Reducing ideas to real property - no you can't, but you can pretend. If you believe in property rights at all, it's important to act as if intellecutal inventions that aren't physical objects are real for the purposes of justice. That's the concept of "IP" - of course it's not a physical object that you can touch, see, etc..., but that characteristic in and of itself should have no bearing on whether or not it is treated as property, and whether it can be "owned" by someone.
Look at some tribal societies across the world and throughout history, where there was (is) no concept for ownership of land. These societies might argue something along the lines of "No one can ever own a mountain, a valley, or a prairie. The notion that you can own a piece of mother nature is absurd". See? Drawing the line at the real vs the not real isn't the right thing to do.
The right thing to do is to look at your societies' laws concerning property rights of physical objects, whater those might be, and then apply those property rights to intangible objects. That's the logic, and it's quite simple, really. Doing the right thing with regards to property rights sometimes goes against the types of self-interested instincts that we naturally have as human beings - if these self-interested tendencies are to somehow be tapped and turned into something beneficial to society in the realm of the intangible, it follows that they might as well be tapped and turned into something beneficial to society in the realm of the physical, as well - that is, if it's such a good idea that there be no property rights for intangible objects, then that very same "good" idea would also need to apply to physical objects, like it does (has) applied in some societies throughout history.
Seeing as how many cultures have held the view that it is impossible to own land and other physical objects, it is not a question of physical vs intangible as much as it is a question of what property rights the culture that you live in finds are appropriate in general, across the board. It's not exactly something that people want to hear, but sometimes that's the way life goes.
I think that drawing the line at a song - for example - You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling - as an example - that's probably OK.
Drawing the line at a novel - Lord of the Rings - no really big problem there.
The problem that patent offices just hand out patents for anything "Get 'em while you can" - complicated by the fact that the benefit of the doubt is that the patent IS valid as far as the courts are concerned - these are serious problems.
But the idea of a song, a movie, a novel, a kernel - we're probably safe drawing the line there, more or less. Although all of those things are physical objects, it's not the keyboard, or the monitor, or the printing company, or the pages of the book that are the physical object - it's what's on those pages, what's on that silver screen - what's on that monitor.
I guess the only thing that bugs me there is the concept that was explored in the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" - where random people from many different places were all humming the same tune; sculpting the same mountain - for instance what happened in the George Harrison case with the copyright infringement - any time you reduce something down to a pure formula, and stop using your common sense, there are bound to be problems. What if there were some sort of "universal rhythm" that had significance for human beings? It would be a shame for artists to try go against their inner creativity and make a concious effort to try to compose something that no one has ever composed before. Maybe there are some tunes, some melodies that have a spiritual significance - a heartbeat, the rhythm of walking, running, etc... that could make some really powerful music, even if more than one artist "hears" them in their heads. It would be good to try to tune into that, so yes, it's a good point - do you invent a melody, or do you just "find" it; and if so, is it possible that someone else has also found the same melody, and if that's the case, how is it possible to own something like that? Extend it further though, and how can you own land? How can you own anything? The earth was put here for us to share, and there are many cultures that have failed to understand how owning land can make any sense. So I think the same concepts can apply to physical or intangible objects, regardless of what philosophy you want to apply to them.
People like file sharing for different reasons, but when you have software companies that are in it to build a business, and the business plans are incomplete with regards to DRM of some sort, you're bound to have problems.
The origin of copyright goes back to at least English common law, if not further.
The problem we have is that we have something that is not a physical object - I know it's an unpopular and purely approximate term, but "intellectual property". My point is that "you can't see it, touch it, feel it, etc...", but it is possible to own it. Something that a brain produces via its intellectual capacities or talents, yet there is no physical object to show for it.
That's the very same problem that the "concept" of copyright has been addressing for hundreds of years. The point is that you CAN argue "Nothing is being taken off the shelf". Everyone agrees on that point - it's obvious nothing is being taken off the shelf. It's obvious no physical object is being taken from one person unjustly and given to another. That's what the concept of intellectual property law has been trying to address for the past few hundred years (or longer).
It all revolves around making the not-real real. Pretending that something that does not exist as a physical object is a physical object. Taking something that is purely an invention of the mind and treating it as if it were the labor of one's hands. That's the whole point - it's not that no one understands this, it's that they understand it very well - miles ahead, actually... this is the very problem that copyright is supposed to address (at least in a common law, common sense sort of way). It's not just about encouraging people to create stuff. It goes deeper than that. It's about making intangible objects into tangible objects for the purpose of legislation and addressing injustices. It's always been that way, long before the U.S.A. even existed.
On the other hand, there are other significant problems - you could say, in a way, that the type of music that our society had become filled with prior to the advent of the internet lended itself to what happened to it. The structure of the entertainment conglomerates, the concept of fame and fortune, the drugs, the sex, and the rock and roll... you can't go around pretending that stuff doesn't affect you in some way (just like your parents told you).
The music changed, and evolved into something different, something that can't stand on its own merits and virtues, but needs sex and drugs and fame and fortune to prop it up, like a crutch. If you want people to not file-share, then the music itself should embody that point of view on a deeper, spiritual level. Rock bands don't accept donations from endowments. It's not "about" that. Rather than embrace society, popular music needs to rebel against it, using the fame and the fortune as a vehicle to tell anyone who might disagree to get lost. If popular music teaches you anything, it teaches you that file sharing is good, and that you should do as much of it as possible. It's the best way to empower yourself. It also happens to be the best way to expand your artistic horizons and stop listening to the crap that "they" want to feed you.
It's two things, really. One is that the selection of "legitimate" multimedia is still somewhat limited for lots of people, and it makes it difficult for people to get together in real life and discuss interesting artists, bands, and movies. Electronic "discussions" make this much easier, and trading of files kind of needs to take place for those "discussions" to mean anything. Maybe "forums" is a better word. Any P2P application is really just a way for human beings to get together and share what they think is cool. Sounds like the entertainment conglomerates want this to happen in real life, not electronically - (i.e. have a get together and listen to music and watch DVDs). But this can't happen until the selection gets diverse enough that it makes it interesting enough and worthwhile for everyone involved. And that can't happen because there's no money to be made in such endeavors. The way to make money is to have less choices, more quantity. Everyone watching the same lacking selection of canned, pre-digested bland crap.
Mr. Fuller came up with this interesting idea; it's kind of hard to describe, so bear with me...
You take a U-shaped, triangular-type thing - sort of like a canoe. But it's longer - not sure how long, but fairly long - maybe at least a couple football fields? You put some water in it. He called it a floating breakwater. This breakwater would stretch along a coast somewhere, out beyond a swimming area - not totally out in the water, but some distance away from the shore, where the water is deeper, but in an area where the waves are already forming, hitting the bottom, but not breaking. It can also help control erosion.
A wave would lift up one end of the breakwater, and the water would move from the end that was lifted up, down towards the other end, and the moving water would generate electricity in that way.
Other things like facing the long end of the house N-S, not like is normally done, facing the long end of the house parallel with the road it's on - this arrangement can keep your house warmer in the winter, perhaps by putting windows or a greenhouse on the south side of the building, and by planting vines on an overhead trellis or using some other type of canopy on the south side of the house in the summer to create shade, there is also a way that you can create airflow throughout the whole house because there will be a significant difference in temperature between the south side and the north side; this can reduce the need for A/C.
Simple things we can all do to make things more efficient; smarter. Instead of paying some large amount of money to work out in a gym, do some gardening and grow your own vegetables - essentially saving lots of money (if you know what you are doing, this can be $20+ per hour you put into it) to grow your own food, and get some serious exercise at the same time. Not to mention that variety and quality of veggies you can get this way.
However, I think that it's not a good idea to put ourselves in a position where we HAVE to switch over to sustainable energy - because it's easier to say than do. Realistically, we need petroleum products right now. We need to look into other options while we still have dead dinosaur remains, not after they are all gone. Instead of treating it as a moral crisis, we need to treat is as an opportunity for technological advancement. If sustainable energy becomes less expensive than dead dinosaur remains, which I think we can get to that point, then people will go for the sustainable energy. If building your house with the long part of the house facing N-S helps save on the A/C bill, and the heating bill, maybe house builders will start building houses facing those directions, and people will want to buy houses facing those directions. If people realize the amount of money they can save by growing their own veggies, maybe areas can be set aside for apartment dwellers where they can do that.
It can be done, we just have to stay positive and cooperative with one another, and stop blaming this or that political party - and it's probably not one particular thing - the best solution will be to use a variety of methods and processes, which, in aggregate, will reduce the need for non-renewable resources of any kind from anywhere.
I agree. I understand. I should add that this doesn't necessarily apply to flac, and flac alone. How about ogg, mp3, wma, aac, whatever else anyone wants. Hard-disk, flash, CD, DVD, whatever..
Obviously, some folks prefer the hard-drive ones, and that choice is a good choice and a valid choice. But I guess it surprises me that the DVD isn't being used (it's not like this is some hypothetical either-or world - we CAN have both) - perhaps it's CSS and other Macrovision restrictions - but in the future, if we get HD-DVD, and the BlueRay disks with something like 30 gigs on each, I just see it as a wonderful way of storing any type of media - whether that aac, or mp3, or flac, ogg, whatever.
It's the concept of using a data CD larger than a CD-R, feeding it to a hardware-based decoder. Whether it's a high-end component, or a portable walkman - the data CD is so ubiquitous, while finding something that reads data DVDs, other than some of the newer DVD players, is next to impossible (for audio formats anyway).
Right now it's the data DVD blank that is "cheap" - I think some are going for 50 cents? In the future, perhaps it will be the Blue Laser disks.
Of course, you could just get a laptop with a DVD drive and use that, but it's a little overkill just for music... another idea I had was to use a Linux-based PDA with a USB port, take a DVD-ROM, put it in an external case that hooks up with the USB port, and use the Linux software on the PDA to play flac files off the external DVD drive - it probably would work, if you could get the software ported on it. I don't know if there are any flac players for Windows CE or the Palm OS - but that might also work.
An inexpensive, (DVD players are like $29 at some stores) - replacable, small, slim, portable data DVD flac/mp3/ogg/aac/wma player with a headphone jack. Shouldn't be that hard to do.
I wonder if advertising has anything to do with it - if you go to a news site just to see "what's up", you might get banner ads, google ads, so on and so forth - but RSS just makes a nice neat webpage for you or something similar.
I have to point out how much I love "Sage", the Mozilla Firefox plugin for RSS - you can even rightclick on that XML thing that tries to tell you to save the page and bookmark it under "Sage Feeds" and then Alt-S and you have your RSS.
I started using Sage for/., Groklaw, and a couple others and it's very cool. Very very cool. I hope the advertising revenue doesn't hurt people or whatever, but it's almost one of those things that would be worth money in how much time and aggravation it saves you having to deal with web designs that aren't as great as they could be.
I've heard a lot about how people complain about Slashdot and the interface and the web design and so on, but Sage cuts down significantly on the time spent here, more or less - or anywhere, for that matter - I think it make the./ or Groklaw or whatever experience BETTER, not worse.
It's the Nyquist theorem - the sampling has to be twice the highest frequency (in this case, for human beings, about 20Khz) you want in order to get proper reproduction. It's a theory, and there are some things about calculating it that don't make it 100%. It may not be 100% correct. But it's more or less, approximately correct, which is good enough.
What about your pets? Maybe your dog would like to sing along with the Beethoven? Think about that for a minute.
And again, CD audio 44.1Khz is based around how the Nyquist theorem applies to human beings - so if you up the frequencies the sound quality IS better, your ears (hearing) just can't notice any difference because you are a human being with human ears. There may be subtle things, or subtle frequencies that affect your subconcious, overtones that might resonate with frequencies in your body or certain glands in your brain (not necessarily your ears).
Music, live, for instance - can be a very spiritual experience - so these mp3's and 44.1Khz CD Audios might be taking some of that spirituality away from us, unfortunately.
We should all just go back to having random jam sessions on the street. We'd be much happier. That way our pets could sing along and we could all have a lot of fun!
I haven't been able to find anything like this (yet).
So we have portable CD players that play mp3's. That's nice. Plop in a CD-R with mp3's into your portable CD-Walkman-type device, and you are good to go. Who needs hard-drive players that cost much much more and that you have to keep plugging into your USB or firewire port?
CD-Audio is silly. DVD-audio is silly. If you can have a portable device that plays FLAC, which there are (they are hard-drive based) from Rio, I think - then what's the point of having huge uncompressed audio files if you can cut the size in half and still have the same sound quality?
Flac does support 24+ bit audio, so instead of using up tons of storage space with that 24bit 96khz quality, just compress it losslessly.
What we need - and I don't know if there are issues with CSS, etc... but we need a Walkman-type device, not much larger than a CD (you know, those round-type things you can get for $50) - that supports DVD data disks.
A DVD data disk is the same size as a CD data disk, and it can hold about 12 lossless - CD Audio quality albums (give or take). Plop in a data DVD that has flac files on it - I think this is much easier in terms of storage space, backups, and not having to connect to some USB or Firewire port all the time every time you want to change the disk.
What I want is a portable FLAC player that accepts DVD data disks - as our embedded processors get more powerful, the need for uncompressed streams like CD audio or DVD audio will be unnecessary.
A portable DVD data player that plays FLAC. That's where it's at, man. Just like the $50 CD Walkmans that play mp3s, except one that plays FLAC and accepts data DVD disks.
Well, that would be like selling copies of that software program that was disallowed - DVD X Copy? Was that the name of it? The court decided that they couldn't sell that software, so this whole thing probably stems from the precedent set by that court case.
It would be like selling computers that advertise the fact that they have DVD copying software on them, as well as having display units with DVDs copied onto them.
Video games can give you carpal tunnel anyway... the next epidemic we are all going to be facing.
Re:This is actually a great idea
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Embedded Gentoo?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Well, I just recently tried to install Gentoo, but I couldn't even get out of the starting gate. The "bootstrap" process, while taking a while, might be acceptable - if it didn't fail here and there from time to time and require you to go in and change code, apply patches, or take wild guesses at why it's not working, etc... In my case, it appeared that "bootstrap" was, at least, upon first inspection, broken.
So I installed Debian, but I wasn't happy with not having had a choice of filesystems, so I went back and guess what I used - the Gentoo install CD - to boot up, manually mount, and move around my partitions from one to the other and make filesystems that I wanted to try out (JFS). Worked just fine. Used the Gentoo handbook to help me (re)-install GRUB, using the Gentoo install CD, on my brand-new Debian JFS Linux machine.
The Gentoo install process, the install CD, the forums, the handbooks, and much much else is really wonderful and puts a new spin on manipulating and customizing your system (in my case it was Debian).
So I think this is quite possibly a really good idea, because it's exactly the flexibility (I don't mean make.conf or USE flags) of the way things are set up that would allow you to sort of get your hands or brains around other things (in my case a Debian install) using the Gentoo philosophy and processes.
Even though Gentoo is though of as a distribution, I think that's it's really turning into something more than just a distribution - I don't particularly care to run Gentoo Linux on my machine, but I will continue to love the install disk if I need to mess around with my system, and the forums and handbooks, if I need questions answered that can make a lot of difference.
I wish them all good luck, and thank them for their hard work.
haven't used anything but E for years now
on
E17 Available From CVS
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· Score: 2, Interesting
maybe it's the trackball I use... I don't know. It's great with trackballs (good ones).
Mine (16.6 right now) is set up 3x3x3 - 9 virtual desktops, times 3 multiple desktops (each with a different background). It's a 3x3x3 cube.
alt-shift combined with right,left,up,down arrows moves you around the virtual desktops (same background, the virtual desktops also wrap around)
ctrl-alt combined with left and right arrows takes you from one multiple desktop to another (different backgrounds, no wrapping)
you kind of have to remember where you are, and right click on the top bar helps you if you get lost.
cd.enlightenment, vim user_apps.menu - add those favorite programs you use all the time to your menu
you can have any menus you want, name them what you want - then link from one to another - the syntax is very easy to pick up - not unlike building a website or something.
I made the first item in the main menu my personalized xterm, so anytime I click the double-click key on my fancy trackball anywhere on the background and an xterm pops up. Then I can dict, or calc, or anything I need. (First click opens up the main menu, second click clicks the first item)
I don't know what more you could want - the only problems I tend to run into is if something is "built for" Gnome or KDE, for instance just the other day - the Straw RSS aggregator - you need to "set" a browser preference to follow the RSS links (like to this story, for instance) - but you need to set the browser preference in Gnome, not Straw. Duh. I found the "sage" RSS aggregator plugin for Firefox and I'm happy as a clam. Place your live RSS links into the "Sage Feeds" bookmark folder in Firefox. Not bad at all.
Enlightenment has done everything, and more - that I have needed. I also like being able to have very nice pictures in the background - I love really nice nature photography, or other relaxing photography when working on a stressful project - it helps.
I start up wmclockmon every time I turn on or reboot the PC, which is not that often - put it in the lower corner, make it sticky and borderless, turn on its "light" and there's my date and time.
So far, anyway, I haven't needed anything badly enough that any other window manager or desktop environment offers to convince me to switch away from the things that I really like about E. Multiple desktops allow you to do several different things at once, keep things seperate, and spread those seperate things out if they too complicated using the virtual desktops within each multiple desktop. And talk about overkill, You can have up to 8x8 virtual desktops - 64 virtual desktops for each multiple desktop - so that's 64 TIMES 32 for each of the possible multiple desktops. That's 2,048 desktops. I use 3x3x3, or 27 and I haven't yet filled them up completely even when working on several complicated projects at the same time.
I love E. That being said, I probably wouldn't use E17 for a while as anything regular - I am apprehensive, because I like E16 so much. Maybe I am alone, maybe it's the way I work, maybe it's the trackball/ergonomic keyboard/setup I have, but E is just -- I don't know - I haven't found anything better, and I have tried lots of things - blackbox, fluxbox, XFCE, Gnome, KDE, sawfish, FVWM, CDE -- nothing - nothing has even come close, in my opinion.
If it was your business, if you stood a very good chance of becoming a multi-millionaire when it was all done - to get a big project off the ground?
I don't doubt that these kinds of things are done at places other than EA, I think there is something to be said for "knowing" the code and the project - almost an ESP-like approach to difficult problems (what did I just do to get this to work just now?)
I think the problem is the pressure, and what rewards you get by facing that pressure, and conquering that pressure. If you are conquering that pressure and the only reward you get if you successfully complete the project is that you don't get fired, or quit, that sucks. If you conquer that pressure, preventing bad things from happening - deadlines not being met, VC people not becoming disheartened by your competency (or lack thereof) - but not only do you prevent bad things from happening, you also gain tangible rewards at the same time that propel you into a world...
There are probably places and times where working that hard, under pressure, can reward people greatly - in certain, probably somewhat rare situations - but as far as that being your daily job, for an established large organization, your efficiency is going to be much worse because you "lose it". All the ESP-like qualities of knowing the code and knowing the project become more difficult to accomplish, knowing there isn't any real reward for you or any end to the unfair and unethical treatment.
No matter how you slice it, it's not good; it's not efficient. But perhaps there are situations, where the reward might make it ethically worthwhile, in some rare instances, for a certain type of personality.
I think the answer is overwhelmingly no - it can't be done, it's a total waste of time and a total waste of money. Any procedures, methodologies, and methods that you use developing one video game can probably be implemented for all other video games - there are significant similarities between the projects that it pays to standardize and hire more people.
On the other hand, if you are working on something completely new, uncharted territory, something so innovative that it's never been done before, the development of that business, or project, or whatever has no precedent, and there probably isn't any established way to do stuff. In a situation like this, perhaps going overboard on the hours you work might pay off in some ways that hiring more people, training them, and trying to set up a system to do something that hasn't ever been done before might not be as efficient.
It's an exception, in special circumstances, when there is substantial reward to motivate you. Otherwise, it's totally unethical and downright idiotic.
Instead of deactivating the entire account, just deactivate that particular game in that particular account - just make that particular key invalid.
If the software vendor is proactive in doing this, if they are "on the ball" when it comes to seeking out and deactivating known bogus keys, this should prove as effective a deterrent as disabling the entire account. Disabling accounts isn't going to win them any friends, and if the "word" gets out that people shouldn't even bother trying to use bogus keys because they won't work but for a short while before they get deactivated, there might be enough of a disincentive to prevent people from doing those things that the software vendor doesn't want people doing.
It's been a fad for quite some time to be harsh, draconian, and fierce, but in the interests of preventing the use of bogus keys, deactivating those bogus keys, silently, switfly, and without much fanfare would probably be equally effective.
I've already seen city vehicles running biodiesel - biodiesel is a renewable fuel that can be produced relatively easily. You need a chem suit to make it because of the methanol, but beyond that, it's fairly straightforward. You could do it in your back yard, although in England, they would give you a hard time about taxes.
Diesel engines are more efficient, and using biodiesel tends to reduce the overall CO2 in the atmosphere - growing the soybeans to make the biodiesel requires almost four times as much CO2 as burning the biodiesel in the diesel engine puts out - yeah, it's not as "clean" as electric - not by a long shot, but it's also true that power plants are far from clean in many ways, and most important of all it's a "renewable" resource. Just grow more soybeans using tractors and other farm machinery that runs on biodiesel to do it.
In the winter, you have to blend, I believe it's usually 10 or 20 percent biodiesel or it gels up, so that's kind of the bad part. Maybe something like a diesel/electric hybrid? Remember, at least in the summer or in warm climates, any modern diesel engine can run 100% biodiesel with absolutely no modifications at all. Just have to keep an eye on the fuel filters because biodiesel has a way of loosening up the petro-gunk particles in gas tanks left over from regular diesel (like a solvent) - and it also has a tendency to eath through older fuel lines (newer fuel lines are fine).
Biodiesel is available now, if your diesel is older you may need new fuel lines and keep and eye on the fuel filters, otherwise no modifications necessary, and people report that their diesels have more power, and run quieter with biodiesel.
Why wait? Do it now. A diesel/electric hybrid might be real nice, too.
Again, if you send your kid to a private school of your liking you don't have to deal with this crap - and you'll get them a better education while you're at it. This will mean an easier time getting accepted at a better college, will lead to a more fulfilling career, a better quality of life, so on and so forth.
The RFID is probably one of the more minor problems the students at many of our public schools face.
yin, among other things, represents being passive, remaining still. restfulness - couch potatoes could be called "yin".
yang, among other things, represents being active, moving (something like running or playing soccer is yang) - in the summer, when it's hot, you are in a "yang" environment, and your watchband fits tighter as your body "expands" and becomes more yin as a reaction - in the winter, you are in a "yin" environment, and you watchband loosens as your body contracts and becomes more "yang" as a response. It goes on and on. In the tropics, the warm (yang) environment produces big juicy (yin) fruits (papayas, pineapples, grapefruits, etc..). In colder climates, the fruits are smaller and less juicy (more yang) - currants, raspberries, apples.
Of course, yin and yang represent other things as well - sugar is yin, salt is yang, competitiveness is yang, cooperation is yin - the list goes on and on.
One example would be if you became extremely yang, and ran 15 miles in an effort to lose weight rapidly. You would find yourself, if you weren't "in shape", if you were being excessively yang, you would find yourself exhausted and resting - as motionless as a couch potato. In this way, extremely active (perhaps excessively active) yang becomes an extremely exhausted, rather motionless yin.
Civilizations rise and fall - a carbon-based life form grows and then the process reverses and it starts to wither and die. War inevitably, eventually, at some point, leads to peace, just like peace, eventually, inevitably, leads to war.
I doubt that in western philosophy it's as prevalent of a theory - well, actually, Aristotle in his "Rhetoric" (I think it was Rhetoric) talks about anger being a form of pleasure, but if you are angry all the time it becomes a bad habit and a form of licentiousness - if I remember that one correctly. Excessive pleasure becomes a vice. Or something like that, probably need to brush up on my Aristotle.
Perhaps a better way to look at it is that yin creates yang, and yang creates yin - they are interconnected, one cannot exist without the other.
If an authority creates rules that are extreme in a particular way, then there will inevitably be a fallout to compensate for that extreme behavior. Our Western sciences and physics might not be able to explain it, (yet) - but if you look all around you, you will see that this is the way that things work. The fact that EFF is suing them is already a sign that there is a reaction to it.
All I'm saying is that our legislatures need to realize that "cracking down" has unintended side effects, and that those side effects need to be evaluated before going to such extreme measures. If no one takes the FCC seriously, and just follows the rules in a robot-like fashion, it will weaken the cultural aspects of our society and we will all be content to watch the same famous actors over and over and over again, and our intellectual capacity to enjoy true art and expression will be diminished.
Or something like that. I would not be surprised if five element theory has no credibility whatsoever in an erudite western world, but the concepts are real, and until you "get it" you don't see that, at least in an abstract sense, the concepts work. But that's often called quackery and alternative medicine and naturalistic fallacies for natural remedies and so forth.
I would suggest that authoritative bodies should try to exercise moderation when it comes to criminalizing the activities of 60 million people, because extreme tactics are bound to backfire (no one is going to take them seriously).
Or the Eastern theory of extreme yin becoming yang, extreme yang becoming yin. It's hard to understand.
More is sometimes less, less is sometimes more. The danger is that by trying to be more, agencies like the FCC end up having their authority weakened. People will not take their policies, and other policies seriously. The more they do to try to crack down, the less effective they become. This is a proven fact, at least in theory.
Copyright law, or something like it, existed in what is called "common law" before America was an independent nation. Common law, in England, going back hundreds and hundreds of years, the "common sense" notion that just because something isn't a physical object, doesn't mean that it can't have some kind of ownership.
The concept of copyright has existed way, way before there were any copyright laws, way, way before America even existed as a country. It's at such a basic level that you can't really get away from it.
What should be done is that the price of music and the price of DVD's should be brought down - those prices are fixed - like another poster pointed out some time ago - these entertainment companies behave like a cartel - the music is overpriced, the movies are overpriced, and it's simply assumed that in order for a movie to be made hundreds of millions of dollars need to be spent to make it - this prevents newer artists from getting into the game... it prevents talented people from expressing themselves,
We should probably redefine the concept that a production, and hence the final product, needs to be expensive in order for it to be considered a quality work of art. That's one problem. If a movie can be made for say, 10 million dollars, and the DVD can be sold for, say $8.99 - giving a previously unknown artist a chance to express herself - then we would be headed in the right direction. It's not copyright's fault that Hollywood is a mess.
Other things that probably need to be questioned are things like the connection between p2p applications and advertising - the idea that a company (like Napster or Kazaa) turns a profit, or makes some kind of revenue stream from advertising on its site or on its products - if you pay careful attention, you will see that this does in fact matter to prosecutors.
Also, perhaps the idea of what a PC (Microsoft) should really be for. Is it a valid thing to buy a PC so that, amongst other reasons, you can fileshare? For instance, not because you are "interested" in music and a big fan and want to learn more about your favorite artists and discuss different things about different artists with your friends (e-mailing an mp3 to a friend to "sample" an album or discuss some aspect of it); not because you have a hobby such as collecting live shows from Dave Matthews and other bands that encourage trading - what I mean is the concept of file-sharing, using an application produced by a software company that generates a revenue stream, by a company that wants as many people to use their software as possible (which increases the selection), I mean using these things as some kind of consideration when purchasing a computer. This needs to be questioned. Is this what computers should be for?
Sorry, but that article makes no sense to me whatsoever. You could just argue that people should be able to share files - this is more or less true anyway, at least in an international sense - but to argue that for-profit companies should be able to generate a revenue stream and market themselves to tens of millions of people by offering a service that has the SOLE purpose (more or less) of enabling the sharing of copyright-infringing files doesn't do anyone a favor. I don't think BT fits this critera, actually, with BT you would have to focus on the torrents (the files) themselves - anyone who makes those available.
Unfortunately, the only way for a legislature to deal with filesharing in a fashion that even remotely accomplishes what you suggest is to pay no attention to it. You can't justify it as a "legitimate" industry around which to build a company - I mean seriously - you CAN'T justify it as a "legitimate" industry - all you can do is just sort of not pay attention to it. If the US and other countries are agressive about pursuing it as an injustice, then you can't stop them from doing that by arguing that copyright is irrelevant. The only argument, I think, that you can really make is that they shouldn't pursue it as agressively. But as long as there are companies out there that generate an advertising revenue stream by providing software programs that "enable copyright infringement" - whatever that means, there will be easy and big targets to pursue.
One theory that I have heard is that when an individual (or a carbon-based life-form) has a greater intelligence, as in, for example, the difference between a pig (the animal) and a human being, the superior-intelligence life form (the human being) will be able to nitpick and see contradictions and things that don't look right - annoyances, things like that. Perhaps a pig might not see these things, seeing as how it is a "lower" life-form with regards to intellect and reasoning. I know, "pigs are smart", but they can't read Shakespeare, or surf the internet.
You get your car back and there's oil on the steering wheel - builders track cement all over your yard - or a teacher that is obviously not fully grasping the subject he or she teaches, as is prone to happen from time to time - your son or daughter gets an essay question marked wrong that you think shouldn't have been marked wrong.
Furthermore, as an intelligent, caring, curious human being, you are fascinated with computers and the internet, and it bugs you that people expect you to just shut up and consume whatever they feel like shoving down your throat, and it also bugs you when others suggest that you should just "make like a pig" and "be happy" in your stupidity. Arrrgghhhh! Why am I so annoyed???? See... it's 'cause you're smart and you see the BS where it lies.
No, we are not stupid. We are smart. We pick the lint off your shirt. We're never satisfied. And you know what? We're proud of it. It's what makes us human beings.
It's not about knowing less about computers or automobiles or building or anything... it's "Hey, you got oil all over my steering wheel and my car is still making that noise" - or something along those lines.
Pigs might be able to just be happy, or maybe clams, better yet, you know... "happy as a clam" - when it comes to using IE, but being nitpicky is, to a greater or lesser extent, human nature - it's what human beings do. It might be right or wrong, but I think it's in some way, shape, or form, "better" than being a pig.
I figured this is probably one of the best ways to do it right now, no? Burn your flac files onto a DVD recordable, and then just get an inexpensive DVD reader and it's like having mega-albums or something...put an entire 10-15 CD boxed set (depending on how full the audio CD's are) in lossless format onto a single CD-sized disk...
The other thing that I am interested in trying out is a projector - it seems that you can probably get a decent one for around $1000 - you can hook those up right to your computer's video card where your monitor would otherwise go, with Linux/BSD you can adjust your XF86Config file down to 800x600 or 1024x768 (depending on the model and how much you want to pay), and then you have a much larger picture than even the largest flatpanels. Dvd's are 720 x something depending on whether or not it's anamorphic or not - but even the lowest resolution projectors at 800x600 are enough to fit the DVD natively onto that resolution. The only thing that surprised me is that the replacement bulbs for those projectors are as much as $350. Scary.
I haven't really broken down and spent the money, but it's something I am curious to try out - plop a DVD into the DVD reader, fire up the projector, connect the surround-sound sound card in your computer to a surround-sound system, and you should be good to go. Of course, it helps to do this when it's dark, some of the projectors don't work so well in the daylight.
Ok. Don't use Linux for two years. Just as an experiment. Then, just try it again. Not good enough for you yet? Wait another two years. Then try it again.
The best thing about Linux is the speed at which the development occurs. Open source is a different development model - it allows something to "not die", something, which if it was proprietary, quite possibly might have died. Open source, more specifically, the GPL, ensures that Linux will continue to thrive just so long as there are at least a couple hundred people on the face of the planet that would like it to. It's totally different if you would like to keep working on and improving on that proprietary operating system or software program, but the company went out of business and the source code is locked up in a vault somewhere... this doesn't happen to open source, so open source won't "die". Besides, technically, it's NOT "Linux", it's "GNU/Linux". And GNU is a recursive acronymn that stands for "Gnu's Not Unix".
Linux is winning. You can realize that now, or you can realize that later. Meanwhile, Linux is going to continue to grow and get better at an incredibly fast rate of speed. So if you don't like it now, wait a year or two... by then, it'll be so easy to use you will have wondered what you missed - it's a moving target, a very fast moving target, so what you don't like today will be history next month.
1. The files thing - it's not THAT particular thing, it's the concept - performing a series of operations, any operations, on a series of objects, in this case, filesystem objects. It's the CONCEPT - you can't do that with a mouse in Windows. Sure, it's easy to do some things in Windows, but it's EASIER to do much more complex stuff in Linux if you know what you are doing. A blender might be easy, but an industrial blender is EASIER for a particular job, even though using the machine might be more complicated. It's not the difficulty of using the tool, it's the difficulty of the job that the tool has to do.
2. You obviously don't understand the CLI. If you understand the CLI, you know it's a programming language. A simple one, but a programming language nonetheless. How could you not care about that if you knew it? It's the case of the sour honey - the bee's nest was too high up in the tree, the bear couldn't get to it - so he gave up and consoled himself by becoming convinced the honey was sour anyway. It's not that hard, trust me, you just have to take one step at a time. Bash is your friend.
3. I guess what I see is that perhaps many people feel that it's "not worth it" to learn GIMP. Your attitudes towards GIMP are the cause of your difficulties. Many individuals, for instance, would gladly take lots of time to learn Photoshop, because their attitudes towards Photoshop are more favorable and Photoshop has the "image" and the "coolness" factor. Truth be told, if you are a graphic artist, you need to know both. Comparing GIMP to some application that allows you print out wallet-sized photos isn't fair... GIMP is an incredibly complex program with intense capabilities - you're comparing apples and oranges. What YOU want is called the "Gnome Photo Printer". Google for that and you will have your wallet-sized photos.
I guess it just boils down to whether or not the whole point of the thing is to sell massive quantities of computers to massive quantities of people, or to produce a quality product that appeals to certain types of people, regardless of the quantities of people.
Seriously... if you like Windows so much, use it - but if the reason you don't like Unix or Linux is because OTHER people like the advanced capabilities it offers, or because "everyone who stands up for Unix never goes outside" then I would have to say it's a failure to understand what a computer is. A better analogy, perhaps is a stick shift, not a hand crank. Got a problem with my stick shift? C'mon. Your opinion counts just as much as anyone elses - so it's always best to respect yourself and make up your OWN mind - if you don't like Unix because it's got a "command line" - if that "command line" which you never have to use really just bugs you that much, and that's how you really feel - why of course you are entitled to that opinion. Don't let others' appreciation and respect for the command line drive you away from a superior product.
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and ownership of nothing worked for millenia prior to the rise of Western civilization....
Reducing ideas to real property - no you can't, but you can pretend. If you believe in property rights at all, it's important to act as if intellecutal inventions that aren't physical objects are real for the purposes of justice. That's the concept of "IP" - of course it's not a physical object that you can touch, see, etc..., but that characteristic in and of itself should have no bearing on whether or not it is treated as property, and whether it can be "owned" by someone.
Look at some tribal societies across the world and throughout history, where there was (is) no concept for ownership of land. These societies might argue something along the lines of "No one can ever own a mountain, a valley, or a prairie. The notion that you can own a piece of mother nature is absurd". See? Drawing the line at the real vs the not real isn't the right thing to do.
The right thing to do is to look at your societies' laws concerning property rights of physical objects, whater those might be, and then apply those property rights to intangible objects. That's the logic, and it's quite simple, really. Doing the right thing with regards to property rights sometimes goes against the types of self-interested instincts that we naturally have as human beings - if these self-interested tendencies are to somehow be tapped and turned into something beneficial to society in the realm of the intangible, it follows that they might as well be tapped and turned into something beneficial to society in the realm of the physical, as well - that is, if it's such a good idea that there be no property rights for intangible objects, then that very same "good" idea would also need to apply to physical objects, like it does (has) applied in some societies throughout history.
Seeing as how many cultures have held the view that it is impossible to own land and other physical objects, it is not a question of physical vs intangible as much as it is a question of what property rights the culture that you live in finds are appropriate in general, across the board. It's not exactly something that people want to hear, but sometimes that's the way life goes.
but the intake of breath that some energetic ministers do when preaching appears to be an acquired skill...I still don't understand how they do it.
I think that drawing the line at a song - for example - You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling - as an example - that's probably OK.
Drawing the line at a novel - Lord of the Rings - no really big problem there.
The problem that patent offices just hand out patents for anything "Get 'em while you can" - complicated by the fact that the benefit of the doubt is that the patent IS valid as far as the courts are concerned - these are serious problems.
But the idea of a song, a movie, a novel, a kernel - we're probably safe drawing the line there, more or less. Although all of those things are physical objects, it's not the keyboard, or the monitor, or the printing company, or the pages of the book that are the physical object - it's what's on those pages, what's on that silver screen - what's on that monitor.
I guess the only thing that bugs me there is the concept that was explored in the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" - where random people from many different places were all humming the same tune; sculpting the same mountain - for instance what happened in the George Harrison case with the copyright infringement - any time you reduce something down to a pure formula, and stop using your common sense, there are bound to be problems. What if there were some sort of "universal rhythm" that had significance for human beings? It would be a shame for artists to try go against their inner creativity and make a concious effort to try to compose something that no one has ever composed before. Maybe there are some tunes, some melodies that have a spiritual significance - a heartbeat, the rhythm of walking, running, etc... that could make some really powerful music, even if more than one artist "hears" them in their heads. It would be good to try to tune into that, so yes, it's a good point - do you invent a melody, or do you just "find" it; and if so, is it possible that someone else has also found the same melody, and if that's the case, how is it possible to own something like that? Extend it further though, and how can you own land? How can you own anything? The earth was put here for us to share, and there are many cultures that have failed to understand how owning land can make any sense. So I think the same concepts can apply to physical or intangible objects, regardless of what philosophy you want to apply to them.
People like file sharing for different reasons, but when you have software companies that are in it to build a business, and the business plans are incomplete with regards to DRM of some sort, you're bound to have problems.
The origin of copyright goes back to at least English common law, if not further.
The problem we have is that we have something that is not a physical object - I know it's an unpopular and purely approximate term, but "intellectual property". My point is that "you can't see it, touch it, feel it, etc...", but it is possible to own it. Something that a brain produces via its intellectual capacities or talents, yet there is no physical object to show for it.
That's the very same problem that the "concept" of copyright has been addressing for hundreds of years. The point is that you CAN argue "Nothing is being taken off the shelf". Everyone agrees on that point - it's obvious nothing is being taken off the shelf. It's obvious no physical object is being taken from one person unjustly and given to another. That's what the concept of intellectual property law has been trying to address for the past few hundred years (or longer).
It all revolves around making the not-real real. Pretending that something that does not exist as a physical object is a physical object. Taking something that is purely an invention of the mind and treating it as if it were the labor of one's hands. That's the whole point - it's not that no one understands this, it's that they understand it very well - miles ahead, actually... this is the very problem that copyright is supposed to address (at least in a common law, common sense sort of way). It's not just about encouraging people to create stuff. It goes deeper than that. It's about making intangible objects into tangible objects for the purpose of legislation and addressing injustices. It's always been that way, long before the U.S.A. even existed.
On the other hand, there are other significant problems - you could say, in a way, that the type of music that our society had become filled with prior to the advent of the internet lended itself to what happened to it. The structure of the entertainment conglomerates, the concept of fame and fortune, the drugs, the sex, and the rock and roll... you can't go around pretending that stuff doesn't affect you in some way (just like your parents told you).
The music changed, and evolved into something different, something that can't stand on its own merits and virtues, but needs sex and drugs and fame and fortune to prop it up, like a crutch. If you want people to not file-share, then the music itself should embody that point of view on a deeper, spiritual level. Rock bands don't accept donations from endowments. It's not "about" that. Rather than embrace society, popular music needs to rebel against it, using the fame and the fortune as a vehicle to tell anyone who might disagree to get lost. If popular music teaches you anything, it teaches you that file sharing is good, and that you should do as much of it as possible. It's the best way to empower yourself. It also happens to be the best way to expand your artistic horizons and stop listening to the crap that "they" want to feed you.
It's two things, really. One is that the selection of "legitimate" multimedia is still somewhat limited for lots of people, and it makes it difficult for people to get together in real life and discuss interesting artists, bands, and movies. Electronic "discussions" make this much easier, and trading of files kind of needs to take place for those "discussions" to mean anything. Maybe "forums" is a better word. Any P2P application is really just a way for human beings to get together and share what they think is cool. Sounds like the entertainment conglomerates want this to happen in real life, not electronically - (i.e. have a get together and listen to music and watch DVDs). But this can't happen until the selection gets diverse enough that it makes it interesting enough and worthwhile for everyone involved. And that can't happen because there's no money to be made in such endeavors. The way to make money is to have less choices, more quantity. Everyone watching the same lacking selection of canned, pre-digested bland crap.
Mr. Fuller came up with this interesting idea; it's kind of hard to describe, so bear with me...
You take a U-shaped, triangular-type thing - sort of like a canoe. But it's longer - not sure how long, but fairly long - maybe at least a couple football fields? You put some water in it. He called it a floating breakwater. This breakwater would stretch along a coast somewhere, out beyond a swimming area - not totally out in the water, but some distance away from the shore, where the water is deeper, but in an area where the waves are already forming, hitting the bottom, but not breaking. It can also help control erosion.
A wave would lift up one end of the breakwater, and the water would move from the end that was lifted up, down towards the other end, and the moving water would generate electricity in that way.
Other things like facing the long end of the house N-S, not like is normally done, facing the long end of the house parallel with the road it's on - this arrangement can keep your house warmer in the winter, perhaps by putting windows or a greenhouse on the south side of the building, and by planting vines on an overhead trellis or using some other type of canopy on the south side of the house in the summer to create shade, there is also a way that you can create airflow throughout the whole house because there will be a significant difference in temperature between the south side and the north side; this can reduce the need for A/C.
Simple things we can all do to make things more efficient; smarter. Instead of paying some large amount of money to work out in a gym, do some gardening and grow your own vegetables - essentially saving lots of money (if you know what you are doing, this can be $20+ per hour you put into it) to grow your own food, and get some serious exercise at the same time. Not to mention that variety and quality of veggies you can get this way.
However, I think that it's not a good idea to put ourselves in a position where we HAVE to switch over to sustainable energy - because it's easier to say than do. Realistically, we need petroleum products right now. We need to look into other options while we still have dead dinosaur remains, not after they are all gone. Instead of treating it as a moral crisis, we need to treat is as an opportunity for technological advancement. If sustainable energy becomes less expensive than dead dinosaur remains, which I think we can get to that point, then people will go for the sustainable energy. If building your house with the long part of the house facing N-S helps save on the A/C bill, and the heating bill, maybe house builders will start building houses facing those directions, and people will want to buy houses facing those directions. If people realize the amount of money they can save by growing their own veggies, maybe areas can be set aside for apartment dwellers where they can do that.
It can be done, we just have to stay positive and cooperative with one another, and stop blaming this or that political party - and it's probably not one particular thing - the best solution will be to use a variety of methods and processes, which, in aggregate, will reduce the need for non-renewable resources of any kind from anywhere.
I agree. I understand. I should add that this doesn't necessarily apply to flac, and flac alone. How about ogg, mp3, wma, aac, whatever else anyone wants. Hard-disk, flash, CD, DVD, whatever..
Obviously, some folks prefer the hard-drive ones, and that choice is a good choice and a valid choice. But I guess it surprises me that the DVD isn't being used (it's not like this is some hypothetical either-or world - we CAN have both) - perhaps it's CSS and other Macrovision restrictions - but in the future, if we get HD-DVD, and the BlueRay disks with something like 30 gigs on each, I just see it as a wonderful way of storing any type of media - whether that aac, or mp3, or flac, ogg, whatever.
It's the concept of using a data CD larger than a CD-R, feeding it to a hardware-based decoder. Whether it's a high-end component, or a portable walkman - the data CD is so ubiquitous, while finding something that reads data DVDs, other than some of the newer DVD players, is next to impossible (for audio formats anyway).
Right now it's the data DVD blank that is "cheap" - I think some are going for 50 cents? In the future, perhaps it will be the Blue Laser disks.
Of course, you could just get a laptop with a DVD drive and use that, but it's a little overkill just for music... another idea I had was to use a Linux-based PDA with a USB port, take a DVD-ROM, put it in an external case that hooks up with the USB port, and use the Linux software on the PDA to play flac files off the external DVD drive - it probably would work, if you could get the software ported on it. I don't know if there are any flac players for Windows CE or the Palm OS - but that might also work.
An inexpensive, (DVD players are like $29 at some stores) - replacable, small, slim, portable data DVD flac/mp3/ogg/aac/wma player with a headphone jack. Shouldn't be that hard to do.
I wonder if advertising has anything to do with it - if you go to a news site just to see "what's up", you might get banner ads, google ads, so on and so forth - but RSS just makes a nice neat webpage for you or something similar.
/., Groklaw, and a couple others and it's very cool. Very very cool. I hope the advertising revenue doesn't hurt people or whatever, but it's almost one of those things that would be worth money in how much time and aggravation it saves you having to deal with web designs that aren't as great as they could be.
./ or Groklaw or whatever experience BETTER, not worse.
I have to point out how much I love "Sage", the Mozilla Firefox plugin for RSS - you can even rightclick on that XML thing that tries to tell you to save the page and bookmark it under "Sage Feeds" and then Alt-S and you have your RSS.
I started using Sage for
I've heard a lot about how people complain about Slashdot and the interface and the web design and so on, but Sage cuts down significantly on the time spent here, more or less - or anywhere, for that matter - I think it make the
Only thing I can think of is advertising revenue.
It's the Nyquist theorem - the sampling has to be twice the highest frequency (in this case, for human beings, about 20Khz) you want in order to get proper reproduction. It's a theory, and there are some things about calculating it that don't make it 100%. It may not be 100% correct. But it's more or less, approximately correct, which is good enough.
What about your pets? Maybe your dog would like to sing along with the Beethoven? Think about that for a minute.
And again, CD audio 44.1Khz is based around how the Nyquist theorem applies to human beings - so if you up the frequencies the sound quality IS better, your ears (hearing) just can't notice any difference because you are a human being with human ears. There may be subtle things, or subtle frequencies that affect your subconcious, overtones that might resonate with frequencies in your body or certain glands in your brain (not necessarily your ears).
Music, live, for instance - can be a very spiritual experience - so these mp3's and 44.1Khz CD Audios might be taking some of that spirituality away from us, unfortunately.
We should all just go back to having random jam sessions on the street. We'd be much happier. That way our pets could sing along and we could all have a lot of fun!
I haven't been able to find anything like this (yet).
So we have portable CD players that play mp3's. That's nice. Plop in a CD-R with mp3's into your portable CD-Walkman-type device, and you are good to go. Who needs hard-drive players that cost much much more and that you have to keep plugging into your USB or firewire port?
CD-Audio is silly. DVD-audio is silly. If you can have a portable device that plays FLAC, which there are (they are hard-drive based) from Rio, I think - then what's the point of having huge uncompressed audio files if you can cut the size in half and still have the same sound quality?
Flac does support 24+ bit audio, so instead of using up tons of storage space with that 24bit 96khz quality, just compress it losslessly.
What we need - and I don't know if there are issues with CSS, etc... but we need a Walkman-type device, not much larger than a CD (you know, those round-type things you can get for $50) - that supports DVD data disks.
A DVD data disk is the same size as a CD data disk, and it can hold about 12 lossless - CD Audio quality albums (give or take). Plop in a data DVD that has flac files on it - I think this is much easier in terms of storage space, backups, and not having to connect to some USB or Firewire port all the time every time you want to change the disk.
What I want is a portable FLAC player that accepts DVD data disks - as our embedded processors get more powerful, the need for uncompressed streams like CD audio or DVD audio will be unnecessary.
A portable DVD data player that plays FLAC. That's where it's at, man. Just like the $50 CD Walkmans that play mp3s, except one that plays FLAC and accepts data DVD disks.
Well, that would be like selling copies of that software program that was disallowed - DVD X Copy? Was that the name of it? The court decided that they couldn't sell that software, so this whole thing probably stems from the precedent set by that court case.
It would be like selling computers that advertise the fact that they have DVD copying software on them, as well as having display units with DVDs copied onto them.
Video games can give you carpal tunnel anyway... the next epidemic we are all going to be facing.
Well, I just recently tried to install Gentoo, but I couldn't even get out of the starting gate. The "bootstrap" process, while taking a while, might be acceptable - if it didn't fail here and there from time to time and require you to go in and change code, apply patches, or take wild guesses at why it's not working, etc... In my case, it appeared that "bootstrap" was, at least, upon first inspection, broken.
So I installed Debian, but I wasn't happy with not having had a choice of filesystems, so I went back and guess what I used - the Gentoo install CD - to boot up, manually mount, and move around my partitions from one to the other and make filesystems that I wanted to try out (JFS). Worked just fine. Used the Gentoo handbook to help me (re)-install GRUB, using the Gentoo install CD, on my brand-new Debian JFS Linux machine.
The Gentoo install process, the install CD, the forums, the handbooks, and much much else is really wonderful and puts a new spin on manipulating and customizing your system (in my case it was Debian).
So I think this is quite possibly a really good idea, because it's exactly the flexibility (I don't mean make.conf or USE flags) of the way things are set up that would allow you to sort of get your hands or brains around other things (in my case a Debian install) using the Gentoo philosophy and processes.
Even though Gentoo is though of as a distribution, I think that's it's really turning into something more than just a distribution - I don't particularly care to run Gentoo Linux on my machine, but I will continue to love the install disk if I need to mess around with my system, and the forums and handbooks, if I need questions answered that can make a lot of difference.
I wish them all good luck, and thank them for their hard work.
maybe it's the trackball I use... I don't know. It's great with trackballs (good ones).
.enlightenment, vim user_apps.menu - add those favorite programs you use all the time to your menu
Mine (16.6 right now) is set up 3x3x3 - 9 virtual desktops, times 3 multiple desktops (each with a different background). It's a 3x3x3 cube.
alt-shift combined with right,left,up,down arrows moves you around the virtual desktops (same background, the virtual desktops also wrap around)
ctrl-alt combined with left and right arrows takes you from one multiple desktop to another (different backgrounds, no wrapping)
you kind of have to remember where you are, and right click on the top bar helps you if you get lost.
cd
you can have any menus you want, name them what you want - then link from one to another - the syntax is very easy to pick up - not unlike building a website or something.
I made the first item in the main menu my personalized xterm, so anytime I click the double-click key on my fancy trackball anywhere on the background and an xterm pops up. Then I can dict, or calc, or anything I need. (First click opens up the main menu, second click clicks the first item)
I don't know what more you could want - the only problems I tend to run into is if something is "built for" Gnome or KDE, for instance just the other day - the Straw RSS aggregator - you need to "set" a browser preference to follow the RSS links (like to this story, for instance) - but you need to set the browser preference in Gnome, not Straw. Duh. I found the "sage" RSS aggregator plugin for Firefox and I'm happy as a clam. Place your live RSS links into the "Sage Feeds" bookmark folder in Firefox. Not bad at all.
Enlightenment has done everything, and more - that I have needed. I also like being able to have very nice pictures in the background - I love really nice nature photography, or other relaxing photography when working on a stressful project - it helps.
I start up wmclockmon every time I turn on or reboot the PC, which is not that often - put it in the lower corner, make it sticky and borderless, turn on its "light" and there's my date and time.
So far, anyway, I haven't needed anything badly enough that any other window manager or desktop environment offers to convince me to switch away from the things that I really like about E. Multiple desktops allow you to do several different things at once, keep things seperate, and spread those seperate things out if they too complicated using the virtual desktops within each multiple desktop. And talk about overkill, You can have up to 8x8 virtual desktops - 64 virtual desktops for each multiple desktop - so that's 64 TIMES 32 for each of the possible multiple desktops. That's 2,048 desktops. I use 3x3x3, or 27 and I haven't yet filled them up completely even when working on several complicated projects at the same time.
I love E. That being said, I probably wouldn't use E17 for a while as anything regular - I am apprehensive, because I like E16 so much. Maybe I am alone, maybe it's the way I work, maybe it's the trackball/ergonomic keyboard/setup I have, but E is just -- I don't know - I haven't found anything better, and I have tried lots of things - blackbox, fluxbox, XFCE, Gnome, KDE, sawfish, FVWM, CDE -- nothing - nothing has even come close, in my opinion.
If it was your business, if you stood a very good chance of becoming a multi-millionaire when it was all done - to get a big project off the ground?
I don't doubt that these kinds of things are done at places other than EA, I think there is something to be said for "knowing" the code and the project - almost an ESP-like approach to difficult problems (what did I just do to get this to work just now?)
I think the problem is the pressure, and what rewards you get by facing that pressure, and conquering that pressure. If you are conquering that pressure and the only reward you get if you successfully complete the project is that you don't get fired, or quit, that sucks. If you conquer that pressure, preventing bad things from happening - deadlines not being met, VC people not becoming disheartened by your competency (or lack thereof) - but not only do you prevent bad things from happening, you also gain tangible rewards at the same time that propel you into a world...
There are probably places and times where working that hard, under pressure, can reward people greatly - in certain, probably somewhat rare situations - but as far as that being your daily job, for an established large organization, your efficiency is going to be much worse because you "lose it". All the ESP-like qualities of knowing the code and knowing the project become more difficult to accomplish, knowing there isn't any real reward for you or any end to the unfair and unethical treatment.
No matter how you slice it, it's not good; it's not efficient. But perhaps there are situations, where the reward might make it ethically worthwhile, in some rare instances, for a certain type of personality.
I think the answer is overwhelmingly no - it can't be done, it's a total waste of time and a total waste of money. Any procedures, methodologies, and methods that you use developing one video game can probably be implemented for all other video games - there are significant similarities between the projects that it pays to standardize and hire more people.
On the other hand, if you are working on something completely new, uncharted territory, something so innovative that it's never been done before, the development of that business, or project, or whatever has no precedent, and there probably isn't any established way to do stuff. In a situation like this, perhaps going overboard on the hours you work might pay off in some ways that hiring more people, training them, and trying to set up a system to do something that hasn't ever been done before might not be as efficient.
It's an exception, in special circumstances, when there is substantial reward to motivate you. Otherwise, it's totally unethical and downright idiotic.
Instead of deactivating the entire account, just deactivate that particular game in that particular account - just make that particular key invalid.
If the software vendor is proactive in doing this, if they are "on the ball" when it comes to seeking out and deactivating known bogus keys, this should prove as effective a deterrent as disabling the entire account. Disabling accounts isn't going to win them any friends, and if the "word" gets out that people shouldn't even bother trying to use bogus keys because they won't work but for a short while before they get deactivated, there might be enough of a disincentive to prevent people from doing those things that the software vendor doesn't want people doing.
It's been a fad for quite some time to be harsh, draconian, and fierce, but in the interests of preventing the use of bogus keys, deactivating those bogus keys, silently, switfly, and without much fanfare would probably be equally effective.
I've already seen city vehicles running biodiesel - biodiesel is a renewable fuel that can be produced relatively easily. You need a chem suit to make it because of the methanol, but beyond that, it's fairly straightforward. You could do it in your back yard, although in England, they would give you a hard time about taxes.
Diesel engines are more efficient, and using biodiesel tends to reduce the overall CO2 in the atmosphere - growing the soybeans to make the biodiesel requires almost four times as much CO2 as burning the biodiesel in the diesel engine puts out - yeah, it's not as "clean" as electric - not by a long shot, but it's also true that power plants are far from clean in many ways, and most important of all it's a "renewable" resource. Just grow more soybeans using tractors and other farm machinery that runs on biodiesel to do it.
In the winter, you have to blend, I believe it's usually 10 or 20 percent biodiesel or it gels up, so that's kind of the bad part. Maybe something like a diesel/electric hybrid? Remember, at least in the summer or in warm climates, any modern diesel engine can run 100% biodiesel with absolutely no modifications at all. Just have to keep an eye on the fuel filters because biodiesel has a way of loosening up the petro-gunk particles in gas tanks left over from regular diesel (like a solvent) - and it also has a tendency to eath through older fuel lines (newer fuel lines are fine).
Biodiesel is available now, if your diesel is older you may need new fuel lines and keep and eye on the fuel filters, otherwise no modifications necessary, and people report that their diesels have more power, and run quieter with biodiesel.
Why wait? Do it now. A diesel/electric hybrid might be real nice, too.
Again, if you send your kid to a private school of your liking you don't have to deal with this crap - and you'll get them a better education while you're at it. This will mean an easier time getting accepted at a better college, will lead to a more fulfilling career, a better quality of life, so on and so forth.
The RFID is probably one of the more minor problems the students at many of our public schools face.
I understand. Little early in the morning for me there on that comment, I guess. Drink the coffee FIRST before you post on /.
yin, among other things, represents being passive, remaining still. restfulness - couch potatoes could be called "yin".
yang, among other things, represents being active, moving (something like running or playing soccer is yang) - in the summer, when it's hot, you are in a "yang" environment, and your watchband fits tighter as your body "expands" and becomes more yin as a reaction - in the winter, you are in a "yin" environment, and you watchband loosens as your body contracts and becomes more "yang" as a response. It goes on and on. In the tropics, the warm (yang) environment produces big juicy (yin) fruits (papayas, pineapples, grapefruits, etc..). In colder climates, the fruits are smaller and less juicy (more yang) - currants, raspberries, apples.
Of course, yin and yang represent other things as well - sugar is yin, salt is yang, competitiveness is yang, cooperation is yin - the list goes on and on.
One example would be if you became extremely yang, and ran 15 miles in an effort to lose weight rapidly. You would find yourself, if you weren't "in shape", if you were being excessively yang, you would find yourself exhausted and resting - as motionless as a couch potato. In this way, extremely active (perhaps excessively active) yang becomes an extremely exhausted, rather motionless yin.
Civilizations rise and fall - a carbon-based life form grows and then the process reverses and it starts to wither and die. War inevitably, eventually, at some point, leads to peace, just like peace, eventually, inevitably, leads to war.
I doubt that in western philosophy it's as prevalent of a theory - well, actually, Aristotle in his "Rhetoric" (I think it was Rhetoric) talks about anger being a form of pleasure, but if you are angry all the time it becomes a bad habit and a form of licentiousness - if I remember that one correctly. Excessive pleasure becomes a vice. Or something like that, probably need to brush up on my Aristotle.
Perhaps a better way to look at it is that yin creates yang, and yang creates yin - they are interconnected, one cannot exist without the other.
If an authority creates rules that are extreme in a particular way, then there will inevitably be a fallout to compensate for that extreme behavior. Our Western sciences and physics might not be able to explain it, (yet) - but if you look all around you, you will see that this is the way that things work. The fact that EFF is suing them is already a sign that there is a reaction to it.
All I'm saying is that our legislatures need to realize that "cracking down" has unintended side effects, and that those side effects need to be evaluated before going to such extreme measures. If no one takes the FCC seriously, and just follows the rules in a robot-like fashion, it will weaken the cultural aspects of our society and we will all be content to watch the same famous actors over and over and over again, and our intellectual capacity to enjoy true art and expression will be diminished.
Or something like that. I would not be surprised if five element theory has no credibility whatsoever in an erudite western world, but the concepts are real, and until you "get it" you don't see that, at least in an abstract sense, the concepts work. But that's often called quackery and alternative medicine and naturalistic fallacies for natural remedies and so forth.
I would suggest that authoritative bodies should try to exercise moderation when it comes to criminalizing the activities of 60 million people, because extreme tactics are bound to backfire (no one is going to take them seriously).
Or the Eastern theory of extreme yin becoming yang, extreme yang becoming yin. It's hard to understand.
More is sometimes less, less is sometimes more. The danger is that by trying to be more, agencies like the FCC end up having their authority weakened. People will not take their policies, and other policies seriously. The more they do to try to crack down, the less effective they become. This is a proven fact, at least in theory.
Copyright law, or something like it, existed in what is called "common law" before America was an independent nation. Common law, in England, going back hundreds and hundreds of years, the "common sense" notion that just because something isn't a physical object, doesn't mean that it can't have some kind of ownership.
The concept of copyright has existed way, way before there were any copyright laws, way, way before America even existed as a country. It's at such a basic level that you can't really get away from it.
What should be done is that the price of music and the price of DVD's should be brought down - those prices are fixed - like another poster pointed out some time ago - these entertainment companies behave like a cartel - the music is overpriced, the movies are overpriced, and it's simply assumed that in order for a movie to be made hundreds of millions of dollars need to be spent to make it - this prevents newer artists from getting into the game... it prevents talented people from expressing themselves,
We should probably redefine the concept that a production, and hence the final product, needs to be expensive in order for it to be considered a quality work of art. That's one problem. If a movie can be made for say, 10 million dollars, and the DVD can be sold for, say $8.99 - giving a previously unknown artist a chance to express herself - then we would be headed in the right direction. It's not copyright's fault that Hollywood is a mess.
Other things that probably need to be questioned are things like the connection between p2p applications and advertising - the idea that a company (like Napster or Kazaa) turns a profit, or makes some kind of revenue stream from advertising on its site or on its products - if you pay careful attention, you will see that this does in fact matter to prosecutors.
Also, perhaps the idea of what a PC (Microsoft) should really be for. Is it a valid thing to buy a PC so that, amongst other reasons, you can fileshare? For instance, not because you are "interested" in music and a big fan and want to learn more about your favorite artists and discuss different things about different artists with your friends (e-mailing an mp3 to a friend to "sample" an album or discuss some aspect of it); not because you have a hobby such as collecting live shows from Dave Matthews and other bands that encourage trading - what I mean is the concept of file-sharing, using an application produced by a software company that generates a revenue stream, by a company that wants as many people to use their software as possible (which increases the selection), I mean using these things as some kind of consideration when purchasing a computer. This needs to be questioned. Is this what computers should be for?
Sorry, but that article makes no sense to me whatsoever. You could just argue that people should be able to share files - this is more or less true anyway, at least in an international sense - but to argue that for-profit companies should be able to generate a revenue stream and market themselves to tens of millions of people by offering a service that has the SOLE purpose (more or less) of enabling the sharing of copyright-infringing files doesn't do anyone a favor. I don't think BT fits this critera, actually, with BT you would have to focus on the torrents (the files) themselves - anyone who makes those available.
Unfortunately, the only way for a legislature to deal with filesharing in a fashion that even remotely accomplishes what you suggest is to pay no attention to it. You can't justify it as a "legitimate" industry around which to build a company - I mean seriously - you CAN'T justify it as a "legitimate" industry - all you can do is just sort of not pay attention to it. If the US and other countries are agressive about pursuing it as an injustice, then you can't stop them from doing that by arguing that copyright is irrelevant. The only argument, I think, that you can really make is that they shouldn't pursue it as agressively. But as long as there are companies out there that generate an advertising revenue stream by providing software programs that "enable copyright infringement" - whatever that means, there will be easy and big targets to pursue.
One theory that I have heard is that when an individual (or a carbon-based life-form) has a greater intelligence, as in, for example, the difference between a pig (the animal) and a human being, the superior-intelligence life form (the human being) will be able to nitpick and see contradictions and things that don't look right - annoyances, things like that. Perhaps a pig might not see these things, seeing as how it is a "lower" life-form with regards to intellect and reasoning. I know, "pigs are smart", but they can't read Shakespeare, or surf the internet.
You get your car back and there's oil on the steering wheel - builders track cement all over your yard - or a teacher that is obviously not fully grasping the subject he or she teaches, as is prone to happen from time to time - your son or daughter gets an essay question marked wrong that you think shouldn't have been marked wrong.
Furthermore, as an intelligent, caring, curious human being, you are fascinated with computers and the internet, and it bugs you that people expect you to just shut up and consume whatever they feel like shoving down your throat, and it also bugs you when others suggest that you should just "make like a pig" and "be happy" in your stupidity. Arrrgghhhh! Why am I so annoyed???? See... it's 'cause you're smart and you see the BS where it lies.
No, we are not stupid. We are smart. We pick the lint off your shirt. We're never satisfied. And you know what? We're proud of it. It's what makes us human beings.
It's not about knowing less about computers or automobiles or building or anything... it's "Hey, you got oil all over my steering wheel and my car is still making that noise" - or something along those lines.
Pigs might be able to just be happy, or maybe clams, better yet, you know... "happy as a clam" - when it comes to using IE, but being nitpicky is, to a greater or lesser extent, human nature - it's what human beings do. It might be right or wrong, but I think it's in some way, shape, or form, "better" than being a pig.
This can only be attributable to human error.
I figured this is probably one of the best ways to do it right now, no? Burn your flac files onto a DVD recordable, and then just get an inexpensive DVD reader and it's like having mega-albums or something...put an entire 10-15 CD boxed set (depending on how full the audio CD's are) in lossless format onto a single CD-sized disk...
The other thing that I am interested in trying out is a projector - it seems that you can probably get a decent one for around $1000 - you can hook those up right to your computer's video card where your monitor would otherwise go, with Linux/BSD you can adjust your XF86Config file down to 800x600 or 1024x768 (depending on the model and how much you want to pay), and then you have a much larger picture than even the largest flatpanels. Dvd's are 720 x something depending on whether or not it's anamorphic or not - but even the lowest resolution projectors at 800x600 are enough to fit the DVD natively onto that resolution. The only thing that surprised me is that the replacement bulbs for those projectors are as much as $350. Scary.
I haven't really broken down and spent the money, but it's something I am curious to try out - plop a DVD into the DVD reader, fire up the projector, connect the surround-sound sound card in your computer to a surround-sound system, and you should be good to go. Of course, it helps to do this when it's dark, some of the projectors don't work so well in the daylight.
Ok. Don't use Linux for two years. Just as an experiment. Then, just try it again. Not good enough for you yet? Wait another two years. Then try it again.
The best thing about Linux is the speed at which the development occurs. Open source is a different development model - it allows something to "not die", something, which if it was proprietary, quite possibly might have died. Open source, more specifically, the GPL, ensures that Linux will continue to thrive just so long as there are at least a couple hundred people on the face of the planet that would like it to. It's totally different if you would like to keep working on and improving on that proprietary operating system or software program, but the company went out of business and the source code is locked up in a vault somewhere... this doesn't happen to open source, so open source won't "die". Besides, technically, it's NOT "Linux", it's "GNU/Linux". And GNU is a recursive acronymn that stands for "Gnu's Not Unix".
Linux is winning. You can realize that now, or you can realize that later. Meanwhile, Linux is going to continue to grow and get better at an incredibly fast rate of speed. So if you don't like it now, wait a year or two... by then, it'll be so easy to use you will have wondered what you missed - it's a moving target, a very fast moving target, so what you don't like today will be history next month.
1. The files thing - it's not THAT particular thing, it's the concept - performing a series of operations, any operations, on a series of objects, in this case, filesystem objects. It's the CONCEPT - you can't do that with a mouse in Windows. Sure, it's easy to do some things in Windows, but it's EASIER to do much more complex stuff in Linux if you know what you are doing. A blender might be easy, but an industrial blender is EASIER for a particular job, even though using the machine might be more complicated. It's not the difficulty of using the tool, it's the difficulty of the job that the tool has to do.
2. You obviously don't understand the CLI. If you understand the CLI, you know it's a programming language. A simple one, but a programming language nonetheless. How could you not care about that if you knew it? It's the case of the sour honey - the bee's nest was too high up in the tree, the bear couldn't get to it - so he gave up and consoled himself by becoming convinced the honey was sour anyway. It's not that hard, trust me, you just have to take one step at a time. Bash is your friend.
3. I guess what I see is that perhaps many people feel that it's "not worth it" to learn GIMP. Your attitudes towards GIMP are the cause of your difficulties. Many individuals, for instance, would gladly take lots of time to learn Photoshop, because their attitudes towards Photoshop are more favorable and Photoshop has the "image" and the "coolness" factor. Truth be told, if you are a graphic artist, you need to know both. Comparing GIMP to some application that allows you print out wallet-sized photos isn't fair... GIMP is an incredibly complex program with intense capabilities - you're comparing apples and oranges. What YOU want is called the "Gnome Photo Printer". Google for that and you will have your wallet-sized photos.
I guess it just boils down to whether or not the whole point of the thing is to sell massive quantities of computers to massive quantities of people, or to produce a quality product that appeals to certain types of people, regardless of the quantities of people.
Seriously... if you like Windows so much, use it - but if the reason you don't like Unix or Linux is because OTHER people like the advanced capabilities it offers, or because "everyone who stands up for Unix never goes outside" then I would have to say it's a failure to understand what a computer is. A better analogy, perhaps is a stick shift, not a hand crank. Got a problem with my stick shift? C'mon. Your opinion counts just as much as anyone elses - so it's always best to respect yourself and make up your OWN mind - if you don't like Unix because it's got a "command line" - if that "command line" which you never have to use really just bugs you that much, and that's how you really feel - why of course you are entitled to that opinion. Don't let others' appreciation and respect for the command line drive you away from a superior product.