BTW - look for open-pollinated seeds and you are cool. Seeds of Change, etc... don't use hybrids, look for something that is specifically open pollinated, which means the seeds are designed to be saved. Hybrids are often patented and cannot be saved "legally", although some farmers can get hybrids to grow from seed, but it's harder to do. Those snow peas in your stir fry are a good example - those are all patented, I believe.
If Gentleman X can grow GMO ( Genetically Modified Organisms ) with no restrictions just because it falls on his land, is that OK? Should there be no restrictions on GMO? Anyone who wants to can grow GMO and doesn't have to register with anyone or tell their neighbors they are doing it, or anything? Doesn't sound right to me. Gentleman X has a resposiblity to tell his neighbors (who are also farmers) that he is growing GMO crops. GMO needs to be regulated in the sense that it needs to be known where GMO crops are being grown. I think there is reason to suggest that Monsanto is not the best organization to put in charge of the registering of GMO crops, perhaps a government agency should be better.
But anyone who suggests that any individual has the right to grow GMO crops simply because the genes landed on their property is advocating a potenitally serious and devastating technology be let loose in the wild to mess with the general gene pool. This is not just about money, it's about whether GMO enters the general gene pool. Obviously, since the modification of the canola oil plants help the farmers out ( free them up to use Roundup when they want without fear of killing their crop ), they don't mind:) -- but they should at least register somewhere and let their neighbors know they are doing it. GMO crops are still experimental, and they should not be allowed to enter the general gene pool. Monsanto is making sure that doesn't happen right now. So either Monsanto does it, or someone else does it, but someone's gotta do it. Since Monsanto sells the seeds, it makes sense that they keep track of where they are being grown, and that they place controls on those that are growing them. Yes, they ask farmers for money. No, it's not fair. But we are still at a point where we need to keep track of who is growing GMO and who isn't.
Why write code? Because you want it to accomplish something.
Why write an article in English? Because you want to convey your thoughts and experiences to other people. English is a language. It uses words to communicate thoughts and concepts to others who speak English.
The trick is to use words properly, while you are in a calm state of mind, so that you can get your idea across. A writer who is filled with hatred, and lets that hatred affect his or her writing, will not only fail as a writer, but will also fail to convey his or her message to the readers.
Here is a better way to get the point across:
"I am afraid of people who are willing to do damage to other people's property over the filing of a lawsuit."
Understood. Plain and simple. The word "terrorism" has so many connotations right now that it's not a very good vehicle to get your ideas and concepts across.
Linux does not create terrorists. Linux does not encourage terrorism. Linux does not cause terrorism. Linux is not bad for any society. Linux does not represent a security threat. When something is open source, there are many advantages to that, advantages that you may not necessarily notice if you are just using the binaries in a desktop environment.
We should dive in deeper, and really get at the details, really understand what's going on. There is a "reasonable doubt" that what happened to SCO's website was an actual attack. There is also "reasonable doubt" that any individual from the "open source community" commited any crime against the SCO Group's website. It would be interesting to some people to really get at the details, to dig deeper, and do some investigative research. In any case, some more investigative research is necessary before any conclusions are drawn concerning what happened to SCO's website.
Timing buffer-cache reads: 1128 MB in 2.00 seconds = 564.00 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 168 MB in 3.00 seconds = 56.00 MB/sec
It's an ATA100 Seagate 7200rpm that I just bought at Newegg not too long ago. Something like 50 bucks, 40 gigs, pretty cheap, but not bad, really. For a basic computer system, it's fine.
This is with a bunch of stuff open and seti running, not very scientific. I've had slightly better readings when hdparm is the only thing going on.
IDE is not bad at all if you need to slap together a computer system. Not bad at all.
I agree that this is a very strange comparison, the IDE results are not anywhere near what you would get in the real world if you bought a new hard drive. SCSI may be better, but that comparison is not realistic at all.
Yup. I see what you are saying. Bad analogy. I was actually thinking afterwards that the clothing label is sort of like the record label - that would be much closer, actually. It's up to the clothing label / designer to make sure that they aren't using sweatshops / exploiting people - that sort of goes to the heart of the matter, too, with the percentage cuts that the artists get, which is too low.
I suppose if an artist starts their own record label, then they would have some more control over that.
But yes, we've got some big problems on our hands here.
Transparency - never understood what that means until we were discussing it at work r.e. credit card processing.
OK... Imagine that the internet is a library, but you don't need a library card. What's wrong with that?
Ever hung out with record industry execs? Any idea what these folks are like as people? What do they imagine the internet as?
So actually, the internet as someone who thinks it is a library is not completely correct, it's a little more complicated than that. But on the other hand, the way the music industry folks see the internet is not completely correct either.
What does harm? An individual person that downloads (the personal computer) a file, or the internet as a whole? Neither? Litigiousness? Well, we can't get rid of the internet, because the internet is not the problem. We can't get rid of personal computers, but can we get rid of litigiousness? It's hard enough to spell the darn word.
Litigiousness is the problem. Plain and simple.
I was listening to this album that I like today. Cat Stevens - Foreigner. When I was really young I bought that album at a used record store for 50 cents. It was one of the first albums I ever bought. So of course, I had to buy the CD when I saw it at the record store about two years ago. It's not always available.
Anyway, the CD is almost completely white, with a silver edge around the outside, and the words "Cat Stevens" in missing white so the CD silver shines through, and the name of the album in smaller black letters. A simple, cool look. At the bottom there is this trumpet in a rectangle with the letters A&M beneath it. And just today I thought -- that's kind of silly - such a simple look, but you can't keep the darn label off the artwork. Imagine a Picasso or Jackson Pollack with an art gallery logo stamped on it. It's crazy.On the automobile side, there are engines like the 351 Cleveland - named after the factory it was made at.
It's a "dark" thing - the label the artist is on is AS important as the name of the album, perhaps even more so. The label is the next important thing besides the name of the act. That's why we have this problem. We don't have the "factory logo" stamped on the designer clothes. Just where the clothes were made or where the fabric was imported from. What mill was that cotton made at? Who knows? Who cares?
Popular music is about the labels, to some extent. And our culture is litigious. What we need to do is free music, and we free our culture. When I, as an artist, write a song, I have to worry if maybe I subconciously heard that song somewhere and instead of writing that song, I have to try to make sure that everything I compose is original according to some algorithm. It's extremely crippling - I've tried it. You just have to forget about it. Folk songs, for instance, other cultural treasures, are "open source". Public domain. Row row row the boat. Swing Low. But these things they are suing the people for, it's a different story altogether. That's the problem. It's a closed industry, and the industry is excessively litigious. The ultimate solution to the remaining problems is freedom of speech and a willingness to cooperate.
It's unfortunate that these things are going on. Too many people have died, too many people have suffered, sacrificed, and some very evil people have gotten rich.
I have to believe that when people start recieving these invoices someone will post one to the web. I am sure we will hear about it, or whatever. Furthermore, I think that we would probably hear about companies (or rumours about companies) that have signed up with the licensing plan.
I have a feeling that no one has signed up for the licensing plan yet. Some were suggesting that DB was the "undisclosed" company that had bought licenses from SCO Group. Who knows? It's not important who the company is, but I am curious if ANY company is actually purchasing licenses from SCO.
I would like to see evidence that proves:
1. Someone has actually purchased an IP (Linux) license from SCO Group. Anyone.
2. A picture of the invoice ( from someone who thinks it's a joke and won't pay it, etc... ) - if and when they claim they are sending out invoices.
I just don't believe that anyone is purchasing these licenses. Remember, the SCO Group has been quoted as saying that this fight for new IP laws and precedents is more important than the long-term stability of the SCO Group. The SCO Group will fight to the death concerning these IP rights, that's how committed and serious they are about it. It's an interesting concept, but death is imminent. This has also been said before, but it's basically true... there is no way they can survive an IBM appeal. And that's exactly what's going to happen if SCO, by some miraculous miscarriage of justice, win the IBM case.
Hey, there are lots of animals like that, too... willing to fight to the death. I bet my dog would be willing to fight to the death to protect my family, as well. It's not uncommon. But SCO may just be wrong about these IP concepts.
Imagine a company that makes caps for pickup trucks. They make caps for Fords, Chevys, and Dodges. That's OK! You can make aftermarket parts for multiple manufacturers. If Dodge comes out and says that any manufacturer that makes caps for their pickup trucks can't make them for any other brands of pickup trucks, such as Chevy, Ford, or Toyota, then Dodge will probably find themselves without any companies making aftermarket parts for them. That's all that's really going on here... SCO is saying that if you make aftermarket software for UNIX, that you can't make it for Linux, because then people won't buy UNIX. It's absolutely absurd, and unheard of in the business world. They may as well be suing Oracle for making a database that runs on Linux, if they are going to be taking that approach.
The argument that it is difficult to make a derivative work of GPL code, where the derivative work includes proprietary code that is integrated with the GPL code. Can't release it under the GPL, it's proprietary code, but Linux _needs_ UNIX, so the only way to do this is get rid of the GPL for the good of Linux.
SGI wants to contribute XFS to Linux, or perhaps any other OS that is interested. They are doing this for everyone's benefit. If I understand it correctly, SCO is saying that SGI cannot do that, no matter what. Even if there is no actual SVR4 code in XFS, it's because SGI is a UNIX licensee, and therefore they cannot open source anything that they use to make the SVR4 UNIX essentials that they license from SCO better. It's controversial, but SCO knows that.
But from another angle, SVR4 has a monopoly of sorts when it comes to UNIX compliant OS'es. Even so, if they are saying that you cannot simultaneously license UNIX code from them, and open source code that you, and only you, as the licensee, wrote to improve and extend the functionality of those UNIX essentials that you license from SCO, then what SCO is really doing, if they get their way, is that they are making SVR4 a kind of Medusa, or a poison oak, or something.
Isn't there a chance that those who want to continue using the GPL, and contributing to open source, will not want to have anything to do with SCO or UNIX SVR4?
If SCO can prove their point in court, no one is going to want to touch SVR4 with a ten foot pole!
Linux is still going to become the OS of choice, no matter how much re-coding is necessary, if any, that is... And if SVR4 won't play nice with it, there will be consequences.
Or maybe not... there is no way to speculate what will take place when all these issues go to court.
One thing that I am confident in saying is that XFS is an excellent file system, and even if it weren't available free of charge, it would be worth some money to have a file system like that.
I don't know if this is the way it's always going to be. I would imagine that it might be a feature that an alternate OS simply wouldn't use.
But a Windows-only motherboard? I dunno about that. I don't think that our selection of motherboards is ever going to be windows-only. I highly doubt it, I would almost be willing to bet money on it.
About 1%. So 99% of Comcast customers have nothing to worry about. If you look at the threads on DSLR, where this whole thing started, you will notice that it's a small minority of people bitching about the fact that they can't leave their connections "pedal to the medal" or at least partially going 24/7. The people who got the letters appear to have been using 100's - multiple 100's of gigs per month, combined with significant upload.
It'a all very nebulous, and no one knows for sure how much they were uploading or downloading. So the problem is that we don't really have any cold hard facts - other than that if you are using your internet connection to the point that it is affecting those around you, at least in theory, you will be notified. That's what the deal has always been, it just hasn't been enforced.
We are not talking about someone who downloads 75 gigs a month; we are more than likely talking 3 digits - 100's of gigs per month. Remember, this is a cable network, this is not FTTH. Each 6 Mhz cable channel running at QAM 64 is 27 Mbps down, and the newer QAM 256 is something like 36Mbps down. Upload is probably somewhere between 3Mbps and 10 Mpbs depending. This is being shared by a couple hundred people or so.
It's not about a limit. It has nothing to do with a limit. The only limit is that you can't use your connection in a way that interferes with network capacity, and something that is streaming 24/7 does affect the peak network capacity whenever those peaks hit. Intermittent downloading is different than unattended use. Simply claiming a portion of network capacity on a 24/7 basis is a lot different than using the network when you need to download a new Linux distrubution or something. It has to do with interfering with the network. It's as simple as that. At least that's the perspective that Comcast is coming from.
Most of the Comcast customers have absolutely nothing to worry about. It's as simple as that. And if I were a reporter, I would be a _little_ more careful about my sources. I wonder if the reporter actually spoke to "Keith", or did he just read the DSLR threads.
It's a good question why there aren't limits. No one at comcast seems to know about any kind of limits. People who are interfering with the network capacity are getting letters. Interfering with the network capacity has nothing to do with a download limit. Those are two different issues entirely.
I still have yet to see any hard verifiable evidence that someone who has downloaded less than 100 gigs per month has gotten any kind of warning whatsoever. It's certainly not as big of a problem as some people make it out to be.
If my CPU and my RAM and my system in general were a pickup truck, java would be a very heavy load. I suppose that if you wrote a Java application and programmed it so that is uses more than one CPU, and then stuck it on a 64-way ultrasparc, you would be rocking and rolling. These kinds of machines are all about having a heavy load.
But on the computers of mere mortals, with our Athlons and Pentiums, it's a heavier load (comparatively speaking).
Have you ever seen how much ISO charges for their standards? You have some standards that are just a few pages, and they are like $75.00.
It's not surprising, not surprising at all. I predict that doing anything commercial on the internet is going to incur some costs, just like putting together a car costs money.
Standards are quite expensive. On the other hand, you have RFCs, which are publically available. And you also have IEEE giving away their 802 standards for free, in PDF form, once those standards are older than 6 months.
So I think it can work both ways, but you have to expect standards organizations to charge what seems like a lot for their standards, just like school textbooks tend to cost a lot more than they should, really.
The IEEE Posix Standards will cost you an arm and a leg if you want to look at those.
We should look to find a way to get the whole thing sponsored, if possible - IEEE is giving away the 802 standards because they got sponsorship to do it and they felt it was important.
It's the proposed $21 per gig on mp3 players that have hard drives, like the i-pod, etc... It's a proposed levy, it hasn't been accepted yet.
But the thing is that the only people that have to pay the levy are wholesalers that bring the media into the country - you would pay the levy at the CompUSA type places in Canada, but if you mail-order blanks from the US or elsewhere, as an individual, not a reseller, you don't have to pay the levy.
Only resellers have to pay the levy and pass it on to their customers.
There are places where you can actually buy biodiesel scattered here and there throughout the country. Might be worth asking around, if you care about that kind of thing.
I was surprised to learn that those very large Cummins Turbodiesel Dodge pickups get 20 mpg or better empty, and not much worse than that fully loaded. And talk about power-- people have stated that it's kind of cool to see all four rear tires of those duallys light up in second gear.
Even at 20 miles per gallon, if what you are using is biodiesel - apparently there are 100% biodiesel fuels available - and various percentage blends also, you are not depleting a non-renewable resource, and the fuel burns cleaner. As it stands, today, you can buy biodiesel for your car if you can find it, and it won't hurt your car or void your warranty. Biodiesel is real, and it is now. (sort of).
I would imagine that a Mercedes-Benz 4 cyl turbodiesel running a high percentage blend of biodiesel would probably be the best bet. The Cummins Turbodiesels are inline 6 cylinders, and are very reliable, but really too big for a passenger car. It would arguably be as environmentally friendly as a hybrid running gasoline, but then that depends on whether or not you can get a high-percentage biodiesel fuel in your area. One thing is for sure, any manufacturer would be hard-pressed to come up with a hybrid engine that has the proven reliability of a Mercedes-Benz four cylinder diesel. Why pollute your stress-free environment with cars that break down all the time?:)
I think that diesel is going to be the way to go, granted that biodiesel has lots of promise. Now.. a hybrid turbodiesel? Hey.... that sounds cool.
My understanding is this: legislators make laws, because we need to have some laws. But legislators do not have the time, and it would take way too long, and be an incredible waste of time, to try to include in that law every single possible occasion when a particular law is broken.
So the legislators give a rough guide, and the jury applies those rough guides to the particular individual(s) who are on trial. So it is really up to the jury to set things straight. However, it seems that many people just dread having to be a juror and that many people don't really understand what it really means to be a juror and how much power they have.
My main concern is that the DMCA, as it stands, is broken. Personally, because I live in the US, I now can no longer surf to any website I want (unless I use some sort of proxy) without the fear that the website operator can fill out the form and request my personal information. This is a serious problem - the security and privacy of every US resident is no longer intact. Big deal, right, if it helps us catch file traders, RIAA might say, but that's wrong.
Sooner or later, hopefully sooner, someone will realize that the way the DMCA stands right now (these subpeonas do not have to be reviewed by a judge) seriously compromises the safety and privacy of every family that lives in the US and uses the internet. That particular clause of the DMCA will be changed, the only question is when?
So if that clause gets closed, and all subpeonas have to be approved by a judge, perhaps all of the subpeonas obtained so far will be thrown out on this technicality, and the RIAA has to go back and get the info again, through a judge this time.
I think that all of these subpeonas and lawsuits will eventually be thrown out - the public backlash and the stories of senior citizens, and 12-year old girls are going to make this whole thing very unpopular. But this is the main problem - the subpeonas are not really reviewed by anyone, so any individual can lie on those subpeonas (if they are willing to suffer the consequences) in order to get personal information on someone. I am willing to bet money there are people like that in this world who will, using the DMCA, cause innocent US residents people incredible suffering and heartbreak. When people start getting stalked and kidnapped and assaulted by stalkers and sexual predators, Congress will realize that there is a problem. It's unfortunate that people need to get hurt in this country before anything is done.
Certainly, I hope to someday soon be able to surf any website I want, and not have to worry about some criminal lying on a subpeona to get my personal information. Hopefully I don't have to move to Canada to achieve the type of privacy protection individuals in most of the first-world nations take for granted.
I had two CD's that were scratched, but they are not at the point where they are unplayable. So I used EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to extract the information from the severely damaged (but not unplayable) CD's, and burned those.wav files that resulted onto a blank CD-R.
Once the CD-R was ready, I deleted the.wav files, and put the original CD in a protective sleeve and stored it away, and put the new CD-R in the original CD case. This way, if something were ever happen to the backup CD-R that I am currently using whenever I want to listen to the album, I could just retrieve the original CD (damaged, but not unplayable) and "rip" it again, and burn another backup CD-R to replace the original backup CD-R if that one were to ever get so scratched up that it didn't play anymore.
Nowhere in this process are the files exposed to the outside world - there would be no way that anyone could download even a fraction of one of the very large.wav files in the 10 minutes or so it takes to burn the CD - besides, you would have to hack into the home network to even be able to download anything - so the files are really not ever in any way capable of being shared, and even in a worst-case scenario where someone has hacked into your computer and can see those.wav files appearing on your machine as the EAC software is doing its job, you can't download the ( is it 10 megs per minute of stereo music? ) in the amount of time those files are on the hard drive.
What I don't understand is why anyone would need to convert a CD quality.wav file to a low sound quality.mp3 file if all they wanted to was make a backup of the CD. Furthermore, why would anyone want to put that.mp3 in their Kazaa shared folder. This has nothing to do with making a backup copy!
BTW ripping a CD is much easier than finding that CD (the whole thing) on some p2p network. Even with an OOL-type 10Mbit cable, it will still take you some time to download those 100 megs or so that an mp3 album at 256+ might be.
10Mbit per second is approximately equivalent to about 6x on a CD drive - I believe - by the time you found the files, your rip would be finished... not to mention that how many people have a 10Mbit up!
The problems with what is being done here revolve around unreasonable search and seizure, and let's remember that the current process of subpeona-ing the ISP puts every American at risk of being stalked, potentially puts the phone numbers and addresses of any American citizen's sons and daughters in the hands of sexual predators. The DMCA is a serious problem. It is the antithesis of the Amber Alert system. This particular clause needs to be closed, the DMCA needs to be amended. The longer it takes, the longer our children are at risk.
Furthermore, these actions do nothing to solve what is an international problem; these actions are unpatriotic and anti-American.
On a side note, I would like to see what percentage of the people being sued in this particular action that this particular article is about are using Windows. I would not be surprised if it was in the high 90th percentile range , if not completely 100% Windows users.
I do think that slashdot has some very good things about it - here is the one question that people might want to ask themselves - is me getting all worked up over it going to make the situation any better?
Of course not. You hear those suits talking about it and it doesn't even phase you. "Awww, man, you guys are just completely wrong about this whole thing." or something like that. Only problem there is that it looks like there is a potential for some executive decision makers to shoot themselves in the foot (along with the hard-working staff) by shying away from Linux.
Shying away from Linux is a bad corporate decision. Again - is getting pissed off and fudded-out going to make the situation any better? Of course not. Remaining calm and unaffected, and simply pointing out some of the resources that can be found here at Slashdot may make you some new friends at the executive level. They will walk around in amazement about that one person they met who was convinced, after looking closely the evidence, that SCO is just way wrong. If they recieved their info from CNN, etc... they don't know much about it and if you approach them in a calm, relaxed, elegant, educated manner, they will be impressed by your confidence. People like that aren't stupid, you know!
So yes, there are too many people bitching, I think so. But there are also some great resources to be had here at slashdot. Like anything in life, it's a mixed bag of pros and cons.
One thing that I think most anyone who ever watches even a little bit of music videos on TV will notice is that there almost always seem to be some sort of attractive young dancers shaking their things. This shaking of things, in many people's opinion, often crosses the line between artistic expression and what could be called soft pornography, or near pornography. You may sometimes see parts of the image blurred because of some type of exposure. So certainly, sometimes, some of what you would see if it were not blurred out would definitely qualify as pornography without a doubt.
Now... we have child stars, probably the most notable amongst these, in a genre where go-go dancers are commonplace, for example, and I am not trying to pick on this artist in particular, but - you have artists in the style of Little Bow Wow. How can one be 100% in the current "style" without having something fairly promiscuous going on behind the scenes when it comes to "hip" music . If you look closely at some of the younger, or "child" artists' videos, you will in fact see very young girls (and boys), probably well under 13 yrs old, shaking their thing. Of course there are no "blurs", but in a music video style where it is not unthinkable that a "blur" may need to be added to retain decency, this is really, in my opinion, cutting a little close. You have very, very young dancers emulating a very sexually expressive, at times explicit style.
Obviously, these videos are more than likely produced by people who have the integrity to manage this situation just fine, but... music videos, in some genres (obviously not christian rock), are becoming synonymous with soft porn and go-go dancers and stripteasers dancing around a pole. What I find interesting here is that the music industry does in fact like to get many stars started early - Leann Rimes, for instance, has gotten a very early start. This is great, there are many very talented, very young artists. But shouldn't the music industry be a little more careful where the post-18 go-go dancing that is so commonplace in music videos these days, so common it has become a cliche, and the pre-18 child talent merge before they go and launch a media attach about "risks"?
Aspiring to be a dancer in a music video is different than aspiring to be a "dancer" is different how?
I tend to forget sometimes that what these Microsoft representatives say sometimes is probably not what they really feel inside. It's a job, they are hired on the team to continue the world domination of the Microsoft OS.
A long time ago, I once had a job where I had to wear a particular piece of fabric to identify me as an employee, a piece of clothing that I not only found uncomfortable, but one that also made me feel kind of stupid. What made me feel guilty sometimes was that all the other employees did not feel this way about their identifying piece of fabric and I realized that for most people, the motivation is to comply with the rules of the organization. If you feel a little stupid at first being required to wear an uncomfortable polyester uniform, hey, you get used to it, it's not that bad... better than being unemployed, right? This is the type of attitude I see here. These MS sales folks are not anywhere near as passionate about their OS as they might be. They are just going through the motions, doing their jobs.
Obviously, Microsoft does not care about the customer, but I have the distinct feeling that the MS execs are making strong statements because they are being paid to do that. So you have to take it with a grain of salt. If the representative told the truth, the obvious, blaring truth, for instance:
"Sure, develop your own OS, and we wish you the best of success with it! For what you want to do with it, Windows, really, it's not secure enough, not to mention that we're going to have to sign you up in a special program if you want the source, at which point we may have to enforce our IP laws on any further development that you may do. Collaborating to build your own OS is going to be much less expensive in the long run. However, feel free to call us anytime if you need any of our services or products, we value our relationship with you."
that representative would no longer be working for MS.
I bet all those Microsoft execs really run Linux in their closets. Or maybe they have one of those stealthy dual-boot systems "just for research purposes".
Furthermore, when you look at the cross-section of industries in the world at this point in time, the open source / free software development and support fields are probably a couple of the very few places where job satisfaction can still be found, and where employees are treated like human beings, not some sort of number or robot, while all the profits that should be going into the business and to the employees keep getting funneled to large, overpriced, proprietary software vendors.
If you are an artist and want to release a work to the public you could release it under a GPL key?
Likewise, a Linux OS could use DRM, but have open-source keys that don't require any type of payment. Nor do they care if the OS is installed on 10,000 computers, etc...
Go through the motions, retaining the freedom. Is this at all possible? I don't really know the technical details, it's just an idea.
Again, this is all about the US we are talking here. In many countries, sharing and copying for yourself are just fine.
Just like SCO - all that SCO is going to do is affect the implementation of superior technology here in America, while Germany and other countries that don't create such a wild wild west business atmosphere will move ahead.
Music fans in other countries will build their collections, share music with their online countrymen, and enjoy the music while smoking something pleasant.
Meanwhile, here in the US individuals will be busy incarcerating one another. The real loser in this situation is the United States.
RIAA and SCO are two of the most unpatriotic organizations right now. They could easily defined as terrorists - in fact, they are legal and financial terrorists.
These attacks are just making a bad situation worse. The SCO Group has many lawsuits that have been filed against it; it looks like they don't really have any evidence, and none of this would have happened at all if they had been bought like they wanted to be in the first place.
Some people may feel that "something needs to be done" about this SCO Group, but I would imagine that the large organizations that have big money backing them are not worried at all. Can we keep using Linux? Yes. Is anyone going to stop us? No. Can the SCO Group file a lawsuit? Yes, they can file it, but that doesn't mean they are going to win. How much money has been saved (and will be saved in the future) by using Linux? It's almost more of a case that Linux is a wonderful operating system that just happens to be free - not that people are putting up with an inferior operating system just so they don't have to pay money. Obviously, Linux is worth the effort defending - it has, does, and will continue to provide millions of people and organizations across the world an excellent value. If someone needs to foot the bill to keep Linux healthy, they would be doing a great service that will benefit all of mankind for decades to come.
A significant problem is that if the SCO Group goes under, and they have sued you and you have spent money on legal fees, or you have given up and bought their "product", they may be unable to pay those legal fees for you, or refund the license you have been paying them to use their "IP" that was never theirs. This could probably be prevented by requiring the SCO Group to sign an NDA with an arbitration clause prior to disclosing (or attempting to disclose) confidential network data, in order to get an estimate of how much you "owe" them. The NDA and the arbitration clause could be intended for any vendor that would like to give an estimate and could include a "third party", such as a governmental agency, that could handle any legal problems, such as IP violations or unregistered software.
Or maybe the defendant could ask the judge to allow legal fees to be placed in escrow by the SCO group in case they lose?
Whether or not the DDOS attacks continue, The SCO Group is in a very bad place right now and the future looks pretty bleak for that organization. DDOS attacks are just making an already pothetic situation even worse. I wonder what's going to happen when they finally go poof? The license reverts back to Novell?
First, Break All The Rules - from Gallup Publications. I highly recommend it to everyone when we start talking about stuff like this at work, or staff picnic, etc...
What's happening here is that the focus is shifting away from being a good sysadmin, or a good computer programmer, salesperson, etc. and the focus is shifted towards something else, something along the lines of multi-tasking and balancing tasks and having the social engineering skills to deal with all the stuff on your plate. Those are two different kinds of skills.
I've worked at a company like this. The problem started because there are so many layoffs, that you end up getting overwhelmed trying to do your job, and then the jobs of all the people who got laid off.
The problem is that there is not enough money to pay for the people that are actually necessary to get the job done. It's not that the things are unimportant, they are all important, and there should be more employees on the job handling the requests, but there are not because people can't afford them. I think in this situation it sounds like the company knows that they need to hire more IT staff, but they are not doing it because they can't afford it.
I don't know if there is really any good way to deal with this problem other than get another job - depending on how much you care about your sanity. It's amazing how it all tends to get done at the end of the day!
My greatest concern with this kind of thing is that when being short-staffed is a modus operandi, the employee is never able to excel - the employee is never able to really do their best, it's like being "set up" or something. This might leave you with references that are not 100% of what they could be, and it certainly may lead you to a situation where you are not leaving the positive impression on others that you are capable of leaving on others.
A long time ago, I worked at a limousine company, and we got a new manager (the drivers made more money than the managers) who was fairly overzealous when it came to taking orders. We got to a point after a few days of this guy working for us where we were about 25 minutes behind on every order. 25 minutes late for a pickup, you can forget about a tip. You can't do that. You take as many orders as you can, and then you don't take any more. Sorry, we are booked up. That way, everything you do is done on time and done properly and done well. Overbooking yourself is pointless, you try to do too much, and none of it ends up getting done on time, or being done well. It's not worth it!
A hairdresser is another good example. How many hairdressing appointments can you schedule? Only so many. After that, forget it. Booked up. And the nature of how hairdressers get paid means they get paid more if they work more. More appointments equals more money for them. In many of these new dot com jobs and jobs like the one in this article, there is no "appointment book" and an employee's time is easily misunderstood. Right now, in jobs like this, it's learning who you can blow off and who you can't, who you can string along and who you can't - lots of people will just not say anything, and some people will bitch all the time. Those are the ones that get their stuff taken care of. It's the only way to do it. In this case, the timid get blown off. It's a horrible thing to do, some of the nicest people being ignored because they are not being difficult.
Companies have been doing this recently, and it is very irritating. It's almost to the point where going independent, selling some gadget on Ebay, or landscaping, or some other self-employment kind of thing is going to be easier than it is to work that hard for someone else. If you are going to do the job of three employees then why not open up your own small business?
This issue is really about the proper management of your own human resources. You have to be your own agent, and make sure you are not getting taken advantage of. How do you 1) pay your bills and 2) not get taken advantage of at the same time? Much harder than walking and chewing gum, especially in this time of economic hardships and crappy economies.
Even if you did document how much time you spend doing this or that to prove that you need assistants, the company knows this already, but they won't hire someone. Makes you wonder why we have these blackouts. It's irresponsible from the employer's side.
Oh, I have often felt that sometimes my coworkers' fears and worries about things not being done on time were unnecessary - having not gotten around to something important often feels pretty bad, despite the fact that nothing is so important that one should drop everything they are doing.
Actually, the main reason most things like that are important is because there is a customer, or a vendor, or some other contact that thinks that THEY are the most important thing in the world. So I feel a personal sense of stupidity, when I am waiting hand and foot on some client who thinks they are "all that". Nor am I going to dig myself or anyone I represent any deeper. Just a run of the mill problem, problems happen all the time, I am numb to them, but everyone has to wait its turn.
So SCO is not worth an old shoe. I am not even going to try to take up arms and fight them because I have better things to do. SCO, go home and die.
That's why no one is doing anything. It's a complete and utter waste of time. You either buy into their FUD or you don't, and people who have money aren't going to bend over backwards for the likes of these idiots.
Slashdot Mirror
Is this off topic? Ouch. But it's interesting.
:) -- but they should at least register somewhere and let their neighbors know they are doing it. GMO crops are still experimental, and they should not be allowed to enter the general gene pool. Monsanto is making sure that doesn't happen right now. So either Monsanto does it, or someone else does it, but someone's gotta do it. Since Monsanto sells the seeds, it makes sense that they keep track of where they are being grown, and that they place controls on those that are growing them. Yes, they ask farmers for money. No, it's not fair. But we are still at a point where we need to keep track of who is growing GMO and who isn't.
BTW - look for open-pollinated seeds and you are cool. Seeds of Change, etc... don't use hybrids, look for something that is specifically open pollinated, which means the seeds are designed to be saved. Hybrids are often patented and cannot be saved "legally", although some farmers can get hybrids to grow from seed, but it's harder to do. Those snow peas in your stir fry are a good example - those are all patented, I believe.
If Gentleman X can grow GMO ( Genetically Modified Organisms ) with no restrictions just because it falls on his land, is that OK? Should there be no restrictions on GMO? Anyone who wants to can grow GMO and doesn't have to register with anyone or tell their neighbors they are doing it, or anything? Doesn't sound right to me. Gentleman X has a resposiblity to tell his neighbors (who are also farmers) that he is growing GMO crops. GMO needs to be regulated in the sense that it needs to be known where GMO crops are being grown. I think there is reason to suggest that Monsanto is not the best organization to put in charge of the registering of GMO crops, perhaps a government agency should be better.
But anyone who suggests that any individual has the right to grow GMO crops simply because the genes landed on their property is advocating a potenitally serious and devastating technology be let loose in the wild to mess with the general gene pool. This is not just about money, it's about whether GMO enters the general gene pool. Obviously, since the modification of the canola oil plants help the farmers out ( free them up to use Roundup when they want without fear of killing their crop ), they don't mind
Why write code? Because you want it to accomplish something.
Why write an article in English? Because you want to convey your thoughts and experiences to other people. English is a language. It uses words to communicate thoughts and concepts to others who speak English.
The trick is to use words properly, while you are in a calm state of mind, so that you can get your idea across. A writer who is filled with hatred, and lets that hatred affect his or her writing, will not only fail as a writer, but will also fail to convey his or her message to the readers.
Here is a better way to get the point across:
"I am afraid of people who are willing to do damage to other people's property over the filing of a lawsuit."
Understood. Plain and simple. The word "terrorism" has so many connotations right now that it's not a very good vehicle to get your ideas and concepts across.
Linux does not create terrorists. Linux does not encourage terrorism. Linux does not cause terrorism. Linux is not bad for any society. Linux does not represent a security threat. When something is open source, there are many advantages to that, advantages that you may not necessarily notice if you are just using the binaries in a desktop environment.
We should dive in deeper, and really get at the details, really understand what's going on. There is a "reasonable doubt" that what happened to SCO's website was an actual attack. There is also "reasonable doubt" that any individual from the "open source community" commited any crime against the SCO Group's website. It would be interesting to some people to really get at the details, to dig deeper, and do some investigative research. In any case, some more investigative research is necessary before any conclusions are drawn concerning what happened to SCO's website.
It is strange... I get
Timing buffer-cache reads: 1128 MB in 2.00 seconds = 564.00 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 168 MB in 3.00 seconds = 56.00 MB/sec
It's an ATA100 Seagate 7200rpm that I just bought at Newegg not too long ago. Something like 50 bucks, 40 gigs, pretty cheap, but not bad, really. For a basic computer system, it's fine.
This is with a bunch of stuff open and seti running, not very scientific. I've had slightly better readings when hdparm is the only thing going on.
IDE is not bad at all if you need to slap together a computer system. Not bad at all.
I agree that this is a very strange comparison, the IDE results are not anywhere near what you would get in the real world if you bought a new hard drive. SCSI may be better, but that comparison is not realistic at all.
Yup. I see what you are saying. Bad analogy. I was actually thinking afterwards that the clothing label is sort of like the record label - that would be much closer, actually. It's up to the clothing label / designer to make sure that they aren't using sweatshops / exploiting people - that sort of goes to the heart of the matter, too, with the percentage cuts that the artists get, which is too low.
I suppose if an artist starts their own record label, then they would have some more control over that.
But yes, we've got some big problems on our hands here.
Transparency - never understood what that means until we were discussing it at work r.e. credit card processing.
OK... Imagine that the internet is a library, but you don't need a library card. What's wrong with that?
Ever hung out with record industry execs? Any idea what these folks are like as people? What do they imagine the internet as?
So actually, the internet as someone who thinks it is a library is not completely correct, it's a little more complicated than that. But on the other hand, the way the music industry folks see the internet is not completely correct either.
What does harm? An individual person that downloads (the personal computer) a file, or the internet as a whole? Neither? Litigiousness? Well, we can't get rid of the internet, because the internet is not the problem. We can't get rid of personal computers, but can we get rid of litigiousness? It's hard enough to spell the darn word.
Litigiousness is the problem. Plain and simple.
I was listening to this album that I like today. Cat Stevens - Foreigner. When I was really young I bought that album at a used record store for 50 cents. It was one of the first albums I ever bought. So of course, I had to buy the CD when I saw it at the record store about two years ago. It's not always available.
Anyway, the CD is almost completely white, with a silver edge around the outside, and the words "Cat Stevens" in missing white so the CD silver shines through, and the name of the album in smaller black letters. A simple, cool look. At the bottom there is this trumpet in a rectangle with the letters A&M beneath it. And just today I thought -- that's kind of silly - such a simple look, but you can't keep the darn label off the artwork. Imagine a Picasso or Jackson Pollack with an art gallery logo stamped on it. It's crazy.On the automobile side, there are engines like the 351 Cleveland - named after the factory it was made at.
It's a "dark" thing - the label the artist is on is AS important as the name of the album, perhaps even more so. The label is the next important thing besides the name of the act. That's why we have this problem. We don't have the "factory logo" stamped on the designer clothes. Just where the clothes were made or where the fabric was imported from. What mill was that cotton made at? Who knows? Who cares?
Popular music is about the labels, to some extent. And our culture is litigious. What we need to do is free music, and we free our culture. When I, as an artist, write a song, I have to worry if maybe I subconciously heard that song somewhere and instead of writing that song, I have to try to make sure that everything I compose is original according to some algorithm. It's extremely crippling - I've tried it. You just have to forget about it. Folk songs, for instance, other cultural treasures, are "open source". Public domain. Row row row the boat. Swing Low. But these things they are suing the people for, it's a different story altogether. That's the problem. It's a closed industry, and the industry is excessively litigious. The ultimate solution to the remaining problems is freedom of speech and a willingness to cooperate.
It's unfortunate that these things are going on. Too many people have died, too many people have suffered, sacrificed, and some very evil people have gotten rich.
I have to believe that when people start recieving these invoices someone will post one to the web. I am sure we will hear about it, or whatever. Furthermore, I think that we would probably hear about companies (or rumours about companies) that have signed up with the licensing plan.
I have a feeling that no one has signed up for the licensing plan yet. Some were suggesting that DB was the "undisclosed" company that had bought licenses from SCO Group. Who knows? It's not important who the company is, but I am curious if ANY company is actually purchasing licenses from SCO.
I would like to see evidence that proves:
1. Someone has actually purchased an IP (Linux) license from SCO Group. Anyone.
2. A picture of the invoice ( from someone who thinks it's a joke and won't pay it, etc... ) - if and when they claim they are sending out invoices.
I just don't believe that anyone is purchasing these licenses. Remember, the SCO Group has been quoted as saying that this fight for new IP laws and precedents is more important than the long-term stability of the SCO Group. The SCO Group will fight to the death concerning these IP rights, that's how committed and serious they are about it. It's an interesting concept, but death is imminent. This has also been said before, but it's basically true... there is no way they can survive an IBM appeal. And that's exactly what's going to happen if SCO, by some miraculous miscarriage of justice, win the IBM case.
Hey, there are lots of animals like that, too... willing to fight to the death. I bet my dog would be willing to fight to the death to protect my family, as well. It's not uncommon. But SCO may just be wrong about these IP concepts.
Imagine a company that makes caps for pickup trucks. They make caps for Fords, Chevys, and Dodges. That's OK! You can make aftermarket parts for multiple manufacturers. If Dodge comes out and says that any manufacturer that makes caps for their pickup trucks can't make them for any other brands of pickup trucks, such as Chevy, Ford, or Toyota, then Dodge will probably find themselves without any companies making aftermarket parts for them. That's all that's really going on here... SCO is saying that if you make aftermarket software for UNIX, that you can't make it for Linux, because then people won't buy UNIX. It's absolutely absurd, and unheard of in the business world. They may as well be suing Oracle for making a database that runs on Linux, if they are going to be taking that approach.
The argument that it is difficult to make a derivative work of GPL code, where the derivative work includes proprietary code that is integrated with the GPL code. Can't release it under the GPL, it's proprietary code, but Linux _needs_ UNIX, so the only way to do this is get rid of the GPL for the good of Linux.
SGI wants to contribute XFS to Linux, or perhaps any other OS that is interested. They are doing this for everyone's benefit. If I understand it correctly, SCO is saying that SGI cannot do that, no matter what. Even if there is no actual SVR4 code in XFS, it's because SGI is a UNIX licensee, and therefore they cannot open source anything that they use to make the SVR4 UNIX essentials that they license from SCO better. It's controversial, but SCO knows that.
But from another angle, SVR4 has a monopoly of sorts when it comes to UNIX compliant OS'es. Even so, if they are saying that you cannot simultaneously license UNIX code from them, and open source code that you, and only you, as the licensee, wrote to improve and extend the functionality of those UNIX essentials that you license from SCO, then what SCO is really doing, if they get their way, is that they are making SVR4 a kind of Medusa, or a poison oak, or something.
Isn't there a chance that those who want to continue using the GPL, and contributing to open source, will not want to have anything to do with SCO or UNIX SVR4?
If SCO can prove their point in court, no one is going to want to touch SVR4 with a ten foot pole!
Linux is still going to become the OS of choice, no matter how much re-coding is necessary, if any, that is... And if SVR4 won't play nice with it, there will be consequences.
Or maybe not... there is no way to speculate what will take place when all these issues go to court.
One thing that I am confident in saying is that XFS is an excellent file system, and even if it weren't available free of charge, it would be worth some money to have a file system like that.
I don't know if this is the way it's always going to be. I would imagine that it might be a feature that an alternate OS simply wouldn't use.
But a Windows-only motherboard? I dunno about that. I don't think that our selection of motherboards is ever going to be windows-only. I highly doubt it, I would almost be willing to bet money on it.
About 1%. So 99% of Comcast customers have nothing to worry about. If you look at the threads on DSLR, where this whole thing started, you will notice that it's a small minority of people bitching about the fact that they can't leave their connections "pedal to the medal" or at least partially going 24/7. The people who got the letters appear to have been using 100's - multiple 100's of gigs per month, combined with significant upload.
It'a all very nebulous, and no one knows for sure how much they were uploading or downloading. So the problem is that we don't really have any cold hard facts - other than that if you are using your internet connection to the point that it is affecting those around you, at least in theory, you will be notified. That's what the deal has always been, it just hasn't been enforced.
We are not talking about someone who downloads 75 gigs a month; we are more than likely talking 3 digits - 100's of gigs per month. Remember, this is a cable network, this is not FTTH. Each 6 Mhz cable channel running at QAM 64 is 27 Mbps down, and the newer QAM 256 is something like 36Mbps down. Upload is probably somewhere between 3Mbps and 10 Mpbs depending. This is being shared by a couple hundred people or so.
It's not about a limit. It has nothing to do with a limit. The only limit is that you can't use your connection in a way that interferes with network capacity, and something that is streaming 24/7 does affect the peak network capacity whenever those peaks hit. Intermittent downloading is different than unattended use. Simply claiming a portion of network capacity on a 24/7 basis is a lot different than using the network when you need to download a new Linux distrubution or something. It has to do with interfering with the network. It's as simple as that. At least that's the perspective that Comcast is coming from.
Most of the Comcast customers have absolutely nothing to worry about. It's as simple as that. And if I were a reporter, I would be a _little_ more careful about my sources. I wonder if the reporter actually spoke to "Keith", or did he just read the DSLR threads.
It's a good question why there aren't limits. No one at comcast seems to know about any kind of limits. People who are interfering with the network capacity are getting letters. Interfering with the network capacity has nothing to do with a download limit. Those are two different issues entirely.
I still have yet to see any hard verifiable evidence that someone who has downloaded less than 100 gigs per month has gotten any kind of warning whatsoever. It's certainly not as big of a problem as some people make it out to be.
If my CPU and my RAM and my system in general were a pickup truck, java would be a very heavy load. I suppose that if you wrote a Java application and programmed it so that is uses more than one CPU, and then stuck it on a 64-way ultrasparc, you would be rocking and rolling. These kinds of machines are all about having a heavy load.
But on the computers of mere mortals, with our Athlons and Pentiums, it's a heavier load (comparatively speaking).
Have you ever seen how much ISO charges for their standards? You have some standards that are just a few pages, and they are like $75.00.
It's not surprising, not surprising at all. I predict that doing anything commercial on the internet is going to incur some costs, just like putting together a car costs money.
Standards are quite expensive. On the other hand, you have RFCs, which are publically available. And you also have IEEE giving away their 802 standards for free, in PDF form, once those standards are older than 6 months.
So I think it can work both ways, but you have to expect standards organizations to charge what seems like a lot for their standards, just like school textbooks tend to cost a lot more than they should, really.
The IEEE Posix Standards will cost you an arm and a leg if you want to look at those.
We should look to find a way to get the whole thing sponsored, if possible - IEEE is giving away the 802 standards because they got sponsorship to do it and they felt it was important.
It's the proposed $21 per gig on mp3 players that have hard drives, like the i-pod, etc... It's a proposed levy, it hasn't been accepted yet.
But the thing is that the only people that have to pay the levy are wholesalers that bring the media into the country - you would pay the levy at the CompUSA type places in Canada, but if you mail-order blanks from the US or elsewhere, as an individual, not a reseller, you don't have to pay the levy.
Only resellers have to pay the levy and pass it on to their customers.
There are places where you can actually buy biodiesel scattered here and there throughout the country. Might be worth asking around, if you care about that kind of thing.
:)
I was surprised to learn that those very large Cummins Turbodiesel Dodge pickups get 20 mpg or better empty, and not much worse than that fully loaded. And talk about power-- people have stated that it's kind of cool to see all four rear tires of those duallys light up in second gear.
Even at 20 miles per gallon, if what you are using is biodiesel - apparently there are 100% biodiesel fuels available - and various percentage blends also, you are not depleting a non-renewable resource, and the fuel burns cleaner. As it stands, today, you can buy biodiesel for your car if you can find it, and it won't hurt your car or void your warranty. Biodiesel is real, and it is now. (sort of).
I would imagine that a Mercedes-Benz 4 cyl turbodiesel running a high percentage blend of biodiesel would probably be the best bet. The Cummins Turbodiesels are inline 6 cylinders, and are very reliable, but really too big for a passenger car. It would arguably be as environmentally friendly as a hybrid running gasoline, but then that depends on whether or not you can get a high-percentage biodiesel fuel in your area. One thing is for sure, any manufacturer would be hard-pressed to come up with a hybrid engine that has the proven reliability of a Mercedes-Benz four cylinder diesel. Why pollute your stress-free environment with cars that break down all the time?
I think that diesel is going to be the way to go, granted that biodiesel has lots of promise. Now.. a hybrid turbodiesel? Hey.... that sounds cool.
My understanding is this: legislators make laws, because we need to have some laws. But legislators do not have the time, and it would take way too long, and be an incredible waste of time, to try to include in that law every single possible occasion when a particular law is broken.
So the legislators give a rough guide, and the jury applies those rough guides to the particular individual(s) who are on trial. So it is really up to the jury to set things straight. However, it seems that many people just dread having to be a juror and that many people don't really understand what it really means to be a juror and how much power they have.
My main concern is that the DMCA, as it stands, is broken. Personally, because I live in the US, I now can no longer surf to any website I want (unless I use some sort of proxy) without the fear that the website operator can fill out the form and request my personal information. This is a serious problem - the security and privacy of every US resident is no longer intact. Big deal, right, if it helps us catch file traders, RIAA might say, but that's wrong.
Sooner or later, hopefully sooner, someone will realize that the way the DMCA stands right now (these subpeonas do not have to be reviewed by a judge) seriously compromises the safety and privacy of every family that lives in the US and uses the internet. That particular clause of the DMCA will be changed, the only question is when?
So if that clause gets closed, and all subpeonas have to be approved by a judge, perhaps all of the subpeonas obtained so far will be thrown out on this technicality, and the RIAA has to go back and get the info again, through a judge this time.
I think that all of these subpeonas and lawsuits will eventually be thrown out - the public backlash and the stories of senior citizens, and 12-year old girls are going to make this whole thing very unpopular. But this is the main problem - the subpeonas are not really reviewed by anyone, so any individual can lie on those subpeonas (if they are willing to suffer the consequences) in order to get personal information on someone. I am willing to bet money there are people like that in this world who will, using the DMCA, cause innocent US residents people incredible suffering and heartbreak. When people start getting stalked and kidnapped and assaulted by stalkers and sexual predators, Congress will realize that there is a problem. It's unfortunate that people need to get hurt in this country before anything is done.
Certainly, I hope to someday soon be able to surf any website I want, and not have to worry about some criminal lying on a subpeona to get my personal information. Hopefully I don't have to move to Canada to achieve the type of privacy protection individuals in most of the first-world nations take for granted.
America needs to make some changes, and fast.
The last line of the article:
'nuff said, Cya.
Here's what I did:
.wav files that resulted onto a blank CD-R.
.wav files, and put the original CD in a protective sleeve and stored it away, and put the new CD-R in the original CD case. This way, if something were ever happen to the backup CD-R that I am currently using whenever I want to listen to the album, I could just retrieve the original CD (damaged, but not unplayable) and "rip" it again, and burn another backup CD-R to replace the original backup CD-R if that one were to ever get so scratched up that it didn't play anymore.
.wav files in the 10 minutes or so it takes to burn the CD - besides, you would have to hack into the home network to even be able to download anything - so the files are really not ever in any way capable of being shared, and even in a worst-case scenario where someone has hacked into your computer and can see those .wav files appearing on your machine as the EAC software is doing its job, you can't download the ( is it 10 megs per minute of stereo music? ) in the amount of time those files are on the hard drive.
.wav file to a low sound quality .mp3 file if all they wanted to was make a backup of the CD. Furthermore, why would anyone want to put that .mp3 in their Kazaa shared folder. This has nothing to do with making a backup copy!
I had two CD's that were scratched, but they are not at the point where they are unplayable. So I used EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to extract the information from the severely damaged (but not unplayable) CD's, and burned those
Once the CD-R was ready, I deleted the
Nowhere in this process are the files exposed to the outside world - there would be no way that anyone could download even a fraction of one of the very large
What I don't understand is why anyone would need to convert a CD quality
BTW ripping a CD is much easier than finding that CD (the whole thing) on some p2p network. Even with an OOL-type 10Mbit cable, it will still take you some time to download those 100 megs or so that an mp3 album at 256+ might be.
10Mbit per second is approximately equivalent to about 6x on a CD drive - I believe - by the time you found the files, your rip would be finished... not to mention that how many people have a 10Mbit up!
The problems with what is being done here revolve around unreasonable search and seizure, and let's remember that the current process of subpeona-ing the ISP puts every American at risk of being stalked, potentially puts the phone numbers and addresses of any American citizen's sons and daughters in the hands of sexual predators. The DMCA is a serious problem. It is the antithesis of the Amber Alert system. This particular clause needs to be closed, the DMCA needs to be amended. The longer it takes, the longer our children are at risk.
Furthermore, these actions do nothing to solve what is an international problem; these actions are unpatriotic and anti-American.
On a side note, I would like to see what percentage of the people being sued in this particular action that this particular article is about are using Windows. I would not be surprised if it was in the high 90th percentile range , if not completely 100% Windows users.
I do think that slashdot has some very good things about it - here is the one question that people might want to ask themselves - is me getting all worked up over it going to make the situation any better?
Of course not. You hear those suits talking about it and it doesn't even phase you. "Awww, man, you guys are just completely wrong about this whole thing." or something like that. Only problem there is that it looks like there is a potential for some executive decision makers to shoot themselves in the foot (along with the hard-working staff) by shying away from Linux.
Shying away from Linux is a bad corporate decision. Again - is getting pissed off and fudded-out going to make the situation any better? Of course not. Remaining calm and unaffected, and simply pointing out some of the resources that can be found here at Slashdot may make you some new friends at the executive level. They will walk around in amazement about that one person they met who was convinced, after looking closely the evidence, that SCO is just way wrong. If they recieved their info from CNN, etc... they don't know much about it and if you approach them in a calm, relaxed, elegant, educated manner, they will be impressed by your confidence. People like that aren't stupid, you know!
So yes, there are too many people bitching, I think so. But there are also some great resources to be had here at slashdot. Like anything in life, it's a mixed bag of pros and cons.
One thing that I think most anyone who ever watches even a little bit of music videos on TV will notice is that there almost always seem to be some sort of attractive young dancers shaking their things. This shaking of things, in many people's opinion, often crosses the line between artistic expression and what could be called soft pornography, or near pornography. You may sometimes see parts of the image blurred because of some type of exposure. So certainly, sometimes, some of what you would see if it were not blurred out would definitely qualify as pornography without a doubt.
Now... we have child stars, probably the most notable amongst these, in a genre where go-go dancers are commonplace, for example, and I am not trying to pick on this artist in particular, but - you have artists in the style of Little Bow Wow. How can one be 100% in the current "style" without having something fairly promiscuous going on behind the scenes when it comes to "hip" music . If you look closely at some of the younger, or "child" artists' videos, you will in fact see very young girls (and boys), probably well under 13 yrs old, shaking their thing. Of course there are no "blurs", but in a music video style where it is not unthinkable that a "blur" may need to be added to retain decency, this is really, in my opinion, cutting a little close. You have very, very young dancers emulating a very sexually expressive, at times explicit style.
Obviously, these videos are more than likely produced by people who have the integrity to manage this situation just fine, but... music videos, in some genres (obviously not christian rock), are becoming synonymous with soft porn and go-go dancers and stripteasers dancing around a pole. What I find interesting here is that the music industry does in fact like to get many stars started early - Leann Rimes, for instance, has gotten a very early start. This is great, there are many very talented, very young artists. But shouldn't the music industry be a little more careful where the post-18 go-go dancing that is so commonplace in music videos these days, so common it has become a cliche, and the pre-18 child talent merge before they go and launch a media attach about "risks"?
Aspiring to be a dancer in a music video is different than aspiring to be a "dancer" is different how?
I tend to forget sometimes that what these Microsoft representatives say sometimes is probably not what they really feel inside. It's a job, they are hired on the team to continue the world domination of the Microsoft OS.
A long time ago, I once had a job where I had to wear a particular piece of fabric to identify me as an employee, a piece of clothing that I not only found uncomfortable, but one that also made me feel kind of stupid. What made me feel guilty sometimes was that all the other employees did not feel this way about their identifying piece of fabric and I realized that for most people, the motivation is to comply with the rules of the organization. If you feel a little stupid at first being required to wear an uncomfortable polyester uniform, hey, you get used to it, it's not that bad... better than being unemployed, right? This is the type of attitude I see here. These MS sales folks are not anywhere near as passionate about their OS as they might be. They are just going through the motions, doing their jobs.
Obviously, Microsoft does not care about the customer, but I have the distinct feeling that the MS execs are making strong statements because they are being paid to do that. So you have to take it with a grain of salt. If the representative told the truth, the obvious, blaring truth, for instance:
"Sure, develop your own OS, and we wish you the best of success with it! For what you want to do with it, Windows, really, it's not secure enough, not to mention that we're going to have to sign you up in a special program if you want the source, at which point we may have to enforce our IP laws on any further development that you may do. Collaborating to build your own OS is going to be much less expensive in the long run. However, feel free to call us anytime if you need any of our services or products, we value our relationship with you."
that representative would no longer be working for MS.
I bet all those Microsoft execs really run Linux in their closets. Or maybe they have one of those stealthy dual-boot systems "just for research purposes".
Furthermore, when you look at the cross-section of industries in the world at this point in time, the open source / free software development and support fields are probably a couple of the very few places where job satisfaction can still be found, and where employees are treated like human beings, not some sort of number or robot, while all the profits that should be going into the business and to the employees keep getting funneled to large, overpriced, proprietary software vendors.
OK - how about open source keys?
If you are an artist and want to release a work to the public you could release it under a GPL key?
Likewise, a Linux OS could use DRM, but have open-source keys that don't require any type of payment. Nor do they care if the OS is installed on 10,000 computers, etc...
Go through the motions, retaining the freedom. Is this at all possible? I don't really know the technical details, it's just an idea.
Again, this is all about the US we are talking here. In many countries, sharing and copying for yourself are just fine.
Just like SCO - all that SCO is going to do is affect the implementation of superior technology here in America, while Germany and other countries that don't create such a wild wild west business atmosphere will move ahead.
Music fans in other countries will build their collections, share music with their online countrymen, and enjoy the music while smoking something pleasant.
Meanwhile, here in the US individuals will be busy incarcerating one another. The real loser in this situation is the United States.
RIAA and SCO are two of the most unpatriotic organizations right now. They could easily defined as terrorists - in fact, they are legal and financial terrorists.
These attacks are just making a bad situation worse. The SCO Group has many lawsuits that have been filed against it; it looks like they don't really have any evidence, and none of this would have happened at all if they had been bought like they wanted to be in the first place.
Some people may feel that "something needs to be done" about this SCO Group, but I would imagine that the large organizations that have big money backing them are not worried at all. Can we keep using Linux? Yes. Is anyone going to stop us? No. Can the SCO Group file a lawsuit? Yes, they can file it, but that doesn't mean they are going to win. How much money has been saved (and will be saved in the future) by using Linux? It's almost more of a case that Linux is a wonderful operating system that just happens to be free - not that people are putting up with an inferior operating system just so they don't have to pay money. Obviously, Linux is worth the effort defending - it has, does, and will continue to provide millions of people and organizations across the world an excellent value. If someone needs to foot the bill to keep Linux healthy, they would be doing a great service that will benefit all of mankind for decades to come.
A significant problem is that if the SCO Group goes under, and they have sued you and you have spent money on legal fees, or you have given up and bought their "product", they may be unable to pay those legal fees for you, or refund the license you have been paying them to use their "IP" that was never theirs. This could probably be prevented by requiring the SCO Group to sign an NDA with an arbitration clause prior to disclosing (or attempting to disclose) confidential network data, in order to get an estimate of how much you "owe" them. The NDA and the arbitration clause could be intended for any vendor that would like to give an estimate and could include a "third party", such as a governmental agency, that could handle any legal problems, such as IP violations or unregistered software.
Or maybe the defendant could ask the judge to allow legal fees to be placed in escrow by the SCO group in case they lose?
Whether or not the DDOS attacks continue, The SCO Group is in a very bad place right now and the future looks pretty bleak for that organization. DDOS attacks are just making an already pothetic situation even worse. I wonder what's going to happen when they finally go poof? The license reverts back to Novell?
One of the coolest books I have read:
First, Break All The Rules - from Gallup Publications. I highly recommend it to everyone when we start talking about stuff like this at work, or staff picnic, etc...
What's happening here is that the focus is shifting away from being a good sysadmin, or a good computer programmer, salesperson, etc. and the focus is shifted towards something else, something along the lines of multi-tasking and balancing tasks and having the social engineering skills to deal with all the stuff on your plate. Those are two different kinds of skills.
I've worked at a company like this. The problem started because there are so many layoffs, that you end up getting overwhelmed trying to do your job, and then the jobs of all the people who got laid off.
The problem is that there is not enough money to pay for the people that are actually necessary to get the job done. It's not that the things are unimportant, they are all important, and there should be more employees on the job handling the requests, but there are not because people can't afford them. I think in this situation it sounds like the company knows that they need to hire more IT staff, but they are not doing it because they can't afford it.
I don't know if there is really any good way to deal with this problem other than get another job - depending on how much you care about your sanity. It's amazing how it all tends to get done at the end of the day!
My greatest concern with this kind of thing is that when being short-staffed is a modus operandi, the employee is never able to excel - the employee is never able to really do their best, it's like being "set up" or something. This might leave you with references that are not 100% of what they could be, and it certainly may lead you to a situation where you are not leaving the positive impression on others that you are capable of leaving on others.
A long time ago, I worked at a limousine company, and we got a new manager (the drivers made more money than the managers) who was fairly overzealous when it came to taking orders. We got to a point after a few days of this guy working for us where we were about 25 minutes behind on every order. 25 minutes late for a pickup, you can forget about a tip. You can't do that. You take as many orders as you can, and then you don't take any more. Sorry, we are booked up. That way, everything you do is done on time and done properly and done well. Overbooking yourself is pointless, you try to do too much, and none of it ends up getting done on time, or being done well. It's not worth it!
A hairdresser is another good example. How many hairdressing appointments can you schedule? Only so many. After that, forget it. Booked up. And the nature of how hairdressers get paid means they get paid more if they work more. More appointments equals more money for them. In many of these new dot com jobs and jobs like the one in this article, there is no "appointment book" and an employee's time is easily misunderstood. Right now, in jobs like this, it's learning who you can blow off and who you can't, who you can string along and who you can't - lots of people will just not say anything, and some people will bitch all the time. Those are the ones that get their stuff taken care of. It's the only way to do it. In this case, the timid get blown off. It's a horrible thing to do, some of the nicest people being ignored because they are not being difficult.
Companies have been doing this recently, and it is very irritating. It's almost to the point where going independent, selling some gadget on Ebay, or landscaping, or some other self-employment kind of thing is going to be easier than it is to work that hard for someone else. If you are going to do the job of three employees then why not open up your own small business?
This issue is really about the proper management of your own human resources. You have to be your own agent, and make sure you are not getting taken advantage of. How do you 1) pay your bills and 2) not get taken advantage of at the same time? Much harder than walking and chewing gum, especially in this time of economic hardships and crappy economies.
Even if you did document how much time you spend doing this or that to prove that you need assistants, the company knows this already, but they won't hire someone. Makes you wonder why we have these blackouts. It's irresponsible from the employer's side.
Oh, I have often felt that sometimes my coworkers' fears and worries about things not being done on time were unnecessary - having not gotten around to something important often feels pretty bad, despite the fact that nothing is so important that one should drop everything they are doing.
Actually, the main reason most things like that are important is because there is a customer, or a vendor, or some other contact that thinks that THEY are the most important thing in the world. So I feel a personal sense of stupidity, when I am waiting hand and foot on some client who thinks they are "all that". Nor am I going to dig myself or anyone I represent any deeper. Just a run of the mill problem, problems happen all the time, I am numb to them, but everyone has to wait its turn.
So SCO is not worth an old shoe. I am not even going to try to take up arms and fight them because I have better things to do. SCO, go home and die.
That's why no one is doing anything. It's a complete and utter waste of time. You either buy into their FUD or you don't, and people who have money aren't going to bend over backwards for the likes of these idiots.