If they don't comply the gestapo will just pressure Visa and MC to deny them accounts on the basis of "aiding the terrorists" - and if they devise some means of getting around it then uncle fed will just rapture their corporate officers to Syria or someplace where they can await prosecution on "money laundering" charges.
I never got this. Novell owns ximian and has all that pull on the gnome desktop and yet they still do not provide a very good gnome desktop and continue to focus on kde.
I tried a paid version of suse. It was very pretty and slick and had good encryption support built in when the only other decent competitor was mandrake but it still had so many glitches (like tvtime, the kde tv app - basically no tv support that worked) that I went back to mandrake....At least until ubuntu came out. Ubuntu's desktop isn't yet complete enough I would suggest it for newbie unless they were pretty dedicated, but I would still rank their overall stability (at least regarding warty) to exceed the version of suse I tried about a year ago.
Where the hell do you live? Surely it ain't the US, where posting pictures of your 12 year old in his or her swimsuit (much less their birthday suit) will get you knocked up by the local constabulary... and surely not the UK where you can't even advocate societal changes others find offensive without getting arrested... and not even the "wild wild west" of russia - where you actually can do that other stuff... just so long as you don't step on Putin's toes.
Free speech? If you think the net is a free speech zone then you obviously don't have many interesting things to say.
Get instead a camera that is ONLY a camera. Go to linuxdevices.org and search for "camera" and you will find various models that come with lens mounts and a tcpip port. They're only about a thousand dollars and you can connect one to any PC you want. If a pair of 500GB drives in a RAID cannot meet your time needs, build two 1TB PCs and let software do the "swapping" in real time.
Really? If your favorite teen idol offered you a chance at a very intimate cam chat with him/her on the condition that you could prove you had no convenient means of capturing the stream and sharing it with others, what would you do?
You could do nothing because presently we do not have that choice. If you and I are face to face there is still a small chance we are being monitored by somoene nearby or that one of us is carrying a concealed recorder, but those odds are pretty slim. In the computing arena the odds are not only great, they are 100% assured because there is no way to do it any other way. Every stream, every pixel, every bit can be captued and shared against the wishes of either party.
The point is those "interested parties" are not just hollywood, they are every last one of us. Any system can be gamed, but a system of meeting with a mutually agreed upon level of security would provably *increase* the sharing of data of all sorts because it would instill greater trust in everyone using these systems.
I'm an anarchist and I believe people should be able to choose privacy.
How do you feel about DRM? Look at the posts here on the issue - venom and mistrust. A certain level of mistrust is one thing but the internet is littered with "NO DRM" type sites. These are not people saying "be careful" these are people saying we should do all we can to reject it outright, dismiss it as an impossible goal and stay forever with a communications paradigm invented decades ago. They call for freedom but outright reject the one tool that CAN free us all from the credit banks and the old school publishers.
People have to eat and we need a neutral ecommerce platform - and some form of DRM is the only means we will ever have of creating a relatively anonymous "e-cash" system that would allow us to trade trustworthy tokens of commerce electronically. Without a universally trusted platform p2p cash type purchases can never happen - it's servitude to the money changers (and their outrageous fees) or nothing.
So what kind of freedom do you want? The freedom to collect and share every bit that you "own" because it passes through your computer, or the freedom to trade data and generate wealth without feeling the thumb of local governments pressing down upon us?
If you don't want to be trusted, no one is going to put a gun to your head. But at present no one needs to put a gun to anyone's head, because there's no choice to make - the alternative is simply impossible for now; there can be no meaningful "trust."
Also, what mass protest movement was there against radio?
Not only were they not uncommon in the 20's, these sorts of "protests" are STILL far too common. Look up cellphones and cancer and see the levels to which people will take their battles to be free from the dreaded radio wave.
What most "free data" anarchists seem to consistently overlook is that at present there is no protection on our data. It's mondo ironic many of those "free data" people are also vocal PRIVACY advocates! Well honey... if you can't even protect the data that is on your machine how the fuck do you expect to effectively guard your privacy online?
You want universal internet access? Then you need to get joe mechanic to understand why it's important to him so he will join your battle cry. Right now the internet is riddled with holes and leaks and misinformation - much like radio was at the turn of the last century.
And anti-DRM advocates are modern day equivalent of those earlier technological luddites who feared radio. In order for computing systems to become more person we must begin constructing them with more security. It doesn't have to be built into everything... I doubt anyone needs a firewall on their blender (although they might want on on their garage door opener and most likely definitely want one in their cellphone).
Those same provisions in the DMCA that allow YOU to be prosecuted for cracking the DRM wrapper on Britney Spears' latest single also apply to the guy who sniff the keys to YOUR system in order to lift your credit card numbers or the pictures you took of your kid playing in the bathtub.
The DMCA does not outlaw the sharing of data... it establishes a basic model for protecting data that we DON'T want to be shared. But what good is it if our trading partners aren't compelled to respect our laws on the protection of YOUR data and MY data when call centers start springing up in Guatemala?
Defending "Freedom" is why we have laws. if "free trade" meant anything goes there would be all out trade wars as one country tried to dump its most profitable exports on other nations in order to win control of markets.
The US has a history of negotiating treaties and then abandoning them and resorting to force to retain control they should have sacrificed when they left the treaty - but that doesn't negate the inherent value in a treaty so long as all parties play by the rules.
After two days of flames SOMEONE finally asks a productive question!
That is the point I am trying desperately to convey: we already trust people of OUR choosing. When you run linux who are you trusting? It starts at the kernel team and branches all the way to the packager of the distribution. There are hundreds of people we are trusting when we run a binary distribution of linux OR EVEN compile it ourselves from source. This is a point that was made repeatedly in the early days but most seem to have overlooked as the community has grown to include a great many who are not inspired by the technical issues but more by an anti-corporatist zeal.
I use ubuntu. I trust Mark Shuttleworth to build an organization of trustworthy people because he appears to me as someone who shares my ideals. I do not think twice of inserting the latest ubuntu distribution, booting and installing it.
There is no reason at all we cannot have an "open and trusted" method of creating and distributing *open source* software. Just as you are free to hack your kernel to your heart's content so too could you be this free with a DRM enabled distribution - just so long as the core "engine of trust" remains untainted. If you want to hack the engine you could be free to do that as well, but only in a sandbox - beyond that your system would be denied a signature of trust until your changes are made part of a "trusted" kernel and updated from a mutually trusted source. That "engine of trust" could as well be distributed by Mark Shuttleworth as Microsoft, and we could all play a role in its evolution just as we do today with the countless other open source programs. If you want to submit changes, then submit them and they will be peer reviewed just as linux does now with the kernel - in fact it would make sense to put it there. Allow ubuntu and redhat and anyone else with the desire and the means to foster a 'trusted platform" and we can ALL enjoy cake and ice cream at that party.
Thanks for asking such a great question. You have renewed my faith in (ahem) "this community."
Damn, talk about irony! The entire "free software" community has had its fists buried so deeply in its ears over this issue for years now it is doubtful we can make a meaningful recovery of the ground that has been lost.
You try to pretend TCPA and DRM can be killed at birth and you are wrong. You try tto pretend DRM cannot be made to work and you are wrong. The same technology that protects HOLLYWOODS data can protect YOUR dat and MY data. DRM will allow computing to move into a new paradigm where conversations can be reasonably assured of being completely ephemeral OR where "data" can be moved from point A to point B with the relative security and geographic displacement of a physical object. But people lie and copy and cheat and forge and so to do this requires a *trusted platform* - a system you and I can both agree has been verified for honesty by a disinterested third party to our exchange.
If you don't want to buy DRM media then don't buy it. But insisting someone is trying to "take your rights away" because they are asserting *their* rights is, at best, disengenuous.
The open source community at large needs to take off the tinfoil hats and start doing some real development on these platforms. Like it or not DRM is coming and if you sit out the party no one is going to listen to you complain that everyone else already got all the cake and ice cream.
Seriously. I know it's politically incorrect to say this here and I'm sure this post is just going to get flamed to a crisp, but I am excited by the prospects of a DRM that might actually work and I am not at all surprised to see Apple taking the lead here.
There are a lot of reasons DRM will be a good thing for our culture but since all anyone really cares about is getting a free ride on hollywood I won't even bother to go into it here. If you want to read my arguments you can hit the comments on the various "free culture" posts at lessig's blog or... well, if you even care why I think DRM is a fantastic thing for computing that's pretty much your *only* chance to find out why.
1) then the women have a problem with their men. It is not my duty to subsidize their problem.
2) no, it doesn't. It only sets "unreasonable expectations" if you (or your partner) are too narrow minded to enjoy the activities you want to enjoy. The people in pornography are not cartoons - they are real people actually doing those things. Some of us do those things without a camera handy.
3) BFD. You have your beliefs and I have mine. You're free to your beliefs so long as you don't try to legislate them on me.
I am sick of living under the thumb of the american taliban. You fuckers have got to go.
I used to work quite a lot in the support forum for their comic chat back when it was actually COMIC chat. What they're describing is easily recognizable to anyone who used that program.
And yes, it actually was pretty innovative. The "leetsters" hated it because it sent a bunch of extra characters they didn't like to see, but it was a phenomenally cool program and I saw first hand how it empowered many disabled people. It's really too bad such a system didn't catch on.
Anyway, it seems like they are making this application pretty late in the game. If they don't already have a patent on a product they introduced a DECADE ago doesn't their own prior art make the technology unpatentable?
You can tell tor what type of nodes to connect to, you don't have to just use "trusted nodes." It comes OOTB like that, but all it takes is a quick edit.
If you are sending unencrypted traffic over tor and you really have a need for anonymity you are stoopid anyway and you will die. If you are doing something that could cost you your freedom you need more than one layer - and tor, no matter how big the onion, is still just one layer.
I have some windows software I have never been able to run. I have windows 2000, btu the software was written for 98 and the game maker won't support it on anything else. So even though I paid for the right to use it, I can't unless I will use the one distribution of Windows the company will support.
Now, depending on my programming skills (which are not great) I might never be able to compile it myself to run on a newer version of windows even if I had the source - but at least with linux and open source I have the option of trying a new port.
I HATE non-DST time. The winter days are already too short, working standard time in an office means you go to work when it's dark AND you leave work when it's almost dark. No time to go to the park, race RC cars, nothing. It's like living in perpeptual night and I hate it.
Seriously. I use ubuntu. Linux is my ONLY computing system and has been for years now.
Just don't buy their shit. it is not your "right" to use their hardware, nor is it your "right" to force them to sell or support something for a market they choose to ignore.
Support manufacturers who are reasonably friendly to linux. Vote with your feet.
Just more insight into why the recorded music industry is dieing.
I subscribed to BBC music magazine for quite some time - just for the music. Three bucks a month and it came with a CD attached to every cover. This isn't the first time the classical music fuzzheads have shown their cluelessness - when Sarah Brightman first started gaining popularity many decried how she was "corrupting the form." And when classical compilation CDs produced by small publishers (usually recordings of performances by east euro orchestras) many of these dying purists attacked them - again - for "diluting the value of these works."
This really is pretty standard fare for those old school classical publishers. It's not about copyright, it's about fox hunts and cardboard people and preserving their "high end" market image.
It seems rather unlikely that companies I've never heard of would have factories producing better parts than Panasonic, Sanyo, etc.
Panasonic and Sanyo produce parts on mass production lines, and do so within financial constraints. Actually Sanyo does make a very good capacitor that is well known in audio circles - they even use OFC copper for leads.
(My guess is that these companies just relabel parts from name-brand manufacturers.)
Some do. I know for a time one well known audiophile brand was having their parts made by Illinois Capacitor company - ever heard of them? They also make capacitors that get rebranded by other big names... like those ones you just mentioned.
The parts are still made to specifications determined by the customer. Solen and other companies like this specify certain materials companies like Sprague and CVX would not. They are able to do this because their customers will pay the extra money for the better part. Imgine that, a free market economy... some people!
The bit where he said "Each brand affects the sound in slightly different ways" actually made me laugh out loud.
Then you should spend more time listening to music rather than listening to yourself laugh. I started learning analog design before I even got out of High School and was one of those "by the numbers know-it-alls" - until one day I listened to a preamp that had been removed of all ceramic caps. Thirty years ago Jung and Marsh published several scientifically sound articles on this subject even providing robust test for mechanisms that contribute to sound quality. Today many of these tests are standard part of most capacitor manufacturer's QA program.
One thing that surprised me is that he didn't mention the possibility of using a different kind of capacitor to achieve higher capacitance, where he was talking about "fit in the highest valued capacitor in the space provided." The last few years have given us all kinds of interesting high-valued capacitors, like tantalum caps, aerogel caps, etc.
Aerogel caps have their own limitations - like transient current handling. Tantalum caps have been around since about the damn of electronics and they REALLY have issues, most notable being typically high DA and DF numbers. A capacitor with high delectric absorption and high ESR and/or inductance is meaningless - it's a "numbers race" and the futility of that path was (thankfully) well proven in the eighties.
I edit video. I create graphics and I do it fucking well and I do it professionally. I do these things with "tools that fit my hand."
OS X doesn't feel right to me. What you folk who keep pandering to the church of Jobs don't seem to get is that not everyone works the same way. I'm classically trained, art and music have been a huge part of my life since I was a child - and I just happen to also have a decent aptitude for science.
If you want to craft everything with store bought tools that all look alike and feel alike that's fine, but not everyone thinks that way or wants to work that way. It doesn't make you right or me right, it makes us different.
Linux is my operating system. No, it's not finished nor perfect - neither is OS X, Windows or any other OS. But I am an integral part of the evolution of my desktop, and I own my desktop.
That's what strikes me most ironic about all this: Apple used to have a rep as the tool of the "counterculture" - the anti-estabishment. But now it just seems to be the tool of technologically handicapped yuppies, soccer moms, and aging stoners.
I feel ya there. I too have tens of thousands of images and it's a pain in the ass to navigate any folder with more than just a few hundred images.
What seems really mad to me is "gnome, inc" keep thumping the HIG regarding spatial browsing, pointing out how it is supposed to ecourage a "flatter" directory structure. I've even heard some say things like "if it's more than three layers deep oyu are doing something wrong."
Well, let's say you have 500,000 images (go ahead, wiseguy, and crack wise - but if you are a photographer you might take 1000 or more images in a day and at that rate it doesn't take long to build up a huge archive).
If we make the directories all "wide and flat" how do we do it? 500 folders of 1000 images each? Even that would be ridiculously slow. 50 folders of ten subfolders of 1000 images? 50 folders of ten folders of ten folders of 100 images?
It needs work and so far I've been unable to get the devs to take this issue seriously. I use gnome, I'm comitted to it and I'll learn to hack code to fix the problem if I have to, but it seems to me it would be a lot more efficient all around to get one of the monkeys who actually knows how to write decent code to address a long standing problem that, for many, is damn near a show stopper.
I'm playing with "smart folders" and beagle as a means of getting around the problem. Actually, I think that may solve many of the issues and I suspect this may be the thinking behind the developer's chronic refusal to give meaningful priority to this issue.
Linux is *far* behind Windows and OSX in terms of usability.
In what way? Two years since my move from windows confinement to linux and I am still discovering new stuff I cna do with an OOTB linux that I used to have to spend HOURS looking for documentation on from Microsoft - or even making my own tools or searching for tools already made by others.
I don't know what you do with a desktop, but I find nothing missing. Parent has it right, gnome has improved pretty dramatically just in the last year and ubuntu, the distro that focuses most directly on it right now, is an absolutely fantastic OS. Yeah, there are still some annoyances - for example in Nautilus (try opening a folder with a few thousand items and you might as well get a cup of coffe while waiting for the content to pour into the frame) - but on the whole it's a fantastically functional desktop that is far easier to customize with custom widgets than anyning Microsoft has managed or even that applescript stuff.
OSX was build from almost scrath in less than half the time Linux has been in existence.
The core of OS X was around for decades and in this respect so was linux (sort of). But the desktop, what people think of when they think of a mac, was around since NEXT, and I do believe that predates both Gnome and KDE.
But even if not, what's it matter? For one thing this whole notion of linux being threatened by a move of Apple to intel is based on the already disproven assumption that one will be able to install OS X on any intel hardware. Unless OS X can run on commodity PC hardware it is no more a "threat to linux" than it ever was.
MS and Apple are busy moving forward all the time.
So is the linux desktop. Quickly, and in a hundred directions. Choice is good.
FWIW, I'm not saying that ALL Linux distros should move in a userfriendly direction, you are.
No, I am saying that at least two very good distributions have ALREADY done this.
I'm only suggesting that Home Desktop-focused move in that direction.
And I'm suggesting you actually try a contemporary "home desktop focused" distributions so you will, perhaps, have an inkling of what you are talking about.
I'm telling you your thesis is a non starter. It is a flawed assumption based on antiquated or non mainstream linux distributions; it is no more; it is pushing up daisies.
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If they don't comply the gestapo will just pressure Visa and MC to deny them accounts on the basis of "aiding the terrorists" - and if they devise some means of getting around it then uncle fed will just rapture their corporate officers to Syria or someplace where they can await prosecution on "money laundering" charges.
You don't fuck with the world police...
I never got this. Novell owns ximian and has all that pull on the gnome desktop and yet they still do not provide a very good gnome desktop and continue to focus on kde.
...At least until ubuntu came out. Ubuntu's desktop isn't yet complete enough I would suggest it for newbie unless they were pretty dedicated, but I would still rank their overall stability (at least regarding warty) to exceed the version of suse I tried about a year ago.
I tried a paid version of suse. It was very pretty and slick and had good encryption support built in when the only other decent competitor was mandrake but it still had so many glitches (like tvtime, the kde tv app - basically no tv support that worked) that I went back to mandrake.
Where the hell do you live? Surely it ain't the US, where posting pictures of your 12 year old in his or her swimsuit (much less their birthday suit) will get you knocked up by the local constabulary... and surely not the UK where you can't even advocate societal changes others find offensive without getting arrested... and not even the "wild wild west" of russia - where you actually can do that other stuff... just so long as you don't step on Putin's toes.
Free speech? If you think the net is a free speech zone then you obviously don't have many interesting things to say.
Get instead a camera that is ONLY a camera. Go to linuxdevices.org and search for "camera" and you will find various models that come with lens mounts and a tcpip port. They're only about a thousand dollars and you can connect one to any PC you want. If a pair of 500GB drives in a RAID cannot meet your time needs, build two 1TB PCs and let software do the "swapping" in real time.
I can make my computer as personal as I like...
Really? If your favorite teen idol offered you a chance at a very intimate cam chat with him/her on the condition that you could prove you had no convenient means of capturing the stream and sharing it with others, what would you do?
You could do nothing because presently we do not have that choice. If you and I are face to face there is still a small chance we are being monitored by somoene nearby or that one of us is carrying a concealed recorder, but those odds are pretty slim. In the computing arena the odds are not only great, they are 100% assured because there is no way to do it any other way. Every stream, every pixel, every bit can be captued and shared against the wishes of either party.
The point is those "interested parties" are not just hollywood, they are every last one of us. Any system can be gamed, but a system of meeting with a mutually agreed upon level of security would provably *increase* the sharing of data of all sorts because it would instill greater trust in everyone using these systems.
I'm an anarchist and I believe people should be able to choose privacy.
How do you feel about DRM? Look at the posts here on the issue - venom and mistrust. A certain level of mistrust is one thing but the internet is littered with "NO DRM" type sites. These are not people saying "be careful" these are people saying we should do all we can to reject it outright, dismiss it as an impossible goal and stay forever with a communications paradigm invented decades ago. They call for freedom but outright reject the one tool that CAN free us all from the credit banks and the old school publishers.
People have to eat and we need a neutral ecommerce platform - and some form of DRM is the only means we will ever have of creating a relatively anonymous "e-cash" system that would allow us to trade trustworthy tokens of commerce electronically. Without a universally trusted platform p2p cash type purchases can never happen - it's servitude to the money changers (and their outrageous fees) or nothing.
So what kind of freedom do you want? The freedom to collect and share every bit that you "own" because it passes through your computer, or the freedom to trade data and generate wealth without feeling the thumb of local governments pressing down upon us?
If you don't want to be trusted, no one is going to put a gun to your head. But at present no one needs to put a gun to anyone's head, because there's no choice to make - the alternative is simply impossible for now; there can be no meaningful "trust."
Also, what mass protest movement was there against radio?
Not only were they not uncommon in the 20's, these sorts of "protests" are STILL far too common. Look up cellphones and cancer and see the levels to which people will take their battles to be free from the dreaded radio wave.
What most "free data" anarchists seem to consistently overlook is that at present there is no protection on our data. It's mondo ironic many of those "free data" people are also vocal PRIVACY advocates! Well honey... if you can't even protect the data that is on your machine how the fuck do you expect to effectively guard your privacy online?
You want universal internet access? Then you need to get joe mechanic to understand why it's important to him so he will join your battle cry. Right now the internet is riddled with holes and leaks and misinformation - much like radio was at the turn of the last century.
And anti-DRM advocates are modern day equivalent of those earlier technological luddites who feared radio. In order for computing systems to become more person we must begin constructing them with more security. It doesn't have to be built into everything... I doubt anyone needs a firewall on their blender (although they might want on on their garage door opener and most likely definitely want one in their cellphone).
Those same provisions in the DMCA that allow YOU to be prosecuted for cracking the DRM wrapper on Britney Spears' latest single also apply to the guy who sniff the keys to YOUR system in order to lift your credit card numbers or the pictures you took of your kid playing in the bathtub.
The DMCA does not outlaw the sharing of data... it establishes a basic model for protecting data that we DON'T want to be shared. But what good is it if our trading partners aren't compelled to respect our laws on the protection of YOUR data and MY data when call centers start springing up in Guatemala?
Defending "Freedom" is why we have laws. if "free trade" meant anything goes there would be all out trade wars as one country tried to dump its most profitable exports on other nations in order to win control of markets.
The US has a history of negotiating treaties and then abandoning them and resorting to force to retain control they should have sacrificed when they left the treaty - but that doesn't negate the inherent value in a treaty so long as all parties play by the rules.
After two days of flames SOMEONE finally asks a productive question!
That is the point I am trying desperately to convey: we already trust people of OUR choosing. When you run linux who are you trusting? It starts at the kernel team and branches all the way to the packager of the distribution. There are hundreds of people we are trusting when we run a binary distribution of linux OR EVEN compile it ourselves from source. This is a point that was made repeatedly in the early days but most seem to have overlooked as the community has grown to include a great many who are not inspired by the technical issues but more by an anti-corporatist zeal.
I use ubuntu. I trust Mark Shuttleworth to build an organization of trustworthy people because he appears to me as someone who shares my ideals. I do not think twice of inserting the latest ubuntu distribution, booting and installing it.
There is no reason at all we cannot have an "open and trusted" method of creating and distributing *open source* software. Just as you are free to hack your kernel to your heart's content so too could you be this free with a DRM enabled distribution - just so long as the core "engine of trust" remains untainted. If you want to hack the engine you could be free to do that as well, but only in a sandbox - beyond that your system would be denied a signature of trust until your changes are made part of a "trusted" kernel and updated from a mutually trusted source. That "engine of trust" could as well be distributed by Mark Shuttleworth as Microsoft, and we could all play a role in its evolution just as we do today with the countless other open source programs. If you want to submit changes, then submit them and they will be peer reviewed just as linux does now with the kernel - in fact it would make sense to put it there. Allow ubuntu and redhat and anyone else with the desire and the means to foster a 'trusted platform" and we can ALL enjoy cake and ice cream at that party.
Thanks for asking such a great question. You have renewed my faith in (ahem) "this community."
Damn, talk about irony! The entire "free software" community has had its fists buried so deeply in its ears over this issue for years now it is doubtful we can make a meaningful recovery of the ground that has been lost.
You try to pretend TCPA and DRM can be killed at birth and you are wrong. You try tto pretend DRM cannot be made to work and you are wrong. The same technology that protects HOLLYWOODS data can protect YOUR dat and MY data. DRM will allow computing to move into a new paradigm where conversations can be reasonably assured of being completely ephemeral OR where "data" can be moved from point A to point B with the relative security and geographic displacement of a physical object. But people lie and copy and cheat and forge and so to do this requires a *trusted platform* - a system you and I can both agree has been verified for honesty by a disinterested third party to our exchange.
If you don't want to buy DRM media then don't buy it. But insisting someone is trying to "take your rights away" because they are asserting *their* rights is, at best, disengenuous.
The open source community at large needs to take off the tinfoil hats and start doing some real development on these platforms. Like it or not DRM is coming and if you sit out the party no one is going to listen to you complain that everyone else already got all the cake and ice cream.
Seriously. I know it's politically incorrect to say this here and I'm sure this post is just going to get flamed to a crisp, but I am excited by the prospects of a DRM that might actually work and I am not at all surprised to see Apple taking the lead here.
There are a lot of reasons DRM will be a good thing for our culture but since all anyone really cares about is getting a free ride on hollywood I won't even bother to go into it here. If you want to read my arguments you can hit the comments on the various "free culture" posts at lessig's blog or... well, if you even care why I think DRM is a fantastic thing for computing that's pretty much your *only* chance to find out why.
1) then the women have a problem with their men. It is not my duty to subsidize their problem.
2) no, it doesn't. It only sets "unreasonable expectations" if you (or your partner) are too narrow minded to enjoy the activities you want to enjoy. The people in pornography are not cartoons - they are real people actually doing those things. Some of us do those things without a camera handy.
3) BFD. You have your beliefs and I have mine. You're free to your beliefs so long as you don't try to legislate them on me.
I am sick of living under the thumb of the american taliban. You fuckers have got to go.
I used to work quite a lot in the support forum for their comic chat back when it was actually COMIC chat. What they're describing is easily recognizable to anyone who used that program.
And yes, it actually was pretty innovative. The "leetsters" hated it because it sent a bunch of extra characters they didn't like to see, but it was a phenomenally cool program and I saw first hand how it empowered many disabled people. It's really too bad such a system didn't catch on.
Anyway, it seems like they are making this application pretty late in the game. If they don't already have a patent on a product they introduced a DECADE ago doesn't their own prior art make the technology unpatentable?
You can tell tor what type of nodes to connect to, you don't have to just use "trusted nodes." It comes OOTB like that, but all it takes is a quick edit.
If you are sending unencrypted traffic over tor and you really have a need for anonymity you are stoopid anyway and you will die. If you are doing something that could cost you your freedom you need more than one layer - and tor, no matter how big the onion, is still just one layer.
I have some windows software I have never been able to run. I have windows 2000, btu the software was written for 98 and the game maker won't support it on anything else. So even though I paid for the right to use it, I can't unless I will use the one distribution of Windows the company will support.
Now, depending on my programming skills (which are not great) I might never be able to compile it myself to run on a newer version of windows even if I had the source - but at least with linux and open source I have the option of trying a new port.
I HATE non-DST time. The winter days are already too short, working standard time in an office means you go to work when it's dark AND you leave work when it's almost dark. No time to go to the park, race RC cars, nothing. It's like living in perpeptual night and I hate it.
Then don't buy their shit.
Seriously. I use ubuntu. Linux is my ONLY computing system and has been for years now.
Just don't buy their shit. it is not your "right" to use their hardware, nor is it your "right" to force them to sell or support something for a market they choose to ignore.
Support manufacturers who are reasonably friendly to linux. Vote with your feet.
Just more insight into why the recorded music industry is dieing.
I subscribed to BBC music magazine for quite some time - just for the music. Three bucks a month and it came with a CD attached to every cover. This isn't the first time the classical music fuzzheads have shown their cluelessness - when Sarah Brightman first started gaining popularity many decried how she was "corrupting the form." And when classical compilation CDs produced by small publishers (usually recordings of performances by east euro orchestras) many of these dying purists attacked them - again - for "diluting the value of these works."
This really is pretty standard fare for those old school classical publishers. It's not about copyright, it's about fox hunts and cardboard people and preserving their "high end" market image.
It seems rather unlikely that companies I've never heard of would have factories producing better parts than Panasonic, Sanyo, etc.
Panasonic and Sanyo produce parts on mass production lines, and do so within financial constraints. Actually Sanyo does make a very good capacitor that is well known in audio circles - they even use OFC copper for leads.
(My guess is that these companies just relabel parts from name-brand manufacturers.)
Some do. I know for a time one well known audiophile brand was having their parts made by Illinois Capacitor company - ever heard of them? They also make capacitors that get rebranded by other big names... like those ones you just mentioned.
The parts are still made to specifications determined by the customer. Solen and other companies like this specify certain materials companies like Sprague and CVX would not. They are able to do this because their customers will pay the extra money for the better part. Imgine that, a free market economy... some people!
The bit where he said "Each brand affects the sound in slightly different ways" actually made me laugh out loud.
Then you should spend more time listening to music rather than listening to yourself laugh. I started learning analog design before I even got out of High School and was one of those "by the numbers know-it-alls" - until one day I listened to a preamp that had been removed of all ceramic caps. Thirty years ago Jung and Marsh published several scientifically sound articles on this subject even providing robust test for mechanisms that contribute to sound quality. Today many of these tests are standard part of most capacitor manufacturer's QA program.
One thing that surprised me is that he didn't mention the possibility of using a different kind of capacitor to achieve higher capacitance, where he was talking about "fit in the highest valued capacitor in the space provided." The last few years have given us all kinds of interesting high-valued capacitors, like tantalum caps, aerogel caps, etc.
Aerogel caps have their own limitations - like transient current handling. Tantalum caps have been around since about the damn of electronics and they REALLY have issues, most notable being typically high DA and DF numbers. A capacitor with high delectric absorption and high ESR and/or inductance is meaningless - it's a "numbers race" and the futility of that path was (thankfully) well proven in the eighties.
OK, who has a screencap of the first GNAA post at LA Times? That's a press release I wanna read.
Also... who the fuck considers the goatse man "hardcore pornography?"
I edit video. I create graphics and I do it fucking well and I do it professionally. I do these things with "tools that fit my hand."
OS X doesn't feel right to me. What you folk who keep pandering to the church of Jobs don't seem to get is that not everyone works the same way. I'm classically trained, art and music have been a huge part of my life since I was a child - and I just happen to also have a decent aptitude for science.
If you want to craft everything with store bought tools that all look alike and feel alike that's fine, but not everyone thinks that way or wants to work that way. It doesn't make you right or me right, it makes us different.
Linux is my operating system. No, it's not finished nor perfect - neither is OS X, Windows or any other OS. But I am an integral part of the evolution of my desktop, and I own my desktop.
That's what strikes me most ironic about all this: Apple used to have a rep as the tool of the "counterculture" - the anti-estabishment. But now it just seems to be the tool of technologically handicapped yuppies, soccer moms, and aging stoners.
I feel ya there. I too have tens of thousands of images and it's a pain in the ass to navigate any folder with more than just a few hundred images.
What seems really mad to me is "gnome, inc" keep thumping the HIG regarding spatial browsing, pointing out how it is supposed to ecourage a "flatter" directory structure. I've even heard some say things like "if it's more than three layers deep oyu are doing something wrong."
Well, let's say you have 500,000 images (go ahead, wiseguy, and crack wise - but if you are a photographer you might take 1000 or more images in a day and at that rate it doesn't take long to build up a huge archive).
If we make the directories all "wide and flat" how do we do it? 500 folders of 1000 images each? Even that would be ridiculously slow. 50 folders of ten subfolders of 1000 images? 50 folders of ten folders of ten folders of 100 images?
It needs work and so far I've been unable to get the devs to take this issue seriously. I use gnome, I'm comitted to it and I'll learn to hack code to fix the problem if I have to, but it seems to me it would be a lot more efficient all around to get one of the monkeys who actually knows how to write decent code to address a long standing problem that, for many, is damn near a show stopper.
I'm playing with "smart folders" and beagle as a means of getting around the problem. Actually, I think that may solve many of the issues and I suspect this may be the thinking behind the developer's chronic refusal to give meaningful priority to this issue.
Linux is *far* behind Windows and OSX in terms of usability.
In what way? Two years since my move from windows confinement to linux and I am still discovering new stuff I cna do with an OOTB linux that I used to have to spend HOURS looking for documentation on from Microsoft - or even making my own tools or searching for tools already made by others.
I don't know what you do with a desktop, but I find nothing missing. Parent has it right, gnome has improved pretty dramatically just in the last year and ubuntu, the distro that focuses most directly on it right now, is an absolutely fantastic OS. Yeah, there are still some annoyances - for example in Nautilus (try opening a folder with a few thousand items and you might as well get a cup of coffe while waiting for the content to pour into the frame) - but on the whole it's a fantastically functional desktop that is far easier to customize with custom widgets than anyning Microsoft has managed or even that applescript stuff.
OSX was build from almost scrath in less than half the time Linux has been in existence.
The core of OS X was around for decades and in this respect so was linux (sort of). But the desktop, what people think of when they think of a mac, was around since NEXT, and I do believe that predates both Gnome and KDE.
But even if not, what's it matter? For one thing this whole notion of linux being threatened by a move of Apple to intel is based on the already disproven assumption that one will be able to install OS X on any intel hardware. Unless OS X can run on commodity PC hardware it is no more a "threat to linux" than it ever was.
MS and Apple are busy moving forward all the time.
So is the linux desktop. Quickly, and in a hundred directions. Choice is good.
You can be a "member" of LA Times and let us fill your mailbos with shit, or you can not be a "member" and read our articles off the google cache.
Thanks, I think I'll stick with Google.
FWIW, I'm not saying that ALL Linux distros should move in a userfriendly direction, you are.
No, I am saying that at least two very good distributions have ALREADY done this.
I'm only suggesting that Home Desktop-focused move in that direction.
And I'm suggesting you actually try a contemporary "home desktop focused" distributions so you will, perhaps, have an inkling of what you are talking about.
I'm telling you your thesis is a non starter. It is a flawed assumption based on antiquated or non mainstream linux distributions; it is no more; it is pushing up daisies.