I would definitely consider buying it; as a technical writer, I have to occasionally document products that must be installed, configured and run on Solaris, so having more than a rudimentary knowledge of the system would be handy (it's quite a while since my college UNIX classes).
In light of all of the hype about how much cash Microsoft is sitting on, it's good to be reminded that they do fail.
Yes, by all means let's balance out the unwarranted praise constantly thrown around/. about Microsoft. For too long we've only heard one side of the story here!
Believe it or not, a few years ago, a student here in Ireland wrote a threatening letter to the US President from a fellow student's account (without her knowledge). They were questioned by the police here about the incident, and as far as I know, would now both be refused entry to the US because of it.
For example, Jane's Addiction's new album came out yesterday and even though I have three of their previous albums (all legit), I have no intention of buying this one simply because it was put out by a member of the RIAA.
Just so that they get the message, I'd suggest you mail/e-mail the band's official address and state your reasons why you're not buying the album. Hopefully feedback like that from bands might have some effect.
The reason I would disagree with that is because the physics engine in Half-Life 2 will (or should lead to a lot more creativity in games). Sure, lighting effects are atmospheric, but that's it; they don't really enhance the game play as such. The parts I loved most from the HL2 demo engine was the gravity engine pulling individual letters from a storefront and then repulsing them at the enemy, or where a radiator is ripped from a wall and used as a make-shift shields. It's those sections which showed you how the engine opens up the game. Depending on how detailed and accessible the HL2 physics engine is, the modification possibilities are staggering.
Reading this thread, it seems that many are still naive enough to think that the reason RIAA are taking the courses of action that they are is because they think people are stealing their music. Wrong. I'm sorry, but a 10% drop in their sales during a near-recession is indicative of diddly-squat, and I'm sure they know that too.
What they are mainly worried about is their marketing and advertising policy being subverted. Simply put, they rely on marketing rather than the quality of the music to sell it, and spending all that money pushing the latest "artist", spending millions on publicity TV and radiotime is worth nothing is people can download their music, think "what shit", and then find some other unknown artist's music as easily.
P2P enables people to judge music merely on its quality, and find and listen to music through alternative channels, and not the usual bought corporate media (sorry if I'm beginning to sound Chomskyesque:)
The powerful Congressman at the center of the controversy over royalty rates for small webcasters took $18,000 from the Recording Industry Association of America.
As chair of the House Judiciary Committee, James Sensenbrenner was instrumental in forcing the deal that could result in an antitrust suit against the RIAA being filed by small webcasters.
Surely even those against P2P and who think there is no legitimate reason for it must think that this bill is an extreme overreaction? Especially for a country already with 2 million people in prison and with the highest percentage of people behind bars in the world?.
Would the same people sanction prison terms for those who swap tape compilations with friends? Or who photocopy newspaper and magazine articles for them?
It's an excerpt from the E3 half-hour
trailer. Higher resolution admittedly, but
nothing to get excited about, and nothing
you should rush a 50 meg download for.
Let's see some new stuff!
P.
I notice that the esteemed Howard Berman,
Democratic Congressman (and industry schill), wants to jail people who swap a mere one music file:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/31800.html
Can you Yanks do the world a favour and vote him out of office as quickly as possible and banish him to well-deserved obscurity? Thank you.
P.
>Yes, you have to make tough choices not just >should we use Linux or Solaris but who is going >to get a paycheck next week or should we lay >off so and so because his wife just died of >cancer last month.
I do hope the sense of that last sentence is that you had planned the layoff the guy and _then_ his wife died, rather than laying him off _because_ she died...
I sync up with (free) newspapers and magazines using AvantGo and read them while travelling; that's probably 90% of my PDA usage. It's also handy to download articles and PDFs from the web to read later.
Apart from that, I use it to remind me of tasks and appointments (for my job, it _really_ helps) and also use 3rd-party apps such as Metro and Pocket Streets when travelling.
I was amusing by the review, which seems to state that "stability" is to be prized above, oh, actually applications and being able to do anything. My iPAQ has _never_ crashed. I want a PDA so I can do _cool_ and _necessary_ things with it, not so I can look at a blank screen and say to myself "Hmmm, 40 days uptime and still no crashes!".
Please, Mr Spielberg, do not take any moviemaking advice from Mr Lucas. Certainly not to the extent that you are so enamoured about special effects that you forget likeable characters, lively acting and keeping emotions and humanity at the heart of the story.
1. Will only Verizon customers be targeted, since (AFAIK) only they have been subpeonaed by the RIAA to hand over the identities of customers?
2. Presumably the only information associated with a particular incident of file sharing is a particular IP address. How can the RIAA associate this with a particular person, in the case where it's shared by a number of people behind a router?
>Huh? How hard is typing "rpm -Uvh [path to >rpm]"?
You _do_ realise that to a non-techie user, the above looks like unintelligible gibberish? As a technical writer with a computer science background, I endlessly bang my head at the inability of developers to appreciate that non-techie users aren't dumb, in the same way that non-English speakers aren't merely dumb when _they_ don't understand English.
In my ongoing attempt to Learn to Love Linux, I tried installing Cygwin at home on my Windows XP. It crashed. No doubt this is due to some trojan planted by Bill the Gates in order to keep me from Linux rather than just a, uh, crap installer.
Slashdot Mirror
I would definitely consider buying it; as a technical writer, I have to occasionally document products that must be installed, configured and run on Solaris, so having more than a rudimentary knowledge of the system would be handy (it's quite a while since my college UNIX classes).
P.
In light of all of the hype about how much cash Microsoft is sitting on, it's good to be reminded that they do fail.
/. about Microsoft. For too long we've only heard one side of the story here!
Yes, by all means let's balance out the unwarranted praise constantly thrown around
P.
Believe it or not, a few years ago, a student here in Ireland wrote a threatening letter to the US President from a fellow student's account (without her knowledge). They were questioned by the police here about the incident, and as far as I know, would now both be refused entry to the US because of it.
Just so that they get the message, I'd suggest you mail/e-mail the band's official address and state your reasons why you're not buying the album. Hopefully feedback like that from bands might have some effect.
P.
The reason I would disagree with that is because the physics engine in Half-Life 2 will (or should lead to a lot more creativity in games). Sure, lighting effects are atmospheric, but that's it; they don't really enhance the game play as such. The parts I loved most from the HL2 demo engine was the gravity engine pulling individual letters from a storefront and then repulsing them at the enemy, or where a radiator is ripped from a wall and used as a make-shift shields. It's those sections which showed you how the engine opens up the game. Depending on how detailed and accessible the HL2 physics engine is, the modification possibilities are staggering.
What they are mainly worried about is their marketing and advertising policy being subverted. Simply put, they rely on marketing rather than the quality of the music to sell it, and spending all that money pushing the latest "artist", spending millions on publicity TV and radiotime is worth nothing is people can download their music, think "what shit", and then find some other unknown artist's music as easily.
P2P enables people to judge music merely on its quality, and find and listen to music through alternative channels, and not the usual bought corporate media (sorry if I'm beginning to sound Chomskyesque :)
P.
From the UK's "The Register":
The powerful Congressman at the center of the controversy over royalty rates for small webcasters took $18,000 from the Recording Industry Association of America.
As chair of the House Judiciary Committee, James Sensenbrenner was instrumental in forcing the deal that could result in an antitrust suit against the RIAA being filed by small webcasters.
--
More at:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/31812.html
Would the same people sanction prison terms for those who swap tape compilations with friends? Or who photocopy newspaper and magazine articles for them?
Someone set up already...
P
It's an excerpt from the E3 half-hour trailer. Higher resolution admittedly, but nothing to get excited about, and nothing you should rush a 50 meg download for. Let's see some new stuff! P.
I notice that the esteemed Howard Berman, Democratic Congressman (and industry schill), wants to jail people who swap a mere one music file: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/31800.html Can you Yanks do the world a favour and vote him out of office as quickly as possible and banish him to well-deserved obscurity? Thank you. P.
>Yes, you have to make tough choices not just >should we use Linux or Solaris but who is going >to get a paycheck next week or should we lay >off so and so because his wife just died of >cancer last month.
I do hope the sense of that last sentence is that you had planned the layoff the guy and _then_ his wife died, rather than laying him off _because_ she died...
P.
Naw, it'd be done by technical writers, so you would do just fine... :)
P.
I sync up with (free) newspapers and magazines using AvantGo and read them while travelling; that's probably 90% of my PDA usage. It's also handy to download articles and PDFs from the web to read later.
Apart from that, I use it to remind me of tasks and appointments (for my job, it _really_ helps) and also use 3rd-party apps such as Metro and Pocket Streets when travelling.
I was amusing by the review, which seems to state that "stability" is to be prized above, oh, actually applications and being able to do anything. My iPAQ has _never_ crashed. I want a PDA so I can do _cool_ and _necessary_ things with it, not so I can look at a blank screen and say to myself "Hmmm, 40 days uptime and still no crashes!".
P.
Please, Mr Spielberg, do not take any moviemaking advice from Mr Lucas. Certainly not to the extent that you are so enamoured about special effects that you forget likeable characters, lively acting and keeping emotions and humanity at the heart of the story.
P.
It's hard to take any man who dated Doctress Neutopia seriously:
http://www.lovolution.net/
P.
It's just a shame that the keypad on my
Ipaq 3660 is so unresponsive! Are
the keypads on later models more suitable
for gaming?
P.
1. Will only Verizon customers be targeted, since (AFAIK) only they have been subpeonaed by the RIAA to hand over the identities of customers?
2. Presumably the only information associated with a particular incident of file sharing is a particular IP address. How can the RIAA associate this with a particular person, in the case where it's shared by a number of people behind a router?
3. Could the RIAA sue anyone outside of the US?
>Huh? How hard is typing "rpm -Uvh [path to >rpm]"?
You _do_ realise that to a non-techie user,
the above looks like unintelligible
gibberish? As a technical writer with a
computer science background, I endlessly
bang my head at the inability of developers
to appreciate that non-techie users aren't dumb,
in the same way that non-English speakers aren't
merely dumb when _they_ don't understand
English.
P.
In my ongoing attempt to Learn to Love Linux, I tried installing Cygwin at home on my Windows XP. It crashed. No doubt this is due to some trojan planted by Bill the Gates in order to keep me from Linux rather than just a, uh, crap installer.
P.
You make helping the poor sound like such a bad thing?
Really, only a slash-and-burn laissez-faire capitalist would consider New Labour "socialist".
P.
Having read the install instructions for BitTorrent, I decided it would be quicker to wait for the movie on DVD. P.
"Fog in (English) channel: continent isolated." P.
>media stations kept crashing (it was nice to see >a Mandrake Linux reboot rather than an M$ bodge >job)
Umm, they kept crashed but weren't a bodge job?
Please explain....
P.