Since SCO never purchased the copyright on UNIX, which remained with Novell;
And Novell own SUSE, who have released a version of Linux under the GPL;
then Novell {being the UNIX copyright holder} have given their blessing to Linux being GPL'ed.
Since SCO do not hold the copyright on any UNIX code that may be present in Linux,
and Novell have not authorised SCO to act on their behalf,
then SCO are acting under false pretences.
Doing something you weren't asked to do to somebody else's property is called trespass in this country, and is a civil offence for which legal aid is not available. It's a defence to trespass that you had good faith that the rightful owner would have wanted you to do what you did; however, there is no way SCO could have good faith that Novell wants them to collect licence money {which would belong to Novell, as the copyright holder, not SCO. Misappropriation of funds is a criminal offence}. Finally, since the GPL does not permit what SCO is doing, SCO are guilty of copyright violation to some extent or other. While there is next to no point in Novell pursuing for damages in the civil courts {they wouldn't have made any money so they can't have lost any money} Novell could still testify against SCO in any criminal copyright violation case.
Did I mention that in the British civil courts, the loser almost always pays all costs; and a successful prosecution for a criminal offence doesn't bar you from instigating separate civil proceedings to recover damages?
Bye-bye, SCO. Thanks for collecting so much evidence againstg yourselves.
Just for once I'm going to leave the social implications of this technology to other commentators, and look at it from a detached, purely mathematical standpoint. What is going on in this software is basically shape recognition. And the mathematical implications of having a shape-recognition system that can apply to something as imprecise and diverse as human faces are as important IMHO as the social ones.
While I don't have a formal proof -- I'll leave that up to the daylights-boring-out faction of the pure maths brigade -- it's my gut feeling that the mathematical problems thrown up by attempting to render compiled code into human-readable form are in the same domain as those involved in shape recognition. Functions, "if / else" structures, "for" and "while" loops and so forth are all basically just recognisable shapes.
Now the maths is done for recognising the shapes of human faces, picking out features and so forth. Obviously the next thing is going to be the ability to do it with one individual in a moving crowd. And I really do not think that a workable decompiler can be all that far behind. This really could be the end of the open-source / closed-source debate.....
It's accepted by broadcasters in the UK that people do not actually watch advertisements. On the satellite station UKTV Gold, one of the "advert break intros" actually invites viewers to put the kettle on, and one of the "outros" suggests that they may be feeling better after returning from the toilet!
I bought the set and I pay the licence fee with money I earned with my own hard graft. And as far as I'm concerned, that gives me the right to watch what I decide, when I decide, where I decide, with whom I decide. Everybody else had just better deal with it.
what about a phone that gets excellent reception wherever you go?
Unfortunately that's not very likely. Whenever the phone companies want to put up a new base station, someone invariably objects on bogus "health risk" grounds.
Now, recall that RF is non-ionising and so has no cumulative effects. Only field strength matters. Furthermore RF travels in straight lines, and spreads out evenly over an area; so the field strength decreases with the square of distance. Twice as far away == a quarter of the field strength.
The further your phone is from the nearest base station {which will be even further if the protesters get their way.....}, the more power it has to put out to reach it. And your phone probably is a lot closer to you than the nearest base station is.....
In the UK, subsidies used to be paid to Combined Heating and Power {CHP} plants -- not sure if they still are, but the tech was seriously promoted in the 80s/90s -- I'm just not sure if it failed, or succeeded to the point it became non-newsworthy. But the basic idea is that instead of installing a simple heating boiler for an industrial facility {factory, office block &c.} you install a generating plant of such a size that it will produce the same amount of waste heat as you need to run your facility. This obviously requires more fuel {since some of the energy stored in chemical bonds in the fuel is now being converted to electricity} but, remember, a kilowatt-hour of electricity costs more than a kilowatt-hour of whatever fuel you're running the plant on. Whatever doesn't get converted to electricity comes out as heat; and that heat goes straight into your industrial process. If you generate more electricity than you can use in the facility, you can sell the surplus back to the power company at the going rate; and even if not, you still save on electricity, since it now costs you the same per kWh as your new fuel.
If you used the wind created by the motion of the vehicle, you'd be sapping
power from the vehicle's engine anyway. You're increasing the frictional
drag on the car; the engine will have to work a little bit harder to overcome
the increased drag. Due to inefficiencies in the system, this will cost you
at least as much fuel as if you just coupled a generator straight to the
engine. {In any case, this is what usually happens in a train. The engine
runs at a constant speed, and is permanently coupled to
a generator which drives an electric motor. It's easier to make a
switch that can handle that much power than a clutch that can handle that
much power; and it's easier to build a motor with multiple windings that
can be arranged in various series/parallel combinations than to make gears
that won't shear with the torque going through them.}
I think you are being unduly pessimistic in your assertion that Microsoft's programmers are any better than the Open Source community. The whole point is, there are more of us than there are of Microsoft. Different people will tend to use different approaches; the more people there are working on any problem, the more likely it is that one of them will find a solution that works. Sometimes, sheer weight of bodies is all that it needs.
It's almost not surprising that you had bad interactions between Windows and Open Source, but don't take that as indicative of any shortcoming of Open Source. Open Source programmers don't have the luxury of working to anything other than the officially-documented interface -- and have to go with the assumption that the documentation is accurate.
Ever wondered why almost everywhere except France, stairs go in flights of 12? That's because the builders always used a rise per step of one inch per foot of total rise. Which will always give you 11 steps and a landing, no matter how much the total rise may be.
Except in France, because France never bothered with feet and inches: they went straight from saying "about yay big" {or more probably "environ tellement grand"} to the metre, originally defined as the length of a pendulum which takes one second to swing from side to side. {Try it in the old formula T = 2 * pi * sqrt (L / g); remember the formula gives the time it takes to swing from side and back again}.
In all my born days I have seen about a dozen legit copies of any version of Windows {including 3.11 on a stack of floppies} -- including about six at my workplace. Everyone else I know has an operating system they didn't pay for: either a dodgy copy of Windows, or Linux.
This is how it works in the UK. If you go to a back-street computer shop -- not PriCey World, not Dixons, but an actual independent retailer, a 21st century artisan -- to buy a machine, you get told the cost of the hardware not including software. Not even Windows. You are then given a choice: either you can take the machine away like that and install your own software, or you can pay for a legitimate copy of Windows and Office and all the usual crap like Outlook Express and Internet Exploder.
At this point the customer probably is going to be shocked by how much the software will cost; and unless they are particularly straight-arsed about such matters, will inquire discreetly about a cheaper way. The shopkeeper's younger assistant will offer to do the job, strictly on the quiet and subject to the customer never breathing a word. The receipt says "No Operating System" and the cost of the software is paid, in cash, straight into the assistant's sky rocket. Lovely!
The customer leaves, thinking they got one up on Microsoft by ripping off "hundreds of pounds" of software. Hey, it feels so good, stickin' it to The Man! And Ballmer cackles, because he knows the customer still believes they need Microsoft. Truth is, it's The Man who stuck it to you. Just because you didn't pay for it, doesn't make it less buggy or crash-prone. You still haven't got the source code -- and having a competent programmer look at the source code is the only way ever to make it less buggy and crash-prone. You still get every disadvantage you would have got if you had paid full whack for a legit copy, on top of the twin disadvantages that it's illegal and you know full well.
In a more sorted universe, the shopkeeper would of course say, "Sure! You could have Linux and OpenOffice instead, for nothing." The customer would spend a day or two getting used to it and then realise they didn't need Microsoft. The customer's friends, being emailed loads of.sxw and.sxc files, would be a little baffled at first; but soon come to realise that they are OpenOffice files. Then they would install OpenOffice -- and maybe notice that instead of dire warnings against copying, comes a notice encouraging you to copy and spread their software!
1981 was the year when everyone in the UK wanted a video recorder, because Prince Charles was marrying Lady Diana Spencer and for some reason, people wanted not only to watch it, but to have a permanent record of the event. My parents went out and rented a massive Sanyo Betacord 9300. First in the street, no visual search, one-event timer. Dog's bollocks. Saved my mother's sanity when the telly blew up one night just as Coronation Street was about to start..... we just slammed in a spare tape and hit "record" {even though it had piano keys, you didn't need to press record and play together, which was a little weirdy in those days}.
My first VHS was an even older Ferguson 3V22 {rebadged JVC} with no freeze-frame -- there was a pause, but it blanked out the screen. And on this one you did have to press record and play together {as it should be IMHO}. It was built like a tank, all belt-driven from one motor and full of sensors, and I should have hung onto it. A new head drum would have fixed it.
I bought my last VCR two years ago, knowing that it was going to be replaced by some kind of disc recorder. Then, in the January Sales of 2003-2004, I bought a Philips DVD recorder, which quite possibly is the best thing I ever bought that plugs in {except my bread maker}. It was expensive but it was worth it.
I don't really think it's a big deal that Dixons are stopping selling VCRs. They are a big unit-shifter, but they're by no means the only place to buy VCRs from. What I do think is a bit worrying is that so many DVD machines are play-only devices. That's sort of the ultimate copy-protection, if you can't make the recordings yourself at all. The combination of a play-only DVD and a non-transportable HDD TV-recorder might look flashy on the surface, but scratch away a little and you'll see a lot less generality of purpose under there. Video cassettes could be carried around anywhere there was a machine that could play them; the only worry you had was whether the machine was PAL, SECAM or NTSC, and chances are the worst you would get, even with the wrong kind of player, would be a mono picture and maybe scratchy sound. Hell, that was only a factor if you were going overseas. And you could fast-forward through Simon Bates' patronising speech about piracy at the beginning of every film.....
At least in the UK, multi-region players and fast-forward-block defeating are very definitely legal; and so will DeCSS be, if it ever gets as far as a Crown Court. {It was very nearly made law that broadcasters had to transmit an 'advertisement warning signal' to allow TV-recorders to distinguish editorial content from advertising..... not much chance of that these days though, since the BBC is about the only advert-free broadcaster left in Europe, and there isn't enough anti-advertising sentiment in high places. Quelle honte.}
Hmmmm..... I hadn't spotted the connection before, but it is actually frighteningly accurate. Right down to the division between the practising ones and the preaching ones!
Most people, like Windows users, see a cake and just want to eat it.
Then they should not be surprised when it gives them diarrhoea, or constipation, or brings them out in a rash, or makes their hair turn green, or their throat constrict so they cannot breathe. Or causes a large, heavy object to descend the second the cake is lifted from the table.....
Why is all notion of common sense apparently abandoned the instant anything electronic is involved?
Since the ingredients list is invariably presented in descending order by weight and usually accompanied by a nutritional breakdown of proteins, fats and proportion of saturates, and carbohydrates and proportions of sugar and fibre, it's not actually that hard to deduce most of the recipe -- it's just simultaneous equations.
Anyway. Getting back onto topic. The point I'm making is that you can't determine what a piece of software does without the source code. But it seems to me that much, if not all, of the anti-malware for Windows is closed-source..... and therefore may contain malware of its own, or otherwise fail to perform as advertised. Otherwise, why won't the manufacturers show us what's inside?
CUSTOMER: Excuse me, miss. This cake. There doesn't seem to be an ingredients list on the box.
MANAGERESS: That's right, sir. There isn't one.
C: Why not?
M: Because it's a secret.
C: But how am I supposed to know what's in it?
M: We don't want you to know what's in it. If you knew what was in it, you might not buy it.
Would you buy a cake without an ingredients list? You don't know. It might contain animal fat. It might contain artificial colourings. It might contain nuts. It might contain radioactive isotopes.
I am genuinely curious as to what motivates people to run software knowing that they are not allowed to look at the source code. Fair enough, you may not understand it yourself. But people are not islands, and you probably know someone who could understand it, if you really needed it understood. And more to the point, if they won't show you the source code, why not? What don't they want you to see?
The only way you can ever know for certain what a piece of software is doing, is by reading the source code. If the suppliers don't want you to read the source code, that suggests to me that they have a problem with you knowing what it does. Which further suggests that it's probably dodgy.
I have no SMB shares -- I even compiled my kernel without SMBFS support. Honestly, I really don't see the point with SMBFS. All the machines on my LAN have NFS support compiled in, and the ones with printers attached are running CUPS. That seems to work fine.
If I actually wanted to run a Windows box for some reason, I'd probably just run open-source NFS and CUPS clients on that. A non-secret, non-proprietary protocol is always going to be inherently more secure than a secret, proprietary one; because there is a proper distinction between what really needs to be kept secret for security reasons, and what can't be kept secret because the source code is available to all.
I would guess that the problem with making wide deflection tubes, say 135 degrees instead of 110, is that the non-linearities inherent with magnetic deflection will become obvious. {They aren't going to start making electrostatically-deflected CRTs anytime soon either.} This is especially likely to be a problem with widescreen TV sets. Also, the curvature of the glass -- it's necessarily a portion of a sphere [or a cylinder, in the case of a Trinitron], because the distance from the electron gun to the screen needs to be constant} will be noticeable.
But it should be possible to
compensate electronically for the deflection aberration, and also adjust the focal length as the beam traverses the screen so the picture stays in focus. It ought even to be possible to build an ultra-wide, twin-necked CRT with a central region into which both electron guns could fire without losing focus. You would have to switch from one to the other at random points on each line of each frame, otherwise there would be a very noticeable step change in picture quality. Although, with this type of set there may well be too many adjustments for someone who just wants to watch films and soap operas.....
My home monitor is a Dell-branded, 40cm. Trinitron, 1280 x 1024 x 75Hz {from memory}. It's the first one I actually paid for as opposed to finding in a skip. It also seems to accept any scan rate and sync polarity without question. I probably will replace it with an LCD when it eventually fails, though. {It's too nice to relegate to a server. And too big.}
My work monitor is a 43cm. LCD, 1280 x 1024. Quite nice; but most other people's in the building are 38cm., 1024x768 LCDs. As I soon found out, this is something you have to be aware of when you write http-driven applications that depend on the size of an iframe.....
My laptop {two years old and quite probably the last one ever made with an audio line-in jack} is a lowly 35cm. 1024 x 768.
One thing I have noticed about the cheaper LCDs is that they are quite fussy about scan rates. I've seen some that go through endless auto-adjustments trying to lock onto the boot-up messages. When plugged via a KVM switch into a stack of servers, this can be annoying. Modern tube monitors, on the other hand, seem far more forgiving.
Dolphins aren't "always smiling". That's just an optical illusion caused by the natural curvature of their jaws which by coincidence resembles a human expression of contentment.
Dolphins don't use radar. It's sonar. And human beings do it too -- except since we started wearing shoes, we have taken to using the sound of our own footfalls as excitation pulses, and so don't tend to make deliberate clicks anymore.
If dolphins are that smart, why haven't they built cities? Or vehicles? Where is their historical record, their literature?
Finally, why does every can of tuna say on it "Dolphin friendly" ? How can you object to the eating of dolphins while not objecting to the eating of tuna {which, being predators, absorb all manner of poisonous heavy metals from everything they have eaten, including everything that everything they have ever eaten has itself eaten, as well as from the water itself}?
They aren't beautiful, they're overrated. Dolphin-worship culture is merely an excuse for whiney new-age types {who probably believe in aliens as well} to make their own miserable existences seem a little less pointless. {And for people to make a quick buck selling tat decorated with dolphins to gullible people.}
You can also made an edible chess set by cutting up a Battenburg cake into sixteen slices, to make the board; then moulding the pieces out of the marzipan from around the edge. Dip one set of pieces in food colouring {or just read a newspaper before you mould the black pieces!}
I thought if you bought all your kit from the same manufacturer, and wired it up with SCART leads, that was what happened anyway? There are standards for passing data over SCART (not sure if different manufacturers' kit works well together tho') so you can send your preset frequencies from the TV set to your VCR/DVDR, and many remotes can control another piece of kit {from the same manufacturer, naturally}.
My DVD+RW recorder can do this when used with a Philips telly. Its remote will even control a Philips TV set -- or, by sheer good fortune, a Daewoo {which is what I have}.
SCART has always included self-switching signals using analogue voltages, so that playing a cassette would switch the TV straight over to the VCR; but I think the newer stuff is a lot more sophisticated. Can't really comment, though, since I have no reason to replace my TV on account of the fact that it works.
You have just outlined the whole problem with disparate currencies which the Euro tried to address. The variable nature of exchange rates means that it is actually possible to make a living doing nothing but change money from one form to another.
You do need a hefty chunk of local currency for day-to-day survival, because you don't necessarily know when the dollars you bought are going to be worth more pounds than you paid for them {or whichever way around it is}. And a lone investor probably couldn't get rich off it. But in the world of high finance, where it's all other people's money anyway, it's a different story..... you can make significant amounts.
Yes, farts are methane, carbon dioxide comes from burps. And since CO2 is soluble in water, which CH4 isn't, CO2 is actually a lot less of a problem than CH4. There's actually energy in that methane too -- if you could purify and burn it, you'd get two molecules of H2O and one of CO2 from every molecule of CH4, and they wouldn't trap as much heat as the unburned methane. Plus, that CO2 would be instead of some CO2 from some other power plant.
Unfortunately, Friends of the Earth would be opposing any attempt you made to do this, since anything at all that releases CO2 is obviously bad.
Right now, US economy is pretty much sustained by the fact that, if you want oil, you must purchase it in dollars
And this is why Britain was not kicked out of the EU years ago. Out of those oil-buying dollars, more of them were bought with Euros and Pounds than started off as dollars in the first place. If Britain were to ditch the Pound and join the Single European Currency, then it would suddenly make more sense for oil producing nations to start selling by the Euro rather than the dollar. As long as there is even a faint glimmer of a hope that Britain might join the Euro, then there is a faint glimmer of hope that oil will one day be priced in Euros.
This is why the USA is so keen to cultivate a special friendship with Britain, and to poison her against the EU. But right now, British politics are in a mess. Blair is bad but Howard would probably be ever so slightly worse. Only the Lib Dems, and maybe the Greens, have anything sensible to say -- but they won't get elected because everybody knows, they're wasted votes.
I honestly don't see much in terms of a solution, until the oil really does start running out. Since Britain has {had?} some oil reserves of her own, this may start biting sooner rather than later.....
Content control and censorship, no, I don't agree with for one minute. And "protecting children" -- I don't agree with that either. The Internet is for adults.
But you have to admit there are blatant misuses going on out there. If I want to sell goods door-to-door, I have to carry an identity card with my employer's details; and if I try to use a fake identity card, I can be arrested. Why then are people allowed not only to send unsolicited e-mail but deliberately to disguise its origin and nature? If I not only installed a concealed radio transmitter in a pair of shoes you bought from me, without telling you, and used it to follow you around; but also made it deliberately awkward for you to remove it, I would almost certainly be breaking the law. Why is it acceptable to do the same thing on a computer?
No, don't tell me; it's all about money. And I keep being reminded of this quotation: "Only when the last tree has been felled, The last river has been poisoned, The last fish
has been caught, Will you realise that you cannot eat money."
Slashdot Mirror
Since SCO never purchased the copyright on UNIX, which remained with Novell;
And Novell own SUSE, who have released a version of Linux under the GPL;
then Novell {being the UNIX copyright holder} have given their blessing to Linux being GPL'ed.
Since SCO do not hold the copyright on any UNIX code that may be present in Linux,
and Novell have not authorised SCO to act on their behalf,
then SCO are acting under false pretences.
Doing something you weren't asked to do to somebody else's property is called trespass in this country, and is a civil offence for which legal aid is not available. It's a defence to trespass that you had good faith that the rightful owner would have wanted you to do what you did; however, there is no way SCO could have good faith that Novell wants them to collect licence money {which would belong to Novell, as the copyright holder, not SCO. Misappropriation of funds is a criminal offence}. Finally, since the GPL does not permit what SCO is doing, SCO are guilty of copyright violation to some extent or other. While there is next to no point in Novell pursuing for damages in the civil courts {they wouldn't have made any money so they can't have lost any money} Novell could still testify against SCO in any criminal copyright violation case.
Did I mention that in the British civil courts, the loser almost always pays all costs; and a successful prosecution for a criminal offence doesn't bar you from instigating separate civil proceedings to recover damages?
Bye-bye, SCO. Thanks for collecting so much evidence againstg yourselves.
Just for once I'm going to leave the social implications of this technology to other commentators, and look at it from a detached, purely mathematical standpoint. What is going on in this software is basically shape recognition. And the mathematical implications of having a shape-recognition system that can apply to something as imprecise and diverse as human faces are as important IMHO as the social ones.
.....
While I don't have a formal proof -- I'll leave that up to the daylights-boring-out faction of the pure maths brigade -- it's my gut feeling that the mathematical problems thrown up by attempting to render compiled code into human-readable form are in the same domain as those involved in shape recognition. Functions, "if / else" structures, "for" and "while" loops and so forth are all basically just recognisable shapes.
Now the maths is done for recognising the shapes of human faces, picking out features and so forth. Obviously the next thing is going to be the ability to do it with one individual in a moving crowd. And I really do not think that a workable decompiler can be all that far behind. This really could be the end of the open-source / closed-source debate
Wow! A court making a decision in line with common sense!
You just restored my faith in human nature. (Was this in the same part of Oz where the happy-herb is legal too?)
It's accepted by broadcasters in the UK that people do not actually watch advertisements. On the satellite station UKTV Gold, one of the "advert break intros" actually invites viewers to put the kettle on, and one of the "outros" suggests that they may be feeling better after returning from the toilet!
I bought the set and I pay the licence fee with money I earned with my own hard graft. And as far as I'm concerned, that gives me the right to watch what I decide, when I decide, where I decide, with whom I decide. Everybody else had just better deal with it.
Now, recall that RF is non-ionising and so has no cumulative effects. Only field strength matters. Furthermore RF travels in straight lines, and spreads out evenly over an area; so the field strength decreases with the square of distance. Twice as far away == a quarter of the field strength.
The further your phone is from the nearest base station {which will be even further if the protesters get their way.....}, the more power it has to put out to reach it. And your phone probably is a lot closer to you than the nearest base station is
Get what I'm saying?
As soon as sheep work out how to make a dildo, humans of both sexes are obsolete.
In the UK, subsidies used to be paid to Combined Heating and Power {CHP} plants -- not sure if they still are, but the tech was seriously promoted in the 80s/90s -- I'm just not sure if it failed, or succeeded to the point it became non-newsworthy. But the basic idea is that instead of installing a simple heating boiler for an industrial facility {factory, office block &c.} you install a generating plant of such a size that it will produce the same amount of waste heat as you need to run your facility. This obviously requires more fuel {since some of the energy stored in chemical bonds in the fuel is now being converted to electricity} but, remember, a kilowatt-hour of electricity costs more than a kilowatt-hour of whatever fuel you're running the plant on. Whatever doesn't get converted to electricity comes out as heat; and that heat goes straight into your industrial process. If you generate more electricity than you can use in the facility, you can sell the surplus back to the power company at the going rate; and even if not, you still save on electricity, since it now costs you the same per kWh as your new fuel.
If you used the wind created by the motion of the vehicle, you'd be sapping power from the vehicle's engine anyway. You're increasing the frictional drag on the car; the engine will have to work a little bit harder to overcome the increased drag. Due to inefficiencies in the system, this will cost you at least as much fuel as if you just coupled a generator straight to the engine. {In any case, this is what usually happens in a train. The engine runs at a constant speed, and is permanently coupled to a generator which drives an electric motor. It's easier to make a switch that can handle that much power than a clutch that can handle that much power; and it's easier to build a motor with multiple windings that can be arranged in various series/parallel combinations than to make gears that won't shear with the torque going through them.}
I think you are being unduly pessimistic in your assertion that Microsoft's programmers are any better than the Open Source community. The whole point is, there are more of us than there are of Microsoft. Different people will tend to use different approaches; the more people there are working on any problem, the more likely it is that one of them will find a solution that works. Sometimes, sheer weight of bodies is all that it needs.
It's almost not surprising that you had bad interactions between Windows and Open Source, but don't take that as indicative of any shortcoming of Open Source. Open Source programmers don't have the luxury of working to anything other than the officially-documented interface -- and have to go with the assumption that the documentation is accurate.
Ever wondered why almost everywhere except France, stairs go in flights of 12? That's because the builders always used a rise per step of one inch per foot of total rise. Which will always give you 11 steps and a landing, no matter how much the total rise may be.
Except in France, because France never bothered with feet and inches: they went straight from saying "about yay big" {or more probably "environ tellement grand"} to the metre, originally defined as the length of a pendulum which takes one second to swing from side to side. {Try it in the old formula T = 2 * pi * sqrt (L / g); remember the formula gives the time it takes to swing from side and back again}.
In all my born days I have seen about a dozen legit copies of any version of Windows {including 3.11 on a stack of floppies} -- including about six at my workplace. Everyone else I know has an operating system they didn't pay for: either a dodgy copy of Windows, or Linux.
.sxw and .sxc files, would be a little baffled at first; but soon come to realise that they are OpenOffice files. Then they would install OpenOffice -- and maybe notice that instead of dire warnings against copying, comes a notice encouraging you to copy and spread their software!
This is how it works in the UK. If you go to a back-street computer shop -- not PriCey World, not Dixons, but an actual independent retailer, a 21st century artisan -- to buy a machine, you get told the cost of the hardware not including software. Not even Windows. You are then given a choice: either you can take the machine away like that and install your own software, or you can pay for a legitimate copy of Windows and Office and all the usual crap like Outlook Express and Internet Exploder.
At this point the customer probably is going to be shocked by how much the software will cost; and unless they are particularly straight-arsed about such matters, will inquire discreetly about a cheaper way. The shopkeeper's younger assistant will offer to do the job, strictly on the quiet and subject to the customer never breathing a word. The receipt says "No Operating System" and the cost of the software is paid, in cash, straight into the assistant's sky rocket. Lovely!
The customer leaves, thinking they got one up on Microsoft by ripping off "hundreds of pounds" of software. Hey, it feels so good, stickin' it to The Man! And Ballmer cackles, because he knows the customer still believes they need Microsoft. Truth is, it's The Man who stuck it to you. Just because you didn't pay for it, doesn't make it less buggy or crash-prone. You still haven't got the source code -- and having a competent programmer look at the source code is the only way ever to make it less buggy and crash-prone. You still get every disadvantage you would have got if you had paid full whack for a legit copy, on top of the twin disadvantages that it's illegal and you know full well.
In a more sorted universe, the shopkeeper would of course say, "Sure! You could have Linux and OpenOffice instead, for nothing." The customer would spend a day or two getting used to it and then realise they didn't need Microsoft. The customer's friends, being emailed loads of
1981 was the year when everyone in the UK wanted a video recorder, because Prince Charles was marrying Lady Diana Spencer and for some reason, people wanted not only to watch it, but to have a permanent record of the event. My parents went out and rented a massive Sanyo Betacord 9300. First in the street, no visual search, one-event timer. Dog's bollocks. Saved my mother's sanity when the telly blew up one night just as Coronation Street was about to start ..... we just slammed in a spare tape and hit "record" {even though it had piano keys, you didn't need to press record and play together, which was a little weirdy in those days}.
.....
..... not much chance of that these days though, since the BBC is about the only advert-free broadcaster left in Europe, and there isn't enough anti-advertising sentiment in high places. Quelle honte.}
My first VHS was an even older Ferguson 3V22 {rebadged JVC} with no freeze-frame -- there was a pause, but it blanked out the screen. And on this one you did have to press record and play together {as it should be IMHO}. It was built like a tank, all belt-driven from one motor and full of sensors, and I should have hung onto it. A new head drum would have fixed it.
I bought my last VCR two years ago, knowing that it was going to be replaced by some kind of disc recorder. Then, in the January Sales of 2003-2004, I bought a Philips DVD recorder, which quite possibly is the best thing I ever bought that plugs in {except my bread maker}. It was expensive but it was worth it.
I don't really think it's a big deal that Dixons are stopping selling VCRs. They are a big unit-shifter, but they're by no means the only place to buy VCRs from. What I do think is a bit worrying is that so many DVD machines are play-only devices. That's sort of the ultimate copy-protection, if you can't make the recordings yourself at all. The combination of a play-only DVD and a non-transportable HDD TV-recorder might look flashy on the surface, but scratch away a little and you'll see a lot less generality of purpose under there. Video cassettes could be carried around anywhere there was a machine that could play them; the only worry you had was whether the machine was PAL, SECAM or NTSC, and chances are the worst you would get, even with the wrong kind of player, would be a mono picture and maybe scratchy sound. Hell, that was only a factor if you were going overseas. And you could fast-forward through Simon Bates' patronising speech about piracy at the beginning of every film
At least in the UK, multi-region players and fast-forward-block defeating are very definitely legal; and so will DeCSS be, if it ever gets as far as a Crown Court. {It was very nearly made law that broadcasters had to transmit an 'advertisement warning signal' to allow TV-recorders to distinguish editorial content from advertising
Why is all notion of common sense apparently abandoned the instant anything electronic is involved?
Since the ingredients list is invariably presented in descending order by weight and usually accompanied by a nutritional breakdown of proteins, fats and proportion of saturates, and carbohydrates and proportions of sugar and fibre, it's not actually that hard to deduce most of the recipe -- it's just simultaneous equations.
..... and therefore may contain malware of its own, or otherwise fail to perform as advertised. Otherwise, why won't the manufacturers show us what's inside?
Anyway. Getting back onto topic. The point I'm making is that you can't determine what a piece of software does without the source code. But it seems to me that much, if not all, of the anti-malware for Windows is closed-source
I am genuinely curious as to what motivates people to run software knowing that they are not allowed to look at the source code. Fair enough, you may not understand it yourself. But people are not islands, and you probably know someone who could understand it, if you really needed it understood. And more to the point, if they won't show you the source code, why not? What don't they want you to see?
The only way you can ever know for certain what a piece of software is doing, is by reading the source code. If the suppliers don't want you to read the source code, that suggests to me that they have a problem with you knowing what it does. Which further suggests that it's probably dodgy.
I have no SMB shares -- I even compiled my kernel without SMBFS support. Honestly, I really don't see the point with SMBFS. All the machines on my LAN have NFS support compiled in, and the ones with printers attached are running CUPS. That seems to work fine.
If I actually wanted to run a Windows box for some reason, I'd probably just run open-source NFS and CUPS clients on that. A non-secret, non-proprietary protocol is always going to be inherently more secure than a secret, proprietary one; because there is a proper distinction between what really needs to be kept secret for security reasons, and what can't be kept secret because the source code is available to all.
I would guess that the problem with making wide deflection tubes, say 135 degrees instead of 110, is that the non-linearities inherent with magnetic deflection will become obvious. {They aren't going to start making electrostatically-deflected CRTs anytime soon either.} This is especially likely to be a problem with widescreen TV sets. Also, the curvature of the glass -- it's necessarily a portion of a sphere [or a cylinder, in the case of a Trinitron], because the distance from the electron gun to the screen needs to be constant} will be noticeable.
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But it should be possible to compensate electronically for the deflection aberration, and also adjust the focal length as the beam traverses the screen so the picture stays in focus. It ought even to be possible to build an ultra-wide, twin-necked CRT with a central region into which both electron guns could fire without losing focus. You would have to switch from one to the other at random points on each line of each frame, otherwise there would be a very noticeable step change in picture quality. Although, with this type of set there may well be too many adjustments for someone who just wants to watch films and soap operas
My home monitor is a Dell-branded, 40cm. Trinitron, 1280 x 1024 x 75Hz {from memory}. It's the first one I actually paid for as opposed to finding in a skip. It also seems to accept any scan rate and sync polarity without question. I probably will replace it with an LCD when it eventually fails, though. {It's too nice to relegate to a server. And too big.}
My work monitor is a 43cm. LCD, 1280 x 1024. Quite nice; but most other people's in the building are 38cm., 1024x768 LCDs. As I soon found out, this is something you have to be aware of when you write http-driven applications that depend on the size of an iframe
My laptop {two years old and quite probably the last one ever made with an audio line-in jack} is a lowly 35cm. 1024 x 768.
One thing I have noticed about the cheaper LCDs is that they are quite fussy about scan rates. I've seen some that go through endless auto-adjustments trying to lock onto the boot-up messages. When plugged via a KVM switch into a stack of servers, this can be annoying. Modern tube monitors, on the other hand, seem far more forgiving.
- Dolphins aren't "always smiling". That's just an optical illusion caused by the natural curvature of their jaws which by coincidence resembles a human expression of contentment.
- Dolphins don't use radar. It's sonar. And human beings do it too -- except since we started wearing shoes, we have taken to using the sound of our own footfalls as excitation pulses, and so don't tend to make deliberate clicks anymore.
- If dolphins are that smart, why haven't they built cities? Or vehicles? Where is their historical record, their literature?
- Finally, why does every can of tuna say on it "Dolphin friendly" ? How can you object to the eating of dolphins while not objecting to the eating of tuna {which, being predators, absorb all manner of poisonous heavy metals from everything they have eaten, including everything that everything they have ever eaten has itself eaten, as well as from the water itself}?
They aren't beautiful, they're overrated. Dolphin-worship culture is merely an excuse for whiney new-age types {who probably believe in aliens as well} to make their own miserable existences seem a little less pointless. {And for people to make a quick buck selling tat decorated with dolphins to gullible people.}You can also made an edible chess set by cutting up a Battenburg cake into sixteen slices, to make the board; then moulding the pieces out of the marzipan from around the edge. Dip one set of pieces in food colouring {or just read a newspaper before you mould the black pieces!}
I thought if you bought all your kit from the same manufacturer, and wired it up with SCART leads, that was what happened anyway? There are standards for passing data over SCART (not sure if different manufacturers' kit works well together tho') so you can send your preset frequencies from the TV set to your VCR/DVDR, and many remotes can control another piece of kit {from the same manufacturer, naturally}.
My DVD+RW recorder can do this when used with a Philips telly. Its remote will even control a Philips TV set -- or, by sheer good fortune, a Daewoo {which is what I have}.
SCART has always included self-switching signals using analogue voltages, so that playing a cassette would switch the TV straight over to the VCR; but I think the newer stuff is a lot more sophisticated. Can't really comment, though, since I have no reason to replace my TV on account of the fact that it works.
You have just outlined the whole problem with disparate currencies which the Euro tried to address. The variable nature of exchange rates means that it is actually possible to make a living doing nothing but change money from one form to another.
..... you can make significant amounts.
You do need a hefty chunk of local currency for day-to-day survival, because you don't necessarily know when the dollars you bought are going to be worth more pounds than you paid for them {or whichever way around it is}. And a lone investor probably couldn't get rich off it. But in the world of high finance, where it's all other people's money anyway, it's a different story
Yes, farts are methane, carbon dioxide comes from burps. And since CO2 is soluble in water, which CH4 isn't, CO2 is actually a lot less of a problem than CH4. There's actually energy in that methane too -- if you could purify and burn it, you'd get two molecules of H2O and one of CO2 from every molecule of CH4, and they wouldn't trap as much heat as the unburned methane. Plus, that CO2 would be instead of some CO2 from some other power plant.
Unfortunately, Friends of the Earth would be opposing any attempt you made to do this, since anything at all that releases CO2 is obviously bad.
This is why the USA is so keen to cultivate a special friendship with Britain, and to poison her against the EU. But right now, British politics are in a mess. Blair is bad but Howard would probably be ever so slightly worse. Only the Lib Dems, and maybe the Greens, have anything sensible to say -- but they won't get elected because everybody knows, they're wasted votes.
I honestly don't see much in terms of a solution, until the oil really does start running out. Since Britain has {had?} some oil reserves of her own, this may start biting sooner rather than later
Content control and censorship, no, I don't agree with for one minute. And "protecting children" -- I don't agree with that either. The Internet is for adults.
But you have to admit there are blatant misuses going on out there. If I want to sell goods door-to-door, I have to carry an identity card with my employer's details; and if I try to use a fake identity card, I can be arrested. Why then are people allowed not only to send unsolicited e-mail but deliberately to disguise its origin and nature? If I not only installed a concealed radio transmitter in a pair of shoes you bought from me, without telling you, and used it to follow you around; but also made it deliberately awkward for you to remove it, I would almost certainly be breaking the law. Why is it acceptable to do the same thing on a computer?
No, don't tell me; it's all about money. And I keep being reminded of this quotation: "Only when the last tree has been felled, The last river has been poisoned, The last fish has been caught, Will you realise that you cannot eat money."