Do you have cable? Or Dish Network/DirecTV/whatever? All of those distribution channels are encrypted and copy protected, just like the distribution channel of a copy-protected CD. Even over-the-air television networks (in the United States) are copy protected as they travel from the network to the satellite, and back to the station for transmission to you.
Have you ever been to the movies? Some theaters have infrared lights behind the screen to thward movie copying. Thus, you've bought a copy-protected product.
Do you own a car? Go ahead and try to reverse-engineer the electronics and you'll find out what many mom-and-pop repair shops already know -- it's copy protected.
This is Slashdot. All companies are BIG EVIL MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS from Microsoft to Amnesty International. The Slashdot mantra is that no one should to make money. We should live in a world where Dell hands out free laptops so nerds can surf on free wireless connections in fields full of daisies.
Do you always look gift horses in the mouth? It's free. Quit yer bitchin'. If you don't like it, don't use it.
What's the compelling reason to switch?
on
Zeta Goes Gold
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
So, I've looked at all the screenshots and read much of what's available, and I'm still not sure why someone would want to run Zeta on a modern machine. I can see it for an older piece of hardware you have laying around that might not have the oomph to push Windows or a robust Linux. But will anyone make this their primary OS?
I'm all in favor of choice (Hell, I use a Mac so I'm automatically a minority), and it's great to see another alternative to Windows, but it looks like a Playskool version of OS/2. Will the average Joe take this seriously?
It appears to be very geek-friendly, but I don't see grandma wanting to know about mount points and such. Further, to use a 1990's phrase, what's the "killer app?" What can Zeta do on the average 2005 desktop machine that Windows or Linux can't? Everything I've seen in terms of software offerings (CD player, CD burner, video editor, AIM client, e-mail, Firefox, etc...) are things that already exist in Windows and Linux. What's the compelling reason to switch?
Re:Do they or do they not have the source legally?
on
Zeta Goes Gold
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
Mod me down for going counter to public opinion but you can still freely use your computer without sourcecode.
You are entirely correct. But the open source zealots who help give open source a bad name and strengthen Microsoft's cause would like you to believe otherwise.
According to them..
Because you don't edit and complile your own source code, you are dependent on "the man" and are not free.
Because you did not build your own computer from scratch you are not free.
Because you did not crack the molecules from crude oil in your mother's basement and fashion the plastic case for your computer on your own, you are not free.
Because you do not generate your own electricity, you are dependent on some utility and are not free.
Because you did not start out with a fist full of raw sand and turn it into a video card you are not free.
I'd like to know if the GP has the source code to his computer's BIOS, or the schematics to his motherboard or his processor. Because without them, he is not free.
Oh, btw: your sister and her husband, who live in Japan, hardly count as a representative sample.
My sister lives in the United States. But thanks for proving my point, which was that the parent's observations do not count as a representative sample, neither do mine, and neither do yours.
When I was a sophomore in college (early 1990's) my best friend tried to get me to drop out with him. He was going to join a new computer company and do fabulous things. Three years later, he's making $75k in a great job with a new car and I'm living in a one-room apartment underneath a convenience store in West Virginia with leaky gas heat, cracked windows, and furniture made out of FedEx boxes duct-taped together.
At least, that's how it started.
Move forward another five years, and I'm the one living in the penthouse in the big city making twice what he makes, and he's stuck in a dead-end job in a cubicle farm pushing paper for middle managers.
The moral of the story, as far as I'm concerned, is that while dropping out can give you a head start in certain circumstances, it doesn't help you in the long run, especially when you need certain degrees and experience to get promotions or move into better positions in different companies. Dropping out looks good at first, but in the words of Marge Simpson, "Slow and steady wins the race."
You'll have great trouble finding a mac in most Asian countries
Well, if you want to get into a personal experiences pissing match -- EVERY SINGLE PERSON I know who lives in Japan owns a Mac. Some own two. Of course, my experiences probably vary greatly from yours, so neither point is entirely valid.
That said, the last time I was in the Apple Store in Ginza people were buying Mac Minis by the armload. The majority of people in the checkout line were Thai, Chinese, and Korean. So, if your statement is true, where are all these Macs going?
AAC is a DRMed file.
Not necessarily. The DRM is optional on some levels. I have several thousand AAC music files that do not have DRM as I ripped them from my own CDs.
In other words, "I read it on the internet, so it must be true." Or to be a complete jackass, "That's what some kid on the playground told me, so I put it on the Wikinet."
I'm not saying this particular Wiki entry isn't correct. I just don't know. What I am saying is that as more and more people have gotten involved with the Wikipedia, its accuracy rate has imploded, rather than improved. Citing Wikipedia as a source of information doesn't improve the credibility of one's argument.
Thanks for the correction. I assumed Chumbawumba was Australian because their accents are somewhat thicker than I'm used to from the other British groups I listen to. I also assume that their song "Pass It Along" is an anti-MS rant, but maybe I'm wrong about that, too.
Building a device perfectly capable of playing video and using it to display photos is insanity.
I assume you're talking about iPod Photo. I don't know much about it's inner workings (4 iPod family, but no Photo), but has it actually been documented that it has the horsepower to play video?
In a way I hope not, because that was the only thing that made the OGG Vorbis dead-enders shut the Hell up.
It's only vaporware if they said it was coming. I try to keep up on Apple news, but I don't remember Apple ever promising that iTunes was coming to Australia, so therefore they owe you nothing. I've heard that an actor and a musician said it was coming, but not Apple. If they made that promise, please post the link. I'd love to get more Chumbawumba songs. (No, really, I would.)
I'd be more concerned with the US becoming like the UK, a country burying itself in surveillance cameras (and soon, audio devices).
Welcome to Chicago, U.S.A. The city has surveilance cameras with audio built-in. If the computer "hears" a gunshot, it's able to triangulate the sound, and automatically swing the camera around and zoom in on the scene so police can check it out. Unlike the U.K. where the cameras can sometimes be hard to spot, at least in Chicago the police surveilance cameras have blue police light bars on top like the kind you see on the police cars.
I like to think of them as warnings to normal people that they're entering a crap neighborhood, lock your car doors, don't get off the train.
EAL ID also prohibits states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal aliens. This makes no sense, and will only result in these illegal aliens driving without licenses -- which isn't going to help anyone's security.
It happens already. I got hit head-on on a one-way street by an illegal alien driving a stolen van with no license and no insurance in Houston, Texas. Fortunately, a cop was driving right behind me. Unfortunately, the cop let her go because she is illegal. At the time (March 2003, I don't know if it's still true), the police were under orders from city council not to arrest illegal aliens unless they do something like murder, rob, or rape. It was part of then-mayor Lee Brown's plan to make Houston a safe haven for illegals so he could boost census numbers and bring in more money from the federal government. Since the city signs the cops paychecks, not the federal government, they do what council wants, not what the law is -- and that means letting people who have broken the law go free. I'm so glad I moved to the north.
ll ask the first guy to fly into the "hidden" tower why the fsck he was flying so damn low over my property in the first place. Planes overhead will bring down property values way faster than decent cell phone reception.
Doesn't matter why he's there. If he has a license to fly and he's obeying the FAA rules, he can be there no matter what you think your rights are.
You own your house. You own your land. You do not own the sky above it. And on a related note, depending on where you live, you might not own the minerals below it. It's just sad that you think your imaginary ability to control what happens in the sky is more important than the life of the human being flying the aircraft. Selfish fuck.
A couple of jobs ago I would sometimes have to dispatch a helicopter to residential neighborhoods. People would be pissed and because they could see the company logo on the side of the chopper they'd call and complain. I'd always want to say, "tough shit" but I never did. There's nothing you can do about it. People flying over your property is perfectly legal and it probably happens more often than you think.
Like the way they test the long-term storage abilities of CD-Rs or how long the ink will remain on printer photo paper. It has to be simulated because you can't have people waiting around 20 years to find out if the product works or not.
The color and type of the lights on all structures in the U.S. are determined by their height and their proximity to flight paths. In the mathematical formulas, sometimes even a few dozen meters can make all the difference.
For example, Chicago's CBD is in the flight path of O'Hare airport. Very often planes trying to take advantage of a wind off the lake will fly between the 1,730-foot (to the tip of the mast) Sears Tower and the 1,500-foot (to the tip of the mast) John Hancock Center (fly between in terms of horizontal position, not altitude). Both have twin masts with flashing white strobes during the day. But at night the Hancock Center switches to red LEDs while Sears, with its taller height, retains the white strobes.
Laws don't prevent the dumping of waste, they just regulate it.
Ideally, cities have two sewer systems - sanitary sewers for poop and such that run to the treatment plant, and storm sewers that handle the water when it rains. But when it rains really hard, one will overflow into the other and the two mingle, sending raw sewage into whatever body of water normally accepts only rain runoff. It happens all the time in cities like Chicago, New York, Milwaukee, Seattle, and elsewhere. It's simple physics -- the water treatment plant can only handle so much fluid per hour. Same with the sewers. There's nothing that can be done about it unless people want spend billions to build massive sewer systems and treatment plants that only get used a few times a year.
Yeah, and programs that only run on Linux aren't open source because they only run on 5% of the computers worldwide.
You sound like a jealous Wintel troll.
Maybe you're just angry because you're wasting another Saturday hunting down all the spyware and viruses in your Windows box instead of using your computer to do something creative.
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't watch TV how do you know it's bad?
Do you have cable? Or Dish Network/DirecTV/whatever? All of those distribution channels are encrypted and copy protected, just like the distribution channel of a copy-protected CD. Even over-the-air television networks (in the United States) are copy protected as they travel from the network to the satellite, and back to the station for transmission to you.
Have you ever been to the movies? Some theaters have infrared lights behind the screen to thward movie copying. Thus, you've bought a copy-protected product.
Do you own a car? Go ahead and try to reverse-engineer the electronics and you'll find out what many mom-and-pop repair shops already know -- it's copy protected.
Ever read a newspaper? Copyright protection there, which some people see as copy protection. And if you go along with that line of thinking, then look at the bottom of your screen where it says "© 1997-2005 OSTG." That's right -- Slashdot is protected by copyright, and thus, laws against copying its content. In other words --copy protection.
There's no point in fighting the war. You've already lost.
This is Slashdot. All companies are BIG EVIL MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS from Microsoft to Amnesty International. The Slashdot mantra is that no one should to make money. We should live in a world where Dell hands out free laptops so nerds can surf on free wireless connections in fields full of daisies.
Do you always look gift horses in the mouth? It's free. Quit yer bitchin'. If you don't like it, don't use it.
So, I've looked at all the screenshots and read much of what's available, and I'm still not sure why someone would want to run Zeta on a modern machine. I can see it for an older piece of hardware you have laying around that might not have the oomph to push Windows or a robust Linux. But will anyone make this their primary OS?
I'm all in favor of choice (Hell, I use a Mac so I'm automatically a minority), and it's great to see another alternative to Windows, but it looks like a Playskool version of OS/2. Will the average Joe take this seriously?
It appears to be very geek-friendly, but I don't see grandma wanting to know about mount points and such. Further, to use a 1990's phrase, what's the "killer app?" What can Zeta do on the average 2005 desktop machine that Windows or Linux can't? Everything I've seen in terms of software offerings (CD player, CD burner, video editor, AIM client, e-mail, Firefox, etc...) are things that already exist in Windows and Linux. What's the compelling reason to switch?
Mod me down for going counter to public opinion but you can still freely use your computer without sourcecode.
You are entirely correct. But the open source zealots who help give open source a bad name and strengthen Microsoft's cause would like you to believe otherwise.
According to them..
Because you don't edit and complile your own source code, you are dependent on "the man" and are not free.
Because you did not build your own computer from scratch you are not free.
Because you did not crack the molecules from crude oil in your mother's basement and fashion the plastic case for your computer on your own, you are not free.
Because you do not generate your own electricity, you are dependent on some utility and are not free.
Because you did not start out with a fist full of raw sand and turn it into a video card you are not free.
I'd like to know if the GP has the source code to his computer's BIOS, or the schematics to his motherboard or his processor. Because without them, he is not free.
Sounds like I can run it on my Mac in VirtualPC. Maybe this will be the upgrade path I take if the Macintel thing goes down in flames.
They weren't buying Dells? At the Apple Store in Ginza?
They don't sell Dells at the Apple store in Ginza, dumbass.
Oh, btw: your sister and her husband, who live in Japan, hardly count as a representative sample.
My sister lives in the United States. But thanks for proving my point, which was that the parent's observations do not count as a representative sample, neither do mine, and neither do yours.
When I was a sophomore in college (early 1990's) my best friend tried to get me to drop out with him. He was going to join a new computer company and do fabulous things. Three years later, he's making $75k in a great job with a new car and I'm living in a one-room apartment underneath a convenience store in West Virginia with leaky gas heat, cracked windows, and furniture made out of FedEx boxes duct-taped together.
At least, that's how it started.
Move forward another five years, and I'm the one living in the penthouse in the big city making twice what he makes, and he's stuck in a dead-end job in a cubicle farm pushing paper for middle managers.
The moral of the story, as far as I'm concerned, is that while dropping out can give you a head start in certain circumstances, it doesn't help you in the long run, especially when you need certain degrees and experience to get promotions or move into better positions in different companies. Dropping out looks good at first, but in the words of Marge Simpson, "Slow and steady wins the race."
You'll have great trouble finding a mac in most Asian countries
Well, if you want to get into a personal experiences pissing match -- EVERY SINGLE PERSON I know who lives in Japan owns a Mac. Some own two. Of course, my experiences probably vary greatly from yours, so neither point is entirely valid.
That said, the last time I was in the Apple Store in Ginza people were buying Mac Minis by the armload. The majority of people in the checkout line were Thai, Chinese, and Korean. So, if your statement is true, where are all these Macs going?
AAC is a DRMed file.
Not necessarily. The DRM is optional on some levels. I have several thousand AAC music files that do not have DRM as I ripped them from my own CDs.
At least according to Wikipedia.
In other words, "I read it on the internet, so it must be true." Or to be a complete jackass, "That's what some kid on the playground told me, so I put it on the Wikinet."
I'm not saying this particular Wiki entry isn't correct. I just don't know. What I am saying is that as more and more people have gotten involved with the Wikipedia, its accuracy rate has imploded, rather than improved. Citing Wikipedia as a source of information doesn't improve the credibility of one's argument.
Or it would be if all those people didn't have white earphones hanging out of their ears.
You don't like the PlayStation Portable? I think it makes a fine MP3 player in those cold months when my clothing has large enough pockets.
Thanks for the correction. I assumed Chumbawumba was Australian because their accents are somewhat thicker than I'm used to from the other British groups I listen to. I also assume that their song "Pass It Along" is an anti-MS rant, but maybe I'm wrong about that, too.
Building a device perfectly capable of playing video and using it to display photos is insanity.
I assume you're talking about iPod Photo. I don't know much about it's inner workings (4 iPod family, but no Photo), but has it actually been documented that it has the horsepower to play video?
In a way I hope not, because that was the only thing that made the OGG Vorbis dead-enders shut the Hell up.
iTMS Australia. Talk about vapourware!
It's only vaporware if they said it was coming. I try to keep up on Apple news, but I don't remember Apple ever promising that iTunes was coming to Australia, so therefore they owe you nothing. I've heard that an actor and a musician said it was coming, but not Apple. If they made that promise, please post the link. I'd love to get more Chumbawumba songs. (No, really, I would.)
I'd be more concerned with the US becoming like the UK, a country burying itself in surveillance cameras (and soon, audio devices).
Welcome to Chicago, U.S.A. The city has surveilance cameras with audio built-in. If the computer "hears" a gunshot, it's able to triangulate the sound, and automatically swing the camera around and zoom in on the scene so police can check it out. Unlike the U.K. where the cameras can sometimes be hard to spot, at least in Chicago the police surveilance cameras have blue police light bars on top like the kind you see on the police cars.
I like to think of them as warnings to normal people that they're entering a crap neighborhood, lock your car doors, don't get off the train.
EAL ID also prohibits states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal aliens. This makes no sense, and will only result in these illegal aliens driving without licenses -- which isn't going to help anyone's security.
It happens already. I got hit head-on on a one-way street by an illegal alien driving a stolen van with no license and no insurance in Houston, Texas. Fortunately, a cop was driving right behind me. Unfortunately, the cop let her go because she is illegal. At the time (March 2003, I don't know if it's still true), the police were under orders from city council not to arrest illegal aliens unless they do something like murder, rob, or rape. It was part of then-mayor Lee Brown's plan to make Houston a safe haven for illegals so he could boost census numbers and bring in more money from the federal government. Since the city signs the cops paychecks, not the federal government, they do what council wants, not what the law is -- and that means letting people who have broken the law go free. I'm so glad I moved to the north.
Perhaps it's an Inch Worm. Aren't they caterpillars?
You are incorrect. Espeically about the "stuff under your land" part. Ever hear of "mineral rights?"
ll ask the first guy to fly into the "hidden" tower why the fsck he was flying so damn low over my property in the first place. Planes overhead will bring down property values way faster than decent cell phone reception.
Doesn't matter why he's there. If he has a license to fly and he's obeying the FAA rules, he can be there no matter what you think your rights are.
You own your house. You own your land. You do not own the sky above it. And on a related note, depending on where you live, you might not own the minerals below it. It's just sad that you think your imaginary ability to control what happens in the sky is more important than the life of the human being flying the aircraft. Selfish fuck.
A couple of jobs ago I would sometimes have to dispatch a helicopter to residential neighborhoods. People would be pissed and because they could see the company logo on the side of the chopper they'd call and complain. I'd always want to say, "tough shit" but I never did. There's nothing you can do about it. People flying over your property is perfectly legal and it probably happens more often than you think.
Like the way they test the long-term storage abilities of CD-Rs or how long the ink will remain on printer photo paper. It has to be simulated because you can't have people waiting around 20 years to find out if the product works or not.
The color and type of the lights on all structures in the U.S. are determined by their height and their proximity to flight paths. In the mathematical formulas, sometimes even a few dozen meters can make all the difference.
For example, Chicago's CBD is in the flight path of O'Hare airport. Very often planes trying to take advantage of a wind off the lake will fly between the 1,730-foot (to the tip of the mast) Sears Tower and the 1,500-foot (to the tip of the mast) John Hancock Center (fly between in terms of horizontal position, not altitude). Both have twin masts with flashing white strobes during the day. But at night the Hancock Center switches to red LEDs while Sears, with its taller height, retains the white strobes.
Laws don't prevent the dumping of waste, they just regulate it. Ideally, cities have two sewer systems - sanitary sewers for poop and such that run to the treatment plant, and storm sewers that handle the water when it rains. But when it rains really hard, one will overflow into the other and the two mingle, sending raw sewage into whatever body of water normally accepts only rain runoff. It happens all the time in cities like Chicago, New York, Milwaukee, Seattle, and elsewhere. It's simple physics -- the water treatment plant can only handle so much fluid per hour. Same with the sewers. There's nothing that can be done about it unless people want spend billions to build massive sewer systems and treatment plants that only get used a few times a year.
Yeah, and programs that only run on Linux aren't open source because they only run on 5% of the computers worldwide.
You sound like a jealous Wintel troll.
Maybe you're just angry because you're wasting another Saturday hunting down all the spyware and viruses in your Windows box instead of using your computer to do something creative.