One of the more irritating examples of re-taxing that I just got to experience yesterday is how the state taxes vehicles that are sold used from one person to another. When a car is bought by person A from the dealership, it is taxed. When A sells it to neighbor B, it is taxed again. When B sells it to their kid C, it is taxed again. When C sells it to his friend D, it is taxed again.
There is no end to how many times they can tax the same item. With enough times of reselling, the total tax paid on the item could go over 100% of the value of the item. How does that make sense except that the state is just using that as an excuse to get money from a random action of its citizens. There is no additional value in the item(as a Value Added Tax (VAT) would target); it is just transferring ownership.
Pascal forced programmers to think before they started to write code, a habit that was odious and foreign to legions of brain-damaged BASIC and FORTRAN programmers.
Yup, I made exactly that move. BASIC (and then QBASIC)was the first language I started with in learning about programming. I came to rely on several things in BASIC that I now know are pretty bad programming practice--excessive use of GOTO statements, making up variables on the spot as needed just by equating them(X=1), using those kinds of "instant variables" as flags to get me out of loops with an IF X=1 GOTO. Ugh. Yes I know it's not pretty, but it was my first programming experience at the beginning of high school.
My next language was Pascal, and it was extremely frustrating because I couldn't do all those bad habits I had gotten used to. (What do you mean I have to declare my variables?? But I just need this one for a second.) It was also a hard shift toward loops and nesting loops. It is interesting that most of that stuff that I thought was so weird with Pascal is actually just good programming structure that is used in most other languages.
I got a good laugh out of this dose of fanboyism from his "review".
(about TiVo)What's really cool is that, for a given channel, you can scroll both forward into the future [...] and into the past
MCE's guide doesn't look into the past, but it works just fine when looking at the future. MCE also offers [
unrelated features to distract from this shortcoming]
So then his conclusion at the end:
Bottom line? Feature for feature, Windows XP Media Center Edition matches TiVo and even exceeds it in some measures.
Add to that his earlier comment about the recordable buffer TiVo has, "MCE keeps a similar buffer but doesn't allow you to save it." So the new definition of "matches and even exceeds" for all features apparently now means that some features match, some are missing, and some are extra. So I wonder if those MCE systems are just on loan from MS or if they were part of his compen$ation package.
OK, I thought it had been decided, but couldn't find it. I do remember that it was just for the state of California, but it was mentioned that it would be a strong precedent to influence similar judgements in other states.
The other is that if you had tried to return the software with the claim that you were unwilling to accept the click thru EULA instead of the claim that your system didn't meet the requirements, they would be required by law to accept the return.
...IF you live in California and IF this lawsuit is successful. That's a lot of IF's.
I wonder if it would help people understand the difference by giving an example of another program. Most of you know Samba. Some would claim Samba is an emulator of Windows File and Printer Sharing(TM). Actually, that program and Samba were(originally) both implementations of the CIFS/SMB protocol. If that were the extent of it, that would be two programs implementing an API.
In continuation of the story, MS has added other functionality beyond that which is actually in the spec for SMB, and through some experimentation, Samba has discovered and implemented the additions. That does move it closer to emulation.
Try comparing that old 5MB hard drive to modern hard drive caches and you're there. I just bought a drive that has an 8MB cache. I'm also thinking of my dad's 486 that originally came with 4MB. I upgraded it to 8MB.
I think that's always going to be the case on any distro that those obscure programs like that are likely not going to have packages. It did really suprise me that they didn't have packages for the two I mentioned, particularly AbiWord, which seems to be installed by default on about every desktop-oriented distro I've seen.
I like the goal of this disto; it just seems like they aren't necessarily doing it well. I have a PIII 600 system that I would like to put Linux on, but it seems to be hard to find a good middle ground type of install. The modern distros with KDE or Gnome are full of mega-bloat and don't run well on that speed of machine. People's response is usually something like, "Oh, just run [insert name of really basic, no-frills window manager here]." I've tried stuff like IceWM and Blackbox, but the thing that most of those window managers are missing is an application menu. I'm sure there are hundreds of programs installed, but if I don't know the names of them to launch them from a CLI, how am I supposed to use them? I just want a window manager that runs fairly fast and has a menu with shortcuts to programs in groups like "office" "multimedia" "internet", etc. so I can find the programs that are available. Anyone want to suggest some?
For comparison, I've been running Win98SE on it, and it works very well, very fast.
Well, not really. The installation of the operating system per se didn't sound hard. What was hard was getting the particular (somewhat unusual) package selections he wanted running.
... and new red balloons. Yeesh, I feel old. My earliest memories of those commercials were when it only went as far as the blue diamonds. I still remember the commercial where Lucky got his ass kicked(literally) by a purple horse, while trying to think of a new marshmellow shape to add. I know this is entirely off the original topic, but it is pretty interesting in its own right. I found a history of the Lucky Charms shapes and what year they were added. The blue diamonds were the first new shape added in 1975 after the original 4 that debuted in 1964.
For $29 dollars you can get 128k DSl from sympatico, without needing an extra phone line. Your paying $50 for dial up. Hmmm.
Remember that the DSL options never include the ISP cost. When you add that extra $10, the price becomes $39. Wow, that looks a lot like the $40 he's already paying for his broadband. Thanks for helping him save $1 a month.;)
The original question posted is something I've thought about and been irritated by. I currently have cable internet (CableOne in Boise, Idaho). It is $45 a month ($40 if you have cableTV service too) for the 1.5Mbit connection. Our DSL in this area is provided by Qworst, and they charge more if you don't have a home phone line. Their bottom level DSL connection is 750K speed, which is just a few dollars a month cheaper(after cheap $9.99 ISP cost added), but if you get an equivalent speed to the cable, it is the same price as cable--very frustrating.
I do have a neighbor's wireless in range of my house, but I'm a pretty heavy bandwidth user sometimes since I'm trying out different Linux distros and doing some re-installations, which would swamp the guy's connection.
So do the **AA have a recurring subscription with Macrovision?
**AA retrieving their mail
**AA: "Oh look! It's my new Titanium Ultra Lock-Down No-Rip Supreme(TM) from Macrovision(R)!"
Neighbor kid: "Oh, hi Mr. **AA. Hey, did you hear about that new copy protection format from Macrovision? I finished up my homework early and had a half hour before dinner time so I wrote up a crack for it."
It's MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!, not MUHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! You missed that first A. MUHAHAHAH sounds very artificial. It's like you jump straight from the MU sound to the HAH sound without an AH sound to segue.
Gates said that he's displeased with the process of political decisions on software patents in the european union.
"Gates is coming here?" "Yes, and he is most displeased with your apparent lack of progress." "We shall double our lobbying efforts!" "I hope so prime minister...for your sake."
I wonder how long until our right to vote is transferred to our employers...
For people who work under a strong union, it already has. My father-in-law worked at a steel mill that originally belonged to Ford Motor. The employees were all part of the UAW union(United Auto Workers). Whenever it was election time, they gave all the employees a list of the candidates they were supposed to vote for.
You said the DMCA allows reverse engineering as a blanket statement, but then you didn't read the details in the relevent section of the DMCA you quoted. I'll show it again, with some bold font for emphasis.
Reverse engineering (section 1201(f)). This exception permits circumvention, and the development of technological means for such circumvention, by a person who has lawfully obtained a right to use a copy of a computer program
for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing elements of the program necessary to achieve interoperability with other programs, to the extent that such acts are permitted under copyright law.
They are not doing this for interoperability purposes, so they actually are in violation of this "law". That being said, I do think that this aspect of the DMCA is unjust and a load of horsepucky, but the current state of the law is on Tecmo's side.
The way this is supposed to be set up according to actual fair use rights is that reverse engineering should be overall legal with the exception of if it is being done to commit copyright infringement. As the DMCA stands, reverse engineering is overall illegal with the exception of the specific, narrow condition of interoperability purposes. That is what is wrong with this part of the DMCA.
I am working on setting up a MythTV system on my. My main problem is that I can't get DMA working on the hard drive. It's a PIII system with the Intel i810 chipset, which supports DMA66, but if I try to enable DMA on the Linux install, it hangs in boot. I used Knoppmyth and have been scouring the forums there, but can't find anything to indicate why this system can't do DMA.
This is how my wife transitioned to Linux. Firefox, OO.o, Evolution, etc. was introduced to her one at a time until one day she realized my Linux desktop didn't look so different from her Win2000 desktop.
Ah, you inspire me my friend. I have that goal, and she has realized how interested I am in Linux, and the potential to get away from the buying/registering annoyance of Windows. About a year ago, I was trying to start learning Linux on a 300MHz K6-2 with less than supported hardware(ISA 16-bit soundcard-ugh!). It was quite a learning experience at the time trying to get that stuff working, but it also gave her a pretty negative opinion of Linux. She was on the phone with her dad and mentioned that I was trying to use Linux on our computer. When he asked what it was, she responded(approximate quote), "It's another operating system that tries to be like Windows but doesn't work as well and is really slow, and you have to write all your own programs for it."
From that to about a year later when she bought me a subscription to Linux Format for my birthday and just said, "If you can get Linux set up where it can do the stuff I need to use the computer for, we can go ahead and switch to it."
That's silly. Linux has far more Apps than windows. My Linux box has 2 full office suites for a start. I don't think I know anyone with windows can say that.
Sure, there are millions of apps for Linux, but you know how many of them most Windows users know? 0. The problem is not lack of apps--the problem is familiarity with the apps.
Let's say you sit a Windows user down in front of a nice KDE desktop and ask them to try to chat with their friend on Yahoo Messenger or burn a CD or crop a digital photo. They would know how to use the "Start menu", so that's familiar, but then they are faced with 50 or so applications in there that they don't recognize the names of and don't know what any of them do. Their familiar programs like Y!Messenger, Nero, and Photoshop aren't there, and they don't know what these things like XMMS, Xine, Gaim, K3B, Konqueror, Gimp, etc. do. They just haven't heard of any of these things, so it is difficult to get going.
Just to get a feel for where I am coming from, I still have Windows at home because my wife uses it. We do know how to keep it relatively safe with Zone Alarm and Firefox, so it runs well and is not a problem. I have a secondary computer that I am using to familiarize myself with Linux so that I can move to that at some point, but my main problem is time. I only have 1 or 2 nights a week at home to do anything at the computer, so that is going to be a long learning curve to find out how to do the stuff I want with this new set of apps. Sure, browsing and email is easy, but I do more complicated stuff than that, so it's a little more challenging. I would appreciate this QT setup so that I could learn one new app at a time, while being able to get stuff done. When I have transitioned to using most or all of the new apps, and am not using stuff that needs to be on Windows, I won't have a problem switching to Linux.
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One of the more irritating examples of re-taxing that I just got to experience yesterday is how the state taxes vehicles that are sold used from one person to another. When a car is bought by person A from the dealership, it is taxed. When A sells it to neighbor B, it is taxed again. When B sells it to their kid C, it is taxed again. When C sells it to his friend D, it is taxed again.
There is no end to how many times they can tax the same item. With enough times of reselling, the total tax paid on the item could go over 100% of the value of the item. How does that make sense except that the state is just using that as an excuse to get money from a random action of its citizens. There is no additional value in the item(as a Value Added Tax (VAT) would target); it is just transferring ownership.
My next language was Pascal, and it was extremely frustrating because I couldn't do all those bad habits I had gotten used to. (What do you mean I have to declare my variables?? But I just need this one for a second.) It was also a hard shift toward loops and nesting loops. It is interesting that most of that stuff that I thought was so weird with Pascal is actually just good programming structure that is used in most other languages.
Add to that his earlier comment about the recordable buffer TiVo has, "MCE keeps a similar buffer but doesn't allow you to save it." So the new definition of "matches and even exceeds" for all features apparently now means that some features match, some are missing, and some are extra. So I wonder if those MCE systems are just on loan from MS or if they were part of his compen$ation package.
OK, I thought it had been decided, but couldn't find it. I do remember that it was just for the state of California, but it was mentioned that it would be a strong precedent to influence similar judgements in other states.
When you say "other models", do you mean other models of Gerber knives/tools, or do you mean other brands of multi-tools from Leatherman(TM), etc.?
I've heard good things about Gerber Multi-tools. A friend of mine has one.
I wonder if it would help people understand the difference by giving an example of another program. Most of you know Samba. Some would claim Samba is an emulator of Windows File and Printer Sharing(TM). Actually, that program and Samba were(originally) both implementations of the CIFS/SMB protocol. If that were the extent of it, that would be two programs implementing an API.
In continuation of the story, MS has added other functionality beyond that which is actually in the spec for SMB, and through some experimentation, Samba has discovered and implemented the additions. That does move it closer to emulation.
Try comparing that old 5MB hard drive to modern hard drive caches and you're there. I just bought a drive that has an 8MB cache. I'm also thinking of my dad's 486 that originally came with 4MB. I upgraded it to 8MB.
I think that's always going to be the case on any distro that those obscure programs like that are likely not going to have packages. It did really suprise me that they didn't have packages for the two I mentioned, particularly AbiWord, which seems to be installed by default on about every desktop-oriented distro I've seen.
I like the goal of this disto; it just seems like they aren't necessarily doing it well. I have a PIII 600 system that I would like to put Linux on, but it seems to be hard to find a good middle ground type of install. The modern distros with KDE or Gnome are full of mega-bloat and don't run well on that speed of machine. People's response is usually something like, "Oh, just run [insert name of really basic, no-frills window manager here]." I've tried stuff like IceWM and Blackbox, but the thing that most of those window managers are missing is an application menu. I'm sure there are hundreds of programs installed, but if I don't know the names of them to launch them from a CLI, how am I supposed to use them? I just want a window manager that runs fairly fast and has a menu with shortcuts to programs in groups like "office" "multimedia" "internet", etc. so I can find the programs that are available. Anyone want to suggest some?
For comparison, I've been running Win98SE on it, and it works very well, very fast.
Would that be the Stairway to Heaven, perhaps?
... and new red balloons.
Yeesh, I feel old. My earliest memories of those commercials were when it only went as far as the blue diamonds. I still remember the commercial where Lucky got his ass kicked(literally) by a purple horse, while trying to think of a new marshmellow shape to add. I know this is entirely off the original topic, but it is pretty interesting in its own right. I found a history of the Lucky Charms shapes and what year they were added. The blue diamonds were the first new shape added in 1975 after the original 4 that debuted in 1964.
The original question posted is something I've thought about and been irritated by. I currently have cable internet (CableOne in Boise, Idaho). It is $45 a month ($40 if you have cableTV service too) for the 1.5Mbit connection. Our DSL in this area is provided by Qworst, and they charge more if you don't have a home phone line. Their bottom level DSL connection is 750K speed, which is just a few dollars a month cheaper(after cheap $9.99 ISP cost added), but if you get an equivalent speed to the cable, it is the same price as cable--very frustrating.
I do have a neighbor's wireless in range of my house, but I'm a pretty heavy bandwidth user sometimes since I'm trying out different Linux distros and doing some re-installations, which would swamp the guy's connection.
I do have a sense of humor, so I would have modded it Funny. I really did find it funny.
So do the **AA have a recurring subscription with Macrovision?
**AA retrieving their mail
**AA: "Oh look! It's my new Titanium Ultra Lock-Down No-Rip Supreme(TM) from Macrovision(R)!"
Neighbor kid: "Oh, hi Mr. **AA. Hey, did you hear about that new copy protection format from Macrovision? I finished up my homework early and had a half hour before dinner time so I wrote up a crack for it."
**AA: "Grrr."
"Yes, and he is most displeased with your apparent lack of progress."
"We shall double our lobbying efforts!"
"I hope so prime minister...for your sake."
No.
They are not doing this for interoperability purposes, so they actually are in violation of this "law". That being said, I do think that this aspect of the DMCA is unjust and a load of horsepucky, but the current state of the law is on Tecmo's side.
The way this is supposed to be set up according to actual fair use rights is that reverse engineering should be overall legal with the exception of if it is being done to commit copyright infringement. As the DMCA stands, reverse engineering is overall illegal with the exception of the specific, narrow condition of interoperability purposes. That is what is wrong with this part of the DMCA.
I am working on setting up a MythTV system on my. My main problem is that I can't get DMA working on the hard drive. It's a PIII system with the Intel i810 chipset, which supports DMA66, but if I try to enable DMA on the Linux install, it hangs in boot. I used Knoppmyth and have been scouring the forums there, but can't find anything to indicate why this system can't do DMA.
From that to about a year later when she bought me a subscription to Linux Format for my birthday and just said, "If you can get Linux set up where it can do the stuff I need to use the computer for, we can go ahead and switch to it."
Let's say you sit a Windows user down in front of a nice KDE desktop and ask them to try to chat with their friend on Yahoo Messenger or burn a CD or crop a digital photo. They would know how to use the "Start menu", so that's familiar, but then they are faced with 50 or so applications in there that they don't recognize the names of and don't know what any of them do. Their familiar programs like Y!Messenger, Nero, and Photoshop aren't there, and they don't know what these things like XMMS, Xine, Gaim, K3B, Konqueror, Gimp, etc. do. They just haven't heard of any of these things, so it is difficult to get going.
Just to get a feel for where I am coming from, I still have Windows at home because my wife uses it. We do know how to keep it relatively safe with Zone Alarm and Firefox, so it runs well and is not a problem. I have a secondary computer that I am using to familiarize myself with Linux so that I can move to that at some point, but my main problem is time. I only have 1 or 2 nights a week at home to do anything at the computer, so that is going to be a long learning curve to find out how to do the stuff I want with this new set of apps. Sure, browsing and email is easy, but I do more complicated stuff than that, so it's a little more challenging. I would appreciate this QT setup so that I could learn one new app at a time, while being able to get stuff done. When I have transitioned to using most or all of the new apps, and am not using stuff that needs to be on Windows, I won't have a problem switching to Linux.