Well, according to the other person who responded here, patents are only valuable to the world of they're made by conglomerates. If some startup or bright individual wants to change the world and make something of themselves by the fruit of their own inventions, they should be screwed.
So if you can't afford $30,000 in patent and lawyer fees, you bette not bother coming up with any ideas?
And even if you do, your lawyer better handle it faster than the lawyer for a multi-billion dollar multi-national with 100,000 employees and more resources than most nations?
Yeah. This totally seems fair and entirely within the spirit intended by the originators of the system. *cough*
Wasn't there an article on Slashdot just a couple days ago about how even most webmasters and bloggers have no clue what RSS is? It was some amazing percentage that had never even heard of it. 66% or 80% or something.
And two days later, we go from "RSS has no mindshare and is dying" to "RSS is killing ATOM"?
Of course, that doesn't matter because the majority of people are oblivious to such things. If they're told "You can not legally play this in both your stereo and your computer and it is illegal to lend your CD to a friend or play it for groups of more than three people", they will just assume that's the way it is and carry on buying them for $20 a pop.
The original poster quite reasonably should fear a time when almost all knowledge and media of any sort is locked down and you have the choice between.... oh wait - no you won't have a choice.
Arbitrary limits like "you can copy this music 3 times" are not "fair use". If I'm not doing anything illegal with it, why should there be a limit at all? Why shouldn't I be able to listen to it or copy it to/from any device imaginable? Why shouldn't I be allowed to mix any piece of hardware I want with any software that I legally own?
Imagine if you bought a DRM car that said you are not allowed to have more than two passengers in the car at one time and only 50 different passengers over the life of the car, because every person you drive around in your car reduces the number of cars they sell since it might reduce the demand? What if they limited you in such a way that you could not alter your new Ford car with any custom modifications or improvements? What if you were only allowed to drive their cars on certain roads authorized by the manufacturer?
I used to want Geeks in Space to return as a podcast, but I don't think that would fly anymore. The half dozen or so episodes they managed to pull together were all before 90% of the community developed a sincere hate for the editors.
Also, it was back when there weren't 400 different editors that nobody could remember.
I'm not sure what things the blurb poster was talking about, but I use OSX, Solaris and Ubuntu for my desktops at home and work EXCLUSIVELY and Debian on my production server on the west coast. The only thing Windows does for me is play my games - which I barely even do anymore anyway.
So seriously, what's so great about windows that linux or OSX can't do for you (obviously solaris isn't as geared to a few of these things, but still...)? Calendaring? Email? Managing your website? Writing letters and documents and spreadsheets? Personal wikis? Photo albums? Dinky little flash games? Instant messaging? Watching movies? Listening to music? Making music? Coding? P2P/Bit Torrent?
Exactly what is there that you can't do on a non windows box?
Yeah, but who wants to play on less than state of the art when they can run Counter Strike Source or Rome Total War at absolutely highest specs?
And therein lies the problem. I've got a case of "keeping up with the Jones'".
I don't think I've gone more than a year without building a new top of the line box as long as I've been an adult (which is going on more than a decade now - heh).
Fortunately, I want to save my money up for a Real Doll with the added animatronic gyrating pelvis - so I won't be building a new high end gaming box for awhile.
You get your choice of ATI or Nvidia, PCI-X if you have a newer G5. There really aren't any other choices worth mentioning unless you don't play games...even then..
ATI and NVIDIA aren't the only companies to put out ATI or NVIDIA based cards. There are plenty of other very worthy contenders with ATI and NVIDIA chipped cards that may or may not vary from the main lines - and are certainly cheaper. And some support various degrees of overclocking, even.
I haven't bought an ATI card in at least five years, but I don't know the last time I bought an NVIDIA that was an actual NVIDIA card and not an eVGA, MSI or other. Maybe it was back in the Viper 5660 (or was it 6550?) days.
Graphics cards in PC laptops don't offer a lot of choice (you have to buy the laptop that comes with the card, of course). But they're definitely important, since if you're going to run Linux on it (Debian/Ubuntu in my case), you're going to care quite about about what support there is for it.
In my unfortunate case, I have an ATI Mobility Radeon which probably has somewhat less proper support and drivers for it than the NVIDIA laptop line for linux . . . but it does alright..
My gaming PC has a $600 videocard in it. I'm thinking of getting away from the annual process of building two new souped-up PCs to keep up with top of the line gaming and moving to console gaming once the new XBOX and PS3 come out.
My main reason is that I can get any decent strategy or RPG game that I want to play on the Mac. Everything else, I can get for the console. And rather than maintaining two expensive high-end gaming PCs for myself and my brother, we can buy one copy of a game and have one machine that'll last us years. Much better than dishing out $110 for two copies of Unreal or Counter Strike: Source on top of the videocards and everything else.
Mostly, I just want out of the rat race. I have a spare bedroom filled with a couple dozen monitors and linux, solaris and windows boxes and several laptops. And all I use is my Powerbook. I'm undecided as to whether I'll use just the laptop, the laptop and buy a desktop mac on x86 later or if I'll stick with my powerbook and have a windows desktop.
Really, the only reason I would keep the windows box now is the same reason I kept a windows box in the linux/solaris world. Because it runs the games. I think I can do without Counterstrike and a couple other PC games and settle for Halo and Madden and GT4 on the console. Or at least, I'm going to try.
I have to piss into a cup and pour it into a biometric reader next to my thin-client to get access in the morning. Sometimes if I splash too much, I end up spreading pee germs all over the keyboard - and all the other hardware in the office. I think it's all just a scam by my employer to gather plentiful urine for operating the urine batteries they're sure to start including in their bulky laptops.
Too bad they didn't use sperm biometric tests, instead. I mean, you don't always have to piss, but you surely always have to.... you know...
In other words, you have no full-time field reporters. You're not going out there and finding new stories, you're repackaging stuff from other sources.
If the world really needed more sites like that, maybe making a profit would not be so hard.
How bad does it have to make all these dorks feel that they were outcast by a conference full of outcasts?! Not being accepted to attend the Foo camp thing has to be a lot like being shoved into your locker in highschool.... by the captain of the chess team.
Slashdot Mirror
Who cares? Just extend daylight savings time a few more weeks to compensate. Efficiency is stupid when you can just mess with time!
Well, according to the other person who responded here, patents are only valuable to the world of they're made by conglomerates. If some startup or bright individual wants to change the world and make something of themselves by the fruit of their own inventions, they should be screwed.
So if you can't afford $30,000 in patent and lawyer fees, you bette not bother coming up with any ideas?
And even if you do, your lawyer better handle it faster than the lawyer for a multi-billion dollar multi-national with 100,000 employees and more resources than most nations?
Yeah. This totally seems fair and entirely within the spirit intended by the originators of the system. *cough*
I don't have a cell phone and refuse to carry one. Problem solved.
Oh, right. This Moog guy invents electronic(a) music and *I'm* the troll.
Wasn't there an article on Slashdot just a couple days ago about how even most webmasters and bloggers have no clue what RSS is? It was some amazing percentage that had never even heard of it. 66% or 80% or something.
And two days later, we go from "RSS has no mindshare and is dying" to "RSS is killing ATOM"?
The passing of a BM is always sad. :(
Of course, that doesn't matter because the majority of people are oblivious to such things. If they're told "You can not legally play this in both your stereo and your computer and it is illegal to lend your CD to a friend or play it for groups of more than three people", they will just assume that's the way it is and carry on buying them for $20 a pop.
The original poster quite reasonably should fear a time when almost all knowledge and media of any sort is locked down and you have the choice between.... oh wait - no you won't have a choice.
Arbitrary limits like "you can copy this music 3 times" are not "fair use". If I'm not doing anything illegal with it, why should there be a limit at all? Why shouldn't I be able to listen to it or copy it to/from any device imaginable? Why shouldn't I be allowed to mix any piece of hardware I want with any software that I legally own?
Imagine if you bought a DRM car that said you are not allowed to have more than two passengers in the car at one time and only 50 different passengers over the life of the car, because every person you drive around in your car reduces the number of cars they sell since it might reduce the demand? What if they limited you in such a way that you could not alter your new Ford car with any custom modifications or improvements? What if you were only allowed to drive their cars on certain roads authorized by the manufacturer?
That's odd, because most of the best porn I have in my multi-terabyte collection is in xvid or divx.
And at something like $100 for a 20gb drive... WHAT A DEAL!
I mean, that's only $5/gb compared to those expensive deals you get on hard drives today that are about 44cents/gb!
I used to want Geeks in Space to return as a podcast, but I don't think that would fly anymore. The half dozen or so episodes they managed to pull together were all before 90% of the community developed a sincere hate for the editors.
Also, it was back when there weren't 400 different editors that nobody could remember.
Hi, you must be new here . . . :D
I'm not sure what things the blurb poster was talking about, but I use OSX, Solaris and Ubuntu for my desktops at home and work EXCLUSIVELY and Debian on my production server on the west coast. The only thing Windows does for me is play my games - which I barely even do anymore anyway.
So seriously, what's so great about windows that linux or OSX can't do for you (obviously solaris isn't as geared to a few of these things, but still...)? Calendaring? Email? Managing your website? Writing letters and documents and spreadsheets? Personal wikis? Photo albums? Dinky little flash games? Instant messaging? Watching movies? Listening to music? Making music? Coding? P2P/Bit Torrent?
Exactly what is there that you can't do on a non windows box?
Yeah, but who wants to play on less than state of the art when they can run Counter Strike Source or Rome Total War at absolutely highest specs?
And therein lies the problem. I've got a case of "keeping up with the Jones'".
I don't think I've gone more than a year without building a new top of the line box as long as I've been an adult (which is going on more than a decade now - heh).
Fortunately, I want to save my money up for a Real Doll with the added animatronic gyrating pelvis - so I won't be building a new high end gaming box for awhile.
Those weren't mutants. They were just into doping and juicing.
I personally find pro sports to be completely retarded. I say this as a former jock.
However, I find sitting on a couch playing a videogame about sports and bitching about how it isn't very "realistic" is more retarded.
The last Madden I played was probably 2002. It just seemed like yet another lame football game to me, though.
So let's see...
Companies want free software and outsourced labor for $6/hr developers.
So essentially the new American business plan is this:
1) Get free stuff
2) Get free labor
3) ???
4) PROFIT!!!
You get your choice of ATI or Nvidia, PCI-X if you have a newer G5. There really aren't any other choices worth mentioning unless you don't play games...even then..
ATI and NVIDIA aren't the only companies to put out ATI or NVIDIA based cards. There are plenty of other very worthy contenders with ATI and NVIDIA chipped cards that may or may not vary from the main lines - and are certainly cheaper. And some support various degrees of overclocking, even.
I haven't bought an ATI card in at least five years, but I don't know the last time I bought an NVIDIA that was an actual NVIDIA card and not an eVGA, MSI or other. Maybe it was back in the Viper 5660 (or was it 6550?) days.
Graphics cards in PC laptops don't offer a lot of choice (you have to buy the laptop that comes with the card, of course). But they're definitely important, since if you're going to run Linux on it (Debian/Ubuntu in my case), you're going to care quite about about what support there is for it.
In my unfortunate case, I have an ATI Mobility Radeon which probably has somewhat less proper support and drivers for it than the NVIDIA laptop line for linux . . . but it does alright..
My gaming PC has a $600 videocard in it. I'm thinking of getting away from the annual process of building two new souped-up PCs to keep up with top of the line gaming and moving to console gaming once the new XBOX and PS3 come out.
My main reason is that I can get any decent strategy or RPG game that I want to play on the Mac. Everything else, I can get for the console. And rather than maintaining two expensive high-end gaming PCs for myself and my brother, we can buy one copy of a game and have one machine that'll last us years. Much better than dishing out $110 for two copies of Unreal or Counter Strike: Source on top of the videocards and everything else.
Mostly, I just want out of the rat race. I have a spare bedroom filled with a couple dozen monitors and linux, solaris and windows boxes and several laptops. And all I use is my Powerbook. I'm undecided as to whether I'll use just the laptop, the laptop and buy a desktop mac on x86 later or if I'll stick with my powerbook and have a windows desktop.
Really, the only reason I would keep the windows box now is the same reason I kept a windows box in the linux/solaris world. Because it runs the games. I think I can do without Counterstrike and a couple other PC games and settle for Halo and Madden and GT4 on the console. Or at least, I'm going to try.
Fortunately, I've converted to the Mac, so I don't have to worry about stupid things like having a choice in graphics cards.
(Sadly, I'm not trolling or being a smartass.)
About five minutes ago.
:D
Look for the "discuss" link/icon underneath any Yahoo! news story.
I have to change my passwprd once a month
You think you have it bad?!
I have to piss into a cup and pour it into a biometric reader next to my thin-client to get access in the morning. Sometimes if I splash too much, I end up spreading pee germs all over the keyboard - and all the other hardware in the office. I think it's all just a scam by my employer to gather plentiful urine for operating the urine batteries they're sure to start including in their bulky laptops.
Too bad they didn't use sperm biometric tests, instead. I mean, you don't always have to piss, but you surely always have to.... you know...
In other words, you have no full-time field reporters. You're not going out there and finding new stories, you're repackaging stuff from other sources.
If the world really needed more sites like that, maybe making a profit would not be so hard.
Yeah, that would never work!
I think this is hilarious.
How bad does it have to make all these dorks feel that they were outcast by a conference full of outcasts?! Not being accepted to attend the Foo camp thing has to be a lot like being shoved into your locker in highschool.... by the captain of the chess team.