It looks like you are politely trolling, but I will respond anyway.:)
First, I never suggested doing whatever you want to Rowling's house or belongings. Contrary to what you may think, she doesn't own any of her books (a hundred copies at most). What she may own are the copyrights, or so-called "intellectual property". So sharing or pirating her books (especially in the digital form) does nothing bad at all, since depriving that "starving single mother" from additional income does not constitute bad according to any reasonable set of morals.
Second, I do not advocate taking stuff from people with more money than me. I am just saying that market economy is not perfect and by any realistic estimate we, as a society, already gave to Rowling more money than she will ever deserve. Even though we can't reverse what was already done, it would be a good thing to stop paying her more money, these money should go everywhere else.
Third, the doctor, who stuck a needle in my ass, in all likelyhood earns several times less money than I do, thanks to a fucked up Russian economy. Rowling, on the other hand, makes millions of times more than he does. I suggest we stop paying that [expletive] Rowling and start paying more to useful members of the society, who are currently underpaid as a direct result of the Harry Potter craze.
P.S. In addition to all that, Rowling is a bitch. Suing little kids who make websites about Harry Potter is repulsive and disgusting.
But she definitely isn't starving now and it would take a fucking real Francis Drake to take that billion dollars from her, not a bunch of people downloading ebooks for free. Nobody owns her anything, she already got orders of magnitude more than she deserves. Damn, Isaak Asimov made a contribution to the humankind that was hundreds of times greater than what Rowling could ever hope to achieve, but was he a billionaire? Heck, I am not even sure he was a millionaire.
People of Slashdot! Feel free to share, pirate, steal and generally do whatever you want with Rowling's books, even with hard copies in the stores. You don't owe her anything, don't let anyone convince you overwise!
Unbeknownst to most foreigners, the ebook revolution is actually lead by Russia. While project Gutenberg might have been founded in the 70s, its size is nothing compared to the benemoth of Russian Internet text distribution.
Lib.Ru was found in 1994 and today it has more than 20000 books (3 times more than Gutenberg), 4.2Gb in size. It's monthly traffic is more than a terabyte - almost half a million visitors and more than 20 million documents downloaded. Unlike Gutenberg, Lib.Ru has many copyrighted books available, many of them brand-new and many distributed with authors' permissions.
I guess for the same reason as for opening online digital music stores. Because customers now want e-books and they will get them, whether publishers want them or not. Because eventually nearly all books will be sold digitally and with the Internet book publishers (just like the music publishers) risk to be left behind, unless they adapt their business models.
The cost of e-publishing is not zero, but in some cases it can be very well approximated as such. And it is definitely much lower than paper publishing. Either publishers will start using the opportunity, or the pirates and the customers will.
I've read the last Harry Potter book on the screen. Actually, I read most of the 870 pages on my 65dpi 160x160 pixel Palm screen. I've also read Masters of Doom in shitty PDF (not OCRed text, but low-res page scans). And I just finished reading Consider Phlebas hardcover. Let me tell you, there is no difference in reading experience whatsoever. The book is a book, no matter what technology is used to represent the text.
It takes people some time to adjust to this new technology, but eventually they will all do that, while the technology will simultaneously catch up (hi-res e-paper, etc.).
No company should be forcing people with your attitude (no offence implied) to work in tech support. But I bet there are still many sysadmins, developers and programmers who would be happy to spend some of the time answering users' questions. And of course, they should do it separately from their main job, not during their coding session.
Even if they are not predominantly spam-generated, there is some layer, which gets most leads from spammers (but doesn't spam itself). Hopefully, this layer would stop paying spammers for the leads and quit the business... Doesn't sound likely, though...
Definitely. I've heard only good about OSX, but I've never had a chance to try it. There are no Amigas or QNXes around and I've never even heard about Zeta and Syllable. Actually, I don't think that Windows GUI is very good (it's actually pretty horrid), but it can be fixed/replaced (Blanch + TClockEx + Win95 explorer) and then Windows becomes an almost decent desktop OS.
I think my point is that people need to realise that interface is a whole different problem and it needs to be approached as a separate issue from programming. Windows, MacOS/OSX, PalmOS are successful as desktop (PDA) systems to some extent because of their interface guidelines. This might actually be a solution to the Linux interface problems. Another solution might be to develop a whole new interface customisation technology and apply it to all Linux apps. I don't think that many people fork differently interfaced versions, probably because it's too much hassle.
You say you have a problem with trolls. I suggest a "Report to moderator" link added to every post. Every user will be able to report a offending post, but it would require an action of one of the select few to actually edit or remove it. You can be the only moderator, or you can grant the power to a few other users. If the site is small, you don't need much manpower.
It would also help if you could ban IPs of the trolls. I don't suggest requiring registration with e-mail confirmation, because if your site is small, you don't want to present users with additional hurdle.
The majority of tech support complaints are no doubt people that just decide to call up all pissed off rather than calming down, looking at the situation objectively, and actually making some steps towards narrowing down the problem before making the call.
Because people usually call tech support only when the buggy software had driven them completly nuts and after they spent hours trying to fix it. They often have a reason to be pissed of.
You don't walk into a McDonalds and bitch about the paper napkins.
Actually I do. There must be napkins and they must be of reasonable quality. If there aren't, I start bitching.
don't buy that $30 CD burner that was made in a straw hut.
Don't make a CD burner for $30 if for that amount you can't provide the level of quality consistent with customer's expectations.
Additionally, buying the cheapest stuff you can find almost certainly promotes outsourcing and the hemmoraging of manufacturing jobs from our country, which hurts all of us in the end.
It only hurts Americans in the mid-term. In the end everyone will be better off, because American economy will switch to manufacturing products and services in which they have competitive cost advantage and as a result they will live even better than they do now.
Pay reasonable prices and try to buy only things that are made in the USA.
Buy only things that are made in South-East Asia, because the quality is the same and there is actually a chance that the money saved on production would be spent on better tech support.
Most of the people who replied to me make the same comment. So I am answering them all here.
Of course, what SCO is doing is a perversion. But that is natural for many businesses. Given some limitations, they try to maximize the criterion function, in most cases, value to shareholders. Now think about it. SCO cannot reasonably expect to provide high returns in the long-term. Selling Linux can be profitable, all right, but it probably will never be as profitable as selling Windows, for example. So in the long term it makes sense for SCO shareholders to invest in Microsoft, or Amazon, or IBM. SCO CEOs very well realise that (unless they somehow con every Linux user into paying them $1000+) they can't provide high returns in the long-run, so it logically follows that they must provide high returns in the short run, allow every shareholder to dump his shares and let them invest in whatever is more profitable in the long term.
Of course, this is a simplification. It is also true that SCO actions can also be explained by the litigious nature of the US society, but in some perverted sense what they are doing is what is best for their shareholder(s).
I am not a Linux user. I just hate all non-Windows OSes with a passion. I hate Solaris, I hate various Linux flavours, I hate MacOS 9-, I hate them all for being non-intuitive, for crashing after 5 minutes of use, etc. But most of all I hate them for stupid interface mistakes.
One possible solution might be a separation of interface and functional development. If, for example, a GIMP interface was completely separated from the functionality and if anyone could easily make a custom interface which could be loaded like a configuration file or a skin, that might help a lot.
First, on average there are less than two eyes in a human. So you don't necessarily need the "hologram" do look correctly from all points of view, just from two. Second, the eyes are so close that sometimes you don't even need the stereo, the flat object can look 3D enough if you successfully use other cues (like place this "hologram" behind some objects and in front of others). Add to that eye tracking for the observer and you can dinamically adjust the picture for the the observer's position. If you can walk around the object, it would look sufficiently 3D.
Of course, this will not allow the creation of a completely realistic illusion of a real 3D object, but it would still look cool.
Well, if you host it in Russia and incorporate the company in Russia, I think Russian law will see it as a Russian company. Then when someone visits the site and pays by credit card for the movie, the transaction will be processed by local company, and the file will be sent from Russian server. So the transaction is definitely made in Russia (and taxed in Russia, though there are no direct taxes on Internet transactions, unless you pay with cash).
The MPAA will have an option to sue the company in Russia (unlikely to win), to sue the company in US (not likely to win - see Germany vs. Yahoo Nazi products case, and even if they win, so what?) or to try blocking Internet traffic from Russia and block VISA from processing these transactions (not bloody likely). Of course, if an employee of the company will visit the US, they can send FBI agents to get him in the airport, but it's easy to protect against this by not visiting the US.
BTW, RetroFilm, a company selling public domain movies, notes that some of the films (foreign ones) it is selling are only public domain inside the US (it's not clear whether they will still sell them abroad).
Ctrl+F is local find, Ctrl+Esc, F3 opens the start menu (taking focus away from your application) and then runs the global find. Try it. Win+Break - well, how often you mouse doesn't work? Do you think this warrants adding extra key?:) Even then, you can press Ctrl+Esc, S, C, S (a couple of times, or use arrows) and Enter. Win+R is not much better than Ctrl+Esc, R. One keystroke instead of two is useful only for very frequent operations (such as Ctrl+O is better than Alt+F, O, because you do it many times a day).
You don't need easy access to the so called "core" windows functions, you need access to frequently used functions. Let's see. Win+D - kind of useful to those people who store files/shortcuts on the desktop, though there is right-clicking on the Taskbar and Minimize all. Win+F - Ctrl+Esc, F3 Win+Break - how often do normal people need access to system properties? Win+L - Ctrl+Alt+Del, Enter
For me it is obvious, that the main function of the Windows key was to place MS logo on the keyboards that it didn't manufacture. Real use was an afterthought.
P.S. I have both Windows keys and the Context Menu key ripped off all keyboards in my house and had them ripped off at work.:)
P.P.S. Still, Windows key is not evil. What is evil is the Power Off button right above the Up arrow key (next to it, without a space in between). The person who placed it (together with Wake and Sleep keys) under the Delete/End/PgDn was a complete utter imbecilic moronic stupid stillborn ass with a brain gangrene.
KaZaA [is used for piracy only|has legitimate use]
on
Kazaa CEO vs. Hilary Rosen
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Check the correct option.:) It is often argued by file-sharing advocates that P2P apps, such as KaZaA have a lot of non-infringing uses. Their opponents respond by claiming that despite that 90%+ of the traffic on KaZaA is illegal. But that certainly depends on the point of view.
Most people here on Slashdot subconsciously assume that US laws define the picture, but that is not true. Copyright laws in different countries are different (that is probably one of the reasons for KaZaA's complex legal structure). You've heard about DeCSS case in Norway, you've heard about Denmark P2P users getting bills for downloaded files, but have you heard about the place where half of the Hollywood movies in in the public domain?:)
Here is the breaking news. The Ministry of Culture of Russian Federation has published a long list of movies that are now in the public domain (automated translation of the list> by Translate.Ru). Titles include Bambi, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Godfather, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Lawrence of Arabia, Monty Python and hundreds of other brilliant films.
This is not the first time when opposition to copyright comes from Russia and probably not the last. Now that these movies officially belong to the public (in Russia), what implications, do you think, this has for the rest of the world and for file-sharing?
And hosting in Russia would probably cost just a few cents per movie uploaded abroad... And the best thing is that would really be 100% legal.
P.S. You may think this is too good to be true, but believe me, it is true. It seems that most movies more than 30 years old really are in public domain now (called obschestvennoe dostoyanie in Russian.
Slashdot Mirror
You know what the price for freedom is (even if it's just free software), don't you?
It looks like you are politely trolling, but I will respond anyway. :)
First, I never suggested doing whatever you want to Rowling's house or belongings. Contrary to what you may think, she doesn't own any of her books (a hundred copies at most). What she may own are the copyrights, or so-called "intellectual property". So sharing or pirating her books (especially in the digital form) does nothing bad at all, since depriving that "starving single mother" from additional income does not constitute bad according to any reasonable set of morals.
Second, I do not advocate taking stuff from people with more money than me. I am just saying that market economy is not perfect and by any realistic estimate we, as a society, already gave to Rowling more money than she will ever deserve. Even though we can't reverse what was already done, it would be a good thing to stop paying her more money, these money should go everywhere else.
Third, the doctor, who stuck a needle in my ass, in all likelyhood earns several times less money than I do, thanks to a fucked up Russian economy. Rowling, on the other hand, makes millions of times more than he does. I suggest we stop paying that [expletive] Rowling and start paying more to useful members of the society, who are currently underpaid as a direct result of the Harry Potter craze.
P.S. In addition to all that, Rowling is a bitch. Suing little kids who make websites about Harry Potter is repulsive and disgusting.
But she definitely isn't starving now and it would take a fucking real Francis Drake to take that billion dollars from her, not a bunch of people downloading ebooks for free. Nobody owns her anything, she already got orders of magnitude more than she deserves. Damn, Isaak Asimov made a contribution to the humankind that was hundreds of times greater than what Rowling could ever hope to achieve, but was he a billionaire? Heck, I am not even sure he was a millionaire.
People of Slashdot! Feel free to share, pirate, steal and generally do whatever you want with Rowling's books, even with hard copies in the stores. You don't owe her anything, don't let anyone convince you overwise!
Unbeknownst to most foreigners, the ebook revolution is actually lead by Russia. While project Gutenberg might have been founded in the 70s, its size is nothing compared to the benemoth of Russian Internet text distribution.
L I B . R U
Lib.Ru was found in 1994 and today it has more than 20000 books (3 times more than Gutenberg), 4.2Gb in size. It's monthly traffic is more than a terabyte - almost half a million visitors and more than 20 million documents downloaded. Unlike Gutenberg, Lib.Ru has many copyrighted books available, many of them brand-new and many distributed with authors' permissions.
I guess for the same reason as for opening online digital music stores. Because customers now want e-books and they will get them, whether publishers want them or not. Because eventually nearly all books will be sold digitally and with the Internet book publishers (just like the music publishers) risk to be left behind, unless they adapt their business models.
The cost of e-publishing is not zero, but in some cases it can be very well approximated as such. And it is definitely much lower than paper publishing. Either publishers will start using the opportunity, or the pirates and the customers will.
I've read the last Harry Potter book on the screen. Actually, I read most of the 870 pages on my 65dpi 160x160 pixel Palm screen. I've also read Masters of Doom in shitty PDF (not OCRed text, but low-res page scans). And I just finished reading Consider Phlebas hardcover. Let me tell you, there is no difference in reading experience whatsoever. The book is a book, no matter what technology is used to represent the text.
It takes people some time to adjust to this new technology, but eventually they will all do that, while the technology will simultaneously catch up (hi-res e-paper, etc.).
No company should be forcing people with your attitude (no offence implied) to work in tech support. But I bet there are still many sysadmins, developers and programmers who would be happy to spend some of the time answering users' questions. And of course, they should do it separately from their main job, not during their coding session.
Even if they are not predominantly spam-generated, there is some layer, which gets most leads from spammers (but doesn't spam itself). Hopefully, this layer would stop paying spammers for the leads and quit the business... Doesn't sound likely, though...
Definitely. I've heard only good about OSX, but I've never had a chance to try it. There are no Amigas or QNXes around and I've never even heard about Zeta and Syllable. Actually, I don't think that Windows GUI is very good (it's actually pretty horrid), but it can be fixed/replaced (Blanch + TClockEx + Win95 explorer) and then Windows becomes an almost decent desktop OS.
I think my point is that people need to realise that interface is a whole different problem and it needs to be approached as a separate issue from programming. Windows, MacOS/OSX, PalmOS are successful as desktop (PDA) systems to some extent because of their interface guidelines. This might actually be a solution to the Linux interface problems. Another solution might be to develop a whole new interface customisation technology and apply it to all Linux apps. I don't think that many people fork differently interfaced versions, probably because it's too much hassle.
You say you have a problem with trolls. I suggest a "Report to moderator" link added to every post. Every user will be able to report a offending post, but it would require an action of one of the select few to actually edit or remove it. You can be the only moderator, or you can grant the power to a few other users. If the site is small, you don't need much manpower.
It would also help if you could ban IPs of the trolls. I don't suggest requiring registration with e-mail confirmation, because if your site is small, you don't want to present users with additional hurdle.
Also check this very useful site for some hints: Joel on Software - Building Communities with Software.
The majority of tech support complaints are no doubt people that just decide to call up all pissed off rather than calming down, looking at the situation objectively, and actually making some steps towards narrowing down the problem before making the call.
Because people usually call tech support only when the buggy software had driven them completly nuts and after they spent hours trying to fix it. They often have a reason to be pissed of.
You don't walk into a McDonalds and bitch about the paper napkins.
Actually I do. There must be napkins and they must be of reasonable quality. If there aren't, I start bitching.
don't buy that $30 CD burner that was made in a straw hut.
Don't make a CD burner for $30 if for that amount you can't provide the level of quality consistent with customer's expectations.
Additionally, buying the cheapest stuff you can find almost certainly promotes outsourcing and the hemmoraging of manufacturing jobs from our country, which hurts all of us in the end.
It only hurts Americans in the mid-term. In the end everyone will be better off, because American economy will switch to manufacturing products and services in which they have competitive cost advantage and as a result they will live even better than they do now.
Pay reasonable prices and try to buy only things that are made in the USA.
Buy only things that are made in South-East Asia, because the quality is the same and there is actually a chance that the money saved on production would be spent on better tech support.
Most of the people who replied to me make the same comment. So I am answering them all here.
Of course, what SCO is doing is a perversion. But that is natural for many businesses. Given some limitations, they try to maximize the criterion function, in most cases, value to shareholders. Now think about it. SCO cannot reasonably expect to provide high returns in the long-term. Selling Linux can be profitable, all right, but it probably will never be as profitable as selling Windows, for example. So in the long term it makes sense for SCO shareholders to invest in Microsoft, or Amazon, or IBM. SCO CEOs very well realise that (unless they somehow con every Linux user into paying them $1000+) they can't provide high returns in the long-run, so it logically follows that they must provide high returns in the short run, allow every shareholder to dump his shares and let them invest in whatever is more profitable in the long term.
Of course, this is a simplification. It is also true that SCO actions can also be explained by the litigious nature of the US society, but in some perverted sense what they are doing is what is best for their shareholder(s).
The goal of almost any business is to maximes shareholders' value, not provide job security or anything else.
I am not a Linux user. I just hate all non-Windows OSes with a passion. I hate Solaris, I hate various Linux flavours, I hate MacOS 9-, I hate them all for being non-intuitive, for crashing after 5 minutes of use, etc. But most of all I hate them for stupid interface mistakes.
One possible solution might be a separation of interface and functional development. If, for example, a GIMP interface was completely separated from the functionality and if anyone could easily make a custom interface which could be loaded like a configuration file or a skin, that might help a lot.
Just as obviously, all mail can be traced to the first post office anyway by looking at the stamp.
Well, there are one-eyed people and there are eyeless people, but I have never heard about anyone who had 3 or more eyes. :-)
/. doesn't support Unicode well - I can't make a 3-eyed smiley. :(
P.S. Too bad that
1. Post notices on campus saying that you can help people improve their grades. :) :) :)
2.
3. Profit.
First, on average there are less than two eyes in a human. So you don't necessarily need the "hologram" do look correctly from all points of view, just from two. Second, the eyes are so close that sometimes you don't even need the stereo, the flat object can look 3D enough if you successfully use other cues (like place this "hologram" behind some objects and in front of others). Add to that eye tracking for the observer and you can dinamically adjust the picture for the the observer's position. If you can walk around the object, it would look sufficiently 3D.
Of course, this will not allow the creation of a completely realistic illusion of a real 3D object, but it would still look cool.
Well, if you host it in Russia and incorporate the company in Russia, I think Russian law will see it as a Russian company. Then when someone visits the site and pays by credit card for the movie, the transaction will be processed by local company, and the file will be sent from Russian server. So the transaction is definitely made in Russia (and taxed in Russia, though there are no direct taxes on Internet transactions, unless you pay with cash).
The MPAA will have an option to sue the company in Russia (unlikely to win), to sue the company in US (not likely to win - see Germany vs. Yahoo Nazi products case, and even if they win, so what?) or to try blocking Internet traffic from Russia and block VISA from processing these transactions (not bloody likely). Of course, if an employee of the company will visit the US, they can send FBI agents to get him in the airport, but it's easy to protect against this by not visiting the US.
BTW, RetroFilm, a company selling public domain movies, notes that some of the films (foreign ones) it is selling are only public domain inside the US (it's not clear whether they will still sell them abroad).
Not sure which names are these. Can't find them there. ;)
:)
As for the font, it is a totally unbroken Cyrillic font.
Ctrl+F is local find, Ctrl+Esc, F3 opens the start menu (taking focus away from your application) and then runs the global find. Try it. :) Even then, you can press Ctrl+Esc, S, C, S (a couple of times, or use arrows) and Enter.
Win+Break - well, how often you mouse doesn't work? Do you think this warrants adding extra key?
Win+R is not much better than Ctrl+Esc, R. One keystroke instead of two is useful only for very frequent operations (such as Ctrl+O is better than Alt+F, O, because you do it many times a day).
My dictionary suggests "emery paper".
disclaimer: not-native-english-speaker-as-well.
P.S. Is there a native English speaker among slashdotters that would enlighten us? Preferably two - one from the US and one from the UK.
You don't need easy access to the so called "core" windows functions, you need access to frequently used functions. Let's see.
:)
Win+D - kind of useful to those people who store files/shortcuts on the desktop, though there is right-clicking on the Taskbar and Minimize all.
Win+F - Ctrl+Esc, F3
Win+Break - how often do normal people need access to system properties?
Win+L - Ctrl+Alt+Del, Enter
For me it is obvious, that the main function of the Windows key was to place MS logo on the keyboards that it didn't manufacture. Real use was an afterthought.
P.S. I have both Windows keys and the Context Menu key ripped off all keyboards in my house and had them ripped off at work.
P.P.S. Still, Windows key is not evil. What is evil is the Power Off button right above the Up arrow key (next to it, without a space in between). The person who placed it (together with Wake and Sleep keys) under the Delete/End/PgDn was a complete utter imbecilic moronic stupid stillborn ass with a brain gangrene.
Check the correct option. :) It is often argued by file-sharing advocates that P2P apps, such as KaZaA have a lot of non-infringing uses. Their opponents respond by claiming that despite that 90%+ of the traffic on KaZaA is illegal. But that certainly depends on the point of view.
:)
Most people here on Slashdot subconsciously assume that US laws define the picture, but that is not true. Copyright laws in different countries are different (that is probably one of the reasons for KaZaA's complex legal structure). You've heard about DeCSS case in Norway, you've heard about Denmark P2P users getting bills for downloaded files, but have you heard about the place where half of the Hollywood movies in in the public domain?
Here is the breaking news. The Ministry of Culture of Russian Federation has published a long list of movies that are now in the public domain (automated translation of the list> by Translate.Ru). Titles include Bambi, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Godfather, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Lawrence of Arabia, Monty Python and hundreds of other brilliant films.
This is not the first time when opposition to copyright comes from Russia and probably not the last. Now that these movies officially belong to the public (in Russia), what implications, do you think, this has for the rest of the world and for file-sharing?
And hosting in Russia would probably cost just a few cents per movie uploaded abroad... And the best thing is that would really be 100% legal.
P.S. You may think this is too good to be true, but believe me, it is true. It seems that most movies more than 30 years old really are in public domain now (called obschestvennoe dostoyanie in Russian.
Do you think he didn't ask for the phone call? Did that do him much good?