The question is, however, whether "something bad happened to one person" is a valid reason to ban porn. People get coaxed into doing stupid things with guns and end up dead - yet guns are very much legal in the United States. A few rotten apples don't justify the extinction of Malus domestica.
Besides, not even all degrading porn is nonconsensual. I'm just thinking of John Thompson, who makes the "GGG" movies which are about nothing but women being degraded - yet the man has a good reputation (well, in certain circles) and employs only women who are aware of what's going to happen, as detailed by the women themselves. Of course starring in such a flick is still a good way to ruin your reputation but apparently a number of women don't mind that.
I think that legalization of porn would be beneficial. Legalization allows regulation; criminalization not only ensures that the creators are criminals, it also encourages the criminals become peroducers.
The post is not about whether Linux is ready for the desktop or not. It's about how advocates of all operating systems can easily take two mutually exclusive stances at the same time.
Yeah, but why should Flash die? Flash video is still going strong - requires some users to install a third party plugin, just lke Flash. Flash requires you to code a player but those are easily available. Plus, Microsoft hasn't committed to anyway so Flash is actually the safer bet.
Linux is ready for the desktop except when someone uses it and runs into some problem, in which case we inform them that it's his fault for using a product that's not ready for the desktop yet.
Apple is not more expensive than other brands, except if you figure in non-premium brands and/or look at the whole market and not just the specific segments Apple caters to.
Mindows does not crash more often than other OSes unless you install third-party drivers in which case all bets are off - and of course one can not expect Microsoft to distribute drivers for every device on Earth.
Well, it depends on the OS. For example, OS X can't create a UDF file system without having you drop to the shell - I have no idea why it doesn't offer UDF in Disk Utility. Any while creating a disk image and using newfs_udf does work perfectly, attempting to use newfs_udf on a USB stick resulted in...
a) newfs_udf reporting success,
b) the stick never being touched and
c) a kernel panic after a few minutes.
I don't quite think that counts as first-class support. Besides, Windows XP can't write to UDF volumes without third-party tools, which also makes UDF rather unattractive as a file exchange FS.
That will work exactly when Microsoft decides to make ext* a first-class filesystem for Windows and Apple decides to do the same for OS X. Until then you can use ext* all you want; I'll use a filesystem that means people besides me can mount my thumb drive.
Come up with a replacement that allows reading and writing without any FS-specific actions to be taken by the user, has low administration overhead and has native first-class support by every operating system and we can talk about FAT being obsolete. Right now FAT32 is the most modern, most advanced file system in its class (the class of high-compatibility general-purpose filesystems, which consists entirely of FAT16 and FAT32).
However, ext2 isn't that much better than FAT (no journal, for example) and the various Windows ext2 IFSes only work reasonably well in most circumstances - however, I did encounter situations where a certain Windows-IFS-volume combination wouldn't work reliably. Plus, NTFS has better compatibility than ext2 as there is no usable ext2 implementation for Mac OS.
This is true. They're intended to be used a while and thrown away. They're priced accordingly.
Actually, even a 20 € electrical toothbrush will last for years unless you buy from a trash brand. Of course they're not expected to last ten hours on a charge after a few years but they don't do that when new, either.
Not all people in the UK are biological children hatched from eggs laid by Queen Elizabeth, although it's been a while since I've cracked open a biology textbook.
Actually, Blizzard doesn't really do that. They use CD keys. That's pretty much it. Also, you can use your CD key to register your game with Blizzard; from then on you can download it from their website at your leisure in both Windows and Mac flavour reardless of which version you bought, which turns their copy protection scheme into a bit of a service.
When it comes to DRM, Blizzard is a saint (at least as far as historical data goes). Doesn't keep them from making funny decisions, of course, but they're one of the few companies not deserving the usual prefabricated anti-DRM rant.
No, this time the Obvious Reason Why Their Game Will Fail is the missing LAN support.
However, another fun consequence is that even if you can play on a LAN just fine, that ability evaporates once you have a LAN without internet connectivity. Yes, that exists; I'm involved with a small (40-60 people) community convention where we don't supply an internet connection for various reasons. We do have the occasional gaming LAN but of course only for games that don't need to talk to a lobby server.
Unfortunately, the embargo does not cover that. European companies like Nokia and Siemens are bound by Council Regulation 423/2007, which forbids the export of the following things:
- Military goods of any kind
- Services relating to maintenance, preparation, production or use of military goods
- Just about anything related to nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles
I just read through the damn thing (151 pages in the German version) and software is only covered where it is used for the design, operation or maintenance of nuclear enrichment facilities or military weapons, especially guided missiles. Unless I overlooked something (unlikely as the appendices are simple tables) or the embargo is covered by an additional regulation I am not aware of Nokia and Siemens did not violate the embargo.
The morality of providing filtering technology to Iran aside, I just can't see what the States are trying to accomplish here. They try to punish companies from other countries for something that wasn't illegal at the time. In the best case we have an ex post facto situation with jurisdictional issues, in the worst case we have "screw the rules, we want your money".
Actually, no. According to the German article, NBR 14136 is a derivative standard differing in the following ways:
- The pins are not 4.5 mm in diameter and the plug is not rated for 16 A. Instead there is a 10 A version with 4 mm pins and a 20 A version with 4.8 mm pins.
- The live and neutral pins can be uninsulated.
- There is a 14 mm thick plug for Class II devices, which can be put into Europlug receptacles. The only problem is that Europlug is only rated for 2.5 A.
This has been possible for a while, but with standardization, we'll have outlet strips with USB ports all over the place, in cafes, on aircraft, in cars, etc.
Actually not really, I'd expect. A USB port in a public place just asks for someone to stick a bit of gum in it - a regular wall socket doesn't quite garner that kind of attention as few people like to stick their fingers inside those. On airplanes you'll find the same sockets you find now. I see no reason to install USB ports just because one can charge their phone over those - notebooks do well with airplane power adapters so why not phones? Standardized chargers mean that the adapters become interchangable and cheap. Besides, if you plug in your notebook you can charge over that. And the only USB plug in a car you're going to use is that in your own car (or a leased one). I doubt that someone will go through the trouble of infecting car computers with mobile phone viruses; that just screams "high risk, low potential profit".
Besides, there's still a simple barrier to USB viruses - pairing. When you connect the phone to a USB host you need to tell the phone (by physically entering it) that you wish to establish data connections with that host. Prior to that the phone will not accept any data and just charge via the USB Battery Charging specification (= the host will not even be able to tell it's a phone).
They'll probably just change the dock to contain a Micro-USB plug instead of the one Apple currently uses. That would be the cheapest way to go about it and fulfill the spec.
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Though pay phones still are around in certain places like train stations. Today's pay phones even do SMS.
The GP also forgot that legalizing gay marriage will obviously instantly make everyone gay.
The question is, however, whether "something bad happened to one person" is a valid reason to ban porn. People get coaxed into doing stupid things with guns and end up dead - yet guns are very much legal in the United States. A few rotten apples don't justify the extinction of Malus domestica.
Besides, not even all degrading porn is nonconsensual. I'm just thinking of John Thompson, who makes the "GGG" movies which are about nothing but women being degraded - yet the man has a good reputation (well, in certain circles) and employs only women who are aware of what's going to happen, as detailed by the women themselves. Of course starring in such a flick is still a good way to ruin your reputation but apparently a number of women don't mind that.
I think that legalization of porn would be beneficial. Legalization allows regulation; criminalization not only ensures that the creators are criminals, it also encourages the criminals become peroducers.
Whooooosh.
The post is not about whether Linux is ready for the desktop or not. It's about how advocates of all operating systems can easily take two mutually exclusive stances at the same time.
Yeah, but why should Flash die? Flash video is still going strong - requires some users to install a third party plugin, just lke Flash. Flash requires you to code a player but those are easily available. Plus, Microsoft hasn't committed to anyway so Flash is actually the safer bet.
Linux is ready for the desktop except when someone uses it and runs into some problem, in which case we inform them that it's his fault for using a product that's not ready for the desktop yet.
Apple is not more expensive than other brands, except if you figure in non-premium brands and/or look at the whole market and not just the specific segments Apple caters to.
Mindows does not crash more often than other OSes unless you install third-party drivers in which case all bets are off - and of course one can not expect Microsoft to distribute drivers for every device on Earth.
Well, it depends on the OS. For example, OS X can't create a UDF file system without having you drop to the shell - I have no idea why it doesn't offer UDF in Disk Utility. Any while creating a disk image and using newfs_udf does work perfectly, attempting to use newfs_udf on a USB stick resulted in...
a) newfs_udf reporting success,
b) the stick never being touched and
c) a kernel panic after a few minutes.
I don't quite think that counts as first-class support. Besides, Windows XP can't write to UDF volumes without third-party tools, which also makes UDF rather unattractive as a file exchange FS.
Not quite useful for an external disk intended to be shared with other computers, though.
Hmm. Last time I tried I couldn't get fuse-ext2 to work. Maybe things have changed since then (quite possible as (Mac)FUSE isn't exactly stagnant).
That will work exactly when Microsoft decides to make ext* a first-class filesystem for Windows and Apple decides to do the same for OS X. Until then you can use ext* all you want; I'll use a filesystem that means people besides me can mount my thumb drive.
Come up with a replacement that allows reading and writing without any FS-specific actions to be taken by the user, has low administration overhead and has native first-class support by every operating system and we can talk about FAT being obsolete. Right now FAT32 is the most modern, most advanced file system in its class (the class of high-compatibility general-purpose filesystems, which consists entirely of FAT16 and FAT32).
There are plenty European software patents; they just don't have any legal backing.
However, ext2 isn't that much better than FAT (no journal, for example) and the various Windows ext2 IFSes only work reasonably well in most circumstances - however, I did encounter situations where a certain Windows-IFS-volume combination wouldn't work reliably. Plus, NTFS has better compatibility than ext2 as there is no usable ext2 implementation for Mac OS.
Actually, even a 20 € electrical toothbrush will last for years unless you buy from a trash brand. Of course they're not expected to last ten hours on a charge after a few years but they don't do that when new, either.
I'll stick to K-Y, thank you very much.
Well, of coursethey aren't. Immigration.
Actually, Blizzard doesn't really do that. They use CD keys. That's pretty much it. Also, you can use your CD key to register your game with Blizzard; from then on you can download it from their website at your leisure in both Windows and Mac flavour reardless of which version you bought, which turns their copy protection scheme into a bit of a service.
When it comes to DRM, Blizzard is a saint (at least as far as historical data goes). Doesn't keep them from making funny decisions, of course, but they're one of the few companies not deserving the usual prefabricated anti-DRM rant.
No, this time the Obvious Reason Why Their Game Will Fail is the missing LAN support.
Or 3 Mbit down/512 kbit up. Yes, you can get that kind of deal when you're not close enough to the nearest DSLAM and cable is not an option.
However, another fun consequence is that even if you can play on a LAN just fine, that ability evaporates once you have a LAN without internet connectivity. Yes, that exists; I'm involved with a small (40-60 people) community convention where we don't supply an internet connection for various reasons. We do have the occasional gaming LAN but of course only for games that don't need to talk to a lobby server.
Unfortunately, the embargo does not cover that. European companies like Nokia and Siemens are bound by Council Regulation 423/2007, which forbids the export of the following things:
- Military goods of any kind
- Services relating to maintenance, preparation, production or use of military goods
- Just about anything related to nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles
I just read through the damn thing (151 pages in the German version) and software is only covered where it is used for the design, operation or maintenance of nuclear enrichment facilities or military weapons, especially guided missiles. Unless I overlooked something (unlikely as the appendices are simple tables) or the embargo is covered by an additional regulation I am not aware of Nokia and Siemens did not violate the embargo.
The morality of providing filtering technology to Iran aside, I just can't see what the States are trying to accomplish here. They try to punish companies from other countries for something that wasn't illegal at the time. In the best case we have an ex post facto situation with jurisdictional issues, in the worst case we have "screw the rules, we want your money".
Actually, no. According to the German article, NBR 14136 is a derivative standard differing in the following ways:
- The pins are not 4.5 mm in diameter and the plug is not rated for 16 A. Instead there is a 10 A version with 4 mm pins and a 20 A version with 4.8 mm pins.
- The live and neutral pins can be uninsulated.
- There is a 14 mm thick plug for Class II devices, which can be put into Europlug receptacles. The only problem is that Europlug is only rated for 2.5 A.
So no, nobody implements IEC 60906-1 yet.
Actually not really, I'd expect. A USB port in a public place just asks for someone to stick a bit of gum in it - a regular wall socket doesn't quite garner that kind of attention as few people like to stick their fingers inside those. On airplanes you'll find the same sockets you find now. I see no reason to install USB ports just because one can charge their phone over those - notebooks do well with airplane power adapters so why not phones? Standardized chargers mean that the adapters become interchangable and cheap. Besides, if you plug in your notebook you can charge over that. And the only USB plug in a car you're going to use is that in your own car (or a leased one). I doubt that someone will go through the trouble of infecting car computers with mobile phone viruses; that just screams "high risk, low potential profit".
Besides, there's still a simple barrier to USB viruses - pairing. When you connect the phone to a USB host you need to tell the phone (by physically entering it) that you wish to establish data connections with that host. Prior to that the phone will not accept any data and just charge via the USB Battery Charging specification (= the host will not even be able to tell it's a phone).
They'll probably just change the dock to contain a Micro-USB plug instead of the one Apple currently uses. That would be the cheapest way to go about it and fulfill the spec.
There is a standard 220-240 V plug. It's called IEC_60906-1. Unfortunately nobody bothers to adopt it.
I'd figure that with prices like these Razor1911 will be applied much more often...