You're confusing the issue. The FCC does not have the authority. The Federal Government does,
No, I'm not confusing the FCC and the federal government. My point was just because somebody doesn't have the authority to do something directly, that doesn't mean that they can't force it to happen indirectly.
the fact is that the FCC has no authority on this matter
Yet. And the federal government has no authority to raise drinking ages to 21, or to mandate a 70 mph nationwide speed limit, and yet they have done so (albiet indirectly).
The FCC does have a lot of power, especially for an organization who's original intent was simply to allocate RF spectrum. They could force DRM in other ways, or could decide that DRM was not outside the FCC's authority after all -- or perhaps Congress could decide that it should be under their authority. Who knows? As long as this is a hobby of hers, I won't complain, but I hope it remains so.
As for her `love of country music' being what led her to this, well, how many cds (probably not copy protected, I might add) and records/tapes (not even digital, so DRM does not apply) did the RIAA have to give her/sell to her to bring her to this conclusion? How many hours of listening to the radio (no DRM, but under the FCC's juristiction) did it take to realize these two loves of country music and DRM?
Or was it satellite radio that lead her to this? DRMed, and under the FCC's juristiction, but it's that DRM (encryption) that causes the FCC to lighten up on them a bit and allow swearing and such?
Well, at the very least a car manufacturer could limit the top speed for a car to keep it from speeding on the highway.
Not that you need anything fancy for this. My 1996 Sunfire GT had a limiter on it that wouldn't let it exceed 107 mph, which I guess was a compromise between cutting off at 75 MPH (a bit over the maximum speed limit anywhere in the US I think) and having no limiter at all (in which case I have no idea how fast the car could go -- 120 MPH? 130 MPH?)
Spped limit regulation would be technologically difficut at best, as the car would have to "know" what the speed limit is.
That's not that difficult. GPSs can tell you exactly where you are, and then it's just a matter of having a database of speed limits, and even if the database can't be kept up to date, there are certain things that can be done with an out of date database (for example, the system could know all the interstates, and if you're on one of them, the limit is 70 mph, and 65 mph otherwise. It would even enforce a limit of 55 mph anywhere unless you explicitly override it (which would be logged with the location just in case something did go wrong -- and you can be sure this would be looked at in an accident.)
The technology is here, and has been for years. It wouldn't even be that hard to implement. Mostly the problems are political, not technological -- nobody wants a car that limits them, though some will be willing to accept that in exchange for lower insurance rates -- first of all, such a system would keep you from speeding, but perhaps more importantly it could also keep track of exact velocity (speed + direction) and location every second, and if there was an accident, this log could be used by your insurance company to prevent fraud and the like. Of course, it could also be used against you, so it's a double edged sword...
Of course, such a system seems awfully close to the `Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety' adage... but many people really don't seem to care.
You do realize this is a debate between two authors
Actually, I didn't. Oops. Good call.
I guess I should have -- the clues were all there. The title said `melee', there were two names listed as the author, each page had a name or initials at the top (and I never noticed that they changed), the first page had one guy addressing the other guy, etc.
Of course, it didn't help that the two seemed to agree about everything.
Oh well, I guess that's what I get for posting before I'm fully caffienated.
In related news, this is a bit misleading --
According to research from sources like the Nielsen Entertainment Interactive Group, close to 40 percent of gamers today in America are female
it may be accurate, but it's misleading because when people think of `gamers', they think of people who take their games seriously (like the professionals that this article is about), but the statistic includes (and is likely dominated by) people who play games like minesweeper and solitaire and whatever they find on the web from time to time.
Oh, them. Yeah, I've met them -- they stole my car, then ran it over my hooker (killing her, and not helping the car much.) Which I never understood -- the hooker was nice and friendly, and the car was just a VW Golf, almost as old as the hooker but in much worse condition (at least before they ran her over with it.)
But even so, they're the exception rather than the rule.
One of the most publicized occurrences was with BMX XXX
... a game that should have never been made.
I'm not quite a hardcore gamer, but I do like to play computer games (RTS, FPS, RPG, Simulations.) And I'm not a prude -- I like my games to be a bit gritty, and a little blood, swearing or nudity never bothered me, and in many cases it enhances the game.
But I've seen BMX XXX. And I have to wonder `what were they thinking?' The game was stupid, uninspired, and not fun.
Duke Nukem had strippers. No nudity, but the strippers were appropriate. I thought GTA3 was OK -- sure, it was violent, but that fit in with the game. The latest Leisure Suit Larry? Well, it's crude because it's supposed to be, and that fits in with the theme (though the game itself was pretty mediocre.) But BMX XXX? It's like, `we'll take one of these `extreme' (which usually means `bad' by itself) games, and make it even more `EXTREME TO THE MAX' by adding lots of swearing and strippers!' Bah.
It's a pity WalMart didn't kill it entirely.
(And GTA: San Andreas and Hot Coffee? Yawn. More games need to acknowledge that people like to have sex. Though I'd prefer they take their clothes off first, unlike the Hot Coffee stuff. And really, it's amusing to no end that people don't really mind how violent the game is, but the moment it suggests somebody having sex (Odds are that 1) your parents have never killed a hooker or stolen a car, but 2) that they have had sex) it must be the Devil! (And nevermind that nobody could ever find the content by accident.)
Nobody is saying this. You'll be perfectly OK using GPLv3'd packages with DRM. What you won't be able to do is publish anything that uses both, because that would restrict the rights of others.
Of course, the GPLv3 telling people that they can't use your (GPLv3 licensed) software to make/support DRM software is `restricting the rights of others', which is exactly what DRM is supposed to do. Of course, DRM does it in order to increase profits, and the GPLv3 does it `for the greater good'. In this case, the ends probably do justify the means, but the idealist in me still doesn't like it. Of course GPLv2 did the same thing, but it didn't push it so far...
But that's OK -- I don't have to completely agree with RMS on every issue, and this topic isn't specifically about the GPLv3 and it being good or bad, so I'm not really going into that. It's about DRM and Linux, and I do think that GPLv3 will certainly have an effect on that.
In any event, the GPLv3 could certainly restrict anybody who tried to make a Linux distribution (or even program/package) that supports DRM -- it all depends on exactly which packages go GPLv3 and which don't. If gcc or glibc did, it would pretty much prevent Linux from ever really supporting DRM media players or creators using the GPLv3 versions of those packages. (Well, I haven't looked at how the LGPL will change in v3, so maybe glibc won't be such an issue, but I doubt it.)
In any event, I never did understand the fascination with people embedding Linux into commercial products, and then they get upset when they learn that the GPL requires that they release source. If this is such a problem, why didn't they just use FreeBSD (or NetBSD fif it's a less commonly used cpu) instead? It has similar functionality in most cases, and a much less restrictive license for a business to (ab)use. If the Linux kernel did go GPLv3 (again, Linus has said it won't), people making Tivo-like devices would probably just go with one of the BSDs instead, and little would change.
Which leads to the really big question. WHY are the media companies so intent on controlling things by region? What is the possible reason?
That's easy. They want to be able to charge each region as much as they can, and certain regions will be willing to pay more than others. They feel that seperating things by region they can make more money.
I attempted to order the entire Hitchhiker's Guide radio series...
Well, that's probably an unusual case. I was thinking more of DVDs. In any event, the HHGTTG recording you wanted may have really just been licensed only in the UK. Though I'm sure if you really wanted it you could get it on eBay or find somebody over there to get it for you.
I agree with you, it's stupid, but it's the way it is.
Well, the new GPL is supposed to make it so that GPLv3 software is not usable by companies that do DRM. Now Linus has made it quite clear that he won't put the kernel under GPLv3, and I doubt he's alone in that sentiment, but it seems likely that some of the packages included with most Linux distributions will move to GPLv3 (such as the ones that RMS has more direct control over) so if I understand the proposed GPLv3 correctly, that would mean that anybody who's putting out a Linux distribution with DRM would not be able to include (or even use) any packages covered by GPLv3 (unless they permit use under other licenses.)
I imagine that this was part of the plan behind the DRM restrictions of the new GPL from the very beginning. It should be interesting to see how it finally turns out.
In any event, while I don't really totally agree with the anti-DRM provisions in the proposed GPLv3 (don't get me wrong -- I hate DRM, but telling people that they can't use your software if they use DRM -- isn't that a sort of DRM right there, just done in legalize rather than software and hardware?), I do think that given the choice between 1) continuing to use existing software pakcages that migrate to GPLv3 and new packages that use GPLv3, or 2) giving up the ability to use anything that uses GPLv3 and so restricting ourselves to the older versions (that were GPLv2 licensed) so that we can include DRM into a Linux distribution so we can play Real media... I think it's pretty obvious what the answer will be.
Linux to Real... die. (No `ditch DRM or die', just `die'. You had your chance to be relevant, and you blew it, and all you're doing now is reminding us that you blew it.)
Granted, even without Real, I don't see DRM going away any time soon, but it's just not something that I think that Linux (or, more specifically, Linux distrubtions) absolutely has to support, and the GPLv3 will probably just make that decision (not to support it) a bit easier.
Real could release a version of it's player that has DRM support, but they're fully aware that the OS isn't going to do too much to keep their content safe from things that record directly from the screen and audio hardware (and I don't see this changing), and so I predict that Real will just decline to make an updated Linux version of their player and point to this as the reason. Of course, the real reason will be that they just don't think that Linux is worth worrying about, and they'll probably be right.
There's a nice little excerpt in the article, in bold, that says this --
"I don't believe that Linux
distributions are a natural
fit for the enterprise."
... which seems a strange statement for Bruce to be making. But then I read the article, and see that what he really said is this --
BP: I actually considered going to work with Canonical when Mark [Shuttleworth] was starting it, and there were a couple of problems with that. I think that Mark is eventually interested in having a successful and profitable company, and I don't believe that Linux distributions are a natural fit for for- profit enterprise. Indeed, if you go on my website I have a very long paper on the economics of open source, and one of the things that you can derive from that is the fact that open source works almost worst for a for-profit Linux distribution.
Which isn't completely clear, but it seems that Bruce is saying that making a Linux distribution is not a good way to make money. The excerpt that they took makes it sound he's saying that Linux isn't good to use in a business. (And it's made worse in that they edited his words -- they took out `for-profit', which helped qualify his statement a bit.)
In any event, the writer should consider himself chastized. Excerpts like that are only useful if they give you an idea of what the article is about, and in this case it says (when taken out of context and then edited) something totally different than what the person who said those words meant.
Be sure to pressurize the probe first (to match that of the Venus atmosphere) before launching it -- that way, if something goes wrong, and it ends up back on Earth and begins a path of destruction, it can be destoyed by simply attaching a cable and raising it up high in our atmosphere...
I make 6 figures and I don't even have an associates degree in comp sci. Experience > piece of paper. I have worked with many people with advanced degrees and from what I can tell, it really has no impact on their salaries. They may make a few grand more coming straight out of school but the guy who went into the real world after 4 years will make up for it by having built up experience.
You can't just say "I learn languages quickly!" The attitude you get in response from the jaded cynical HR people is "stop giving us b.s., anyone can say that and nearly everyone does." Fair enough. I haven't been able to figure any way to convincingly show that so they wouldn't have to take me at my word.
Easy... learn some languages. Do so quickly. Once you know them, put them on your resume. C, C++, perl, python, and java are probably good places to start. Once you know all of those, you probably know the languages that 90% of your potential employers would want you to know anyways, so it doesn't matter so much if you can learn new languages quickly or not.
I know that comes across as a smart-alec answer, but it's true. If you're so good at learning new languages quickly, do so, then it won't be an issue anymore. (And HR is right -- everybody does claim that.) And if you're REALLY fast at learning new languages, just put the popular ones on your resume and when you have an interview in two days, well, find out what languages they care about, and you've got two days to learn it. It's risky, but I've seen people pull it off. (And I've seen people crash and burn.)
(Actually, on second thought, that list is pretty *nix biased. For Windows, they may want VB and is C# very popular? And you'll also want to learn things like SQL, know your way around XML and HTML (they're not really languages though), javascript is useful to know as well for web stuff. In any event, once you know a few computer languages well, learning more is generally easy. But the first one is usually the hardest, and the second one is easier, but still not as easy as the later ones become.)
Another way to get past HR is to have some experience in what a company does beyond programming. Ok, so you want to get a job writing financial software in java. You know java, that's fine, but what will really wow them is having experience in finances. Very few jobs just involve `programming for the sake of programming' -- instead, you're programming to make the computer do something useful, and knowing something about what the program is supposed to actually do is what will set you apart from all the other CS grads.
Also, you can often bypass HR completely. If you know people in the department doing the hiring, give them a call -- often you can get an interview without ever talking to HR. Networking works.
Yes, and that's a relevant thing to add to this discussion, but you should keep in mind (or mention if it's already in mind) that RFC stands for `Request for Comments', not `Rules that must never be broken' or even `Follow these or you'll be sent to Gitmo.'
Violating a RFC may make you a bad person, and certainly it looks like D-link is in the wrong here, but it's not like there's anybody out there enforcing RFCs in any way beyond `you shouldn't be doing that!' (unless they're kooks, of course.
Now, maybe you could sue somebody for violating a RFC, and perhaps that's what Mr. Kamp should do, but I'm no lawyer and he's already spoken with many about this, so I suspect he has considered it. But it's not likely that any actual laws are being broken here.
Now, if Mr Kamp wanted to play hardball, he could have his legitimate users of his NTP server move to another name, and then modify the GPS.dix.dk server to return a totally bogus time, which would probably help get the current users of the routers to upgrade their firmware. I suspect that only a small fraction of the users would even notice, but those that do would call D-Link, and those calls would cost D-Link money...
Yes, Mr Kamp shouldn't have to do this, and maybe the/. effect (which does go beyond mere web traffic) will prompt D-Link to do what they can to fix the problem they've caused, but it's always an option, one which he's probably already considered.
What's REALLY funny is his claim in court that "he let himself go and no longer lifted weights to keep fit." That fat fuck wasn't "fit" when it was recorded, so unless he had his stomach stapled between then and when he found out it was on the Internet, he's a fat fucking LIAR.
Well, weight lifting isn't usually a very effective method of weight control anyways. In many cases, it makes people gain weight rather than lose it (of course, that's due to the gaining of muscle rather than fat, which is generally a good thing, but still...)
But yes, you're right... he certainly doesn't appear to be skinny in the video. However, he does jump around with considerable gusto, so he couldn't have been that out of shape.
Geez, what is it with people today? Don't they teach reading comprehension in school any more?
Indeed. Even the trolls can't keep track of what they said.
This doesn't mean the distro is any good just because a business uses it.
I didn't say the `distro was any good'. I was countering the poorly thought out `I'm sorry but everything is Ubuntu nowadays' claim you made.
Sorry, but NOT everything is Ubuntu nowadays. Sure, it might be growing rapidly, and might be the most popular distribution now, but NOT everything is Ubuntu.
Desktop users are all switching to Ubuntu. So while Fedora might be "quite popular" it ain't the cat's meow.
They are not ALL switching to Ubuntu. Many, maybe, but not ALL. Don't they teach simple logic in school nowadays?
It's the distro specific stuff that sucks (boot time, package management)
You must do different things with your systems than I do on mine. I boot rarely enough that I don't really care how long it takes (and I just checked my other `fast' computer... 35 seconds, from the moment that grub started loading the kernel to the time that the gdm login screen appeared. Just how fast do you want it to be? Perhaps Ubuntu can do that in 25 seconds (warning: made up number) but if so... who cares?) and I only average a few minutes on `package management' per week. A much bigger issue is how quickly my applications come up and run, and (a much smaller issue) how quickly I can get a given application installed if I need it (package management, but yum makes that very quick and easy), and I'm very happy with that.
Usability and look are often the same thing. Sorry if I wasn't clear but "ugly" to me means it has a bad feeling to it, it's hard to use or whatever. The functionality and look of FVWM or XFCE is crap.
Yes, apparantly your version of `ugly' is very different from that of the rest of the world. I've found fvwm to be perfectly functional, and xfce was as well when I tried it. I've looked at the default window manager that Fedora Core gives you, and it's very `pretty' (read: eye candy, opposite of `ugly' for most people) and seemed functional enough to me, but I didn't really care for it. Same for KDE, though it's less `pretty'.
The functionality of fvwm is just fine, thank you. (It does lack eye candy, however -- I won't deny that.) Of course, it's not installed with Fedora Core -- I had to compile it myself -- so it's probably not a good thing to whine about when talking about FC.
I didn't say "Windows XP screams" I said it screams compared to most Linux distros. Make sure you read what others write before responding.
And perhaps I wasn't clear enough -- I've found that 1) Windows XP is plenty fast, even on the slow hardware of that laptop, and 2) Fedora Core was similarly fast. Boot time is a bigger issue on the laptop, as it's booted up more often, but even so, it's fast enough. And even looking at boot times, starting from when grub loads the kernel, up to the gdm login screen is 73 seconds. For XP, it's 40 seconds -- so yes, Windows boots faster. But I don't care much about how fast the system boots -- I care about how usable it is, and both FC and XP are plenty usable. (Note that XP does a lot more stuff after the login screen appears -- there's a minute or two after you've logged in where the system is dog slow because it's doing... something... and pounding on the disk. So they've just delayed some of the bootup activities, which seems a good trade-off to me for a desktop system.)
Where did I say it wouldn't work smartass? I said it was slow as hell.
`Works fine' implies some amount of performance. Even if every function works properly, if it takes 8x as long as one would expect it t
Oh really? Seems to me that businesses love Redhat (and the clones like Whitebox) more for than everybody else put together. And Fedora Core is quite popular as well with the desktop user.
I know they have come out with newer stuff like yum
yum is very nice. Really, I never did understand why people hated rpm so much. Any sort of package management that also handles dependancies is going to add some complexity, and even then yum and the respositories makes it all pretty much automatic. I'm no rpm fanboy, but it does do it's job.
It's no picnic with Ubuntu either but using Fedora is beyond absurdly slow.
So, they picked a window manager by default that uses a lot of resources. So change it.
except the barely functional (read: ugly) distros that use things like XFCE (gag).
Barely functional and ugly have nothing in common. And xfce seemed plenty functional to me, and plenty fast. (Of course, I'm still using fvwm as my window manager, the same window manager I used back when I had a 166 MHz box and probably even further back than that.)
But you are right about one thing -- XP does work fine on my wife's 233 MHz laptop w/ 128 MB ram. I wouldn't say it screams, but it runs fine, and the only time she complained about the performance was when she put the Sims on it and it couldn't keep up. Of course, Fedora Core also works fine on the same laptop, even with the default gnome window manager, so maybe you just did something wrong.
Sure there is. DVD storage is cheaper than HDD storage by an order of magnitude...
Not anymore. 50 good quality DVD-R or DVD+Rs are about $20, or about $0.09/GB. (Granted, you can get them cheaper if you go to Fry's and get something on special, like their GQ media, but it's generallly... crap.)
I can get 300 GB ATA drives for about $105, or 250 GB drives for $83, or about $0.33/GB, and it's even less when they're on sale or there's a rebate involved.
Doing the math, that's only a difference of about 3.5 -- somewhat smaller than an order of magnitude. Even if you get the dirt cheap GQ media when it's on sale (limit one pack per visit), that's only a factor of 7. Almost an order of magnitude, but not quite, and we're not considering hard drive sales.
Personally, I wouldn't really care how much storage my Tivo had if I could easily remove shows from it and save them to my computer. That way, I could keep on hard disk, or archive to DVD if I wanted... it would be up to me.
It started with great technology and no viable business plan.
The business plan seems sound enough to me -- sell Tivo units, sell subscriptions to the service.
I've heard that they were taking a loss on each unit sold, but it wasn't that substantial. (It's larger now, as you can buy a Tivo for almost free after rebates, but you commit to a year or two of service.) I saw the `Lifetime subscription' as a way to get quick cash for the company at the expense of future income -- questionable, but it made sense.
In any event, the Tivo service should cost very little to provide -- you pay the local ISPs for dialup access, and probably something to the source of the TV guide data, but beyond that, it should bring in a steady stream of revenue that doesn't depend on development or even marketing. If one wanted to keep the company from losing money, you just cut back on development and marketing, lay a bunch of people off, and raise the price on new units so that money isn't lost on each sale. If things got really bad, you'd lay off everybody not needed to provide the service to existing customers, raise the price on new units enough to make a nice profit on each one. Sure, sales would drop a lot (so you'd lay off lots of people making the units) but the subscription revenue would keep coming in. And at $13/unit/month, that's quite a bit of money.
Personally, I had a Tivo Series 1 with lifetime service. I loved it. But then I got Direct TV and three Tivo receivers, and that's even better -- it's pretty much perfect. The only downside is that it's incapable of recording anything that doesn't come down from DTV. But at $39/month just for the Tivo service, three standard units would cost a fortune. But with DTV, each additional receiver is only $5/month, and to have any number of Tivo units is only $5/month total, which makes it a much better deal, and makes having a Tivo on every TV practical.
In any event, I'm amazed that Tivo is still losing money -- it seems like that unlike many dot-coms, they actually did have a viable way to make money (i.e. they didn't really participate in the 1) give stuff away, 2) ???, 3) profit!) plan that may dot coms did) and so I'm really amazed that they're not in the black yet.
Of course, I'm not happy to see that they're trying to save the company by defending overly broad patents that they own but shouldn't have even been awarded, but I guess that's just the way things work.
I don't think that's what you were referring to...
Dalnet won't let me in, it's like all the servers are down or something, so I can't check that...
Perhaps this is part of why IRC isn't the killer application -- AIM, Yahoo, MSN etc. are. IRC was great when I discovered it in 1990 or so, but people now want instant gratification, and IRC isn't that.
- Has a history of enabling spam and virus propagation (due to users inability to set it up properly).
I've found sendmail to be as spam-resistant as any of the other MTAs out there at the same time.
At one point, every mail server was an open relay, because that's just the way things were done, and few people abused it and it was nice. Then the spammers came and ruined that. Sendmail changed to default to `don't relay' approximately as fast as everybody else. From time to time spammers have found ways around the anti-relay provisions, but this has happened with other MTAs.
As for virii, I'd argue that if a program sends an email from sytem A to user B, it's the MTA's job to, by default, deliver the email if it's properly addressed and such. Virus scanning can be added it you want, but it certainly shouldn't be there by default.
If it's sendmail, well, it's GOOD!
I don't think people quite think this. But it runs on *nix, so it can't be all bad.
Slashdot Mirror
The FCC does have a lot of power, especially for an organization who's original intent was simply to allocate RF spectrum. They could force DRM in other ways, or could decide that DRM was not outside the FCC's authority after all -- or perhaps Congress could decide that it should be under their authority. Who knows? As long as this is a hobby of hers, I won't complain, but I hope it remains so.
As for her `love of country music' being what led her to this, well, how many cds (probably not copy protected, I might add) and records/tapes (not even digital, so DRM does not apply) did the RIAA have to give her/sell to her to bring her to this conclusion? How many hours of listening to the radio (no DRM, but under the FCC's juristiction) did it take to realize these two loves of country music and DRM?
Or was it satellite radio that lead her to this? DRMed, and under the FCC's juristiction, but it's that DRM (encryption) that causes the FCC to lighten up on them a bit and allow swearing and such?
The technology is here, and has been for years. It wouldn't even be that hard to implement. Mostly the problems are political, not technological -- nobody wants a car that limits them, though some will be willing to accept that in exchange for lower insurance rates -- first of all, such a system would keep you from speeding, but perhaps more importantly it could also keep track of exact velocity (speed + direction) and location every second, and if there was an accident, this log could be used by your insurance company to prevent fraud and the like. Of course, it could also be used against you, so it's a double edged sword ...
Of course, such a system seems awfully close to the `Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety' adage ... but many people really don't seem to care.
I guess I should have -- the clues were all there. The title said `melee', there were two names listed as the author, each page had a name or initials at the top (and I never noticed that they changed), the first page had one guy addressing the other guy, etc.
Of course, it didn't help that the two seemed to agree about everything.
Oh well, I guess that's what I get for posting before I'm fully caffienated.
In related news, this is a bit misleading --
it may be accurate, but it's misleading because when people think of `gamers', they think of people who take their games seriously (like the professionals that this article is about), but the statistic includes (and is likely dominated by) people who play games like minesweeper and solitaire and whatever they find on the web from time to time.But even so, they're the exception rather than the rule.
Granted, I tend to agree with him, but usually I only have to say things once (or maybe twice to my kids) ... not six times.
I'm not quite a hardcore gamer, but I do like to play computer games (RTS, FPS, RPG, Simulations.) And I'm not a prude -- I like my games to be a bit gritty, and a little blood, swearing or nudity never bothered me, and in many cases it enhances the game.
But I've seen BMX XXX. And I have to wonder `what were they thinking?' The game was stupid, uninspired, and not fun.
Duke Nukem had strippers. No nudity, but the strippers were appropriate. I thought GTA3 was OK -- sure, it was violent, but that fit in with the game. The latest Leisure Suit Larry? Well, it's crude because it's supposed to be, and that fits in with the theme (though the game itself was pretty mediocre.) But BMX XXX? It's like, `we'll take one of these `extreme' (which usually means `bad' by itself) games, and make it even more `EXTREME TO THE MAX' by adding lots of swearing and strippers!' Bah.
It's a pity WalMart didn't kill it entirely.
(And GTA: San Andreas and Hot Coffee? Yawn. More games need to acknowledge that people like to have sex. Though I'd prefer they take their clothes off first, unlike the Hot Coffee stuff. And really, it's amusing to no end that people don't really mind how violent the game is, but the moment it suggests somebody having sex (Odds are that 1) your parents have never killed a hooker or stolen a car, but 2) that they have had sex) it must be the Devil! (And nevermind that nobody could ever find the content by accident.)
But that's OK -- I don't have to completely agree with RMS on every issue, and this topic isn't specifically about the GPLv3 and it being good or bad, so I'm not really going into that. It's about DRM and Linux, and I do think that GPLv3 will certainly have an effect on that.
In any event, the GPLv3 could certainly restrict anybody who tried to make a Linux distribution (or even program/package) that supports DRM -- it all depends on exactly which packages go GPLv3 and which don't. If gcc or glibc did, it would pretty much prevent Linux from ever really supporting DRM media players or creators using the GPLv3 versions of those packages. (Well, I haven't looked at how the LGPL will change in v3, so maybe glibc won't be such an issue, but I doubt it.)
In any event, I never did understand the fascination with people embedding Linux into commercial products, and then they get upset when they learn that the GPL requires that they release source. If this is such a problem, why didn't they just use FreeBSD (or NetBSD fif it's a less commonly used cpu) instead? It has similar functionality in most cases, and a much less restrictive license for a business to (ab)use. If the Linux kernel did go GPLv3 (again, Linus has said it won't), people making Tivo-like devices would probably just go with one of the BSDs instead, and little would change.
I agree with you, it's stupid, but it's the way it is.
I imagine that this was part of the plan behind the DRM restrictions of the new GPL from the very beginning. It should be interesting to see how it finally turns out.
In any event, while I don't really totally agree with the anti-DRM provisions in the proposed GPLv3 (don't get me wrong -- I hate DRM, but telling people that they can't use your software if they use DRM -- isn't that a sort of DRM right there, just done in legalize rather than software and hardware?), I do think that given the choice between 1) continuing to use existing software pakcages that migrate to GPLv3 and new packages that use GPLv3, or 2) giving up the ability to use anything that uses GPLv3 and so restricting ourselves to the older versions (that were GPLv2 licensed) so that we can include DRM into a Linux distribution so we can play Real media ... I think it's pretty obvious what the answer will be.
Linux to Real ... die. (No `ditch DRM or die', just `die'. You had your chance to be relevant, and you blew it, and all you're doing now is reminding us that you blew it.)
Granted, even without Real, I don't see DRM going away any time soon, but it's just not something that I think that Linux (or, more specifically, Linux distrubtions) absolutely has to support, and the GPLv3 will probably just make that decision (not to support it) a bit easier.
Real could release a version of it's player that has DRM support, but they're fully aware that the OS isn't going to do too much to keep their content safe from things that record directly from the screen and audio hardware (and I don't see this changing), and so I predict that Real will just decline to make an updated Linux version of their player and point to this as the reason. Of course, the real reason will be that they just don't think that Linux is worth worrying about, and they'll probably be right.
In any event, the writer should consider himself chastized. Excerpts like that are only useful if they give you an idea of what the article is about, and in this case it says (when taken out of context and then edited) something totally different than what the person who said those words meant.
Unless of course your goal is to make it somewhat resistant to any men who cost about 67 million pesos, in which case do not pressurize it beforehand ...
I know that comes across as a smart-alec answer, but it's true. If you're so good at learning new languages quickly, do so, then it won't be an issue anymore. (And HR is right -- everybody does claim that.) And if you're REALLY fast at learning new languages, just put the popular ones on your resume and when you have an interview in two days, well, find out what languages they care about, and you've got two days to learn it. It's risky, but I've seen people pull it off. (And I've seen people crash and burn.)
(Actually, on second thought, that list is pretty *nix biased. For Windows, they may want VB and is C# very popular? And you'll also want to learn things like SQL, know your way around XML and HTML (they're not really languages though), javascript is useful to know as well for web stuff. In any event, once you know a few computer languages well, learning more is generally easy. But the first one is usually the hardest, and the second one is easier, but still not as easy as the later ones become.)
Another way to get past HR is to have some experience in what a company does beyond programming. Ok, so you want to get a job writing financial software in java. You know java, that's fine, but what will really wow them is having experience in finances. Very few jobs just involve `programming for the sake of programming' -- instead, you're programming to make the computer do something useful, and knowing something about what the program is supposed to actually do is what will set you apart from all the other CS grads.
Also, you can often bypass HR completely. If you know people in the department doing the hiring, give them a call -- often you can get an interview without ever talking to HR. Networking works.
Violating a RFC may make you a bad person, and certainly it looks like D-link is in the wrong here, but it's not like there's anybody out there enforcing RFCs in any way beyond `you shouldn't be doing that!' (unless they're kooks, of course.
Now, maybe you could sue somebody for violating a RFC, and perhaps that's what Mr. Kamp should do, but I'm no lawyer and he's already spoken with many about this, so I suspect he has considered it. But it's not likely that any actual laws are being broken here.
Now, if Mr Kamp wanted to play hardball, he could have his legitimate users of his NTP server move to another name, and then modify the GPS.dix.dk server to return a totally bogus time, which would probably help get the current users of the routers to upgrade their firmware. I suspect that only a small fraction of the users would even notice, but those that do would call D-Link, and those calls would cost D-Link money ...
Yes, Mr Kamp shouldn't have to do this, and maybe the /. effect (which does go beyond mere web traffic) will prompt D-Link to do what they can to fix the problem they've caused, but it's always an option, one which he's probably already considered.
But yes, you're right ... he certainly doesn't appear to be skinny in the video. However, he does jump around with considerable gusto, so he couldn't have been that out of shape.
Indeed. Even the trolls can't keep track of what they said.
I didn't say the `distro was any good'. I was countering the poorly thought out `I'm sorry but everything is Ubuntu nowadays' claim you made.
Sorry, but NOT everything is Ubuntu nowadays. Sure, it might be growing rapidly, and might be the most popular distribution now, but NOT everything is Ubuntu.
They are not ALL switching to Ubuntu. Many, maybe, but not ALL. Don't they teach simple logic in school nowadays?
You must do different things with your systems than I do on mine. I boot rarely enough that I don't really care how long it takes (and I just checked my other `fast' computer ... 35 seconds, from the moment that grub started loading the kernel to the time that the gdm login screen appeared. Just how fast do you want it to be? Perhaps Ubuntu can do that in 25 seconds (warning: made up number) but if so ... who cares?) and I only average a few minutes on `package management' per week. A much bigger issue is how quickly my applications come up and run, and (a much smaller issue) how quickly I can get a given application installed if I need it (package management, but yum makes that very quick and easy), and I'm very happy with that.
Yes, apparantly your version of `ugly' is very different from that of the rest of the world. I've found fvwm to be perfectly functional, and xfce was as well when I tried it. I've looked at the default window manager that Fedora Core gives you, and it's very `pretty' (read: eye candy, opposite of `ugly' for most people) and seemed functional enough to me, but I didn't really care for it. Same for KDE, though it's less `pretty'.
The functionality of fvwm is just fine, thank you. (It does lack eye candy, however -- I won't deny that.) Of course, it's not installed with Fedora Core -- I had to compile it myself -- so it's probably not a good thing to whine about when talking about FC.
And perhaps I wasn't clear enough -- I've found that 1) Windows XP is plenty fast, even on the slow hardware of that laptop, and 2) Fedora Core was similarly fast. Boot time is a bigger issue on the laptop, as it's booted up more often, but even so, it's fast enough. And even looking at boot times, starting from when grub loads the kernel, up to the gdm login screen is 73 seconds. For XP, it's 40 seconds -- so yes, Windows boots faster. But I don't care much about how fast the system boots -- I care about how usable it is, and both FC and XP are plenty usable. (Note that XP does a lot more stuff after the login screen appears -- there's a minute or two after you've logged in where the system is dog slow because it's doing ... something ... and pounding on the disk. So they've just delayed some of the bootup activities, which seems a good trade-off to me for a desktop system.)
`Works fine' implies some amount of performance. Even if every function works properly, if it takes 8x as long as one would expect it t
But you are right about one thing -- XP does work fine on my wife's 233 MHz laptop w/ 128 MB ram. I wouldn't say it screams, but it runs fine, and the only time she complained about the performance was when she put the Sims on it and it couldn't keep up. Of course, Fedora Core also works fine on the same laptop, even with the default gnome window manager, so maybe you just did something wrong.
I can get 300 GB ATA drives for about $105, or 250 GB drives for $83, or about $0.33/GB, and it's even less when they're on sale or there's a rebate involved.
Doing the math, that's only a difference of about 3.5 -- somewhat smaller than an order of magnitude. Even if you get the dirt cheap GQ media when it's on sale (limit one pack per visit), that's only a factor of 7. Almost an order of magnitude, but not quite, and we're not considering hard drive sales.
Personally, I wouldn't really care how much storage my Tivo had if I could easily remove shows from it and save them to my computer. That way, I could keep on hard disk, or archive to DVD if I wanted ... it would be up to me.
I've heard that they were taking a loss on each unit sold, but it wasn't that substantial. (It's larger now, as you can buy a Tivo for almost free after rebates, but you commit to a year or two of service.) I saw the `Lifetime subscription' as a way to get quick cash for the company at the expense of future income -- questionable, but it made sense.
In any event, the Tivo service should cost very little to provide -- you pay the local ISPs for dialup access, and probably something to the source of the TV guide data, but beyond that, it should bring in a steady stream of revenue that doesn't depend on development or even marketing. If one wanted to keep the company from losing money, you just cut back on development and marketing, lay a bunch of people off, and raise the price on new units so that money isn't lost on each sale. If things got really bad, you'd lay off everybody not needed to provide the service to existing customers, raise the price on new units enough to make a nice profit on each one. Sure, sales would drop a lot (so you'd lay off lots of people making the units) but the subscription revenue would keep coming in. And at $13/unit/month, that's quite a bit of money.
Personally, I had a Tivo Series 1 with lifetime service. I loved it. But then I got Direct TV and three Tivo receivers, and that's even better -- it's pretty much perfect. The only downside is that it's incapable of recording anything that doesn't come down from DTV. But at $39/month just for the Tivo service, three standard units would cost a fortune. But with DTV, each additional receiver is only $5/month, and to have any number of Tivo units is only $5/month total, which makes it a much better deal, and makes having a Tivo on every TV practical.
In any event, I'm amazed that Tivo is still losing money -- it seems like that unlike many dot-coms, they actually did have a viable way to make money (i.e. they didn't really participate in the 1) give stuff away, 2) ???, 3) profit!) plan that may dot coms did) and so I'm really amazed that they're not in the black yet.
Of course, I'm not happy to see that they're trying to save the company by defending overly broad patents that they own but shouldn't have even been awarded, but I guess that's just the way things work.
Fails on Efnet, Undernet. On IRCnet --
I don't think that's what you were referring toDalnet won't let me in, it's like all the servers are down or something, so I can't check that ...
Perhaps this is part of why IRC isn't the killer application -- AIM, Yahoo, MSN etc. are. IRC was great when I discovered it in 1990 or so, but people now want instant gratification, and IRC isn't that.
At one point, every mail server was an open relay, because that's just the way things were done, and few people abused it and it was nice. Then the spammers came and ruined that. Sendmail changed to default to `don't relay' approximately as fast as everybody else. From time to time spammers have found ways around the anti-relay provisions, but this has happened with other MTAs.
As for virii, I'd argue that if a program sends an email from sytem A to user B, it's the MTA's job to, by default, deliver the email if it's properly addressed and such. Virus scanning can be added it you want, but it certainly shouldn't be there by default.
I don't think people quite think this. But it runs on *nix, so it can't be all bad.