...I would be surprised if Stardock ever develops for anything but MS OSes. Brad Wardell pretty much despised Linux back in Stardock's OS/2 era (especially after having been burned on an early effort to port GalCiv). Even if BW did not have a fundamental philosophical objection to the concept of free/open source software, he would still need to avoid Linux like the plague. Stardock has a pretty nice business providing add-ons to MS -- and, so far, at least, MS has not tried to muscle in on anything that Stardock is doing. Imagine what would happen to his business, which exists solely due to the sufferance and good will of MS, if he allowed porting (or worse, developed) products for "enemy" operating systems.
Brad has always been a good guy -- I wish him well, even though it is not likely that I will ever use any Stardock software again. (I bought almost everything it released for OS/2 -- but OS/2 is long gone from our family computers).
No fullscreen problems for me either -- and installation of the new RPMs was trouble free on SuSE 8.1 (I got prompted to install the SuSE disc containing termcap as a prerequisite).
...works markedly better than the slightly older one that came with SuSE 8.1. It plays divx files and VCDs at least as well as WMP on Windows 98 and better than WMP on NT.
BMI is the Broadcast Music Institute, one of the bodies that license the use of music on behalf of composers (or on behalf of the people to whom composers assign their rights):
BMI is the Broadcast Music institute, one of the bodies that license the use of composers (or the people to whom composers assign their rights):
http://www.bmi.com/
EMI is a recorded music seller, and a music publishing company, based in London:
http://www.emigroup.com/
BMG is the Bertelsman Music Group, a different company in the same business as EMI, whose headquarters is now in New York City (but used to be in Germany, once upon a time):
There are two licensed R3 release from Hong Kong, a Cantonese dub, and the original Japanese version (with English subtitles), which is about half the price of the Japanese R2 release, see:
Bottom line: If a DVD of a Miyazaki film claims to be "all region", it's almost certainly a bootleg. If it has a region code, it is probably an authorized release. For further information on bootleg versions, see:
http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/video/answers.h tm l
But there are no provisions in Copyright law which force material to be placed in the public domain when it is no longer being used (or even when Copyright expires!).
The intent of the Constitutional provision that allows (but does not require) the government to afford copyright protection (for a limited time) to authors was to ultimately increase the amount of material in the public domain. When a copyright expires, the material previously protected belongs to the public.
Cyberiad is one of his funniest books. It is the story (mainly) of two robot constructors (robots who construct all sorts of amazing things). It's rather like an Arabian Night for Robots. The translation, by Michael Kandel (despite the shared initials, no relation) is superb. When browsing Lem on the shelves, pay attention to the translator, if the translator is Kandel (who now writes his own SF) pay special attention. Unfortunately, the translation for Solaris (which was not made directly from the Polish original, but from a French or German translation) is deadly.
Cats may not be restrained. To combat the rats that caused the Black Death in London in 1665, Charles II ordered that cats be allowed to roam free. This decree has the force of law in Canada and municipalities cannot issue cat licenses.
I guess that's why Boston licenses dogs, but not cats.
And of course, in order to "protect" our citizens of Japanese descent, we HAD to force them to give up their real estate and personal property for a few pennies per dollar value -- instead of holding the property "in trust" and letting them have it back after we let them out of prison camps.
It looks like the rush to legislate against encryption has little basis in the facts. An article in today's Guardian states:
FBI investigators had been able to locate hundreds of email communications, sent 30 to 45 days before the attack. Records had been obtained from internet service providers and from public libraries. The messages, in both English and Arabic, were sent within the US and internationally. They had been sent from personal computers or from public sites such as libraries. They used a variety of ISPs, including accounts on Hotmail.
According to the FBI, the conspirators had not used encryption or concealment methods. Once found, the emails could be openly read.
Well -- that's why I specified "during the last couple hundred years". The original poster asserted that Catholics DO certain unsavory things, not that they DID them several hundred years ago.
> A Catholic one is classifying heretics as not
> being neighbours, despite copious instruction
> and example to the contrary in the Bible, a
> book which they sometimes claim to follow.
> It's doctrinally OK for a Catholic to break any
> kind of deal or agreement made with a heretic,
> without notice.
Would you care to cite a source for this "fact" that dates from the last couple of centuries?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (published fairly recently) is a pretty thick volume. I read every page -- and I'm quite sure there's no such doctrine propounded there.
> By way of comparison, I think it's probably
> safe to say that Lafferty dropped way more acid
> than Vance. (Although perhaps not as much as
> Dick:)
Curiously enough, no acid. Plenty of beer, however.
Lafferty was a conservative Catholic mechanical engineer with no "literary" background (other than being a voracious reader. Definitely no counter-cultural tendencies, despite his very unique style (and subject matter). I suspect his neglect arose from the fact that there was no pigeon-hole in the literary establishment for eccentric literary stylists who were also "cranky right-wingers".
Back in my youth, my family lived in Tulsa, and my little brother had a friend who lived next door to RAL. Consequently, my wife and I got to visit him in his tiny, book-stuffed house.
> It just doesn't get any better than Vance. He's
> the one true master prose stylist that the
> genres of science fiction and fantasy have
> produced;; only Dick comes within spitting
> distance.
R.A. Lafferty was an even greater stylist (still alive last I heard, but too infirm to write). If you think it's hard to find Vance's books...
One of the great plays Bernard Shaw wrote in his old age, the Apple Cart, deals with this very issue. Alas, few people seem to have read it -- and it is rarely staged (the Canadian Shaw Festival did it last year, however). A synopsis follows:
******quoting*******
The Apple Cart (1929), set in a mythical kingdom of the future, typically (for the extravaganza) rationally follows out an irrational proposition--what would happen if a popular constitutional monarch should abdicate out of frustration with his powerlessness and run for office? King Magnus uses the probability that he would be elected as a threat to force the politicians and bureaucrats to govern more wisely. But ultimately, as Shaw wrote in the preface, "the conflict is not really between royalty and democracy. It is between both and plutocracy, which, having destroyed the royal power by frank force under democratic pretexts, has bought and swallowed democracy."28 Capitalism in the form of a corporation called Breakages Limited runs everything for its own ends, to make money, and cares not what social wreckage it creates in the process, wreckage being as profitable as any business, if not more.
****end quoting*****
extracted from:
From British Drama 1890-1950: A Critical History,
by R. F. Dietrich
Hegel said something like: "The most perfect freedom arises from an individual's total subjection to the will of the state."
Simply substitute "Microsoft" for "state" -- and you will have MS's working definition of freedom.
Re:Gee, this topic always reminds me of...
on
Linux to Fragment?
·
· Score: 1
Long, long ago -- back in the days before mini-cams and instantaneous transmission from the sites of fires, auto accidents, crime scenes, etc., reporters actually had to report breaking news (on the evening news show) without showing pictures. To lure viewers into tuning back in for the late night news show, they promised that the tape of the exciting event would be back at the studio, edited and ready to roll in time for the later broadcast.
Marty Heidt, the investigator here, is apparently an Iowa farmer in real life. What amazes me is that virtually no member of the mainstream press seems to have bothered to look into the materials Mr. Heidt has gathered to determine whether his interpretations are tenable.
MEK
Re:Miyazaki On A Popsicle Stick
on
Essential Anime
·
· Score: 1
Nausicaa.net IS a tremendous resource -- but right now it is out of action due to an equipment failure.
I would bet that, if you did a survey of everyday computer users, you would find that they all simply assume that the underpinning of the Internet (and all the nice sites and services they use there) is built upon Microsoft products. The free/open software foundations are essentially invisible to them. Professional technology writers should, one would presume, know better.
Isn't it amazing what people will believe if they hear it repeated by spin-meisters enough times. A little background on the "Gore invents Internet" story, courtesy of the Daily Howler archive (www.dailyhowler.com) for 3-26-99:
[begin quote]
Did Vice President Gore "invent the Internet?" Better yet: Did he say that he did? Here is what the VP said when he chatted with Wolf on March 9:
GORE: During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.
And of course Gore did take the lead, within the Congress, in promoting and advancing the technical developments that have led to our now-beloved Net. Here's what Internet guru Vinton Cerf told the Post's John Schwartz:
SCHWARTZ: Vinton G. Cerf, a senior vice president at MCI Worldcom and the person most often called "the father of the Internet" for his part in designing the network's common computer language, said in an e-mail interview yesterday, "I think it is very fair to say that the Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given it and related research areas by the vice president in his current role and in his earlier role as senator."
According to Schwartz, Katie Hafner, co-author of a history of the Internet, "agreed" with that assessment:
SCHWARTZ: Hafner said people have been haggling over the true beginnings of the network for decades. "...[T]here are so many people who did at least one pivotal thing in either creating the network, or encouraging the use of the network, or bringing the network to the public--and Gore was one of those people."
William Greider wrote this, in a Rolling Stone profile published before the recent flap:
GREIDER: [Gore] held the first congressional hearings on industry's casual disposal of toxic wastes and on global warming, and he was an early champion of the system we now call the Internet.
Chuck Raasch, of USA Today, quoted University of Pennsylvania professor Dave Farber, whom Schwartz described as "one of the early players in the Internet:"
RAASCH: Dave Farber, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told [The Commercial Appeal of Memphis], "Gore did not technically create the Internet, but without him there is a good chance it would not be where it is today."
Indeed, when Gore made his initial statement March 9, it produced no comments in the press corps. On Wednesday, March 10, and on Thursday, March 11 not a word was written. Even in the Washington Times, a paper which lives for Clinton-Gore scandal, not a single word appeared about what the VP had said.
But to many within this celebrity press corps, it's just not a day without scandal. And as we've often shown you before, the scribes just love being handed spin, and rushing it right into print! And that's exactly how the Great Gore Scandal took the nation on Friday, March 12, as obedient pundits recited spin they'd been handed by historian Richard Armey.
We're not quite sure who invented the fax, but Armey sure knows how to use it. He sends out messages of dubious accuracy, and pundits just type them right up! For the pundits, it's a whole lot simpler than going out and spending their time doing real reporting! And Armey's stuff has pre-packaged panache, the kind that those editors simply love!
And so it was that, starting on Friday, the nation's press was full of experts, spinning remarkably similar tales about how the Net had begun.
[end quote]
To anyone not familiar with Daily Howler, I recommend it highly. It "reviews", in a relatively non-partisan fashion, the press's failings in covering the current campaign. It doesn't provide "answers", so much as it points out what questions the press ought to be asking -- but isn't.
Believe it or not lawyers ARE sometimes held accountable for their behavior. Just last week, a judge (in South Georgia) issued a harshly-worded rebuke to our opposing counsel in several cases for persistently misrepresenting facts in his briefs.
I once told one of my (then) law firm's client that it ought not to press an intellectual property-related claim against a former employee. The legal action the company wanted to take was based on vindictiveness and had very little (i.e. no) legal basis. I think the company did not, in fact, pursue its plan. I do know that the partner who "owned" this client (and who was on vacation when I provided my ill-advised opinion) was furious. It was not too long afterwards that I was looking for a new job.
I now work for a government agency that actually pays me to tell it has screwed up when it has, in fact, done so.
Slashdot Mirror
...I would be surprised if Stardock ever develops for anything but MS OSes. Brad Wardell pretty much despised Linux back in Stardock's OS/2 era (especially after having been burned on an early effort to port GalCiv). Even if BW did not have a fundamental philosophical objection to the concept of free/open source software, he would still need to avoid Linux like the plague. Stardock has a pretty nice business providing add-ons to MS -- and, so far, at least, MS has not tried to muscle in on anything that Stardock is doing. Imagine what would happen to his business, which exists solely due to the sufferance and good will of MS, if he allowed porting (or worse, developed) products for "enemy" operating systems.
Brad has always been a good guy -- I wish him well, even though it is not likely that I will ever use any Stardock software again. (I bought almost everything it released for OS/2 -- but OS/2 is long gone from our family computers).
MEK
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0
No fullscreen problems for me either -- and installation of the new RPMs was trouble free on SuSE 8.1 (I got prompted to install the SuSE disc containing termcap as a prerequisite).
MEK
...works markedly better than the slightly older one that came with SuSE 8.1. It plays divx files and VCDs at least as well as WMP on Windows 98 and better than WMP on NT.
MEK
BMI is the Broadcast Music Institute, one of the bodies that license the use of music on behalf of composers (or on behalf of the people to whom composers assign their rights):
MEK
all confused in this thread.
BMI is the Broadcast Music institute, one of the bodies that license the use of composers (or the people to whom composers assign their rights):
http://www.bmi.com/
EMI is a recorded music seller, and a music publishing company, based in London:
http://www.emigroup.com/
BMG is the Bertelsman Music Group, a different company in the same business as EMI, whose headquarters is now in New York City (but used to be in Germany, once upon a time):
http://www.bmg.com/
MEK
There are two licensed R3 release from Hong Kong, a Cantonese dub, and the original Japanese version (with English subtitles), which is about half the price of the Japanese R2 release, see:
3 85 64&did=0&code=c§ion=anime&
y .h tm
h tm l
http://us.yesasia.com/en/PrdDept.aspx?pid=10018
There also are, or will be soon, licensed R3 versions from Taiwan and Korea. For Chinese readers, the Taiwanese DVD is described at:
http://bvhe.bvi.com.tw/event/ghibli_spiritedawa
Bottom line: If a DVD of a Miyazaki film claims to be "all region", it's almost certainly a bootleg. If it has a region code, it is probably an authorized release. For further information on bootleg versions, see:
http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/video/answers.
MEK
Cyberiad is one of his funniest books. It is the story (mainly) of two robot constructors (robots who construct all sorts of amazing things). It's rather like an Arabian Night for Robots. The translation, by Michael Kandel (despite the shared initials, no relation) is superb. When browsing Lem on the shelves, pay attention to the translator, if the translator is Kandel (who now writes his own SF) pay special attention. Unfortunately, the translation for Solaris (which was not made directly from the Polish original, but from a French or German translation) is deadly.
MEK
Michael Kerpan
And of course, in order to "protect" our citizens of Japanese descent, we HAD to force them to give up their real estate and personal property for a few pennies per dollar value -- instead of holding the property "in trust" and letting them have it back after we let them out of prison camps.
Guardian: How the plotters slipped US net
Well -- that's why I specified "during the last couple hundred years". The original poster asserted that Catholics DO certain unsavory things, not that they DID them several hundred years ago.
> A Catholic one is classifying heretics as not
> being neighbours, despite copious instruction
> and example to the contrary in the Bible, a
> book which they sometimes claim to follow.
> It's doctrinally OK for a Catholic to break any
> kind of deal or agreement made with a heretic,
> without notice.
Would you care to cite a source for this "fact" that dates from the last couple of centuries?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (published fairly recently) is a pretty thick volume. I read every page -- and I'm quite sure there's no such doctrine propounded there.
> By way of comparison, I think it's probably :)
> safe to say that Lafferty dropped way more acid
> than Vance. (Although perhaps not as much as
> Dick
Curiously enough, no acid. Plenty of beer, however.
Lafferty was a conservative Catholic mechanical engineer with no "literary" background (other than being a voracious reader. Definitely no counter-cultural tendencies, despite his very unique style (and subject matter). I suspect his neglect arose from the fact that there was no pigeon-hole in the literary establishment for eccentric literary stylists who were also "cranky right-wingers".
Back in my youth, my family lived in Tulsa, and my little brother had a friend who lived next door to RAL. Consequently, my wife and I got to visit him in his tiny, book-stuffed house.
> It just doesn't get any better than Vance. He's
...
> the one true master prose stylist that the
> genres of science fiction and fantasy have
> produced;; only Dick comes within spitting
> distance.
R.A. Lafferty was an even greater stylist (still alive last I heard, but too infirm to write). If you think it's hard to find Vance's books
One of the great plays Bernard Shaw wrote in his old age, the Apple Cart, deals with this very issue. Alas, few people seem to have read it -- and it is rarely staged (the Canadian Shaw Festival did it last year, however). A synopsis follows:
5 .h tm
******quoting*******
The Apple Cart (1929), set in a mythical kingdom of the future, typically (for the extravaganza) rationally follows out an irrational proposition--what would happen if a popular constitutional monarch should abdicate out of frustration with his powerlessness and run for office? King Magnus uses the probability that he would be elected as a threat to force the politicians and bureaucrats to govern more wisely. But ultimately, as Shaw wrote in the preface, "the conflict is not really between royalty and democracy. It is between both and plutocracy, which, having destroyed the royal power by frank force under democratic pretexts, has bought and swallowed democracy."28 Capitalism in the form of a corporation called Breakages Limited runs everything for its own ends, to make money, and cares not what social wreckage it creates in the process, wreckage being as profitable as any business, if not more.
****end quoting*****
extracted from:
From British Drama 1890-1950: A Critical History,
by R. F. Dietrich
http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dietrich/britishdrama
Hegel said something like: "The most perfect freedom arises from an individual's total subjection to the will of the state."
Simply substitute "Microsoft" for "state" -- and you will have MS's working definition of freedom.
Long, long ago -- back in the days before mini-cams and instantaneous transmission from the sites of fires, auto accidents, crime scenes, etc., reporters actually had to report breaking news (on the evening news show) without showing pictures. To lure viewers into tuning back in for the late night news show, they promised that the tape of the exciting event would be back at the studio, edited and ready to roll in time for the later broadcast.
Michael Kerpan
An up-to-date discussion of Bush's "missing in action" period
A link to lots of resources on the Bush vs National Guard issue
Marty Heidt, the investigator here, is apparently an Iowa farmer in real life. What amazes me is that virtually no member of the mainstream press seems to have bothered to look into the materials Mr. Heidt has gathered to determine whether his interpretations are tenable.
MEK
Nausicaa.net IS a tremendous resource -- but right now it is out of action due to an equipment failure.
I would bet that, if you did a survey of everyday computer users, you would find that they all simply assume that the underpinning of the Internet (and all the nice sites and services they use there) is built upon Microsoft products. The free/open software foundations are essentially invisible to them. Professional technology writers should, one would presume, know better.
Isn't it amazing what people will believe if they hear it repeated by spin-meisters enough times. A little background on the "Gore invents Internet" story, courtesy of the Daily Howler archive (www.dailyhowler.com) for 3-26-99:
[begin quote]
Did Vice President Gore "invent the Internet?" Better yet: Did he say that he did? Here is what the VP said when he chatted with Wolf on March 9:
GORE: During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.
And of course Gore did take the lead, within the Congress, in promoting and advancing the technical developments that have led to our now-beloved Net. Here's what Internet guru Vinton Cerf told the Post's John Schwartz:
SCHWARTZ: Vinton G. Cerf, a senior vice president at MCI Worldcom and the person most often called "the father of the Internet" for his part in designing the network's common computer language, said in an e-mail interview yesterday, "I think it is very fair to say that the Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given it and related research areas by the vice president in his current role and in his earlier role as senator."
According to Schwartz, Katie Hafner, co-author of a history of the Internet, "agreed" with that assessment:
SCHWARTZ: Hafner said people have been haggling over the true beginnings of the network for decades. "...[T]here are so many people who did at least one pivotal thing in either creating the network, or encouraging the use of the network, or bringing the network to the public--and Gore was one of those people."
William Greider wrote this, in a Rolling Stone profile published before the recent flap:
GREIDER: [Gore] held the first congressional hearings on industry's casual disposal of toxic wastes and on global warming, and he was an early champion of the system we now call the Internet.
Chuck Raasch, of USA Today, quoted University of Pennsylvania professor Dave Farber, whom Schwartz described as "one of the early players in the Internet:"
RAASCH: Dave Farber, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told [The Commercial Appeal of Memphis], "Gore did not technically create the Internet, but without him there is a good chance it would not be where it is today."
Indeed, when Gore made his initial statement March 9, it produced no comments in the press corps. On Wednesday, March 10, and on Thursday, March 11 not a word was written. Even in the Washington Times, a paper which lives for Clinton-Gore scandal, not a single word appeared about what the VP had said.
But to many within this celebrity press corps, it's just not a day without scandal. And as we've often shown you before, the scribes just love being handed spin, and rushing it right into print! And that's exactly how the Great Gore Scandal took the nation on Friday, March 12, as obedient pundits recited spin they'd been handed by historian Richard Armey.
We're not quite sure who invented the fax, but Armey sure knows how to use it. He sends out messages of dubious accuracy, and pundits just type them right up! For the pundits, it's a whole lot simpler than going out and spending their time doing real reporting! And Armey's stuff has pre-packaged panache, the kind that those editors simply love!
And so it was that, starting on Friday, the nation's press was full of experts, spinning remarkably similar tales about how the Net had begun.
[end quote]
To anyone not familiar with Daily Howler, I recommend it highly. It "reviews", in a relatively non-partisan fashion, the press's failings in covering the current campaign. It doesn't provide "answers", so much as it points out what questions the press ought to be asking -- but isn't.
Michael Kerpan
Believe it or not lawyers ARE sometimes held accountable for their behavior. Just last week, a judge (in South Georgia) issued a harshly-worded rebuke to our opposing counsel in several cases for persistently misrepresenting facts in his briefs.
Michael Kerpan
I once told one of my (then) law firm's client that it ought not to press an intellectual property-related claim against a former employee. The legal action the company wanted to take was based on vindictiveness and had very little (i.e. no) legal basis. I think the company did not, in fact, pursue its plan. I do know that the partner who "owned" this client (and who was on vacation when I provided my ill-advised opinion) was furious. It was not too long afterwards that I was looking for a new job.
I now work for a government agency that actually pays me to tell it has screwed up when it has, in fact, done so.
Michael Kerpan