It's Hasbro's copyright and trademark, and they are absolutely right to defend it they way they are doing. I don't know if Jared made money out of his site (it's slashdotted right now), but even if he didn't, that cease and desist letter seems fully legitimate.
There's a big difference between unintentional copyright infringement (everyone makes mistakes from time to time) and willful infringement coupled with commercial activities. Both are illegal, that's for sure, but damages are more easily demanded from those who appear to know what they are doing.
Even if some people have mixed feelings about copyright laws; it's exactly these laws that protect us too. Without copyright laws, the GPL or any other open source license would be moot and irrelevant. We don't want that to happen, don't we?
Their statement seems to imply that they are only trying to defend themselves against patent litigation. This is consistent with Microsoft's use of patents in the past.
What does Microsoft have to gain by not updating to css2 and other standards?
Developer time? Testing time?
Microsoft just doesn't care about CSS2. Period. Since they dominate over 90% of the market, they wouldn't give a damn.
Seriously: Microsoft probably does have to care for backward compatibility with their own products. If they were to implement CSS2 fully, this could break a lot of sites that were crafted specially for previous IE releases. That would upset a lot more users than the few (?) who care about standards.
Microsoft don't care about standards, but they sure have to care about their own "de facto" pseudo-standards.
It will take the net down for those who connect via the ISPs in question:) Pretty quickly, too...
Yes, of course it will, but only temporarily. All it takes is to dial an ISP abroad and you're connected again. Even if you cut down all intl. phone links, there are still satellites you (as a country) don't control, and dialing up is still possible.
I was a UUCP node operator before IP became ubiquitous. The links were slow and expensive, yet people already exchanged files just as much as we do today. With IP, setting up a peer to peer network over phone lines is much easier today that it was with UUCP back then.
So, if you take down major ISPs, it will slow down the masses. No doubt about it! But it will not prevent truly determined people from running their own part of the Internet. As soon as the general public realizes this, the Net will be back up again in no time!
The Internet is much more resilient against this than you may think. Remember: even in war zones, the last communication channels that break down are internet links. IP is designed in such a way that it can use ANY kind of link whatsoever in a pretty ad hoc manner. Taking down big ISPs may slow down the masses, but it won't take the Internet down!
A very annoying bug for us VIA C3 users was that GCC uses the CMOV instruction with i686, even though CMOV is an optional instruction according to Intel specs. This prevented software compiled for i686 to run on VIA C3 processors.
Does anyone know if this GCC bug is fixed in the development version or in the upcoming 4.0?
You could move that computer outside of your bedroom, and use a silent diskless workstation to access it. Theoretically, you could just move the array outside, using a specialized SCSI bus extender solution (mostly fiber), but that would be far too expensive for such a simple home setup.
Once you're used to fanless systems like EPIA boards (with cold power, a.k.a. 12 V DC-DC converter), you'll be really spoiled, and wouldn't want to go back to even 120mm fans! I sleep much better with zero-noise computers.
Get one of these, add a flash card and you have a *zero* noise computer.
That's not exactly true. I'm using EPIA 5000 boards which run as diskless workstations. They *are* admirably silent, *but* the 12 V DC-DC converter (a PW60A) makes a very silent, yet audible whispering noise. This is normal, but you'd never have heard it if you used some fans!
Am I the only one that avoids VIA chipset products like the plague?
I'm using EPIA 5000 boards with VIA C3 CPUs (fanless) for a big pool of diskless FreeBSD workstations. They run fine so far. The main problems with their chipset are:
The VIA C3 is a i686, but it doesn't support the optional! CMOV instruction, which gcc erroneously assumes being ubiquitous on i686. This gcc bug is not really VIAs fault, but it makes installing Linux distros that are precompiled for i686 impossible.
The VIA VT6102 Rhine II 10/100BaseTX often loses some frames, which is quite pesky in a diskless NFS setup. It's not really that bad, and NFS can be configured with 1k UDP frames or to use TCP directly.
The original EPIA 5000 boards have a problem driving two SDRAM sticks. Newer DDR-based boards have no problems there.
But dispite these shortcomings, EPIA boards are great.
That would be about right. It's much more than an EPIA 5000 single fanless CPU board though, which peaks at 10 watt or so (without HDD, add 4 to 12 watt for that). Take 2 1 GHz VIA processors and, say, 512 MB RAM, then 30 watt really makes sense.
The problem I have with paypal is that it is not regulated.
IIRC, the problem with paypal was with merchant accounts, not with regular buyers accounts. On the slightest complaint against a merchant (wether justified or not) paypal would freeze their account, probably longer than required.
Well, yes, it's risky; but people at Google (or anywhere else) are not all-knowing. Without source code, it's extremely difficult to find stuff like this within IE. If it were that easy, smart people at Mozilla Foundation would have figured out a way to reverse-engineer IE's rendering engine too (a.k.a bug-for-bug compatibility).
The only way for this (sabotage) to transpire is if it's done by stupid coders, or if someone leaks out that source code (again?)... which is both quite likely.
But then again, being a geek, any chance of me actually having sex would be next to impossible.
As a geek, you should have read RFC 696969: "Interpersonal Communications Protocol v3" to start with, esp. paying close attention to the "flirting" section, which specifies the "handshaking protocol to initiate sex."
You can leave out mail and newsgroups, the address book, and the IRC client.
With modern demand paging systems, it doesn't matter anyway, as long as you don't load and use the other components. If you don't do e-mail with mozilla, the email code won't even be fetched from the disk. Same for IRC or other stuff that you don't use.
Slashdot Mirror
Full ack!
It's Hasbro's copyright and trademark, and they are absolutely right to defend it they way they are doing. I don't know if Jared made money out of his site (it's slashdotted right now), but even if he didn't, that cease and desist letter seems fully legitimate.
There's a big difference between unintentional copyright infringement (everyone makes mistakes from time to time) and willful infringement coupled with commercial activities. Both are illegal, that's for sure, but damages are more easily demanded from those who appear to know what they are doing.
Even if some people have mixed feelings about copyright laws; it's exactly these laws that protect us too. Without copyright laws, the GPL or any other open source license would be moot and irrelevant. We don't want that to happen, don't we?
Their statement seems to imply that they are only trying to defend themselves against patent litigation. This is consistent with Microsoft's use of patents in the past.
What does Microsoft have to gain by not updating to css2 and other standards?
Developer time? Testing time?
Microsoft just doesn't care about CSS2. Period. Since they dominate over 90% of the market, they wouldn't give a damn.
Seriously: Microsoft probably does have to care for backward compatibility with their own products. If they were to implement CSS2 fully, this could break a lot of sites that were crafted specially for previous IE releases. That would upset a lot more users than the few (?) who care about standards.
Microsoft don't care about standards, but they sure have to care about their own "de facto" pseudo-standards.
Already done: Jython
It will take the net down for those who connect via the ISPs in question :) Pretty quickly, too...
Yes, of course it will, but only temporarily. All it takes is to dial an ISP abroad and you're connected again. Even if you cut down all intl. phone links, there are still satellites you (as a country) don't control, and dialing up is still possible.
I was a UUCP node operator before IP became ubiquitous. The links were slow and expensive, yet people already exchanged files just as much as we do today. With IP, setting up a peer to peer network over phone lines is much easier today that it was with UUCP back then.
So, if you take down major ISPs, it will slow down the masses. No doubt about it! But it will not prevent truly determined people from running their own part of the Internet. As soon as the general public realizes this, the Net will be back up again in no time!
if you take the entire net down
The Internet is much more resilient against this than you may think. Remember: even in war zones, the last communication channels that break down are internet links. IP is designed in such a way that it can use ANY kind of link whatsoever in a pretty ad hoc manner. Taking down big ISPs may slow down the masses, but it won't take the Internet down!
What about p2c, the Pascal to C compiler?
A very annoying bug for us VIA C3 users was that GCC uses the CMOV instruction with i686, even though CMOV is an optional instruction according to Intel specs. This prevented software compiled for i686 to run on VIA C3 processors.
Does anyone know if this GCC bug is fixed in the development version or in the upcoming 4.0?
You could move that computer outside of your bedroom, and use a silent diskless workstation to access it. Theoretically, you could just move the array outside, using a specialized SCSI bus extender solution (mostly fiber), but that would be far too expensive for such a simple home setup.
Reasonbly quiet and sits in my bedroom.
Once you're used to fanless systems like EPIA boards (with cold power, a.k.a. 12 V DC-DC converter), you'll be really spoiled, and wouldn't want to go back to even 120mm fans! I sleep much better with zero-noise computers.
Get one of these, add a flash card and you have a *zero* noise computer.
That's not exactly true. I'm using EPIA 5000 boards which run as diskless workstations. They *are* admirably silent, *but* the 12 V DC-DC converter (a PW60A) makes a very silent, yet audible whispering noise. This is normal, but you'd never have heard it if you used some fans!
Am I the only one that avoids VIA chipset products like the plague?
I'm using EPIA 5000 boards with VIA C3 CPUs (fanless) for a big pool of diskless FreeBSD workstations. They run fine so far. The main problems with their chipset are:
But dispite these shortcomings, EPIA boards are great.
30 watts per board?
That would be about right. It's much more than an EPIA 5000 single fanless CPU board though, which peaks at 10 watt or so (without HDD, add 4 to 12 watt for that). Take 2 1 GHz VIA processors and, say, 512 MB RAM, then 30 watt really makes sense.
Could you post a link to the site?
Sure: www.allofmp3.com.
Enjoy!
The problem I have with paypal is that it is not regulated.
IIRC, the problem with paypal was with merchant accounts, not with regular buyers accounts. On the slightest complaint against a merchant (wether justified or not) paypal would freeze their account, probably longer than required.
But I may be wrong here.
TMDA works great for me too. But it's best to combine it with a content-based filter to reduce the number of challenges you send out.
Well, yes, it's risky; but people at Google (or anywhere else) are not all-knowing. Without source code, it's extremely difficult to find stuff like this within IE. If it were that easy, smart people at Mozilla Foundation would have figured out a way to reverse-engineer IE's rendering engine too (a.k.a bug-for-bug compatibility).
The only way for this (sabotage) to transpire is if it's done by stupid coders, or if someone leaks out that source code (again?)... which is both quite likely.
since they pull code away from the client into the servers.
If that's true, it would be the renaissance of thin clients and we'll see more low-power, fanless and silent CPUs out there.
But then again, being a geek, any chance of me actually having sex would be next to impossible.
As a geek, you should have read RFC 696969: "Interpersonal Communications Protocol v3" to start with, esp. paying close attention to the "flirting" section, which specifies the "handshaking protocol to initiate sex."
Of course MS could get away with it. All it takes is a low random probability of failure to access Google (say, 5% or so):
You can leave out mail and newsgroups, the address book, and the IRC client.
With modern demand paging systems, it doesn't matter anyway, as long as you don't load and use the other components. If you don't do e-mail with mozilla, the email code won't even be fetched from the disk. Same for IRC or other stuff that you don't use.
All BSDs have open cvs trees.
Technically, that's true. But consider FreeBSD, which uses Perforce internally, before the changes hit the CURRENT CVS branch!
I thought RELEASE was the most stable version of FreeBSD
You are not running RELEASE, if you updated your ports tree :). At least, not *exactly*.
Good luck with the remaining Perl modules.
C'mon, baby, let me show you my pointer.
Uh, that dangling pointer?
/ducks :)
[...] I'd very much like to see an over-the-Internet face-slapping technology developed.
Easy, if you replace face-slapping with electro-shocking.
If you thought that you could get away with using rubber gloves, you are dead wrong: this is a circumvention, and you'll be hit by the DMCA!