If ClearPlay can create modified versions of movies, why can't I publish a book of modified Ansel Adams photographs? (emphasis mine)
You just answered your own question. Because ClearPlay doesn't publish anything but "cut lists." It's the high-tech and highly-precise equivalent of giving the parents ta printed document that says, "at 23 minutes and 20 seconds into the film, hit Mute. Un-mute two seconds later."
the real question is whether ClearPlay has a right to create a derivative work from a copyrighted movie
They didn't before this bill, and they still don't. I am creating the derivative work in my own home for private use, using tools that ClearPlay provided. If I were to rip and alter the movie, and seed a torrent with it (or seed a torrent with an unaltered rip), then I would be in a lot of trouble. If ClearPlay did that, they'd get hammered, too.
Now, if Snow White and the dwarves getting nasty is your thing, then go ahead and make an altered version, or hire someone to do it, and view it in your own home. Call you friends to come over and see it, too, but the day you distribute it count on a lot of angry phone calls from Disney's lawyers, and if you can't mount a parody defense, YUO = 0WN3D.
P.S. search archive.org for SpaceMoose; one cartoon was called "Snow White and the Semen Dwarves."
For all the ranting and raving I see on/. about "it's my DVD, if I want to play it on linux, if I want to skip the commercials, if I want to make a backup/archival copy, I should damn well be able to," I don't see why [some]/.'ers object so much to me skipping parts that I feel are inappropriate for my kids.
After much research, we bought one of the RCA players with "ClearPlay" functionality, and signed up for an annual membership. Don't tell me you've never seen a movie and said, "that was great except for..." How about Kevin Costner's butt in Dances With Wolves, or Robin Hood, or any other movie he ever made. Did I need to see his pasty white cheeks? (No.)
My 2nd biggest complaint with ClearPlay is that you can't see a list of what was removed, i.e. "f*** at 23:20, brief nudity at 25:41" etc. My biggest complaint is that I can't make/modify my own filters, such as removing Hogarth's "guns are bad" speech from The Iron Giant. I love that movie (even though it's more a kids' movie), and I like to watch it with my kids, so I just hit the chapter skip button and poof - no more Hogarth railing about the evils of gun ownership. (And if guns are so bad, why did he take his BB gun with him when he went looking for the giant early in the movie?)
To sum it up, there's nothing wrong with ClearPlay. They're not forcing you to buy it, nor forcing you to use it. Much like proprietary vs. open-source, the issue is choice, or more specifically, do I have a choice at all?
because when someone covered by "anti-discrimination" laws is fired for cause, the first thing they seem to think is, "they fired me because I'm black/female/hispanic/gay/handicapped." No, it could never be because you didn't do your freaking job, it's obviously because of something covered by a law and therefore promising a hefty jury award.
I saw this first-hand a few jobs ago. A black female with a hispanic surname was in charge of the QA department. Rather than do her job, she dealt Amway from her desk. Everyone knew it, and she made no effort to hide the fact that if you worked for her, how much Amway you bought was reflected in your performance review. HR and Legal swatted away people's concerns by letting us know that they knew what she was doing, and if she weren't so "protected" she would have been fired long ago. As it stood, her thrice-protected status made her nearly invulnerable. Sickening.
THAT is why anti-discrimination laws are wrong - because they give overly litigious people one more excuse to sue. Oh, and something libertarian about how it's my business and I can hire whom I please. If I miss out on a great engineer who also happens to be gay, then that's MY problem, not society's; some other company will hire him if he's that good.
Good quote from the article: "Tridge believes strongly enough in free software that he thinks anyone using non-free software is living in sin."
While McVoy may be overstating things a bit, I get this sort of vibe from some F/OSS people, most notably RMS, who adovcated outlawing proprietary source code in the GNU Manifesto.
I run SuSE 9.2 at home, and I use Firefox and OpenOffice on Windows at work. I also provide the "freedom" angle for every tool we consider using or purchasing. We use GCC instead of commercial compilers so that we never have to renew a license or pass around a dongle. We use a libre and gratis source code management tool. Our lab machines and test stations run linux.
Even in hardware, I try to inject freedom: we are buying a Bitscope instead of a competitor's product because their gratis (but not libre, duly noted) software runs on Windows or Linux, while the slightly-more-capable competitor only runs on Windows. Additionally, the Bitscope interface is documented well enough that we will be writing one for an automated hardware validation test, something that would be much more difficult if we had to reverse-engineer the protocol.
I found myself explaining this philosophy to our FNG (f-ing new guy) recently, when he asked why we didn't buy tool X from vendor Y: "we want to control our tools, rather than have our tools control us."
Contrast this to our JTAG/ICE which used to support Motorola and IBM PowerPC chips until the company was bought a few times and wound up in the Motorola family of companies. We had to upgrade the firmware and software to support a new Mot chip, and with that we lost the support for the IBM PPC chips.
F/OSS is great, but we will not make inroads if we have an attitude like that attributed to Tridge; we cannot [openly] "look down" on those who are stuck in the land of proprietary software, or we come across as self-righteous zealots, and we all know how well that sort of attitude is taken these days.
58% of web surfers deleted cookies from their system in 2004. This has sent a loud message to marketers in regard to consumer's preference as to tracking their online activities. The marketers have responded with PIE. Persistent Identification Element
So, when they noticed people were deleting cookies (TFA probably explains how they found this out), they realized that this was a "mandate" from the consumers that they don't like being tracked with cookies. Their reponse? A new tracking mechanism! Brilliant. This reminds me of pop-unders and floating frames in response to people getting bent at X-10 pop-up ads.
Since the marketing weenies didn't really understand the message, I'll repeat it in plain english:
We block your ads because we don't want to buy your crap. We delete tracking cookies because we don't want to be tracked. Any attempt to overcome our efforts at [semi-]anonymous and ad-free browsing just pisses us off even more. We hate you. Die, die, die!
I added my latest job skills, made sure the e-mail address was correct, wrote a new cover letter, visited Kinko's to get some nice paper, made photocopies instead of sending inkjet prints, and then contributed to my mailman's retirement account 37 cents at a time.
It means they got MBA's and brushed up on their golf game; I'm doing good to hit par*2 at the local putt-putt/mini-golf course. Hence, I'm an engineer, and they're making enough money to fill a swimming pool with medical-grade cocaine.
But yes, in some ways, smarter than me; they know how and are willing to play the corporate game of chutes-n-ladders.
... in a salary discussion. The context is that I work in a very large company with many gratuitous layers of brown-nos^W management. As you rise higher in the food chain, your bonuses and stock options grow. People like me and my peers, who do the actual work, are never eligible for any stock options or the like. Once a year, we get a measly bonus while our CEO gets millions of dollars and hay bales of stock certificates.
So my boss tried to console me with some lip-service: the engineers are more valuable than the managers. You see, the company can find a new manager without too much trouble, but replacing an engineer, someone who can come in and pick up the hardware and the code, is much more difficult. This led to the obvious question: if the engineers are so valuable, why don't we get the huge bonuses and stock options?
I'll let you guess at his answer, but here's a hint: I updated my resume that night.
Haven't you noticed that we already have a sort of "Virtual Comdex"? Instead of waiting until November in Las Vegas, there is a press release about HD-DVD. Sites like/. pick up on it, and we all jump on the website, bringing it to a crawl. This is the electronic equivalent of when some booth or another would have a particularly attractive spokesmodel, and the crowd of men waiting for an autographed poster would block the aisle. I shouldered my way through (rudely) once, but decided to simply go around the next blockage.
Trade shows have their place, but once internet access became taken-for-granted in the U.S., Comdex never managed to find their niche.
Nowadays, you go to a specialized show, such as Embedded Systems Conference (just got back; it was TEH R0X0RZ), Game Developer's Conference, etc. I've also noticed that larger vendors are becoming enamoured of running their own shows, i.e. WindRiver Developers' Conference, Microsoft PDC, and others. Could this be so that they have your rapt attention, and no competition across the aisle in the exhibit hall?
I went to Comdex a few times in the mid 90's, and while there were some neat things to see (hardware MPEG decoder cards had just become widely available, with several vendors showing off their various models), it was just too crowded and too unfocused. Wander two aisles over, and instead of multimedia hardware, you were at the cheap PC case makers. Even a few large LED manufacturers set up booths. WTF? I'm sure LED's are important, but how large of an audience can you get at Comdex for a commodity product like LED's?
It's time to move on, and let Comdex die. I'd insert a "Netcraft confirms it" troll/joke here, but I'm sure somebody's already dedicated an entire post to it.
There's another one my former boss (an Iranian emigree in 1977) told me.
Three guys from the CIA, Mossad, and the Iranian Secret Police have a competition. Each of them has a burlap sack, and must go into the jungle to capture a wild boar. The CIA goes first. 30 minutes later, he's back, with a wild boar in the sack. Mossad goes next, and he comes back in just 15 minutes with a similar catch.
The Iranian Secret Police goes next. He's back in 2 minutes. The CIA and Mossad are shocked. "No, you can't have alreayd caught a wild boar."
"Open the sack and see for yourself." The CIA and Mossad look in the bag and see a rabbit with cigarette burns, bruises, cuts, and possibly a few broken bones.
"That's not a boar, that's a rabbit. You lose."
On hearing this, the rabbit shrieks out, "no!!!!!! I'm a wild boar! I've been a wild boar for seven years. I can give you the names of other wild boars who are still loose in the jungle!"
... but for a different reason: SCO[tm] is a trademark, not a copyrighted name. You have confused copyright and trademark, so let me help you understand the difference.
If I write a book titled "SCO[tm] Sucks Donkey Balls," that book is a copyrightable work. Assuming Congress keeps listening to Disney every 10-20 years (as the copyright on Steamboat Mickey is about to expire), copyright will last forever. I believe right now we're at life of the author plus 95 years. The point is that copyright can (theoretically) expire.
My book title uses a trademarked name, that is "SCO[tm]" That name is a trademark of some donkey-ball-sucking company in Lindon UT that thinks they own the mind of every programmer who ever wrote #include <stdio.h>. Trademarks last FOREVER, or until you don't bother to pursue violations.
you'll find that the volunteer work of all of your users will give you a much better final product than whatever you release
Few things are more frustrating than to go to the "docs" section of an F/OSS software project and find it's a wiki with lots of "TO DO" headings and no useful information. Here's a tip: if you don't provide any documentation, you won't have any users to volunteer their hard work documenting the code that you know a lot better than they do, since you wrote it.
Now, wiki as a tool to organize and present the docs is another issue entirely. Wiki isn't bad, but simplying plunking down a start page and expecting users to fill in the details is not going to solve the problem of missing docs. You need to populate the wiki with useful information FIRST. And make sure that you offer an off-line version of the docs; some people rip PDF's to their handheld and read them on the bus/train while travelling to and from work.
Other than pointing out the "rob Paul to pay Peter, and skim a percentage off the top" scam that most governments have devolved into, I did not accuse the submitter of running a scam. I am, however, concerned that he doesn't know how or if he can accomplish the goal, yet the grant has apparently been received already.
Another person pointed out that grants do not always come from the government. True, but the word generally connotes government sources, otherwise it would be "hired," "retained," or "paid." Grants are "free" money, and nobody gives out "free" money except the government, which can steal or print (same difference) it at will. (Well, OK, some community orgs give out "free" money, too, but it pales compared to the collective Sugar Daddy that the governments have become.)
Now, setting aside the source of the money, you are right: his two questions are valid. I made no effort to answer them, because when he asks about "security" in the same sentence as "wireless," he's already asking an unanswerable question. I think once this guy's project is done, I'll go visit with a laptop and a copy of AirPwn (google it).
My point remains: if the people in the pueblo want the access, why aren't they paying for it, instead of having someone else foot the bill?
I am now officially off-topic. Please mod as such.
I have to wonder what's so important about 150 homes having wireless broadband that the government sees fit to take other peoples' money and hand it to ths guy who doesn't even know if he can accomplish what his grant application promised. If he can't get all 150 homes wired up, will they make him return the money? I bet, just like the public schools, his failure will be rewarded with more money.
Thanks a lot, submitter. I'll remember you next time I'm in the voting booth. Whereas I used to vote straight (or almost straight) Republican, I've been mixed between Libertarian and Republican for the last several years. I think it's time to go 100% Libertarian so that leeches like you can pay for your own damn internet access, just like I do.
Please mod me -1, Overtaxed. Failing that, Flamebait, Troll, or Overrated will be accepted.
You have got to be trolling, but I just can't resist.
If the end-user wants to simply read websites, check mail, and write a document or two, a Celeron with Windows XP is the ideal choice.
I can't believe you actually recommend XP for web and mail - what a way to increase the number of zombies and spam-bots on TEH INTARWEB than to set people up with an insecure operating system, an insecure web browser, and an insecure mail client. Smooth move, ex-lax.
For web access, e-mail, and writing documents, a linux live CD is the way to go, with documents and preferences are stored on a USB flash drive. It's hard for a rootkit to 0wn a system when all executables are stored on read-only media.
My kids' computer runs windows (for the games), and that's why their computer is blocked by MAC address at the router.
I googled all over for the perfect WAV file, converted it to the proper format (A-law IIRC), put it on my home site, and then downloaded it via the phone's GPRS. The next day, as I went into a meeting, I asked a friend to call my cell phone in 10 minutes. Ten minutes later, my phone farted. LOUDLY.
It seemed like it should have been funnier, but since then, I've kept the phone strictly on vibrate.
I bet you show your receipt at the door at Fry's too...
I used to show my receipt at Fry's, until folks like John Gilmore woke me up, so to speak; I haven't shown the receipt since then. My reasoning goes like this: the store is open to the public, they have "loss prevention agents" all over the store, and the path from the cash registers to the exit is segregated from the rest of the merchandise. You may see my receipt only after I am arrested (falsely) for shoplifting. And then you may see my lawyer's card.
My bet would be the 1st of April. Repeat after me, "Embrace and extend."
If MS were to adopt this protocol, it would become GroupDAV.NET, with extra-special "features" added that "our customers demand." These features of course would not be compatible with existing open-source programs, nor would they be compliant with the standard, and guess who would win the ensuing "betamax" war?
As another poster has pointed out, they are wedded to MS in unholy matrimony because of Exchange. Don't think for a minute that MS will give up one of their better lock-ins in the name of "compatibility." Just like when one political party talks about "bipartisanship" and actually means "cave in to our demands," when MS talks about compatibility and "open standards" what they really mean is "do it our way, or we'll tell you where to go today."
MS has not patented their.doc format in such a way to prevent other programs from interpreting it
Yes, but they are trying to patent (or have already patented?) their "new" MS Orifice format, based on XML. How you can patent a file format is beyond me, but then again we are talking about the same patent office that approved the setuid patent oh so many years ago.
I remember reading that the patent office used to require a working model of the invention. It might be time to bring that rule back.
Why not have the car's mileage checked annually and just get a tax statement then ?
I had your same thought, but then I realized that if you had to pay an extra $500 (for example) when you registered your car, you might remember to vote on election day.
One of the reasons we Commiefornians were so pissed at Gov. Davis was his decision to stop back-filling the Vehicle License Fee (car tax). He didn't raise it, he just had the state stop reimbursing the counties for 2/3 of it, and so the counties had to get that money from somewhere. Well, the end result was my car registration and everyone else's went WAY up, and that didn't help Gray at the polls.
Also consider that a large percentage of the population lives paycheck-to-paycheck. The idea of saving money for an unexpected expense, or even a planned one like a tax bill coming due, is foreign to them. Just like the government gets their taxes a little bit at a time instead of sending you a bill for $10,000 on 15 Apr, expecting that you saved an appropriate portion of your paycheck every month for the past year.
If this passes, I will not have one installed in my car; it will be the final straw to get me to leave this idiotic state.
I'd have to agree 100%. (Does that make me an AOHeller? "ME TOO!")
The Eiffel language has some very good design decisions, but the IDE was all right-clicky this, and drag that, and so on. If memory serves correctly, you set a watch on a variable by dragging it's textual name to a "watch" button. Retarded with a capital "tard." Also, I tried to find a way to compile from a makefile and command-line, being the junkie that I am, but couldn't and eventually gave up.
Of course, I've always been required to use C/C++ (and assembly lately) in my job, never had a chance to even suggest an alternate choice of languages, and this seems to go back to the point of an earlier poster: we don't use something other can C/C++ on our projects because "nobody" else is using it on their projects.
Off-topic, yes, but I'm running a little low on self-restraint today.
So why isn't the US bringing democracy to Saudi Arabia, China, Iran, Nepal, or North Korea?
There are two answers:
"Patience, Starling. All good things to those who wait."
Because bitches like you will whine about how wrong we are to play "world's policeman," when in reality we're just bringing a long-overdue ass-whipping to some pretty despotic tyrants.
Except China, of course. I don't think we really want them to have democracy, because then they wouldn't work for slave wages to build all the cheap crap we buy, or let us sell them a bunch of our crap either. But the rest of those are fair game, probably Iran first, then Saudi Arabia. I bet "they" would hate us a lot less in the Middle East if we quit propping up tyrants like the Saudi royal family.
the perfect knowledge that they will NEVER be doing it again
I thought I was the only person who felt that way about the best feature of the death penalty - zero recividism.
I have very few qualms about executing child molesters in the most painful and excrutiating way possible, 8th amendment be damned. Once the sentence is passed, lead them outside to the television cameras, and begin the execution live on national television. Have a doctor on-hand to resuscitate the scumbag as many times as possible until his body simply cannot be repaired.
My one qualm is that children can be coached to say almost anything. The most famous case I'm aware of is the McMartin pre-school. I was a teenager at the time, but the news reports interested me greatly because of the satanic worship/human sacrifice angle. As the case progressed, it became plainly obvious to me that at least 98% of what the kids were claiming was total bullshit, and that put the other 2% seriously in doubt.
People confess to all kinds of things just to make the police shut up, and kids have a natural tendency to want to please authority figures anyway. Say Mr. Smith touched you and suddenly everyone is paying lots of attention to you. Say he did more, and you get even more attention.
I have a friend who works in the county sherrif's office. He said, "you'd be amazed what people will say to me in chat rooms when they think I'm a 14-year old boy." What a shitty job, says I. But these are dangerous and sick people, and a painful death, provided we're 100% sure of their guilt, is far too good for them.
Slashdot Mirror
You just answered your own question. Because ClearPlay doesn't publish anything but "cut lists." It's the high-tech and highly-precise equivalent of giving the parents ta printed document that says, "at 23 minutes and 20 seconds into the film, hit Mute. Un-mute two seconds later."
the real question is whether ClearPlay has a right to create a derivative work from a copyrighted movie
They didn't before this bill, and they still don't. I am creating the derivative work in my own home for private use, using tools that ClearPlay provided. If I were to rip and alter the movie, and seed a torrent with it (or seed a torrent with an unaltered rip), then I would be in a lot of trouble. If ClearPlay did that, they'd get hammered, too.
Now, if Snow White and the dwarves getting nasty is your thing, then go ahead and make an altered version, or hire someone to do it, and view it in your own home. Call you friends to come over and see it, too, but the day you distribute it count on a lot of angry phone calls from Disney's lawyers, and if you can't mount a parody defense, YUO = 0WN3D.
P.S. search archive.org for SpaceMoose; one cartoon was called "Snow White and the Semen Dwarves."
For all the ranting and raving I see on /. about "it's my DVD, if I want to play it on linux, if I want to skip the commercials, if I want to make a backup/archival copy, I should damn well be able to," I don't see why [some] /.'ers object so much to me skipping parts that I feel are inappropriate for my kids.
-paul
My 2nd biggest complaint with ClearPlay is that you can't see a list of what was removed, i.e. "f*** at 23:20, brief nudity at 25:41" etc. My biggest complaint is that I can't make/modify my own filters, such as removing Hogarth's "guns are bad" speech from The Iron Giant. I love that movie (even though it's more a kids' movie), and I like to watch it with my kids, so I just hit the chapter skip button and poof - no more Hogarth railing about the evils of gun ownership. (And if guns are so bad, why did he take his BB gun with him when he went looking for the giant early in the movie?)
To sum it up, there's nothing wrong with ClearPlay. They're not forcing you to buy it, nor forcing you to use it. Much like proprietary vs. open-source, the issue is choice, or more specifically, do I have a choice at all?
-paul
I saw this first-hand a few jobs ago. A black female with a hispanic surname was in charge of the QA department. Rather than do her job, she dealt Amway from her desk. Everyone knew it, and she made no effort to hide the fact that if you worked for her, how much Amway you bought was reflected in your performance review. HR and Legal swatted away people's concerns by letting us know that they knew what she was doing, and if she weren't so "protected" she would have been fired long ago. As it stood, her thrice-protected status made her nearly invulnerable. Sickening.
THAT is why anti-discrimination laws are wrong - because they give overly litigious people one more excuse to sue. Oh, and something libertarian about how it's my business and I can hire whom I please. If I miss out on a great engineer who also happens to be gay, then that's MY problem, not society's; some other company will hire him if he's that good.
-paul
While McVoy may be overstating things a bit, I get this sort of vibe from some F/OSS people, most notably RMS, who adovcated outlawing proprietary source code in the GNU Manifesto.
I run SuSE 9.2 at home, and I use Firefox and OpenOffice on Windows at work. I also provide the "freedom" angle for every tool we consider using or purchasing. We use GCC instead of commercial compilers so that we never have to renew a license or pass around a dongle. We use a libre and gratis source code management tool. Our lab machines and test stations run linux.
Even in hardware, I try to inject freedom: we are buying a Bitscope instead of a competitor's product because their gratis (but not libre, duly noted) software runs on Windows or Linux, while the slightly-more-capable competitor only runs on Windows. Additionally, the Bitscope interface is documented well enough that we will be writing one for an automated hardware validation test, something that would be much more difficult if we had to reverse-engineer the protocol.
I found myself explaining this philosophy to our FNG (f-ing new guy) recently, when he asked why we didn't buy tool X from vendor Y: "we want to control our tools, rather than have our tools control us."
Contrast this to our JTAG/ICE which used to support Motorola and IBM PowerPC chips until the company was bought a few times and wound up in the Motorola family of companies. We had to upgrade the firmware and software to support a new Mot chip, and with that we lost the support for the IBM PPC chips.
F/OSS is great, but we will not make inroads if we have an attitude like that attributed to Tridge; we cannot [openly] "look down" on those who are stuck in the land of proprietary software, or we come across as self-righteous zealots, and we all know how well that sort of attitude is taken these days.
-paul
So, when they noticed people were deleting cookies (TFA probably explains how they found this out), they realized that this was a "mandate" from the consumers that they don't like being tracked with cookies. Their reponse? A new tracking mechanism! Brilliant. This reminds me of pop-unders and floating frames in response to people getting bent at X-10 pop-up ads.
Since the marketing weenies didn't really understand the message, I'll repeat it in plain english:
We block your ads because we don't want to buy your crap. We delete tracking cookies because we don't want to be tracked. Any attempt to overcome our efforts at [semi-]anonymous and ad-free browsing just pisses us off even more. We hate you. Die, die, die!
-paul
-paul
But yes, in some ways, smarter than me; they know how and are willing to play the corporate game of chutes-n-ladders.
-paul
So my boss tried to console me with some lip-service: the engineers are more valuable than the managers. You see, the company can find a new manager without too much trouble, but replacing an engineer, someone who can come in and pick up the hardware and the code, is much more difficult. This led to the obvious question: if the engineers are so valuable, why don't we get the huge bonuses and stock options?
I'll let you guess at his answer, but here's a hint: I updated my resume that night.
-paul
Trade shows have their place, but once internet access became taken-for-granted in the U.S., Comdex never managed to find their niche.
-paul
I went to Comdex a few times in the mid 90's, and while there were some neat things to see (hardware MPEG decoder cards had just become widely available, with several vendors showing off their various models), it was just too crowded and too unfocused. Wander two aisles over, and instead of multimedia hardware, you were at the cheap PC case makers. Even a few large LED manufacturers set up booths. WTF? I'm sure LED's are important, but how large of an audience can you get at Comdex for a commodity product like LED's?
It's time to move on, and let Comdex die. I'd insert a "Netcraft confirms it" troll/joke here, but I'm sure somebody's already dedicated an entire post to it.
-paul
Three guys from the CIA, Mossad, and the Iranian Secret Police have a competition. Each of them has a burlap sack, and must go into the jungle to capture a wild boar. The CIA goes first. 30 minutes later, he's back, with a wild boar in the sack. Mossad goes next, and he comes back in just 15 minutes with a similar catch.
The Iranian Secret Police goes next. He's back in 2 minutes. The CIA and Mossad are shocked. "No, you can't have alreayd caught a wild boar."
"Open the sack and see for yourself." The CIA and Mossad look in the bag and see a rabbit with cigarette burns, bruises, cuts, and possibly a few broken bones.
"That's not a boar, that's a rabbit. You lose."
On hearing this, the rabbit shrieks out, "no!!!!!! I'm a wild boar! I've been a wild boar for seven years. I can give you the names of other wild boars who are still loose in the jungle!"
-paul
If I write a book titled "SCO[tm] Sucks Donkey Balls," that book is a copyrightable work. Assuming Congress keeps listening to Disney every 10-20 years (as the copyright on Steamboat Mickey is about to expire), copyright will last forever. I believe right now we're at life of the author plus 95 years. The point is that copyright can (theoretically) expire.
My book title uses a trademarked name, that is "SCO[tm]" That name is a trademark of some donkey-ball-sucking company in Lindon UT that thinks they own the mind of every programmer who ever wrote #include <stdio.h>. Trademarks last FOREVER, or until you don't bother to pursue violations.
-paul
Few things are more frustrating than to go to the "docs" section of an F/OSS software project and find it's a wiki with lots of "TO DO" headings and no useful information. Here's a tip: if you don't provide any documentation, you won't have any users to volunteer their hard work documenting the code that you know a lot better than they do, since you wrote it.
Now, wiki as a tool to organize and present the docs is another issue entirely. Wiki isn't bad, but simplying plunking down a start page and expecting users to fill in the details is not going to solve the problem of missing docs. You need to populate the wiki with useful information FIRST. And make sure that you offer an off-line version of the docs; some people rip PDF's to their handheld and read them on the bus/train while travelling to and from work.
-paul
Another person pointed out that grants do not always come from the government. True, but the word generally connotes government sources, otherwise it would be "hired," "retained," or "paid." Grants are "free" money, and nobody gives out "free" money except the government, which can steal or print (same difference) it at will. (Well, OK, some community orgs give out "free" money, too, but it pales compared to the collective Sugar Daddy that the governments have become.)
Now, setting aside the source of the money, you are right: his two questions are valid. I made no effort to answer them, because when he asks about "security" in the same sentence as "wireless," he's already asking an unanswerable question. I think once this guy's project is done, I'll go visit with a laptop and a copy of AirPwn (google it).
My point remains: if the people in the pueblo want the access, why aren't they paying for it, instead of having someone else foot the bill?
I am now officially off-topic. Please mod as such.
-paul
Thanks a lot, submitter. I'll remember you next time I'm in the voting booth. Whereas I used to vote straight (or almost straight) Republican, I've been mixed between Libertarian and Republican for the last several years. I think it's time to go 100% Libertarian so that leeches like you can pay for your own damn internet access, just like I do.
Please mod me -1, Overtaxed. Failing that, Flamebait, Troll, or Overrated will be accepted.
-paul
I can't believe you actually recommend XP for web and mail - what a way to increase the number of zombies and spam-bots on TEH INTARWEB than to set people up with an insecure operating system, an insecure web browser, and an insecure mail client. Smooth move, ex-lax.
For web access, e-mail, and writing documents, a linux live CD is the way to go, with documents and preferences are stored on a USB flash drive. It's hard for a rootkit to 0wn a system when all executables are stored on read-only media.
My kids' computer runs windows (for the games), and that's why their computer is blocked by MAC address at the router.
-paul
It seemed like it should have been funnier, but since then, I've kept the phone strictly on vibrate.
-paul
I used to show my receipt at Fry's, until folks like John Gilmore woke me up, so to speak; I haven't shown the receipt since then. My reasoning goes like this: the store is open to the public, they have "loss prevention agents" all over the store, and the path from the cash registers to the exit is segregated from the rest of the merchandise. You may see my receipt only after I am arrested (falsely) for shoplifting. And then you may see my lawyer's card.
-paul
If MS were to adopt this protocol, it would become GroupDAV.NET, with extra-special "features" added that "our customers demand." These features of course would not be compatible with existing open-source programs, nor would they be compliant with the standard, and guess who would win the ensuing "betamax" war?
As another poster has pointed out, they are wedded to MS in unholy matrimony because of Exchange. Don't think for a minute that MS will give up one of their better lock-ins in the name of "compatibility." Just like when one political party talks about "bipartisanship" and actually means "cave in to our demands," when MS talks about compatibility and "open standards" what they really mean is "do it our way, or we'll tell you where to go today."
-paul
Tell that to Michael Jackon's latest victim.
-paul
Yes, but they are trying to patent (or have already patented?) their "new" MS Orifice format, based on XML. How you can patent a file format is beyond me, but then again we are talking about the same patent office that approved the setuid patent oh so many years ago.
I remember reading that the patent office used to require a working model of the invention. It might be time to bring that rule back.
-paul
I had your same thought, but then I realized that if you had to pay an extra $500 (for example) when you registered your car, you might remember to vote on election day.
One of the reasons we Commiefornians were so pissed at Gov. Davis was his decision to stop back-filling the Vehicle License Fee (car tax). He didn't raise it, he just had the state stop reimbursing the counties for 2/3 of it, and so the counties had to get that money from somewhere. Well, the end result was my car registration and everyone else's went WAY up, and that didn't help Gray at the polls.
Also consider that a large percentage of the population lives paycheck-to-paycheck. The idea of saving money for an unexpected expense, or even a planned one like a tax bill coming due, is foreign to them. Just like the government gets their taxes a little bit at a time instead of sending you a bill for $10,000 on 15 Apr, expecting that you saved an appropriate portion of your paycheck every month for the past year.
If this passes, I will not have one installed in my car; it will be the final straw to get me to leave this idiotic state.
-paul
The Eiffel language has some very good design decisions, but the IDE was all right-clicky this, and drag that, and so on. If memory serves correctly, you set a watch on a variable by dragging it's textual name to a "watch" button. Retarded with a capital "tard." Also, I tried to find a way to compile from a makefile and command-line, being the junkie that I am, but couldn't and eventually gave up.
Of course, I've always been required to use C/C++ (and assembly lately) in my job, never had a chance to even suggest an alternate choice of languages, and this seems to go back to the point of an earlier poster: we don't use something other can C/C++ on our projects because "nobody" else is using it on their projects.
-paul
So why isn't the US bringing democracy to Saudi Arabia, China, Iran, Nepal, or North Korea?
There are two answers:
Except China, of course. I don't think we really want them to have democracy, because then they wouldn't work for slave wages to build all the cheap crap we buy, or let us sell them a bunch of our crap either. But the rest of those are fair game, probably Iran first, then Saudi Arabia. I bet "they" would hate us a lot less in the Middle East if we quit propping up tyrants like the Saudi royal family.
-paul
I thought I was the only person who felt that way about the best feature of the death penalty - zero recividism.
I have very few qualms about executing child molesters in the most painful and excrutiating way possible, 8th amendment be damned. Once the sentence is passed, lead them outside to the television cameras, and begin the execution live on national television. Have a doctor on-hand to resuscitate the scumbag as many times as possible until his body simply cannot be repaired.
My one qualm is that children can be coached to say almost anything. The most famous case I'm aware of is the McMartin pre-school. I was a teenager at the time, but the news reports interested me greatly because of the satanic worship/human sacrifice angle. As the case progressed, it became plainly obvious to me that at least 98% of what the kids were claiming was total bullshit, and that put the other 2% seriously in doubt.
People confess to all kinds of things just to make the police shut up, and kids have a natural tendency to want to please authority figures anyway. Say Mr. Smith touched you and suddenly everyone is paying lots of attention to you. Say he did more, and you get even more attention.
I have a friend who works in the county sherrif's office. He said, "you'd be amazed what people will say to me in chat rooms when they think I'm a 14-year old boy." What a shitty job, says I. But these are dangerous and sick people, and a painful death, provided we're 100% sure of their guilt, is far too good for them.
-paul