The right to intellectual propery a agree with. If I pour my heart and soul into code for a program and need the profits from that program to live (i.e. not open-source) and someone steals that code or my algorithms or unique features of my program and just has a larger pocket-book for marketing, I'm screwed, and I don't get dinner. That's not right. The same goes for Napster's ease-of-theft of music. (I'm not anti-napster, I used it many times as it is "legally" intended; for "personal backup" of CDs I own as well as checking out new music before I spend $20 on a CD.)
Where I have a problem is when this is all closed and secured. The way the MPAA and RIAA are trying to protect their intellectual property (oh, lets ignore the fact that the MPAA/RIAA do not own a single piece of music/dvd) is ludicrous. The MPAA wants to keep DeCSS under wraps/illegal and wants software companies to pay licensing fees to use the (frighteningly simple) algorithm, which means I can't get a decent DVD player no matter what OS I use. The few that are available for Windows are $30-50 and don't run that well. The one for Linux I can't even buy yet. I paid for the DVD, I should be able to watch it now. bah. Maybe I'm JAACB (just another anti-corporate bastard). ---
CS Graduate work isn't necessarily government-funded though. Often, if it is government funded research, the code is released publicly though, is it not? (IANACSGSDR (Comp.Sci.Grad.Student Doing Research)) If the research is funded by the University, I'm fairly sure the University gets the copyright on the work, or a portion of the profits, if any. Maybe not...Is this something that every University has set up? Anyone with experience/knowledge in this area? ---
That's exactly mikej's point though; Ballmer states the terms of the GPL so loosely and slanderously as to make anyone who doesn't know better make the assumptions that you stated in your comment. Now, next time Joe Schmoe, CEO of XYZ corp. sits in a board meeting and someone mentions GNU/Linux/open-source software, Mr. CEO is gonna blow up and ban the words from the building for all of eternity.
After all, who's gonna take the word of a few hacker-programmer geeks who are so bad they have to give their code away, over the big ol' Microsoft Exec? ---
This thread is getting severely off-topic, but a few quick things:
1. I own a truck because I use it to haul things. I also use it because I can not afford to sell my "POS" (which, by the way, is running strong after twelve years and 165,000 miles) and buy a car which I do not know the history of.
2. Some cars, some trucks, yeah, so picking on SUVs makes no more or less sense than picking on the Pontiac Grand Prix with a V8; SUVs are just an easier target.
3. I agree with you that a truck/SUV drives differently, but there are no more or no less idiots driving trucks/SUVs than are driving cars.
4. If you can't see around an SUV or truck then you're too damn close. You should not need to see around a truck for a left-hand turn if you're driving safely, because you should be waiting for a clear field of vision before you even enter the intersection (and yes, I realize that almost no one actually drives this way; that doesn't make it wrong however).
5. Last, if these people want to drop 25 grand on a "faddy" vehicle (agreed on that point as well, btw) then let them. The owner has to deal with shoddy construction, shitty mileage, bad emissions, (as we all do, on that one) etc. (As far as emissions go, as far as I'm concerned, unless you do not own or drive a car at all, quit bitching about emissions and pollution. If you in fact do not own or drive a vehicle, then kudos to you! I wish more people were in a postion (ie. not in the suburbs) so that they could get by in this situation.) ---
mini-rant
Do people realize that SUVs (usually) get better mileage than any truck with a 6-cylinder or better? My parents drive a newer Explorer and get better gas mileage than me with my '89 Dodge Dakota with a four-banger. I'm not a huge SUV fan, but christ, they're not that bad. And your car (if you own a car, at least) probably pollutes more than a brand-new SUV anyway. I know mine sure as hell does... /rant ---
...filled with FUD to give it that "OH MY GOD" kind of edge...
Agreed. The article is well written (as was stated previously) but his writing style is trying to make a DoS attack a dramatic life-or-death situation. A DoS attack and the lack of response from ISPs, authorities, etc. is definitely not a good thing, but it is not an imperitive situation (unless, of course, there are network admins dumb enough to make critical systems this accessible while running Windows). ---
First he gets DDoS's by a bunch of script kiddies, then he gets....
slashdotted.
You mean, first he gets DDoS'd by a bunch of script kiddies using IRC bots, then he gets...
DDoS'd by a bunch of script kiddies using web browsers.
You mean, first he gets DDoSed (or DDoSd, whichever you prefer, I guess) by...
Apostrophes are not used to signify plurality, only possession and contraction. ---
That's what America on the whole has been doing for years; why stop now? Who says chopping down the trees in the world's rain forests is bad? We'll find something else to breath other than oxygen! Toxic computer parts? PFFFFFTH!!!! We'll just bury them under all the other crap in our landfills and let someone else deal with em.
I can't wait until George Bush XVIII gets elected in 2424 and gets to deal with this shit (assuming humans still thrive...)
Now to just find a solution so we can all quit whining about the environment (myself included, of course!) ---
Re:I may be an old fart but...
on
IETF vs. ICANN
·
· Score: 1
I agree completely; I still say the ICANN system sucks though, be it one TLD or fifty. Of course, most of us do, I'm sure, as I think a typical/.er is most likely anti-institutional when it comes to things like ICANN/RIAA/MPAA/etc. ---
Re:I may be an old fart but...
on
IETF vs. ICANN
·
· Score: 1
What about a new mom-n-pop ISP (theoretically speaking) called slashdot? they'd request slashdot.net and be denied because of this site. If you made this requirement (ie. one domain name essentially eats up all three TLDs) you would make it three times more difficult to find a website for yourself/company. There are so many damn domains that are "parked" that it can be hard to find an original name that makes sense. You want to cut those choices by two-thirds? ---
Well, from the looks of that article, (which I assume was typed by the author on the half-keyboard) either: 1) spell-checkers don't work on anything typed using that keyboard; 2) the keyboard is not conducive to accurate typing; 3) the author's spelling/grammar is poor to begin with; or some combination of the above. I'll stick to my ergonomic, thankyouverymuch. ---
I typed the first message in this thread in mozilla 0.9 I think, and I used mozilla for a week or so and was not very satisfied with it. I found no real improvements over Netscape 4.7 at all. Both Netscape and Mozilla are slow on my computer for some reason, and both have small quirks that have irked me from the beginning. But those are more a matter of personal preference. ---
Is 2.1.1 recent enough? I've been using it off and on, as every link I click in Kmail (which I like) opens in Konqueror, (which I don't like. I mean, I don't like the fact that I can't choose what browser to use.) And just in these few uses, I've noticed one huge annoyance: Konqueror will not keep my logins from webpages. (And yes, I have my cookies enabled.) That fact alone could keep me from using Konqueror.
That said, Konqueror is not bad, but compared to IE5.5?? I'm using Opera 5 right now (I'd used Opera 4 but found it lacking) and am satisfied for the most part...it even uses the backspace as a "back" hotkey like IE5.5. ---
There is a compatability list, but everything on that list (usually) works without any extra effort, and a lot of hardware still works even if it's not on that list. The HCL is only the stuff MS has certified to work with Win2K.
I recently installed Linux-Mandrake 8.0 and I have yet to get my burner working properly, though I haven't had time to research that yet; with Win2K though, it just works. ---
"Does anyone have any idea why this keyboard layout didn't catch on?"
Imagine for a second how many secretaries in offices would be completely lost if they came in on Tuesday from Memorial Day weekend to find a Dvorak keyboard on their desk? Now, of course if everyone switched to Dvorak, it wouldn't be overnight, and many would never switch, but it's a matter of standards and comfortability. We didn't learn to type on a Dvorak keyboard (most of us, at least) for the same reason we didn't learn weight/volume/speed/etc measurements in the metric system. (again, most of us, or the Americans, at least...damn my typical American self-centeredness =) To change, even gradually would require copious amounts of money for things like street signage. (To those who laugh, the University of Minnesota re-signed all their buildings two summers ago, roughly 250 buildings on the St. Paul/Minneapolis East Bank/Minneapolis West Bank campuses, for somewhere between $800,000 and $1,000,000 USD. That's signage on the front of buildings only.)
But at the same time, we have to keep everything else in place as well for those who aren't accustomed to it, (which wouldn't be nearly so bad as a metric conversion, obviously) but I don't know of many school districts that would spend two cents on new keyboards so the kids can learn to type more efficiently.
I've seen keyboards that actually had the right-third of the space bar broken off and made into a backspace key. As I only used them temporarily, I ended up deleting the last letter instead of putting in a space more than once, but if I were on it for awhile, I think it would be a very handy key to have.
-jth ---
Sorry to tell you, but Konqueror isn't that great either. It's not bad, but it's no better than Netscape (and you say "other open-source browsers"...did you forget Mozilla is open-source and yet it still sucks?)
Don't get me wrong, please. I'm for open-source software fully, but you sound like an irrational radical when you say "well, my program is the best because it's open-source." It adds a certain appeal and quality to a program (the fact that it's open-source) but it does not make it a better program. Open-source is great, but the focus with open-source is not necessarily to put out a bug-free, low-resource, easy-to-use program that writes the books on usability; rather, open-source is about innovation. This isn't bad, but open-source programs tend to lose a bit in the refinement area. A program designed by geeks and programmers will not seem easy to use for a technological neophyte.
That said, IE or other closed-source programs don't fit the bill to a T, either. In those situations, though, this is due to corporations fighting to release a new "feature-filled" program two weeks before the other guy, regardless of whether it's even remotely stable.
---
Yes, this is true. Windows Media Player is slow, bloated, and hogs resources. Winamp is still a far superior player than WMP. MusicMatch Jukebox is the only thing that competes with Winamp on my desktop, but that can seem rather bloated at times as well; it does, however, manage my mp3 library much better, and utilizes ID3 tags much more than Winamp. But Winamp will always hold a special place in my heart. *insert dreamy sigh* ---
The biggest problem I can see with this is: what if you drop that hard drive a foot or two? I know newer (better) HDDs can survive some impact, but at the same time, I've seen people who won't set their HDD down on anything unless there's a rubber mousepad underneath to pad...Regardless, I doubt very much if many HDDs would survive a 3-foot (or more) fall to carpet/tile/cement/whatever. I'm sure some of us have been lucky, but do it a few more times and your drive is hosed.
Now, as to whether this new storage media from Iomega will be as "rugged" as a floppy/zip/jaz disc, I could not find anything...the fact that the read/write heads are integrated with the disc, like an HDD, the above argument against durability of an HDD may apply just as well to the peerless disks.
Slashdot Mirror
Where I have a problem is when this is all closed and secured. The way the MPAA and RIAA are trying to protect their intellectual property (oh, lets ignore the fact that the MPAA/RIAA do not own a single piece of music/dvd) is ludicrous. The MPAA wants to keep DeCSS under wraps/illegal and wants software companies to pay licensing fees to use the (frighteningly simple) algorithm, which means I can't get a decent DVD player no matter what OS I use. The few that are available for Windows are $30-50 and don't run that well. The one for Linux I can't even buy yet. I paid for the DVD, I should be able to watch it now. bah. Maybe I'm JAACB (just another anti-corporate bastard).
---
CS Graduate work isn't necessarily government-funded though. Often, if it is government funded research, the code is released publicly though, is it not? (IANACSGSDR (Comp.Sci.Grad.Student Doing Research)) If the research is funded by the University, I'm fairly sure the University gets the copyright on the work, or a portion of the profits, if any. Maybe not...Is this something that every University has set up? Anyone with experience/knowledge in this area?
---
After all, who's gonna take the word of a few hacker-programmer geeks who are so bad they have to give their code away, over the big ol' Microsoft Exec?
---
1. I own a truck because I use it to haul things. I also use it because I can not afford to sell my "POS" (which, by the way, is running strong after twelve years and 165,000 miles) and buy a car which I do not know the history of.
2. Some cars, some trucks, yeah, so picking on SUVs makes no more or less sense than picking on the Pontiac Grand Prix with a V8; SUVs are just an easier target.
3. I agree with you that a truck/SUV drives differently, but there are no more or no less idiots driving trucks/SUVs than are driving cars.
4. If you can't see around an SUV or truck then you're too damn close. You should not need to see around a truck for a left-hand turn if you're driving safely, because you should be waiting for a clear field of vision before you even enter the intersection (and yes, I realize that almost no one actually drives this way; that doesn't make it wrong however).
5. Last, if these people want to drop 25 grand on a "faddy" vehicle (agreed on that point as well, btw) then let them. The owner has to deal with shoddy construction, shitty mileage, bad emissions, (as we all do, on that one) etc. (As far as emissions go, as far as I'm concerned, unless you do not own or drive a car at all, quit bitching about emissions and pollution. If you in fact do not own or drive a vehicle, then kudos to you! I wish more people were in a postion (ie. not in the suburbs) so that they could get by in this situation.)
---
mini-rant
/rant
Do people realize that SUVs (usually) get better mileage than any truck with a 6-cylinder or better? My parents drive a newer Explorer and get better gas mileage than me with my '89 Dodge Dakota with a four-banger. I'm not a huge SUV fan, but christ, they're not that bad. And your car (if you own a car, at least) probably pollutes more than a brand-new SUV anyway. I know mine sure as hell does...
---
---
You mean, first he gets DDoSed (or DDoSd, whichever you prefer, I guess) by...
Apostrophes are not used to signify plurality, only possession and contraction.
---
No, it was "modern" and "slavery." Not necessarily both in the same search.
---
I can't wait until George Bush XVIII gets elected in 2424 and gets to deal with this shit (assuming humans still thrive...)
Now to just find a solution so we can all quit whining about the environment (myself included, of course!)
---
I agree completely; I still say the ICANN system sucks though, be it one TLD or fifty. Of course, most of us do, I'm sure, as I think a typical /.er is most likely anti-institutional when it comes to things like ICANN/RIAA/MPAA/etc.
---
What about a new mom-n-pop ISP (theoretically speaking) called slashdot? they'd request slashdot.net and be denied because of this site. If you made this requirement (ie. one domain name essentially eats up all three TLDs) you would make it three times more difficult to find a website for yourself/company. There are so many damn domains that are "parked" that it can be hard to find an original name that makes sense. You want to cut those choices by two-thirds?
---
Well, from the looks of that article, (which I assume was typed by the author on the half-keyboard) either: 1) spell-checkers don't work on anything typed using that keyboard; 2) the keyboard is not conducive to accurate typing; 3) the author's spelling/grammar is poor to begin with; or some combination of the above. I'll stick to my ergonomic, thankyouverymuch.
---
Thanks for the tip! When I find a second computer to move Linux to, I'll put Win2K back on this one and try winamp3!
---
I typed the first message in this thread in mozilla 0.9 I think, and I used mozilla for a week or so and was not very satisfied with it. I found no real improvements over Netscape 4.7 at all. Both Netscape and Mozilla are slow on my computer for some reason, and both have small quirks that have irked me from the beginning. But those are more a matter of personal preference.
---
That said, Konqueror is not bad, but compared to IE5.5?? I'm using Opera 5 right now (I'd used Opera 4 but found it lacking) and am satisfied for the most part...it even uses the backspace as a "back" hotkey like IE5.5.
---
I recently installed Linux-Mandrake 8.0 and I have yet to get my burner working properly, though I haven't had time to research that yet; with Win2K though, it just works.
---
Imagine for a second how many secretaries in offices would be completely lost if they came in on Tuesday from Memorial Day weekend to find a Dvorak keyboard on their desk? Now, of course if everyone switched to Dvorak, it wouldn't be overnight, and many would never switch, but it's a matter of standards and comfortability. We didn't learn to type on a Dvorak keyboard (most of us, at least) for the same reason we didn't learn weight/volume/speed/etc measurements in the metric system. (again, most of us, or the Americans, at least...damn my typical American self-centeredness =) To change, even gradually would require copious amounts of money for things like street signage. (To those who laugh, the University of Minnesota re-signed all their buildings two summers ago, roughly 250 buildings on the St. Paul/Minneapolis East Bank/Minneapolis West Bank campuses, for somewhere between $800,000 and $1,000,000 USD. That's signage on the front of buildings only.)
But at the same time, we have to keep everything else in place as well for those who aren't accustomed to it, (which wouldn't be nearly so bad as a metric conversion, obviously) but I don't know of many school districts that would spend two cents on new keyboards so the kids can learn to type more efficiently.
My $0.02 USD.
-jth
---
"er" and "re" aren't adjacent? or were you just saying adjacent and using the same finger (typically) to strike the keys? -jth
---
I've seen keyboards that actually had the right-third of the space bar broken off and made into a backspace key. As I only used them temporarily, I ended up deleting the last letter instead of putting in a space more than once, but if I were on it for awhile, I think it would be a very handy key to have. -jth
---
Don't get me wrong, please. I'm for open-source software fully, but you sound like an irrational radical when you say "well, my program is the best because it's open-source." It adds a certain appeal and quality to a program (the fact that it's open-source) but it does not make it a better program. Open-source is great, but the focus with open-source is not necessarily to put out a bug-free, low-resource, easy-to-use program that writes the books on usability; rather, open-source is about innovation. This isn't bad, but open-source programs tend to lose a bit in the refinement area. A program designed by geeks and programmers will not seem easy to use for a technological neophyte.
That said, IE or other closed-source programs don't fit the bill to a T, either. In those situations, though, this is due to corporations fighting to release a new "feature-filled" program two weeks before the other guy, regardless of whether it's even remotely stable.
---
Yes, this is true. Windows Media Player is slow, bloated, and hogs resources. Winamp is still a far superior player than WMP. MusicMatch Jukebox is the only thing that competes with Winamp on my desktop, but that can seem rather bloated at times as well; it does, however, manage my mp3 library much better, and utilizes ID3 tags much more than Winamp. But Winamp will always hold a special place in my heart. *insert dreamy sigh*
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As far as I knew though, these can maintain a 15MB/s transfer rate. This is according to the Iomega site, of course...
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Now, as to whether this new storage media from Iomega will be as "rugged" as a floppy/zip/jaz disc, I could not find anything...the fact that the read/write heads are integrated with the disc, like an HDD, the above argument against durability of an HDD may apply just as well to the peerless disks.
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There's a better review here (IMHO, at least...)
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Fat man and LITTLE boy.