Wow. 50+ million users jump onto other IM programs and the IETF is "fairly close" to having a public spec for an IM protocol. The IETF may be a lot of things, but they're certainly not slow!
Many, many people here are missing the point. Other protocols such as IRC, FTP, HTTP, etc are primarily used and designed things other than piracy. They allow for things other than a small subset of files to transfer through them. Napster allows only mp3s. Although they try to say "hey, it's only for LEGAL mp3s!," anyone who isn't lying or retarded knows that its primary use is illegal mp3s. At the moment of this post, there are 149,590 songs available on napster. Can you really tell me that the majority of those songs are legal mp3s?
Lets take a search for "Metallica" and see what we find.. over 100 songs. All copyrighted. Now, I'll try out #Alternative on the chat part of napster.. within 2 minutes of joining, I see someone asking for a Counting Crows mp3. Also copyrighted. Now, I'll try a search for Liona Boyd, one of mp3.com's Featured Artists.. 1 song found. A 100:1 ratio of pirated:legal mp3s does not shine napster in a good light.
Face it.. napster was primarily designed for and is primarily used for the piracy of music. I don't like the RIAA or their tactics, but I simply must side with them in this case. Piracy is illegal. If I were a musician, I certainly wouldn't want my music being copied around without receiving payment for it.
Yea, why don't we make people jump through hoops and create an elitist organization where only the most popular are let in?
The reason napster is popular is because it is easy. People want to get their mp3s and they want to get them easily and fast. Your propose method is neither.
MS will only control the web if designers let it. If people write platform independent code, then it won't really matter which browser is used. Which would keep the door open for other browsers to come in and challenge IE's dominance. For all it's worth, on the few sites I will design in the future, I plan on making them completely viewable in Netscape or IE 4.x+. Just because a browser is dominant doesn't mean people MUST design only for that browser. The web is supposed to be open to everyone, not just people who use IE.
I second that notion! 'tis a really good read. Quite entertaining, even for non-math types such as myself. There was a review of it on here a while ago, which is why I bought it. I highly recommend getting it.
All human life is somewhat valuable. (Though I think we place a little too much importance on it here in the "west"). To the family of a "terrorist" they may be a freedom-fighter, doing what little they can to fight back against an oppressive regime. It's just as unfair to say that someone's life is less valuable because someone else has labelled them a terrorist as it is to say someone's life is more valuable because someone has decided they're a celebrity.
A valid point, and perhaps I was a bit too broad with that statement. However, some people really should die, as bad as that sounds. People like Hitler and Stalin. They each killed millions of innocent people. I can't think of a valid argument in support of killing and torturing that many people.
I am not a hypocrite. Because I feel the same level of grief for a famous person or someone I read about in the obituaries. Which, I admit, it close to none. But, I'm not trying to pour out gallons (liters, for you euros) of tears because she helped me overcome my bedwetting or some terminal disease.
Face it.. she made funny voices on an immature cartoon show. She didn't do anything world-changing. Ghandi, Mother Theresa, Einstein.. those people did things that changed attitudes and how many people work and live.
I watch southpark occasionally and I like the show. But, when you break it all down, she's replacable. She's simply a voice for an animated character. I am willing to wager that she could have been taken out of the cast and replaced with one or more others to fill in the voices and less than 1% of southpark watchers would have noticed.
What's wrong with that is that if things continue to grow into that area, then eventually, there will be a dual class system: the beautiful people and the whipping boys. The beautiful people will walk over the backs of the whipping boys, getting everything they want, which is just wrong. People should be treated equally. It helps to keep unrest down in a population if no one group feels it is being treated grossly wrong.
I'm not saying that everyone should get an absolutely equal share of things, regardless of amount of work and talent. If someone is talented, then yes they should reap the benefits that follow. But, "normal" people should not be treated as second class citizens just because they don't happen to excel in one area. Even the most famous/popular/rich people have their own issues which tarnish their shine; as is obvious in this event.
And here is yet another example of fame making someone more important than any poor joe on the street. When a mother to 3 children dies in a car wreck, she doesn't even make it on page 84 of the local newspaper. If I went out and killed myself right now, not one reader of slashdot would mourn my passing, even though I have family and friends, just like this woman did. Face it.. money and fame really does equal importance in the world.
Another thing.. hoards of people will ring in with chimes of "she was such a wonderful " when they had never even heard her name before this event. If you don't know anything about her, please don't try to fake it and say she was so wonderful. Maybe she was a complete warbitch. Maybe she was an angel. I certainly don't know the woman, so I won't make any comments as to how she lived her life and treated others.
For the record, I am not trivializing her death. It is, indeed, a bad thing when someone dies. (most of the time, not counting terrorists and such) I just want to point out that many people are more pissed off that the voice of the southpark characters is gone rather than that a woman has died and left behind mourning family members and friends.
I'm fairly sure I'll be moderated down as a troll or as being flamebait, but that is not my intention.
You should have said "you're an idiot," rather than "your an idiot." Putting it your way, it's the same as talking about an "an idiot" that is possessed by someone.
PLEASE, people! Don't screw up something so simple as basic grammer while calling someone stupid.
You know.. no one would give a rat's ass about transmeta doing nothing if they hadn't hired a pack of famous internet personalities. If I, the nameless internet dweeb, were to start up a company with a nifty name and simply say "I'm not telling you what I'm making! Not only that, but I won't be putting anything out for years!," not one person in the world would give me a second glance.
I suppose when microsoft comes out with vaporware, it's bad. However, when something involving the holy linus comes out with vaporware, it's the second coming of christ.
SHOUTcast is Nullsoft's Winamp-based distributed streaming audio system. Now you can listen to live streaming audio, and even broadcast your own SHOUTcast station from the comfort of your regular Internet connection.
Has slashdot not learned its lesson from the times before? Is there really a need for news of an ftp server being updated before the official announcement and before it can be mirrored elsewhere? Just give them their time to get set up for the load.
At least on the other times, the software was actually entirely on the server. Now, corel will be doing battle with not only people downloading the entire thing, but also the people downloading half, logging out, logging back in, and redownloading it all.
Because many people don't want to have to spend hours configuring their software and looking up all sorts of arcane commands to simply start up their favorite email program and send a picture of the kids to grandma. It might be hard for some geeks to believe, but many people don't particularly enjoy figuring out problems on their computers. They want to turn it on and have it work.
Configurability isn't linux's only strong point. There is also stability and rapid rate of development. Just because something isn't configurable doesn't mean it's completely shot to hell.
*Secondly, and more appropriate, have you EVER seen a program which could recognize that there was more than one CD-ROM on the machine? Since we're talking a consumer model machine, server applications are not considered.*
I've yet to see a program on my boss's computer that does not recognize any one of his cd drives. He has a 5x disc changer and a single cd drive. Every program he uses (a mixed bag of various scientific programs. he's the scientific director of a medical research place.) recognizes each of the cds.
Figure $200 per palm pilot for 1,000 students. That's $200,000. $200k that will be broken, stolen, or sold in 2 weeks. The money would be better spent on charity, buying new books, fixing up schools, or hiring more teachers to get a better student:teacher ratio. There is nothing that can replace the educational value of a human being. Can a palm pilot, in all it's 512 kilobytes of glory, take a student under its wing and and encourage him to get out of a bad situation? Not likely.
Teachers are what makes a school good or bad. They can get students excited about learning and can help out students who are in need of someone to talk to. They can give advice to a 15 year old girl who just got pregnant. What can a palm pilot give? A phone number.
The money could be spent on much better things than a toy for the students. That's what the students will use them for. Maybe 5 students out of that 1,000 will use it for any school related activities. Another 500 will sell their palms and claim them to be stolen. 200 of the remaining students will actually have theirs stolen. The rest will be divided up between never using their palms or breaking their handheld wonders.
The palm pilots will not be used for any greater glory. For the price of one $200 palm, four $50 books could be bought. And trust me, public schools are in SERVERE need of new books. When I was in high school (2 years ago), our history books ended with President Reagan. And the teachers were limited to 3 copies per student per month.
But, of course! How DARE they step on your righteous foot and include a non-unix OS. After all, everyone knows that if you can't do it in a unix, it simply should not be done. Damn that decent graphic arts software on mac and windows platforms. Real elite d00dz use command line programs for graphics.
drwln 482 382 5 1 clr 83 255 48 0
Oh yea. I almost forgot to say how much everyone who doesn't know c or c++ sucks. You all suck! A LOT!
Many posters here are wondering about cracking dvd keys and copying discs and generally pirating them in various ways. If my meager law knowledge isn't failing me, piracy is illegal.
My point isn't about piracy, it's about hypocracy. If there is even the hint that someone is illegally trampling on the GPL or something beloved to linuxite hearts, there is an immediate cry of bringing in the law. Is illegaly pirating DVDs more acceptable than illegally taking code from a GPLed program? They are both examples of taking something and using it in ways that are not legal.
Another semirelated point is the cry of people of "Even if it is commercial, I'll buy it! I want it for linux, open source or not!" But, judging from the immediate reaction of "Let's crack it and take all we can," it seems not many people WOULD pay for much in linux. The few that would actually buy games or apps for linux are far outweighed by the number that would simply pirate it or crack it. It seems to me that many people in the "open source" community don't give a damn about open source. They just want everything they can get for free.
All of this makes me wonder if companies are influenced by reactions like this. If I were a company pondering putting in the work to release my commercial product for linux, I would definitely think twice before I spent the time and money on porting or rewriting. Yes, I know that piracy is also rampant in the windows world, but just looking at what has been posted thus far, it seems the linux market isn't exactly filled with willing buyers of software and other replicable items. (movies, audio, etc)
* Please not that I said 'many,' not 'all.' There is a difference.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. 50+ million users jump onto other IM programs and the IETF is "fairly close" to having a public spec for an IM protocol. The IETF may be a lot of things, but they're certainly not slow!
Many, many people here are missing the point. Other protocols such as IRC, FTP, HTTP, etc are primarily used and designed things other than piracy. They allow for things other than a small subset of files to transfer through them. Napster allows only mp3s. Although they try to say "hey, it's only for LEGAL mp3s!," anyone who isn't lying or retarded knows that its primary use is illegal mp3s. At the moment of this post, there are 149,590 songs available on napster. Can you really tell me that the majority of those songs are legal mp3s?
Lets take a search for "Metallica" and see what we find.. over 100 songs. All copyrighted. Now, I'll try out #Alternative on the chat part of napster.. within 2 minutes of joining, I see someone asking for a Counting Crows mp3. Also copyrighted. Now, I'll try a search for Liona Boyd, one of mp3.com's Featured Artists.. 1 song found. A 100:1 ratio of pirated:legal mp3s does not shine napster in a good light.
Face it.. napster was primarily designed for and is primarily used for the piracy of music. I don't like the RIAA or their tactics, but I simply must side with them in this case. Piracy is illegal. If I were a musician, I certainly wouldn't want my music being copied around without receiving payment for it.
Yea, why don't we make people jump through hoops and create an elitist organization where only the most popular are let in?
The reason napster is popular is because it is easy. People want to get their mp3s and they want to get them easily and fast. Your propose method is neither.
MS will only control the web if designers let it. If people write platform independent code, then it won't really matter which browser is used. Which would keep the door open for other browsers to come in and challenge IE's dominance. For all it's worth, on the few sites I will design in the future, I plan on making them completely viewable in Netscape or IE 4.x+. Just because a browser is dominant doesn't mean people MUST design only for that browser. The web is supposed to be open to everyone, not just people who use IE.
Then again, who is going to have a server with no UPS to back it up? Not I.
About as cheezy as that damn penguin named (cleverly) "Tux." I'd like to personally hurt the person who invented it.
/me prepares to be moderated down as flamebait. Oh well. I got my one comment that reached 5. I can die happy.
I second that notion! 'tis a really good read. Quite entertaining, even for non-math types such as myself. There was a review of it on here a while ago, which is why I bought it. I highly recommend getting it.
All human life is somewhat valuable. (Though I think we place a little too much importance on it here in the "west"). To the family of a "terrorist" they may be a freedom-fighter, doing what little they can to fight back against an oppressive regime. It's just as unfair to say that someone's life is less valuable because someone else has labelled them a terrorist as it is to say someone's life is more valuable because someone has decided they're a celebrity.
A valid point, and perhaps I was a bit too broad with that statement. However, some people really should die, as bad as that sounds. People like Hitler and Stalin. They each killed millions of innocent people. I can't think of a valid argument in support of killing and torturing that many people.
I am not a hypocrite. Because I feel the same level of grief for a famous person or someone I read about in the obituaries. Which, I admit, it close to none. But, I'm not trying to pour out gallons (liters, for you euros) of tears because she helped me overcome my bedwetting or some terminal disease.
Face it.. she made funny voices on an immature cartoon show. She didn't do anything world-changing. Ghandi, Mother Theresa, Einstein.. those people did things that changed attitudes and how many people work and live.
I watch southpark occasionally and I like the show. But, when you break it all down, she's replacable. She's simply a voice for an animated character. I am willing to wager that she could have been taken out of the cast and replaced with one or more others to fill in the voices and less than 1% of southpark watchers would have noticed.
What's wrong with that is that if things continue to grow into that area, then eventually, there will be a dual class system: the beautiful people and the whipping boys. The beautiful people will walk over the backs of the whipping boys, getting everything they want, which is just wrong. People should be treated equally. It helps to keep unrest down in a population if no one group feels it is being treated grossly wrong.
I'm not saying that everyone should get an absolutely equal share of things, regardless of amount of work and talent. If someone is talented, then yes they should reap the benefits that follow. But, "normal" people should not be treated as second class citizens just because they don't happen to excel in one area. Even the most famous/popular/rich people have their own issues which tarnish their shine; as is obvious in this event.
And here is yet another example of fame making someone more important than any poor joe on the street. When a mother to 3 children dies in a car wreck, she doesn't even make it on page 84 of the local newspaper. If I went out and killed myself right now, not one reader of slashdot would mourn my passing, even though I have family and friends, just like this woman did. Face it.. money and fame really does equal importance in the world.
Another thing.. hoards of people will ring in with chimes of "she was such a wonderful " when they had never even heard her name before this event. If you don't know anything about her, please don't try to fake it and say she was so wonderful. Maybe she was a complete warbitch. Maybe she was an angel. I certainly don't know the woman, so I won't make any comments as to how she lived her life and treated others.
For the record, I am not trivializing her death. It is, indeed, a bad thing when someone dies. (most of the time, not counting terrorists and such) I just want to point out that many people are more pissed off that the voice of the southpark characters is gone rather than that a woman has died and left behind mourning family members and friends.
I'm fairly sure I'll be moderated down as a troll or as being flamebait, but that is not my intention.
You should have said "you're an idiot," rather than "your an idiot." Putting it your way, it's the same as talking about an "an idiot" that is possessed by someone.
PLEASE, people! Don't screw up something so simple as basic grammer while calling someone stupid.
You know.. no one would give a rat's ass about transmeta doing nothing if they hadn't hired a pack of famous internet personalities. If I, the nameless internet dweeb, were to start up a company with a nifty name and simply say "I'm not telling you what I'm making! Not only that, but I won't be putting anything out for years!," not one person in the world would give me a second glance.
I suppose when microsoft comes out with vaporware, it's bad. However, when something involving the holy linus comes out with vaporware, it's the second coming of christ.
To quote http://www.shoutcast.com/...
SHOUTcast is Nullsoft's Winamp-based distributed streaming audio system. Now you can listen to live streaming audio, and even broadcast your own SHOUTcast station from the comfort of your regular Internet connection.
2 years? What is d.net hoping to prove? Are they just interested in spending furious amounts of energy processing needless keys?
Personally, I spend my computer's idle time finding mersenne primes. Seems a bit more worthy than beating a 2 year old dead horse.
My guess is so it can keep personalized settings if the person accesses the site from another computer.
Has slashdot not learned its lesson from the times before? Is there really a need for news of an ftp server being updated before the official announcement and before it can be mirrored elsewhere? Just give them their time to get set up for the load.
At least on the other times, the software was actually entirely on the server. Now, corel will be doing battle with not only people downloading the entire thing, but also the people downloading half, logging out, logging back in, and redownloading it all.
Because many people don't want to have to spend hours configuring their software and looking up all sorts of arcane commands to simply start up their favorite email program and send a picture of the kids to grandma. It might be hard for some geeks to believe, but many people don't particularly enjoy figuring out problems on their computers. They want to turn it on and have it work.
Configurability isn't linux's only strong point. There is also stability and rapid rate of development. Just because something isn't configurable doesn't mean it's completely shot to hell.
*Secondly, and more appropriate, have you EVER seen a program which could recognize that there was more than one CD-ROM on the machine? Since we're talking a consumer model machine, server applications are not considered.*
I've yet to see a program on my boss's computer that does not recognize any one of his cd drives. He has a 5x disc changer and a single cd drive. Every program he uses (a mixed bag of various scientific programs. he's the scientific director of a medical research place.) recognizes each of the cds.
I don't think w2k would run linux at all. Maybe I'm just misinformed..
Personally, I prefer sales@real.com or support@real.com
The great unasked question of technology.. why?
Figure $200 per palm pilot for 1,000 students. That's $200,000. $200k that will be broken, stolen, or sold in 2 weeks. The money would be better spent on charity, buying new books, fixing up schools, or hiring more teachers to get a better student:teacher ratio. There is nothing that can replace the educational value of a human being. Can a palm pilot, in all it's 512 kilobytes of glory, take a student under its wing and and encourage him to get out of a bad situation? Not likely.
Teachers are what makes a school good or bad. They can get students excited about learning and can help out students who are in need of someone to talk to. They can give advice to a 15 year old girl who just got pregnant. What can a palm pilot give? A phone number.
The money could be spent on much better things than a toy for the students. That's what the students will use them for. Maybe 5 students out of that 1,000 will use it for any school related activities. Another 500 will sell their palms and claim them to be stolen. 200 of the remaining students will actually have theirs stolen. The rest will be divided up between never using their palms or breaking their handheld wonders.
The palm pilots will not be used for any greater glory. For the price of one $200 palm, four $50 books could be bought. And trust me, public schools are in SERVERE need of new books. When I was in high school (2 years ago), our history books ended with President Reagan. And the teachers were limited to 3 copies per student per month.
But, of course! How DARE they step on your righteous foot and include a non-unix OS. After all, everyone knows that if you can't do it in a unix, it simply should not be done. Damn that decent graphic arts software on mac and windows platforms. Real elite d00dz use command line programs for graphics.
drwln 482 382 5 1
clr 83 255 48 0
Oh yea. I almost forgot to say how much everyone who doesn't know c or c++ sucks. You all suck! A LOT!
You're a militant womenist, aren't you?
Many posters here are wondering about cracking dvd keys and copying discs and generally pirating them in various ways. If my meager law knowledge isn't failing me, piracy is illegal.
My point isn't about piracy, it's about hypocracy. If there is even the hint that someone is illegally trampling on the GPL or something beloved to linuxite hearts, there is an immediate cry of bringing in the law. Is illegaly pirating DVDs more acceptable than illegally taking code from a GPLed program? They are both examples of taking something and using it in ways that are not legal.
Another semirelated point is the cry of people of "Even if it is commercial, I'll buy it! I want it for linux, open source or not!" But, judging from the immediate reaction of "Let's crack it and take all we can," it seems not many people WOULD pay for much in linux. The few that would actually buy games or apps for linux are far outweighed by the number that would simply pirate it or crack it. It seems to me that many people in the "open source" community don't give a damn about open source. They just want everything they can get for free.
All of this makes me wonder if companies are influenced by reactions like this. If I were a company pondering putting in the work to release my commercial product for linux, I would definitely think twice before I spent the time and money on porting or rewriting. Yes, I know that piracy is also rampant in the windows world, but just looking at what has been posted thus far, it seems the linux market isn't exactly filled with willing buyers of software and other replicable items. (movies, audio, etc)
* Please not that I said 'many,' not 'all.' There is a difference.