How about a script that produces a random anticopyright story, such as The Right to Read or Melancholy Elephants. I'm certain RMS wouldn't object, as long as you stick the license text on the end; I doubt Spider Robinson would object either, given the nature of the story.
The only reason I can think of to want mechanical, rather than quartz, timing is to have your own personal wearable kinetic sculpture. It's not what I'd personally choose (/me glances at his digital-face Timex), but if you have the money and inclination for a mechanical watch, go for it.
Opera and Firefox are both leaps and bounds ahead of IE. Like the parent, I came to Firefox from Opera, and the only thing I miss about Opera is the usefulness of some of its keyboard shortcuts. There's probably an extension to give me that functionality back (such as G to disable graphics, F12 for quick options, and number keys for page scaling), but it hasn't been so troubling that I've gone out looking for one.
Engadget's readerbase isn't all that different from slashdot's, or, for that matter, the little corner of the internet that I work on. Seeing IE just barely having majority on any of those (or any of the myriad sites with similar readerbases/userbases) is neither surprising nor particularly indicative of what Joe Sixpack or Aunt Tillie are using to surf with (IE, almost invariably).
When it is clear that we have won will be when we start seeing statistics like these from sites like cnn.com or weather.com.
Most people don't care to get involved in politics, and it would take quite an effort to get Congress to even consider passing such a law (let alone pass such a law, as it's quite clearly not in the less diligent ones' best interests). Enforceability also seems to be problematic, but I haven't really thought about that yet.
Ads in games are nothing new, especially for the developers'/publishers' other products.
All of Midway's "San Francisco: Rush" series have ads for other Midway games on the billboards, and one of the bonus tracks in "Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA" is a slot-car-scale tour of what's purportedly one of Midway's offices, complete with several dozen arcade games made by them (including the series' various cabinets to date, as well as most of the Area 51 series of arcade games).
And this is just from a game series that started in 1995.
I can understand reasonable copy protection systems (such as CD keys, and, to a lesser extent, requiring the CD in the drive to work). A device driver is a bit much though.
The great-grandparent seems to think the only people trying to pirate a given piece of software fall into 3 categories: the professional pirates (who are probably impossible to stop), the office pirate (what (s)he calls "industrial software piracy"), and the home pirate ("casual copying"). They neglect to consider a couple categories that probably account for most of the.isos and cracks floating around out there: the anarchists (or other kinds of anticapitalists) who feel that it is their duty to crack it and release for some purpose or other, the people who look for a crack because they and/or several of their friends are too poor to each buy a copy, but still want to play the game, and the people who crack it for academic reasons or just to see if it can be done (this group shouldn't account for any of the.isos or cracks, however).
One of these 6 groups is harmless; two are unquestionably a threat (or at least hope they are), and 3 are potentially both harmful and beneficial (because, although they don't get the full number of sales that they would if everyone using it bought a copy, it gets the pirates used to the software and makes them more likely to buy it (or newer versions/sequels thereof) when they have the money to do so, and increases the vendor's market share (Aside: I wonder if MS would have quite the monopoly it does if Windows had never been pirated by anyone)).
Presumably, wanting the game that installed it to work properly without a crack, but, realistically speaking, someone will probably come up with a crack that gets rid of the driver and patches the game around the missing driver with a handful of mouse clicks.
Typically, it's not the developers that are responsible for this (and rarely have much say over it), but the publishers. The developers have confidence in their product and tend to think it will stand on its own; the publishers are just out to maximize profits, because, in their minds, piracy is the source of all lost sales, not the insult to their legitimate customers that antipiracy measures such as this particular driver represents.
Noone likes being treated like a criminal, especially those that aren't. If they keep treating their customers this way, I'll go back to only gaming on consoles. Starforce, you can have my NES (and the rest of my consoles) when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
no matter how obfuscated the key is, it has to be available and therefore breakable
Exactly. At some point they have to realize they can only do so much.
As much as we'd like them to, they won't until they have no other choice.
These are people that think even less logically than the archaetypical PHB, so they think that computers can do the logically impossible (the reasoning of which would likely scare me for its stupidity and oversight of the obvious). Until that is forced down their throats, they won't get it.
You'd think that, but, IIRC, citizens (or whatever they were called) in 1984 were just as reluctant to turn other people in as our society is now....unless of course they were being questioned by the Thought Police.
and never get particularly bogged down by any single process like a UP machine.
Doh. That's coz most people haven't figured out a general/common way to make single process use both CPUs, so when you have a single process, extra CPUs are wasted.
Well, the BeOS folks did, but that OS is now rather dead for other reasons.
If you mean something along the lines of this, you're right:
AMD: We're still going to be trying to get more than 20% market share. Intel: Um...trying to get further into the server market, and keeping ahead of AMD? Win: AMD.
But if you mean in terms of sticking to their own previously announced plans for the next year, no. AMD's been playing the socket shuffle for a couple years now with sockets 754, 940, and 939. They've also decided to introduce 32-bit-only bargain CPUs (codenamed Sempron), after announcing that all their chips after the AthlonXP/MP would use x86-64. All that Intel's done in the same period is drop the intended successor to Prescott (called Tejas), and switch their desktop roadmaps to the Pentium M chips. Win: Intel.
In an industry like this, it's not exactly easy to make predictions more than a couple years in advance and expect them to be entirely accurate.
What's the advantage of dual cpu machine for Internet browsing? Or editing files? Or for gaming (decent video card is more important here)?
I'm sitting on a dual athlon system right now, and, as others have said, there's a feeling of fluidity with SMP systems that makes it worth it if you multitask much, even if it's all relatively lightweight stuff (IRC, web browsing, email, etc.).
For file editing, it depends on the kind of files. Your basic office stuff won't benefit any more than the aforementioned internet usage will. But if you're working with media, it will go a lot faster (not quite a 100% gain, because of SMP management overhead, memory bandwidth limitations, etc., but it will be well above 50% for anything multithreaded, and allows you to do multiple instances for single-threaded things).
Gaming will start to show more benefit as hardware shifts things that are traditionally hardware functions into their drivers (particularly 3D audio in sound cards, as shown here). When a sound card is trying to use 30% of a cpu for 3D audio (as one sound card in that link did at times), that'll have quite an effect on gaming performance on a single-cpu system. An SMP system will just have the other cpu pick up the extra load from the sound card drivers, along with whatever network, AI, and other threads the OS load balances onto it, leaving the first cpu free to handle whatever's most cpu-intensive in the game (usually graphics).
I get charged for every text message I receive. Under the same laws that make fax spam illegal, SMS spam should be illegal too (for once, vagueness in a law works *for* us).
I haven't read the text of the bill myself, and, as my sig says, IANAL, but everything I've read about it (probably all biased, but still...) says it's even more overly broad than the DMCA. It seems to me that we would effectively be able to say anything related to data interchange documented in an RFC would immediately be illegal, regardless of legal usefulness.
Regardless of whether they want expert opinions on this or not, they need them. Anyone else up for writing their congresspeople?
Luring people with false promises of legally free music is false advertising. Last I checked, this was already illegal.
They might have had a leg to stand on about easy access to pr0n, if it wasn't for the equally easy access to it on the rest of the internet. And besides, there are already plenty of (iirc, mainly state and local) laws regarding the accessibility of pornography. Last I knew, those laws were still in effect.
Which brings us to the part that's outrageous. Based on the premises behind the previous two paragraphs, they aim to make p2p software illegal, because it PERMITS these activities.
This is akin to making it illegal to make cars capable of exceeding the speed limit, on the off chance that someone speeds. But that would never fly. It's called personal responsibility. If I speed, I get a ticket (or have at least earned one, whether or not a policeman was around to give me one). I know this. You know this. Lots of people do it anyways, but they know they're taking a chance. P2Ping is no different (the rare instance of legal usage excepted).
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How about a script that produces a random anticopyright story, such as The Right to Read or Melancholy Elephants. I'm certain RMS wouldn't object, as long as you stick the license text on the end; I doubt Spider Robinson would object either, given the nature of the story.
The only reason I can think of to want mechanical, rather than quartz, timing is to have your own personal wearable kinetic sculpture. It's not what I'd personally choose (/me glances at his digital-face Timex), but if you have the money and inclination for a mechanical watch, go for it.
A non-flash form might've also allowed their shared hosting account to stand up to the slashdotting for about 3 more seconds....
Opera and Firefox are both leaps and bounds ahead of IE. Like the parent, I came to Firefox from Opera, and the only thing I miss about Opera is the usefulness of some of its keyboard shortcuts. There's probably an extension to give me that functionality back (such as G to disable graphics, F12 for quick options, and number keys for page scaling), but it hasn't been so troubling that I've gone out looking for one.
Engadget's readerbase isn't all that different from slashdot's, or, for that matter, the little corner of the internet that I work on. Seeing IE just barely having majority on any of those (or any of the myriad sites with similar readerbases/userbases) is neither surprising nor particularly indicative of what Joe Sixpack or Aunt Tillie are using to surf with (IE, almost invariably).
When it is clear that we have won will be when we start seeing statistics like these from sites like cnn.com or weather.com.
Most people don't care to get involved in politics, and it would take quite an effort to get Congress to even consider passing such a law (let alone pass such a law, as it's quite clearly not in the less diligent ones' best interests). Enforceability also seems to be problematic, but I haven't really thought about that yet.
It would be nice to see such a law passed though.
Ads in games are nothing new, especially for the developers'/publishers' other products.
All of Midway's "San Francisco: Rush" series have ads for other Midway games on the billboards, and one of the bonus tracks in "Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA" is a slot-car-scale tour of what's purportedly one of Midway's offices, complete with several dozen arcade games made by them (including the series' various cabinets to date, as well as most of the Area 51 series of arcade games).
And this is just from a game series that started in 1995.
So I did. They're rather close to the academic cracking category though, as they (probably) don't distribute the crack or a cracked version.
I can understand reasonable copy protection systems (such as CD keys, and, to a lesser extent, requiring the CD in the drive to work). A device driver is a bit much though.
.isos and cracks floating around out there: the anarchists (or other kinds of anticapitalists) who feel that it is their duty to crack it and release for some purpose or other, the people who look for a crack because they and/or several of their friends are too poor to each buy a copy, but still want to play the game, and the people who crack it for academic reasons or just to see if it can be done (this group shouldn't account for any of the .isos or cracks, however).
The great-grandparent seems to think the only people trying to pirate a given piece of software fall into 3 categories: the professional pirates (who are probably impossible to stop), the office pirate (what (s)he calls "industrial software piracy"), and the home pirate ("casual copying"). They neglect to consider a couple categories that probably account for most of the
One of these 6 groups is harmless; two are unquestionably a threat (or at least hope they are), and 3 are potentially both harmful and beneficial (because, although they don't get the full number of sales that they would if everyone using it bought a copy, it gets the pirates used to the software and makes them more likely to buy it (or newer versions/sequels thereof) when they have the money to do so, and increases the vendor's market share (Aside: I wonder if MS would have quite the monopoly it does if Windows had never been pirated by anyone)).
Presumably, wanting the game that installed it to work properly without a crack, but, realistically speaking, someone will probably come up with a crack that gets rid of the driver and patches the game around the missing driver with a handful of mouse clicks.
For some reason, I doubt StarForce would have problems getting their 'driver' signed by the single most profitable member of the BSA.
Their goal breaks down when someone with the skills of the pros posts an .iso somewhere.
Typically, it's not the developers that are responsible for this (and rarely have much say over it), but the publishers. The developers have confidence in their product and tend to think it will stand on its own; the publishers are just out to maximize profits, because, in their minds, piracy is the source of all lost sales, not the insult to their legitimate customers that antipiracy measures such as this particular driver represents.
Noone likes being treated like a criminal, especially those that aren't. If they keep treating their customers this way, I'll go back to only gaming on consoles. Starforce, you can have my NES (and the rest of my consoles) when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
These are people that think even less logically than the archaetypical PHB, so they think that computers can do the logically impossible (the reasoning of which would likely scare me for its stupidity and oversight of the obvious). Until that is forced down their throats, they won't get it.
You'd think that, but, IIRC, citizens (or whatever they were called) in 1984 were just as reluctant to turn other people in as our society is now....unless of course they were being questioned by the Thought Police.
The enormous load keeps bringing that one down.
If you mean something along the lines of this, you're right:
AMD: We're still going to be trying to get more than 20% market share.
Intel: Um...trying to get further into the server market, and keeping ahead of AMD?
Win: AMD.
But if you mean in terms of sticking to their own previously announced plans for the next year, no. AMD's been playing the socket shuffle for a couple years now with sockets 754, 940, and 939. They've also decided to introduce 32-bit-only bargain CPUs (codenamed Sempron), after announcing that all their chips after the AthlonXP/MP would use x86-64. All that Intel's done in the same period is drop the intended successor to Prescott (called Tejas), and switch their desktop roadmaps to the Pentium M chips.
Win: Intel.
In an industry like this, it's not exactly easy to make predictions more than a couple years in advance and expect them to be entirely accurate.
For file editing, it depends on the kind of files. Your basic office stuff won't benefit any more than the aforementioned internet usage will. But if you're working with media, it will go a lot faster (not quite a 100% gain, because of SMP management overhead, memory bandwidth limitations, etc., but it will be well above 50% for anything multithreaded, and allows you to do multiple instances for single-threaded things).
Gaming will start to show more benefit as hardware shifts things that are traditionally hardware functions into their drivers (particularly 3D audio in sound cards, as shown here). When a sound card is trying to use 30% of a cpu for 3D audio (as one sound card in that link did at times), that'll have quite an effect on gaming performance on a single-cpu system. An SMP system will just have the other cpu pick up the extra load from the sound card drivers, along with whatever network, AI, and other threads the OS load balances onto it, leaving the first cpu free to handle whatever's most cpu-intensive in the game (usually graphics).
I get charged for every text message I receive. Under the same laws that make fax spam illegal, SMS spam should be illegal too (for once, vagueness in a law works *for* us).
I generally use user@domain.tld for things that take invalid tld's, and user@domain.com for things that don't.
I haven't read the text of the bill myself, and, as my sig says, IANAL, but everything I've read about it (probably all biased, but still...) says it's even more overly broad than the DMCA. It seems to me that we would effectively be able to say anything related to data interchange documented in an RFC would immediately be illegal, regardless of legal usefulness.
Regardless of whether they want expert opinions on this or not, they need them. Anyone else up for writing their congresspeople?
Not to mention making Microsoft illegal, as their operating systems are the most common (if not only) environments for p2p apps.
...and outrageous where it's not.
Luring people with false promises of legally free music is false advertising. Last I checked, this was already illegal.
They might have had a leg to stand on about easy access to pr0n, if it wasn't for the equally easy access to it on the rest of the internet. And besides, there are already plenty of (iirc, mainly state and local) laws regarding the accessibility of pornography. Last I knew, those laws were still in effect.
Which brings us to the part that's outrageous. Based on the premises behind the previous two paragraphs, they aim to make p2p software illegal, because it PERMITS these activities.
This is akin to making it illegal to make cars capable of exceeding the speed limit, on the off chance that someone speeds. But that would never fly. It's called personal responsibility. If I speed, I get a ticket (or have at least earned one, whether or not a policeman was around to give me one). I know this. You know this. Lots of people do it anyways, but they know they're taking a chance. P2Ping is no different (the rare instance of legal usage excepted).