The main difference is that someone that has a Mac computer and has only one computer can't run a windows game, so it's a lost sale... while most people that use linux and are even half interested in gaming at all at least dual boot into windows, so a linux version doesn't give extra buyers, while a mac version does. At least that's how it looks to me..:)
Not only cotton... if you go to a venezuelan public hospital you have to bring EVERYTHING with you... and with everything I include a mattress to lay on while you're there. I'm not saying this without a base, I had an uncle that died around the middle of the year, and while he was in the hospital (we can't afford a private clinic) we gave him a mattress so he could stay, and from what we saw there it was the common practice. The doctors are excellent... after all, most of the doctors in the private clinics go part time to public hospitals too... but there's only so much they can do without supplies when the regular people can't afford them either..:(
Not really. While I don't agree with lots of things Chavez is doing in the government, there are some things I do agree with, and I do believe we needed someone like him to revive the politics in the state they were. I don't think right now he's the best person to lead the country, though (though I have to say I'd be hard pressed to find someone that would be better and that would have the amount of public support needed), I don't believe a coup is the way to go (even if I believed back then Carmona might have done a good work, the choices he took were wrong in too many levels which is why he failed), not now, and not back when Chavez himself tried it twice.
But I don't know if it would be like in Cuba, but public medical care here in Venezuela is so bad (and yes, I've experienced it first hand) that you're more likely to die if you land on a public hospital than if you treat yourself based on what herbs your granma said would be good for you...:)
This is the first time I actually reply to the article instead of to another discussion, but it's also the first time I've seen slashdot discuss something about my country so here goes..:)
Personally I don't see this having any effect other than public offices changing to linux and open source programs. It will give more jobs in the public sector to programmers, which is a good thing considering the huge unemployment right now, but the regular people will just continue using their pirated copies of programs. To put things in perspective, I live in the 4th biggest city in the country, and where the electricity (hydro) for most of Venezuela and part of Colombia and Brazil is generated, plus a big producer of iron, steel, aluminum and lots of other minerals exported worldwide... but yet I don't know of any place here where I could buy legitimate software.. while at the same time just walking from my home to work everyday I pass in front of at least 4 places that sell pirated DVDs, music and software.. and I don't mean shady places in the back of a van or soemthing, but huge places with neon signs advertising pirated stuff for sale... heck, I've seen several next to police stations with police people buying on them frequently. People here just don't know about open source, because there's just not a culture of paying for software at all, most people don't even realize that buying a burned CD with the latest software on it, a crack and a serial written on the label is illegal... and last time I heard of something being done about it was 4 or 5 years ago when the BSA did a campaign against piracy, closed down several stores and placed fines on people... and things were back again like it was before within a week.
If I had to guess, I'd say this is more about president Chavez sticking it up to the US in any way he can (after all, we're talking about a guy that called Bush an asshole in public chained TV.. and for those that don't know "chained" means that the president can "chain" all the public TV and radio stations so that they're forced to display whatever he wants, usually him giving one of his 2 or 3+ hours speeches, which he does very frequently... times like those makes me feel pity for those that can't afford cable TV), and as I said, I really doubt it'll have any effect outside of the public offices... and if the ones I've gone to, in this city and in the capitol, even then they have so few computers and so outdated the effect will be minimal... we use to joke around that anytime we hear the sound of an old style typewriter (that old tac-tac-tac), that it sounds like a public office..:)
This joke is about 40 years too late... we changed the name from United States of Venezuela to Republic of Venezuela ín 1961 (and again to Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in 1999)...:)
Yeah, how evil of them to go against the poor college students that couldn't afford the 13,000 software titles he obviously needed for his studies...:)
But you also have to take into account that with most P2P programs available, people make the media file available for downloading at the same time they're downloading it themselves.
I'll admit I've never ran linux so far (no practical use for it since all the apps I use are mostly windows), but I don't see how not running admin as defauly would help in that particular case. Let's say some ignorant linux user decides to install kazaa for linux, he must runs as admin (or input his admin password) as it's installing, so that would leave the installer free to install whatever it wants with a "do you not want for we to not spam you?" checkbox. At least in my personal experience, most of spyware friends and family get (before we have a long talk) is by installing "free screensavers" "keep you clock in time" and the like.
As a more "socially acceptable" alternative, you could just use your cell phone (even if you're not calling for real) and start shouting at it "yeah, the flight is nice but there's an idiot next to me that just won't shut up, I was trying to sleep and all he does is to yell at his cell phone as if everyone cared about his boring life..." and the like...:)
To be fair, Microsoft also took measures for that in SP2. At least last time I used IE when it wanted to install something, it didn't popup the "do you want to install?" window that so many people hit yes to unconciously, instead you get a little yellow bar on top that says "this website tried to install a program. If you really want to do that click here", then it gave me a dialog of wether I was sure (with a text saying the possible dangers of viruses and the like) and then I got to the actual "do you want to install this?" screen. Bad thing that they didn't add a patch to make SP1 or Windows 2000 do the same.
Find a place that does professional video/photography where you live and ask them if they can scan the slides for you... if they can't, at least chances are they'll know someone who can... I know where I work we would do it for you for cheap, but you'd have to pay the plane ticket and hotel room in Venezuela to bring them...:)
Unless checking that email is actually part of work, like where I work for example (video production) that we use email regularly to send and receive scripts for videos, pictures to add to them and audio (music and speech) in MP3 format to work with until we receive the definitive high quality versions, just to name the few things we've used it for this week alone.
Gollum was made differently. He was a mix of captured and hand made animation. It went from having the captured performance tweaked minimally, to being used only as a reference and re-creating the animation by hand, and even in some cases animating by hand from the beggining (like when Gollum is climbing down in the beggining of Two Towers). On top of that, Gollum's face was never captured, it was all hand animated using Serkiss's performance as a guide. On the other hand, IIRC Polar Express is untweaked capture both in the bodies and in the faces, and it shows.. they just, at least to me, seem like they're moving, but they're not alive. Like Disney said when they were using rotostoping when making Snow White, when they kept too close to the live performance, the resulting "animation" just didn't felt like it was alive.
Gollum was completely different. They did use motion capture to get him, but not exclusively. Sometimes the motion capture was only tweaked minimally by the animators, other times it was thrown away and used only as a guide, other times it wasn't even captured at all (like when Gollum is climbing down near the beggining of Two Towers) and he was completely hand animated. His face wasn't captured at all either, it was completely hand animated based on Serkiss's filmed performance. In Polar Express they seem to be using straigh untweaked motion capture for the body and faces of the characters, and at least from what I've seen in the trailers the results are the same I saw on the Final Fantasy movie, characters that just seem like moving mannequins, lacking the (in Disney's words) illusion of life. I guess it's the same that Disney found out when they were making Snow White, they were using some rotoscoping (filming an actor and then trace on top of it), and found that when they stayed too close to the filmed performance, the resulting animation was boring and lifeless.
I think international courts don't apply as long as they're still presidents (at least that's what they said of Venezuelan president Chavez). I don't think they could arrest him either under Chilean laws because he would have diplomatic inmunity, most they could do is not to let him get into the country, or expell him if he's in already (at least according to some chilean friends I have). They could attempt it once he's out of office, though.
I was reading about something like this on a PC Magazine sometime ago called the stealthsurfer (http://www.stealthsurfer.biz/). I guess it's like this except that this one uses GPL software (stealthsurfer uses a personalized version of netscape 7)
This is common in most big companies too. For example, if you work for Disney (as an animator at least), you have to sign a contract where they own any concept/idea/animation/whatever that you come up with while working for them, even in your own free time on your own equipment (the general idea is that you could have used ideas you got from work to influence your own stuff), and according to my maya teacher, that's not uncommon at all in the animation industry, and I'd bet in almost any industry where corporations are involved out there.
Well, IANAL, but as far as I know, downloading is also illegal (well, depending on the country you live on), but unless they were to offer a copyrighted file for you to download and bust you after you do it (like entrapment) and only real law officers (like the police) can do that legally, so there's really no way for them to legally prove that you downloaded copyrighted material, so they go for the uploaders instead.
Neither of them would have any problems, since they wouldn't be illegal (fraud or anything like that), then it would be 100% legal and ok for them to put fake info on their whois. This law only affects someone that's using the website to do illegal stuff, and when they're caught it's found they also faked their info.
Personally I don't think the analogy works there. An internet server and an internet browsers are too different, a server is meant to be installed and used only by people that know what are they doing, feel confortable tweaking things and keep informed of when a patch is needed, while a browser is meant to be used by everyone, and most of its intended userbase will just want to install it (or have someone install for them) and then not worry about it ever again.
I completely agree that one of the big advantages of open source is that a patch for a vulnerability will be available sooner, but if people don't apply it (and you can safely assume that most of "mainstream" users won't even know what a patch is) it's all the same.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe put "crap inside" looking like the "intel inside" logo... :)
The main difference is that someone that has a Mac computer and has only one computer can't run a windows game, so it's a lost sale... while most people that use linux and are even half interested in gaming at all at least dual boot into windows, so a linux version doesn't give extra buyers, while a mac version does. At least that's how it looks to me.. :)
Not only cotton... if you go to a venezuelan public hospital you have to bring EVERYTHING with you... and with everything I include a mattress to lay on while you're there. I'm not saying this without a base, I had an uncle that died around the middle of the year, and while he was in the hospital (we can't afford a private clinic) we gave him a mattress so he could stay, and from what we saw there it was the common practice. The doctors are excellent... after all, most of the doctors in the private clinics go part time to public hospitals too... but there's only so much they can do without supplies when the regular people can't afford them either.. :(
Not really. While I don't agree with lots of things Chavez is doing in the government, there are some things I do agree with, and I do believe we needed someone like him to revive the politics in the state they were. I don't think right now he's the best person to lead the country, though (though I have to say I'd be hard pressed to find someone that would be better and that would have the amount of public support needed), I don't believe a coup is the way to go (even if I believed back then Carmona might have done a good work, the choices he took were wrong in too many levels which is why he failed), not now, and not back when Chavez himself tried it twice.
But I don't know if it would be like in Cuba, but public medical care here in Venezuela is so bad (and yes, I've experienced it first hand) that you're more likely to die if you land on a public hospital than if you treat yourself based on what herbs your granma said would be good for you... :)
Personally I don't see this having any effect other than public offices changing to linux and open source programs. It will give more jobs in the public sector to programmers, which is a good thing considering the huge unemployment right now, but the regular people will just continue using their pirated copies of programs. To put things in perspective, I live in the 4th biggest city in the country, and where the electricity (hydro) for most of Venezuela and part of Colombia and Brazil is generated, plus a big producer of iron, steel, aluminum and lots of other minerals exported worldwide... but yet I don't know of any place here where I could buy legitimate software.. while at the same time just walking from my home to work everyday I pass in front of at least 4 places that sell pirated DVDs, music and software.. and I don't mean shady places in the back of a van or soemthing, but huge places with neon signs advertising pirated stuff for sale... heck, I've seen several next to police stations with police people buying on them frequently. People here just don't know about open source, because there's just not a culture of paying for software at all, most people don't even realize that buying a burned CD with the latest software on it, a crack and a serial written on the label is illegal... and last time I heard of something being done about it was 4 or 5 years ago when the BSA did a campaign against piracy, closed down several stores and placed fines on people... and things were back again like it was before within a week.
If I had to guess, I'd say this is more about president Chavez sticking it up to the US in any way he can (after all, we're talking about a guy that called Bush an asshole in public chained TV.. and for those that don't know "chained" means that the president can "chain" all the public TV and radio stations so that they're forced to display whatever he wants, usually him giving one of his 2 or 3+ hours speeches, which he does very frequently... times like those makes me feel pity for those that can't afford cable TV), and as I said, I really doubt it'll have any effect outside of the public offices... and if the ones I've gone to, in this city and in the capitol, even then they have so few computers and so outdated the effect will be minimal... we use to joke around that anytime we hear the sound of an old style typewriter (that old tac-tac-tac), that it sounds like a public office.. :)
This joke is about 40 years too late... we changed the name from United States of Venezuela to Republic of Venezuela ín 1961 (and again to Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in 1999)... :)
Yeah, how evil of them to go against the poor college students that couldn't afford the 13,000 software titles he obviously needed for his studies... :)
They're not only on it, they're also giving him an F-18 escort... ;D
But you also have to take into account that with most P2P programs available, people make the media file available for downloading at the same time they're downloading it themselves.
I'll admit I've never ran linux so far (no practical use for it since all the apps I use are mostly windows), but I don't see how not running admin as defauly would help in that particular case. Let's say some ignorant linux user decides to install kazaa for linux, he must runs as admin (or input his admin password) as it's installing, so that would leave the installer free to install whatever it wants with a "do you not want for we to not spam you?" checkbox. At least in my personal experience, most of spyware friends and family get (before we have a long talk) is by installing "free screensavers" "keep you clock in time" and the like.
As a more "socially acceptable" alternative, you could just use your cell phone (even if you're not calling for real) and start shouting at it "yeah, the flight is nice but there's an idiot next to me that just won't shut up, I was trying to sleep and all he does is to yell at his cell phone as if everyone cared about his boring life..." and the like... :)
To be fair, Microsoft also took measures for that in SP2. At least last time I used IE when it wanted to install something, it didn't popup the "do you want to install?" window that so many people hit yes to unconciously, instead you get a little yellow bar on top that says "this website tried to install a program. If you really want to do that click here", then it gave me a dialog of wether I was sure (with a text saying the possible dangers of viruses and the like) and then I got to the actual "do you want to install this?" screen. Bad thing that they didn't add a patch to make SP1 or Windows 2000 do the same.
Find a place that does professional video/photography where you live and ask them if they can scan the slides for you... if they can't, at least chances are they'll know someone who can... I know where I work we would do it for you for cheap, but you'd have to pay the plane ticket and hotel room in Venezuela to bring them... :)
Unless checking that email is actually part of work, like where I work for example (video production) that we use email regularly to send and receive scripts for videos, pictures to add to them and audio (music and speech) in MP3 format to work with until we receive the definitive high quality versions, just to name the few things we've used it for this week alone.
Sorry about the double post, computer was having troubles at work and didn't knew it actually went trough the first time.
Gollum was made differently. He was a mix of captured and hand made animation. It went from having the captured performance tweaked minimally, to being used only as a reference and re-creating the animation by hand, and even in some cases animating by hand from the beggining (like when Gollum is climbing down in the beggining of Two Towers). On top of that, Gollum's face was never captured, it was all hand animated using Serkiss's performance as a guide. On the other hand, IIRC Polar Express is untweaked capture both in the bodies and in the faces, and it shows.. they just, at least to me, seem like they're moving, but they're not alive. Like Disney said when they were using rotostoping when making Snow White, when they kept too close to the live performance, the resulting "animation" just didn't felt like it was alive.
Gollum was completely different. They did use motion capture to get him, but not exclusively. Sometimes the motion capture was only tweaked minimally by the animators, other times it was thrown away and used only as a guide, other times it wasn't even captured at all (like when Gollum is climbing down near the beggining of Two Towers) and he was completely hand animated. His face wasn't captured at all either, it was completely hand animated based on Serkiss's filmed performance. In Polar Express they seem to be using straigh untweaked motion capture for the body and faces of the characters, and at least from what I've seen in the trailers the results are the same I saw on the Final Fantasy movie, characters that just seem like moving mannequins, lacking the (in Disney's words) illusion of life. I guess it's the same that Disney found out when they were making Snow White, they were using some rotoscoping (filming an actor and then trace on top of it), and found that when they stayed too close to the filmed performance, the resulting animation was boring and lifeless.
I think international courts don't apply as long as they're still presidents (at least that's what they said of Venezuelan president Chavez). I don't think they could arrest him either under Chilean laws because he would have diplomatic inmunity, most they could do is not to let him get into the country, or expell him if he's in already (at least according to some chilean friends I have). They could attempt it once he's out of office, though.
I was reading about something like this on a PC Magazine sometime ago called the stealthsurfer (http://www.stealthsurfer.biz/). I guess it's like this except that this one uses GPL software (stealthsurfer uses a personalized version of netscape 7)
This is common in most big companies too. For example, if you work for Disney (as an animator at least), you have to sign a contract where they own any concept/idea/animation/whatever that you come up with while working for them, even in your own free time on your own equipment (the general idea is that you could have used ideas you got from work to influence your own stuff), and according to my maya teacher, that's not uncommon at all in the animation industry, and I'd bet in almost any industry where corporations are involved out there.
Well, IANAL, but as far as I know, downloading is also illegal (well, depending on the country you live on), but unless they were to offer a copyrighted file for you to download and bust you after you do it (like entrapment) and only real law officers (like the police) can do that legally, so there's really no way for them to legally prove that you downloaded copyrighted material, so they go for the uploaders instead.
You can also try the stand alone patch for this particular bug here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin /MS04-028.mspx
Neither of them would have any problems, since they wouldn't be illegal (fraud or anything like that), then it would be 100% legal and ok for them to put fake info on their whois. This law only affects someone that's using the website to do illegal stuff, and when they're caught it's found they also faked their info.
Personally I don't think the analogy works there. An internet server and an internet browsers are too different, a server is meant to be installed and used only by people that know what are they doing, feel confortable tweaking things and keep informed of when a patch is needed, while a browser is meant to be used by everyone, and most of its intended userbase will just want to install it (or have someone install for them) and then not worry about it ever again. I completely agree that one of the big advantages of open source is that a patch for a vulnerability will be available sooner, but if people don't apply it (and you can safely assume that most of "mainstream" users won't even know what a patch is) it's all the same.