Providing it free as a service probably wouldn't be too difficult. But would it make sense to go through all the hassle for the few bucks you can make?
I would tend to agree with this viewpoint. It seems to me we are talking about a commercial environment, not enthusiast shop or basement. Anecdotal evidence of what Slashdot readers have successfully installed on their laptop or home (and I've played with Debian successfully on my T30 too:) has no bearing on this decision.
If your company, as it appears, uses IBM software/hardware, it prefers to pay some (ok, a LOT;) extra $$$ to have the peace of mind of having a large, monolithic corporation a phone call away:). As a hacker, you'll adapt easily to SuSE or RedHat (sure, we all raise hell about the differences, but let's be honest here;). As a company though, and especially a "conservative" one, they'll have -much- harder time adapting to a different model of doing things. In all honesty, sounds like you might be doing them a disservice by offering what is, in the end, an officially unsupported OS. Do you want to be the one who inadvertently nullifies their support contracts (no matter how unreasonable their requirements may be)?
You need to think beyond what you would like to play with, and extend your viewpoint to all the possibilities and risks your company might encounter in the years ahead. If they're more comfortable knowing somebody is guaranteeing, supporting, and in the end, taking the blame for their software/hardware, then it's a strategic policy you should follow.
There's little other then deception to persuade them to use Debian, if they are the type of company you describe.
Whether it is or is not DMCA violation is in the end for a judge to decide. I would venture that more DMCA-related lawsuits are about scaring the defendant then about validity of the claim. All I am saying is that when such 'frivolous' or invalid suits start happening between major players, they might finally start looking at the wide reaches of the legislation and it's benefits/disadvantages.
Personally (and IANAL), I would think there would be at least as much DMCA-relevancy as in many other cases recently. Perhaps Real _didn't_ activelly reverse-engineer the code; that doesn't stop Apple from _claiming_ that it did (and in the process breaking the copyright-protection mechanism) and asking for preliminary injuctions to keep the product off the market. The decision 12 months from now that Real was legaly allowed to do it would be meaningless if product was stopped until then. This is the kind of thing DMCA gets used for a fair bit.
I'd _love_ Apple to hit Real with DMCA related lawsuit. Not because I think what Real is doing isn't great (unlike most of their other activities), or that DMCA is a "Good Thing" (tm), but on the contrary -- until commercial companies themselves start getting hit with too-relaxed DMCA definitions (as opposed to individuals), their lobbying efforts will likely keep the law on the books.
If the content industry big shots start getting tangled in zillions of IP/copyright related lawsuits, perhaps the laws will be moderated to the point they make some sort of sense...
Advantages: Um, I'll have to get back to you on that!:) Basically, if you have a REAALLLYYY lazy sysadmin, with a poor config, they might prefer to keep their IP numbers when they move so they don't have to do any or much work.
Disadvantages: to save that sysadmin a little bit of work, everybody else has to change the way Internet operates. Well, maybe not quite, but almost -- internet routing (the way messages and content get where they are supposed to go) depend on a strict hierarchical nature of IP numbering system - when you send a message, it follows branches along a humongous but unambiguous tree to arrive at the leaf (end-machine) it needs. The nature of IP #s leads it along the branches. If anybody can take a number or block of numbers whereever they want, it all falls apart. If you are allowed to swap "leaves" on the tree (take your IP #s to another ISP/location/whatever), when you send a message, it might not have a clue which branch it's supposed to follow to arrive at proper leaves.
In other words, it's a pretty ridiculous suit for anybody to lay down, and potentially disastrous if resolved in this way.
The author seems pretty stuck on extremely stretched "real-life metaphors". I never ever actually thought of files & folders as drawers in a cabinet, or webpages as pages in a book -- any artificial attempts to link these two quite separate activities are doomed to failure. Let's use the advantages of new interface media whenver possible - after all, it was the failure of QuickTime and so many other media players of few years ago to try to immitate real-life devices (CD-players or PDAs) in an interface too different to make such "metaphor" work.
Advice for shallow folders seems stuck in ages of DOS when you had 100s of files on a drive max. In age with 100's of thousands of files, shallow hierarchy is a murder both in terms of organization and performance.
Similarly, author's disgust at some people using tabs to display separate pages seems ridiculous - we're not supposed to use interface in the most convenient way possible, just to avoid crossing some imagines real-life metaphor none of us knew existed?
I guess I just cannot get myself into the mind of the reviers, or the way that he apparently uses his computer... all I can say is, he better realize that other people don't all use the computer in the same way, before he presumes to write UI articles with any authority...:-/
Security issues would be a concern I'm sure. There's plenty of hackers who'd see no harm in, for example, extracting a number of images from around the world and sticthing a trailer, etc. And of course, rendering is a "trial-and-error" process - would they want people to have access to broken scenes? Or deleted scenes?
Speculation would seriously dampen their ability to control marketing and release info.
On the technical side, farms are reliable and predictable. Who can figure out how many fans will keep their computers up tonight for the critical preview tomorrow? What about the decline of interest after first little while?
Distributed computing of this sort isn't well suited for commercial projects with fixed schedules.
Not that I don't think it'd be COOL... I just don't think it'll happen:-/
I'm not sure if computing can ever become instant (especially not in strict sense of the word). As our capabilities increase, so do the requirements. And I'm not even talking about MS Word taking longer and longer with computers faster and faster...:-P
There is almost ridiculous (and exploding) amount of raw data out there, and we are always eager to collate, process and present it in better ways. With software being written in less optimized ways (due to need for speedy development), and increased expectations, a "common task" today doesn't take significantly less time then it did 10 years ago -- it's just that a "common task" today is much more complex (and, arguably, useful).
Except, of course, for those using certain popular mind-expanding substances;)
Seriously though - it seems we are finding a new limit every day. Wasn't it last week that they theorized limitations on data storage, as well as data transmission speed?
But jobs ARE being offshored - by millions:). It's the cheap goods that are sometimes hard to obtain (DVD region coding etc).
There's a ridiculous amount of stuff that's dirt cheap in East Europe or Asia, that is not available here.
>>the linux kernel developers need to get over their fanaticism about open-source drivers.
I thought the problem here is of a non-GPL driver *claiming* to be GPL?
Any other crusade developers may or may not have is mostly irrelevant in this particular case.
The original Linus e-mail was changed in that "helpful" reposting. Words like "Circumsise" and "vomit" were not present in the original (haven't bothered to check for other transgressions).
Of course, by the time you add liquid cooling, Lexan case sides, LAN carrying straps, enhanced power supply etc, it's going to be somewhat larger that Super Nintendo;)
Why not just use existing phones/ethernet jacks in Airplanes?
I cannot see this much technology being any cheaper, so what is the point in using your own cell vs. built-in phones?
"Amazed at the level of ignorance"??
I'm perfectly *aware* of the need for secure passwords. My passwords at work were initially hard-memorized, completely random strings of letters & numbers. However, after the 3rd time I had to change all my 12 passwords (on different schedules, of course), I just said "Screw it".
There is no way I can practically memorize 12 secure passwords a month. The constant changing of passwords is one of the most counter-productive practices - while perhaps great in theory, and with some sound reasoning behind it, everybody I know agrees their passwords get less secure every iteration.
b) is only half the truth... that laptop-wielding mechanic also won't have a clue when some actual trouble-shooting needs to be done. I've had technicians who could hear the horrible, screeching sounds coming from the engine as well as I could, but since no codes were forthcoming from the diagnostic machine, the problem "did not exist".
So... some problems are easy to diagnose -- if there's a working sensor designed to detect that specific problem.
Other problems are devilishly difficult as cars get so complex that it is near impossible to figure out what is causing an intermittent glitch.
I think more then just ideas on what to use them *for*, the original poster would like some advice on how to connect the LCDs to a computer or MP3 player etc.
I might have extra laptop screens as well - but no clue how to connect their (proprietary?) laptop wire thingamagies to the 15-pin VGA port... or the "other" port on my ATI Radeon:)
... it needs to be more believable & official - some techno-babble on how the protocol works and how it disables the computer - rather then just "there's this really big & bad thingie out there".
Perhaps version 1.1 of this April-1st scare will be slightly improved:)
It is questionable for you to download music in Canada because the copyright extension only allows for copying from an original source.
This is incorrect, and in fact the Copyright Board of Canada has specifically clarified that it is only concerned whether a copy of musical audio work is made for personal copy or not. The source is actually irrelevant. (I posted a link in another post in this discussion if you'd like to check the source:))
As to your assertion that this levy is an attack on freedom, it is debatable. More importantly, while it is an imperfect system, it is (I believe) better then what US has. Public has as much choice in which artist gets $$$ and how much as it ever does - and in fact, the same metric is used (50% sales figures, 50% charts/requests I believe). Regular CD-Rs have much lower levy then designated Audio-CD-Rs (or cassete tapes etc). Meanwhile, for a bargain price, we get much more freedom. If you believe the price itself to be unfair, Copyright Board Canada is taking comments for considerations, and the levies are revised every 1-2 years (all this was found out in this morning's research - it's not that hard:)
Solution? Boycott these cartels (stop sharing and stop buying) and support Free alternatives.
I am not sure which "free alternatives" you propose (are we still talking music?). I can only get Sultans of Swing (my favourite song) from Dire Straits - any other alternative would be illegal or imperfect or both:->>>
In US it is illegal to both download and upload. RIAA promised that it would go after the uploaders only - but we all know how that ended;).
In short, filesharing in general is not safe in US.
In Canada, arguably, downloading is OK, Uploading (distributing) still isn't. As such, there would be no real advantage for setting up any servers in US - if you're really that concerned, and have capability to place servers where you want to... may I suggest Cayman islands?:>
For fuzzy values of legal. The language of the actual law was kept vague for political reasons.
Actually, the legal values are not that fuzzy. However, most Canadians don't believe their luck (sounds too good to be true:), so by all means check out the actual Copyright law, Part VIII - Private Copying.
The particular clause/statute/statement (IANAL:) is #80.
(1) Subject to subsection (2), the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of
(a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,
(b) a performer's performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or
(c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performer's performance of a musical work, is embodied
onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer's performance or the sound recording.
Not that fuzzy... copying for others is illegal - copying for yourself is legal.
Slashdot Mirror
Providing it free as a service probably wouldn't be too difficult. But would it make sense to go through all the hassle for the few bucks you can make?
I would tend to agree with this viewpoint. It seems to me we are talking about a commercial environment, not enthusiast shop or basement. Anecdotal evidence of what Slashdot readers have successfully installed on their laptop or home (and I've played with Debian successfully on my T30 too:) has no bearing on this decision.
If your company, as it appears, uses IBM software/hardware, it prefers to pay some (ok, a LOT;) extra $$$ to have the peace of mind of having a large, monolithic corporation a phone call away:). As a hacker, you'll adapt easily to SuSE or RedHat (sure, we all raise hell about the differences, but let's be honest here;). As a company though, and especially a "conservative" one, they'll have -much- harder time adapting to a different model of doing things. In all honesty, sounds like you might be doing them a disservice by offering what is, in the end, an officially unsupported OS. Do you want to be the one who inadvertently nullifies their support contracts (no matter how unreasonable their requirements may be)?
You need to think beyond what you would like to play with, and extend your viewpoint to all the possibilities and risks your company might encounter in the years ahead. If they're more comfortable knowing somebody is guaranteeing, supporting, and in the end, taking the blame for their software/hardware, then it's a strategic policy you should follow.
There's little other then deception to persuade them to use Debian, if they are the type of company you describe.
Whether it is or is not DMCA violation is in the end for a judge to decide. I would venture that more DMCA-related lawsuits are about scaring the defendant then about validity of the claim. All I am saying is that when such 'frivolous' or invalid suits start happening between major players, they might finally start looking at the wide reaches of the legislation and it's benefits/disadvantages. Personally (and IANAL), I would think there would be at least as much DMCA-relevancy as in many other cases recently. Perhaps Real _didn't_ activelly reverse-engineer the code; that doesn't stop Apple from _claiming_ that it did (and in the process breaking the copyright-protection mechanism) and asking for preliminary injuctions to keep the product off the market. The decision 12 months from now that Real was legaly allowed to do it would be meaningless if product was stopped until then. This is the kind of thing DMCA gets used for a fair bit.
I'd _love_ Apple to hit Real with DMCA related lawsuit. Not because I think what Real is doing isn't great (unlike most of their other activities), or that DMCA is a "Good Thing" (tm), but on the contrary -- until commercial companies themselves start getting hit with too-relaxed DMCA definitions (as opposed to individuals), their lobbying efforts will likely keep the law on the books. If the content industry big shots start getting tangled in zillions of IP/copyright related lawsuits, perhaps the laws will be moderated to the point they make some sort of sense...
Advantages: Um, I'll have to get back to you on that!:) Basically, if you have a REAALLLYYY lazy sysadmin, with a poor config, they might prefer to keep their IP numbers when they move so they don't have to do any or much work.
Disadvantages: to save that sysadmin a little bit of work, everybody else has to change the way Internet operates. Well, maybe not quite, but almost -- internet routing (the way messages and content get where they are supposed to go) depend on a strict hierarchical nature of IP numbering system - when you send a message, it follows branches along a humongous but unambiguous tree to arrive at the leaf (end-machine) it needs. The nature of IP #s leads it along the branches. If anybody can take a number or block of numbers whereever they want, it all falls apart. If you are allowed to swap "leaves" on the tree (take your IP #s to another ISP/location/whatever), when you send a message, it might not have a clue which branch it's supposed to follow to arrive at proper leaves.
In other words, it's a pretty ridiculous suit for anybody to lay down, and potentially disastrous if resolved in this way.
Advice for shallow folders seems stuck in ages of DOS when you had 100s of files on a drive max. In age with 100's of thousands of files, shallow hierarchy is a murder both in terms of organization and performance.
Similarly, author's disgust at some people using tabs to display separate pages seems ridiculous - we're not supposed to use interface in the most convenient way possible, just to avoid crossing some imagines real-life metaphor none of us knew existed?
I guess I just cannot get myself into the mind of the reviers, or the way that he apparently uses his computer... all I can say is, he better realize that other people don't all use the computer in the same way, before he presumes to write UI articles with any authority...
Security issues would be a concern I'm sure. There's plenty of hackers who'd see no harm in, for example, extracting a number of images from around the world and sticthing a trailer, etc. And of course, rendering is a "trial-and-error" process - would they want people to have access to broken scenes? Or deleted scenes? Speculation would seriously dampen their ability to control marketing and release info. On the technical side, farms are reliable and predictable. Who can figure out how many fans will keep their computers up tonight for the critical preview tomorrow? What about the decline of interest after first little while? Distributed computing of this sort isn't well suited for commercial projects with fixed schedules. Not that I don't think it'd be COOL... I just don't think it'll happen :-/
sounds painful... arguably, anybody whose mind is into *that* kind of thing, is even more messed up then the aforementioned geeks ;)
I'm not sure if computing can ever become instant (especially not in strict sense of the word). As our capabilities increase, so do the requirements. And I'm not even talking about MS Word taking longer and longer with computers faster and faster... :-P
There is almost ridiculous (and exploding) amount of raw data out there, and we are always eager to collate, process and present it in better ways. With software being written in less optimized ways (due to need for speedy development), and increased expectations, a "common task" today doesn't take significantly less time then it did 10 years ago -- it's just that a "common task" today is much more complex (and, arguably, useful).
(feel free to enlighten us then, eh? :)
"consciousness must be finite"
;)
Except, of course, for those using certain popular mind-expanding substances
Seriously though - it seems we are finding a new limit every day. Wasn't it last week that they theorized limitations on data storage, as well as data transmission speed?
But jobs ARE being offshored - by millions:). It's the cheap goods that are sometimes hard to obtain (DVD region coding etc).
There's a ridiculous amount of stuff that's dirt cheap in East Europe or Asia, that is not available here.
>>the linux kernel developers need to get over their fanaticism about open-source drivers. I thought the problem here is of a non-GPL driver *claiming* to be GPL? Any other crusade developers may or may not have is mostly irrelevant in this particular case.
The original Linus e-mail was changed in that "helpful" reposting. Words like "Circumsise" and "vomit" were not present in the original (haven't bothered to check for other transgressions).
Of course, by the time you add liquid cooling, Lexan case sides, LAN carrying straps, enhanced power supply etc, it's going to be somewhat larger that Super Nintendo ;)
Why not just use existing phones/ethernet jacks in Airplanes? I cannot see this much technology being any cheaper, so what is the point in using your own cell vs. built-in phones?
"Amazed at the level of ignorance"?? I'm perfectly *aware* of the need for secure passwords. My passwords at work were initially hard-memorized, completely random strings of letters & numbers. However, after the 3rd time I had to change all my 12 passwords (on different schedules, of course), I just said "Screw it". There is no way I can practically memorize 12 secure passwords a month. The constant changing of passwords is one of the most counter-productive practices - while perhaps great in theory, and with some sound reasoning behind it, everybody I know agrees their passwords get less secure every iteration.
Is anybody really still paying attention to RedHat's 2.4 offerings? Does it look like they'll keep up the backporting practice?
b) is only half the truth... that laptop-wielding mechanic also won't have a clue when some actual trouble-shooting needs to be done. I've had technicians who could hear the horrible, screeching sounds coming from the engine as well as I could, but since no codes were forthcoming from the diagnostic machine, the problem "did not exist". So... some problems are easy to diagnose -- if there's a working sensor designed to detect that specific problem. Other problems are devilishly difficult as cars get so complex that it is near impossible to figure out what is causing an intermittent glitch.
I think more then just ideas on what to use them *for*, the original poster would like some advice on how to connect the LCDs to a computer or MP3 player etc. I might have extra laptop screens as well - but no clue how to connect their (proprietary?) laptop wire thingamagies to the 15-pin VGA port... or the "other" port on my ATI Radeon :)
sure... or it could just be me calling from Toronto, with my 'heavy accent' and cordless battery dying :P
... it needs to be more believable & official - some techno-babble on how the protocol works and how it disables the computer - rather then just "there's this really big & bad thingie out there". Perhaps version 1.1 of this April-1st scare will be slightly improved:)
It is questionable for you to download music in Canada because the copyright extension only allows for copying from an original source.
:->>>
This is incorrect, and in fact the Copyright Board of Canada has specifically clarified that it is only concerned whether a copy of musical audio work is made for personal copy or not. The source is actually irrelevant. (I posted a link in another post in this discussion if you'd like to check the source:))
As to your assertion that this levy is an attack on freedom, it is debatable. More importantly, while it is an imperfect system, it is (I believe) better then what US has. Public has as much choice in which artist gets $$$ and how much as it ever does - and in fact, the same metric is used (50% sales figures, 50% charts/requests I believe). Regular CD-Rs have much lower levy then designated Audio-CD-Rs (or cassete tapes etc). Meanwhile, for a bargain price, we get much more freedom. If you believe the price itself to be unfair, Copyright Board Canada is taking comments for considerations, and the levies are revised every 1-2 years (all this was found out in this morning's research - it's not that hard:)
Solution? Boycott these cartels (stop sharing and stop buying) and support Free alternatives.
I am not sure which "free alternatives" you propose (are we still talking music?). I can only get Sultans of Swing (my favourite song) from Dire Straits - any other alternative would be illegal or imperfect or both
In US it is illegal to both download and upload. RIAA promised that it would go after the uploaders only - but we all know how that ended;).
:>
In short, filesharing in general is not safe in US.
In Canada, arguably, downloading is OK, Uploading (distributing) still isn't. As such, there would be no real advantage for setting up any servers in US - if you're really that concerned, and have capability to place servers where you want to... may I suggest Cayman islands?
Actually, the legal values are not that fuzzy. However, most Canadians don't believe their luck (sounds too good to be true:), so by all means check out the actual Copyright law, Part VIII - Private Copying.
The particular clause/statute/statement (IANAL:) is #80.
Not that fuzzy... copying for others is illegal - copying for yourself is legal.