*why* you have a problem with music being used is a mystery. I can only assume it's because it may somehow impact its profitability to you. If the profitability wasn't artificially inflated by copyright law, someone else using it wouldn't be impacting the profitability.
Your second argument suggests this is the case. By the way, the Smashing Pumpkins' permission would not be sufficient for distributing Gish, you would need the permission of the label - still feel copyright is a good solution?
That aside, since distribution of music is only profitable because copyright exists, if copyright did not exist, you would be very unlikely to want to try and make money distributing music.
The backlash against copyright is far more than college kids being miffed. It is about copyright being used to stifle and control artists, to restrict innovation, and maintain, much as I hate to use the phrase, the status quo.
If you'd researched why people are against copyright, your arguments wouldn't be so specious.
IPv6 is hierarchical; if done right, there should be only 8,192 top level entries. The chances of it being done right are depressingly low, however. What it will provide is better aggregation than IPv4 provides, partly because it will be allocated properly right from the start. See your local friendly regional internet registry's homepage for more information (arin.net, ripe.net, apnic.net).
IPv4 address space isn't too tight just yet, but it probably will be soon. Renumbering is a logistical nightmare sheerly from the point of view of trying to contact all the current address space holders, let alone organising it. The currently assigned IPv4 space doesn't lend itself too well to aggregation. As soon as a company holding a/24 wants to multihome, yet another/24 route must be announced.
IPv6 fixes these problems by providing automatic address configuration. Renumbering isn't a problem, since you only have to make one change to renumber an entire site. Moving upstream provider simply means changing the top part of your address space, not an entire renumbering.
As mentioned elsewhere, mobile computing support is built in.
Quality of Service is built into IPv6.
IPv6 has smaller overhead per packet! This alone will speed things up enormously - less processing per packet, and less data to pass through overloaded switches for the same payload. Shorter TCP connection negotiation (although whether TCP is at fault or protocols such as HTTP are at fault there is a tricky issue. talk to your local TCP guru to find out more.)
There are 92 thousand entries in global routes at the moment. Maybe 93 by now, I haven't checked this week. IPv6 is *needed* for this and many other reasons, but it won't become popular until 2002 or so, when mobile phones with WAP browsers and so on get IPv6 addresses. I can't wait.
for (y = 0; y Y; y++) {
for (x = 0; x X; x++) {
if (board[x][y] == MINE) {
known[x - 1][y]++;
/* repeat for other edges */
} else if (board[x][y] == COVERED) {
fuzz[edg][es]++;
}
}
}
now another n^2 loop to verify board[x][y] is between known[x][y] and known[x][y]+fuzz[x][y]
if so, board is consistent, if not, board is inconsistent. O(n^2).
That's not the whole problem, because that solution is far too easy. The fuzz[][] array is not entirely correct, since it would be possible to have:
XX10
2#20
0000
which is obviously NOT consistent, but would fuzz to be so with the above code. It would be another n^2 loop to determine that unknown is not a mine, but there would be cases where you couldn't establish it so easily, I'm sure, I just can't think of one right now.
A probablistic solution would be pretty simple, though.
No, not everyone does. (apologies for the slightly anti KDE bent, I like neither C++ nor Qt, and it tends to show.)
1) KDE is bound to C++, GNOME is (albeit more loosely) bound to C. Development language choice is a *massive* difference between the two.
2) Qt licensing issues were most certainly NOT petty, and the apparent lack of concern from the KDE team tarnished the whole project.
3) Putting all effort into one project is a big mistake, since different projects have different goals. Take Mozilla vs Konqueror for an example. If noone had bothered with a browsing component in Konq because the Mozilla project had a browsing component, where would we be?
4) Your life long dream may be for Linux to be a user friendly desktop usable OS, but my desire is for Linux to be an OS I can use to do what I want to get done. I don't want GUI admin tools to config files I'm comfortable with. I don't mind if other people want them and make them, but I'd be pissed off if, to save duplication of effort, we stopped providing those config files.
(incidentally, Mozilla is a classic example of mismatched goals - people were hoping for a browser, the Mozilla team wanted to create something else. I sure wish there'd been more duplication of effort there, we could have a lightweight browser that didn't need mozembed.)
So the not terribly funny (come on, it's an old old story) "joke" exposes a serious lack of understanding of why choice is so good.
He was either misquoted, or is seriously misguided. Even just a quick scan of the article shows the four "main contenders" are RedHat, Caldera, Turbolinux and SuSE. Debian and Slackware just aren't mentioned.
So, insofaras one uses the definition "a descendant of RedHat" as the definition for a Linux distribution, yes, it's reasonable to suppose they'll coalesce back into one. It's pretty unlikely that Debian and RedHat will merge, since they're based on different concepts. Ditto for Slackware.
So this story is most likely an attempt to drum up awareness of Turbolinux, which appears to be a RedHat plus some proprietary stuff.
1) There is no security model, but one IS needed. With a proper OS kernel security model, you would not have trojans, nor would you have viruses spreading so easily. It's surely not that hard to require user authorization to perform certain priveliged tasks, and to have that authorization checked by OS, not program?
2) Windows usability has been discussed thoroughly in the past.
3) There's no requirement that you run a shell, or even a getty. I've done embedded projects with Linux, and I didn't run a getty. I included a shell so the techies could telnet to the box, but the OS runs happily with no shell running in the field. I didn't even need to modify the kernel to do it.
Evolved is too kind a word. Mutated, perhaps. DOS was a poor kludge. FAT should have been left behind when hard disks became popular; it was never designed for anything more, and is woefully inadequate. But backwards compatibility we must have. Hooray for the x86 instruction set. Bring on the sort opcode. VAX forever.
Your comment on crashing is vaguely worrying. So I'm not using my car often, I just drive from home to work and back again. So it doesn't matter if the engine stalls once or twice a day, or if the steering wheel stops turning the car once a month. Of course, as someone else said, this is because 3rd party drivers are abysimal.
Windows is a successful idea, but not necessarily a good one. It is so common due to illegal monopolistic tactics. Don't believe me? Ask the US courts. It is "popular" because it has no competition. That said, I'm not one who calls for replacing Windows with Linux. I'd much prefer to see a reasonably high volume of OSes available, and vendors to use open standards, but I'd also like to get laid tonight, and that's not going to happen, either.
At least everyone agrees attempting to reimplement it is a bad idea.;)
-- Boycott MPAA movies. You may not make them care, but don't let them make you NOT care.
DVDs are a very consumer-friendly product. They provide more entertainment per dollar than any home video product ever has and has grown faster than VHS, LaserDisc, or CD. Movies over the net is not usable yet (and I have a broadband connection...it still can't hold a candle to my DVDs)
Yes, a DVD is a wonderful thing, but you cannot call it consumer friendly with the restrictions it has. Region locking is not for the consumer; see the recent Princess Mononoke article, for example -- the region locking prevented fans importing the DVD, and the only region 1 edition was dubbed. That's not consumer friendly. Why don't you try and get the original version of Run Lola, Run, or Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels? Seen Asterix and Obelix on DVD yet?
The simple fact that there are workarounds to the restrictions put in place show that those restrictions are not good for the consumer. So the product, no matter how shiny and exciting, also has features that hinder the consumer.
Videos are cheaper than DVDs. I'm not buying videos, either, though. I think I would have been interested in getting a DVD-ROM and a collection of DVDs such as Buffy, though, if it weren't for the issues around it.
Even if I was buying videos instead, no, I don't think my actions would be noticed. If more people felt the way I did, then it would be noticed that video sales were remaining high, and DVD sales were not growing, but that's not the case.
-- goldfish, wondering what I was taking when I chose this nick.
(I think I'm getting more off topic each time I post. Apologies.)
IP bothers me. It bothers me because I think things are wrong at the moment. Having someone able to claim ownership of an idea, and prevent others using that idea, is awful to contemplate. Conversely, as you point out, the people who create art forms such as music or books need to eat.
So I buy books instead of borrowing from the library, and while I download MP3s, I delete those I don't like, and buy the CDs of those I do.
I don't believe that anyone motivated purely by money can produce good art. A good book has the author's soul in it; a good painting captures a mood or feeling. Good music is something the artist created for themselves. So your hypothetical artist in a post copyright world produces a song, and gets a warm glow inside, followed by a hunger pang. Now, how do they make money so they can eat?
I don't know, and this is what bothers me. I do know that the current copyright system bothers me just as much, because it gives control to a few, restricts the flow of art, culture and information, and denies competition. One only has to look at the patent debacle to see how copyright is problematic to small business.
Actually, one answer is historical -- patronage. Also known these days as R&D. Someone who provides a service wishes to enjoy fine art, and so they pay an artist to produce that art. The artist doesn't get rich, but they can do what they love, and not starve to death. Similarly, a company funds an R&D department, in the hope that some of the ideas generated will be useful.
There are benefits, that is without doubt. They come at a price of some freedom, and I'm not willing to pay that price. Yes, I can buy a player without region locks, and without macrovision. And probably even one with real digital out, though I'm not sure about that. But doesn't this say to the MPAA, "I don't mind you trying?" What, then, of the relative difficulty of producing a DVD? When you buy into DVDs, you buy into the current set of producers, and no more. CDs, on the other hand, are a digital distribution in an easily duplicatable format, and an open specification. Anyone can produce a CD. Yet for a new producer of DVDs to arise, there are a number of licensing issues. Supporting DVDs is restricting choice. You are right about one thing. My personal boycott is not going to make a difference, except to me. Even if the entire/. community chose to ignore the unquestionable benefits of DVDs, it would still be a relatively small group. I am just hoping (vainly) that DVDs will be replaced by an open, unencumbered solution. Oh, yes, in nearly no time I won't be able to watch movies at home (without breaking the law, which I don't intend to do; even if I disagree with it, breaking it won't help). I'm ok with that, I'll miss out on those special editions, and things like the Transformers movie (I remember seeing that when it came out in the cinemas; the original transformers always bring back nostalgic memories of my childhood) -- I won't, however, participate in something that goes against my principles, no matter how tempting it is. -- goldfish
As far as I'm concerned it's simple. Since DVD is not a consumer friendly product, I refuse to buy into it. I won't buy a DVD-ROM, nor a DVD player, nor will I buy any DVDs. Not only are they restricted in a way I do not like, they are about the same price as two VHS videos.
Sure, I miss out on some content. I miss out on setting up a digital theatre. But in exchange, I get to tell the MPAA that I don't support their practices, and never will, and I get to tell them in the way that bothers them most -- by not giving them money.
So for all the people that complain about how restrictive DVDs are, and how wrong it is for the MPAA to behave as they are, how do you justify buying DVDs to yourself?
(And how does/. justify posting articles about how unfair DVDs are, followed by articles about new DVD releases?)
I may have problems in the future if games start shipping exclusively on DVD. I don't yet know what I'll do if that happens, but you can bet I won't be buying video DVDs.
1. I sometimes like to play games which aren't available to linux
Also the sole reason most people keep a windows partition.
2. My wife likes to surf the net and hasn't quite got the hang of the linux command line.
hmm!? you don't need to use the command line to login using xdm and use your preferred launcher to start netscape. I use the gnome panel and the QuickLaunch applet myself.
3. Linux doesn't have visio *yet*.
I'm sure this is being worked on. You might however in future want to check that products you lend your money support to have open standards and don't lock you into something.
4. If my wife screws up the computer, at least the damage is contained within the windows partition which doesn't really contain anything valuable anyhow (except perhaps my previous high scores:-))
!!!!
With the total lack of a protection model in Windows, any program can *totally* trash your entire hard drive. What if your wife, while surfing the web, is caught out by one of the sites that uses a bug in IE to trash a system? Now contrast this to her surfing in Linux. The only things she, or the programs she runs, can possibly damage are files owned by her user ID, which should be/home/ and nothing more. The rest of the system is protected from her (and you should be running things as a user, not as root, so if you happen to make a mistake, the worst you'll do is blow away your home directory, which you're backing up, right?)
(Sure, this reply is a little delayed, and I doubt anyone will ever read it)
First, you're probably getting your IP address via PPP negotiation, not DHCP. That aside, getting your address dynamically is a good thing, and always will be. Let's say you use provider X, who has the network prefix A. Your userid address portion, assigned by X, is Z, so X gives you the ipv6 address A:Z. Now, you have a relatively permanent address, and you can go and get a hostname at one of the free DNS sites, which is better than giving out an IP address. Let's say now that provider X changes their upstream provider, and gets network prefix B instead. If you weren't using dynamic IPs, you'd now have a broken 'net connection. But since you are, transparently you're now using B:X, and if you're running a dyndns client, your DNS entry will be updated automatically.
DHCP is used in LAN environments, where it serves an essential role. You have all workstations configured via DHCP, so if your company needs to renumber, you merely change the DHCP server's config, not every workstation. DHCP can provide fixed addresses to particular machines, if necessary, also. For example, on my home LAN, the DHCP server provides fixed addresses for the regular machines, but if someone comes over to play games, they're given an IP address in the same range. We can also pick up and move to a LAN party that's using DHCP and not need to do a thing.
As for IPv6, it probably won't come into play until a large network provider comes to one of the registries with a request for a block of IPv4 addresses and is told, "sorry, we don't have any more addresses avaliable."
This is a few years away, yet.
IPv6 addresses will also be allocated using similar policies to IPv4. Just because we think there are lots now, doesn't mean there'll be lots in the future. When IPv4 was introduced, it seemed like a lot of addresses.
Many comments here are saying it is purely the fault of the system administrators -- they should secure their systems. But along those lines, spam is a good thing, it can be fixed by the recipient easily enough. And if someone breaks into your house, you should have put more locks on it. If you get beaten up on the street, you should ask yourself why you didn't take a self defence course!
The simple truth is that someone launching an attack against your system is doing the wrong thing. It is their fault, and their responsibility, and attempting to say the victim deserved the attack is supporting anarchy and chaos.
As for it being a path to learning how to be a system administrator, that's utter bullshit. Several people *did* start that way, but that doesn't mean it's the only, or the best, or even a good way to start. Since they have access to the Internet, they can easily get a hold of all the freely available information about how systems work; learn programming, learn how the Internet actually works, learn how your CPU does its job. Certainly a better use of time than./setup.sh.
Strangely, I've seen noone comment on licensing issues. From what limited information I've seen, Kylix will produce Qt based code. We already know that pure GPL and Qt don't mix, or at least, I'd prefer not to do it.
I'd be happy to use Kylix, but not if it means I can't release GPLd programs.
-- to the beat j0r
Re:If I wanted an under-powered, under-used OS,
on
AtheOS
·
· Score: 1
Same with AutoCad... It's just a fun little drawing program for me... Open up all but the current version, I say!
Like the way Borland/Inprise allows free download of old versions of Turbo C, because many educational institutions use those version?
Think about it... if Microsoft were to offer Office 95 for free, do you think Office 2000 would have sufficient advances to make people want to buy it? However, Windows 2000 is probably sufficiently advanced to justify buying that instead of freely installing NT 3.
AutoCAD are unlikely to be able to make any money from those old versions of ACAD, and people who wish to do serious CAD work are more likely to want the later versions, so what reasons are there for *not* allowing free distribution of the earlier revisions?
(Note. I don't endorse breaking the law, even when the law is blatantly stupid and wrong.)
(You also need a license to drive a car, and you must be of a certain age or above. Think how much better the Internet could be if you had to pass a test to be allowed on it.)
Saving that IRC was created primarily to facilitate chatting between users, and the ability to transfer files was added later, but napster was created primarily to facilitate transferring mp3 files.
It is possible that a lawsuit against Napster could successfully argue that the sole (or at least, primary) purpose of Napster is to create an environment that encourages illegal activity. I'm not sure what the law says about this, but it probably wouldn't be slapped on the wrist and told it's being naughty.
Of course, as with most law suits, it's missing the point, and trying to use force instead of reason. There must be some reason why people will continually copy music, some lack of incentive to purchase it. A far better solution than suing everyone you can would be to find a way to create more incentive for people to buy music.
Similarly with most other laws. ``Making an example'' doesn't work.
Dr. Dre's attourney outright calls transmitting copyrighted materials theft, which leaves me of the opinion that Dr. Dre should seek a new attourney.
For a long time, the software and music industries have been working hard to associate copyright violations with theft; the very term "pirate" is suggestive of thievery. The problem is, legally, it cannot be considered theft, and would be punishable under copyright laws.
Or at least in Australia, and I presume America would not be too different.
-- goldfish
Re:Phone companies charging for using modem
on
Hoax-a-go-go!
·
· Score: 1
Several European countries have timed local calls, both voice and data. The UK I believe is one of them.
The hoaxes (and the real.au Telstra plans) are about introducing time charging for data alone.
Or, in the case of Telstra, introducing charges to ISPs for each phone call they receive.
-- goldfishz0rs
Re:Phone companies charging for using modem
on
Hoax-a-go-go!
·
· Score: 1
hold down shift, then give a sequence of commands; they'll be executed in order. For example, B, S, shift-rightclick will cause your SCV to build a farm and then move to where you clicked.
As for moving right past enemy units, use Attack-to. A will get your units moving to a point, stopping to attack anything on the way. Most useful with fleets of battlecruisers and carriers, for the protoss inclined.
As for total annihilation, it had balance issues.
Probably one of the best strat. game interfaces around at the moment is Age of Kings; you can queue unit construction up to 15, and building construction to no limit, though sometimes peasants are stupid about it. You can also get a fair degree of control over your units, telling them to be aggressive, defensive, or to DON'TMOVEATALLYOUSTUPIDLITTLEARCHERSTAYRIGHTTHERE.
It's a shame the game's networking code is so unstable. Oh, and there's no chance of a Linux port.:)
I see a constant flow of stories like this; "We have a cool new technology that will revolutionise the way you do such'n'such. It'll be available in 5 years."
What's the point?
Technology changes very rapidly. It's entirely possible that other power sources will be tapped by then. We might all move to low power consuming devices. Motorola might decide to scrap the project.
In short, I'd rather companies didn't come out with these press releases until they have something solid to offer, at least a "production starts next week" or similar.
Slashdot Mirror
mate, those are both circular arguments.
*why* you have a problem with music being used is a mystery. I can only assume it's because it may somehow impact its profitability to you. If the profitability wasn't artificially inflated by copyright law, someone else using it wouldn't be impacting the profitability.
Your second argument suggests this is the case. By the way, the Smashing Pumpkins' permission would not be sufficient for distributing Gish, you would need the permission of the label - still feel copyright is a good solution?
That aside, since distribution of music is only profitable because copyright exists, if copyright did not exist, you would be very unlikely to want to try and make money distributing music.
The backlash against copyright is far more than college kids being miffed. It is about copyright being used to stifle and control artists, to restrict innovation, and maintain, much as I hate to use the phrase, the status quo.
If you'd researched why people are against copyright, your arguments wouldn't be so specious.
--
bje
IPv6 is hierarchical; if done right, there should be only 8,192 top level entries. The chances of it being done right are depressingly low, however. What it will provide is better aggregation than IPv4 provides, partly because it will be allocated properly right from the start. See your local friendly regional internet registry's homepage for more information (arin.net, ripe.net, apnic.net).
/24 wants to multihome, yet another /24 route must be announced.
IPv4 address space isn't too tight just yet, but it probably will be soon. Renumbering is a logistical nightmare sheerly from the point of view of trying to contact all the current address space holders, let alone organising it. The currently assigned IPv4 space doesn't lend itself too well to aggregation. As soon as a company holding a
IPv6 fixes these problems by providing automatic address configuration. Renumbering isn't a problem, since you only have to make one change to renumber an entire site. Moving upstream provider simply means changing the top part of your address space, not an entire renumbering.
As mentioned elsewhere, mobile computing support is built in.
Quality of Service is built into IPv6.
IPv6 has smaller overhead per packet! This alone will speed things up enormously - less processing per packet, and less data to pass through overloaded switches for the same payload. Shorter TCP connection negotiation (although whether TCP is at fault or protocols such as HTTP are at fault there is a tricky issue. talk to your local TCP guru to find out more.)
There are 92 thousand entries in global routes at the moment. Maybe 93 by now, I haven't checked this week. IPv6 is *needed* for this and many other reasons, but it won't become popular until 2002 or so, when mobile phones with WAP browsers and so on get IPv6 addresses. I can't wait.
--
bje
int known[][];
/* repeat for other edges */
int fuzz[][];
for (y = 0; y Y; y++) {
for (x = 0; x X; x++) {
if (board[x][y] == MINE) {
known[x - 1][y]++;
} else if (board[x][y] == COVERED) {
fuzz[edg][es]++;
}
}
}
now another n^2 loop to verify board[x][y] is between known[x][y] and known[x][y]+fuzz[x][y]
if so, board is consistent, if not, board is inconsistent. O(n^2).
That's not the whole problem, because that solution is far too easy. The fuzz[][] array is not entirely correct, since it would be possible to have:
XX10
2#20
0000
which is obviously NOT consistent, but would fuzz to be so with the above code. It would be another n^2 loop to determine that unknown is not a mine, but there would be cases where you couldn't establish it so easily, I'm sure, I just can't think of one right now.
A probablistic solution would be pretty simple, though.
--
bje
No, not everyone does. (apologies for the slightly anti KDE bent, I like neither C++ nor Qt, and it tends to show.)
1) KDE is bound to C++, GNOME is (albeit more loosely) bound to C. Development language choice is a *massive* difference between the two.
2) Qt licensing issues were most certainly NOT petty, and the apparent lack of concern from the KDE team tarnished the whole project.
3) Putting all effort into one project is a big mistake, since different projects have different goals. Take Mozilla vs Konqueror for an example. If noone had bothered with a browsing component in Konq because the Mozilla project had a browsing component, where would we be?
4) Your life long dream may be for Linux to be a user friendly desktop usable OS, but my desire is for Linux to be an OS I can use to do what I want to get done. I don't want GUI admin tools to config files I'm comfortable with. I don't mind if other people want them and make them, but I'd be pissed off if, to save duplication of effort, we stopped providing those config files.
(incidentally, Mozilla is a classic example of mismatched goals - people were hoping for a browser, the Mozilla team wanted to create something else. I sure wish there'd been more duplication of effort there, we could have a lightweight browser that didn't need mozembed.)
So the not terribly funny (come on, it's an old old story) "joke" exposes a serious lack of understanding of why choice is so good.
--
bje
He was either misquoted, or is seriously misguided. Even just a quick scan of the article shows the four "main contenders" are RedHat, Caldera, Turbolinux and SuSE. Debian and Slackware just aren't mentioned.
So, insofaras one uses the definition "a descendant of RedHat" as the definition for a Linux distribution, yes, it's reasonable to suppose they'll coalesce back into one. It's pretty unlikely that Debian and RedHat will merge, since they're based on different concepts. Ditto for Slackware.
So this story is most likely an attempt to drum up awareness of Turbolinux, which appears to be a RedHat plus some proprietary stuff.
--
fish don't have their bowls region locked
1) There is no security model, but one IS needed. With a proper OS kernel security model, you would not have trojans, nor would you have viruses spreading so easily. It's surely not that hard to require user authorization to perform certain priveliged tasks, and to have that authorization checked by OS, not program?
;)
2) Windows usability has been discussed thoroughly in the past.
3) There's no requirement that you run a shell, or even a getty. I've done embedded projects with Linux, and I didn't run a getty. I included a shell so the techies could telnet to the box, but the OS runs happily with no shell running in the field. I didn't even need to modify the kernel to do it.
Evolved is too kind a word. Mutated, perhaps. DOS was a poor kludge. FAT should have been left behind when hard disks became popular; it was never designed for anything more, and is woefully inadequate. But backwards compatibility we must have. Hooray for the x86 instruction set. Bring on the sort opcode. VAX forever.
Your comment on crashing is vaguely worrying. So I'm not using my car often, I just drive from home to work and back again. So it doesn't matter if the engine stalls once or twice a day, or if the steering wheel stops turning the car once a month. Of course, as someone else said, this is because 3rd party drivers are abysimal.
Windows is a successful idea, but not necessarily a good one. It is so common due to illegal monopolistic tactics. Don't believe me? Ask the US courts. It is "popular" because it has no competition. That said, I'm not one who calls for replacing Windows with Linux. I'd much prefer to see a reasonably high volume of OSes available, and vendors to use open standards, but I'd also like to get laid tonight, and that's not going to happen, either.
At least everyone agrees attempting to reimplement it is a bad idea.
--
Boycott MPAA movies. You may not make them care, but don't let them make you NOT care.
I won't be seeing any more movies, either, not in the cinema, not on TV, not on video, DVD or other formats.
You're not alone.
--
goldfish
Yes, a DVD is a wonderful thing, but you cannot call it consumer friendly with the restrictions it has. Region locking is not for the consumer; see the recent Princess Mononoke article, for example -- the region locking prevented fans importing the DVD, and the only region 1 edition was dubbed. That's not consumer friendly. Why don't you try and get the original version of Run Lola, Run, or Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels? Seen Asterix and Obelix on DVD yet?
The simple fact that there are workarounds to the restrictions put in place show that those restrictions are not good for the consumer. So the product, no matter how shiny and exciting, also has features that hinder the consumer.
--
goldfish
Videos are cheaper than DVDs. I'm not buying videos, either, though. I think I would have been interested in getting a DVD-ROM and a collection of DVDs such as Buffy, though, if it weren't for the issues around it.
Even if I was buying videos instead, no, I don't think my actions would be noticed. If more people felt the way I did, then it would be noticed that video sales were remaining high, and DVD sales were not growing, but that's not the case.
--
goldfish, wondering what I was taking when I chose this nick.
(I think I'm getting more off topic each time I post. Apologies.)
IP bothers me. It bothers me because I think things are wrong at the moment. Having someone able to claim ownership of an idea, and prevent others using that idea, is awful to contemplate. Conversely, as you point out, the people who create art forms such as music or books need to eat.
So I buy books instead of borrowing from the library, and while I download MP3s, I delete those I don't like, and buy the CDs of those I do.
I don't believe that anyone motivated purely by money can produce good art. A good book has the author's soul in it; a good painting captures a mood or feeling. Good music is something the artist created for themselves. So your hypothetical artist in a post copyright world produces a song, and gets a warm glow inside, followed by a hunger pang. Now, how do they make money so they can eat?
I don't know, and this is what bothers me. I do know that the current copyright system bothers me just as much, because it gives control to a few, restricts the flow of art, culture and information, and denies competition. One only has to look at the patent debacle to see how copyright is problematic to small business.
Actually, one answer is historical -- patronage. Also known these days as R&D. Someone who provides a service wishes to enjoy fine art, and so they pay an artist to produce that art. The artist doesn't get rich, but they can do what they love, and not starve to death. Similarly, a company funds an R&D department, in the hope that some of the ideas generated will be useful.
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goldfish
There are benefits, that is without doubt. They come at a price of some freedom, and I'm not willing to pay that price. Yes, I can buy a player without region locks, and without macrovision. And probably even one with real digital out, though I'm not sure about that. But doesn't this say to the MPAA, "I don't mind you trying?" What, then, of the relative difficulty of producing a DVD? When you buy into DVDs, you buy into the current set of producers, and no more. CDs, on the other hand, are a digital distribution in an easily duplicatable format, and an open specification. Anyone can produce a CD. Yet for a new producer of DVDs to arise, there are a number of licensing issues. Supporting DVDs is restricting choice. You are right about one thing. My personal boycott is not going to make a difference, except to me. Even if the entire /. community chose to ignore the unquestionable benefits of DVDs, it would still be a relatively small group. I am just hoping (vainly) that DVDs will be replaced by an open, unencumbered solution. Oh, yes, in nearly no time I won't be able to watch movies at home (without breaking the law, which I don't intend to do; even if I disagree with it, breaking it won't help). I'm ok with that, I'll miss out on those special editions, and things like the Transformers movie (I remember seeing that when it came out in the cinemas; the original transformers always bring back nostalgic memories of my childhood) -- I won't, however, participate in something that goes against my principles, no matter how tempting it is. -- goldfish
As far as I'm concerned it's simple. Since DVD is not a consumer friendly product, I refuse to buy into it. I won't buy a DVD-ROM, nor a DVD player, nor will I buy any DVDs. Not only are they restricted in a way I do not like, they are about the same price as two VHS videos.
/. justify posting articles about how unfair DVDs are, followed by articles about new DVD releases?)
Sure, I miss out on some content. I miss out on setting up a digital theatre. But in exchange, I get to tell the MPAA that I don't support their practices, and never will, and I get to tell them in the way that bothers them most -- by not giving them money.
So for all the people that complain about how restrictive DVDs are, and how wrong it is for the MPAA to behave as they are, how do you justify buying DVDs to yourself?
(And how does
I may have problems in the future if games start shipping exclusively on DVD. I don't yet know what I'll do if that happens, but you can bet I won't be buying video DVDs.
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goldfish
hmm?
1. I sometimes like to play games which aren't available to linux
Also the sole reason most people keep a windows partition.
2. My wife likes to surf the net and hasn't quite got the hang of the linux command line.
hmm!? you don't need to use the command line to login using xdm and use your preferred launcher to start netscape. I use the gnome panel and the QuickLaunch applet myself.
3. Linux doesn't have visio *yet*.
I'm sure this is being worked on. You might however in future want to check that products you lend your money support to have open standards and don't lock you into something.
4. If my wife screws up the computer, at least the damage is contained within the windows partition which doesn't really contain anything valuable anyhow (except perhaps my previous high scores :-))
!!!!
With the total lack of a protection model in Windows, any program can *totally* trash your entire hard drive. What if your wife, while surfing the web, is caught out by one of the sites that uses a bug in IE to trash a system? Now contrast this to her surfing in Linux. The only things she, or the programs she runs, can possibly damage are files owned by her user ID, which should be /home/ and nothing more. The rest of the system is protected from her (and you should be running things as a user, not as root, so if you happen to make a mistake, the worst you'll do is blow away your home directory, which you're backing up, right?)
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bodyrockj0r, to the beatj0r
(Sure, this reply is a little delayed, and I doubt anyone will ever read it)
First, you're probably getting your IP address via PPP negotiation, not DHCP. That aside, getting your address dynamically is a good thing, and always will be. Let's say you use provider X, who has the network prefix A. Your userid address portion, assigned by X, is Z, so X gives you the ipv6 address A:Z. Now, you have a relatively permanent address, and you can go and get a hostname at one of the free DNS sites, which is better than giving out an IP address. Let's say now that provider X changes their upstream provider, and gets network prefix B instead. If you weren't using dynamic IPs, you'd now have a broken 'net connection. But since you are, transparently you're now using B:X, and if you're running a dyndns client, your DNS entry will be updated automatically.
DHCP is used in LAN environments, where it serves an essential role. You have all workstations configured via DHCP, so if your company needs to renumber, you merely change the DHCP server's config, not every workstation. DHCP can provide fixed addresses to particular machines, if necessary, also. For example, on my home LAN, the DHCP server provides fixed addresses for the regular machines, but if someone comes over to play games, they're given an IP address in the same range. We can also pick up and move to a LAN party that's using DHCP and not need to do a thing.
As for IPv6, it probably won't come into play until a large network provider comes to one of the registries with a request for a block of IPv4 addresses and is told, "sorry, we don't have any more addresses avaliable."
This is a few years away, yet.
IPv6 addresses will also be allocated using similar policies to IPv4. Just because we think there are lots now, doesn't mean there'll be lots in the future. When IPv4 was introduced, it seemed like a lot of addresses.
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what would I know, I'm just a programmer
Many comments here are saying it is purely the fault of the system administrators -- they should secure their systems. But along those lines, spam is a good thing, it can be fixed by the recipient easily enough. And if someone breaks into your house, you should have put more locks on it. If you get beaten up on the street, you should ask yourself why you didn't take a self defence course!
./setup.sh.
The simple truth is that someone launching an attack against your system is doing the wrong thing. It is their fault, and their responsibility, and attempting to say the victim deserved the attack is supporting anarchy and chaos.
As for it being a path to learning how to be a system administrator, that's utter bullshit. Several people *did* start that way, but that doesn't mean it's the only, or the best, or even a good way to start. Since they have access to the Internet, they can easily get a hold of all the freely available information about how systems work; learn programming, learn how the Internet actually works, learn how your CPU does its job. Certainly a better use of time than
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lock your doors, it's now OK to housebreak
Strangely, I've seen noone comment on licensing issues. From what limited information I've seen, Kylix will produce Qt based code. We already know that pure GPL and Qt don't mix, or at least, I'd prefer not to do it.
I'd be happy to use Kylix, but not if it means I can't release GPLd programs.
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to the beat j0r
$ file `which true`
/bin/true: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped
Maybe you need to update your distribution, or, if it's current, change to a better distribution.
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goldfish
Like the way Borland/Inprise allows free download of old versions of Turbo C, because many educational institutions use those version?
Think about it... if Microsoft were to offer Office 95 for free, do you think Office 2000 would have sufficient advances to make people want to buy it? However, Windows 2000 is probably sufficiently advanced to justify buying that instead of freely installing NT 3.
AutoCAD are unlikely to be able to make any money from those old versions of ACAD, and people who wish to do serious CAD work are more likely to want the later versions, so what reasons are there for *not* allowing free distribution of the earlier revisions?
(Note. I don't endorse breaking the law, even when the law is blatantly stupid and wrong.)
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life is better under the sea
(You also need a license to drive a car, and you must be of a certain age or above. Think how much better the Internet could be if you had to pass a test to be allowed on it.)
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goldfish have it better
Saving that IRC was created primarily to facilitate chatting between users, and the ability to transfer files was added later, but napster was created primarily to facilitate transferring mp3 files.
It is possible that a lawsuit against Napster could successfully argue that the sole (or at least, primary) purpose of Napster is to create an environment that encourages illegal activity. I'm not sure what the law says about this, but it probably wouldn't be slapped on the wrist and told it's being naughty.
Of course, as with most law suits, it's missing the point, and trying to use force instead of reason. There must be some reason why people will continually copy music, some lack of incentive to purchase it. A far better solution than suing everyone you can would be to find a way to create more incentive for people to buy music.
Similarly with most other laws. ``Making an example'' doesn't work.
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goldfish
No
This is copyright violation, it is not theft.
Dr. Dre's attourney outright calls transmitting copyrighted materials theft, which leaves me of the opinion that Dr. Dre should seek a new attourney.
For a long time, the software and music industries have been working hard to associate copyright violations with theft; the very term "pirate" is suggestive of thievery. The problem is, legally, it cannot be considered theft, and would be punishable under copyright laws.
Or at least in Australia, and I presume America would not be too different.
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goldfish
Several European countries have timed local calls, both voice and data. The UK I believe is one of them.
.au Telstra plans) are about introducing time charging for data alone.
The hoaxes (and the real
Or, in the case of Telstra, introducing charges to ISPs for each phone call they receive.
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goldfishz0rs
Telstra rock.
Really.
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I wish, I wish, to be a fish.
hold down shift, then give a sequence of commands; they'll be executed in order. For example, B, S, shift-rightclick will cause your SCV to build a farm and then move to where you clicked.
.
:)
As for moving right past enemy units, use Attack-to. A will get your units moving to a point, stopping to attack anything on the way. Most useful with fleets of battlecruisers and carriers, for the protoss inclined.
As for total annihilation, it had balance issues.
Probably one of the best strat. game interfaces around at the moment is Age of Kings; you can queue unit construction up to 15, and building construction to no limit, though sometimes peasants are stupid about it. You can also get a fair degree of control over your units, telling them to be aggressive, defensive, or to DON'TMOVEATALLYOUSTUPIDLITTLEARCHERSTAYRIGHTTHERE
It's a shame the game's networking code is so unstable. Oh, and there's no chance of a Linux port.
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bje
I see a constant flow of stories like this; "We have a cool new technology that will revolutionise the way you do such'n'such. It'll be available in 5 years."
What's the point?
Technology changes very rapidly. It's entirely possible that other power sources will be tapped by then. We might all move to low power consuming devices. Motorola might decide to scrap the project.
In short, I'd rather companies didn't come out with these press releases until they have something solid to offer, at least a "production starts next week" or similar.
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bje