I believe that the discussion has been misguided for a long time. "Making a copy" shouldn't be a "right" that can be bought or sold, taken, managed or enforced by law. The problem ethical in the first place, and economical in second. For instance: if I buy a movie on tape, and later want to digitize and burn it on disc, no harm is done to anyone - so, no ethical problem. But if, say, the MPAA wanted to force me buying the movie again on dvd, based solely on the idea of copyright, this is immoral gouging. On the other hand, if the version on dvd is much better (clean sound, image, extras), I might want to buy it again, *if* the price is reasonable. This is just a silly example, but it's all a give and take in the end. What is wrong is trying to radicalize things, calling copyright infringement theft and suing people. Both sides lose, you get the idea.
I don't believe in normalization: in every class I ever taught, I never ceased to amaze me how grades would always form a Gaussian distribution, independently of how hard the test was or wasn't, how competent or or not the students were, not even how small the sample could be. Any further grade manipulation beyond perhaps a mere translation of the mean (to compensate for a test too hard, perhaps) would feel wrong, because I could see that the classification in the exams was strongly correlated with the students' participation in class. If a professor is *really* doing his or her job, it's easy to catch cheaters, no need to massage numbers. In my point of view, American universities are doing it completely wrong in terms of grades: first, by abusing of the so called "teaching assistants" to grade student work, and with that cutting an important feedback channel that could help the professor improve his/her teaching. Second, with the idea of "honor code" that some previous poster mentioned: cheaters do not have honor! Such idealism only works in small doses, not in cutthroat competition (and force curving wouldn't work either, it only makes half-sense to cut group cheating.) I read "we rely on an honor code" as "we are afraid to accuse and punish cheaters". Last, if you manipulate grades so everyone gets an A or B (the infamous grade inflation), you crush in the process standard deviation: any noise in the grading process can become significant, i.e. change a B into an A or vice-versa. In general, cheaters get A's since it's a "grade-improving" noise, while honest work barely gets you a B.
So: work hard, become the best in your field, and get fired so they can offer you a new job 10 weeks later at a lower salary.
Think of it as:
1) You work for a corporation. 2) Profit is a corporation's (sole) objective. 3) It doesn't matter how good you are in your field: if someone will do the same thing you do well enough (i.e. not so bad that it would damage the profit) then, seriously, what you expect?
Alright, I respect your opinion: your pet peeve is spelling correction. Mine is spelling errors: I don't mind being corrected and, as I said, I appreciate when people take the time to review what they wrote. Peace.
He probably knows that. On the other hand, when was the last time someone (not working for Microsoft) compiled a Windows kernel optimized for his/her own machine?
I mean, of course sometimes it may feel petty or obnoxious, but I don't think GP's spelling correction was either. And if more people worried about spelling correctly and grammar, less corrections would be necessary. I don't know about you, but I appreciate reading well written text - maybe I should stop reading/. ?
No, Mycosoft is better: from the greek mycos, for fungus, and soft, for software. Virus infections, DRM infections and now ad infections? It surely resembles a nasty case of mycosis.
"Copyright laws"? That's preposterous - if the former company did violate the GPL, it must be punished. But concerning the keys mentioned, I think it falls in a gray area: could they be forced to reveal, say, some encryption key or other sensitive information even if it is not directly related to said GPL violation, but on the other hand necessary to prove something in court?
Of course that is not true, but Windows surely feels more expensive (but not necessarily a better value) each new version. I know people will point out that each new version includes more "free" stuff - browser, media player, cd-burning, DRM infection... - and also that hardware is proportionally cheaper nowadays, so the so called Windows tax is a bigger chunk of your new PC's price. What I would really like to see is a good economic analysis taking into account the factors above, inflation, OEM price vs. consumer price, etc, and answering once and for all, how much should Windows really cost? I do feel it is a ripoff but, how much?
First point: when someone buys a CD or DVD, normally it's being bought for the content: music, movie or software, not for the shiny little plastic disc (that, btw, is worth just a few cents.) So, if what the person bought in fact access to the content, he or she should be free to use it as fit: make a backup, play on the computer/jukebox/whatever, etc. The only unethical thing is if the person resells (or gives away) access to the content AND keeps a copy. It's simple as that.
Regarding your (fallacious) analogy, if someone invents a StarTrek-like replicator, supposedly he or she would have to pay for the energy to be converted in matter, so the "free" copy would in fact be paid for. The last point here is if the poor light bulb manufacturer complains that the replicator is somehow stealing his so called "intellectual property". Let's see: the light bulb was invented by Edison, and any R&D was paid for long ago. RIAA/MPAA don't actually create any music or films, the world would be much fairer if we could compensate the real creators of content - the artists - directly.
Fallacies like the above are annoying and I'm tired. End rant.
"Addicted" is appropriated, in my opinion. "Locked in" is true if we consider "must have" functionality that only a specific software or vendor can provide - for instance, someone whose work depends on some esoteric feature that only Word, Excel or Powerpoint has. But most of the time it's not true: people could be happily developing and browsing their intranets with Apache, Firefox and friends, saving their forms and memos in open document formats, etc. Why aren't they? Fear of change in one hand, (re)training costs in the other. People tend to stick with what they already know, even if there are better, more rational alternatives: that is the behavior of an "addict".
magnetic strip reader Cool. What was its use? Did you get pre-recorded applications, or was it used for memory expansion? I think I have seen a 41 before, but I didn't know about such accessory.
What is their alternative? Should they let others spew incorrect FUD all day long? Exactly. If it *is* FUD, when Vista ships to consumers it will be dispelled - Joe Consumer will not stop buying Vista just because of rumors on websites he does not even see. But if it is true, and his shiny new computer stops working because of some stupid DRM, then negative word-of-mouth will kill Vista, at least for home users.
Today there expansion packs with additional content for many popular games. I would really enjoy if you could buy also upgraded engines for your classics: things like support for new graphics, sound, etc. Compatibility with new hardware (without emulation or similar) would be the priority - new artwork and extra content would be nice, but not necessary. And for a reasonable price.
Just an observation: there are two separate problems here: region coding and tv standard. They are frequently together, and both can be used to restrict distribution. Concerning the first, there was some hope that region coding would be dropped from hi def formats, but it looks like both HD DVD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD#Digital_Rights _Management and BD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc#Region_c odes are keeping the cursed thing (and if they could, they would certainly forbid import/export of media and players too). The second problem, tv standard, is easily circumventable (a mere transcoder, in software or hardware), *provided* you could work with the decrypted signal (no you can't, thanks DMCA!).
Slashdot Mirror
The only thing more pathetic than being a living fossil from the cold war is making puerile jokes about one. Are you afraid from him?
I believe that the discussion has been misguided for a long time. "Making a copy" shouldn't be a "right" that can be bought or sold, taken, managed or enforced by law. The problem ethical in the first place, and economical in second. For instance: if I buy a movie on tape, and later want to digitize and burn it on disc, no harm is done to anyone - so, no ethical problem. But if, say, the MPAA wanted to force me buying the movie again on dvd, based solely on the idea of copyright, this is immoral gouging. On the other hand, if the version on dvd is much better (clean sound, image, extras), I might want to buy it again, *if* the price is reasonable. This is just a silly example, but it's all a give and take in the end. What is wrong is trying to radicalize things, calling copyright infringement theft and suing people. Both sides lose, you get the idea.
I don't believe in normalization: in every class I ever taught, I never ceased to amaze me how grades would always form a Gaussian distribution, independently of how hard the test was or wasn't, how competent or or not the students were, not even how small the sample could be. Any further grade manipulation beyond perhaps a mere translation of the mean (to compensate for a test too hard, perhaps) would feel wrong, because I could see that the classification in the exams was strongly correlated with the students' participation in class. If a professor is *really* doing his or her job, it's easy to catch cheaters, no need to massage numbers. In my point of view, American universities are doing it completely wrong in terms of grades: first, by abusing of the so called "teaching assistants" to grade student work, and with that cutting an important feedback channel that could help the professor improve his/her teaching. Second, with the idea of "honor code" that some previous poster mentioned: cheaters do not have honor! Such idealism only works in small doses, not in cutthroat competition (and force curving wouldn't work either, it only makes half-sense to cut group cheating.) I read "we rely on an honor code" as "we are afraid to accuse and punish cheaters". Last, if you manipulate grades so everyone gets an A or B (the infamous grade inflation), you crush in the process standard deviation: any noise in the grading process can become significant, i.e. change a B into an A or vice-versa. In general, cheaters get A's since it's a "grade-improving" noise, while honest work barely gets you a B.
Think of it as:
1) You work for a corporation.
2) Profit is a corporation's (sole) objective.
3) It doesn't matter how good you are in your field: if someone will do the same thing you do well enough (i.e. not so bad that it would damage the profit) then, seriously, what you expect?
Alright, I respect your opinion: your pet peeve is spelling correction. Mine is spelling errors: I don't mind being corrected and, as I said, I appreciate when people take the time to review what they wrote. Peace.
He probably knows that. On the other hand, when was the last time someone (not working for Microsoft) compiled a Windows kernel optimized for his/her own machine?
Well, if AMD published the concept first, yes. But that doesn't detract from Intel's merit if they do build the first viable implementation.
Why?
/. ?
I mean, of course sometimes it may feel petty or obnoxious, but I don't think GP's spelling correction was either. And if more people worried about spelling correctly and grammar, less corrections would be necessary. I don't know about you, but I appreciate reading well written text - maybe I should stop reading
No, Mycosoft is better: from the greek mycos, for fungus, and soft, for software. Virus infections, DRM infections and now ad infections? It surely resembles a nasty case of mycosis.
"Copyright laws"? That's preposterous - if the former company did violate the GPL, it must be punished. But concerning the keys mentioned, I think it falls in a gray area: could they be forced to reveal, say, some encryption key or other sensitive information even if it is not directly related to said GPL violation, but on the other hand necessary to prove something in court?
MS Says Vista Selling At Twice XP's Price
Of course that is not true, but Windows surely feels more expensive (but not necessarily a better value) each new version. I know people will point out that each new version includes more "free" stuff - browser, media player, cd-burning, DRM infection... - and also that hardware is proportionally cheaper nowadays, so the so called Windows tax is a bigger chunk of your new PC's price. What I would really like to see is a good economic analysis taking into account the factors above, inflation, OEM price vs. consumer price, etc, and answering once and for all, how much should Windows really cost? I do feel it is a ripoff but, how much?
Hah! So *he* is the guy who's melting it! Insensitive clod!
First point: when someone buys a CD or DVD, normally it's being bought for the content: music, movie or software, not for the shiny little plastic disc (that, btw, is worth just a few cents.) So, if what the person bought in fact access to the content, he or she should be free to use it as fit: make a backup, play on the computer/jukebox/whatever, etc. The only unethical thing is if the person resells (or gives away) access to the content AND keeps a copy. It's simple as that.
Regarding your (fallacious) analogy, if someone invents a StarTrek-like replicator, supposedly he or she would have to pay for the energy to be converted in matter, so the "free" copy would in fact be paid for. The last point here is if the poor light bulb manufacturer complains that the replicator is somehow stealing his so called "intellectual property". Let's see: the light bulb was invented by Edison, and any R&D was paid for long ago. RIAA/MPAA don't actually create any music or films, the world would be much fairer if we could compensate the real creators of content - the artists - directly.
Fallacies like the above are annoying and I'm tired. End rant.
"Addicted" is appropriated, in my opinion. "Locked in" is true if we consider "must have" functionality that only a specific software or vendor can provide - for instance, someone whose work depends on some esoteric feature that only Word, Excel or Powerpoint has. But most of the time it's not true: people could be happily developing and browsing their intranets with Apache, Firefox and friends, saving their forms and memos in open document formats, etc. Why aren't they? Fear of change in one hand, (re)training costs in the other. People tend to stick with what they already know, even if there are better, more rational alternatives: that is the behavior of an "addict".
Or is He dead? Don't blame me, blame Nietzsche ;-) Cthulhu, on the other hand, is dead but dreaming...
Thanks!
I believe it is. I remember there was a hack http://weblogs.asp.net/dfindley/archive/2006/06/20 /Set-hardware-clock-to-UTC-on-Windows-_2800_or-how -to-make-the-clock-work-on-a-Mac-Book-Pro_2900_.as px to use UTC, but it didn't work quite right http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/09/ 02/224672.aspx. (Sorry about the long links, couldn't figure out how to do it properly.)
HyperActivation?
*ducks*
Thanks for the information :-)
Old school here, but I love my (still working) 48SX. AFAIK, the only thing the G series introduced was a new, slow and maybe buggy(?) UI.
Today there expansion packs with additional content for many popular games. I would really enjoy if you could buy also upgraded engines for your classics: things like support for new graphics, sound, etc. Compatibility with new hardware (without emulation or similar) would be the priority - new artwork and extra content would be nice, but not necessary. And for a reasonable price.
That said, TIE Fighter FTW!
Just an observation: there are two separate problems here: region coding and tv standard. They are frequently together, and both can be used to restrict distribution. Concerning the first, there was some hope that region coding would be dropped from hi def formats, but it looks like both HD DVD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD#Digital_Rights _Management and BD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc#Region_c odes are keeping the cursed thing (and if they could, they would certainly forbid import/export of media and players too). The second problem, tv standard, is easily circumventable (a mere transcoder, in software or hardware), *provided* you could work with the decrypted signal (no you can't, thanks DMCA!).
Amen, brother! I have learned not to argue with guys who ride dinosaurs and/or whose gods turns into wolves :-D