Umm, how are Linus and RMS like minded? Whilst they both support Freedom of software, they're completely different in their philosophies, ethics and favourite programming languages. Saying they're like minded is like saying that Microsoft and the Salvation Army are like minded because they both happen to produce goods and sell them.
I don't know where you live, so this may or may not be relevant. Here in Australia we have privacy laws that give us the right to know what information a company holds on us, how that information is stored and to have it changed if it is incorrect. The company concerned must take reasonable steps to ensure that only those who need the information have access to it.
If this happened to me, I would be demanding that the site be taken down, and if they refuse, I'd send my lawyer (or better still, the statutory Privacy Commissioner) down on them.
On the other hand, I'd be tempted to ftp them an updated web page, and ask them to replace the old, inaccurate one with up to date information (as is my right). I'd include on the new page a line, "My age is xx years, yy months and zz days." I'd also inform them that I'll be doing this on a weekly basis from now on to ensure accuracy.
I doubt I'd have to do that for too long before my free hosting disappears...
This reminds me of a joke that my six year old told me the other day (it's the first joke she's ever told me that qualifies as humour, so I'm allowed to be proud!)
There were two guys walking along on opposite sides of a river. One guy yells out, 'Hey, how do I get to the other side?'
The other guy yells out, 'You're already on the other side!'
As I remember, six was a happy time of my life too.
Does anyone have any info on when MS claim to have invented the double click? I remember using it on a Mac before I'd even heard of Windows. That may just be a function of my memory though!
you could make as many copies of the master as you wanted to bother with.
Umm, I'm not really sure this is what the article talks about. The point is that only five copies of the master can be made.
I don't really care that it's defeatable. Most people wouldn't defeat it if they used it in a reasonable way... I doubt that anyone honest would bother to build a "circumvention device"
Just like now. Most people don't copy above what the RIAA is looking to let us do. I might copy a disk for the car, keep an ogg or flac on my hard drive and maybe (very rarely) copy it for a friend. But it's dishonest people we're talking about. It will be easily circumvented, not for techie points but for dollar bills. And that's what this system is supposed to prevent.
The good browsers will rise, the bad ones will fall
Unfortunately, no. The browser that comes as default on 90+% of the world's desktops will stay where it is. MS will do the easy things like add tabbed browsing and maybe even tighten up security a bit. As the article implies, MS is after control of the content of the net. There was never a lot of money in the browser market per se. It's an issue of power.
Unless the vast majority of people who simply use whatever's there find a reason to change (and they already have plenty) they're going to stay as they are.
Heck, how many people even realise that there are other Internet Explorers out there?
I guess it's a while ago now, but I remember the fanfare when Saddam gave up a few missiles -- a week or two before the war started? I suspect he was really trying to fend off war. I can't remember what sort of warheads they contained, but in retrospect, they may have been the last hope he had of any shot at defence.
I also remember how the inspectors always believed they were jsut hours away from the arsenal, even though their high tech gadgetry showed nothing. All they needed was ten minutes without Saddam's goons hanging around and they'd have them. If they'd just hung on a few more weeks they would have seen the shock and awe WMD coming in from the east.
You're right, I don't believe we have the right to force our beliefs on anyone else. But we do have the right to instigate discussion (at least, in countries where freedom of speech is recognised). By extension, those in the discussion have the right to terminate it any time they want. I'm not forcing anyone to do anything.
Being a Christian, I do understand why Christians want to spread their message. My point is that there is a (morally) right and wrong way to do it. That just comes down to common human decency.
Let's face it, isn't the free exchange of ideas what Slashdot's all about?
Now that you mention it, the wheel on my MS mouse has an annoying habit of depressing every time I lightly tap the mouse on the desk. This can be annoying when I'm fiddling while reading/. because my browser will try to find whatever's on my clipboard at the time.
So point taken.
And sorry, I've spent far too long playing racing sims and I've forgotten the KETM rule...
In fact, you're not that far away from my point, which was that people are far more likely to sympathetically listen if they're not being browbeaten and threatened with hell. That didn't figure into our style at all. One of the principle tenets of Christianity (yeah, I know, I can't figure out why most Christians don't realise it either) is that we should treat others the way we wish to be treated. I certainly don't like being attacked by Mormons (although it gives me a perverse pleasure...!) but I don't mind watching good street theatre and chatting to a reasonable sort of a person about religion and philosphy.
Interestingly, one of my most vivid memories of my experience in Chinatown was when some Muslim ladies (on holiday from the Middle East) came along and had dinner with us. They were fantastic, and were quite surprised to find a group of Christians that didn't either Bible bash them or try to drop a bomb on their village. We actually agreed more than disagreed on a lot of things about the nature of God, and in some ways their views were more fundamentally Christian than my own!
On the other hand, one of the corollaries of having freedom of speech is that you have to put up with other people going overboard for whatever it is they want to say. Unfortunately, some of those will be extreme zealots for whatever not-so-unreasonable point of view they may have. The result is that the point of view in question takes on an unpleasant taste for the majority of people, regardless of how reasonable it may be. I know a lot of people who have left the church or not belonged in the first place because of idiot Christians giving God a bad name. A large part of my job seems to be helping such people to see the difference.
A few years ago I was one of a bunch of religious freaks who hit Sydney's Chinatown. Fantastic location. We didn't pretend to speak Chinese--in fact, we did our thing with some simple street theatre and a couple of really cool dance routines. We had a crowd of people watching, and some of the local businesses even gave us lunch because we were getting business for them!
If anyone wanted to talk about what we had presented, that was up to them. If people wanted to watch the concert and leave, that was fine too. We did the same thing in King's Cross and Darling Harbour.
What wrecked it was the freaks who followed us. The moment they started with their fake Chinese and bible bashing, people ran. We actually gave away over a hundred Bibles that day, and people seemed pleased with what they got. These other idiots didn't get to base one.
The moral of the story is that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. We said what we had to say in a non-confrontational way, and moved on. Everyone was happy. Go out of your way to offend, and end up going backwards.
This applies to the Linux evangelists as well as anything else. I can't stand Windows or anything else by MS (apart from their mice!) But I've found the easiest way to get people thinking about changing over to the Light Side is to use Linux, maybe show off a little bit, and know what the differences are. When people get interested, I can explain the benefits, and give them a copy of Knoppix. Easy. By treating people as human beings instead of targets to be hit everyone benefits.
Check out www.mozilla.org/unix/remote.html. It seems for standard mozilla there is a command line parameter that allows you to start a new tab rather than a new instance. I think this might work from firefox too, because I found it via the firefox documentation on my machine.
Try putting the switch into the firefox command in your config for your other apps (where you define which browser is called on clicking a link.)
I have no idea if this wouuld work if there are no instances already running. But then, I have no idea if this works at all!
Don't forget that the trick is to distract yourself so you forget to fall. I don't know if whales would have any advantage over an aeroplane in this regard.
I wonder what it would take to bring about the demise of SCO. I always assumed that SCO were a company who had turned to litigation because they couldn't sell products. Given that they've started to lay off staff around the world you'd think that their belts must need tightening. Does history have any examples of these things turn out?
Regardless of what you think of the business direction SCO has taken, it must be worrying for the staff who still have families to feed. ATle ast they'll still be able to afford GNU/Linux...
I worked for a company that had grown to just past the small-enough-to-know-everyone size. Everyone sort of recognised most people, so the company never really worried about security. We were always told to keep an eye on who was around, but that was about it.
Anyway, right in the middle of lunch time one day two blokes walk in with a trolley, load up the coke machine out of the canteen and took it out to their truck. Nobody challenged them--it had been playing up for weeks and we were all expecting it to get fixed soon.
Needless to say the next day, when the guy from Coca-Cola came to refill the machine, we were all slightly embarrassed. We had all seen the machine disappear. And none of us could remember what the guys looked like.
If they'd gone for any of the real equipment (it was an electronic design and manufacturing plant) we would have noticed. These guys knew how to slip in under the radar.
Before long we were all issued with security cards and had to swipe before we entered. The incredible thing was that it happened again six months later...
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, I know, I'm getting off topic. But here's a link telling us how RMS views other FOSS advocates anyway.
Umm, how are Linus and RMS like minded? Whilst they both support Freedom of software, they're completely different in their philosophies, ethics and favourite programming languages. Saying they're like minded is like saying that Microsoft and the Salvation Army are like minded because they both happen to produce goods and sell them.
I don't know where you live, so this may or may not be relevant. Here in Australia we have privacy laws that give us the right to know what information a company holds on us, how that information is stored and to have it changed if it is incorrect. The company concerned must take reasonable steps to ensure that only those who need the information have access to it.
If this happened to me, I would be demanding that the site be taken down, and if they refuse, I'd send my lawyer (or better still, the statutory Privacy Commissioner) down on them.
On the other hand, I'd be tempted to ftp them an updated web page, and ask them to replace the old, inaccurate one with up to date information (as is my right). I'd include on the new page a line, "My age is xx years, yy months and zz days." I'd also inform them that I'll be doing this on a weekly basis from now on to ensure accuracy.
I doubt I'd have to do that for too long before my free hosting disappears...
This reminds me of a joke that my six year old told me the other day (it's the first joke she's ever told me that qualifies as humour, so I'm allowed to be proud!)
As I remember, six was a happy time of my life too.
Does anyone have any info on when MS claim to have invented the double click? I remember using it on a Mac before I'd even heard of Windows. That may just be a function of my memory though!
you could make as many copies of the master as you wanted to bother with.
Umm, I'm not really sure this is what the article talks about. The point is that only five copies of the master can be made.
I don't really care that it's defeatable. Most people wouldn't defeat it if they used it in a reasonable way ... I doubt that anyone honest would bother to build a "circumvention device"
Just like now. Most people don't copy above what the RIAA is looking to let us do. I might copy a disk for the car, keep an ogg or flac on my hard drive and maybe (very rarely) copy it for a friend. But it's dishonest people we're talking about. It will be easily circumvented, not for techie points but for dollar bills. And that's what this system is supposed to prevent.
You only want 10 millibytes per second? Man, I bet Buddha wasn't that patient.
The good browsers will rise, the bad ones will fall
Unfortunately, no. The browser that comes as default on 90+% of the world's desktops will stay where it is. MS will do the easy things like add tabbed browsing and maybe even tighten up security a bit. As the article implies, MS is after control of the content of the net. There was never a lot of money in the browser market per se. It's an issue of power. Unless the vast majority of people who simply use whatever's there find a reason to change (and they already have plenty) they're going to stay as they are.
Heck, how many people even realise that there are other Internet Explorers out there?
I've been both shot and stabbed. It's really not the big deal that tv makes it out to be.
That's right. Believe it or not, people actually die on TV from these things. But then, who really wants reality?
The comment's not racist. The poster was having a shot at people who are scared of blacks and cops who don't believe they can be rich.
Just because a joke uses racial traits doesn't make it racist, or even offensive.
I guess it's a while ago now, but I remember the fanfare when Saddam gave up a few missiles -- a week or two before the war started? I suspect he was really trying to fend off war. I can't remember what sort of warheads they contained, but in retrospect, they may have been the last hope he had of any shot at defence.
I also remember how the inspectors always believed they were jsut hours away from the arsenal, even though their high tech gadgetry showed nothing. All they needed was ten minutes without Saddam's goons hanging around and they'd have them. If they'd just hung on a few more weeks they would have seen the shock and awe WMD coming in from the east.
I know my wife gets a little teary when I tell her I've been rooting around on my computer.
And my computer doesn't seem to understand when I tell it I got root on somebody else's.
It could also be the answer to Marvin the Paranoid Android's "Pick a number. Any Number."
Has everyone missed the fact that Steve Jobs runs Pixar?
You're right, I don't believe we have the right to force our beliefs on anyone else. But we do have the right to instigate discussion (at least, in countries where freedom of speech is recognised). By extension, those in the discussion have the right to terminate it any time they want. I'm not forcing anyone to do anything.
Being a Christian, I do understand why Christians want to spread their message. My point is that there is a (morally) right and wrong way to do it. That just comes down to common human decency.
Let's face it, isn't the free exchange of ideas what Slashdot's all about?
Is Guinness honey like enough?
Now that you mention it, the wheel on my MS mouse has an annoying habit of depressing every time I lightly tap the mouse on the desk. This can be annoying when I'm fiddling while reading /. because my browser will try to find whatever's on my clipboard at the time.
So point taken.
And sorry, I've spent far too long playing racing sims and I've forgotten the KETM rule...
So point taken again.
Er... I'm Australian.
Point taken though.
In fact, you're not that far away from my point, which was that people are far more likely to sympathetically listen if they're not being browbeaten and threatened with hell. That didn't figure into our style at all. One of the principle tenets of Christianity (yeah, I know, I can't figure out why most Christians don't realise it either) is that we should treat others the way we wish to be treated. I certainly don't like being attacked by Mormons (although it gives me a perverse pleasure...!) but I don't mind watching good street theatre and chatting to a reasonable sort of a person about religion and philosphy.
Interestingly, one of my most vivid memories of my experience in Chinatown was when some Muslim ladies (on holiday from the Middle East) came along and had dinner with us. They were fantastic, and were quite surprised to find a group of Christians that didn't either Bible bash them or try to drop a bomb on their village. We actually agreed more than disagreed on a lot of things about the nature of God, and in some ways their views were more fundamentally Christian than my own!
On the other hand, one of the corollaries of having freedom of speech is that you have to put up with other people going overboard for whatever it is they want to say. Unfortunately, some of those will be extreme zealots for whatever not-so-unreasonable point of view they may have. The result is that the point of view in question takes on an unpleasant taste for the majority of people, regardless of how reasonable it may be. I know a lot of people who have left the church or not belonged in the first place because of idiot Christians giving God a bad name. A large part of my job seems to be helping such people to see the difference.
I live in Australia. How does my investment of $130 billion keep $50 billion in the US economy?
Or is this a US only technology?
A few years ago I was one of a bunch of religious freaks who hit Sydney's Chinatown. Fantastic location. We didn't pretend to speak Chinese--in fact, we did our thing with some simple street theatre and a couple of really cool dance routines. We had a crowd of people watching, and some of the local businesses even gave us lunch because we were getting business for them!
If anyone wanted to talk about what we had presented, that was up to them. If people wanted to watch the concert and leave, that was fine too. We did the same thing in King's Cross and Darling Harbour.
What wrecked it was the freaks who followed us. The moment they started with their fake Chinese and bible bashing, people ran. We actually gave away over a hundred Bibles that day, and people seemed pleased with what they got. These other idiots didn't get to base one.
The moral of the story is that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. We said what we had to say in a non-confrontational way, and moved on. Everyone was happy. Go out of your way to offend, and end up going backwards.
This applies to the Linux evangelists as well as anything else. I can't stand Windows or anything else by MS (apart from their mice!) But I've found the easiest way to get people thinking about changing over to the Light Side is to use Linux, maybe show off a little bit, and know what the differences are. When people get interested, I can explain the benefits, and give them a copy of Knoppix. Easy. By treating people as human beings instead of targets to be hit everyone benefits.
I hope you checked the definitions of the micro- nano- and pico- prefixes. I'm really not in the mood for a micki- nani- and picbi- debate right now.
Check out www.mozilla.org/unix/remote.html. It seems for standard mozilla there is a command line parameter that allows you to start a new tab rather than a new instance. I think this might work from firefox too, because I found it via the firefox documentation on my machine.
Try putting the switch into the firefox command in your config for your other apps (where you define which browser is called on clicking a link.)
I have no idea if this wouuld work if there are no instances already running. But then, I have no idea if this works at all!
Don't forget that the trick is to distract yourself so you forget to fall. I don't know if whales would have any advantage over an aeroplane in this regard.
I wonder what it would take to bring about the demise of SCO. I always assumed that SCO were a company who had turned to litigation because they couldn't sell products. Given that they've started to lay off staff around the world you'd think that their belts must need tightening. Does history have any examples of these things turn out?
Regardless of what you think of the business direction SCO has taken, it must be worrying for the staff who still have families to feed. ATle ast they'll still be able to afford GNU/Linux...
I worked for a company that had grown to just past the small-enough-to-know-everyone size. Everyone sort of recognised most people, so the company never really worried about security. We were always told to keep an eye on who was around, but that was about it.
Anyway, right in the middle of lunch time one day two blokes walk in with a trolley, load up the coke machine out of the canteen and took it out to their truck. Nobody challenged them--it had been playing up for weeks and we were all expecting it to get fixed soon.
Needless to say the next day, when the guy from Coca-Cola came to refill the machine, we were all slightly embarrassed. We had all seen the machine disappear. And none of us could remember what the guys looked like.
If they'd gone for any of the real equipment (it was an electronic design and manufacturing plant) we would have noticed. These guys knew how to slip in under the radar.
Before long we were all issued with security cards and had to swipe before we entered. The incredible thing was that it happened again six months later...