I work for a large private university, Brigham Young University (30,000+ undergrads). Our CS labs have used Redhat for years, always supported by the lab and teachers assistants. What we need it to wean the public university computer labs from windows and we may have some news.
The implication ought to be there. If anyone can rip cd's and listen to there on anything they own, why not dvd's? Not that I agree, but I could seem the arguement that there is a lack of xvid (or insert mpeg4 codec here) hardware support. So if we can rip our cd's and listen to them on ipods, we should be able to rip our own dvds and watch them on... oh wait a second. Nevermind.
MPC is the easiest for video (VLC is the best), but for audio foobar (especially the lite version) is the greatest. http://www.foobar2000.org/download.html
Classic is a fantastic little media player. It'll handle nearly every video file (including.mov, dvd's and.rm) and it all works without an install. Just a tiny little program that goes everywhere with me on my USB drive.
Snag it at sourceforge here http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/guliverkli/mpc2 kxp6484.zip?download
Yes Taylor certainly did sound open-minded and repentent about the days of lashing out against linux (3 years ago), although he sidestepped the point that microsoft is still lashing out against linux. Nonetheless, what you do means more than what you say, he couldn't bash linux because he'd have gotten shredded. Had he been speaking to less-informed potential customers, is there any question which 'solution' he'd recommend? If asked about linux is there any question he'd point out all of the percieved flaws rather than strengths. The guy is smart, and he panders to his audience.
There really are some easy ways to protect yourself that most people overlook. This is what drives me nuts about a lot of information which is stolen, it should have never been offered in the first place.
Unless you NEED internet access, don't have it. For personal PC's, turn them off when you aren't using them, and for goodness sakes, don't use an admin account unless you need to. That is the biggest common mistake.
If you insist on leaving your computer on, power off your DSL/Cable box, or manually unplug. It isn't that hard. And disconnect from the wireless network. Password protecting your login isn't enough, password protect access to your hard drive, as in no boot-up without password. Then make sure to turn it off after you are done.
Most solutions aren't hard. Yes you need a firewall, yes you ought to have PGP, but the most effective are the easiest.
I've used Copernic for a while (since the comparison on http://slate.msn.com/id/2111643/) and it'll do star office, open office or anything else you want. By default it searches firefox history (I don't use thunderbird so I can't vouch for it's ability there). I have found it quite effective for OOo though.
I don't use it now just because I know where my stuff is, but it was fun to mess around with. Give it a shot here: http://www.copernic.com/.
The problem is this. A law may create a huge loss to consumers (lets use the US for example) of say 360 million dollars. Thats roughly about $2 per person. Now lets say 300 million of that is burned to heat the whitehouse (wasted in some way), and the RIAA gets the other 60 million. Now how many Americans will go lobby congress for $2? On the other hand, do you think the RIAA will lobby for 60 million, even if it is bad for America as a whole? You can bet they will.
The reason consumer advocacy groups will never be sufficient is because consumer advocacy is a public good (everyone benefits, even hilary rosen) and so there will be a massive free-rider problem. Everyone wants someone else to pay for it because they get just as much benefit.
The problem is uneven distribution of wealth, hence the rich get richer, at the expense of the poor, and usually the whole.
I don't know if there are any solutions to this without a major overhaul of congress and maybe even the constitution itself. So the point is props to Canada for looking out for its citizens. Now if only we could get the rest of the 1st world to follow suit.
is if they'd not been slashdotted in less than 5 minutes! No actually a list of what is on it to see if it is worth torrenting would have been awesome, anyone get through?
"So you're saying I'm invincible?" "No Mr. Burns, with the slightest gust of wind..." "I'm invincible!"
Yeah just like the BSD's have killed it. Or Linux has killed the BSD's. More diversity is better, but among computer literate, there will be no OS monopoly.
This shouldn't be anything surprising. When a society jumps at the shocking, the surreal, of course we'll get what we want. Steven Landsburg, at slate, has illustrated and explained this link long ago with academic journals. See: http://slate.msn.com/id/34856/
These journals use the sensational (and more often less accurate) findings in stories to attract readers. Why should it be any different with any other news agency?
If you want more solid science go somewhere that there is less incentive to be sensational. Where people are already genuinely interested, such as a magazine devoted soley to science.
Locks just like security fixes and such only make it more difficult for someone to break in. We've covered the kensington lock vulnerability before here: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/09/021822 5&tid=172&tid=184&tid=1
Ultimately everything is hackable, hard and software, by those who have too much time and a little knowhow.
As if CD's and music downloads aren't over priced as it is. Imagine paying what you are now, plus the price of developing and implementing this technology. It is surely doomed to fail.
As has been explained since hardware isn't free to make, or innovate etc, the hardware companies would have to be compensated. Now since this money is be funneled through the software companies, the hardware companies would have no opportunities to capture excess profits as they'd be filtered by the software companies.
Not only would this stagnate R&D and only stimulate cost cutting (and the consumer wouldn't necessarily see the lower costs anyway since the hardware company can't offer a lower price to the consumer, as they don't sell to the consumer) but this greatly benefits the software companies.
Interestingly enough, it is sun and MS advocating this free hardware program. What do they provide? Predominantly software, thus this plan would benefit them most. Plus if they were able to absorb some hardware companies, they would have a horizontal and vertical monopoly on the market. That would sound pretty good to me if I was Gates, or Shwartz.
Slashdot Mirror
I work for a large private university, Brigham Young University (30,000+ undergrads). Our CS labs have used Redhat for years, always supported by the lab and teachers assistants. What we need it to wean the public university computer labs from windows and we may have some news.
The implication ought to be there. If anyone can rip cd's and listen to there on anything they own, why not dvd's? Not that I agree, but I could seem the arguement that there is a lack of xvid (or insert mpeg4 codec here) hardware support. So if we can rip our cd's and listen to them on ipods, we should be able to rip our own dvds and watch them on... oh wait a second. Nevermind.
MPC is the easiest for video (VLC is the best), but for audio foobar (especially the lite version) is the greatest.l
http://www.foobar2000.org/download.htm
Classic is a fantastic little media player. It'll handle nearly every video file (including .mov, dvd's and .rm) and it all works without an install. Just a tiny little program that goes everywhere with me on my USB drive.
2 kxp6484.zip?download
Snag it at sourceforge here http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/guliverkli/mpc
Not a single post up yet, and yet the site is already slashdotted into oblivion. Wow.
They've had this more or less at every smiths and albertsons for years.
Yes Taylor certainly did sound open-minded and repentent about the days of lashing out against linux (3 years ago), although he sidestepped the point that microsoft is still lashing out against linux. Nonetheless, what you do means more than what you say, he couldn't bash linux because he'd have gotten shredded. Had he been speaking to less-informed potential customers, is there any question which 'solution' he'd recommend? If asked about linux is there any question he'd point out all of the percieved flaws rather than strengths. The guy is smart, and he panders to his audience.
Good golly, windowmaker is the only way to go.
There really are some easy ways to protect yourself that most people overlook. This is what drives me nuts about a lot of information which is stolen, it should have never been offered in the first place.
Unless you NEED internet access, don't have it. For personal PC's, turn them off when you aren't using them, and for goodness sakes, don't use an admin account unless you need to. That is the biggest common mistake.
If you insist on leaving your computer on, power off your DSL/Cable box, or manually unplug. It isn't that hard. And disconnect from the wireless network. Password protecting your login isn't enough, password protect access to your hard drive, as in no boot-up without password. Then make sure to turn it off after you are done.
Most solutions aren't hard. Yes you need a firewall, yes you ought to have PGP, but the most effective are the easiest.
I've used Copernic for a while (since the comparison on http://slate.msn.com/id/2111643/) and it'll do star office, open office or anything else you want. By default it searches firefox history (I don't use thunderbird so I can't vouch for it's ability there). I have found it quite effective for OOo though.
I don't use it now just because I know where my stuff is, but it was fun to mess around with. Give it a shot here: http://www.copernic.com/.
The problem is this. A law may create a huge loss to consumers (lets use the US for example) of say 360 million dollars. Thats roughly about $2 per person. Now lets say 300 million of that is burned to heat the whitehouse (wasted in some way), and the RIAA gets the other 60 million. Now how many Americans will go lobby congress for $2? On the other hand, do you think the RIAA will lobby for 60 million, even if it is bad for America as a whole? You can bet they will.
The reason consumer advocacy groups will never be sufficient is because consumer advocacy is a public good (everyone benefits, even hilary rosen) and so there will be a massive free-rider problem. Everyone wants someone else to pay for it because they get just as much benefit.
The problem is uneven distribution of wealth, hence the rich get richer, at the expense of the poor, and usually the whole.
I don't know if there are any solutions to this without a major overhaul of congress and maybe even the constitution itself. So the point is props to Canada for looking out for its citizens. Now if only we could get the rest of the 1st world to follow suit.
is if they'd not been slashdotted in less than 5 minutes! No actually a list of what is on it to see if it is worth torrenting would have been awesome, anyone get through?
"So you're saying I'm invincible?"
"No Mr. Burns, with the slightest gust of wind..."
"I'm invincible!"
This is like one of the greatest strategy, guessing and expected value games ever! Stratego rocks, there are many neat optional rules, etc.
Yeah just like the BSD's have killed it. Or Linux has killed the BSD's. More diversity is better, but among computer literate, there will be no OS monopoly.
This shouldn't be anything surprising. When a society jumps at the shocking, the surreal, of course we'll get what we want. Steven Landsburg, at slate, has illustrated and explained this link long ago with academic journals. See: http://slate.msn.com/id/34856/ These journals use the sensational (and more often less accurate) findings in stories to attract readers. Why should it be any different with any other news agency? If you want more solid science go somewhere that there is less incentive to be sensational. Where people are already genuinely interested, such as a magazine devoted soley to science.
Locks just like security fixes and such only make it more difficult for someone to break in. We've covered the kensington lock vulnerability before here: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/09/021822 5&tid=172&tid=184&tid=1
Ultimately everything is hackable, hard and software, by those who have too much time and a little knowhow.
It just sure is nice to be one of those people.
As if CD's and music downloads aren't over priced as it is. Imagine paying what you are now, plus the price of developing and implementing this technology. It is surely doomed to fail.
As has been explained since hardware isn't free to make, or innovate etc, the hardware companies would have to be compensated. Now since this money is be funneled through the software companies, the hardware companies would have no opportunities to capture excess profits as they'd be filtered by the software companies.
Not only would this stagnate R&D and only stimulate cost cutting (and the consumer wouldn't necessarily see the lower costs anyway since the hardware company can't offer a lower price to the consumer, as they don't sell to the consumer) but this greatly benefits the software companies.
Interestingly enough, it is sun and MS advocating this free hardware program. What do they provide? Predominantly software, thus this plan would benefit them most. Plus if they were able to absorb some hardware companies, they would have a horizontal and vertical monopoly on the market. That would sound pretty good to me if I was Gates, or Shwartz.