I think you'll find that there are little scriptable apps for OS X that do just about everything you'd want done to a PDF except for the Adobe-style encryption/protection.
And the difference between "distinct culture" and "brainwashing" is...????
I see you got my point:)
The US has a distinct culture. It is not shared by the rest of the world. You fill in the rest. Remember who said "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for lunch."
Remember also that AFAIK, no country in the world has created a democratically determined constitution. If you argue that the US has, it's time to re-learn your US history; the US is not a democracy. One bonus of the US system is that it doesn't obliterate access to differing accounts, even if it sometimes makes them hard to get to.
Please don't go assuming that I'm being a Chinese apologist; I personally would not want to live there for any length of time, and am saddened that most people there (as in the rest of the world) have no choice about what country they live in. However, I have the same attitude toward the USA.
I admit it was a pretty bad slashjob; but my argument was not supposed to hang together all that well; it was just supposed to make people reading the parent post realize that everyone is brainwashed to some degree, which is where the "Distinct Culture" quip came from. The US was created with a multicultural "melting pot" ideology, as opposed to the problematic "mosaic" ideology many other countries use. This means that in the US, non-standard cultural values often tend to be ignored instead of respected as distinct. Many Americans tend to think that everyone else shares a similar fundamental world view, or else has been brainwashed by someone with a nefarious agenda.
What you may be overlooking is the idea that you have been raised as a brainwashed sheep. Of course you hate protection of distinct cultures, your government raised you that way!
It's like certain American countries that raise their children to hate the Commies. Now maybe they give you reason, but when you see 6 year old kids chanting "Death to Commies" how can anyone justify such "educational" systems?
If people are going to hate China, or hate protection of distinct cultures, they should learn to hate when they are old enough to decide on their own to hate something, not becuase they have been told to a million times since birth.
Many countries around the world embark on serious brainwashing techniques on their youth. The US had flagrant stints of this during the 50s, but has since found it is more effective to use tools like Mass Media to do the dirty work. So be careful when you are talking to someone that has been manipulated to such an extreme from childhood, they have been raised in isolation, they have never even been given the opportunity to make their own choices on the matter as an adult.
I severely doubt there are any CompUSA/Best Buy/Circuit City stores in the EU. You might just find that "Average Georges" isn't quite the same person as "Average Joe".
Of course, they're going to have a problem if the disc is made out of anything resembling the same material as that designed to store the moving pictures... most likely, the hole in the middle will end up being an opening into the dungeon dimensions when the disc is spun, or when a number of said discs end up too close to each other....
Re:Still no word from the pr0n industry
on
Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD
·
· Score: 1
Depends on your definition of "piracy" -- the big virtual pirates are not the people who hardware-shift their content, but those who buy a copy of something and then mass-produce knockoffs of that product. This is the old-fashioned "piracy" that they are talking about. Of course, the problem is that many of these kinds of "pirates" are really working for the manufacturing houses in China and other cheap labour countries, selling extra product on the side to increase revenue.
For an example of this, see Canada: here, both the Income tax and the GST were supposed to be temporary measures. Now we have a complex taxation system of both provincial and federal income and sales/services taxes, as well as various levies.
don't forget http://p7zip.sf.net/ when talking about large archives; the 7Zip formats regularly beat rar; I had a 280MB file compress down to 54MB with rar a -m5, and down to 17MB with 7za -ultra. 7Zip has the added benefit of being less encumbered than RAR or ACE, and more open in use of algorithms.
I think we're seing two different definitions of QoS here -- the grandparent's being the actual quality of the network; routing times, dropped packets etc. The parent is talking about server QoS -- namely, packet prioritization. This is definitely nowhere near as important as the quality of the network service.
Most CS majors have a real problem with that specific language. Being able to translate between the two is highly marketable. Also knowing another language (Chinese, Spanish, French, Arabic) is a large bonus.
The parent statement misses a few key facts about the way cellphones work: it's not the distributed microwave radiation that is the problem -- you get way more exposure from the sun on a sunny day than from the human generated EM radiation in the ether -- the problem is in the points of generation. Believe me -- if you stood with your head up against a microwave transmission antenna for a few hours each day, you'd have a very measurable effect. Cellphones work by having a receiver/transmitter that can vary the signal strength based upon the power needed for a clean connection. The problem is that when you have the phone (or antenna tip) up against your ear, half of all outbound signals travel through your head before going on their merry way.
Think of it like throwing stones in a pond; it'll take a lot of people doing that at the same time for a ripple to capsize a boat at a distance; but the force exerted on the water at the locus is probably enough to punch a hole through your boat.
If you prefer another analogy, think of people talking -- you aren't going to get a headache from someone a long way away yelling at your friend sitting beside you -- their voicewaves are distributed, with the signal getting fainter at any specific location the more dispersed they become. The problem happens when your friend, with his mouth right beside your ear, yells back.
So what someone really needs to do is make a sailplane that can do it in a time between 24 and 36 hours... then the sun can be up for the entire flight.
Something tells me this won't be happening anytime soon.
"SP 1 is not a current operating system," said [Microsoft representative] Sundwall. "It doesn't surprise me that it only took 18 minutes to get infected."
So it doesn't surprise MS that an OS that they had in distribution channels only 2 months ago only took 18 minutes to get infected after connecting it to the internet.
Corporations aren't mindless automatons, they're groups of people who've agreed through their charter to share financial responsibility. If a crime is being committed it's not by a corporation, it's by a subset of the people in the corporation.
As far as what you say goes, this is true. However, let's say that you and 3 other people all give Harry $200 each, and say that you expect $250 each back after a specified time, as long as he handles the money the way you want him to. You then tell Harry that you've all decided together (with you personally being a bit unsure about this, but the other two overruled you) that you'll pull your money out unless he gets your interest money very soon, and if you don't see that he has a gun and a mask in his posession within 3 hours, you'll pull out your money immediately.
You see, although a lot of people look on the stock exchange purely as a way to grow their money, investing in a company involves becoming part of the group that decides how that company is run. The Board is responsable to the shareholders, and the employees are responsable to the Board. The Corporation is made up of the shareholders and the Board, and they hire employees. It is ultimately the shareholders as a body who are responsable for what happens in a company. If the Board does something against the wishes of the shareholders, the Board bears full responsability for those actions. If the employees do something against the wishes of the Board, those employees bear responsability for those actions. Thus, just as parents (the corporation) are responsable for the actions of their children, investors are responsable for the actions of the corporation -- and the individuals are also responsable for their individual actions.
The CDs/DVDs themselves might cost next to nothing to make and ship... but the ~$100M budget movies that go on DVDs do not make themselves up overnight.
I haven't checked how these things work these days, but back in the time of Videocassettes, studios did all their financial balancing based on cinema sales alone.
This means that they would project their releases and productions in a way that would guarantee a decent aggregate profit for any given year, without considering tape sales. Tape sales were looked on as an annual loss (people won't go back to the theatre to watch it if they own it), so most shows only went to tape after the projections had been met.
So effectively, the only costs for the cassettes were in the cassette mastering, duplication, and distribution, and any profit above break even was an added bonus.
The incentive to release movies in this way was mostly branding; if you saw that MGM produced these good movies, and certain celebrities generally gave a good performance, you'd be more likely to go see the next MGM film in the theatre that starred those actors.
Of course, my real point is that it's not fair to compare a vendor's distribution of Linux with a clean install of Windows XP.
I just thought I'd point out that, as the grandparent, my point was not to do with ease of use/installation -- it was to do with security and stability. In the original article, Microsoft was comparing a vendor's distribution of Linux with a clean install of Windows XP, and pointing out how XP has way fewer security patches required. I was pointing out that a Linux distribution is a complete package, with compatability testing and security testing done between all components -- this never happens on Windows XP; it is up to the end user/administrator to complete this task. However, one of the posts in this thread made a good point -- Companies like Dell do bundle extra apps in and do some compatability testing -- of course, the apps they add also often contain spyware etc. and generally have not been security tested -- after all, the same company does not have the ability to look at all the source code for all the software installed.
This makes you think though, doesn't it?
I mean, you get a RedHat install, go online, apply the patches, and then get to work doing whatever it is you want to do.
Now let's go to Microsoft land.
You install XP (if it isn't pre-installed), plug it into a firewall, configure firewall, go online, install updates, and then... and then... ...Install Office, go online, install updates...
[repeat for x pieces of software by miscellaneous different software manufacturers]
And FINALLY get down to doing whatever work it was you wanted to do, hoping that the software patches for the myriad of products you've installed from isolated vendors work properly together, and have been fully vetted and tested with a configuration similar to yours.
4- People that only like to buy DVDs they know they'll enjoy watching, so they download it first to see if it is worth their while.
Now I know this category is probably smaller than the others, but it does exist, and there are people who fall into this category more often than into the other ones.
Re:Still doesn't work with Safari
on
Mapping Google Maps
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The problem isn't with javascript, it's with XSLT. If you read the article, you'll notice that the XML transforms are done using XSLT -- and Safari is currently the only browser I've used that doesn't support XSLT. Supposedly it will be in the next version of Safari, so it looks like Google has decided to use it now, and let the browser catch up, instead of using an older technology hack. I hope this provides some incentive for the Safari team to get XSLT working soon, as I have a number of projects that depend on it.
http://www.plattiblog.com/2004/08/16.html seems to hint that there has been some progress.
Artists Against 419 works by getting people to download all the images on the fraudulent web page -- if they redirect the domain, these images will no longer exist. I would hope that the screensaver would be designed such that after one file not found error, it would no longer try to retrieve that file. Thus, unless the Mugus were able to somehow both redirect the site and use the same image names, this will really only affect their own server and associated ISP.
One moment... none of the parties in the suit took simple, reasonable steps. It was a relative of one of the parties who took that step; she was under no obligation to be involved in the suit in any way; the only argument that could be made otherwise is if she was the executor of her mother's estate, and had not yet signed off. The daughter would not be required to go to court; it is her mother who would have received the summons. The court itself would quickly have discovered that there was no such person living, and reprimanded the RIAA for not following due process.
However, until everyone is using strong encryption to store and send all data, steganographed encrypted data is necessary. You see, often it is just as important to hide the fact that you've got something to hide as it is to secure the data. With steganographed encrypted data, you can plausibly deny that it was you who hid the data in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you'll find that there are little scriptable apps for OS X that do just about everything you'd want done to a PDF except for the Adobe-style encryption/protection.
I see you got my point :)
The US has a distinct culture. It is not shared by the rest of the world. You fill in the rest. Remember who said "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for lunch."
Remember also that AFAIK, no country in the world has created a democratically determined constitution. If you argue that the US has, it's time to re-learn your US history; the US is not a democracy. One bonus of the US system is that it doesn't obliterate access to differing accounts, even if it sometimes makes them hard to get to.
Please don't go assuming that I'm being a Chinese apologist; I personally would not want to live there for any length of time, and am saddened that most people there (as in the rest of the world) have no choice about what country they live in. However, I have the same attitude toward the USA.
I admit it was a pretty bad slashjob; but my argument was not supposed to hang together all that well; it was just supposed to make people reading the parent post realize that everyone is brainwashed to some degree, which is where the "Distinct Culture" quip came from. The US was created with a multicultural "melting pot" ideology, as opposed to the problematic "mosaic" ideology many other countries use. This means that in the US, non-standard cultural values often tend to be ignored instead of respected as distinct. Many Americans tend to think that everyone else shares a similar fundamental world view, or else has been brainwashed by someone with a nefarious agenda.
It's like certain American countries that raise their children to hate the Commies. Now maybe they give you reason, but when you see 6 year old kids chanting "Death to Commies" how can anyone justify such "educational" systems?
If people are going to hate China, or hate protection of distinct cultures, they should learn to hate when they are old enough to decide on their own to hate something, not becuase they have been told to a million times since birth.
Many countries around the world embark on serious brainwashing techniques on their youth. The US had flagrant stints of this during the 50s, but has since found it is more effective to use tools like Mass Media to do the dirty work. So be careful when you are talking to someone that has been manipulated to such an extreme from childhood, they have been raised in isolation, they have never even been given the opportunity to make their own choices on the matter as an adult.
I severely doubt there are any CompUSA/Best Buy/Circuit City stores in the EU. You might just find that "Average Georges" isn't quite the same person as "Average Joe".
Of course, they're going to have a problem if the disc is made out of anything resembling the same material as that designed to store the moving pictures... most likely, the hole in the middle will end up being an opening into the dungeon dimensions when the disc is spun, or when a number of said discs end up too close to each other....
Depends on your definition of "piracy" -- the big virtual pirates are not the people who hardware-shift their content, but those who buy a copy of something and then mass-produce knockoffs of that product. This is the old-fashioned "piracy" that they are talking about. Of course, the problem is that many of these kinds of "pirates" are really working for the manufacturing houses in China and other cheap labour countries, selling extra product on the side to increase revenue.
For an example of this, see Canada: here, both the Income tax and the GST were supposed to be temporary measures. Now we have a complex taxation system of both provincial and federal income and sales/services taxes, as well as various levies.
don't forget http://p7zip.sf.net/ when talking about large archives; the 7Zip formats regularly beat rar; I had a 280MB file compress down to 54MB with rar a -m5, and down to 17MB with 7za -ultra. 7Zip has the added benefit of being less encumbered than RAR or ACE, and more open in use of algorithms.
I think we're seing two different definitions of QoS here -- the grandparent's being the actual quality of the network; routing times, dropped packets etc. The parent is talking about server QoS -- namely, packet prioritization. This is definitely nowhere near as important as the quality of the network service.
Most CS majors have a real problem with that specific language. Being able to translate between the two is highly marketable. Also knowing another language (Chinese, Spanish, French, Arabic) is a large bonus.
Think of it like throwing stones in a pond; it'll take a lot of people doing that at the same time for a ripple to capsize a boat at a distance; but the force exerted on the water at the locus is probably enough to punch a hole through your boat.
If you prefer another analogy, think of people talking -- you aren't going to get a headache from someone a long way away yelling at your friend sitting beside you -- their voicewaves are distributed, with the signal getting fainter at any specific location the more dispersed they become. The problem happens when your friend, with his mouth right beside your ear, yells back.
Something tells me this won't be happening anytime soon.
So it doesn't surprise MS that an OS that they had in distribution channels only 2 months ago only took 18 minutes to get infected after connecting it to the internet.
As far as what you say goes, this is true. However, let's say that you and 3 other people all give Harry $200 each, and say that you expect $250 each back after a specified time, as long as he handles the money the way you want him to. You then tell Harry that you've all decided together (with you personally being a bit unsure about this, but the other two overruled you) that you'll pull your money out unless he gets your interest money very soon, and if you don't see that he has a gun and a mask in his posession within 3 hours, you'll pull out your money immediately.
You see, although a lot of people look on the stock exchange purely as a way to grow their money, investing in a company involves becoming part of the group that decides how that company is run. The Board is responsable to the shareholders, and the employees are responsable to the Board. The Corporation is made up of the shareholders and the Board, and they hire employees. It is ultimately the shareholders as a body who are responsable for what happens in a company. If the Board does something against the wishes of the shareholders, the Board bears full responsability for those actions. If the employees do something against the wishes of the Board, those employees bear responsability for those actions. Thus, just as parents (the corporation) are responsable for the actions of their children, investors are responsable for the actions of the corporation -- and the individuals are also responsable for their individual actions.
I haven't checked how these things work these days, but back in the time of Videocassettes, studios did all their financial balancing based on cinema sales alone.
This means that they would project their releases and productions in a way that would guarantee a decent aggregate profit for any given year, without considering tape sales. Tape sales were looked on as an annual loss (people won't go back to the theatre to watch it if they own it), so most shows only went to tape after the projections had been met.
So effectively, the only costs for the cassettes were in the cassette mastering, duplication, and distribution, and any profit above break even was an added bonus.
The incentive to release movies in this way was mostly branding; if you saw that MGM produced these good movies, and certain celebrities generally gave a good performance, you'd be more likely to go see the next MGM film in the theatre that starred those actors.
I just thought I'd point out that, as the grandparent, my point was not to do with ease of use/installation -- it was to do with security and stability. In the original article, Microsoft was comparing a vendor's distribution of Linux with a clean install of Windows XP, and pointing out how XP has way fewer security patches required. I was pointing out that a Linux distribution is a complete package, with compatability testing and security testing done between all components -- this never happens on Windows XP; it is up to the end user/administrator to complete this task. However, one of the posts in this thread made a good point -- Companies like Dell do bundle extra apps in and do some compatability testing -- of course, the apps they add also often contain spyware etc. and generally have not been security tested -- after all, the same company does not have the ability to look at all the source code for all the software installed.
I mean, you get a RedHat install, go online, apply the patches, and then get to work doing whatever it is you want to do.
Now let's go to Microsoft land.
...Install Office, go online, install updates...
You install XP (if it isn't pre-installed), plug it into a firewall, configure firewall, go online, install updates, and then... and then...
[repeat for x pieces of software by miscellaneous different software manufacturers]
And FINALLY get down to doing whatever work it was you wanted to do, hoping that the software patches for the myriad of products you've installed from isolated vendors work properly together, and have been fully vetted and tested with a configuration similar to yours.
4- People that only like to buy DVDs they know they'll enjoy watching, so they download it first to see if it is worth their while.
Now I know this category is probably smaller than the others, but it does exist, and there are people who fall into this category more often than into the other ones.
The problem isn't with javascript, it's with XSLT. If you read the article, you'll notice that the XML transforms are done using XSLT -- and Safari is currently the only browser I've used that doesn't support XSLT. Supposedly it will be in the next version of Safari, so it looks like Google has decided to use it now, and let the browser catch up, instead of using an older technology hack. I hope this provides some incentive for the Safari team to get XSLT working soon, as I have a number of projects that depend on it. http://www.plattiblog.com/2004/08/16.html seems to hint that there has been some progress.
Artists Against 419 works by getting people to download all the images on the fraudulent web page -- if they redirect the domain, these images will no longer exist. I would hope that the screensaver would be designed such that after one file not found error, it would no longer try to retrieve that file. Thus, unless the Mugus were able to somehow both redirect the site and use the same image names, this will really only affect their own server and associated ISP.
Two words: install anacron.
One moment... none of the parties in the suit took simple, reasonable steps. It was a relative of one of the parties who took that step; she was under no obligation to be involved in the suit in any way; the only argument that could be made otherwise is if she was the executor of her mother's estate, and had not yet signed off. The daughter would not be required to go to court; it is her mother who would have received the summons. The court itself would quickly have discovered that there was no such person living, and reprimanded the RIAA for not following due process.
I always interpret the F in [R]TF* as standing for either Full or Faulty, depending on the context :)
However, until everyone is using strong encryption to store and send all data, steganographed encrypted data is necessary. You see, often it is just as important to hide the fact that you've got something to hide as it is to secure the data. With steganographed encrypted data, you can plausibly deny that it was you who hid the data in the first place.