Well I've started spreading rumors about people buying stuff from spammers and getting tape worm eggs/cyanide pills/another disgusting or poisonous thing instead of medication...
They had it quite a while ago (think around 1999/2000 I was using it with them anyway), but they probably got rid of it or made it a subscriber only service.
On a Star Trek TNG episode I seem to remember Picard tapping out prime numbers to show that he was an intelligent species to another species who were holding him captive, the theory being that maths is a universal constant. Dunno how that would work for communicating, but it would be a good way to show intelligence, or at least draw attention to ourselves if we so desired.
True that MS don't have an absolute monopoly (ie an absolute monopoly would be one with literally no alternatives), but they have a market share that literally dwarfs the competition (well, in some areas anyway, most notibly the home market) - meaning that they are still a monopoly in practice. I'm sure there's a cut-off point where a company becomes a monopoly, but it varies (IIRC in the UK the monopolies commission consider any merger which would result in a company with more than 25% market share to be a monopoly) from country to country.
"I will also assume you are European, in which case I should ask you why Europeans aren't jumping up and down to lower taxes and remove bans on certain speech (such as the ban on Nazi material). "
I'm British so not subject to the ban on nazi materials (well, yet anyway I think) although IIRC there have been a few protests/marches against the Nazi material bans, unfortunatly with the people involved being labelled as neo-nazis.
On the subject of taxes, us British don't mind taxes which get stuff done (not that raising taxes would be a vote winner on a politicians manifesto, although increasing NHS funding for example might be), but a fairly large protest against fuel taxation took place only 5 years ago, leaving one third of all pumps dry in the country, so we're maybe not as apathetic as you think;)
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the BSD license state that you must give credit in the software to your code meaning that, for example, CherryOS who violates the GPL (using PearPC's code) would violate the BSD license if PearPC was under the BSD license (CherryOS are claiming that they wrote all the code)?
The last time I checked, Linux didn't have a monopoly - monopolies have to play under different rules (IIRC they can't use a monopoly to gain a monopoly in another market - eg they can't use a monopoly on operating systems to gain a media player monopoly).
Besides, if I want Linux without anything other a bare GUI, I can install a distro that does that (install a bare Gentoo, or Linux From Scratch install for example then install KDE or Gnome or another GUI) - if I want Windows installed without anything other than a bare GUI, then it's much more difficult to remove IE, OE, WMP etc.
In the UK under the data protection act IIRC they can't distribute your information to other companies without your permission, but maybe their EULA gives them permission to do this?
Only thing I can think of is so that they can put the French language version of their site on the.fr domain - and maybe a French slashdotter would correct me on this, but I'm thinking that maybe french people go to www.$COMPANYNAME.fr by default, rather than the www.$COMPANYNAME.com that people seem to go to when guessing a company name in the uk and probably the US.
However, even then the damage is neglibable - I mean, if I'm looking for information about chocolate and (for example) I go to www.milke.fr looking for information about the chocolate manufacturer I'm not exactly going to suddenly go "Shit, I was looking for chocolate but I can only find a web site about a designer, I better buy some clothes and forget about that chocolate!", - I'd do the logical thing and either go to the.com site (where the company could put up a link to a french language version, which many other sites do), or search for the company on google.
IIRC the GPL says you can charge whatever you want for the binary, but you have to release the source code which you used in it (ie make it available, at the very least by including the LICENCE.txt in the main directory of the software) and release it under the GPL licence. CherryOS has not done this.
The problem was that the title of the page (ie that part in head title="...) was changing to contain the "term stuffing" text if the google bot was visiting it.
"
Meanwhile, anything that would have violated one of the unlawful patents is now legitimate prior art for blocking the re-application."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC the EU patent system works in favour of who applies for the patent first, not who "invented" the idea first, which is IMO completely insane - I seem to remember seeing somewhere it costs 10000 to file a patent application. Most open source or small business developers can't afford this, meaning they could be sued even if they used the idea first and have proof of this!
Maybe the PearPC sound system can have an obscure "bug" in it - not something that could occur in normal development, but something that would 100% prove (that's if the proof of the obscure variable name being identical between the two pieces of software isn't enough) that CherryOS is definatly based from the GPL'd PearPC code.
"
But with this new physics processing unit, I don't have to!"
Maybe eventually games will become so realistic it will become different to tell the difference between them and RL! Then again... maybe that's already happened and I'm in one right now!
I'm in the UK and have never heard of a nationwide content filter - but maybe you're thinking of the BT child-porn block which I believe was on/. a while ago - and they are only one ISP.
Although I believe BT owns the vast majority of phone lines in the UK, those on BT lines (myself included) pay BT the line rental (about £10 a month I think) for the phone line, then we can choose whichever ADSL ISP (iirc ADSL is the vast majority of broadband access in the UK) we choose, so, for example I have a BT phone line, and pay BT for that at £10 a month for normal phone line rental, but pay £25.99 per month to Eclipse (my ISP), and although the data travels through BT's telephone exchange, they do not filter any data on it whatsoever - it would be up to Eclipse to do that in my situation.
"In other words, that content has to be accessible on a Mac, on Linux (any distro, my choice), on a PC, on some wondeful-but-yet-to-be-conceived-of OS that gets written in 2009...anything."
Well, at the moment they use realplayer streams, but they are working on a replacement that should work on all platforms.
IIRC the DivX player has included the Google toolbar for a while - and last time I used it (instead of using the K-lite codecs which include the DivX codecs), it didn't ask me whether or not to install the toolbar - although now it claims to be optional on their web site (or at least doesn't install if IE is not your default browser).
It did let me uninstall it, and I know that the Google toolbar isn't spyware, but it just irritated me that DivX ASSUMED that I wanted a piece of completely unrelated piece of software onto my system without consulting me.
Slashdot Mirror
Well I've started spreading rumors about people buying stuff from spammers and getting tape worm eggs/cyanide pills/another disgusting or poisonous thing instead of medication...
They had it quite a while ago (think around 1999/2000 I was using it with them anyway), but they probably got rid of it or made it a subscriber only service.
That was a history of GUIs, this focuses on icons.
On a Star Trek TNG episode I seem to remember Picard tapping out prime numbers to show that he was an intelligent species to another species who were holding him captive, the theory being that maths is a universal constant. Dunno how that would work for communicating, but it would be a good way to show intelligence, or at least draw attention to ourselves if we so desired.
True that MS don't have an absolute monopoly (ie an absolute monopoly would be one with literally no alternatives), but they have a market share that literally dwarfs the competition (well, in some areas anyway, most notibly the home market) - meaning that they are still a monopoly in practice. I'm sure there's a cut-off point where a company becomes a monopoly, but it varies (IIRC in the UK the monopolies commission consider any merger which would result in a company with more than 25% market share to be a monopoly) from country to country.
"I will also assume you are European, in which case I should ask you why Europeans aren't jumping up and down to lower taxes and remove bans on certain speech (such as the ban on Nazi material). "
;)
I'm British so not subject to the ban on nazi materials (well, yet anyway I think) although IIRC there have been a few protests/marches against the Nazi material bans, unfortunatly with the people involved being labelled as neo-nazis.
On the subject of taxes, us British don't mind taxes which get stuff done (not that raising taxes would be a vote winner on a politicians manifesto, although increasing NHS funding for example might be), but a fairly large protest against fuel taxation took place only 5 years ago, leaving one third of all pumps dry in the country, so we're maybe not as apathetic as you think
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the BSD license state that you must give credit in the software to your code meaning that, for example, CherryOS who violates the GPL (using PearPC's code) would violate the BSD license if PearPC was under the BSD license (CherryOS are claiming that they wrote all the code)?
"introduced their first 32 bit OS"
;) (using Windows XP Pro 64 bit edition beta now).
Well, to be fair, they are introducing their first 64-bit OS now
The last time I checked, Linux didn't have a monopoly - monopolies have to play under different rules (IIRC they can't use a monopoly to gain a monopoly in another market - eg they can't use a monopoly on operating systems to gain a media player monopoly).
Besides, if I want Linux without anything other a bare GUI, I can install a distro that does that (install a bare Gentoo, or Linux From Scratch install for example then install KDE or Gnome or another GUI) - if I want Windows installed without anything other than a bare GUI, then it's much more difficult to remove IE, OE, WMP etc.
By having drives that can use both standards? Sounds good to me!
I once told a telemarketer trying to sell me (double glazed) windows that I don't need any because I run Linux...
In the UK under the data protection act IIRC they can't distribute your information to other companies without your permission, but maybe their EULA gives them permission to do this?
Only thing I can think of is so that they can put the French language version of their site on the .fr domain - and maybe a French slashdotter would correct me on this, but I'm thinking that maybe french people go to www.$COMPANYNAME.fr by default, rather than the www.$COMPANYNAME.com that people seem to go to when guessing a company name in the uk and probably the US.
.com site (where the company could put up a link to a french language version, which many other sites do), or search for the company on google.
However, even then the damage is neglibable - I mean, if I'm looking for information about chocolate and (for example) I go to www.milke.fr looking for information about the chocolate manufacturer I'm not exactly going to suddenly go "Shit, I was looking for chocolate but I can only find a web site about a designer, I better buy some clothes and forget about that chocolate!", - I'd do the logical thing and either go to the
IIRC the GPL says you can charge whatever you want for the binary, but you have to release the source code which you used in it (ie make it available, at the very least by including the LICENCE.txt in the main directory of the software) and release it under the GPL licence. CherryOS has not done this.
On my Nokia N-Gage (runs Symbian OS), it warns me if apps I'm installing aren't signed, but lets me continue or abort at that point.
The problem was that the title of the page (ie that part in head title="...) was changing to contain the "term stuffing" text if the google bot was visiting it.
" Meanwhile, anything that would have violated one of the unlawful patents is now legitimate prior art for blocking the re-application."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC the EU patent system works in favour of who applies for the patent first, not who "invented" the idea first, which is IMO completely insane - I seem to remember seeing somewhere it costs 10000 to file a patent application. Most open source or small business developers can't afford this, meaning they could be sued even if they used the idea first and have proof of this!
Maybe the PearPC sound system can have an obscure "bug" in it - not something that could occur in normal development, but something that would 100% prove (that's if the proof of the obscure variable name being identical between the two pieces of software isn't enough) that CherryOS is definatly based from the GPL'd PearPC code.
IIRC here in the UK copyright expires after 50 years, and does not depend on how long the artist(s) live.
" But with this new physics processing unit, I don't have to!"
Maybe eventually games will become so realistic it will become different to tell the difference between them and RL! Then again... maybe that's already happened and I'm in one right now!
Changes for me. (Shown with Firefox User Agent Extension settings).
" You've never heard of the Great Firewall of China?"
Obviously I've heard of the Great Firewall of China - I was referring to Content filtering within the UK.
I'm in the UK and have never heard of a nationwide content filter - but maybe you're thinking of the BT child-porn block which I believe was on /. a while ago - and they are only one ISP.
Although I believe BT owns the vast majority of phone lines in the UK, those on BT lines (myself included) pay BT the line rental (about £10 a month I think) for the phone line, then we can choose whichever ADSL ISP (iirc ADSL is the vast majority of broadband access in the UK) we choose, so, for example I have a BT phone line, and pay BT for that at £10 a month for normal phone line rental, but pay £25.99 per month to Eclipse (my ISP), and although the data travels through BT's telephone exchange, they do not filter any data on it whatsoever - it would be up to Eclipse to do that in my situation.
"In other words, that content has to be accessible on a Mac, on Linux (any distro, my choice), on a PC, on some wondeful-but-yet-to-be-conceived-of OS that gets written in 2009...anything."
Well, at the moment they use realplayer streams, but they are working on a replacement that should work on all platforms.
IIRC the DivX player has included the Google toolbar for a while - and last time I used it (instead of using the K-lite codecs which include the DivX codecs), it didn't ask me whether or not to install the toolbar - although now it claims to be optional on their web site (or at least doesn't install if IE is not your default browser).
It did let me uninstall it, and I know that the Google toolbar isn't spyware, but it just irritated me that DivX ASSUMED that I wanted a piece of completely unrelated piece of software onto my system without consulting me.