When I was in China a few years ago, I saw people in banks using abacuses. Not to denigrate them for that -- they were faster and more efficient with them than the average North American worker is with a computer. (at least, that's my subjective impression)
As a parent and a grandfather, I would not want my kids partaking in this sort of degenerate filth. It's garbage.
So be a responsible parent and grandfather then, and restrict those things from your kids yourself. Don't take the easy, selfish route of asking the State to do your parenting for you. Your temporary convenience is not worth your freedom, nor the freedom of your neighbours.
This article may have identified why lousy movies get made by German directors, but it's wildly off the mark when it comes to assigning blame. Look at this inflammatory excerpt:
"Rich Germans getting richer by exploiting the stupidity of the Hollywood system and the naivety of critics like us, who never thought to question the true motives of why these horrible, horrible movies existed. Pure and unfiltered 21st century capitalism."
Right...
Capitalism is simply what you get when people create and own property, consume goods, and forego total consumption by reinvesting your capital. All people are capitalists; an economy can't exist without capital.
The culprit here is not "capitalism" or "greedy rich Germans". Germans, like all people, would like to keep their hard-earned money. With an onerous socialist tax system and the resultant stagnant economy, Germans must resort to crazy schemes like Boll's if they want to keep their capital from disappearing into the coffers of the bureaucracy. In the absence of these high taxes, the same "greedy Germans" would be free to save or reinvest their capital in more productive ventures that would benefit the entire economy as a whole.
The culprit is stupid laws, and a lack of economic freedom. German investors are simply acting rationally according to the same motives that exist in all of us.
And really - if this bothers the article's author so badly, he can just stop going to Boll's movies. I see no value in his pathetic diatribe against rich Germans.
In addition to posting a duplicate, the Slashdot editor "ScuttleMonkey" seems to have some funny ideas about what copyright is. Perhaps it would be good to know something about the subject before posting Slashdot articles.
"Really? Even when they were granted to a company which is from another country?"
No, because the status of any patent law in a country depends entirely on whether the local government wants to enact and enforce such laws. Clearly no government is going to see much benefit in enforcing a patent against its own interests.
Unfortunately, most of his product's users aren't doing so well. Windows was making my computing life miserable, until a year or so ago when I bought a computer from a company that charges a higher margin but makes a better product.
1. EULAs are BS. The spyware company happily uploaded a copy of their software to the anti-spyware company on request. Clicking the install button below a 3000 word pile of legalese after you've been given the software isn't a valid contract, for reasons well explained many times before on this site. Heck, the spyware company doesn't even know what individual supposedly "agreed" to the EULA. The janitor? A 12-year-old child? Could have been anyone.
2. Why is the industry so lawsuit crazy? Lawsuits are supposed to reimburse you for actual unlawful damages done. What damage was done by the anti-spyware company downloading the software? A few cents' worth of bandwidth at the most. What damage was done by installing it? None at all. This is surely the most baseless lawsuit ever.
(I know that including the spyware definitions in anti-spyware software will [one hopes] hurt the spyware company, but that's not what the suit is about.)
When I installed Mandrake 9, some of the URPMI repositories in the default setup (the "contrib" ones I believe) were broken and didn't work - and that was a shipping product. That's when I realized Mandrake would happily take my money but wasn't too interested in QA.
I don't think the number of distros has anything to do with it. The problem is flaws they all share in common:
1. No distro includes a simple way of installing and uninstalling software that is guaranteed to work for all Linux programs.
2. Different tookits and a lack of GUI guidelines leads to unpredictable interface behaviour and a lack of inter-operability. Even basic copy and paste can be a problem.
3. Few (if any) software retailers stock Linux software, and many crucial applications are unavailable for Linux. (This won't change till 1 and 2 are fixed)
4. Most hardware does not ship with Linux drivers. (This also won't change till 1 and 2 are fixed)
Were any or all Linux distros to solve these problems, Linux would take off.
"Yet within weeks almost 90% of the customers are back to using IE. The reason? Familiarity."
It could also be apps like MSN, which opens email links in IE even when Firefox is the default browser (or so I've heard). Then IE starts up, asks to be made the default browser, and you're back to square one.
"This rootkit hides itself from the user and anti-malware. Why should any software be allowed to run invisibly?...It seems to me that a well designed OS should NEVER let a piece of code be invisible."
The point of a rootkit is that it alters the behaviour of the OS. Sure, a pre-rootkit kernel wouldn't have let just any code run. But once the rootkit gets in (one way or another), it alters the OS's behaviour. Just like the Sony audio CD rootkit (mentioned in a previous Slashdot article) alters the behaviour of Windows to keep certain kinds of files invisible.
I doubt it, because any malicious program that wants to alter OS X's settings is going to have to prompt you for an administrator password (unlike Windows). Besides, it's likely that any such worm will target official IM clients rather than third-party apps.
I followed that link to Amazon's product page and "modded up" all the user comments that complained about the rootkit and DRM, so they will appear higher on the product page. I imagine both Sony and the artist will get the message if their high-profile page at Amazon.com is a big diatribe against them.
I encourage others to mod up such comments on the Amazon pages for this and any other playback-prevention CD they come across.
"July 2001 and June 2004 show an almost mirror image in terms of the blue and red lines (Apache and MS.) When one goes up, the other goes down and vice-versa. Strange. I wonder what exactly was happening during that time period to cause that."
I suspect that red "hump" on the Microsoft graph coincides with major version releases of their IIS and Windows Server 2003. People and companies tried it out, then switched back to Apache over time.
Some of the sharper spikes are sometimes due to large ISPs with thousands of hosted domains that migrate to a new platform (either to or from Apache) or get bought by another ISP that uses a different platform. For example, Microsoft's spike in July '02 was due to Register.com moving their domain parking system to an IIS front end, even though practically speaking, the proportion of actual sites hosted on IIS did not increase.
"I don't think she has any considerations toward piracy whatsoever."
For 5000 years of human civilization, sharing and spreading culture and information was the norm. In some places, scribes would laboriously copy each book or manuscript that came their way in the hopes of preserving and spreading knowledge. Musicians invented music because they were driven to; artists painted and sculptors sculpted for the same reasons. People shared, copied, improved on, and passed on each others' stories, fables, art, and songs. People innately recognized that culture and knowledge, unlike physical objects, could be freely shared without anyone suffering a loss.
Perhaps the modern Western socialist-democratic state that tries to regulate information and guarantee profits for the media corporations is an exception that goes against human nature. I believe your wife's attitude is the natural and moral one.
"The BBC's numbers are simply representative of this, as any large web site would be."
Well, they'll at least be representative of the overall British marketshare. (And yes, I know not just Brits visit the BBC, but still...)
I imagine for a large German or Finnish media site, you'd see a much higher portion of Firefox users. Many countries in continental Europe seem to have much higher Firefox adoption rates.
"Linux will win because people will crack the technology on a free os?"
I think you're oversimplifying what I wrote.
I don't know if Linux will "win" (whatever that means), but I think it might have an edge over Windows in this case. DRM-enforcing tools for playing Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs will appear for Windows, but naturally none will appear for Linux - certainly, no open source tools. Therefore, someone like DVD Jon will hack the DRM and make an open source library that any Linux program can use. At that point, a typical Linux installation will be capable of doing things with Blu-Ray discs that a standard Vista installation can't do.*
We even see this now with copy-protected CDs. The standard protection mechanisms prevent Windows users from ripping their music, but they do nothing to stop Linux and Mac users from ripping.
My suggestion is that Gates wants to avoid that scenario. He'd rather make it easy to get the data onto Windows and thus control what devices are DRM-authorized and which aren't. Make no mistake, Gates is pro-DRM. But he'd like it to reside in a domain he can control.
Bill Gates doesn't care that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD use restrictive, anti-customer technologies. After all, Gates is that one who's letting Hollywood studios design the high-powered DRM in Windows Vista. He's the one crippling media playback on non-approved PC peripherals.
What Gates mostly cares about, I'll bet, is that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD keep your data chained to another vendor's disc. Microsoft could have a few problems with this; after all, the inability to back up or rip discs will make Windows look like a second-rate OS, while Linux will undoubtedly end up with open source DRM-cracking tools. Gates would rather keep your data locked into your Windows installation. That way, Microsoft-approved devices like the Xbox will work with it, but non-approved devices like the iPod won't.
"He's telling the developers of those clones to be careful about copying or risk being sued."
Sue who for what? 100 developers and contributors for a portion of all the profits they've earned?
Surely, after all the massive hits he's made and the piles of money he sleeps on, he can afford to be a little gracious towards an open source game project.
Funny how to the state, free commerce isn't an option, but blowing $250 million that isn't even yours on a computer system that doesn't work is okay.
"Your papers, citizen! Whoops, my citizen-authorization-scanner just went dead. You'll have to be detained while I get fresh batteries. Oh, and that'll cost $10 - batteries aren't free, you know."
The Internet is collaborative and largely decentralized. Sure, ICANN's in charge of the root domain servers, and different organizations run the top level domain servers. But nothing's stopping your or your ISP from getting DNS from another source if you're dissatisfied with how the official DNS sources are doing. ISPs can largely offer Internet connectivity however they want, and consumers can choose what kind of services to buy. The free market ensures that the entire system will work as well as possible.
To introduce new regulation by any politicians, whether they wear US, UN, or EU badges is largely meaningless, unless by regulation, you mean coercive restrictions, content filtering, and new taxation regimes. There is no ethical profit for anyone to gain from extra regulation, but it's a good recipe for less freedom, more red tape, and a less efficient Internet.
Ultimately, if some political body insists on hijacking the Internet and controlling it, people will make a new network and switch to that one.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was in China a few years ago, I saw people in banks using abacuses. Not to denigrate them for that -- they were faster and more efficient with them than the average North American worker is with a computer. (at least, that's my subjective impression)
As a parent and a grandfather, I would not want my kids partaking in this sort of degenerate filth. It's garbage.
So be a responsible parent and grandfather then, and restrict those things from your kids yourself. Don't take the easy, selfish route of asking the State to do your parenting for you. Your temporary convenience is not worth your freedom, nor the freedom of your neighbours.
This article may have identified why lousy movies get made by German directors, but it's wildly off the mark when it comes to assigning blame. Look at this inflammatory excerpt:
"Rich Germans getting richer by exploiting the stupidity of the Hollywood system and the naivety of critics like us, who never thought to question the true motives of why these horrible, horrible movies existed. Pure and unfiltered 21st century capitalism."
Right...
Capitalism is simply what you get when people create and own property, consume goods, and forego total consumption by reinvesting your capital. All people are capitalists; an economy can't exist without capital.
The culprit here is not "capitalism" or "greedy rich Germans". Germans, like all people, would like to keep their hard-earned money. With an onerous socialist tax system and the resultant stagnant economy, Germans must resort to crazy schemes like Boll's if they want to keep their capital from disappearing into the coffers of the bureaucracy. In the absence of these high taxes, the same "greedy Germans" would be free to save or reinvest their capital in more productive ventures that would benefit the entire economy as a whole.
The culprit is stupid laws, and a lack of economic freedom. German investors are simply acting rationally according to the same motives that exist in all of us.
And really - if this bothers the article's author so badly, he can just stop going to Boll's movies. I see no value in his pathetic diatribe against rich Germans.
In addition to posting a duplicate, the Slashdot editor "ScuttleMonkey" seems to have some funny ideas about what copyright is. Perhaps it would be good to know something about the subject before posting Slashdot articles.
"Really? Even when they were granted to a company which is from another country?"
No, because the status of any patent law in a country depends entirely on whether the local government wants to enact and enforce such laws. Clearly no government is going to see much benefit in enforcing a patent against its own interests.
What the heck is a "massive blowout"? Did 1UP explode? Argh ... let's use words with meaning, Slashdot editors.
"He's doing pretty well these days."
Unfortunately, most of his product's users aren't doing so well. Windows was making my computing life miserable, until a year or so ago when I bought a computer from a company that charges a higher margin but makes a better product.
1. EULAs are BS. The spyware company happily uploaded a copy of their software to the anti-spyware company on request. Clicking the install button below a 3000 word pile of legalese after you've been given the software isn't a valid contract, for reasons well explained many times before on this site. Heck, the spyware company doesn't even know what individual supposedly "agreed" to the EULA. The janitor? A 12-year-old child? Could have been anyone.
2. Why is the industry so lawsuit crazy? Lawsuits are supposed to reimburse you for actual unlawful damages done. What damage was done by the anti-spyware company downloading the software? A few cents' worth of bandwidth at the most. What damage was done by installing it? None at all. This is surely the most baseless lawsuit ever.
(I know that including the spyware definitions in anti-spyware software will [one hopes] hurt the spyware company, but that's not what the suit is about.)
When I installed Mandrake 9, some of the URPMI repositories in the default setup (the "contrib" ones I believe) were broken and didn't work - and that was a shipping product. That's when I realized Mandrake would happily take my money but wasn't too interested in QA.
(Now I run OS X exclusively.)
I don't think the number of distros has anything to do with it. The problem is flaws they all share in common:
1. No distro includes a simple way of installing and uninstalling software that is guaranteed to work for all Linux programs.
2. Different tookits and a lack of GUI guidelines leads to unpredictable interface behaviour and a lack of inter-operability. Even basic copy and paste can be a problem.
3. Few (if any) software retailers stock Linux software, and many crucial applications are unavailable for Linux. (This won't change till 1 and 2 are fixed)
4. Most hardware does not ship with Linux drivers. (This also won't change till 1 and 2 are fixed)
Were any or all Linux distros to solve these problems, Linux would take off.
"Yet within weeks almost 90% of the customers are back to using IE. The reason? Familiarity."
It could also be apps like MSN, which opens email links in IE even when Firefox is the default browser (or so I've heard). Then IE starts up, asks to be made the default browser, and you're back to square one.
"This rootkit hides itself from the user and anti-malware. Why should any software be allowed to run invisibly? ...It seems to me that a well designed OS should NEVER let a piece of code be invisible."
The point of a rootkit is that it alters the behaviour of the OS. Sure, a pre-rootkit kernel wouldn't have let just any code run. But once the rootkit gets in (one way or another), it alters the OS's behaviour. Just like the Sony audio CD rootkit (mentioned in a previous Slashdot article) alters the behaviour of Windows to keep certain kinds of files invisible.
"I use Adium. Should I be worried?"
I doubt it, because any malicious program that wants to alter OS X's settings is going to have to prompt you for an administrator password (unlike Windows). Besides, it's likely that any such worm will target official IM clients rather than third-party apps.
I followed that link to Amazon's product page and "modded up" all the user comments that complained about the rootkit and DRM, so they will appear higher on the product page. I imagine both Sony and the artist will get the message if their high-profile page at Amazon.com is a big diatribe against them.
I encourage others to mod up such comments on the Amazon pages for this and any other playback-prevention CD they come across.
"July 2001 and June 2004 show an almost mirror image in terms of the blue and red lines (Apache and MS.) When one goes up, the other goes down and vice-versa. Strange. I wonder what exactly was happening during that time period to cause that."
I suspect that red "hump" on the Microsoft graph coincides with major version releases of their IIS and Windows Server 2003. People and companies tried it out, then switched back to Apache over time.
Some of the sharper spikes are sometimes due to large ISPs with thousands of hosted domains that migrate to a new platform (either to or from Apache) or get bought by another ISP that uses a different platform. For example, Microsoft's spike in July '02 was due to Register.com moving their domain parking system to an IIS front end, even though practically speaking, the proportion of actual sites hosted on IIS did not increase.
"I don't think she has any considerations toward piracy whatsoever."
For 5000 years of human civilization, sharing and spreading culture and information was the norm. In some places, scribes would laboriously copy each book or manuscript that came their way in the hopes of preserving and spreading knowledge. Musicians invented music because they were driven to; artists painted and sculptors sculpted for the same reasons. People shared, copied, improved on, and passed on each others' stories, fables, art, and songs. People innately recognized that culture and knowledge, unlike physical objects, could be freely shared without anyone suffering a loss.
Perhaps the modern Western socialist-democratic state that tries to regulate information and guarantee profits for the media corporations is an exception that goes against human nature. I believe your wife's attitude is the natural and moral one.
You deserve to be flogged and drowned in grog! I am truly agog. Well, they say, when in Prague...
"Ahh, spoken like a true Socialist!"
I'm about as anti-Socalist as you can get.
"'I say he's made enough money, and I think he should be compel^H^H^H^H^H^H happy to give back to the people who played his games!'"
No, he should live and let live. I said nothing about compelling.
"The BBC's numbers are simply representative of this, as any large web site would be."
Well, they'll at least be representative of the overall British marketshare. (And yes, I know not just Brits visit the BBC, but still...)
I imagine for a large German or Finnish media site, you'd see a much higher portion of Firefox users. Many countries in continental Europe seem to have much higher Firefox adoption rates.
"Linux will win because people will crack the technology on a free os?"
I think you're oversimplifying what I wrote.
I don't know if Linux will "win" (whatever that means), but I think it might have an edge over Windows in this case. DRM-enforcing tools for playing Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs will appear for Windows, but naturally none will appear for Linux - certainly, no open source tools. Therefore, someone like DVD Jon will hack the DRM and make an open source library that any Linux program can use. At that point, a typical Linux installation will be capable of doing things with Blu-Ray discs that a standard Vista installation can't do.*
We even see this now with copy-protected CDs. The standard protection mechanisms prevent Windows users from ripping their music, but they do nothing to stop Linux and Mac users from ripping.
My suggestion is that Gates wants to avoid that scenario. He'd rather make it easy to get the data onto Windows and thus control what devices are DRM-authorized and which aren't. Make no mistake, Gates is pro-DRM. But he'd like it to reside in a domain he can control.
Bill Gates doesn't care that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD use restrictive, anti-customer technologies. After all, Gates is that one who's letting Hollywood studios design the high-powered DRM in Windows Vista. He's the one crippling media playback on non-approved PC peripherals.
What Gates mostly cares about, I'll bet, is that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD keep your data chained to another vendor's disc. Microsoft could have a few problems with this; after all, the inability to back up or rip discs will make Windows look like a second-rate OS, while Linux will undoubtedly end up with open source DRM-cracking tools. Gates would rather keep your data locked into your Windows installation. That way, Microsoft-approved devices like the Xbox will work with it, but non-approved devices like the iPod won't.
"He's telling the developers of those clones to be careful about copying or risk being sued."
Sue who for what? 100 developers and contributors for a portion of all the profits they've earned?
Surely, after all the massive hits he's made and the piles of money he sleeps on, he can afford to be a little gracious towards an open source game project.
Funny how to the state, free commerce isn't an option, but blowing $250 million that isn't even yours on a computer system that doesn't work is okay.
"Your papers, citizen! Whoops, my citizen-authorization-scanner just went dead. You'll have to be detained while I get fresh batteries. Oh, and that'll cost $10 - batteries aren't free, you know."
Right... the new iPod will sell 20 times the volume that the Olympus mRobe (what the heck?) will sell, but making it was a mistake. :)
The Internet is collaborative and largely decentralized. Sure, ICANN's in charge of the root domain servers, and different organizations run the top level domain servers. But nothing's stopping your or your ISP from getting DNS from another source if you're dissatisfied with how the official DNS sources are doing. ISPs can largely offer Internet connectivity however they want, and consumers can choose what kind of services to buy. The free market ensures that the entire system will work as well as possible.
To introduce new regulation by any politicians, whether they wear US, UN, or EU badges is largely meaningless, unless by regulation, you mean coercive restrictions, content filtering, and new taxation regimes. There is no ethical profit for anyone to gain from extra regulation, but it's a good recipe for less freedom, more red tape, and a less efficient Internet.
Ultimately, if some political body insists on hijacking the Internet and controlling it, people will make a new network and switch to that one.