I like having the camera, but it is a pain to get pictures off it (I have a RAZR).
Just use the 'browse device' feature of your OS's bluetooth support and grab it out of/pictures/ - ten seconds, start to finish, I do it with mine all the time.
If you tell the validator to force the encoding to windows-1252, then it will try to validate it, and choke on 45 errors. If you tell the validator to force the doctype to XHTML 1.0 (which a quick look at the source seems to indicate they were trying for), you get 100 errors. Fantastic.
Not quite as worthy of dismission as you seem to imply. Viiv is a set of requirements (e.g. GigE) that manufacturers must match in order to be 'Viiv' certified. Thus Viiv is a common criteria that you can be assured has certain minimum requirements for a multimedia PC.
It's not a marketing/advertising gimmick, it's a brand (draw what conclusions you will).
That's why you browse at Score: 3. There are a lot less crappy posts, no trolls, and just plain less to read. Ever since I started browsing at threshold 3, Slashdot has been a lot more managable. I don't understand why people complain about things like this when the solution has been here for years. Try it, you'll like it.
But Gnome and KDE get slower, and you have to look at the whole package. Aside from that, distribution kernels get slower to boot because they have more options compiled in by default - a stock Debian kernel takes forever to boot compared to one custom-compiled for the machine. This is not the case on my OS X system (diversity can be a curse).
OS X, including the user interface, has become faster on the same hardware - assuming the same hardware meets the minimum requirements for 10.4, the system will be noticably faster than under 10.3, which was faster than 10.2, etc.
Comparatively, recent Linux distribution releases are slower in many respects than their previous versions, due to the ballooning requirements of Gnome and KDE, and the extraneous crap that comes with them.
It's too bad you don't live in a city like Montréal. Montréal has a network of city-owned conduit, spanning 19,200 kilometres, providing direct access to more than 38,000 buildings across the island. Running fibre along the conduit costs a relatively insignificant $3.65/metre. Too bad more cities can't get it right like this.
It also makes it more convenient to carry. As summer rapidly approaches, I'm planning to replace my 30G iPod 3gen with a 1G iPod Nano, simply because it's smaller, thinner, and lighter, which makes it easier to carry around when I've only got two pockets available, and my keys have to go in one of them and my wallet in the other. With a thin phone like the Razr (my current phone), I can put it in the change pocket of my one pocket, put my keys in there too, and wallet in the other, and then I can hang the nano around my neck under my shirt.
Compare this to even the new, slimmer video iPods, a large (and ugly) Nokia/Sony-Ericsson phones, and suddenly my pockets are overburdened and unsightly, and I have to resort to wearing cargo pants. Not an ideal solution in all situations.
Advanced Fedora may be, but Ihope they fixed their installer. I tried it a few weeks ago from the beta, and it took forever to get anything done.
After asking me a lot of extraneous questions (a more confusing install than even Debian's installer), and then afterwards, it would present me with a screen explaining what it was going to do (e.g. generate the package list), and then prompt me to click 'Next' to start it. It would then do whatever it needed to do, and then present me with another screen telling me what it was going to do, and then prompt me to click 'Next' to start that. This went on several times until the installer just locked up (as near as I could tell) and I just gave up on it.
Pretty sad situation. I often say that Microsoft needs to take a lesson from Apple's installer, but it's kind of depressing to say that Fedora needs to take a lesson from Microsoft's.
The big benefits of source-based distros are the ability to tailor packages to each install (ie the ability to compile certain features in or out), to choose optimizations on each package (do you want -Os, -O2, -03, or are you really daring -> -ffast-math?).
In some circles (e.g. #mysql on Freenode) this is considered a Bad Thing. Users come in on Gentoo systems complaining about how 'Unstable' MySQL is. Did they compile from source? Yes. Did they compile from official source? Yes. What EXACTLY did they do to compile from official source? 'I just did "emerge mysql"'
The result is that the user's CFLAGS, Gentoo's patches/defaults, and so on, end up with a binary that is quite a bit different from the stock MySQL install, and it's not terribly surprising to me that the only 'unstable' MySQL situations I've seen are on Gentoo (which is not to say others don't occur).
Another issue with compiling from source is libraries. Even on Debian (with manual compiles by my predecessor), I've seen situations where I'll compile Apache 2 against libssl, but then a few updates later, I'll recompile PHP or curl, which will pick up a new version of libssl - resulting in hard-to-diagnose incompatibilities. The simplest solution I could find was to move the whole system over to complete debianisation, moving the manual Apache compile, configs, etc. over to the Debian package version. The result? Other pakages knew what was installed, I could be guaranteed of consistent compilation options (since I had no easy way to find out how Apache was compiled previously), and so on.
It has no namespaces. Luckily, they are to be added in PHP 6 (and about time too!), so we can do $db::connect() rather than mysql_connect($db). So can we get rid of all the mysql_* and other pseudo-namespace functions please? They are annoying and will be wholly unnecessary.
You mean we could do something like this?
$dbh = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=test', $user, $pass); foreach ($dbh->query('SELECT * from FOO') as $row) {
print_r($row); } $dbh = null;
Wouldn't that be neat? This is actually what PDO is going to provide, and is exactly what you want, without having to use namespacing, thanks to PHP's OOP features.
In actuality, your example is a terrible use of namespaces. More useful would be to be able to do things like $connection = mysql::connect(), which is really no more or less useful than $connection = mysql_connect();
Unlike languages like perl (from what I can tell), functions in PHP are not generally named arbitrarily. PHP modules like the MySQL extension or the SQLite extension are generally thin wrappers around C libraries (the SQLite module, for example, took on the order of an hour or two to write). PHP developers writing modules generally name the functions they create the same as the functions they are using. PHP's lack of namespaces has not generally been an issue in this case because C lacks namespaces as well. Hence, the mysql_real_escape() PHP function maps to the mysql_real_escape() C function - the name was not chosen by the PHP devs.
The only place that namespaces will help is with C libraries that clutter the global namespace (examples of which I can't really recall - are there any?), or have terse, difficult-to-remember names - e.g. strstr(), strcmp(), strrev(), etc. Moving these to string::replace(), string::reverse() and so on would be handy, but then string_replace() and string_reverse() is just as useful.
Faked namespacing using ext_ as opposed to real namespacing with ext:: doesn't seem to make much difference in terms of anything other than code style however - as I understand, other languages provide facilities like 'use CGI' for example, which import modules into the namespace - PHP's functions and extensions are generally done in C code and loaded as modules, meaning that they are either loaded and available, or unloaded and not available. There is no performance hit to be had from the global namespace. Perhaps I misunderstand the PHP architecture on this point, but from what I know, this is the case.
As for your other points, people always rely on poor language features in any language. To many people, the 'do { x } unless (foo)' syntax that perl provides is absurd; the use of '$|++' to enable output buffering is incomprehensible to anyone who's used a language without such terseness, and the idea of declaring arrays with @ but referring to them with $ is confusing to begin with (though easy to understand and get used to).
The people who still use register_globals, short_tags, magic_quotes, etc. are either ignorant or lazy. THey are either following tutorials that are three years old, or they have legacy applications that they have not bothered to update. I myself have a few hosted websites for friends and acquaintances, and after several warnings to one particular individual, I disabled short_tags for good - if he was too lazy to upgrade (which was the case), then I was not going to suffer for it.
I welcome PHP6's incompatibilities, because largely, it is incompatible only with 'features' that have been off by default for several years, and deprecated for even more. Anyone who did not see this coming is blind, and I have no sympathy for anyone whose applications break. It will either force programmers to fix their broken code, or it will force users to switch to applications that are written well in the first place. Which one happens, I care not.
I am looking forward to PHP for a great many reasons, and I can't wait to roll it out o
Am I the only one that read that as an A1-based search engine? I couldn't think what steak sauce, even fantastic steak sauce, could bring to search engine technology, though I'm sure it would be delicious. Oh well, another dream dashed.
How often does it happen that a company consistently puts out programs and services that you'd wanted to use before they made them?
I'm pretty sure that's how capitalism works...
Re:Dual-Booting Can Go Take A Freaking Hike
on
No EFI Support for Vista
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Unless things have changed recently, opengl, directx etc don't work.
With Vanderpool virtualisation technology, you can run multiple concurrent OSes directly on the hardware. As opposed to VMWare or VirtualPC, which emulate a system abstracted out, hardware virtualisation lets you run two systems (e.g. OS X and Windows Vista) at the same time directly on the hardware. Perhaps you would still be running it inside of VMWare or VirtualPC just to provide a management interface, but it's just as real as booting one or the other - you just need more memory, that's all.
So yes, even for gaming, this should well solve the problems. Huzzah.
Fredericton's city-wide WiFi was a fantastic boon when I lived there in 2003/2004. It got to the point where I was never without internet access - everywhere I went, there was wireless. Whether I was at home, at a friend's place (any friend), downtown in a favourite cafe or restaurant, or even sitting on the grass by the river watching the ducks, I could always check my e-mail.
Some people look at this and say 'You're outside, you should be enjoying nature, why bring your work with you and just go online?' My rebuttal is usually 'I have to do work and study online anyway, so I may as well be somewhere pleasant and relaxing as well.
Especially now that I have a lighter-weight, easier-to-carry laptop (PB12" vs. Inspiron 5150), I miss that. Montreal, as great as it is, is a lot harder to find good (free) wireless. Oh well.
To answer the OP's question, it doesn't compare at all. NBD lets you export drives over the network so that they show up as block devices on remote systems (meaning you can do raw operations on them, use LVM, etc.); this, on the other hand, replicates changes to another filesystem.
At first glance, this might not seem very effective for backup if deletes are replicated as well. That said, the benefit (as with replication in MySQL) seems (to me) to be that you can take a precise snapshot of the drive, however large it is, without having to take any services down, without slowing down the primary system, etc. Seems to me that that's probably the biggest benefit.
A DRM format, based off MP4 audio, which is easily stripped from M4P to M4A if you're concerned about the issue, is a huge step back? From what? Napster? From pirating broken, incomplete, poorly-encoded MP3s? From piracy? From actually paying for what we consume?
Or is it a huge step back from buying CDs? From waiting six weeks for the local store to get in that obscure album you want, or from buying on Amazon and paying for shipping?
He's suggesting that we should all rip to MP3, but MP3 is patented and requires royalties. He's not even advocating open technologies like OGG (which I personally think are irrelevant).
He's saying that DRM is a step back because when you want it in the next 'latest greatest' format, you'll have to buy it again - just like LPs, 8-tracks, casettes, and CDs. So how is it a step back?
Perhaps I should buy CDs instead? I should spend $15-17 on a CD, instead of $9.99, so that I can get the liner notes (which I never read) and the physical media (which goes in a box within minutes, eventually getting lost)?
He seems to be saying that 'iTunes isn't stopping P2P because people can fill 80 gig disks and swap with friends'. What does this have to do with anything? Is iTunes supposed to stop piracy? Was this its stated goal? Did it miss its deadline? The iTMS is cutting into piracy, and that's enough for me. You're never going to make a pay system that completely replaces getting things for free. People have been taking things that aren't theirs since the dawn of time, and expecting iTunes to stop that seems more than a little ludicrous.
This reeks to me of sour grapes. It sounds like a man who is anti-Apple, or anti-iTunes or anti-iPod, or anti-something-else, and is getting fed up with everyone else loving something that he hates, so he resorts to ranting about it online in order to vent his frustrations with everyone else's favourite gadget. Give me a break.
Welcoem to capitalism, Thomas. Here's a tip: if you don't like the iTMS, don't buy from it. If you don't like iPods, don't buy one. Vote with your dollars. While you're standing on your soapbox preaching to the choir, the rest of us will be voting with our dollars too, downloading special tracks, podcasts, albums, and even liner notes, alongside TV shows like Law and Order, Lost, and Monk. I'll vote for my dollars and you vote for yours, and may the best solution win.
I dunno, if you're good that could be a career-boosting move. After all, why would the boss fire his daughter's boyfriend? Wait until you get promoted out of his department though, if you plan on breaking up with her afterwards.
Our DSL is 3 meg down, 800k up, with eight static IPs and reverse DNS control. That plugs into a Cisco 720 DSL modem with 32 megs of ram, which runs the latest IOS. This modem handles DHCP (which I'm going to disable in favour of setting up a network management server) and also manages an IPv6 tunnel (also with reverse DNS control).
From there, it goes to our Cisco Micro Switch 10/100 (old kit I guess), which routes it off to the various machines. The first is my roommate's AMD64 desktop system; next is the dual-proc Ultra2, which is my testing ground, and my roommate's CVS server; after that is the 1.3 GHz Celeron which serves as our media centre PC and runs MCE.
I've recently begun playing with a Bondi Blue iMac which I got from a client, putting Ubuntu on it (on 96 megs of ram, it's painful), which required taking the network cable away from my roommate's new Dell laptop running Debian. He found another one, but I need to find a replacement cable for the old Ultra5 (thinking about putting OopenSolaris 10 on it, the poor thing).
Finally, another cable runs to my (crappy) wireless router, which serves out wireless to my shiny 12" Powerbook.
We have the dubious distinction of being the only geek residence out of anyone I know which does not posess two machines on the same arch which run the same OS. Great for experimentation, pain in the ass if you want to make use of distcc.
Oh, and no, we don't have enough IP addresses for all the machines. Kind of tragic. I'm thinking about setting the 'experimentation' machines to 10.0.0.x addresses and letting them keep public IPv6 addresses. Hmm...
People always love my powerbook when they first see it, but they invariably say something along the lines of 'It's so small!' Of course my reply is always, 'Yeah, I'm overcompensating for having a huge dick.'
It's immoral for a company to expect the general public to be able to read and fully understand mounds of legalese that most lawyers would cringe at.
If you have a problem with that, then bitch about the current state of contract law in the world, but don't bitch about Apple. Every company does this with every product you buy, whether it's Dora the Explorer for your kids, or the terms of your mortgage, or the lease for your car. Face it, this is the way it is, and yes it sucks, but it's not Apple's fault. They're just protecting their investment, same as anyone else.
Cameras at intersections have been implemented to catch anyone who runs the lights (but hey if you're not doing anything wrong then why would you mind right?)
While I agree with the rest of your post, I don't think anyone has a reasonble right to privacy while out in public. The fact that your city abuses it in such a retarded way notwithstanding, cameras in public I have no problem with. Privacy in public makes no sense, and unless it's being abused (which, in your case, it is), I would have no complaints.
Credit card transactions are tagged with a coe that indicates what the transaction is - adult, merchandise, gambling, etc. Some credit card companies (I believe CitiBank is one example) deny these transactions outright. Hence, if it becomes illegal to gamble online, then all that requires doing is for banks to block all CC transactions related to gambling.
The only way around this would be to use a non-American credit card, and those are pretty rare in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
2. What the hell are they going to do about the copyright issues?
I hope they take my content - they're going to archive me a new Mini Cooper!
I like this idea already.
I like having the camera, but it is a pain to get pictures off it (I have a RAZR).
/pictures/ - ten seconds, start to finish, I do it with mine all the time.
Just use the 'browse device' feature of your OS's bluetooth support and grab it out of
If you tell the validator to force the encoding to windows-1252, then it will try to validate it, and choke on 45 errors. If you tell the validator to force the doctype to XHTML 1.0 (which a quick look at the source seems to indicate they were trying for), you get 100 errors. Fantastic.
Not quite as worthy of dismission as you seem to imply. Viiv is a set of requirements (e.g. GigE) that manufacturers must match in order to be 'Viiv' certified. Thus Viiv is a common criteria that you can be assured has certain minimum requirements for a multimedia PC.
It's not a marketing/advertising gimmick, it's a brand (draw what conclusions you will).
That's why you browse at Score: 3. There are a lot less crappy posts, no trolls, and just plain less to read. Ever since I started browsing at threshold 3, Slashdot has been a lot more managable. I don't understand why people complain about things like this when the solution has been here for years. Try it, you'll like it.
Linux gets faster too.
But Gnome and KDE get slower, and you have to look at the whole package. Aside from that, distribution kernels get slower to boot because they have more options compiled in by default - a stock Debian kernel takes forever to boot compared to one custom-compiled for the machine. This is not the case on my OS X system (diversity can be a curse).
OS X, including the user interface, has become faster on the same hardware - assuming the same hardware meets the minimum requirements for 10.4, the system will be noticably faster than under 10.3, which was faster than 10.2, etc.
Comparatively, recent Linux distribution releases are slower in many respects than their previous versions, due to the ballooning requirements of Gnome and KDE, and the extraneous crap that comes with them.
It's too bad you don't live in a city like Montréal. Montréal has a network of city-owned conduit, spanning 19,200 kilometres, providing direct access to more than 38,000 buildings across the island. Running fibre along the conduit costs a relatively insignificant $3.65/metre. Too bad more cities can't get it right like this.
It also makes it more convenient to carry. As summer rapidly approaches, I'm planning to replace my 30G iPod 3gen with a 1G iPod Nano, simply because it's smaller, thinner, and lighter, which makes it easier to carry around when I've only got two pockets available, and my keys have to go in one of them and my wallet in the other. With a thin phone like the Razr (my current phone), I can put it in the change pocket of my one pocket, put my keys in there too, and wallet in the other, and then I can hang the nano around my neck under my shirt.
Compare this to even the new, slimmer video iPods, a large (and ugly) Nokia/Sony-Ericsson phones, and suddenly my pockets are overburdened and unsightly, and I have to resort to wearing cargo pants. Not an ideal solution in all situations.
Advanced Fedora may be, but Ihope they fixed their installer. I tried it a few weeks ago from the beta, and it took forever to get anything done.
After asking me a lot of extraneous questions (a more confusing install than even Debian's installer), and then afterwards, it would present me with a screen explaining what it was going to do (e.g. generate the package list), and then prompt me to click 'Next' to start it. It would then do whatever it needed to do, and then present me with another screen telling me what it was going to do, and then prompt me to click 'Next' to start that. This went on several times until the installer just locked up (as near as I could tell) and I just gave up on it.
Pretty sad situation. I often say that Microsoft needs to take a lesson from Apple's installer, but it's kind of depressing to say that Fedora needs to take a lesson from Microsoft's.
I dunno, the Lapps get pretty cool in the winter months. Go visit in February, you'll see.
The big benefits of source-based distros are the ability to tailor packages to each install (ie the ability to compile certain features in or out), to choose optimizations on each package (do you want -Os, -O2, -03, or are you really daring -> -ffast-math?).
In some circles (e.g. #mysql on Freenode) this is considered a Bad Thing. Users come in on Gentoo systems complaining about how 'Unstable' MySQL is. Did they compile from source? Yes. Did they compile from official source? Yes. What EXACTLY did they do to compile from official source? 'I just did "emerge mysql"'
The result is that the user's CFLAGS, Gentoo's patches/defaults, and so on, end up with a binary that is quite a bit different from the stock MySQL install, and it's not terribly surprising to me that the only 'unstable' MySQL situations I've seen are on Gentoo (which is not to say others don't occur).
Another issue with compiling from source is libraries. Even on Debian (with manual compiles by my predecessor), I've seen situations where I'll compile Apache 2 against libssl, but then a few updates later, I'll recompile PHP or curl, which will pick up a new version of libssl - resulting in hard-to-diagnose incompatibilities. The simplest solution I could find was to move the whole system over to complete debianisation, moving the manual Apache compile, configs, etc. over to the Debian package version. The result? Other pakages knew what was installed, I could be guaranteed of consistent compilation options (since I had no easy way to find out how Apache was compiled previously), and so on.
Binary packages for the win.
You mean we could do something like this?
Wouldn't that be neat? This is actually what PDO is going to provide, and is exactly what you want, without having to use namespacing, thanks to PHP's OOP features.
In actuality, your example is a terrible use of namespaces. More useful would be to be able to do things like $connection = mysql::connect(), which is really no more or less useful than $connection = mysql_connect();
Unlike languages like perl (from what I can tell), functions in PHP are not generally named arbitrarily. PHP modules like the MySQL extension or the SQLite extension are generally thin wrappers around C libraries (the SQLite module, for example, took on the order of an hour or two to write). PHP developers writing modules generally name the functions they create the same as the functions they are using. PHP's lack of namespaces has not generally been an issue in this case because C lacks namespaces as well. Hence, the mysql_real_escape() PHP function maps to the mysql_real_escape() C function - the name was not chosen by the PHP devs.
The only place that namespaces will help is with C libraries that clutter the global namespace (examples of which I can't really recall - are there any?), or have terse, difficult-to-remember names - e.g. strstr(), strcmp(), strrev(), etc. Moving these to string::replace(), string::reverse() and so on would be handy, but then string_replace() and string_reverse() is just as useful.
Faked namespacing using ext_ as opposed to real namespacing with ext:: doesn't seem to make much difference in terms of anything other than code style however - as I understand, other languages provide facilities like 'use CGI' for example, which import modules into the namespace - PHP's functions and extensions are generally done in C code and loaded as modules, meaning that they are either loaded and available, or unloaded and not available. There is no performance hit to be had from the global namespace. Perhaps I misunderstand the PHP architecture on this point, but from what I know, this is the case.
As for your other points, people always rely on poor language features in any language. To many people, the 'do { x } unless (foo)' syntax that perl provides is absurd; the use of '$|++' to enable output buffering is incomprehensible to anyone who's used a language without such terseness, and the idea of declaring arrays with @ but referring to them with $ is confusing to begin with (though easy to understand and get used to).
The people who still use register_globals, short_tags, magic_quotes, etc. are either ignorant or lazy. THey are either following tutorials that are three years old, or they have legacy applications that they have not bothered to update. I myself have a few hosted websites for friends and acquaintances, and after several warnings to one particular individual, I disabled short_tags for good - if he was too lazy to upgrade (which was the case), then I was not going to suffer for it.
I welcome PHP6's incompatibilities, because largely, it is incompatible only with 'features' that have been off by default for several years, and deprecated for even more. Anyone who did not see this coming is blind, and I have no sympathy for anyone whose applications break. It will either force programmers to fix their broken code, or it will force users to switch to applications that are written well in the first place. Which one happens, I care not.
I am looking forward to PHP for a great many reasons, and I can't wait to roll it out o
Am I the only one that read that as an A1-based search engine? I couldn't think what steak sauce, even fantastic steak sauce, could bring to search engine technology, though I'm sure it would be delicious. Oh well, another dream dashed.
How often does it happen that a company consistently puts out programs and services that you'd wanted to use before they made them?
I'm pretty sure that's how capitalism works...
Unless things have changed recently, opengl, directx etc don't work.
With Vanderpool virtualisation technology, you can run multiple concurrent OSes directly on the hardware. As opposed to VMWare or VirtualPC, which emulate a system abstracted out, hardware virtualisation lets you run two systems (e.g. OS X and Windows Vista) at the same time directly on the hardware. Perhaps you would still be running it inside of VMWare or VirtualPC just to provide a management interface, but it's just as real as booting one or the other - you just need more memory, that's all.
So yes, even for gaming, this should well solve the problems. Huzzah.
Fredericton's city-wide WiFi was a fantastic boon when I lived there in 2003/2004. It got to the point where I was never without internet access - everywhere I went, there was wireless. Whether I was at home, at a friend's place (any friend), downtown in a favourite cafe or restaurant, or even sitting on the grass by the river watching the ducks, I could always check my e-mail.
Some people look at this and say 'You're outside, you should be enjoying nature, why bring your work with you and just go online?' My rebuttal is usually 'I have to do work and study online anyway, so I may as well be somewhere pleasant and relaxing as well.
Especially now that I have a lighter-weight, easier-to-carry laptop (PB12" vs. Inspiron 5150), I miss that. Montreal, as great as it is, is a lot harder to find good (free) wireless. Oh well.
Repeat after me:
RAID is not a backup solution!
To answer the OP's question, it doesn't compare at all. NBD lets you export drives over the network so that they show up as block devices on remote systems (meaning you can do raw operations on them, use LVM, etc.); this, on the other hand, replicates changes to another filesystem.
At first glance, this might not seem very effective for backup if deletes are replicated as well. That said, the benefit (as with replication in MySQL) seems (to me) to be that you can take a precise snapshot of the drive, however large it is, without having to take any services down, without slowing down the primary system, etc. Seems to me that that's probably the biggest benefit.
A DRM format, based off MP4 audio, which is easily stripped from M4P to M4A if you're concerned about the issue, is a huge step back? From what? Napster? From pirating broken, incomplete, poorly-encoded MP3s? From piracy? From actually paying for what we consume?
Or is it a huge step back from buying CDs? From waiting six weeks for the local store to get in that obscure album you want, or from buying on Amazon and paying for shipping?
He's suggesting that we should all rip to MP3, but MP3 is patented and requires royalties. He's not even advocating open technologies like OGG (which I personally think are irrelevant).
He's saying that DRM is a step back because when you want it in the next 'latest greatest' format, you'll have to buy it again - just like LPs, 8-tracks, casettes, and CDs. So how is it a step back?
Perhaps I should buy CDs instead? I should spend $15-17 on a CD, instead of $9.99, so that I can get the liner notes (which I never read) and the physical media (which goes in a box within minutes, eventually getting lost)?
He seems to be saying that 'iTunes isn't stopping P2P because people can fill 80 gig disks and swap with friends'. What does this have to do with anything? Is iTunes supposed to stop piracy? Was this its stated goal? Did it miss its deadline? The iTMS is cutting into piracy, and that's enough for me. You're never going to make a pay system that completely replaces getting things for free. People have been taking things that aren't theirs since the dawn of time, and expecting iTunes to stop that seems more than a little ludicrous.
This reeks to me of sour grapes. It sounds like a man who is anti-Apple, or anti-iTunes or anti-iPod, or anti-something-else, and is getting fed up with everyone else loving something that he hates, so he resorts to ranting about it online in order to vent his frustrations with everyone else's favourite gadget. Give me a break.
Welcoem to capitalism, Thomas. Here's a tip: if you don't like the iTMS, don't buy from it. If you don't like iPods, don't buy one. Vote with your dollars. While you're standing on your soapbox preaching to the choir, the rest of us will be voting with our dollars too, downloading special tracks, podcasts, albums, and even liner notes, alongside TV shows like Law and Order, Lost, and Monk. I'll vote for my dollars and you vote for yours, and may the best solution win.
I dunno, if you're good that could be a career-boosting move. After all, why would the boss fire his daughter's boyfriend? Wait until you get promoted out of his department though, if you plan on breaking up with her afterwards.
I'm bored, it's late, what the heck....
Our DSL is 3 meg down, 800k up, with eight static IPs and reverse DNS control. That plugs into a Cisco 720 DSL modem with 32 megs of ram, which runs the latest IOS. This modem handles DHCP (which I'm going to disable in favour of setting up a network management server) and also manages an IPv6 tunnel (also with reverse DNS control).
From there, it goes to our Cisco Micro Switch 10/100 (old kit I guess), which routes it off to the various machines. The first is my roommate's AMD64 desktop system; next is the dual-proc Ultra2, which is my testing ground, and my roommate's CVS server; after that is the 1.3 GHz Celeron which serves as our media centre PC and runs MCE.
I've recently begun playing with a Bondi Blue iMac which I got from a client, putting Ubuntu on it (on 96 megs of ram, it's painful), which required taking the network cable away from my roommate's new Dell laptop running Debian. He found another one, but I need to find a replacement cable for the old Ultra5 (thinking about putting OopenSolaris 10 on it, the poor thing).
Finally, another cable runs to my (crappy) wireless router, which serves out wireless to my shiny 12" Powerbook.
We have the dubious distinction of being the only geek residence out of anyone I know which does not posess two machines on the same arch which run the same OS. Great for experimentation, pain in the ass if you want to make use of distcc.
Oh, and no, we don't have enough IP addresses for all the machines. Kind of tragic. I'm thinking about setting the 'experimentation' machines to 10.0.0.x addresses and letting them keep public IPv6 addresses. Hmm...
People always love my powerbook when they first see it, but they invariably say something along the lines of 'It's so small!' Of course my reply is always, 'Yeah, I'm overcompensating for having a huge dick.'
:p
No dates so far, but it gets a lot of laughs.
It's immoral for a company to expect me to adhere to licence agreements that I can't look at before I pay for the product.
Read away
It's immoral for a company to expect the general public to be able to read and fully understand mounds of legalese that most lawyers would cringe at.
If you have a problem with that, then bitch about the current state of contract law in the world, but don't bitch about Apple. Every company does this with every product you buy, whether it's Dora the Explorer for your kids, or the terms of your mortgage, or the lease for your car. Face it, this is the way it is, and yes it sucks, but it's not Apple's fault. They're just protecting their investment, same as anyone else.
The government is fully aware that I, for one, welcome our idiot Texan overlords.
Cameras at intersections have been implemented to catch anyone who runs the lights (but hey if you're not doing anything wrong then why would you mind right?)
While I agree with the rest of your post, I don't think anyone has a reasonble right to privacy while out in public. The fact that your city abuses it in such a retarded way notwithstanding, cameras in public I have no problem with. Privacy in public makes no sense, and unless it's being abused (which, in your case, it is), I would have no complaints.
Actually, you might.
Credit card transactions are tagged with a coe that indicates what the transaction is - adult, merchandise, gambling, etc. Some credit card companies (I believe CitiBank is one example) deny these transactions outright. Hence, if it becomes illegal to gamble online, then all that requires doing is for banks to block all CC transactions related to gambling.
The only way around this would be to use a non-American credit card, and those are pretty rare in the US.