I apply a very simple test: "What does the average murderer/rapist/pedophile get when convicted?" Good point. In this case, however, the more appropriate question would be "what would someone who raped 10 million people per day, every day, for many years, get?". I'm absolutely with you that someone like that should get a much, much harsher penalty.
Do they "hide" it in the files, or put it into the comment fields? There's a difference there, especially if you want to accuse them of underhand dealings.
The article is also pretty crappy on the suggestion to convert to MP3. Why should I do that? A simple binary find&replace will be faster, safer and result in no quality loss or recoding troubles.
So a little more info on this before painting anyone as a devil would be cool.
We need more scare, more laws, more punishment, life-time registration and all that.
Because, you see, the really, really evil thing is that these people are sex offenders. Got it? It's sex for christ's sake, or better not for his sake because we need to think of the chiiildren. And we have to make sex illegal. Since we can't do that (hey, we've tried for 2000 years, for some reason it just doesn't stick) at least let us turn as much of it into a taboo as possible. The term is great. "sex offender". It doesn't say a thing about what they actually did, but it says it's about sex and they offended us, and that's as close as we'll get to the "sex offends us" as we can get right now. Of course, sex scares us as well, but that's just because we don't have much of it, except with the choir boys and that doesn't really count, does it?
Thanks for listening,
Your friendly neighbourhood christian fundamentalist club
Lots of people tell the same story. Me included, regarding the parents part. And the neighbour part. Regarding the neighbour part, consider this: If you tell the cute girl next door that you'll be playing Starcraft 2 tonight, chances are she'll consider you an antisocial jerk and you'll never even get to take her to lunch. If you tell her you'll be playing tennis or bowling, and invite her over, then chances are that next time she will be asking you if you would mind spending the evening together.
Something like "environment tarrifs" would actually fit to the market-driven hardcore-capitalism position. Let the market regulate things. If we want environment-conscious products, make sure the pollution is more expensive.
I always thought little of drag&drop. Then I switched to OSX about a year ago. Ever since I realized just how important and great drag&drop is, because on the Mac it works. From everywhere to everywhere, with everything. On both Linux and windos, it's a hack and a game of luck - you never know if it's going to work this time or not, so you don't rely on it.
Get the stuff working that people actually use a hundred times every day, without noticing them much, and you've made a lot more progress than all the fancy flashy crap that gets used twice a year.
When someone gets Windows, he installs it, starts it up and starts clicking around. No, when someone gets windos he doesn't install it. It's already there on the machine. That's 90% of the secret of success. A very small fraction of the windos user population is able to (re-)install windos without outside help. If they had to install it, it wouldn't have half the market share it does.
No good case exists for the inequality of real and intellectual property, Except that the first is property and the second isn't. "Intellectual property" is an artificial term created specifically to cause this confusion between real property and ideas. And if you don't realize that your car and an idea in your head aren't the same class of things, then I see you in the "all hope is lost" category.
Just an idea: Why not have someone who has a bunch of code in any of the mentioned projects sue MS for libel, slander, whatever? Truth is a defense, so they'll have to lose that case or put the evidence on the table.
Yeah, MS is pulling a fast one, we all know that. But - it is working, at least right now. And tomorrow, the mainstream media will have forgotten. Today, the headlines are "Microsoft: Everything just stolen" and a Linux penguin in the article. Tomorrow, we will not read "Microsoft's patent claims debunked". We'll read about what celebrity goes to jail, which senator was found dead with a whore or that intelligent design is being discussed in the educational board of Backwater City.
It's a short-term victory. But in a world where stock market and mainstream media have an attention span measured in hours, more often than not that's all you need.
The whole "responsible disclosure" and "it's not public" crowd is ignoring the oldest, most boring and just a tiny bit important fact of the security world: Bad guys don't publish their 0days. They keep them for themselves or their group. The "0day" you read on bugtraq today is old news for many of the people you don't want to exploit it.
So not patching a bug because it's not (yet) public means giving priority root access to bad guys. If that's your philosophy...
You know what? He wasn't so wrong. Not in the way he intended it, but the US is losing the Iraq war (defeat) and it has all been a disgrace for years now. Disappointment, too. As for the superpower status, he didn't read his Kennedy well, it takes a while longer than that, but the writing's been on the wall ever since Detroit went down the drain.
Come on Microsoft, don't pull a SCO. Why, exactly, should they not? It has worked for many years, hasn't it? That's all they need - time to survive until Vista's successor hits the market.
Translation: "A broad group of people (which we don't detail) somehow (we don't tell how) violates (we don't say to what extend) a large number (we even give you a number, look! we just don't say what it means or what's inside) of patents (at least in the US). Now be afraid because that's what we want!"
I hereby claim that the MS executives are all going to jail because among them they have broken at least 25 laws. I'm not saying if it's speeding or murder and I won't say who exactly broke which law. But it's time to pay up, suckers, yeah. You're all going down!
Oh yeah, I could mention that patents aren't a problem for users, but for developers. But I'm sure at least 50 other comments already point that out.
So this is where Free Software and commercial software finally part ways. Wouldn't have thought it.
Why? Because software isn't a service. Selling access to software is what the commercial software industry is trying because it solves many problems for them, like piracy and how to keep users charging after the first bill. Neither of these and very few of the others are issues Free Software needs to burden itself with.
Because, you know, in the end we need it all. Some stuff is best done as a web app. Some stuff is best done as a network app, but not using a web-browser. And some stuff is best done as a standalone app.
Last weekend, I went shopping. Among other things, I saw a dude playing some tennis game on the PS3. The graphics were impressive. Except for the too restricted and artifical-looking movement of the players, it could've almost been TV.
But tell you what, I was bored after 30 seconds of watching it. I can watch Wii Tennis for 10, 15 minutes without getting bored. In fact, the urge to play myself is strong and I can't wait until the game is over so I can play a round. I felt no desire whatsoever to wait until that guy was finished so I could try that game myself.
Yeah, the graphics were pretty. But it was a lot like TV sports vs. playing yourself.
The Sucker^H^H^Htarter Edition is so seriously crippled that it offers considerably less functionality than OLPC does. No local networking at all, 800x600 max resolution, max 3 processes at once. Which means once you have captured your 3rd spyware/trojan you can't even launch the removal tool anymore?;-)
Children play with very simple toys and yet they have tons of fun and find no flaw in the big space monster being just a blob of whatever. It's called "imagination". That's what you do when you read a book. How's that for graphics? 2-bit, 1D graphics. And yet, when you read a good book, its world comes alive in your mind.
The human imagination can easily compensate for weak graphics if the gameplay is good. Go back to some of your early games, that would be C64 times for me. My memory of their graphics is much better than the graphics actually were. When I look at actual screenshots, I'm not sure if I really played that same game 20 years ago.
Good gameplay can compensate bad graphics to a large extend. Good graphics can only conceal bad gameplay for a short time.
I find it interesting that Intel immediately jump in with "the ability to run win xp" as a major advantage. Leads me to ponder. Here's what I ponder:
"ability to run" != "comes with"
Buying XP licenses for all those machines will about double their price, depending on how much of a volume discount MS is giving them. Maybe if MS is really, really generous, it'll only add 50% to the price. If the budget is fixed, that means somewhere between a third and half less machines are going to be distributed to children.
Yeah, because polygon count and memory speed arer what really matters for great gameplay, right?
What this really is is the denial phase of a very important (and very painful) lesson that MS and Sony are about to learn: That throwing more hardware at a console doesn't solve the problem of creating an entertainment product. Or as Steve Jobs just said: If money were the solution, Microsoft would be shipping good products.
Whatever "central europe" you're from, must be different than mine (Germany). ICQ is still around, I think I know a few people who are using it. But ICQ UINs instead of phone numbers? Can't be girls you're exchanging numbers with...
Slashdot Mirror
*raise hands*
For it. Heck, if he manages to do it in less than 65 years, let him go early.
I'd like a few more details, please.
Do they "hide" it in the files, or put it into the comment fields? There's a difference there, especially if you want to accuse them of underhand dealings.
The article is also pretty crappy on the suggestion to convert to MP3. Why should I do that? A simple binary find&replace will be faster, safer and result in no quality loss or recoding troubles.
So a little more info on this before painting anyone as a devil would be cool.
Very strong disagree on assert() there.
A lot of errors don't necessitate a program termination. Depending on your program, it might be very much better to log the error and carry on.
No, you are getting this all wrong.
We need more scare, more laws, more punishment, life-time registration and all that.
Because, you see, the really, really evil thing is that these people are sex offenders. Got it? It's sex for christ's sake, or better not for his sake because we need to think of the chiiildren. And we have to make sex illegal. Since we can't do that (hey, we've tried for 2000 years, for some reason it just doesn't stick) at least let us turn as much of it into a taboo as possible. The term is great. "sex offender". It doesn't say a thing about what they actually did, but it says it's about sex and they offended us, and that's as close as we'll get to the "sex offends us" as we can get right now. Of course, sex scares us as well, but that's just because we don't have much of it, except with the choir boys and that doesn't really count, does it?
Thanks for listening,
Your friendly neighbourhood christian fundamentalist club
Lots of people tell the same story. Me included, regarding the parents part. And the neighbour part. Regarding the neighbour part, consider this: If you tell the cute girl next door that you'll be playing Starcraft 2 tonight, chances are she'll consider you an antisocial jerk and you'll never even get to take her to lunch. If you tell her you'll be playing tennis or bowling, and invite her over, then chances are that next time she will be asking you if you would mind spending the evening together.
Something like "environment tarrifs" would actually fit to the market-driven hardcore-capitalism position. Let the market regulate things. If we want environment-conscious products, make sure the pollution is more expensive.
Exactly. Head on.
Same with drag & drop.
I always thought little of drag&drop. Then I switched to OSX about a year ago. Ever since I realized just how important and great drag&drop is, because on the Mac it works. From everywhere to everywhere, with everything. On both Linux and windos, it's a hack and a game of luck - you never know if it's going to work this time or not, so you don't rely on it.
Get the stuff working that people actually use a hundred times every day, without noticing them much, and you've made a lot more progress than all the fancy flashy crap that gets used twice a year.
Just an idea: Why not have someone who has a bunch of code in any of the mentioned projects sue MS for libel, slander, whatever? Truth is a defense, so they'll have to lose that case or put the evidence on the table.
IANAL, but maybe someone who is can comment.
Yeah, MS is pulling a fast one, we all know that. But - it is working, at least right now. And tomorrow, the mainstream media will have forgotten. Today, the headlines are "Microsoft: Everything just stolen" and a Linux penguin in the article. Tomorrow, we will not read "Microsoft's patent claims debunked". We'll read about what celebrity goes to jail, which senator was found dead with a whore or that intelligent design is being discussed in the educational board of Backwater City.
It's a short-term victory. But in a world where stock market and mainstream media have an attention span measured in hours, more often than not that's all you need.
The whole "responsible disclosure" and "it's not public" crowd is ignoring the oldest, most boring and just a tiny bit important fact of the security world: Bad guys don't publish their 0days. They keep them for themselves or their group. The "0day" you read on bugtraq today is old news for many of the people you don't want to exploit it.
So not patching a bug because it's not (yet) public means giving priority root access to bad guys. If that's your philosophy...
You know what? He wasn't so wrong. Not in the way he intended it, but the US is losing the Iraq war (defeat) and it has all been a disgrace for years now. Disappointment, too. As for the superpower status, he didn't read his Kennedy well, it takes a while longer than that, but the writing's been on the wall ever since Detroit went down the drain.
Translation: "A broad group of people (which we don't detail) somehow (we don't tell how) violates (we don't say to what extend) a large number (we even give you a number, look! we just don't say what it means or what's inside) of patents (at least in the US). Now be afraid because that's what we want!"
I hereby claim that the MS executives are all going to jail because among them they have broken at least 25 laws. I'm not saying if it's speeding or murder and I won't say who exactly broke which law. But it's time to pay up, suckers, yeah. You're all going down!
Oh yeah, I could mention that patents aren't a problem for users, but for developers. But I'm sure at least 50 other comments already point that out.
So this is where Free Software and commercial software finally part ways. Wouldn't have thought it.
Why? Because software isn't a service. Selling access to software is what the commercial software industry is trying because it solves many problems for them, like piracy and how to keep users charging after the first bill. Neither of these and very few of the others are issues Free Software needs to burden itself with.
Because, you know, in the end we need it all. Some stuff is best done as a web app. Some stuff is best done as a network app, but not using a web-browser. And some stuff is best done as a standalone app.
I'll give you a 2nd reply:
Last weekend, I went shopping. Among other things, I saw a dude playing some tennis game on the PS3. The graphics were impressive. Except for the too restricted and artifical-looking movement of the players, it could've almost been TV.
But tell you what, I was bored after 30 seconds of watching it. I can watch Wii Tennis for 10, 15 minutes without getting bored. In fact, the urge to play myself is strong and I can't wait until the game is over so I can play a round. I felt no desire whatsoever to wait until that guy was finished so I could try that game myself.
Yeah, the graphics were pretty. But it was a lot like TV sports vs. playing yourself.
The Sucker^H^H^Htarter Edition is so seriously crippled that it offers considerably less functionality than OLPC does. No local networking at all, 800x600 max resolution, max 3 processes at once. Which means once you have captured your 3rd spyware/trojan you can't even launch the removal tool anymore? ;-)
Your assumption is wrong.
Children play with very simple toys and yet they have tons of fun and find no flaw in the big space monster being just a blob of whatever. It's called "imagination". That's what you do when you read a book. How's that for graphics? 2-bit, 1D graphics. And yet, when you read a good book, its world comes alive in your mind.
The human imagination can easily compensate for weak graphics if the gameplay is good. Go back to some of your early games, that would be C64 times for me. My memory of their graphics is much better than the graphics actually were. When I look at actual screenshots, I'm not sure if I really played that same game 20 years ago.
Good gameplay can compensate bad graphics to a large extend.
Good graphics can only conceal bad gameplay for a short time.
"ability to run" != "comes with"
Buying XP licenses for all those machines will about double their price, depending on how much of a volume discount MS is giving them. Maybe if MS is really, really generous, it'll only add 50% to the price. If the budget is fixed, that means somewhere between a third and half less machines are going to be distributed to children.
Which is par for the course. Name a company that had more hits than misses.
While I found most of the comments here funny, this one frightens me.
Because I live in Germany.
Because as my grandparents told me, the Germans ca. 1936-39 spoke jokingly about the GESTAPO.
Yeah, because polygon count and memory speed arer what really matters for great gameplay, right?
What this really is is the denial phase of a very important (and very painful) lesson that MS and Sony are about to learn: That throwing more hardware at a console doesn't solve the problem of creating an entertainment product. Or as Steve Jobs just said: If money were the solution, Microsoft would be shipping good products.
Whatever "central europe" you're from, must be different than mine (Germany). ICQ is still around, I think I know a few people who are using it. But ICQ UINs instead of phone numbers? Can't be girls you're exchanging numbers with...