I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd sure want my doctor to be able to use his med school books as referances when he's treating me. I know I've never been able to remember every little thing out of a book and have a stack of referances that I consult regularly, and I'd expect my doctor to be no more super-human than myself.
Oh yeah, that would be really great. Lend more fodder to the precedent AGAINST DeCSS, and then donate the procedes to DEFEND DeCSS. The process would do a hell of a lot more for the MPAA than for the EFF.
What do companies sell as an OS
on
Is UNIX An OS?
·
· Score: 1
By the logic in this article, companies such as Dell and Gateway could come under a lot of lawsuits. They claim to sell an operating system installed on all their systems, but I know the Gateway that I bought a few years back didn't have a C compiler pre-installed, and I need that for it to be functional. Fortunately for Gateway, I know the real definition of an operating system, and don't feel that a compiler is part of it (besides, I installed Linux/gcc/many other things I needed immediately after verifying that it all worked).
I've read so many comments now saying "So what if they left it blank? That's the administrator's fault for not changing it." I agree with that, but the point is, Red Hat got blasted recently for doing the same thing while Microsoft hardly gets mentioned for it.
I do think that MS should put a password change in the setup, but only because they've churned out so many MSCEs that don't know the reasons for what they do - just that they have to click X button when they need to do Y task and they have to apply service pack Z to get certain software to work.
Many venues have policies of their own about bootlegging (though usually if the artist wants, they can work something out). Last time I saw Metallica (after the black album) there was plenty of bootlegging going on, and even signs saying which sections tapers were allowed in.
I worry about this of late. Look around at how common this is. Turn the focus to law for a min. Do laws get written in normal english? No...they get written in a kind of sub language, by people of another culture, a legal culture. Perhaps their thinking has been shaped by their language, and their patterns of operation? Could that be the link to the reason that those in power and the common man don't seem to understand eachother? Different cultures, different languages (similar but different in usage and somewhat in definitions).
Very interesting thought... With possibly disasterous consequences. As society tends to specialize more and more, we could end up with such distinct sub-classes and such different viewpoints that we end up in constant battles. In fact, look around. Is it any coincidence that with more specializing we're seeing culture clashes leading to outcast children bringing guns to school? Or that we're seeing relentless protesting against everything and everyone?
We probably would have ended up with much the same constructs, just with different words representing things. Why? Because it's not really based on english - it's based on machine code, logic, and math. English is just what we use to represent these things (if, while, whatever function calls, etc...)
We're coming close to a time when national laws don't make sense for much anymore. We've largely become a global economy, and with mass media covering every little corner of the world we're becoming one global society. For evidence, look at how countries used to ignore who other countries treated their own residents. Now you can't go anywhere without hearing how so-and-so in some far off place is mistreating the residents that live there. I agree that in most of these cases something should be done, but allowing national control largely prevents legal action.
Now, does anyone want to try to come up with a workable international law system?
For someone who's so smart, you seem to be confusing correlation with causation. Just because you don't watch TV and are smart doesn't mean you are smart because you didn't watch TV. I've known plenty of TV addicts who also scored very well on their standardised tests and went on to good schools/etc...
Everybody reading this knows who the real losers are -- the Net, music-lovers and sharers, artists not under contract to large conglomerates, individual consumers, and the notion of the Internet as a free and unrestricted space that connects individuals to information in culture in new and powerful ways
OK Jon, I'll bite... I'm an avid user of the net, I'm a music lover, I'm an artist not under contract to anyone, and I'm an individual consumer. I don't feel I've lost anything (yet). If the internet ends up restricted to the point where all filesharing is eliminated, then I'll have lost something. Sharing files containing something that other have created and hold rights to without compensating those other people IS WRONG. Maybe Napster shouldn't be the one sued, but I'm sick of your anti-IP rantings. IP is valid property - if I don't own my thoughts, then what do I own?
Everybody reading this knows who the real losers are -- the Net, music-lovers and sharers, artists not under contract to large conglomerates, individual consumers, and the notion of the Internet as a free and unrestricted space that connects individuals to information in culture in new and powerful ways
OK Jon, I'll bite... I'm an avid user of the net, I'm a music lover, I'm an artist not under contract to anyone, and I'm an individual consumer. I don't feel I've lost anything (yet). If the internet ends up restricted to the point where all filesharing is eliminated, then I'll have lost something. Sharing files containing something that other have created and hold rights to without compensating those other people IS WRONG. Maybe Napster shouldn't be the one sued, but I'm sick of your anti-IP rantings. IP is valid property - if I don't own my thoughts, then what do I own?
As you said, those artists are locked into contracts. By the time those contracts are up, 95% of those bands will be beating a hasty retreat back to obscurity, and likely wouldn't be picked up again for contract renewal anyways (where are the bands like Boys II Men and Naughty By Nature who were yesteryear's N'Sync and Sysqo?) Half the bands who have staying power go off to start their own label when it comes time to renew anyways (though yes, they do stay part of RIAA - but that's by choice because of cases like Napster-using pirates when the artists can gang up under the umbrella of RIAA and sue). Most of the music I listen to comes from bands that have never had that elusive "big-label-contract" to begin with... Yet somehow they've found a way, even before mp3, to sell their music to their audience. It's called independant CD stores and live shows.
The only thing you're missing is that 90% of the Slashdot crowd has double standards for just about everything. For example, it should be OK to pull down all the pirated MP3's you want, but don't you dare snarf any GPL code into a closed piece of software - that belongs to us!
Well, from just credit card payments up front, "The Plant" seems to be on track through 34,000 copies. That's still not even counting those who will pay by mail. So much for all you nay-sayers. People can be honest.
If he were in this for the money, as the author seems to think, then he wouldn't be limiting the number of downloads to 50,000 and charging $1. $50,000 minus the costs of running the website don't amount to a drop in a bucket when you're got the net worth of a man like Stephen King.
Mr King has said that he's doing this as a test of honesty on the internet to see if this type of distribution works. If it does, you can expect to see others start to use it. Unfortunately, it will still require authors to have some following beforehand for the most part (how many bands have gotten popular off mp3.com?)
Hmmm.... I missed that. To be honest, I don't watch the show that often, but I did see the one you're talking about. I just never noticed that the actor came back. Probably because I saw the episode before I knew who he was. As far as Bruce goes though, most fans of the X-Files should know who he is (hell, I think most people everywhere should know who he is!)
I'm sorry, but I don't see Bruce getting the role. For one specific reason - he's already played a character on the show who really wouldn't work as an FBI agent (hmmm - demon turned FBI - maybe it would work). I don't know about you, but I'd hate it if they switched him over to a totally new character, even if it was only 1 episode that he played the demon in.
Yes, there is something called configuration. I was talking defaults. In case you didn't know, the start bar in windows isn't always at the bottom either. Fact of the matter is, GNOME puts that bar at the bottom unless you put it somewhere else.
"Miguel is an open admirer of how Microsoft does software development."
Someone please tell me this is a belated April Fools joke!"
Do you even doubt that he's a Microsoft fan? Tell me you can look at that thing that Gnome puts on the bottom of your screen and tell me it doesn't remind you of an M$ start bar. OK, so it looks even more like a CDE screen, but people have touted it as something to convert Windows users.
Of course, what he was really talking about was Windows re-use of code. I don't know any developers who say that re-use of code is a bad idea. (oh yeah - there was that one job I interviewed for where they wanted me to write PERL without using any modules because "there's no company to support those modules." Needless to say I laughed at them and didn't end up working there.) Of course, you can run into problems (DLL hell, which has been mentioned time and again here), but if you can manage your re-useable code in a way that doesn't break compatability with old programs when adding new functionality you'll end up with programs that are much nicer and easier to write.
The people who decided that X users could pick their own window manager created a situation where there were many, many window managers to choose from; "they were smoking crack."
Now this is what gets me... People have different requirements and preferances. I personally like the looks of Windowmaker without the added overhead or lost screen space of running Gnome or KDE. I know others who like Gnome, and others who won't use anything other than KDE. And then there are still lots of people who don't care what it looks like and still use FVWM/TWM/Virtual Terminals. If you've got high memory/stability requirements, that would be the way to go.
Seriously though, you can already buy 75 gig HD from any of the companies listed on Pricewatch (www.pricewatch.com) So why bother getting that extra 5 gig?
Isn't it funny how small 5 GB sounds when you're talking about 75 to 80 GB? I read that and thought, "Yeah, 5 GB is tiny." Then I realized that my computer only has 6GB and I rarely find myself in need of more.
So what this tells me is that your friends weren't using linux because they thought it was a superior OS, but to have some sense of elitism in using an OS that most people didn't. This is just silly. However, the same attitude exists everywhere. In music for example. Your favorite underground band finds some wide success and lots of people hear about them. Suddenly this band and sold out and become trendy. You dont like them anymore even though they're more or less putting out the same quality of music that they've also put out.
I agree that this is silly, but this paragraph has some flaws of it's own. Quite often, when an underground band finds success it is because the record company has said to them "If you change in tthese ways, we'll pump you on the radio stations until every kid in the world is humming your tunes." I've seen some really quality bands turn down contracts because of this, others have broken up because of it, and others have gone along with it. Some of these requests actually change the band in absolutly fundamental ways. There was a band from Maine years ago that had a contract in front of them that stated that they would have to take on a frontman (the rhythm guitarist was one of the best singers around, but they didn't want a singer who was held down with a guitar apparently), and they would have to stop promoting themselves as a band from Portland - they would now be a band from Boston. They turned it down feeling that the new singer would be bad for the band. Other bands would have seen the contract and signed it regardless of the impact it would have on the music. Other bands (Metallica) drastically change the style of their music even after they have the contract because they figure they can squeeze a bit more money out of consumers with a different style (listen to pre-Black album stuff and then the recent stuff and tell me you don't think they changed over the course of 1 album). At the same time, eliteism can get out of hand. Personally, I don't care if other's use Linux or not... I also don't care if lots of commercial apps get opensourced or not... It might be nice, but unless a project gets lots of attention it won't draw developers.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd sure want my doctor to be able to use his med school books as referances when he's treating me. I know I've never been able to remember every little thing out of a book and have a stack of referances that I consult regularly, and I'd expect my doctor to be no more super-human than myself.
What's wrong with Henny Youngman jokes?
You want geek laughs and Henny Youngman?
"... Take Windows 2000... Please!"
Oh yeah, that would be really great. Lend more fodder to the precedent AGAINST DeCSS, and then donate the procedes to DEFEND DeCSS. The process would do a hell of a lot more for the MPAA than for the EFF.
By the logic in this article, companies such as Dell and Gateway could come under a lot of lawsuits. They claim to sell an operating system installed on all their systems, but I know the Gateway that I bought a few years back didn't have a C compiler pre-installed, and I need that for it to be functional. Fortunately for Gateway, I know the real definition of an operating system, and don't feel that a compiler is part of it (besides, I installed Linux/gcc/many other things I needed immediately after verifying that it all worked).
I've read so many comments now saying "So what if they left it blank? That's the administrator's fault for not changing it." I agree with that, but the point is, Red Hat got blasted recently for doing the same thing while Microsoft hardly gets mentioned for it.
I do think that MS should put a password change in the setup, but only because they've churned out so many MSCEs that don't know the reasons for what they do - just that they have to click X button when they need to do Y task and they have to apply service pack Z to get certain software to work.
Many venues have policies of their own about bootlegging (though usually if the artist wants, they can work something out). Last time I saw Metallica (after the black album) there was plenty of bootlegging going on, and even signs saying which sections tapers were allowed in.
I worry about this of late. Look around at how common this is. Turn the focus to law for a min. Do laws get written in normal english? No...they get written in a kind of sub language, by people of another culture, a legal culture. Perhaps their thinking has been shaped by their language, and their patterns of operation? Could that be the link to the reason that those in power and the common man don't seem to understand eachother? Different cultures, different languages (similar but different in usage and somewhat in definitions).
Very interesting thought... With possibly disasterous consequences. As society tends to specialize more and more, we could end up with such distinct sub-classes and such different viewpoints that we end up in constant battles. In fact, look around. Is it any coincidence that with more specializing we're seeing culture clashes leading to outcast children bringing guns to school? Or that we're seeing relentless protesting against everything and everyone?
We probably would have ended up with much the same constructs, just with different words representing things. Why? Because it's not really based on english - it's based on machine code, logic, and math. English is just what we use to represent these things (if, while, whatever function calls, etc...)
In a first time ever event, a Slashdotter openly admitted that typical Slashdot ideals clash with the real world.
We're coming close to a time when national laws don't make sense for much anymore. We've largely become a global economy, and with mass media covering every little corner of the world we're becoming one global society. For evidence, look at how countries used to ignore who other countries treated their own residents. Now you can't go anywhere without hearing how so-and-so in some far off place is mistreating the residents that live there. I agree that in most of these cases something should be done, but allowing national control largely prevents legal action.
Now, does anyone want to try to come up with a workable international law system?
For someone who's so smart, you seem to be confusing correlation with causation. Just because you don't watch TV and are smart doesn't mean you are smart because you didn't watch TV. I've known plenty of TV addicts who also scored very well on their standardised tests and went on to good schools/etc...
Actually, since this is for compressing 3D vertices, gaming would be a perfect application for this.
Everybody reading this knows who the real losers are -- the Net, music-lovers and sharers, artists not under contract to large conglomerates, individual consumers, and the notion of the Internet as a free and unrestricted space that connects individuals to information in culture in new and powerful ways
OK Jon, I'll bite... I'm an avid user of the net, I'm a music lover, I'm an artist not under contract to anyone, and I'm an individual consumer. I don't feel I've lost anything (yet). If the internet ends up restricted to the point where all filesharing is eliminated, then I'll have lost something. Sharing files containing something that other have created and hold rights to without compensating those other people IS WRONG. Maybe Napster shouldn't be the one sued, but I'm sick of your anti-IP rantings. IP is valid property - if I don't own my thoughts, then what do I own?
Whoops... read something, read another thing, got called away and forgot where I was, and then replied to the wrong article =)
SORRY!
Everybody reading this knows who the real losers are -- the Net, music-lovers and sharers, artists not under contract to large conglomerates, individual consumers, and the notion of the Internet as a free and unrestricted space that connects individuals to information in culture in new and powerful ways
OK Jon, I'll bite... I'm an avid user of the net, I'm a music lover, I'm an artist not under contract to anyone, and I'm an individual consumer. I don't feel I've lost anything (yet). If the internet ends up restricted to the point where all filesharing is eliminated, then I'll have lost something. Sharing files containing something that other have created and hold rights to without compensating those other people IS WRONG. Maybe Napster shouldn't be the one sued, but I'm sick of your anti-IP rantings. IP is valid property - if I don't own my thoughts, then what do I own?
As you said, those artists are locked into contracts. By the time those contracts are up, 95% of those bands will be beating a hasty retreat back to obscurity, and likely wouldn't be picked up again for contract renewal anyways (where are the bands like Boys II Men and Naughty By Nature who were yesteryear's N'Sync and Sysqo?) Half the bands who have staying power go off to start their own label when it comes time to renew anyways (though yes, they do stay part of RIAA - but that's by choice because of cases like Napster-using pirates when the artists can gang up under the umbrella of RIAA and sue). Most of the music I listen to comes from bands that have never had that elusive "big-label-contract" to begin with... Yet somehow they've found a way, even before mp3, to sell their music to their audience. It's called independant CD stores and live shows.
The only thing you're missing is that 90% of the Slashdot crowd has double standards for just about everything. For example, it should be OK to pull down all the pirated MP3's you want, but don't you dare snarf any GPL code into a closed piece of software - that belongs to us!
Well, from just credit card payments up front, "The Plant" seems to be on track through 34,000 copies. That's still not even counting those who will pay by mail.
So much for all you nay-sayers. People can be honest.
If he were in this for the money, as the author seems to think, then he wouldn't be limiting the number of downloads to 50,000 and charging $1. $50,000 minus the costs of running the website don't amount to a drop in a bucket when you're got the net worth of a man like Stephen King.
Mr King has said that he's doing this as a test of honesty on the internet to see if this type of distribution works. If it does, you can expect to see others start to use it. Unfortunately, it will still require authors to have some following beforehand for the most part (how many bands have gotten popular off mp3.com?)
Hmmm.... I missed that. To be honest, I don't watch the show that often, but I did see the one you're talking about. I just never noticed that the actor came back. Probably because I saw the episode before I knew who he was. As far as Bruce goes though, most fans of the X-Files should know who he is (hell, I think most people everywhere should know who he is!)
I'm sorry, but I don't see Bruce getting the role. For one specific reason - he's already played a character on the show who really wouldn't work as an FBI agent (hmmm - demon turned FBI - maybe it would work).
I don't know about you, but I'd hate it if they switched him over to a totally new character, even if it was only 1 episode that he played the demon in.
Yes, there is something called configuration. I was talking defaults. In case you didn't know, the start bar in windows isn't always at the bottom either. Fact of the matter is, GNOME puts that bar at the bottom unless you put it somewhere else.
"Miguel is an open admirer of how Microsoft does software development."
Someone please tell me this is a belated April Fools joke!"
Do you even doubt that he's a Microsoft fan? Tell me you can look at that thing that Gnome puts on the bottom of your screen and tell me it doesn't remind you of an M$ start bar. OK, so it looks even more like a CDE screen, but people have touted it as something to convert Windows users.
Of course, what he was really talking about was Windows re-use of code. I don't know any developers who say that re-use of code is a bad idea. (oh yeah - there was that one job I interviewed for where they wanted me to write PERL without using any modules because "there's no company to support those modules." Needless to say I laughed at them and didn't end up working there.) Of course, you can run into problems (DLL hell, which has been mentioned time and again here), but if you can manage your re-useable code in a way that doesn't break compatability with old programs when adding new functionality you'll end up with programs that are much nicer and easier to write.
The people who decided that X users could pick their own window manager created a situation where there were many, many window managers to choose from; "they were smoking crack."
Now this is what gets me... People have different requirements and preferances. I personally like the looks of Windowmaker without the added overhead or lost screen space of running Gnome or KDE. I know others who like Gnome, and others who won't use anything other than KDE. And then there are still lots of people who don't care what it looks like and still use FVWM/TWM/Virtual Terminals. If you've got high memory/stability requirements, that would be the way to go.
Seriously though, you can already buy 75 gig HD from any of the companies listed on Pricewatch (www.pricewatch.com) So why bother getting that extra 5 gig?
Isn't it funny how small 5 GB sounds when you're talking about 75 to 80 GB? I read that and thought, "Yeah, 5 GB is tiny." Then I realized that my computer only has 6GB and I rarely find myself in need of more.
So what this tells me is that your friends weren't using linux because they thought it was a superior OS, but to have some sense of elitism in using an OS that most people didn't. This is just silly. However, the same attitude exists everywhere. In music for example. Your favorite underground band finds some wide success and lots of people hear about them. Suddenly this band and sold out and become trendy. You dont like them anymore even though they're more or less putting out the same quality of music that they've also put out.
I agree that this is silly, but this paragraph has some flaws of it's own. Quite often, when an underground band finds success it is because the record company has said to them "If you change in tthese ways, we'll pump you on the radio stations until every kid in the world is humming your tunes." I've seen some really quality bands turn down contracts because of this, others have broken up because of it, and others have gone along with it. Some of these requests actually change the band in absolutly fundamental ways. There was a band from Maine years ago that had a contract in front of them that stated that they would have to take on a frontman (the rhythm guitarist was one of the best singers around, but they didn't want a singer who was held down with a guitar apparently), and they would have to stop promoting themselves as a band from Portland - they would now be a band from Boston. They turned it down feeling that the new singer would be bad for the band. Other bands would have seen the contract and signed it regardless of the impact it would have on the music.
Other bands (Metallica) drastically change the style of their music even after they have the contract because they figure they can squeeze a
bit more money out of consumers with a different style (listen to pre-Black album stuff and then the recent stuff and tell me you don't think they changed over the course of 1 album).
At the same time, eliteism can get out of hand. Personally, I don't care if other's use Linux or not... I also don't care if lots of commercial apps get opensourced or not... It might be nice, but unless a project gets lots of attention it won't draw developers.