I hate to say it, but wrong != illegal. Just ask the cop that took my license after pulling me over for speeding, without even using a radar/laser gun.
Well I don't know about where you live but here the there is something called the point system. Generally speaking offences are tallied up within the space of say 1-3 years and if you exceed the number of points allowed you get your liscence suspended. I sure hope you challenged it.
People with power will always get away with crimes against those without power.
In general this is correct. If I can't defend myself I am usually going to get victimized.
What modern man has developed is various schemes that prevent rampant abuses of power to the extent that it could hurt those that are defenseless. Now this dosn't always work perfectly but for the most part it does.
Why does it take the threat of a judge making a ruling on a case to actually get these two together and try to work out an arrangement/resolution to this mess? Wouldn't it have saved both Microsoft and the taxpayers a ton of money if they could have tried this out in the first place.
Maybe it would have saved some money on the part of the "taxpayers" (I really would like to see some hard numbers in regards to income and funding for the DoJ in this matter) and saved Microsoft money (why I should care about Microsoft's moeny is beyond me). But they still have violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and should be punished for their crimes.
Not only has this been proven by a group of intelligent legal authorities but there is ample evidence that can attest to this.
Now I know that having a monopoly is not necessarily wrong legally as such however using that monopoly to keep that monopoly and say using unfair business practices that can harm the consumer is an illegal act and should not be tolerated.
OK, that's out of the way (since I know everyone's going to flame it). I really don't see how Microsoft is going to get any more than a slap on the wrist and told not to do it anymore. We could fine them, but how do you financially fine a company that makes 100's of billions a year? We could break it apart, but they would still be owned by the same people and everyone would go on making their profits, just like before. Hell, 3Com/USR/Palm has shown that it can even be a usefull business strategy. So then what? They could force MS to quasi-open source their software but ask Red Hat how terrible that is for business.
If you want to fine them you make it much larger than a couple billion. Then you take the money and pump it into the competitors or perhaps some really nice OSS projects. Imagine just how good linux could become with say $50 billion to spend on getting SMP working *for sure* on say a good sized Sun Enterprise server.
Red Hat is not exactly rolling in it as far as companies are judged. I know for certain that adding source code would significantly level the playing field and prevent the underhanded tactics that MS is using. Why do you ask? Because simply put all you have to do to make sure your software works for windows is just make sure it works the way the source says windows should work and plan you app accordingly.
Personally, I think that the Justice Department is just wasting time and money really pursuing this.
Just because this dosn't affect you dosn't mean it's not important.
From what I know of such things they are usually in the relm of scifi. I seriously doubt that any such device will be avaible within our lifetimes.
Could someone please explain why seemingly impossible things that are the domain of Captain Picard and the boys are getting attention from science when we can barely launch probes properly to Mars.
This ruling does not make it illegal for a web store in Japan to send me the Dreamcast I ordered. And the post office isn't going to open and inspect EVERY box coming into the US. (easily millions if not billions per day). And besides, customs agents have more IMPORTANT things to look for, like guns or drugs. So how exactly does this affect me again?
Think about it this way. If you have to pay someone to smuggle something into the country then you are going to be (generally) screwed concerning it's price. If the item gets stolen or the people sending it have to get a special courier to get it to you without customs seizing it then prices will go up and quality could go down. Instead of getting the Dreamcast in a timely manner you may see it in say 6 months.
Well, what about a gun maker that advertises "resistant to finger prints" or markets in a way to ensure arrival of guns to minors? I know we are talking about different levels of morality (theft != guns) but the point remains that manufacturers bear some responsibility to their products, especially when the use is obviously illegal.
Really now do you honestly think that if I am motivated to kill someone that that would stop me. Any half wit knows that all you have to do is wear gloves of some kind and suddently all those nasty fingerprints dissapear for good really quickly. Now here's something really interesting do you think that just because someone uses a product for an illegal purpose does that make them totally responsible. Well if y ou follow the letter of the law in various places in the US it already is to some extent in terms of software liscencing. Ever actually sit down to read any of those software agreements or service agreements. Hell even in debian I can read the following:
Copyright (C) 1993-1999 Software in the Public Interest, and others
Most of the programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are freely redistributable; the exact distribution terms for each program should be described in the individual files in/usr/share/doc/*/copyright or/usr/doc/*/copyright.
Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law.
That last line is really the kicker most progams usually come with a form of agreement even more stingent. Usually this equates to saying that (in layspeak): I as the author don't really give a tinker's damn about how you use this software only that is isn't guaranteed to suit a particular purpose and I am not liable for any direct/indirect damage from my program being used inapropriately.
That's bullshit and we all know it. Napster, Gnutella, DivX, anything new that comes along: they are all used primarily for entertainment, plain and simple. We ain't talking about political news or relious freedoms or anything serious. We're talking about people stealing South Park and Britney Spears for their own fucking pleasure, just to save a buck or two. It's that plain, as much as you all hate to admit it!
Man you like Britney Spears? Ok man whatrever. You have a rather blanket statement stating that "anything that comes along is entertainment" while one could technically argue that all the things you have mentioned can be forms of entertainment I think that a telegraph machine could also be used for entertainment, a photocopier (for copying those unmentionables), or using mainframes to play ttyquake on. Are you saying that new media is primarily used for entertainment purposes first and foremost? As a programmer I can say that on all the network protocols that I have seen nothing compares to the level of scanning and avaibility that is built in to the napster/gnutella protocol. Oh sure you can do other things with various pre-existing standards but nothing this easy and complete. It's liek distributed.net for storage or for querying transactions.
Actually you are wrong on the "couple of bucks" angle too. In general usually the person is saving thousands (in the case of things like 3d Studio Max) or they are saving nothing but more accurately costing them big bucks for getting the files. Seems most people around here prefer to rid mp3's from their preexisting cd sets for convient archival and use. Now personally I haven't done this because I haven't bought a CD (yeah I am a loner and not much into music as such being a keen listener to the radio and posessor of no sound equipment) However I have thought of the possibility of taking say something like a book and riping apart the pages scanning them in and do a multiple regression OCR analysis on it so that I could easily search for and retrieve data for all my reference books (Britanica, Bible, Koran, Hindu ancient texts, English classics of the 19th century, various history books from long dead authors, etc), now assuming that I dont' distribute these to anyone (hell several hundred gigs of text data isn't exactly portable by any means including removing my hd) I am perfectly in my right to do this in the spirit of keeping things in a better format. PS. out of curiousity what could be the best method od going the above scannign routine. Say best hardware/software combo and it's current state of linux compatability/incompataiblity.
This appears to be really interesting however how exactly can one use a direct download method? I tried accessing the first server only to find that it starts timeing out and the second from the AC which apparently servs up just mp3 content but dosn't allow for direct download. When I try to access the links via downloading them via right clicking or typing 'd' over the linx in lynx or following the links by clicking on them it returns status information saying that the server is a gnutella server and not a http server.
Hmmm well I have seen some of this gnutella stuff. Tell me exactly where can one obtain say a nice linux binary or some nice source for the app. If not what would be the most stable build for NT? P.S. I just might decide to do some of this gnutella stuff say tomorrow if I can get access to a binary and some good material I did a small ammount of the napster thing just for the hell of it when I had a couple of hours to spare. If anyone is interested I would register with some form of a variation of the slashdot uid or something like that.
Is there a formalized backup or scan protocol that could say scan for any original material from all currently avaible gnutella servers and then grab/flag said material for possible retrieval? That could be very useful just get a couple 50 gig SCSI disks and your all set.
Then your argument is not worthy or presentation. For an argument to be truely useful you have to have a good, solid, rigorous explanation of what it is that you are trying to say.
What logically dosn't make sence is saying that someone is greedy in wanting to dual boot something. If you have already bought a computer with windows on it why throw away money that you paid to get windows on it? (This is in the form of increased costs for windows. If you really don't believe me just check pricewatch or another wholesaler for prices on say a barebones OEM version of a computer and one with windows you will definately see a difference.
(insert quote from some l33t orwell novel i read in high school hmm.. four legs good, two legs bad!)
I have not idea what in the hell that's supposed to mean about wheather a person is bidedal or a quadraped I can only say that I choose things based on simplicity and beauty not on popularity.
You get everyone involved in the Oscars, and suddenly Mouse Trap would have won all the awards because people thought the mouse was cute. I deal with the American public every single day because I'm unfortunate enough to live there, and let me tell you, I do everything I can to stay away from it as much as I possibly can.
So you are telling me that you are a xenophobe and live in rural Montana right? Do you hide in your basement? How exactly do you avoid Americans? Does anyone who has ever lived in American count, born in America. I feel sory for you.
They're fat, they're lazy, they're stupid, and they don't know enough to care. They sit and eat potato chips in front of the TV after driving home alone in their car from work which was mind-numbingly boring, except that they have too little ambition or self-respect to even have the idea that they could look for another one.
Really, I am sure that several million people would disagree with you. Although I know a few people who are like that I think that concept is not totally accurate. First of all most Americans are not fat and so on. Just because the rest of the world goes around and is usually malnourished and poor because they have roving bandits killing off their friends and burning their fields dosn't mean I have to starve.
You really don't get it do you. There are times when I wonder how in the hell I will ever get a job. Not everyone actually has the ability to code straight assembly language for 30 different processors and can create at least 6 new OSS projects a year you know. Everyone has a choice in their life that can go one of three ways, work in some job, work in no job, or just take a visit to Kavorkian and get it over with. What will you do. I don't know what country you come from but I can probably find the same class of people you are talking about right in your own country.
Simple logic for you. If getting a job is so uncertain and difficult why do you think people work in a job at all. Hell my own dad has been working in a job that he hates for at least 15+ years and he still does it each and every day. Is it because he was lazy I think after he submitted over 500+ applications all over the continental USA to get the job that he wanted and still didn't get it. That's a start. Everyone has self respect but you have to make a choice sooner or later and you always have to ask yourself what would rather do try and make some money and live to see another dawn or just die? Well make up your mind already.
Do I want these people selecting the best movies of the year? Hell no. I mean, sure, it's minor. But it already scares the hell out of me that they get to choose who runs the goddamn country! If you live in the US, take a look at your neighbors. Do you want them choosing anything for you? The thought terrifies and disgusts you, most likely. It does the same for me.
What do I really care if they select the "movie of the year" does that really mean a damn thing to anyone? Not to me. Hell I have watched movies that were considered "good" TPM and ST Insurrections leap to mind as the last 2 movies that I saw and logical fallacies and problems with both but they still got rave reviews from cult like followers of the movies. So I guess even "educated" people still make mistakes.
Making a choice about a movie is not the same as running the country. I can't exactly say that the choice of people in other countries is any better. Let's see in Austria we have a Natzi wanna be, and in Russia we have an ex KGB guy to run the supposedly "free" nation. Boy that brings back fond memories. Mix that with the various smart people in Australia who decided that looking at boobies is bad for your health, add to that China where a communist regime decides what you can and cannot say and beats people and runs your over with a 1960's era tank if you disagree. Yeah all the other people in the world are better than the US..*not*.
Well if you are as distant from people as you let on you most likely don't even know your neighbor's names. What do they do for a living. What are their interests. If you are one of those people living in one of the tech centers you may actually be working in the same building doing similar things and never know it (easy to do in a place as big as some sectors of IBM, or Hewlett Packard).
why the fsck did you pick C as your language of choice for GNOME? There are a ton of other languages out there that are much more suitable for GUI development than C. Do you plan on overhauling the whole GNOME code base at any time in another laguage (im sure C++ would be picked, whether or not it deserves to be)?
C has a tendency to make things just a little faster and more nitty gritty in terms of the things it can do. Although I would admit that C++ is good for things and for allowing for a changeable design I wonder if it's totally necessary. I got headaches just trying to comphrend some of the C++ concepts. I have read books which indicate it's really useful however I haven't seen anything that couldn't be just done in straight C. I was able to learn C with little problem (well pointers just suck badly) but C++ and it's interactions started to get murky about the time inheritance and polymorphism started getting added.
C++ can add some whoppers to bugs and trying to get them to work. I think before we start to develop in C++ too much we need a tool that does a good job of creating and IDE with compiler, easy debugger, and other features. That's the biggest problem I get into. using vi and the command line is simple and fast but I like interactive things that allow me to see bugs and squash them quickly.
Also another thing you have to consider is that perhaps the libraries that are being used the most are C related and not C++ as of this time? That can put a damper on things.
In light of the fact that gnome seems to becomming the default method of setting up a modern GNU/Linux machine I ask this:
Is there a formal method of creating a scalable GUI interface that will work well on almost anything but still be gnome? Other WMs have done this to a considerable extent and perhaps a little better being more leightweight. My first impressions from running the latest debs avaible was that perhaps it's still a little primitive and perhaps a little more shall we say corpulent than I care for. Also most WMs seem to be reinventing the wheel and duplicating a great deal of functionality of others.
I think this is a great idea and I believe in four or five years, this is almost precisely what they will be doing.
Speeches I think are a small price to pay for something that is considered "entertainment". In general if someone spends considerable time to actually go to the trouble of producing a movie and takes their valuable time. The least we can do is listen to a speech on why they did what they did. I like to know the motivations behind why people do things.
I left the theatre feeling really disappointed, actually. I mean, it was a cool action flick and the special effects were neat and all that, but they could have done so much more with the movie than they did. The central point of the plot was the the Metaphysic of Magick, and the transformation of the individual from a mundane into a mage. They could have cut 5 minutes of the random mayhem (and still had enough blood and guts to satisfy any action-movie freak), and used that time to focus more on the process of the transformation, as Neo becomes aware of the true nature of reality, and then becomes aware of how this newfound knowledge allows him to control reality. But instead the transformation was virutally instantaneous: Neo went from clueless shmoe to uber-mage in one scene. And I'm not even going to get started on the absurdity of the basic premise that the machines were using humans as a power source.
All of the fantasy stuff I have read is usually based on the concept of having magic from birth. Usually you can't learn a damn thing as an average person and all the power is usually concentrated with a few people who are then secretive with their knowledge.
Who exactly is Neo and why does he wish to gain power? Is he getting picked on? Is he just bored? Family die?
I think machines would consider humans as a liability rather than a blessing. You have to feed a human and keep neural activity alive and such. You end up loosing power and work to keep that human alive. Plus you can use "dangerous" levels of say radiation or other things to get it to work efficiently.
Maybe I just expect too much from Hollywood. I guess there is a reason I don't see many movies. Sigh...
I don't see many movies because I am poor but that's another matter entirely.
NB: The references to the Metaphysic of Magic, etc are from Mage: The Ascension. The MofM, in a nutshell, is the principle that reality is a fluid thing that is created by our common perception of reality. (Yes it's circular. Don't ask me.) Understanding this key fact allows a person to manipulate reality, in a limited fashion, by imposing their version of what should be on the consensual reality. This is what makes someone a mage.
Ahh but the problem with the concept of altering reality or doing things like say on a large scale like creating a storm is rather impossible. Telekenesis would be I would think the best your could hope for considering how much raw energy it takes to do anything. Also you mind has to create this energy and it has to come from somewhere and it also has to be directed and focuses in a highly rigorous manner. Plus the fact that magic is not a reality.
The Matrix was the best movie of the 1999. Who agrees with me on that one? I have seen it like 15 times on the big screen, have CD version of it (MIRC:) and I still watch it time to time.
Actually I haven't seen it yet. What would be the good selling points of the movie? Will it be (or is it currently on) VHS? What makes it so good? special effects, good acting, good plot?
Bioware has planned a Linux port of Neverwinter Nights right from day 1. NWN being primarily a client/server multiplayer game (and apparently a really interesting one too) I think it wasn't really an option not to support Linux. Why you ask? Because the platform statistics for FPS servers is currently something along the lines of 70% Linux, 30% Windows, the difference being even bigger in Europe (Can't remember an exact reference, but check the Bluesnews archives). All the big known dedicated servers run on Linux. As an example, the server availability for Half-Life was abysmal until Sierra finally got the server port out, and now it's the most popular game online (mainly because of the Counterstrike mod).
Where are these stats comming from? Where do these people get the time? Can this game be played by yourself without a network connection?
I get really scared of what the future of games might be like. Not everyone has a net connection at their home, and not everyone wants to have to play games with others. I made a feeble attempt to play things like starcraft multiplayer and got massacred each and every time:(
I would like the use of network play to be an option not the basis for the entire game. Multiplayer games introduce an ammount of shall we say unfair competition. When I play a game I expect to have a fun time and enjoy an experience that I can feel good about. Not like I was just humiliated by some 10 year old kid.
Then linux might be able to achieve some gaming capabilities on par with that of a circa-1996 windows box. If you want to serve web pages, run linux. If you want to play more than 2% of new pc games, run windows. Dual booters are just greedy.
Explain exactly how a person is greedy in wanting to get something to work that they paid for?
um, shouldn't be linux kept for sysadmin/networking issues? i mean, it is BUILT for them, right? doh...i just play games, and i am quite as happy doing it on a windoze maShine. my linux can (box, whatever) is for networking only because it takes shitloads of time to set it up efficiently. do you agree?
Networking is boring and theoretically not terribly useful without applications to back it up. Who cares if you can transmit and receive data without being able to do anything useful to that data in the first place. This is why other things are important. Games have infultriated your "pure" OS already. Look at any mud and see what OS they are running most likely some unix dirivitave (ie. linux).
I for one would like some games on my machine because the computer that I have linux on is my one and only machine.
Ok, Hemos will be good...but will Rob ? Seriously, if there's a commitment for a timely porting of BG2 to Linux (and henceforth other games), Windows may be looking at a up and coming reformat at home. I currently have Debian and Win/98 (yes, I admit..I'm weak and like to play games sometimes). I seldom boot into Win98 (twice a month or so...and always to play like BG). This is VERY GOOD news to me....thanks for the person who submitted the article!
What precisely makes this game so good? I assume that Baulder's Gate II is already out for other platforms right? What is this about?
One of the major reasons for there being a distinct lack of linux viruses is that by and large, it will most likely only be executed by a local user as themselves, therefore spreading to system binaries is nigh-on impossible.
Wish I could do that. I am truely running out of disk space and have to routinely have to use the 10% space margin that is on the filesystem and is "reserved" for root just to get things done.
The only virus I ever heard of infecting a *nix system is an incompetent sysadmin...we all know there's enough of them
I know for a fact that you are wrong in that regard. At least a year or 2 ago I heard that something called the bliss virus infected several linux systems. Apparently it did some form of infection mechanism on non protected binaries. You could also (with a command line option) disinfect the files that were infected. The author said that he/she would release the source at some future date but I never saw it. In general most people who run linux are not the type that just run some random binaries.
You know this is almost really funny. People have always said that native code is much faster and that there are certain advantages to it. Why would everyone start using Tcl, perl, and Java all of a sudden? All the things that I do with so called "platform independent" languages makes the thing dog slow. Case in point gimp. I can tell a big difference between native executables and perl on my system. When I do something perl related that is even built in for the gimp takes rougly 2-3 minutes of hd grinding. Also things like dpkg which also relies heavily on perl takes up a lot of time as well. Tcl is in the same boat. Java is not exactly something that I use on a regular basis nor are there many apps for linux that actually have java as their main code included in almost any distribution at all. All java stuff I have seen runs dog slow and this is stuff that is supposed to be highly optimized. I think that C++ is closest to what you could consider to be "crows platform" than almost anything: there is a ANSI standard, and a compiler for almost any system. I routinely write and run programs between win32 and linux all the time and never see a problem. Plus my code is much faster.
The unix philosophy has allowed me to do things that no one has ever really been able to do in NT without breaking out Viual C++. I mean seriously; things like sed, awk, grep, emacs and other things are god sends for being able to do almost anything you want. Linux has been able to allow me to use shitty hardware that NT just plain wouldn't run on (well ok the new versions of NT I had a CD of NT 3.1 and it worked on my machine but I took it off 2 hours later). A GUI interface is nice but it dosn't make up for the lack of efficiency and power that make NT evil.
Actually it's more correct to say that uid 0 = power. You can easily change a single field location in/etc/passwd and rename the uid 0 account to god or whatever and get equivelent actions.
Slashdot Mirror
what exactly for?
I hate to say it, but wrong != illegal. Just ask the cop that took my license after pulling me over for speeding, without even using a radar/laser gun.
Well I don't know about where you live but here the there is something called the point system. Generally speaking offences are tallied up within the space of say 1-3 years and if you exceed the number of points allowed you get your liscence suspended. I sure hope you challenged it.
People with power will always get away with crimes against those without power.
In general this is correct. If I can't defend myself I am usually going to get victimized.
What modern man has developed is various schemes that prevent rampant abuses of power to the extent that it could hurt those that are defenseless. Now this dosn't always work perfectly but for the most part it does.
Why does it take the threat of a judge making a ruling on a case to actually get these two together and try to work out an arrangement/resolution to this mess? Wouldn't it have saved both Microsoft and the taxpayers a ton of money if
they could have tried this out in the first place.
Maybe it would have saved some money on the part of the "taxpayers" (I really would like to see some hard numbers in regards to income and funding for the DoJ in this matter) and saved Microsoft money (why I should care about Microsoft's moeny is beyond me). But they still have violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and should be punished for their crimes.
Not only has this been proven by a group of intelligent legal authorities but there is ample evidence that can attest to this.
Now I know that having a monopoly is not necessarily wrong legally as such however using that monopoly to keep that monopoly and say using unfair business practices that can harm the consumer is an illegal act and should not be tolerated.
OK, that's out of the way (since I know everyone's going to flame it). I really don't see how Microsoft is going to get any more than a slap on the wrist and told not to do it anymore. We could fine them, but how do you financially
fine a company that makes 100's of billions a year? We could break it apart, but they would still be owned by the same people and everyone would go on making their profits, just like before. Hell, 3Com/USR/Palm has shown that it
can even be a usefull business strategy. So then what? They could force MS to quasi-open source their software but ask Red Hat how terrible that is for business.
If you want to fine them you make it much larger than a couple billion. Then you take the money and pump it into the competitors or perhaps some really nice OSS projects. Imagine just how good linux could become with say $50 billion to spend on getting SMP working *for sure* on say a good sized Sun Enterprise server.
Red Hat is not exactly rolling in it as far as companies are judged. I know for certain that adding source code would significantly level the playing field and prevent the underhanded tactics that MS is using. Why do you ask? Because simply put all you have to do to make sure your software works for windows is just make sure it works the way the source says windows should work and plan you app accordingly.
Personally, I think that the Justice Department is just wasting time and money really pursuing this.
Just because this dosn't affect you dosn't mean it's not important.
From what I know of such things they are usually in the relm of scifi. I seriously doubt that any such device will be avaible within our lifetimes.
Could someone please explain why seemingly impossible things that are the domain of Captain Picard and the boys are getting attention from science when we can barely launch probes properly to Mars.
This ruling does not make it illegal for a web store in Japan to send me the Dreamcast I ordered. And the post office isn't going to open and inspect EVERY box coming into the US. (easily millions if not billions per day). And
besides, customs agents have more IMPORTANT things to look for, like guns or drugs. So how exactly does this affect me again?
Think about it this way. If you have to pay someone to smuggle something into the country then you are going to be (generally) screwed concerning it's price. If the item gets stolen or the people sending it have to get a special courier to get it to you without customs seizing it then prices will go up and quality could go down. Instead of getting the Dreamcast in a timely manner you may see it in say 6 months.
Well, what about a gun maker that advertises "resistant to finger
/usr/share/doc/*/copyright /usr/doc/*/copyright.
prints" or markets in a way to ensure arrival of guns to minors? I
know we are talking about different levels of morality (theft != guns)
but the point remains that manufacturers bear some responsibility to
their products, especially when the use is obviously illegal.
Really now do you honestly think that if I am motivated to kill someone that that would stop me. Any half wit knows that all you have to do is wear gloves of some kind and suddently all those nasty fingerprints dissapear for good really quickly. Now here's something really interesting do you think that just because someone uses a product for an illegal purpose does that make them totally responsible. Well if y ou follow the letter of the law in various places in the US it already is to some extent in terms of software liscencing. Ever actually sit down to read any of those software agreements or service agreements. Hell even in debian I can read the following:
Copyright (C) 1993-1999 Software in the Public Interest, and others
Most of the programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are
freely redistributable; the exact distribution terms for each program
should be described in the individual files in
or
Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.
That last line is really the kicker most progams usually come with a form of agreement even more stingent. Usually this equates to saying that (in layspeak):
I as the author don't really give a tinker's damn about how you use this software only that is isn't guaranteed to suit a particular purpose and I am not liable for any direct/indirect damage from my program being used inapropriately.
That's bullshit and we all know it. Napster, Gnutella, DivX, anything
new that comes along: they are all used primarily for entertainment,
plain and simple. We ain't talking about political news or relious
freedoms or anything serious. We're talking about people stealing
South Park and Britney Spears for their own fucking pleasure, just to
save a buck or two. It's that plain, as much as you all hate to admit it!
Man you like Britney Spears? Ok man whatrever.
You have a rather blanket statement stating that "anything that comes along is entertainment" while one could technically argue that all the things you have mentioned can be forms of entertainment I think that a telegraph machine could also be used for entertainment, a photocopier (for copying those unmentionables),
or using mainframes to play ttyquake on. Are you saying that new media is primarily used for entertainment purposes first and foremost?
As a programmer I can say that on all the network protocols that I have seen nothing compares to the level of scanning and avaibility that is built in to the napster/gnutella protocol. Oh sure you can do other things with various pre-existing standards but nothing this easy and complete. It's liek distributed.net for storage or for querying transactions.
Actually you are wrong on the "couple of bucks"
angle too. In general usually the person is saving thousands (in the case of things like 3d Studio Max) or they are saving nothing but more accurately costing them big bucks for getting the files.
Seems most people around here prefer to rid mp3's from their preexisting cd sets for convient archival and use. Now personally I haven't done this because I haven't bought a CD (yeah I am a loner and not much into music as such being a keen listener to the radio and posessor of no sound equipment)
However I have thought of the possibility of taking say something like a book and riping apart the pages scanning them in and do a multiple regression OCR analysis on it so that I could easily search for and retrieve data for all my reference books (Britanica, Bible, Koran, Hindu ancient texts, English classics of the 19th century, various history books from long dead authors, etc), now assuming that I dont' distribute these to anyone (hell several hundred gigs of text data isn't exactly portable by any means including removing my hd) I am perfectly in my right to do this in the spirit of keeping things in a better format.
PS. out of curiousity what could be the best method od going the above scannign routine. Say best hardware/software combo and it's current state of linux compatability/incompataiblity.
This appears to be really interesting however how exactly can one use a direct download method? I tried accessing the first server only to find that it starts timeing out and the second from the AC which apparently servs up just mp3 content but dosn't allow for direct download.
When I try to access the links via downloading them via right clicking or typing 'd' over the linx in lynx or following the links by clicking on them it returns status information saying that the server is a gnutella server and not a http server.
Hmmm well I have seen some of this gnutella stuff.
Tell me exactly where can one obtain say a nice linux binary or some nice source for the app.
If not what would be the most stable build for NT?
P.S. I just might decide to do some of this gnutella stuff say tomorrow if I can get access to a binary and some good material I did a small ammount of the napster thing just for the hell of it when I had a couple of hours to spare. If anyone is interested I would register with some form of a variation of the slashdot uid or something like that.
Is there a formalized backup or scan protocol that could say scan for any original material from all currently avaible gnutella servers and then grab/flag said material for possible retrieval? That could be very useful just get a couple 50 gig SCSI disks and your all set.
I don't feel the need to explain myself to you.
Then your argument is not worthy or presentation. For an argument to be truely useful you have to have a good, solid, rigorous explanation of what it is that you are trying to say.
What logically dosn't make sence is saying that someone is greedy in wanting to dual boot something. If you have already bought a computer with windows on it why throw away money that you paid to get windows on it? (This is in the form of increased costs for windows. If you really don't believe me just check pricewatch or another wholesaler for prices on say a barebones OEM version of a computer and one with windows you will definately see a difference.
(insert quote from some l33t orwell novel i read in high school hmm.. four legs good, two legs bad!)
I have not idea what in the hell that's supposed to mean about wheather a person is bidedal or a quadraped I can only say that I choose things based on simplicity and beauty not on popularity.
Three words:
..*not*.
people are stupid.
Five words:
You are a person too!
You get everyone involved in the Oscars, and suddenly Mouse Trap would have won all the awards because people thought the mouse was cute. I deal with the American public every single day because I'm unfortunate enough to live
there, and let me tell you, I do everything I can to stay away from it as much as I possibly can.
So you are telling me that you are a xenophobe and live in rural Montana right? Do you hide in your basement? How exactly do you avoid Americans? Does anyone who has ever lived in American count, born in America. I feel sory for you.
They're fat, they're lazy, they're stupid, and they don't know enough to care. They sit and eat potato chips in front of the TV after driving home alone in their car from work which was mind-numbingly boring, except that they have
too little ambition or self-respect to even have the idea that they could look for another one.
Really, I am sure that several million people would disagree with you. Although I know a few people who are like that I think that concept is not totally accurate. First of all most Americans are not fat and so on. Just because the rest of the world goes around and is usually malnourished and poor because they have roving bandits killing off their friends and burning their fields dosn't mean I have to starve.
You really don't get it do you. There are times when I wonder how in the hell I will ever get a job. Not everyone actually has the ability to code straight assembly language for 30 different processors and can create at least 6 new OSS projects a year you know. Everyone has a choice in their life that can go one of three ways, work in some job, work in no job, or just take a visit to Kavorkian and get it over with. What will you do. I don't know what country you come from but I can probably find the same class of people you are talking about right in your own country.
Simple logic for you. If getting a job is so uncertain and difficult why do you think people work in a job at all. Hell my own dad has been working in a job that he hates for at least 15+ years and he still does it each and every day. Is it because he was lazy I think after he submitted over 500+ applications all over the continental USA to get the job that he wanted and still didn't get it. That's a start. Everyone has self respect but you have to make a choice sooner or later and you always have to ask yourself what would rather do try and make some money and live to see another dawn or just die? Well make up your mind already.
Do I want these people selecting the best movies of the year? Hell no. I mean, sure, it's minor. But it already scares the hell out of me that they get to choose who runs the goddamn country! If you live in the US, take a look at your
neighbors. Do you want them choosing anything for you? The thought terrifies and disgusts you, most likely. It does the same for me.
What do I really care if they select the "movie of the year" does that really mean a damn thing to anyone? Not to me. Hell I have watched movies that were considered "good" TPM and ST Insurrections leap to mind as the last 2 movies that I saw and logical fallacies and problems with both but they still got rave reviews from cult like followers of the movies. So I guess even "educated" people still make mistakes.
Making a choice about a movie is not the same as running the country. I can't exactly say that the choice of people in other countries is any better. Let's see in Austria we have a Natzi wanna be, and in Russia we have an ex KGB guy to run the supposedly "free" nation. Boy that brings back fond memories. Mix that with the various smart people in Australia who decided that looking at boobies is bad for your health, add to that China where a communist regime decides what you can and cannot say and beats people and runs your over with a 1960's era tank if you disagree. Yeah all the other people in the world are better than the US
Well if you are as distant from people as you let on you most likely don't even know your neighbor's names. What do they do for a living. What are their interests. If you are one of those people living in one of the tech centers you may actually be working in the same building doing similar things and never know it (easy to do in a place as big as some sectors of IBM, or Hewlett Packard).
Go out to Borders, pick up the book on GTK/Gnome development, and read the FAQ chapter. There you will see why I moderated you down
Umm. I thought you can't post to and moderate the same discussion. Do you have multiple accounts?
why the fsck did you pick C as your language of choice for GNOME? There are a ton of other languages out there that are much more suitable for GUI development than C. Do you plan on overhauling the whole GNOME code base at
any time in another laguage (im sure C++ would be picked, whether or not it deserves to be)?
C has a tendency to make things just a little faster and more nitty gritty in terms of the things it can do. Although I would admit that C++ is good for things and for allowing for a changeable design I wonder if it's totally necessary. I got headaches just trying to comphrend some of the C++ concepts. I have read books which indicate it's really useful however I haven't seen anything that couldn't be just done in straight C. I was able to learn C with little problem (well pointers just suck badly) but C++ and it's interactions started to get murky about the time inheritance and polymorphism started getting added.
C++ can add some whoppers to bugs and trying to get them to work. I think before we start to develop in C++ too much we need a tool that does a good job of creating and IDE with compiler, easy debugger, and other features. That's the biggest problem I get into. using vi and the command line is simple and fast but I like interactive things that allow me to see bugs and squash them quickly.
Also another thing you have to consider is that perhaps the libraries that are being used the most are C related and not C++ as of this time? That can put a damper on things.
In light of the fact that gnome seems to becomming the default method of setting up a modern GNU/Linux machine I ask this:
Is there a formal method of creating a scalable GUI interface that will work well on almost anything but still be gnome? Other WMs have done this to a considerable extent and perhaps a little better being more leightweight. My first impressions from running the latest debs avaible was that perhaps it's still a little primitive and perhaps a little more shall we say corpulent than I care for. Also most WMs seem to be reinventing the wheel and duplicating a great deal of functionality of others.
I think this is a great idea and I believe in four or five years, this is almost precisely what they will be doing.
Speeches I think are a small price to pay for something that is considered "entertainment". In general if someone spends considerable time to actually go to the trouble of producing a movie and takes their valuable time. The least we can do is listen to a speech on why they did what they did. I like to know the motivations behind why people do things.
I left the theatre feeling really disappointed, actually. I mean, it was a cool action flick and the special effects were neat and all that, but they could have done so much more with the movie than they did. The central point of the plot
was the the Metaphysic of Magick, and the transformation of the individual from a mundane into a mage. They could have cut 5 minutes of the random mayhem (and still had enough blood and guts to satisfy any action-movie freak),
and used that time to focus more on the process of the transformation, as Neo becomes aware of the true nature of reality, and then becomes aware of how this newfound knowledge allows him to control reality. But instead the
transformation was virutally instantaneous: Neo went from clueless shmoe to uber-mage in one scene.
And I'm not even going to get started on the absurdity of the basic premise that the machines were using humans as a power source.
All of the fantasy stuff I have read is usually based on the concept of having magic from birth. Usually you can't learn a damn thing as an average person and all the power is usually concentrated with a few people who are then secretive with their knowledge.
Who exactly is Neo and why does he wish to gain power? Is he getting picked on? Is he just bored? Family die?
I think machines would consider humans as a liability rather than a blessing. You have to feed a human and keep neural activity alive and such. You end up loosing power and work to keep that human alive. Plus you can use "dangerous" levels of say radiation or other things to get it to work efficiently.
Maybe I just expect too much from Hollywood. I guess there is a reason I don't see many movies. Sigh...
I don't see many movies because I am poor but that's another matter entirely.
NB: The references to the Metaphysic of Magic, etc are from Mage: The Ascension. The MofM, in a nutshell, is the principle that reality is a fluid thing that is created by our common perception of reality. (Yes it's circular. Don't ask
me.) Understanding this key fact allows a person to manipulate reality, in a limited fashion, by imposing their version of what should be on the consensual reality. This is what makes someone a mage.
Ahh but the problem with the concept of altering reality or doing things like say on a large scale like creating a storm is rather impossible. Telekenesis would be I would think the best your could hope for considering how much raw energy it takes to do anything. Also you mind has to create this energy and it has to come from somewhere and it also has to be directed and focuses in a highly rigorous manner. Plus the fact that magic is not a reality.
The Matrix was the best movie of the 1999. Who agrees with me on that one? I have seen it like 15 times on the big screen, have CD version of it (MIRC :) and I still watch it time to time.
Actually I haven't seen it yet. What would be the good selling points of the movie? Will it be (or is it currently on) VHS? What makes it so good? special effects, good acting, good plot?
Bioware has planned a Linux port of Neverwinter Nights right from day 1. NWN being primarily a client/server multiplayer game (and apparently a really interesting one too) I think it wasn't really an option not to support Linux.
:(
Why you ask? Because the platform statistics for FPS servers is currently something along the lines of 70% Linux, 30% Windows, the difference being even bigger in Europe (Can't remember an exact reference, but check the
Bluesnews archives). All the big known dedicated servers run on Linux. As an example, the server availability for Half-Life was abysmal until Sierra finally got the server port out, and now it's the most popular game online (mainly
because of the Counterstrike mod).
Where are these stats comming from? Where do these people get the time? Can this game be played by yourself without a network connection?
I get really scared of what the future of games might be like. Not everyone has a net connection at their home, and not everyone wants to have to play games with others. I made a feeble attempt to play things like starcraft multiplayer and got massacred each and every time
I would like the use of network play to be an option not the basis for the entire game. Multiplayer games introduce an ammount of shall we say unfair competition. When I play a game I expect to have a fun time and enjoy an experience that I can feel good about. Not like I was just humiliated by some 10 year old kid.
Then linux might be able to achieve some gaming capabilities on par with that of a circa-1996 windows box. If you want to serve web pages, run linux. If you want to play more than 2% of new pc games, run windows. Dual booters
are just greedy.
Explain exactly how a person is greedy in wanting to get something to work that they paid for?
um, shouldn't be linux kept for sysadmin/networking issues? i mean, it is BUILT for them, right? doh...i just play games, and i am quite as happy doing it on a windoze maShine. my linux can (box, whatever) is for networking
only because it takes shitloads of time to set it up efficiently. do you agree?
Networking is boring and theoretically not terribly useful without applications to back it up. Who cares if you can transmit and receive data without being able to do anything useful to that data in the first place. This is why other things are important. Games have infultriated your "pure" OS already. Look at any mud and see what OS they are running most likely some unix dirivitave (ie. linux).
I for one would like some games on my machine because the computer that I have linux on is my one and only machine.
Ok, Hemos will be good...but will Rob ? Seriously, if there's a commitment for a timely porting of BG2 to Linux (and henceforth other games), Windows may be looking at a up and coming reformat at home. I currently have Debian
and Win/98 (yes, I admit..I'm weak and like to play games sometimes). I seldom boot into Win98 (twice a month or so...and always to play like BG). This is VERY GOOD news to me....thanks for the person who submitted the
article!
What precisely makes this game so good? I assume that Baulder's Gate II is already out for other platforms right? What is this about?
One of the major reasons for there being a distinct lack of linux viruses is that by and large, it will most likely only be executed by a local user as themselves, therefore spreading to system binaries is nigh-on
impossible.
Wish I could do that. I am truely running out of disk space and have to routinely have to use the 10% space margin that is on the filesystem and is "reserved" for root just to get things done.
The only virus I ever heard of infecting a *nix system is an incompetent sysadmin...we all know there's enough of them
I know for a fact that you are wrong in that regard. At least a year or 2 ago I heard that something called the bliss virus infected several linux systems. Apparently it did some form of infection mechanism on non protected binaries. You could also (with a command line option) disinfect the files that were infected. The author said that he/she would release the source at some future date but I never saw it. In general most people who run linux are not the type that just run some random binaries.
You know this is almost really funny. People have always said that native code is much faster and that there are certain advantages to it. Why would everyone start using Tcl, perl, and Java all of a sudden? All the things that I do with so called "platform independent" languages makes the thing dog slow. Case in point gimp. I can tell a big difference between native executables and perl on my system. When I do something perl related that is even built in for the gimp takes rougly 2-3 minutes of hd grinding. Also things like dpkg which also relies heavily on perl takes up a lot of time as well. Tcl is in the same boat. Java is not exactly something that I use on a regular basis nor are there many apps for linux that actually have java as their main code included in almost any distribution at all. All java stuff I have seen runs dog slow and this is stuff that is supposed to be highly optimized.
I think that C++ is closest to what you could consider to be "crows platform" than almost anything: there is a ANSI standard, and a compiler for almost any system. I routinely write and run programs between win32 and linux all the time and never see a problem. Plus my code is much faster.
The unix philosophy has allowed me to do things that no one has ever really been able to do in NT without breaking out Viual C++. I mean seriously; things like sed, awk, grep, emacs and other things are god sends for being able to do almost anything you want.
Linux has been able to allow me to use shitty hardware that NT just plain wouldn't run on (well ok the new versions of NT I had a CD of NT 3.1 and it worked on my machine but I took it off 2 hours later). A GUI interface is nice but it dosn't make up for the lack of efficiency and power that make NT evil.
Actually it's more correct to say that uid 0 = power. /etc/passwd and rename the uid 0 account to god or whatever and get equivelent actions.
You can easily change a single field location in