Plus there is one little problem with this. You can't burn down a house just by getting the stove on. Let's just say I leave my house and don't happen to have anything on the stove. Now most stoves that I have seen are based on the concept of an automatic pilot or atomatic spark. You have a piece of material that conducts static electricity and emits a spark to light natural gas and create flame. Now from what I have seen there are also preset physical limits on how much gas can be released at any given time. The only case where this can really do anything is if I have a manual stove (like me). You have to turn the gas on manually and then get a stick match and light said stove. If an arsonist wanted to burn down your house or even blow it to kingdom come all they have to do is get a device that just does a delay timer or remote operation spark and let the gas run, get in their car and be driving down the road when they hit the switch. Note the above dosn't apply if you have an electric or use microwaves.
France is not especially a large bastion of freedom in the first place. I also seriously doubt that the US takes it's cues from France in any way. Although in theory 1984 is possible it is not realistically attainable in any way. Eventually people revolt and do something rash, the government looses money, people don't care anymore and the system collapses, etc. I would also make the bold statement that myself and each ad every person that is currently alive in this world will be dead and nothing but dust before 1984 can occur even on the most optimistic timetables. Plus there is the issue that perhaps no one realizes. France is a democratic country not a communist one controlled by a dictator. France is also on our side (the US). Last I checked no one is getting randomly slaughtered in France for what they say, nor are there any really large quantities of political prisoneers that could have been possibly jailed. Also realize that 1984 concerned itself with a location of theworld which did not include France in the least so there is a minor problem. What I see a bigger problem is that the creation of content is becomming much more of an intensive process and costs more and more. I think people don't have any idea how much it takes to create your own content providing system. Now maybe on slashdot people pull 6-7 digit salaries but I do not and I would also wager that most of the people in France don't either. Now we are not simply content to have standard HTML and graphics dynamic content and various levels of java, javascript, and other things are also required and other server side mechanisms that almost no one can really have without a supreme sacrifice. What I see as happening is that the average Joe is going to get screwed not by the government but by inequal distribution of the ability to speak and convey information. Sure I can be as smart as einstein but if I have a page a geoshitties and you have something like http://www.jimmycoolslashdotter.com with all sorts of dynamic content and maybe say 100Gb of page space that you can fill with almost anything you like and make it look good what does that do? When will it be possible to connect an arbitrary PC to the net and give such preformance?
For people like me various "free" services have been almost 100% necessary. In truth the net was a very cost prohibitive area until these things started apearing. Most people can't afford to quit their jobs and go at something they formely did as a hobby full time with ramifications. Plus it's quite hard to justify the use and implimentation of something that costs quite a bit. I have no idea about France or how their people view things of this nature but I think that it significantly raises the bar on the ability to publish almost any content on the net at all almost in any form. Anonymity is a side issue from the get go. Also now that you have something concrete to loose (namely yourt over priced access to network computing resources) there is incentive to be "good". Basically what this does is force anyone critizing the government to make their views much, much more painful. Admins are just being pressured into becomming much more greedy and natzi like with things. In all practicality there is little reason not to allow free homepages. However this is one thing that does indeed worry me. Apparently many people who do software development seem to think that they must force each and every application to have some component to send data back and forth across some network interface. Also almost all of the applications on freshmeat are geared for people creating networks with machines that they have complete control over. This is very bad indeed. When you look at how much such services cost initially and how much they are not decreasing as a whole there is a really bad problem.
The killing in the 20th century has been without parallel.
That's the killing we reccorded. I think that violence per se was a lot higher in the past. That's why people started to band together in times past and that's why nation states were created.
First Bismarck's effort to remake the world, then Hitler's efforts for the higher man. Stalin "knew" the world would be wonderful without the Kulaks (Jews, for those of you with a government degree) and didn't stop until he killed 40 million. Mao purified China, adding another 80 million to the toll. Not to mention Pol Pot and dozens of other reformers.
It was my understanding that the USSR in fact banned most religions because of Marx's comment that religion was an opiate of the masses. I may be incorrect. Considering that Stalin was really a deranged xenophobe I doubt he would have wanted a powerful clergy.
And not a single one was religious. All of them blamed religion for killing, and thought if they could just eliminate the religious, the killing would stop.
People kill for a lot of reasons. Revenge killing gets old after a while however if you can justify the killing for god it goes a lot further. See usually god dosn't speak much (he's kind of a loner) and so the killing can happen because of some rather unsubstiantiated rumor of the past that said that god wanted such and such done.
I remember watching a documentary about the affairs of the inhabitants of the Kosovo region. Largely their entire culture is based on violence and doing the work of Alah. Now don't get me wrong about Islam. The initial statements of Islam, Judiasm, and Christianity are all pretty peaceful coexistience type things but these people come across as rather bloodthirsty and ruthless.
The killing didn't stop because usually you don't want to submit to some uber-authorty figure and most of the time people don't like having their most intimate beliefs made crimes.
Yeah, it's a good thing that people who have faith based convictions and beliefs would never stoop so low to issue a blanket attack against all "open-minded" people!
Essentially it's an attack on what people perceive as individuals who would erode the house of cards that they have build for thousands of years. Also consider this. Wonder why hundreds of years ago people were so pissed off with Martin Luther for religious matters? It wasn't because of religious conviction (well not totally) but because a great deal of wealthy princes were skipping out on dues for the Catholic church.
Don't forget that without religious groundwork, a lot of what we take for granted today would be without basis.
I think you are being rather far reaching with a statement like that.
You have to look at what people have been able to think about. People like Voltaire wrote various works that were able to coutner the concept of letting everyting that was ever done be attributed to an unseen source and for said source to be accepted.
Later the concept of free will and other things have essentially countered the religious stance in many ways. Most of our current system is based on these philosophies not on current religious memes.
The principles of most modern humanities can find allegiance to a lot of the fundamental principles of most of the modern religion bodies that have dominated the world for the past few thousand years. Without these fundamental principles, we may not have come so far.
Yes and no. Essentially people developed religions and other systems because they were unable to use logic to solve any of their current set of problems (why did my wife die so suddently, my corps are doing poorly this year, etc). When people couldn't figure things out they developed a method of giving their problems a face. Bam religion was born.
Definitely, you must account for the destructive elements in religious movements over the years, but you cannot honestly do this without also asessing the positives.
Logically because for something to be defined as "good" something also has to correspondingly has to be "wrong" or "evil"
And I believe that this is one of the foundations for Dyson having been awarded this prize - that he was willing and able intellectually and morally to look at the issue of religion in modern life and present an honest view that brings value to those that read it.
How does allowing for more primal and base interpretations of various events we cannot currently explain give your life any value? That's about like talking about the tooth fairy, the boogyman, or saying that teddy will protect you. This really does nothing but give you warm fizzies.
Too often, various world religions are lambasted for the harm they have caused (holy wars, etc), unfairly and with shadowed intent...
And what exactly is "shadowed intent". It almost seems like someone is looking for the Anti-Christ:)
Both positive and negative. Religion has sparked some of the longest, bloodiest wars in the history of mankind. Probably killed just as many people as it's ever helped. Like the man said though, the problem is the people who are too arrogant to admit that they could be wrong. Why do those people always end up in charge?:)
Religion's impact is only good if you believe it and have reason to think it will change things for the better. One could put an argument that all of religion's effects and in fact anything that changes the actual implimentation of reality from what it really is based on laws of physics and such.
For example reading fiction can be considered detrimential because it distorts our ability to think and model reality.
I think the sweeping statement that religion being more important than science is rather stupid and shortsighted. I would much rather have science to give my penicilin when I have an infection than making some sacrifice, praying in front of a stone tower, or doing various strange chants/rights.
How many don't realize that their own beliefs are based on a sort of faith, that is, a faith in scientific results that they haven't personally witnessed or belief in events too far back in time to personally witness. To me, all of us have some degree of faith. Those who deny it haven't fully looked at their own faith.
Everything has a proof of some sort. Each and every discovery if you are verbose enough is can become extremely well documented. Take for example a discovery of various extrasolar planetoids. Various laws of gravitation that can be mathmetically proven influence these happenings. The math involved can also be proven right down the the smallest things. There are given things however these are not "faith".
I think that people have to think a bit. Considering that smalltalk is not as extensively used as C++ or java and that the Amiga is also not extensively used by the average person is reason enough to rework the idea for newer hardware/software combinations. What I have yet to actually see is any of this affect a real desktop computer that I can buy. A transmeta processor would be a nice touch but tell me why waste something like that on afn embedded or handheld device which almost by definition has severe limitations?
They all the distributions on the machine though. I have a feeling that Slackware and possibly Debian are going to give an install that will run reasonably well on a 486.
Slackare and debian do run on a 486 because I have used both. Also you can also fit slackware with standard things like gcc and g++ and other necessary thing on less than 80Mb because I ran slackware on a configuration and actually used less than than because I had a swap partition as well of about 10MB.
Yeah, basically, especially if the machine doesn't have a CDROM. You can put enough of slackware on sloppies to be useful. Then again, Debian Base also fits on sloppies. RHAT gave up on sloppies at least a decade ago.
Actually up to a while ago you could get the entire thing on floppies however that changed when 3.5 came out.
Generally for a machine like that (I have one but I have a 486 with a cd rom that will not work under linux so I usually copy the files to a spare portion of the hd and then reboot a few times to get into linux) debian would I think be a little better in terms of getting packages installed. The entire base is avaible on floppies. Most of the packages that are really good for development and programming gcc and g++ and others are also able to fit on floppies.
The killer app is already here -- it's called jMax by -- IRCAM. I wouldn't worry yourselves on trying to replicate Cubase VST or Logic in an Open Source model-- those systems have been in development longer than Linux has, and you're not going to get very far without copying every single bit of functionality. And who needs more cloneware?
I'm sorry I don't speak a word of French what exactly makes this so good? Babelfish output is not very legible.
The market is not a very stable one. My Father purchased a copy of Encore from Passport. It was a fairly well know notation software program and the company well belly-up. It would be great to get some to port existing code such as encore, fix the bugs and open the source...
Check on freshmeat in the last few days/weeks. I was almost positive I found a package that did musical notation that you are describing there.
I just found Mup at: http://www.freshmeat.net/appindex/1998/07/01/899 283854.html
MuX2d is in the works: http://www.freshmeat.net/appindex/2000/01/04/946 988873.html
As well as the very interesting Rosegarden: http://www.freshmeat.net/appindex/1998/05/06/894 447917.html
So by holding a Christian viewpoint I deserve to get the shit kicked out of me? Wow, wouldn't that mean my beliefs aren't being respected? But you don't seem to care about the spiritual and moral well-being of people, just pushing your anti-Christian propaganda.
No it dosn't. However if I start making racial slurs against blacks in Harlem I am bound to have problems. If you vehemently attack a position without evidence and make any dissenting view criminal then I have done wrong. If you were to say: "I am a Christian" that is fine. However the wrong approach; one that I and many slashdotters think you have made is something like this:
"I am a Christian and I believe... Because of this and the fact that you don't believe that way as part of your religion or personal beliefs about life you are sinners and therefore going to hell/inferior than I"
Wheather the statement is actually stated or implied it dosn't matter.
I do not have anything against the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth however I have question about how his subsequent followers have changed many aspects of his ideas. Plus the fact that he and I didn't speak the same language dosn't help any.
And as for most Americans not going to church - that is why America is no longer such a decent place to live. The moral decline that has occured since the 1960s has directly led to the increase in drug use, prostitution, homelessness and violence which we see in the news everyday now. What this country needs is a return to Christian ideals before it is too late.
Hmm. That's a pickle. In some instinces we could say that the 60's was a rebellion against what people saw that sharply deviated from what was really the case Vietnam, political corruption, environmental damage. I don't agree with everything that they said but I don't discount anything out of hand without research.
Drug use I think has actually gone down in the time period that you mentioned. Indeed it increased in the 60's but at about the late 70's drug use decreased. If you look at the efforts of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan we see that drug use went down. This was not a result of religious doctorine but political pressure.
Prostitution and homelessness and violence are functions usually of ecconomic solvency and not issues that can be solved with religion. The only thing you actually change with religions to all three is that they act differently with their avaible situation. The warm and cozy feeling that I get from religion will not get me a house or get me money so that I can stop prostituting myself to feed my children. It just has the potential to make people feel good if they like that sort of thing.
I don't think that ecconomic robber barons essentially creating ecconomic inequality is something that is covered by Christian theory. Napster/Gnutella does not solely transmit data that is specifically anti-christian. If you actually search with Napster you can find Handel's Messiah and other forms of classical and or religious music the same with Gnutella. To be honest I don't think that Gnutella has been out long enough to actually do anything in the way of replacing the traditional methods of hypertext document exchange that http has.
Protocols as I have pointed out have been around for years on the windows side that have/had allowed for exchange of data. This might be a revelent idea at the start of these apps but now it's really not much of an issue.
Here's another thing. Look at places like China over 1,000,000,000 people and hardly any Chrisitans and I don't see their country going to pot. In fact it's doing pretty damn well. Care to explain that one away?
I am not claiming to be "holier than thou". Like all beings under Heaven I am imperfect, but unlike many here I strive to acheive God's aims and thus enter Heaven upon my death. As such I work actively with various Christian bodies to improve the sadly-lacking morals of our country, in the hope that America will once again become the shining beacon of decency that it once was.
When was that exactly? Seems like ever since the beginning of time people have searched for utopia and have never found it. I have studied the history of the USA in great detail and never have found one instince where there was any form of "shining beacon of decency" in the entire thing. Each culture at every time in their history has rotten people and all usually have some form of zealotry.
What exactly is your aim here? Do you really have proof of what god wants? No I don't mean watching episodes of Touched By and Angel or anything on the PAX network. Do you have direct reveleation from god that in fact what you are doing each and every day is in line with what he wants? Well one would usually have to rely upon their religious text to determine that. However the Christian bible is usually massively interpreted unless you happen to be knowledgable with both ancient Hebrew and Greek you are basing you ideas usually on the King James version of the bible. And even if you do know these things scholars debate these issues endlessly. And even they have not found an applicable answer to what Christ really meant. The best we can do is to treat people with respect and not condemn and deliberately burn those at the state that disagree with us.
For a truely enlightening look at how people can turn christianity into their own crusade and twist it to their cause please look at Fyodor Dostoyeveski's book the Brothers Karamazov in the book is something entitled "The Grand Inquisitor" told by Ivan in the book. Essentially it shows how the religious temperment of the Inquisition was totally rejecting Jesus of Nazereth and his teachings. Also references to ideas and concepts taht the Nazti's used the in WWII to justify their motives.
Well that's interesting considering that this post is currently moderated with an "interesting" flag but oh well.
Despite everything people here on Slashdot know about the real world they still insist that applications like these are a good thing despite the deeply criminal purpose which they are intended for. I mean in theory you can say "Oh Napster's just for sharing MP3s that you own the rights to" but let's face it, the sole true purpose of Napster is to trade illegal MP3s. Knowing just how popular illegal MP3s are, the creators of Napster devised a program which would allow, even promote, the rape of the music industry and the artists they represent. Every time you use Napster you are taking money away from people that have put their time and effort into creating a piece of art which enriches the world.
Well I knew absolutely nothing about this concept a few months ago and I might have agreed with you then. However I took the time to look at slashdot and think about things.
People who actually make the music are in fact not getting a decent cut of the profits. The people who are loosing the money are not the people who are the starving musicians and their cats. They are people like good ol' Jack Vallenti who are rolling in dough.
Now I don't pretent to make a case for stealing from the rich however if you say have ever borrowed a Windows CD when your computer crashed you have fleeced Bill Gates and should therefore classify your actions in the league of the "evil mp3 pirates".
And now we have Gnutella, which incidentally sounds like that horrible chocolate spread which only the French could enjoy, a program which does the same thing as Napster, but which is designed to be impossible to shut down. And people wonder why companies like Time-Warner are concerned about this and want it shut down before it can be used to deprive artists of any more revenue? If you look at it from a corporaion's point of view this program is a direct threat to their economic well-being, and hence a direct threat to the lives of employees working for them. Given enough people using this sort of piracy tool you will see people losing their jobs and being thrown out onto the streets.
Well as for your comment about Nutella I would think that it's rather good (I am an American) and a lot of other people like it as well (a lot of Germans). Good start mass flamming lots of people there.
Ahh but it dosn't do just the same thing it actually adds a superset onto the Napster's distribution method. As I recall you can also set up Napster onto another port if you wish. I think you are trying to say that this hurts the ability of syadmins and others to actually en mass block napster type clients. I would not feel any sympathy.
Time-Warner and companies like it are concerned about it because people won't go through them or a subsidary of them to get a product that could in the end make trillions more for them if the distribution mechanism was opened.
That's rich. Just because a multi billion dollar company might loose some money dosn't mean that is a "direct threat to the lives of employees". Does Napster/Gnutella actually cause a sound and light combination that interfers with the CNS and cause hypnotic suggestions of suicide? I thought not. Your correlary between Napster/Gnutella usage and lost jobs and direct loss of useful revenue? Name me one person who has actually documented evidence that he/she was terminated because their company lost money because of direct application of Napster/Gnutella.
And let's not forget that Gnutella allows all kinds of information to be spread across the Internet. Not only illegal MP3s, but other illegal and immoral content - pornography, terrorist manifestos, race-hate propaganda and anti-Christian bigotry. How are we supposed to eradicate these blights when they are available over a distributed network of servers which is practically impossible to shut down?
Wow interesting let's look at this carefully. 1. Pornography--Largely depends on your definition of porn, age, and locality. I think that in some parts of the world people have to wory about other things than porn on the internet. Maybe like getting food to live, shelter, and protection against winding up in a mass grave somewhere.
2. Terrorist Manifestos--Ok you got me there. If you mean dissident political opinion then you are way, way, off your rocker. Generally I can read almost anything I want. I actually have read parts of Ted Kazanski's (Unabomber) manifesto and found that he makes some interesting points. His application of said points was rather bad however not all his ideas are bad. Personally I haven't seen too many groups that are actually classified as "terrorists" by the UN Security Council or the USA or almst any other group that has gained "terrorist" status.
Again please show me exactly how this is harmful and where I could easily get such information with the current Napster/Gnutella setup. Remember the web dosn't count.
3. Race-hate propaganda
Nice one. Unfortunately many so called "Christian" religions have done bruthis and nasty things before to the unbelievers: The Inquisition, English Civil War, Holocaust, The Crusades. There are examples from other religions but much less extreme and widespread.
As far as race goes again prove to me that Napster/Gnutella actually servers up content and show working examples of this to be the case.
4. Anti-christian bigotry By bigotry do you mean criticism? I think you may. Most non Christians/non church goers don't want to spend Sunday or any of their time going to church when they don't want to. I have elected not to go to church and don't feel like this is a bad choice. Actually I think it was the bigotry of my church of choice that prompted my to enjoy relaxing in my favorite chair when Sunday rolls around. Plus I need to study Calculus anyway so it's a win/win.
I urge/. to consider this before automatically crying out about how corporations are oppressing your rights. Gnutella could have the potential for unmatched harm, and AOL are perfectly right to prevent it from reaching the Internet.
I have considered this in length and could (at your request) type this up in a more formal way give it line numbers and post it on the web to allow you or anyone who wants to look at it to view it. This is what I feel it the best response to the problem.
Corporations are oppressive because of power mad people at the top. Most people if really questioned would not want or care to be involved in such activities but need that money to help out their family. I would compare this situation to a group of grog smelling pirates or maybe the "terrorists" in your post above who have taken over a company. Except that the people have to come and go each and every day back to the terrorists and if they leave they are punished or if they speak their mind they will be shot.
Gnutella has not been proven to be of "unmatched harm" like other things that I can name.
And while you say that AOL has prevented it from reaching the internet they in actuality have not done any such thing. To prevent someting is to initiate some action whereby the attached action is eliminated from a logical progression of fact, or sequence. However it was posted to the net and then AOL removed it. Some people already got ahold of the client. Therefore we can assume what: yes that AOL did indeed not prevent it's introduction to the net but prevented contineued access to it. Please think about the wording of your statement.
Okay, so if my viewpoint disagrees with yours, then I'm either "trolling" or a sixteen year-old kid, is that it? People are allowed to have different opinions from those of the/. sheep herd, even if you don't like them. People like you who just accept the party line make me sick. It's the reason/. has become a place for yea-sayers and karma whores rather than the place where intelligent people discussed issues in a civilised manner.
Long ago from a legal perspective people deemed certain speech as being inflamatory. For example going up to you flipping the bird and yelling "Fuck You!" in your face is not considered protected speech in the slightest. Nor is for example yelling "FIRE!!" in a crowded theater.
Now what you are saying is not illegal or prohibited but is in fact something that is not very popular. When making arguments you have to consider very carefully what kind of audience you are looking at.
Consider the Lincoln/Douglas debates. Lincoln was against the expansion of slavery into new territory and douglas was pretty much for it. Now Lincoln didn't want to afford to alienate people or cause a riot so instead of advocating any action he maneuvered Douglas into espousing a method where by people in these disputed territories could decide for themselves.
Whenever you debate please consider both sides of the coin alright.
Consider for a minute the following items and name how they cannot be used to do something "illegal"
1. garbage bag--suffocation, carrying "drugs", mp3 cds 2. butter knife--stabbing 3. car--vehicular homicide 4. water--drowning 5. computers--industrial espionage 6. religion--hate crimes ... and the list goes on
Because on the Internet you have the ability to shut these sites down by contacting their ISP or whatever, and if you don't like them, then don't go and look at them. Using Gnutella these kinds of materials will be stored across an ever-changing distributed network and will be almost impossible to trace or eradicate.
Your just dead wrong. Just go look at any tucows mirror and look under your favorite OS of choice. Then next look at the groupings called server tools. You will find that you can run the equivelent of a Napster/Gnutella server and have been able to do so for some time. You can also set up news servers, irc servers, etc.
Oh and by the way if you have a linux box by default you get everything and so therefore become a default server of at least 5+ different protocols unless you turn it off.
And as soon as your kid starts the program up, what's the first thing he sees? A huge list of pornography, bomb-making instruction manuals and virulent anti-Christian diatribes. Do you want your child exposed to this kind of filth? If you are a patriotic American then it is your moral duty to oppose these things and anything which contributes to their spread thorugh society. Children need to be protected so that they can grow up to be good, decent, Christian people.
Yeah until they figure out what the real world is like. See spuing extremely pro-Christian propaganda around strangers is a good way to get the shit beaten out of you for not respecting others beliefs. The vast majority of people in the US don't even go to church. Did you know that? Hell football games like the superbowl and other sporting events occur on Sundays on a regular basis. Do you really think that Joe Sixpack is going to miss his precious ESPN? Nope.
I could go for a couple gigabytes of avi movies showing Billy taking it up the ass from the Federal Gov't.
Seems like almost any file could be publically traded not specifically mp3s. For example source code, recipes, or perhaps fan fiction. You are really being short sighted.
1)Why not define say a max size of 999TB or something. 2)but why the arbitrary limitations? Anyone else find this amusing?:)
It's as big a number that dosn't exceede what I know of and it's safe to say that it will not get bigger than that. I also am not sure what the suffix for anything bigger would be Petabytes? PB?
I guess maybe 9,999,999,999,999,999PB would be better.
Note 1: this drive despite the antishock stuff uses a glass plate so dragging it around is very unwise.
Why would anyone put glass in something that is supposed to be resistant to damage? Will this ever change? I will never buy something like this with the potential to store massive ammounts of my previous data when the next passing small earthquake, large truck, or thunder storm could destory it.
Note 2: most bioses will choke on such a beast for quite a while anyway. So unless you have a hardware IDE raid with recent firmware it does not worth using in selfassembled stuff at least for now.
They are still doing that little dance again? I thought I had it bad with my 486 that won't accept any of the new hd's. What logical reason do bios chips have for limiting drive size? Why not define say a max size of 999TB or something. Maybe I am an idiot but why the arbitrary limitations?
Quite a lot of rights, actually. As a student at a university, I have had to sign away my rights to any software I might develop, whether using my own equipment at home, or the computers in uni. This means that if I were to write (say) a napster clone, and start distributing it without using any of their resources, they would still be within their rights to tell me to withdraw it. (Incidentally, this particular uni doesn't block Napster, butit could...). I'm guessing that it would be rather silly for AOL not to impose the same restrictions on its employees- what if they developed a new MP3 player that was better than WinAmp? AOL's market in that particular sector could take quite a tumble.
My first little question wasn't the first basic interpreter created by Bill G. himself created on university machines?
I really don't know of any clause where I went to school and I never had to sign anything. Incidentally how could they prove you did anything at all? For example suppose I just had the source around from before I signed the release and then "released" it. Exactly how can a group of people force what you do on your own time? I really can't see how that is ethical or even legal.
In short, it's probably perfectly legal, even if it is wrong.
What I do on my own time with my own resources shouldn't be wrong at all. Suppose I wanted to create a new litttle game called "Barney's Dungeon" where barney and the character of choice engage in "BDSM and varoious anal activities with hilarious results". I can do whatever I want because it was my time. Now that dosn't mean that I will sell any copies but it is something I can do because I did it independently of what I did originally.
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Plus there is one little problem with this. You can't burn down a house just by getting the stove on. Let's just say I leave my house and don't happen to have anything on the stove. Now most stoves that I have seen are based on the concept of an automatic pilot or atomatic spark. You have a piece of material that conducts static electricity and emits a spark to light natural gas and create flame. Now from what I have seen there are also preset physical limits on how much gas can be released at any given time. The only case where this can really do anything is if I have a manual stove (like me). You have to turn the gas on manually and then get a stick match and light said stove. If an arsonist wanted to burn down your house or even blow it to kingdom come all they have to do is get a device that just does a delay timer or remote operation spark and let the gas run, get in their car and be driving down the road when they hit the switch.
Note the above dosn't apply if you have an electric or use microwaves.
France is not especially a large bastion of freedom in the first place. I also seriously doubt that the US takes it's cues from France in any way. Although in theory 1984 is possible it is not realistically attainable in any way. Eventually people revolt and do something rash, the government looses money, people don't care anymore and the system collapses, etc. I would also make the bold statement that myself and each ad every person that is currently alive in this world will be dead and nothing but dust before 1984 can occur even on the most optimistic timetables.
Plus there is the issue that perhaps no one realizes. France is a democratic country not a communist one controlled by a dictator. France is also on our side (the US). Last I checked no one is getting randomly slaughtered in France for what they say, nor are there any really large quantities of political prisoneers that could have been possibly jailed. Also realize that 1984 concerned itself with a location of theworld which did not include France in the least so there is a minor problem.
What I see a bigger problem is that the creation of content is becomming much more of an intensive process and costs more and more. I think people don't have any idea how much it takes to create your own content providing system. Now maybe on slashdot people pull 6-7 digit salaries but I do not and I would also wager that most of the people in France don't either. Now we are not simply content to have standard HTML and graphics dynamic content and various levels of java, javascript, and other things are also required and other server side mechanisms that almost no one can really have without a supreme sacrifice. What I see as happening is that the average Joe is going to get screwed not by the government but by inequal distribution of the ability to speak and convey information. Sure I can be as smart as einstein but if I have a page a geoshitties and you have something like http://www.jimmycoolslashdotter.com with all sorts of dynamic content and maybe say 100Gb of page space that you can fill with almost
anything you like and make it look good what does that do? When will it be possible to connect an arbitrary PC to the net and give such preformance?
For people like me various "free" services have been almost 100% necessary. In truth the net was a very cost prohibitive area until these things started apearing. Most people can't afford to quit their jobs and go at something they formely did as a hobby full time with ramifications. Plus it's quite hard to justify the use and implimentation of something that costs quite a bit.
I have no idea about France or how their people view things of this nature but I think that it significantly raises the bar on the ability to publish almost any content on the net at all almost in any form. Anonymity is a side issue from the get go. Also now that you have something concrete to loose (namely yourt over priced access to network computing resources) there is incentive to be "good".
Basically what this does is force anyone critizing the government to make their views much, much more painful. Admins are just being pressured into becomming much more greedy and natzi like with things. In all practicality there is little reason not to allow free homepages.
However this is one thing that does indeed worry me. Apparently many people who do software development seem to think that they must force each and every application to have some component to send data back and forth across some network interface. Also almost all of the applications on freshmeat are geared for people creating networks with machines that they have complete control over. This is very bad indeed.
When you look at how much such services cost initially and how much they are not decreasing as a whole there is a really bad problem.
The killing in the 20th century has been without parallel.
That's the killing we reccorded. I think that violence per se was a lot higher in the past. That's why people started to band together in times past and that's why nation states were created.
First Bismarck's effort to remake the world, then Hitler's efforts for the higher man. Stalin "knew" the world would be wonderful without the Kulaks (Jews, for those of you with a government degree) and didn't stop until he killed 40 million. Mao purified China, adding another 80 million to the toll. Not to mention Pol Pot and dozens of other reformers.
It was my understanding that the USSR in fact banned most religions because of Marx's comment that religion was an opiate of the masses. I may be incorrect. Considering that Stalin was really a deranged xenophobe I doubt he would have wanted a powerful clergy.
And not a single one was religious. All of them blamed religion for killing, and thought if they could just eliminate the religious, the killing would stop.
People kill for a lot of reasons. Revenge killing gets old after a while however if you can justify the killing for god it goes a lot further. See usually god dosn't speak much (he's kind of a loner) and so the killing can happen because of some rather unsubstiantiated rumor of the past that said that god wanted such and such done.
I remember watching a documentary about the affairs of the inhabitants of the Kosovo region. Largely their entire culture is based on violence and doing the work of Alah. Now don't get me wrong about Islam. The initial statements of Islam, Judiasm, and Christianity are all pretty peaceful coexistience type things but these people come across as rather bloodthirsty and ruthless.
The killing didn't stop because usually you don't want to submit to some uber-authorty figure and most of the time people don't like having their most intimate beliefs made crimes.
Yeah, it's a good thing that people who have faith based convictions and beliefs would never stoop so low to issue a blanket attack against all "open-minded" people!
Essentially it's an attack on what people perceive as individuals who would erode the house of cards that they have build for thousands of years. Also consider this. Wonder why hundreds of years ago people were so pissed off with Martin Luther for religious matters? It wasn't because of religious conviction (well not totally) but because a great deal of wealthy princes were skipping out on dues for the Catholic church.
Don't forget that without religious groundwork, a lot of what we take for granted today would be without basis.
:)
I think you are being rather far reaching with a statement like that.
You have to look at what people have been able to think about. People like Voltaire wrote various works that were able to coutner the concept of letting everyting that was ever done be attributed to an unseen source and for said source to be accepted.
Later the concept of free will and other things have essentially countered the religious stance in many ways. Most of our current system is based on these philosophies not on current religious memes.
The principles of most modern humanities can find allegiance to a lot of the fundamental principles of most of the modern religion bodies that have dominated the world for the past few thousand years. Without these fundamental principles, we may not have come so far.
Yes and no. Essentially people developed religions and other systems because they were unable to use logic to solve any of their current set of problems (why did my wife die so suddently, my corps are doing poorly this year, etc). When people couldn't figure things out they developed a method of giving their problems a face. Bam religion was born.
Definitely, you must account for the destructive elements in religious movements over the years, but you cannot honestly do this without also asessing the positives.
Logically because for something to be defined as "good" something also has to correspondingly has to be "wrong" or "evil"
And I believe that this is one of the foundations for Dyson having been awarded this prize - that he was willing and able intellectually and morally to look at the issue of religion in modern life and present an honest view that brings value to those that read it.
How does allowing for more primal and base interpretations of various events we cannot currently explain give your life any value? That's about like talking about the tooth fairy, the boogyman, or saying that teddy will protect you. This really does nothing but give you warm fizzies.
Too often, various world religions are lambasted for the harm they have caused (holy wars, etc), unfairly and with shadowed intent...
And what exactly is "shadowed intent". It almost seems like someone is looking for the Anti-Christ
Both positive and negative. :)
Religion has sparked some of the longest, bloodiest wars in the history of mankind. Probably killed just as many people as it's ever helped. Like the man said though, the problem is the people who are too arrogant to admit that they could be wrong. Why do those people always end up in charge?
Religion's impact is only good if you believe it and have reason to think it will change things for the better. One could put an argument that all of religion's effects and in fact anything that changes the actual implimentation of reality from what it really is based on laws of physics and such.
For example reading fiction can be considered detrimential because it distorts our ability to think and model reality.
I think the sweeping statement that religion being more important than science is rather stupid and shortsighted. I would much rather have science to give my penicilin when I have an infection than making some sacrifice, praying in front of a stone tower, or doing various strange chants/rights.
How many don't realize that their own beliefs are based on a sort of faith, that is, a faith in scientific results that they haven't personally witnessed or belief in events too far back in time to personally witness. To me, all of us have some degree of faith. Those who deny it haven't fully looked at their own faith.
Everything has a proof of some sort. Each and every discovery if you are verbose enough is can become extremely well documented. Take for example a discovery of various extrasolar planetoids. Various laws of gravitation that can be mathmetically proven influence these happenings. The math involved can also be proven right down the the smallest things. There are given things however these are not "faith".
I think that people have to think a bit. Considering that smalltalk is not as extensively used as C++ or java and that the Amiga is also not extensively used by the average person is reason enough to rework the idea for newer hardware/software combinations.
What I have yet to actually see is any of this affect a real desktop computer that I can buy. A transmeta processor would be a nice touch but tell me why waste something like that on afn embedded or handheld device which almost by definition has severe limitations?
They all the distributions on the machine though. I have a feeling that Slackware and possibly Debian are going to give an install that will run reasonably well on a 486.
Slackare and debian do run on a 486 because I have used both. Also you can also fit slackware with standard things like gcc and g++ and other necessary thing on less than 80Mb because I ran slackware on a configuration and actually used less than than because I had a swap partition as well of about 10MB.
Yeah, basically, especially if the machine doesn't have a CDROM. You can put enough of slackware on sloppies to be useful. Then again, Debian Base also fits on sloppies. RHAT gave up on sloppies at least a decade ago.
Actually up to a while ago you could get the entire thing on floppies however that changed when 3.5 came out.
Generally for a machine like that (I have one but I have a 486 with a cd rom that will not work under linux so I usually copy the files to a spare portion of the hd and then reboot a few times to get into linux) debian would I think be a little better in terms of getting packages installed. The entire base is avaible on floppies. Most of the packages that are really good for development and programming gcc and g++ and others are also able to fit on floppies.
I am quite interested in exactly what kind of applications are going to be created with this standard.
SuSE is always just soooo huge! So... how many DVDROMs is SuSE filling up this time?
Actually I think that debian is the biggest with roughly 2Gb of actual packages. That I think was with slink.
Potato may be more and unstable even more.
The killer app is already here -- it's called jMax by -- IRCAM. I wouldn't worry yourselves on trying to replicate Cubase VST or Logic in an Open Source model-- those systems have been in development longer than Linux has, and
you're not going to get very far without copying every single bit of functionality. And who needs more cloneware?
I'm sorry I don't speak a word of French what exactly makes this so good? Babelfish output is not very legible.
The market is not a very stable one. My Father purchased a copy of Encore from Passport. It was a fairly well know notation software program and the company well belly-up. It would be great to get some to port existing code such
9 283854.html
6 988873.html
4 447917.html
8 706537.html
as encore, fix the bugs and open the source...
Check on freshmeat in the last few days/weeks. I was almost positive I found a package that did musical notation that you are describing there.
I just found Mup at:
http://www.freshmeat.net/appindex/1998/07/01/89
MuX2d is in the works:
http://www.freshmeat.net/appindex/2000/01/04/94
As well as the very interesting Rosegarden:
http://www.freshmeat.net/appindex/1998/05/06/89
Brahms:
http://www.freshmeat.net/appindex/1999/09/30/93
Those should get you started.
So by holding a Christian viewpoint I deserve to get the shit kicked out of me? Wow, wouldn't that mean my beliefs aren't being respected? But you don't seem to care about the spiritual and moral well-being of people, just pushing
your anti-Christian propaganda.
No it dosn't. However if I start making racial slurs against blacks in Harlem I am bound to have problems. If you vehemently attack a position without evidence and make any dissenting view criminal then I have done wrong. If you were to say:
"I am a Christian"
that is fine. However the wrong approach; one that I and many slashdotters think you have made is something like this:
"I am a Christian and I believe...
Because of this and the fact that you don't believe that way as part of your religion or personal beliefs about life you are sinners and therefore going to hell/inferior than I"
Wheather the statement is actually stated or implied it dosn't matter.
I do not have anything against the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth however I have question about how his subsequent followers have changed many aspects of his ideas. Plus the fact that he and I didn't speak the same language dosn't help any.
And as for most Americans not going to church - that is why America is no longer such a decent place to live. The moral decline that has occured since the 1960s has directly led to the increase in drug use, prostitution, homelessness
and violence which we see in the news everyday now. What this country needs is a return to Christian ideals before it is too late.
Hmm. That's a pickle. In some instinces we could say that the 60's was a rebellion against what people saw that sharply deviated from what was really the case Vietnam, political corruption, environmental damage. I don't agree with everything that they said but I don't discount anything out of hand without research.
Drug use I think has actually gone down in the time period that you mentioned. Indeed it increased in the 60's but at about the late 70's drug use decreased. If you look at the efforts of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan we see that drug use went down. This was not a result of religious doctorine but political pressure.
Prostitution and homelessness and violence are functions usually of ecconomic solvency and not issues that can be solved with religion. The only thing you actually change with religions to all three is that they act differently with their avaible situation. The warm and cozy feeling that I get from religion will not get me a house or get me money so that I can stop prostituting myself to feed my children. It just has the potential to make people feel good if they like that sort of thing.
I don't think that ecconomic robber barons essentially creating ecconomic inequality is something that is covered by Christian theory. Napster/Gnutella does not solely transmit data that is specifically anti-christian. If you actually search with Napster you can find Handel's Messiah and other forms of classical and or religious music the same with Gnutella. To be honest I don't think that Gnutella has been out long enough to actually do anything in the way of replacing the traditional methods of hypertext document exchange that http has.
Protocols as I have pointed out have been around for years on the windows side that have/had allowed for exchange of data. This might be a revelent idea at the start of these apps but now it's really not much of an issue.
Here's another thing. Look at places like China over 1,000,000,000 people and hardly any Chrisitans and I don't see their country going to pot. In fact it's doing pretty damn well. Care to explain that one away?
I am not claiming to be "holier than thou". Like all beings under Heaven I am imperfect, but unlike many here I strive to acheive God's aims and thus enter Heaven upon my death. As such I work actively with various Christian
bodies to improve the sadly-lacking morals of our country, in the hope that America will once again become the shining beacon of decency that it once was.
When was that exactly? Seems like ever since the beginning of time people have searched for utopia and have never found it. I have studied the history of the USA in great detail and never have found one instince where there was any form of "shining beacon of decency" in the entire thing. Each culture at every time in their history has rotten people and all usually have some form of zealotry.
What exactly is your aim here? Do you really have proof of what god wants? No I don't mean watching episodes of Touched By and Angel or anything on the PAX network. Do you have direct reveleation from god that in fact what you are doing each and every day is in line with what he wants? Well one would usually have to rely upon their religious text to determine that. However the Christian bible is usually massively interpreted unless you happen to be knowledgable with both ancient Hebrew and Greek you are basing you ideas usually on the King James version of the bible. And even if you do know these things scholars debate these issues endlessly. And even they have not found an applicable answer to what Christ really meant. The best we can do is to treat people with respect and not condemn and deliberately burn those at the state that disagree with us.
For a truely enlightening look at how people can turn christianity into their own crusade and twist it to their cause please look at Fyodor Dostoyeveski's book the Brothers Karamazov in the book is something entitled "The Grand Inquisitor" told by Ivan in the book. Essentially it shows how the religious temperment of the Inquisition was totally rejecting Jesus of Nazereth and his teachings. Also references to ideas and concepts taht the Nazti's used the in WWII to justify their motives.
The best thing we can look at media in this way is just like history learn from the good, put a cast on the average and prevent the bad.
Well that's interesting considering that this post is currently moderated with an "interesting" flag but oh well.
/. to consider this before automatically crying out about how corporations are oppressing your rights. Gnutella could have the potential for unmatched harm, and AOL are perfectly right to prevent it from reaching the Internet.
Despite everything people here on Slashdot know about the real world they still insist that applications like these are a good thing despite the deeply criminal purpose which they are intended for. I mean in theory you can say "Oh
Napster's just for sharing MP3s that you own the rights to" but let's face it, the sole true purpose of Napster is to trade illegal MP3s. Knowing just how popular illegal MP3s are, the creators of Napster devised a program which would
allow, even promote, the rape of the music industry and the artists they represent. Every time you use Napster you are taking money away from people that have put their time and effort into creating a piece of art which enriches the
world.
Well I knew absolutely nothing about this concept a few months ago and I might have agreed with you then. However I took the time to look at slashdot and think about things.
People who actually make the music are in fact not getting a decent cut of the profits. The people who are loosing the money are not the people who are the starving musicians and their cats. They are people like good ol' Jack Vallenti who are rolling in dough.
Now I don't pretent to make a case for stealing from the rich however if you say have ever borrowed a Windows CD when your computer crashed you have fleeced Bill Gates and should therefore classify your actions in the league of the "evil mp3 pirates".
And now we have Gnutella, which incidentally sounds like that horrible chocolate spread which only the French could enjoy, a program which does the same thing as Napster, but which is designed to be impossible to shut down.
And people wonder why companies like Time-Warner are concerned about this and want it shut down before it can be used to deprive artists of any more revenue? If you look at it from a corporaion's point of view this program is a
direct threat to their economic well-being, and hence a direct threat to the lives of employees working for them. Given enough people using this sort of piracy tool you will see people losing their jobs and being thrown out onto the
streets.
Well as for your comment about Nutella I would think that it's rather good (I am an American) and a lot of other people like it as well (a lot of Germans). Good start mass flamming lots of people there.
Ahh but it dosn't do just the same thing it actually adds a superset onto the Napster's distribution method. As I recall you can also set up Napster onto another port if you wish. I think you are trying to say that this hurts the ability of syadmins and others to actually en mass block napster type clients. I would not feel any sympathy.
Time-Warner and companies like it are concerned about it because people won't go through them or a subsidary of them to get a product that could in the end make trillions more for them if the distribution mechanism was opened.
That's rich. Just because a multi billion dollar company might loose some money dosn't mean that is a "direct threat to the lives of employees". Does Napster/Gnutella actually cause a sound and light combination that interfers with the CNS and cause hypnotic suggestions of suicide? I thought not. Your correlary between Napster/Gnutella usage and lost jobs and direct loss of useful revenue? Name me one person who has actually documented evidence that he/she was terminated because their company lost money because of direct application of Napster/Gnutella.
And let's not forget that Gnutella allows all kinds of information to be spread across the Internet. Not only illegal MP3s, but other illegal and immoral content - pornography, terrorist manifestos, race-hate propaganda and
anti-Christian bigotry. How are we supposed to eradicate these blights when they are available over a distributed network of servers which is practically impossible to shut down?
Wow interesting let's look at this carefully.
1. Pornography--Largely depends on your definition of porn, age, and locality. I think that in some parts of the world people have to wory about other things than porn on the internet. Maybe like getting food to live, shelter, and protection against winding up in a mass grave somewhere.
2. Terrorist Manifestos--Ok you got me there. If you mean dissident political opinion then you are way, way, off your rocker. Generally I can read almost anything I want. I actually have read parts of Ted Kazanski's (Unabomber) manifesto and found that he makes some interesting points. His application of said points was rather bad however not all his ideas are bad. Personally I haven't seen too many groups that are actually classified as "terrorists" by the UN Security Council or the USA or almst any other group that has gained "terrorist" status.
Again please show me exactly how this is harmful and where I could easily get such information with the current Napster/Gnutella setup. Remember the web dosn't count.
3. Race-hate propaganda
Nice one. Unfortunately many so called "Christian" religions have done bruthis and nasty things before to the unbelievers: The Inquisition, English Civil War, Holocaust, The Crusades. There are examples from other religions but much less extreme and widespread.
As far as race goes again prove to me that Napster/Gnutella actually servers up content and show working examples of this to be the case.
4. Anti-christian bigotry
By bigotry do you mean criticism? I think you may. Most non Christians/non church goers don't want to spend Sunday or any of their time going to church when they don't want to. I have elected not to go to church and don't feel like this is a bad choice. Actually I think it was the bigotry of my church of choice that prompted my to enjoy relaxing in my favorite chair when Sunday rolls around. Plus I need to study Calculus anyway so it's a win/win.
I urge
I have considered this in length and could (at your request) type this up in a more formal way give it line numbers and post it on the web to allow you or anyone who wants to look at it to view it. This is what I feel it the best response to the problem.
Corporations are oppressive because of power mad people at the top. Most people if really questioned would not want or care to be involved in such activities but need that money to help out their family. I would compare this situation to a group of grog smelling pirates or maybe the "terrorists" in your post above who have taken over a company. Except that the people have to come and go each and every day back to the terrorists and if they leave they are punished or if they speak their mind they will be shot.
Gnutella has not been proven to be of "unmatched harm" like other things that I can name.
And while you say that AOL has prevented it from reaching the internet they in actuality have not done any such thing. To prevent someting is to initiate some action whereby the attached action is eliminated from a logical progression of fact, or sequence. However it was posted to the net and then AOL removed it. Some people already got ahold of the client. Therefore we can assume what: yes that AOL did indeed not prevent it's introduction to the net but prevented contineued access to it. Please think about the wording of your statement.
Okay, so if my viewpoint disagrees with yours, then I'm either "trolling" or a sixteen year-old kid, is that it? People are allowed to have different opinions from those of the /. sheep herd, even if you don't like them. People like you /. has become a place for yea-sayers and karma whores rather than the place where intelligent people discussed issues in a civilised manner.
who just accept the party line make me sick. It's the reason
Long ago from a legal perspective people deemed certain speech as being inflamatory. For example going up to you flipping the bird and yelling "Fuck You!" in your face is not considered protected speech in the slightest. Nor is for example yelling "FIRE!!" in a crowded theater.
Now what you are saying is not illegal or prohibited but is in fact something that is not very popular. When making arguments you have to consider very carefully what kind of audience you are looking at.
Consider the Lincoln/Douglas debates. Lincoln was against the expansion of slavery into new territory and douglas was pretty much for it. Now Lincoln didn't want to afford to alienate people or cause a riot so instead of advocating any action he maneuvered Douglas into espousing a method where by people in these disputed territories could decide for themselves.
Whenever you debate please consider both sides of the coin alright.
Consider for a minute the following items and name how they cannot be used to do something "illegal"
1. garbage bag--suffocation, carrying "drugs", mp3 cds
2. butter knife--stabbing
3. car--vehicular homicide
4. water--drowning
5. computers--industrial espionage
6. religion--hate crimes
...
and the list goes on
Because on the Internet you have the ability to shut these sites down by contacting their ISP or whatever, and if you don't like them, then don't go and look at them. Using Gnutella these kinds of materials will be stored across an
ever-changing distributed network and will be almost impossible to trace or eradicate.
Your just dead wrong. Just go look at any tucows mirror and look under your favorite OS of choice. Then next look at the groupings called server tools. You will find that you can run the equivelent of a Napster/Gnutella server and have been able to do so for some time. You can also set up news servers, irc servers, etc.
Oh and by the way if you have a linux box by default you get everything and so therefore become a default server of at least 5+ different protocols unless you turn it off.
And as soon as your kid starts the program up, what's the first thing he sees? A huge list of pornography, bomb-making instruction manuals and virulent anti-Christian diatribes. Do you want your child exposed to this kind of filth?
If you are a patriotic American then it is your moral duty to oppose these things and anything which contributes to their spread thorugh society. Children need to be protected so that they can grow up to be good, decent, Christian
people.
Yeah until they figure out what the real world is like. See spuing extremely pro-Christian propaganda around strangers is a good way to get the shit beaten out of you for not respecting others beliefs. The vast majority of people in the US don't even go to church. Did you know that? Hell football games like the superbowl and other sporting events occur on Sundays on a regular basis. Do you really think that Joe Sixpack is going to miss his precious ESPN? Nope.
I could go for a couple gigabytes of avi movies showing Billy taking it up the ass from the Federal Gov't.
Seems like almost any file could be publically traded not specifically mp3s. For example source code, recipes, or perhaps fan fiction. You are really being short sighted.
1)Why not define say a max size of 999TB or something. 2)but why the arbitrary limitations? Anyone else find this amusing? :)
It's as big a number that dosn't exceede what I know of and it's safe to say that it will not get bigger than that. I also am not sure what the suffix for anything bigger would be Petabytes? PB?
I guess maybe 9,999,999,999,999,999PB would be better.
Note 1: this drive despite the antishock stuff uses a glass plate so dragging it around is very unwise.
Why would anyone put glass in something that is supposed to be resistant to damage? Will this ever change? I will never buy something like this with the potential to store massive ammounts of my previous data when the next passing small earthquake, large truck, or thunder storm could destory it.
Note 2: most bioses will choke on such a beast for quite a while anyway. So unless you have a hardware IDE raid with recent firmware it does not worth using in selfassembled stuff at least for now.
They are still doing that little dance again? I thought I had it bad with my 486 that won't accept any of the new hd's. What logical reason do bios chips have for limiting drive size? Why not define say a max size of 999TB or something. Maybe I am an idiot but why the arbitrary limitations?
I've got a copy of it, and I've been using it regularly. It's much smaller and neater than the real napster.
How big is this? I might be able to throw up a page for you.
Quite a lot of rights, actually. As a student at a university, I have had to sign away my rights to any software I might develop, whether using my own equipment at home, or the computers in uni. This means that if I were to write
(say) a napster clone, and start distributing it without using any of their resources, they would still be within their rights to tell me to withdraw it. (Incidentally, this particular uni doesn't block Napster, butit could...). I'm guessing
that it would be rather silly for AOL not to impose the same restrictions on its employees- what if they developed a new MP3 player that was better than WinAmp? AOL's market in that particular sector could take quite a tumble.
My first little question wasn't the first basic interpreter created by Bill G. himself created on university machines?
I really don't know of any clause where I went to school and I never had to sign anything. Incidentally how could they prove you did anything at all? For example suppose I just had the source around from before I signed the release and then "released" it. Exactly how can a group of people force what you do on your own time? I really can't see how that is ethical or even legal.
In short, it's probably perfectly legal, even if it is wrong.
What I do on my own time with my own resources shouldn't be wrong at all. Suppose I wanted to create a new litttle game called "Barney's Dungeon" where barney and the character of choice engage in "BDSM and varoious anal activities with hilarious results". I can do whatever I want because it was my time. Now that dosn't mean that I will sell any copies but it is something I can do because I did it independently of what I did originally.