The point I was originally trying to make was that no stories are really original; there are always many people who have done/said/written/etc. it before.
Romeo And Juliet was based on the old greek myth of Pyraemus and Thisbe, two young lovers from opposing houses who die in a graveyard due to their loves. As for Hamlet, I don't feel like digging out Edith Hamilton/Bullfinche's mythology at the moment to look it up. As for historical basis, kids from opposing houses killing themselves over their love was not a rare occurrance in those times (Hell, it happens now.).
The Shakespearean tradgedies that were based on Historical events tended to be a bit obvious as to what they were, eq. Julius Caeser and Antony and Cleopatra.
There are no original stories. All stories, one way or another, are just retelling of all the basic myths of mankind.
For example, the Lion King was not ripped from Kimba, it was ripped from Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. Hamlet, like many of the bawdy bard's works, was just a retelling of assorted chunks of greek myths that he liked. The greek myths were old stories that had been handed down orally for centuries.
This kind of thing is basic stuff. Joseph Campbell taught it for decades (Exploration of Campbell's work inspired Star Wars, a popular Star Wars topic that is about as unoriginal as plots can be.). It was a PBS miniseries. Most high schools teach it as part of advanced freshman english classes. Any social anthropology teacher at any level will probably bring it up.
And of course, the idiots who run Slashdot, in an attempt to bring down the corporate machine, attack Disney for stealing plots for their movies, simply because they fail to realize that the plots of the Japenese animation they so often watch are no more original than they were when other people told the same stories a millenia ago.
"and I would gladly pay for their service, if they would serve me."
Forgive me for trolling, but I somehow doubt that a guy who makes his living extolling the virtues of Napster, free software, and open source would pay for Linux software/services.
Maybe if Linux users like Michael HAD been paying for the product/services offered by Zero-Knowledge, they would have been making money off of it and not discontinued it!
This is the downside to free software and open source: Do not expect commercial support. Get used to surfing old newsgroup postings or scouring IRC, because if someone is not making money from the users, he will not have money to provide support with!!!
Stuff like this is why I love PayPal. A few bucks here and there, takes about ten seconds to actually do the transaction. Very cool. Hopefully more Open Source/Free Software projects can use such a model to fund full time developers.
This article should be about Windows XP and OS X, not Win2k and OS X. OS X is a consumer operating system, designed primarily for home users, especially computing Neophytes. Windows 2000 is meant for, and marketed to, working professionals looking for a more stable, and featureful OS than NT4.
Beyond that, it would also be nice to see someone nitpick at XP as Microsoft starts pushing people to use it;)
I think my Grandma would agree that sacrificing a little book time to keep up with news about the technology that got me a job paying more than anyone else in my family at the age of twenty-two is a good thing.:)
"It's the perfect model: the users pay you *and* for the bandwidth to share the songs they already bought"
Maybe if the users stopped "sharing" the files with people who did NOT buy them, this wouldn't have been such a big deal to begin with.
"Course I still don't see the benefit for us."
Taco, you must be blind. How is being able to get music digitally, and legitimatly, without actually buying a cd is not a benefit? Not to mention that Individual artists could work with Napster to sell their own music online in such a manner, giving them an easy way to distribute their work via an incredibly popular online service for little cost, without ever getting involved with record companies to begin with?
"No doubt we'll see more of these deals as napster becomes less relevant and decentralized networks grow in popularity."
Not too likely. Given that peer-to-peer networks like GNUtella scale poorly (See the Slashdot story about that here.), Napster is likely to experience a nice rebirth of sorts. Once users realize that they can just buy a few songs they want from record company whores like Britney Spears and J-Lo, instead of getting the less catching songs used as album filler between hits, money-conscious pop fans will jump right back to Napster.
This is just another crappy Slashdot post about the big evil record companies versus Napster, hero of the people and savior of artists. The Slashdot crew posts these because even though they hate the record companies (Rightly so, the record companies and their affects on music are disgusting.), they are too lazy to make a concerted effort to help artists survive independantly. Anyone with a brain knows that Napster is just as sleazy as Sony or BMG, and cares even less about the artists. At least the record companies front musicians money to work with. Napster just wants to leech off of the artists and record companies, growing fat on the blood of artists, as well as the pus and bile that fills the veins of record execs.
If Slashdot really wants to fight the record companies, perhaps they should bring up Prince's successful online music club, or review the work of independent artist Ani DiFranco, both working outside the world of record companies.
Stories like this are the product of laziness. If anything is to become less relevant on the net, it will be Slashdot, as a result of this crap, not Napster.
"As Bruce Schneier says 'Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. The sooner people accept this, and build business models that take this into account, the sooner people will start making money again.'" "
I think that pretty much beats out any comment a slashdotter will ever come up with. Bruce is the man...
How many glove interfaces have there been over the years? At least a dozen. Aside from the Nintendo Power Glove, does anyone really remember them? Were they really all that useful? Honestly, unless such a device had some sort of tactile-feedback, it would still be pretty pointless.
What we really need is to skip this silly stuff and find a way to plug a computer RIGHT INTO MY BRAIN! Imagine just plugging a wire into the back of your head, and having all nervous input and output to the hands redirected toward a computer, which would send back the appropriate sensations! That would impress me. Yet another glove that does little more than the one I used to play Ridge Racer when I was eight is nothing special.
AOL 6.0 bundled into Windows XP... sigh. As if all the shit crammed into Windows 2000 wasn't enough. I hope they at least only put it into the consumer version and not the server releases as well.
"If AOL isn't going to switch to a new Netscape or Mozilla browser to base their client upon, what happens to Netscape?"
Netscape will continue to be annoying, bloated, unstable, crappy, etc. AOL will keep supporting it at the behest of Microsoft, which wants to look competitive. Eventually AOL will let Netscape proper fade away as Mozilla and its derivatives continue to get better and more popular.
"John G. Rowland said Thursday that he will veto a bill barring children under 18 from playing 'point-and-shoot' video games in public places."
Imagine what would happen if they passed a bill prohibitng kids from shooting real guns at human shaped targets at a public firing range. I cna guarantee you that it would go nowhere...
"I have made it a condition that those I am interested in not play computer games or use pornography."
Women like you drive men like me to homosexuality. I would SO much rather spend all of my time with my hard drinking, game playing, violent guy buddies, and fuck them as well, than to date a waste of flesh like yourself. And unfortunately, far too many women's views are just like yours.
Ok, I can understand the rest, but tracking lunch purchases? Is it just me, or is it a little odd that the school keeps track of what individual students eat to begin with? Is such information being tracked without the consent of students and parents who do not use the system?
And what else does the school system do with the information?
"it's intuitive, and well-designed aesthetically."
Intuitive? Not really. In Windows 2000 professional, to change network properties, I just click control panel, then network, and select a connection to edit. To alter properties of a disk, I must go into control panel, then administrative tools, then disk management. Such inconsistencies abound in Windows, and are far from intuitive. If you want intuitive check out Mac OS.
As for aesthetics, aesthetics vary wildly. Most Linux distributions come with hundreds of desktop themes, offering a far greater chance that a user will be able to find a pleasing aethetic right out of the box, as compared to Windows where only a few generic options are provided.
Windows has users because of all the software available, which is written for Windows because it is a much more standardized OS (Only one Windows "distribution.") and upgrades are far less frequent than they are for Linux. Only once a standard Linux distro champions itself on the desktop, with only infrequent major changes, can Linux hope to be as viable to an end user as Windows.
From the story-
"The White House official says she'd like to see scientists police themselves better regarding what they publish and with whom they share data."
Of course. Keep it all wrapped up. Leave it to the government to think of secrecy as an answer.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone wrote new ones? Damn! Maybe I'll pick one up to read over vacation...
Those were good, but the three investigators were better.
The point I was originally trying to make was that no stories are really original; there are always many people who have done/said/written/etc. it before.
Romeo And Juliet was based on the old greek myth of Pyraemus and Thisbe, two young lovers from opposing houses who die in a graveyard due to their loves. As for Hamlet, I don't feel like digging out Edith Hamilton/Bullfinche's mythology at the moment to look it up. As for historical basis, kids from opposing houses killing themselves over their love was not a rare occurrance in those times (Hell, it happens now.).
The Shakespearean tradgedies that were based on Historical events tended to be a bit obvious as to what they were, eq. Julius Caeser and Antony and Cleopatra.
There are no original stories. All stories, one way or another, are just retelling of all the basic myths of mankind.
For example, the Lion King was not ripped from Kimba, it was ripped from Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. Hamlet, like many of the bawdy bard's works, was just a retelling of assorted chunks of greek myths that he liked. The greek myths were old stories that had been handed down orally for centuries.
This kind of thing is basic stuff. Joseph Campbell taught it for decades (Exploration of Campbell's work inspired Star Wars, a popular Star Wars topic that is about as unoriginal as plots can be.). It was a PBS miniseries. Most high schools teach it as part of advanced freshman english classes. Any social anthropology teacher at any level will probably bring it up.
And of course, the idiots who run Slashdot, in an attempt to bring down the corporate machine, attack Disney for stealing plots for their movies, simply because they fail to realize that the plots of the Japenese animation they so often watch are no more original than they were when other people told the same stories a millenia ago.
"and I would gladly pay for their service, if they would serve me."
Forgive me for trolling, but I somehow doubt that a guy who makes his living extolling the virtues of Napster, free software, and open source would pay for Linux software/services.
Maybe if Linux users like Michael HAD been paying for the product/services offered by Zero-Knowledge, they would have been making money off of it and not discontinued it!
This is the downside to free software and open source: Do not expect commercial support. Get used to surfing old newsgroup postings or scouring IRC, because if someone is not making money from the users, he will not have money to provide support with!!!
Maybe Apple should use these for the newer Macs. Anything is better than trying to get those chips in short supply/high cost from Motorola....
Wonder what the black market value of a 63", hand built, one of three in the world, display is?
I bet the mafia stole the display and gave it to a hacker who they pay to encrypt their email!
I feel like an eskimo talking about snow, because I can come up with thousands of ways to say "I want one of those!!!"
Stuff like this is why I love PayPal. A few bucks here and there, takes about ten seconds to actually do the transaction. Very cool. Hopefully more Open Source/Free Software projects can use such a model to fund full time developers.
"Now one can be mesmerized by two devices simultaneously"
Now? You mean I am the only person who plays EverQuest while watching Oprah?
This article should be about Windows XP and OS X, not Win2k and OS X. OS X is a consumer operating system, designed primarily for home users, especially computing Neophytes. Windows 2000 is meant for, and marketed to, working professionals looking for a more stable, and featureful OS than NT4.
;)
Beyond that, it would also be nice to see someone nitpick at XP as Microsoft starts pushing people to use it
I think my Grandma would agree that sacrificing a little book time to keep up with news about the technology that got me a job paying more than anyone else in my family at the age of twenty-two is a good thing. :)
Before anyone bothers to point it out, yes, I know that I misspelled "effect" as "affect."
"It's the perfect model: the users pay you *and* for the bandwidth to share the songs they already bought"
Maybe if the users stopped "sharing" the files with people who did NOT buy them, this wouldn't have been such a big deal to begin with.
"Course I still don't see the benefit for us."
Taco, you must be blind. How is being able to get music digitally, and legitimatly, without actually buying a cd is not a benefit? Not to mention that Individual artists could work with Napster to sell their own music online in such a manner, giving them an easy way to distribute their work via an incredibly popular online service for little cost, without ever getting involved with record companies to begin with?
"No doubt we'll see more of these deals as napster becomes less relevant and decentralized networks grow in popularity."
Not too likely. Given that peer-to-peer networks like GNUtella scale poorly (See the Slashdot story about that here.), Napster is likely to experience a nice rebirth of sorts. Once users realize that they can just buy a few songs they want from record company whores like Britney Spears and J-Lo, instead of getting the less catching songs used as album filler between hits, money-conscious pop fans will jump right back to Napster.
This is just another crappy Slashdot post about the big evil record companies versus Napster, hero of the people and savior of artists. The Slashdot crew posts these because even though they hate the record companies (Rightly so, the record companies and their affects on music are disgusting.), they are too lazy to make a concerted effort to help artists survive independantly. Anyone with a brain knows that Napster is just as sleazy as Sony or BMG, and cares even less about the artists. At least the record companies front musicians money to work with. Napster just wants to leech off of the artists and record companies, growing fat on the blood of artists, as well as the pus and bile that fills the veins of record execs.
If Slashdot really wants to fight the record companies, perhaps they should bring up Prince's successful online music club, or review the work of independent artist Ani DiFranco, both working outside the world of record companies.
Stories like this are the product of laziness. If anything is to become less relevant on the net, it will be Slashdot, as a result of this crap, not Napster.
"As Bruce Schneier says 'Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. The sooner people accept this, and build business models that take this into account, the sooner people will start making money again.'" "
I think that pretty much beats out any comment a slashdotter will ever come up with. Bruce is the man...
How many glove interfaces have there been over the years? At least a dozen. Aside from the Nintendo Power Glove, does anyone really remember them? Were they really all that useful? Honestly, unless such a device had some sort of tactile-feedback, it would still be pretty pointless.
What we really need is to skip this silly stuff and find a way to plug a computer RIGHT INTO MY BRAIN! Imagine just plugging a wire into the back of your head, and having all nervous input and output to the hands redirected toward a computer, which would send back the appropriate sensations! That would impress me. Yet another glove that does little more than the one I used to play Ridge Racer when I was eight is nothing special.
AOL 6.0 bundled into Windows XP... sigh. As if all the shit crammed into Windows 2000 wasn't enough. I hope they at least only put it into the consumer version and not the server releases as well.
"If AOL isn't going to switch to a new Netscape or Mozilla browser to base their client upon, what happens to Netscape?"
Netscape will continue to be annoying, bloated, unstable, crappy, etc. AOL will keep supporting it at the behest of Microsoft, which wants to look competitive. Eventually AOL will let Netscape proper fade away as Mozilla and its derivatives continue to get better and more popular.
"John G. Rowland said Thursday that he will veto a bill barring children under 18 from playing 'point-and-shoot' video games in public places."
Imagine what would happen if they passed a bill prohibitng kids from shooting real guns at human shaped targets at a public firing range. I cna guarantee you that it would go nowhere...
"I have made it a condition that those I am interested in not play computer games or use pornography."
Women like you drive men like me to homosexuality. I would SO much rather spend all of my time with my hard drinking, game playing, violent guy buddies, and fuck them as well, than to date a waste of flesh like yourself. And unfortunately, far too many women's views are just like yours.
Ok, I can understand the rest, but tracking lunch purchases? Is it just me, or is it a little odd that the school keeps track of what individual students eat to begin with? Is such information being tracked without the consent of students and parents who do not use the system?
And what else does the school system do with the information?
I wrote most, not all.
"it's intuitive, and well-designed aesthetically."
Intuitive? Not really. In Windows 2000 professional, to change network properties, I just click control panel, then network, and select a connection to edit. To alter properties of a disk, I must go into control panel, then administrative tools, then disk management. Such inconsistencies abound in Windows, and are far from intuitive. If you want intuitive check out Mac OS.
As for aesthetics, aesthetics vary wildly. Most Linux distributions come with hundreds of desktop themes, offering a far greater chance that a user will be able to find a pleasing aethetic right out of the box, as compared to Windows where only a few generic options are provided.
Windows has users because of all the software available, which is written for Windows because it is a much more standardized OS (Only one Windows "distribution.") and upgrades are far less frequent than they are for Linux. Only once a standard Linux distro champions itself on the desktop, with only infrequent major changes, can Linux hope to be as viable to an end user as Windows.
Th3Y c4nn0tz do th1z! Wh3r3 w1ll my m1rC budd13z g0 t0 s33 @ll 0f my 31337 h4x0rz!
L1nUx 43v4h! FUX0R US G0V3Rm3NTZ!!!
/sarcasm off
good.
From the story- "The White House official says she'd like to see scientists police themselves better regarding what they publish and with whom they share data." Of course. Keep it all wrapped up. Leave it to the government to think of secrecy as an answer.