If people can't edit a config file, they 'deserve' to shell out money for Windows.
If people can't use the command line to update packages, they deserve to shell out money for Windows.
If people can't hack their own kernel, they deserve to shell out money for Windows.
If people can't design and build their own PC from sand and raw metal-bearing ores, they deserve to shell out money for Windows (and the hardware it runs on).
Yes, it's going to extremes, but I know of different people who would take different positions on the above. Manually editing a config file means that the process has failed the user. If the user doesn't know how to do this and no obvious interactive method exists, then that's another process failure.
People pirate stuff because they want to, not because they have to. If they need Photoshop but can't pay for it, and don't want to buy Elements or anything else, they'll pirate it. Afterwards they'll justify how they need the 'standard' software, but they clearly don't because they're not learning graphic art (else they'd buy PS at the edu. price) and they're not earning from it (else they'd be able to afford it).
People just want stuff for free and because there's almost zero chance of being caught, they feel empowered to just pirate stuff.
Justification is just so much hot air. We all know it's crap, but some people still insist on producing lots of verbage when they should just say "I wanted it and I didn't want to pay for it."
Thanks to pirates, we've got copy protection and DRM. Thanks guys! Love your work!
Hmmm, what could be more natural than plugging your IPod into someone else's computer? Remember tape swapping? IPod brings a nasty surprise by erasing all of it's contents when you try to SHARE. Getting your music back is a painful operation, not simply a button press. This punishment of sharing, evil on it's own, will also punish people who lose their music due to other failures.
In a world where musicians want money for their music, how would you have music sharing work?
I don't see that people have any inherent right to make unlimited copies of music and distribute them. To me, *sharing* is something I do with stuff *I* make. I can't share someone else's work - that's not fair to the original source.
You don't always need to know content. Any packet from a porn site is generally not going to be viewed favourably in most countries outside the US. The carriers expose themselves to risk by allowing such a packet to be passed along.
China can use this idea to help restrict those democratic sites, improving the Great Firewall.
It'd be hell to administer, but when the carriers record and track every packet (for tiered billing) they open themselves to all sorts of craziness.
Jobs' first job (hmm) was with Hewlett Packard, where he met Wozniak. Later he became a technician for Atari. He never worked a day in a marketing department, although as CEO of Apple, NeXT and Pixar he did a good number of presentations.
I don't think he did a lot of the design for the original Apple computer, but I know he did a lot of assembly work to fulfil their first order. I suspect some of the design came from him, but that may be more in the requirements than the technical.
A lot of people discount Jobs' technical knowledge, which is one of his strengths. The fabled RDF may be strong, but he knows exactly what he's talking about.
That's a *really* good point, and one I've been mulling over for a while now.
If the phone companies are going to implement a tiered Internet, they can only do this by identifying who each packet belongs to. They have to that packet #n comes from Google (or is going to Google) to be able to make this work.
That means they're going to *knowingly* pass on data or information that could be suspect or illegal either in the source location or the destination location (or both). There can be no hiding behind the old common carrier protections when they're inspecting every single packet.
This proposal makes them responsible for every single packet they transmit.
As an SQL Server developer, an Excel 'power' user and someone who manages about 20GB of statistical and performance data, I reckon I've got a clue here.
Show me a sample piece of SQL for calculating a cumulative average, without linking a table to itself, creating a new table or other weirdness. It's pretty hard.
What about a running total for certain criteria? Or percentile calculations, or means, standard deviations and so on?
SQL is just not good at statistics, even simple stats. It just can't do it without a *lot* of effort.
SQL-based databases are ideal for filtering and simple calculations, but terrible at doing real work with numbers. Sometimes Excel is a far superior solution to the best and brightest database.
A few pages in any direction? You've clearly never seen corporate spreadsheets or looked at numerical quality methodologies (such as Six Sigma)!
SQL is weak at statistics and crippled for inter-row calculations. It's not what the language was designed for, and it's certainly not what it does well. Making it go there is exactly as bad as making relational databases in Excel.
I speak as an SQL Server developer here, and a data administrator and a former corporate reporting person.
Databases are perfect for filtering sets of data and simple calculations, but they're painfully bad for complex calculations.
Sometimes a database is the right solution, sometimes not. The thing is to look at the purpose and use of the data, not the row count.
WTF? If I've got anyone in IT putting 1,000,000 rows in a spreadsheet, I'm seriously considering demoting them. If you're going to have a million rows, get a database.
You're probably right - if anyone in *IT* puts a million rows of data into a spreadsheet they're probably better off with a database. The only spreadsheets I've ever seen the IT department use are lists.
Some people, like myself, occasionally need a few hundred thousand rows of data for complex calculations, something databases are generally weak at (certainly any SQL-based ones).
Want to calculate percentiles over a database in SQL? Want to use data between multiple rows without linking a table to itself? Want a running total or cumulative average?
Databases are great for queries, but awful for calculations. Spreadsheets are great for calculations but awful for queries.
The solution isn't based on the number of rows, but on the purpose of the data and how you're going to use it.
I don't work in IT, but I do manage a *lot* of data.
I'm not sure that the options are only one way or the other, with no middle ground.
If you take that position, then the options become no secrets at all versus no rights at all.
Given your comments so far, are you *certain* that you want to go to extremes?
(by the way, I'm not a US citizen but I hate arguments that reduce to unrealistic polar opposites to score a point)
Re:Creative == SCO, hope they get crushed.
on
Apple Sues Creative
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· Score: 1
A couple of developers (Bilodeau and Songy) developed this technique around the same time as John Carmack and Sim Dietrich from nVidia. It was a fairly logical idea after all, an elegant solution.
Bilodeau and Songy filed a patent from their company, which was granted but their company was bought up by Creative. And we know what Creative then did.
It was never an id-only technique, or something stolen from them. The USPTO should have found that Carmack and Dietrich were presenting the algorithm publicly, but the attitude there seems to be to allow patents through and let the courts sort it out.
(rant) I have real problems with the idea of patenting software algorithms. Designs, maybe, but methods? Sometimes there are only so many ways a task can be achieved. If you don't hold the patents, you can't develop. That's like patenting metallurgical techniques, so that a company can be the only supplier of girders in the world. The design of a girder could be patented, but not the means by which it's made. (end rant)
id could have gone to court, but who wants to see all their profits eaten up by lawyers? It would be a trial over several months, with discovery phases, evidence presented and all that. A single-day trial is a fantasy in patent law, as far as I can see.
And yet the nameless troll can't name the mystery product, and even if they could, there's a big leap from predicting the death of the iPod to it actually happening.
That was my first thought on seeing the headline. three hundred and sixty hackers, all being responded to by Microsoft. I wonder if they each got letters, or if Microsoft sent out three hundred and sixty lawyers.
I bought an X-Box, and it died completely while in warranty. Hard drive failed in an unrecoverable manner (you could hear the clicks across the room).
I called tech support, spoke to some guy in the US (I'm in Australia) and after he thoroughly probed me he arranged a pre-paid box to be sent to me so I could have the unit repaired/replaced.
Without the warranty I'd have been down a few hundred dollars. Outside the warranty period, I'd happily hack the X-Box, but inside that time I consider hacking it to be a bit more of a gamble than I'd like to take.
Company X: "We don't want our product mentioned in the same search results as 'cracks'! " Nation X: "We don't want our nation mentioned in the same search results as 'democracy'! " Religion X: "We don't want our religion mentioned in the same search results as 'evolution'! "
To paraphrase that great thinker, Yoda, "Once you start down the path of filtering, forever will it dominate your destiny."
Or was it "Start down path the filtering of once you, destiny dominate it forever your will." Something like that. But then he said a lot of stupid stuff when he was drunk.
Maybe my comprehension skills are low today, but no single post says that this is a good thing (except the sarcastic posts). The best anyone says is that it won't impact users. Most here are saying that it's a bad thing.
So where do you get the idea that Apple are being congratulated by the Slashdot consensus? I just don't see it, and that's why I said you were trolling.
As for Bill Gates - a lot of people won't seperate his business from his philanthropy, which is a shame. Maybe Microsoft should have done things differently, but the result of that might well be that he couldn't do the things he's doing philanthropically, as money would be in the hands of many diverse groups. The nett result of his actions are vastly positive, even in light of his abysmal business dealings.
But of course, you mentioned Gates from nowhere. You brought Microsoft into this when they're not relevant to the story. You're trying to draw comparisons where none are required.
Is this single action in and of itself a good or a bad thing? Most here say it's a bad thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Where does that attitude end?
If people can't edit a config file, they 'deserve' to shell out money for Windows.
If people can't use the command line to update packages, they deserve to shell out money for Windows.
If people can't hack their own kernel, they deserve to shell out money for Windows.
If people can't design and build their own PC from sand and raw metal-bearing ores, they deserve to shell out money for Windows (and the hardware it runs on).
Yes, it's going to extremes, but I know of different people who would take different positions on the above. Manually editing a config file means that the process has failed the user. If the user doesn't know how to do this and no obvious interactive method exists, then that's another process failure.
It's a good post - it deserves to be more visible.
'cause it's really truthy.
People pirate stuff because they want to, not because they have to. If they need Photoshop but can't pay for it, and don't want to buy Elements or anything else, they'll pirate it. Afterwards they'll justify how they need the 'standard' software, but they clearly don't because they're not learning graphic art (else they'd buy PS at the edu. price) and they're not earning from it (else they'd be able to afford it).
People just want stuff for free and because there's almost zero chance of being caught, they feel empowered to just pirate stuff.
Justification is just so much hot air. We all know it's crap, but some people still insist on producing lots of verbage when they should just say "I wanted it and I didn't want to pay for it."
Thanks to pirates, we've got copy protection and DRM. Thanks guys! Love your work!
Hmmm, what could be more natural than plugging your IPod into someone else's computer? Remember tape swapping? IPod brings a nasty surprise by erasing all of it's contents when you try to SHARE. Getting your music back is a painful operation, not simply a button press. This punishment of sharing, evil on it's own, will also punish people who lose their music due to other failures.
In a world where musicians want money for their music, how would you have music sharing work?
I don't see that people have any inherent right to make unlimited copies of music and distribute them. To me, *sharing* is something I do with stuff *I* make. I can't share someone else's work - that's not fair to the original source.
As soon as insults are used to win an argument, it's lost beyond retrieval.
"Sheeple" makes your point invalid, your opinion null and void. I stopped reading at that point, and started looking for a post with something to say.
They may not be able to afford Photoshop, but they can afford Photoshop Elements, which is more useful to them anyway.
Well, I was going from my apparently faulty memory of some books I read. ... and maybe a couple of cereal boxes
You don't always need to know content. Any packet from a porn site is generally not going to be viewed favourably in most countries outside the US. The carriers expose themselves to risk by allowing such a packet to be passed along.
China can use this idea to help restrict those democratic sites, improving the Great Firewall.
It'd be hell to administer, but when the carriers record and track every packet (for tiered billing) they open themselves to all sorts of craziness.
Well, you'd be wrong then.
Jobs' first job (hmm) was with Hewlett Packard, where he met Wozniak. Later he became a technician for Atari. He never worked a day in a marketing department, although as CEO of Apple, NeXT and Pixar he did a good number of presentations.
I don't think he did a lot of the design for the original Apple computer, but I know he did a lot of assembly work to fulfil their first order. I suspect some of the design came from him, but that may be more in the requirements than the technical.
A lot of people discount Jobs' technical knowledge, which is one of his strengths. The fabled RDF may be strong, but he knows exactly what he's talking about.
That's a *really* good point, and one I've been mulling over for a while now.
If the phone companies are going to implement a tiered Internet, they can only do this by identifying who each packet belongs to. They have to that packet #n comes from Google (or is going to Google) to be able to make this work.
That means they're going to *knowingly* pass on data or information that could be suspect or illegal either in the source location or the destination location (or both). There can be no hiding behind the old common carrier protections when they're inspecting every single packet.
This proposal makes them responsible for every single packet they transmit.
This comes up again and again.
As an SQL Server developer, an Excel 'power' user and someone who manages about 20GB of statistical and performance data, I reckon I've got a clue here.
Show me a sample piece of SQL for calculating a cumulative average, without linking a table to itself, creating a new table or other weirdness. It's pretty hard.
What about a running total for certain criteria? Or percentile calculations, or means, standard deviations and so on?
SQL is just not good at statistics, even simple stats. It just can't do it without a *lot* of effort.
SQL-based databases are ideal for filtering and simple calculations, but terrible at doing real work with numbers. Sometimes Excel is a far superior solution to the best and brightest database.
A few pages in any direction? You've clearly never seen corporate spreadsheets or looked at numerical quality methodologies (such as Six Sigma)!
SQL is weak at statistics and crippled for inter-row calculations. It's not what the language was designed for, and it's certainly not what it does well. Making it go there is exactly as bad as making relational databases in Excel.
I speak as an SQL Server developer here, and a data administrator and a former corporate reporting person.
Databases are perfect for filtering sets of data and simple calculations, but they're painfully bad for complex calculations.
Sometimes a database is the right solution, sometimes not. The thing is to look at the purpose and use of the data, not the row count.
WTF? If I've got anyone in IT putting 1,000,000 rows in a spreadsheet, I'm seriously considering demoting them. If you're going to have a million rows, get a database.
You're probably right - if anyone in *IT* puts a million rows of data into a spreadsheet they're probably better off with a database. The only spreadsheets I've ever seen the IT department use are lists.
Some people, like myself, occasionally need a few hundred thousand rows of data for complex calculations, something databases are generally weak at (certainly any SQL-based ones).
Want to calculate percentiles over a database in SQL? Want to use data between multiple rows without linking a table to itself? Want a running total or cumulative average?
Databases are great for queries, but awful for calculations.
Spreadsheets are great for calculations but awful for queries.
The solution isn't based on the number of rows, but on the purpose of the data and how you're going to use it.
I don't work in IT, but I do manage a *lot* of data.
First Excel I used was '97 and I'm pretty sure it had conditional formatting. I know Excel 2000 does it (I did it yesterday).
I'm not sure that the options are only one way or the other, with no middle ground.
If you take that position, then the options become no secrets at all versus no rights at all.
Given your comments so far, are you *certain* that you want to go to extremes?
(by the way, I'm not a US citizen but I hate arguments that reduce to unrealistic polar opposites to score a point)
A couple of developers (Bilodeau and Songy) developed this technique around the same time as John Carmack and Sim Dietrich from nVidia. It was a fairly logical idea after all, an elegant solution.
Bilodeau and Songy filed a patent from their company, which was granted but their company was bought up by Creative. And we know what Creative then did.
It was never an id-only technique, or something stolen from them. The USPTO should have found that Carmack and Dietrich were presenting the algorithm publicly, but the attitude there seems to be to allow patents through and let the courts sort it out.
(rant)
I have real problems with the idea of patenting software algorithms. Designs, maybe, but methods? Sometimes there are only so many ways a task can be achieved. If you don't hold the patents, you can't develop. That's like patenting metallurgical techniques, so that a company can be the only supplier of girders in the world. The design of a girder could be patented, but not the means by which it's made.
(end rant)
id could have gone to court, but who wants to see all their profits eaten up by lawyers? It would be a trial over several months, with discovery phases, evidence presented and all that. A single-day trial is a fantasy in patent law, as far as I can see.
And yet the nameless troll can't name the mystery product, and even if they could, there's a big leap from predicting the death of the iPod to it actually happening.
More pointless trolling. More anonymous cowards.
That was my first thought on seeing the headline. three hundred and sixty hackers, all being responded to by Microsoft. I wonder if they each got letters, or if Microsoft sent out three hundred and sixty lawyers.
I bought an X-Box, and it died completely while in warranty. Hard drive failed in an unrecoverable manner (you could hear the clicks across the room).
I called tech support, spoke to some guy in the US (I'm in Australia) and after he thoroughly probed me he arranged a pre-paid box to be sent to me so I could have the unit repaired/replaced.
Without the warranty I'd have been down a few hundred dollars. Outside the warranty period, I'd happily hack the X-Box, but inside that time I consider hacking it to be a bit more of a gamble than I'd like to take.
Company X: "We don't want our product mentioned in the same search results as 'cracks'! "
Nation X: "We don't want our nation mentioned in the same search results as 'democracy'! "
Religion X: "We don't want our religion mentioned in the same search results as 'evolution'! "
To paraphrase that great thinker, Yoda, "Once you start down the path of filtering, forever will it dominate your destiny."
Or was it "Start down path the filtering of once you, destiny dominate it forever your will." Something like that. But then he said a lot of stupid stuff when he was drunk.
Maybe they're using the video RAM to manage multiple windows, so that moving a window doesn't require as much CPU work.
The question is perfectly valid - what difference does this make to the majority of end users?
I think it makes no difference at all, but we could at least open it up for discussion.
Maybe my comprehension skills are low today, but no single post says that this is a good thing (except the sarcastic posts). The best anyone says is that it won't impact users. Most here are saying that it's a bad thing.
So where do you get the idea that Apple are being congratulated by the Slashdot consensus? I just don't see it, and that's why I said you were trolling.
As for Bill Gates - a lot of people won't seperate his business from his philanthropy, which is a shame. Maybe Microsoft should have done things differently, but the result of that might well be that he couldn't do the things he's doing philanthropically, as money would be in the hands of many diverse groups. The nett result of his actions are vastly positive, even in light of his abysmal business dealings.
But of course, you mentioned Gates from nowhere. You brought Microsoft into this when they're not relevant to the story. You're trying to draw comparisons where none are required.
Is this single action in and of itself a good or a bad thing? Most here say it's a bad thing.
But where do the RAND Corporation and the Reverse Vampires fit in?
Enquiring minds want to know!
So... Apple is a government now?
Does fascism apply to corporations?
Also - got any idea why the man was wrestled to the ground? Any clue?