Isn't the purpose of an archival copy to be around as a backup in case the original gets destroyed (or vice versa). So it's ridiculous to have to keep them both together. What destroys one (burning, smashing, glove box in arizona) will destroy the other thereby eliminating the whole reason for a backup in the first place. A true archival or backup copy should be kept off-site in a reasonably secure location. You all know this, don't you have an odd-day and even-day tape that you carry back and forth from home (or wherever)?
So I think this works. I have my 1/100th of a cd plus the archival backups of the other 99/100th's that are out there held by my 99 friends. And they all have archival copies of my 1/100th and so on. THe ultimate in redundant backups. In the event my copy gets destroyed, then one of my buddies sends me a copy of the backup of my 100th along with duplicates of the other 99 parts so that we don't lose any redundancy by attrition. This is very reasonable.
No I didn't say the government should make the machines. I said I had no good solution. I was merely raising the point that something is critical as our elections should be free of such encumbrances as a need to make a buck on the process.
I think the best solution may be for the government to require open source voting machines. If someone wants to make money by manufacturing machines that meet the standard in an open way, then great. What I don't want is a black-box controlled by a for-profit entity that then has the power to ensure its own contract by guaranteeing reelection of the official that renews that contract. The government should issue the standard that machines have to meet and the manufacturer has to prove that they meet it by opening up the box. At that point, its just who has the best price and can deliver them by tuesday....
I have much more confidence in elected officials making decisions about what weapons or planes to purchase if I know that official was elected fairly by the people. That's doesn't mean the guy's not a crook, BUT at least we know we have a fair chance to elect someone else next time....
What I don't get, and believe me I have no good solution, is how we can put something so critical to our country in the hands of for-profit corporations. This just irks me. There are some things that just need to be off-limits for profit-taking. Granted, the list is pretty long and voting machines aren't right at the top, but this is just common sense. Who's bone-headed idea was it to put the future of our elections and our system of government in the hands of an entity whose sole purpose is to make a profit?
Nice article, a total of 4 sentences distributed between 4 paragraphs (you do the math). This is not news, just another corporate press release, probably designed to boost stock price or convince some muckity-muck that progress is being made at R&D. move along.
Either way, I'm not sure why this prevents them from dumping a Linux version on there, and inserting a disclaimer that they won't support software problems.
Put an icon on the desktop that links to the appropriate newsgroups, mailing-lists etc based on the user's response to some questions. Done. Call it "Community Driven Support"(tm). Profit.
Its simple really. I guess the big boys like Dell don't understand how much support is really out there for Linux. There is no problem I've ever had on Linux that couldn't be solved through a little google and an email or two. If they took the trouble to direct people to the right sources for community support, their in-house costs for support would probably be pretty dang low.
Granted, I don't relish the idea of hordes of tot4l n00bs invading various lists, but then again, I was there once too....
1. We make software that allows you to keep an eye on your children while they are on the internet.
Fine. good luck with that product.
2. Some anti-virus software blacklisted our software.
Oh, that's unfortunate. Simply explain the situation to them and hopefully they'll change their minds. If not, well TOO BAD. Its THEIR software, they can do what they want with it.
3. We state that they are not allowed to download our software in an attempt to stop them blacklisting us
Well, a sure fire way to get someone to blacklist you is to prevent them from actually examining your product and engaging in a dialogue about its application. In the world of anti-spayware/virus I would assume that if you can't get information, then you must blacklist it rather than expose yourself.
4. They carry on doing so, ignoring our warning they they are expressly forbidden from downloading our software - it is our copyright.
See, this is where you set down the wrong path. You should have pro-actively engaged the anti-spyware industry along the lines of "Hey, you guys call us spyware, but we're not and here's why..., can we come to some agreement about this?" Unless of course, it is just crappy spyware, in which case they'll throw you out. Further, as has been written several times already, they don't have to download it. All they have to do is go to a client's computer that already has it installed. Or perhaps someone handed them a copy of the binary and asked them to figure out what it was? The point is your attempt to forbid download has no effect at all on whether they can examine your software. It is merely inflammatory.
5. They ignore our attempts to contact them
Why should they communicate with you now? You've already tried to cut them out of the process with useless but inflammatory things like your anti-anti-spyware EULA?
6. So we consider going to the police to stop them downloading our program without permission.
Well, you certainly can consider it, but first you'll have to establish that they downloaded the program, and that your EULA clause is applicable at the time of download and not time of installation. And then you'll have to find a cop who actually has time to deal with this crap instead of his backlog of robberies and car-jackings.
7. We get flamed by a load of people who don't seem to understand the situation!
What we don't understand is how you think you can pull this off. You've taken the wrong tack and need to re-examine your process. A pro-active engagement of the anti-spyware/virus industry from the start would have done a lot to remediate this situation before it arose.
Why are we sleazy?
Because you make software that spies on people. jeez, it's not complicated.
They can always invoke the infamous playground rule of "no takebacks". There is no known way to defeat "no takebacks" unless you first utter "opposite day" or some other general protection clause ("I am rubber, you are glue" etc). But it is a matter of strict timing. Uttered too late and, well its too late. Too soon, and the enemy will withhold the "no takebacks" or worse turn it into an "all takebacks" or "1 2 3 NOT IT".
Does anyone else get the feeling that all these guys are rats trying to grab whatever they can while the ship goes down? This whole thing has gotta collapse at some point. I hope.
I agree completely and still use my celeron 300 for a lot of stuff. In fact, the only reason I upgraded my main machine was due to some failing memory and since I'd built the last one in '96 (?) figured it was time. My point was a joke, in that people buy as much bang as they can without consideration for their actual needs and then fill it with so much cruft and unneccessary processes that it grinds to nearly a halt. My example, my mom's old toshiba laptop is actually a sweet little machine, til you pile on the win '98 crap and the peoplesoft crap and all the other "crap" that is on it.... Hell, my uncle's machine which runs win 2000 and was a pretty high-powered machine could barely crawl due to the overwhelming amount of garbage. The thing literally had over 55 processes running with only one user logged in and no apps running. ugh. so it ran like a dog and he was ready to "upgrade" til I got a-hold of it and now its quite snappy...
I would agree, but what you fail to realise is that these consumers a planning ahead. They know that they'll use this machine for 2-3 years at least before upgrading. They also know that they'll be so riddled with spyware at the halfway point that they NEED that extra 1.7 GHz just to pull through.
on a serious note though, I keep trying to convince my mother to switch to linux on her crappy little laptop. All she does with it is surf and email and if she'd just ditch that bloated MS and put in a nice light-weight WM, she'd be really happy. And no, this is NOT OT because she has plenty of proc. and memory for what she does, but too much OS for her machine. ugh.
oh wait, this isn't a "put linux on old crappy laptop thread"? oh well.
Actually, the whole article is not too bad overall, we certainly see worse in real papers
yeah except I hate this kind of crap (from TFA):
Subjected to winds of 180 - 212 in early testing under controlled conditions, an earlier prototype withstood this force, with the only consequence being that a lock collar loosened by 1/8 of an inch
There is no reference as to what that 1/8 inch means. I hate it when "news" sources give specific information with no frame of reference. So the lock collar loosened by 1/8" and that's great if there is 1/2" of tolerance before failure, but what if the tolerance was more like 3/16" before failure? IOW, this is meaningless and because the number is "small" it must be good. crap reporting.
If we could get a worm that resolves its own dependencies, think of the benefits for spreading Linux. No more RPM hell or the occaisional apt-get flake-out. WIth the right worm, even my grandma could start using Linux! Yes!
Oh, and the XBox 360 is going to kick the PS3's ass.
Sony PS3... Microsoft XBox... Sony PS3... Microsoft XBox... Sony PS3... Microsoft XBox... Sony PS3... Microsoft XBox... Sony PS3... Microsoft XBox... Sony PS3... Microsoft XBox... Sony PS3... Microsoft XBox... Sony PS3... Microsoft XBox... Sony PS3... Microsoft XBox...
But they'll pay for the damages in a class action settlement several years from now. By that time, the $ value of the settlement will be considerably smaller in future $ and the insurance company will likely pay it anyway. No problem.
Business Model:
1. Make crappy crap and sell the crap out of it.
2. Profit!!
3. ??
4. Maybe pay some profit back a long time from now.
I thought about this and then realised that the problem is that you're still PAYING them to produce this crap. This bothers me. While its great that you can get the music you want, and its cleary "fair use" to make a "backup" of the original disc it turns my stomach to realise that they are basically getting away with this crap. What you are doing is validating their plan.
The only solution I see is to make a copy, then take the original disc(along with all packaging), along with the crufty old player that CAN'T read it back to the retailer and demand your money back as the disc won't function in your player. You'll likely have to demonstrate that. If the disc is so crippled, then it can't really meet the CDDA standard etc etc etc.
Oh, yeah. You'll want to throw away that copy you made earlier. ahem.
Gnome is being guided towards being a Desktop for dummies, but it's weird behaviour only make users unconfortable with that Desktop.
Unfortunately, I have to agree. Although I've only got a couple months of GNOME under my belt and haven't taken the time to perfect its set-up like I did with KDE, I find I am constantly frustrated with by things that should "just work". Example, there is no way I can see to make nautilus open sub-folders in the same window when file-browsing. Maybe I'm stupid (wouldn't be the first time), but I hate my desktop cluttered with a bunch of unneeded windows from farther up the directory tree. There also seems to be less direct access to the nuts&bolts of things in GNOME than in KDE. I'm sure its all impression, but its putting me off and I'm just about ready to head back to KDE for good.
of course, I use Debian, so this is probably all moot:p
Many people I know who've completed post-grad degrees need those relationships because all they've done so far in life is go to school. They need a network and recommendations.
If you're already in the work force in your field and are looking to expand your knowledge and skills, these personal contacts are not as essential. You're already employed, you already know people and have a social infrastructure. Online courses make sense then as all you really need out of them are the knowledge in your noggin and the paper in your hand.
Not to mention, as has been discussed in old sci-fi novels for decades, the moon is much farther up the gravity well from us and they'll have lots and lots of rocks.
I think you'd only need a handful of resourceful people up there with a big slingshot and they've got us all by the short-curlies.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't the purpose of an archival copy to be around as a backup in case the original gets destroyed (or vice versa). So it's ridiculous to have to keep them both together. What destroys one (burning, smashing, glove box in arizona) will destroy the other thereby eliminating the whole reason for a backup in the first place. A true archival or backup copy should be kept off-site in a reasonably secure location. You all know this, don't you have an odd-day and even-day tape that you carry back and forth from home (or wherever)?
So I think this works. I have my 1/100th of a cd plus the archival backups of the other 99/100th's that are out there held by my 99 friends. And they all have archival copies of my 1/100th and so on. THe ultimate in redundant backups. In the event my copy gets destroyed, then one of my buddies sends me a copy of the backup of my 100th along with duplicates of the other 99 parts so that we don't lose any redundancy by attrition. This is very reasonable.
That's my cc number you insensitive clod!
Aw screw it, just give me a freakin paper ballot...
No I didn't say the government should make the machines. I said I had no good solution. I was merely raising the point that something is critical as our elections should be free of such encumbrances as a need to make a buck on the process.
I think the best solution may be for the government to require open source voting machines. If someone wants to make money by manufacturing machines that meet the standard in an open way, then great. What I don't want is a black-box controlled by a for-profit entity that then has the power to ensure its own contract by guaranteeing reelection of the official that renews that contract. The government should issue the standard that machines have to meet and the manufacturer has to prove that they meet it by opening up the box. At that point, its just who has the best price and can deliver them by tuesday....
I have much more confidence in elected officials making decisions about what weapons or planes to purchase if I know that official was elected fairly by the people. That's doesn't mean the guy's not a crook, BUT at least we know we have a fair chance to elect someone else next time....
What I don't get, and believe me I have no good solution, is how we can put something so critical to our country in the hands of for-profit corporations. This just irks me. There are some things that just need to be off-limits for profit-taking. Granted, the list is pretty long and voting machines aren't right at the top, but this is just common sense. Who's bone-headed idea was it to put the future of our elections and our system of government in the hands of an entity whose sole purpose is to make a profit?
Nice article, a total of 4 sentences distributed between 4 paragraphs (you do the math). This is not news, just another corporate press release, probably designed to boost stock price or convince some muckity-muck that progress is being made at R&D. move along.
Either way, I'm not sure why this prevents them from dumping a Linux version on there, and inserting a disclaimer that they won't support software problems.
Put an icon on the desktop that links to the appropriate newsgroups, mailing-lists etc based on the user's response to some questions. Done. Call it "Community Driven Support"(tm). Profit.
Its simple really. I guess the big boys like Dell don't understand how much support is really out there for Linux. There is no problem I've ever had on Linux that couldn't be solved through a little google and an email or two. If they took the trouble to direct people to the right sources for community support, their in-house costs for support would probably be pretty dang low.
Granted, I don't relish the idea of hordes of tot4l n00bs invading various lists, but then again, I was there once too....
1. We make software that allows you to keep an eye on your children while they are on the internet.
Fine. good luck with that product.
2. Some anti-virus software blacklisted our software.
Oh, that's unfortunate. Simply explain the situation to them and hopefully they'll change their minds. If not, well TOO BAD. Its THEIR software, they can do what they want with it.
3. We state that they are not allowed to download our software in an attempt to stop them blacklisting us
Well, a sure fire way to get someone to blacklist you is to prevent them from actually examining your product and engaging in a dialogue about its application. In the world of anti-spayware/virus I would assume that if you can't get information, then you must blacklist it rather than expose yourself.
4. They carry on doing so, ignoring our warning they they are expressly forbidden from downloading our software - it is our copyright.
See, this is where you set down the wrong path. You should have pro-actively engaged the anti-spyware industry along the lines of "Hey, you guys call us spyware, but we're not and here's why..., can we come to some agreement about this?" Unless of course, it is just crappy spyware, in which case they'll throw you out. Further, as has been written several times already, they don't have to download it. All they have to do is go to a client's computer that already has it installed. Or perhaps someone handed them a copy of the binary and asked them to figure out what it was? The point is your attempt to forbid download has no effect at all on whether they can examine your software. It is merely inflammatory.
5. They ignore our attempts to contact them
Why should they communicate with you now? You've already tried to cut them out of the process with useless but inflammatory things like your anti-anti-spyware EULA?
6. So we consider going to the police to stop them downloading our program without permission.
Well, you certainly can consider it, but first you'll have to establish that they downloaded the program, and that your EULA clause is applicable at the time of download and not time of installation. And then you'll have to find a cop who actually has time to deal with this crap instead of his backlog of robberies and car-jackings.
7. We get flamed by a load of people who don't seem to understand the situation!
What we don't understand is how you think you can pull this off. You've taken the wrong tack and need to re-examine your process. A pro-active engagement of the anti-spyware/virus industry from the start would have done a lot to remediate this situation before it arose.
Why are we sleazy?
Because you make software that spies on people. jeez, it's not complicated.
They can always invoke the infamous playground rule of "no takebacks". There is no known way to defeat "no takebacks" unless you first utter "opposite day" or some other general protection clause ("I am rubber, you are glue" etc). But it is a matter of strict timing. Uttered too late and, well its too late. Too soon, and the enemy will withhold the "no takebacks" or worse turn it into an "all takebacks" or "1 2 3 NOT IT".
Does anyone else get the feeling that all these guys are rats trying to grab whatever they can while the ship goes down? This whole thing has gotta collapse at some point. I hope.
I agree completely and still use my celeron 300 for a lot of stuff. In fact, the only reason I upgraded my main machine was due to some failing memory and since I'd built the last one in '96 (?) figured it was time. My point was a joke, in that people buy as much bang as they can without consideration for their actual needs and then fill it with so much cruft and unneccessary processes that it grinds to nearly a halt. My example, my mom's old toshiba laptop is actually a sweet little machine, til you pile on the win '98 crap and the peoplesoft crap and all the other "crap" that is on it.... Hell, my uncle's machine which runs win 2000 and was a pretty high-powered machine could barely crawl due to the overwhelming amount of garbage. The thing literally had over 55 processes running with only one user logged in and no apps running. ugh. so it ran like a dog and he was ready to "upgrade" til I got a-hold of it and now its quite snappy...
I would agree, but what you fail to realise is that these consumers a planning ahead. They know that they'll use this machine for 2-3 years at least before upgrading. They also know that they'll be so riddled with spyware at the halfway point that they NEED that extra 1.7 GHz just to pull through.
on a serious note though, I keep trying to convince my mother to switch to linux on her crappy little laptop. All she does with it is surf and email and if she'd just ditch that bloated MS and put in a nice light-weight WM, she'd be really happy. And no, this is NOT OT because she has plenty of proc. and memory for what she does, but too much OS for her machine. ugh.
oh wait, this isn't a "put linux on old crappy laptop thread"? oh well.
Actually, the whole article is not too bad overall, we certainly see worse in real papers
yeah except I hate this kind of crap (from TFA):
Subjected to winds of 180 - 212 in early testing under controlled conditions, an earlier prototype withstood this force, with the only consequence being that a lock collar loosened by 1/8 of an inch
There is no reference as to what that 1/8 inch means. I hate it when "news" sources give specific information with no frame of reference. So the lock collar loosened by 1/8" and that's great if there is 1/2" of tolerance before failure, but what if the tolerance was more like 3/16" before failure? IOW, this is meaningless and because the number is "small" it must be good. crap reporting.
YOu need to link to that page from the original virus description... then it works fine.
If we could get a worm that resolves its own dependencies, think of the benefits for spreading Linux. No more RPM hell or the occaisional apt-get flake-out. WIth the right worm, even my grandma could start using Linux! Yes!
Oh, and the XBox 360 is going to kick the PS3's ass.
Sony PS3... Microsoft XBox...
Sony PS3... Microsoft XBox...
Sony PS3... Microsoft XBox...
Sony PS3... Microsoft XBox...
Sony PS3... Microsoft XBox...
Sony PS3... Microsoft XBox...
Sony PS3... Microsoft XBox...
Sony PS3... Microsoft XBox...
Sony PS3... Microsoft XBox...
Ack! Choose your evil.
But they'll pay for the damages in a class action settlement several years from now. By that time, the $ value of the settlement will be considerably smaller in future $ and the insurance company will likely pay it anyway. No problem.
Business Model:
1. Make crappy crap and sell the crap out of it.
2. Profit!!
3. ??
4. Maybe pay some profit back a long time from now.
I thought about this and then realised that the problem is that you're still PAYING them to produce this crap. This bothers me. While its great that you can get the music you want, and its cleary "fair use" to make a "backup" of the original disc it turns my stomach to realise that they are basically getting away with this crap. What you are doing is validating their plan.
The only solution I see is to make a copy, then take the original disc(along with all packaging), along with the crufty old player that CAN'T read it back to the retailer and demand your money back as the disc won't function in your player. You'll likely have to demonstrate that. If the disc is so crippled, then it can't really meet the CDDA standard etc etc etc.
Oh, yeah. You'll want to throw away that copy you made earlier. ahem.
OMFG this is FUNNY!!! not interesting!!!
(Lameness filter precludes more caps in this post. please imagine more caps. thank you)
well, fancy that...
"So, I'm gonna invent this thing that makes lots of energy."
"okay, what's it gonna do?"
"Ooh, I know, its gonna get really hot really fast when you turn it on and that'll make energy. yeah."
"okay, cool. how hot?"
"Oh, I don't know, maybe a million degrees?"
"Well, that doesn't seem very hot..."
"okay, I know, lets make it a BILLION DEGREES!! mwuhahahahahahahaha!"
"Yeah, okay, people will be really impressed with a billion degrees. So, how big is this thing?"
"Umm, I don't know, lets make it the size of a car."
"Well, that's not very impressive, I mean I can get a generator the size of a big cooler and it'll power my whole house."
"Oh, yeah, okay. I know we'll make it the SIZE OF A COFFEE CAN!! mwuhahahahahaha!"
"Cool. okay..."
I, for one, hope I'm proved to be as wacky as these guys appear to be.
I can't stand it.
"reallyremotistan" is freakin' hilarious. and so sadly true.
Gnome is being guided towards being a Desktop for dummies, but it's weird behaviour only make users unconfortable with that Desktop.
:p
Unfortunately, I have to agree. Although I've only got a couple months of GNOME under my belt and haven't taken the time to perfect its set-up like I did with KDE, I find I am constantly frustrated with by things that should "just work". Example, there is no way I can see to make nautilus open sub-folders in the same window when file-browsing. Maybe I'm stupid (wouldn't be the first time), but I hate my desktop cluttered with a bunch of unneeded windows from farther up the directory tree. There also seems to be less direct access to the nuts&bolts of things in GNOME than in KDE. I'm sure its all impression, but its putting me off and I'm just about ready to head back to KDE for good.
of course, I use Debian, so this is probably all moot
Many people I know who've completed post-grad degrees need those relationships because all they've done so far in life is go to school. They need a network and recommendations.
If you're already in the work force in your field and are looking to expand your knowledge and skills, these personal contacts are not as essential. You're already employed, you already know people and have a social infrastructure. Online courses make sense then as all you really need out of them are the knowledge in your noggin and the paper in your hand.
Not to mention, as has been discussed in old sci-fi novels for decades, the moon is much farther up the gravity well from us and they'll have lots and lots of rocks.
I think you'd only need a handful of resourceful people up there with a big slingshot and they've got us all by the short-curlies.