I can't help to see the need to see Microsoft completely destroyed.
Given the number of entities that depend on MS software, this would not be a good thing in the short term. But since it's highly unlikely, I won't lose any sleep over that possibility.
What would be good is for MS to gradually decline to just one provider of operating systems amongst several, all with similar market share. That would compel them to honestly pursue interoperability with other platforms. I think that scenario is one which we can hope for over the long term.
Linux box with an uptime of 153 days. It does have to go down now and again so I can clean the dust and cat fur out of it, but that doesn't take too long.
If you have evidence, show it. If it's infringing, it'll be removed. But you don't want to. You want to spread FUD to generate $$$.
Isn't this exactly what SCO did? And now Microsoft seeks to emulate them? Is Balmer on crack? I suppose the test will be whether or not they actually pursue anything in the courts. Pure FUD is cheap, and sad to say, probably at least somewhat effective.
When I'm working on a problem on the computer, I'm physically in the room, but my mind is in some abstract space such that the height of the ceiling is really irrelevant. Perhaps they should do a study on the effects of monitor size. I might feel more constrained using a 14" monitor. Or operating systems. Unless I can install cygwin, I feel really constrained in Windows.
copyright should be excluded from the conventional understanding of 'intellectual property'. If there is a 'property right' with regard to copyright, then the property right belongs to the public. That's right, all copyrighted material belongs to the public, it is public property. What copyright provides is a temporary monopoly on the creative work to the creator of the work as reward and incentive to create original work. Perhaps the confusion is understandable as the term of copyright keeps getting extended, but it's important to understand so we can recognize the bullshit way the term 'intellectual property' is used with regard to copyright.
My god. If I changed my.sig to "I'm inserting my virtual penis into your unwilling virtual vagina", would I become the worlds most prolific serial virtual rapist?
This is slashdot. Perhaps you meant "I'm inserting my virtual penis into your unwilling virtual mangina".
Handy for finding ad urls when you don't want to click on them because they're on your own site because clicking on your own ads is against google's terms. Bit of a pain, but the information is in there if you want to dig it out.
There's a misplaced 'y' at the beginning of the 2nd last word, but we shouldn't come down too hard on them for it. It's something a spell checker wouldn't catch.
If I were them I'd probably blame the "necessity" of the copy-restriction schemes on the "pirates" in the first place, and thus account any "lost sales" due to copy-restriction issues as part of the "loss" due to "piracy".
Unfortunately it's a bit circular as well. Because I consider them to be a bunch of evil bastards, if I want something of theirs I'll look for it using means that don't put any money in their coffers. It's hard to believe, but I was once something of a Sony fan some years ago. Over the years I've actually shelled out a fair bit of cash on diverse Sony products. No more.
That is very cool. Couple it with some sort of modulate/demodulate device and it might do the trick. I wonder how many bytes you could store per 12" vinyl disk.
I just bought a DAT deck on ebay. But I probably would not have were it not for the fact that my old DAT deck died and I have material on DAT. I suppose I should have saved it on CD or DVD, but I'm not that confident about the longevity of these mediums. Of course, tape will deteriorate as well. I suppose I should just resign myself to eventual non-existence, both of myself and of the artifacts that mark my being here. Bummer.
What are you archiving to? Is there a system for transfering digital data to vinyl? Short of carving ones and zeroes into stone, that might be the way to go, provided it were cared for properly. But until such time as I have my digital to vinyl transcriber, I think I'll keep my DAT tapes and try to keep a working deck on hand.
That's a lot better than the account I had in 1994. Of course the limiting factor in those days was the dial up modem. It worked with the phone lines, sort of like ADSL, but much, much slower. Noisier too. And don't get me started about trumpet winsock. Kids today don't know how good they got it. 5 GB, boo hoo. Back then the only 5 GB was on Star Trek.
Get rid of grading altogether. Education shouldn't be some stupid game where students quite legitimately ask, 'Is this going to be on the exam?', because if you're going for high score you don't want to waste a lot of time on stuff that won't score you points. The only exams should be at the start of term to determine if a student possesses the prerequisite knowledge to handle the course material. Fail prereq exams, don't get necessary courses, don't graduate. Anyone who graduates has to have known enough to do so. Beyond that, place emphasis on the aquisition of knowledge -- wouldn't that be revolutionary? Education that emphasized the aquisition of knowledge? What a concept.
As long as it's just a game I really can't get that upset about students gaming the game. As is, it's just bullshit anyway. Get through it any way you can.
In the call centre, humans are made to wear headphones with the little microphone thingy. They are strapped into chairs, and an IV is inserted into each arm, one containing a stimulant, the other a relaxant. Electrodes for measuring galvanic skin response, as well as heart monitors are attached. The central computer queues calls, and assigns them to available humans. If it is detected that a human is becoming agitated, the relaxant iv drip is opened. If the human seems too relaxed, the stimulant drip is opened. If the call queue is long, the system may bias drips in favour of stimulant, though this can be risky, as humans may totally wig out.
Ok, that might be a slight exageration. It's based on the account of a friend who worked in one. Perhaps it wasn't quite as bad as he let on.
That's a nice breakdown. Another difference between material objects and copyable files is that there's a sort of coercive element to the material -- we've got it, if you want it, you gotta pay what we're asking. Files can, with some effort, be gotten for free. The value of the commercial product is in quality of the files and overall packaging, as well as ease of access. These are things worth paying for, even if you could get the content for free, though as you outline, what people are willing to pay will vary. However, the lower the price, the more people there are who will be willing to pay.
For myself the only exception is music sold by RIAA member labels (EMI, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, others). As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter how they price their product, they aren't going to get one red cent from me until they stop suing their customers, especially the weakest amongst us like children, single mothers, people on disability.
How about implementing the noon rule, where jokes must be played (posted) before noon in the time zone the joker is in. Otherwise the joker (Zonk in this case) is the fool.
April Fool is dead and gone,
You're a fool to carry it on.
Somehow I doubt there was ever a pirate sitting on the deck of his vessel in the early evening, sipping his tea and perusing The Lay of Leithian in his off-hours from pillaging the nearby towns.
True. They preferred The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Their choral presentations were said to be quite spirited.
About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white.
KDE has given me the cleanest interface possible, with some customization. I choose not to put anything on the desktop, the task bar is hidden, and the apps I use most launch with keyboard short cuts. When nothing is open, there's nothing there, very clean. Amusing to watch a co-worker try to do anything on it though. To get the task bar to come up you have to mouse to the upper left corner, but they don't know that.
Unlimited $1 bills, or unlimited pennies, or unlimited $20 bills, or unlimited flecks of gold... does it really matter if indeed it is unlimited?
Yup, because the pipe itself is limited, they're not offering petabytes a second. I would opt for the pipe full of twenties over the pipe full of pennies. Don't go for the flecks of gold, though, as they'll fill up the air, you'll be breathing them in, and then you'll die of gold lung.
IT-class people with time on their hands, then Linux is insanley expensive to maintain.
I would have disagreed with you until I had the experience of working on a small network set up by a creative monkey based on Mandrake distros. The monkey quit and left the non-tech savy boss begging for help.
That said, if you are set up initially by someone who knows what they're doing and get a modicum of training with regard to day to day tasks, Linux can run rock solid without much trouble. If it's well set up when you do need to call an expert for support, the expert can just get to work on your problem without first having to hose off the monkey shit.
If a creative monkey is going to set things up, then as much as it pains me to recommend Microsoft, that might be the way to go. Choices are more constrained. Still would be a good idea to get an expert to go over the set up with eye to security. Or use a distro like Fedora and do things the Fedora way, don't get creative unless you really know what you're doing.
Slashdot Mirror
Given the number of entities that depend on MS software, this would not be a good thing in the short term. But since it's highly unlikely, I won't lose any sleep over that possibility.
What would be good is for MS to gradually decline to just one provider of operating systems amongst several, all with similar market share. That would compel them to honestly pursue interoperability with other platforms. I think that scenario is one which we can hope for over the long term.
Linux box with an uptime of 153 days. It does have to go down now and again so I can clean the dust and cat fur out of it, but that doesn't take too long.
Isn't this exactly what SCO did? And now Microsoft seeks to emulate them? Is Balmer on crack? I suppose the test will be whether or not they actually pursue anything in the courts. Pure FUD is cheap, and sad to say, probably at least somewhat effective.
When I'm working on a problem on the computer, I'm physically in the room, but my mind is in some abstract space such that the height of the ceiling is really irrelevant. Perhaps they should do a study on the effects of monitor size. I might feel more constrained using a 14" monitor. Or operating systems. Unless I can install cygwin, I feel really constrained in Windows.
That's something of an overstatement.
Or it would have been, before Harper.
copyright should be excluded from the conventional understanding of 'intellectual property'. If there is a 'property right' with regard to copyright, then the property right belongs to the public. That's right, all copyrighted material belongs to the public, it is public property. What copyright provides is a temporary monopoly on the creative work to the creator of the work as reward and incentive to create original work. Perhaps the confusion is understandable as the term of copyright keeps getting extended, but it's important to understand so we can recognize the bullshit way the term 'intellectual property' is used with regard to copyright.
This is slashdot. Perhaps you meant "I'm inserting my virtual penis into your unwilling virtual mangina".
right click on ad, copy link location, paste into a text editor
http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/iclk?look for: adurl=http://whatever
Handy for finding ad urls when you don't want to click on them because they're on your own site because clicking on your own ads is against google's terms. Bit of a pain, but the information is in there if you want to dig it out.There's a misplaced 'y' at the beginning of the 2nd last word, but we shouldn't come down too hard on them for it. It's something a spell checker wouldn't catch.
Unfortunately it's a bit circular as well. Because I consider them to be a bunch of evil bastards, if I want something of theirs I'll look for it using means that don't put any money in their coffers. It's hard to believe, but I was once something of a Sony fan some years ago. Over the years I've actually shelled out a fair bit of cash on diverse Sony products. No more.
Hey, as long as you're older than 35, I say kudos to you, well done.
I say fine, let them try, but only if we can call shenanigans on them when we catch them at it, then beat them to death with sticks.
You're thinking of Fyodor. Otherwise, I concur with your assessment.
<|8-p <- Image of the King of Thailand
Now they can ban slashdot.
That is very cool. Couple it with some sort of modulate/demodulate device and it might do the trick. I wonder how many bytes you could store per 12" vinyl disk.
I just bought a DAT deck on ebay. But I probably would not have were it not for the fact that my old DAT deck died and I have material on DAT. I suppose I should have saved it on CD or DVD, but I'm not that confident about the longevity of these mediums. Of course, tape will deteriorate as well. I suppose I should just resign myself to eventual non-existence, both of myself and of the artifacts that mark my being here. Bummer.
What are you archiving to? Is there a system for transfering digital data to vinyl? Short of carving ones and zeroes into stone, that might be the way to go, provided it were cared for properly. But until such time as I have my digital to vinyl transcriber, I think I'll keep my DAT tapes and try to keep a working deck on hand.
That's a lot better than the account I had in 1994. Of course the limiting factor in those days was the dial up modem. It worked with the phone lines, sort of like ADSL, but much, much slower. Noisier too. And don't get me started about trumpet winsock. Kids today don't know how good they got it. 5 GB, boo hoo. Back then the only 5 GB was on Star Trek.
Get rid of grading altogether. Education shouldn't be some stupid game where students quite legitimately ask, 'Is this going to be on the exam?', because if you're going for high score you don't want to waste a lot of time on stuff that won't score you points. The only exams should be at the start of term to determine if a student possesses the prerequisite knowledge to handle the course material. Fail prereq exams, don't get necessary courses, don't graduate. Anyone who graduates has to have known enough to do so. Beyond that, place emphasis on the aquisition of knowledge -- wouldn't that be revolutionary? Education that emphasized the aquisition of knowledge? What a concept.
As long as it's just a game I really can't get that upset about students gaming the game. As is, it's just bullshit anyway. Get through it any way you can.
In the call centre, humans are made to wear headphones with the little microphone thingy. They are strapped into chairs, and an IV is inserted into each arm, one containing a stimulant, the other a relaxant. Electrodes for measuring galvanic skin response, as well as heart monitors are attached. The central computer queues calls, and assigns them to available humans. If it is detected that a human is becoming agitated, the relaxant iv drip is opened. If the human seems too relaxed, the stimulant drip is opened. If the call queue is long, the system may bias drips in favour of stimulant, though this can be risky, as humans may totally wig out.
Ok, that might be a slight exageration. It's based on the account of a friend who worked in one. Perhaps it wasn't quite as bad as he let on.
That's a nice breakdown. Another difference between material objects and copyable files is that there's a sort of coercive element to the material -- we've got it, if you want it, you gotta pay what we're asking. Files can, with some effort, be gotten for free. The value of the commercial product is in quality of the files and overall packaging, as well as ease of access. These are things worth paying for, even if you could get the content for free, though as you outline, what people are willing to pay will vary. However, the lower the price, the more people there are who will be willing to pay.
For myself the only exception is music sold by RIAA member labels (EMI, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, others). As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter how they price their product, they aren't going to get one red cent from me until they stop suing their customers, especially the weakest amongst us like children, single mothers, people on disability.
How about implementing the noon rule, where jokes must be played (posted) before noon in the time zone the joker is in. Otherwise the joker (Zonk in this case) is the fool.
April Fool is dead and gone,
You're a fool to carry it on.
True. They preferred The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Their choral presentations were said to be quite spirited.
About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white.
(Arrr, that it did, that it did, me hearties)
KDE has given me the cleanest interface possible, with some customization. I choose not to put anything on the desktop, the task bar is hidden, and the apps I use most launch with keyboard short cuts. When nothing is open, there's nothing there, very clean. Amusing to watch a co-worker try to do anything on it though. To get the task bar to come up you have to mouse to the upper left corner, but they don't know that.
Yup, because the pipe itself is limited, they're not offering petabytes a second. I would opt for the pipe full of twenties over the pipe full of pennies. Don't go for the flecks of gold, though, as they'll fill up the air, you'll be breathing them in, and then you'll die of gold lung.
I would have disagreed with you until I had the experience of working on a small network set up by a creative monkey based on Mandrake distros. The monkey quit and left the non-tech savy boss begging for help.
That said, if you are set up initially by someone who knows what they're doing and get a modicum of training with regard to day to day tasks, Linux can run rock solid without much trouble. If it's well set up when you do need to call an expert for support, the expert can just get to work on your problem without first having to hose off the monkey shit.
If a creative monkey is going to set things up, then as much as it pains me to recommend Microsoft, that might be the way to go. Choices are more constrained. Still would be a good idea to get an expert to go over the set up with eye to security. Or use a distro like Fedora and do things the Fedora way, don't get creative unless you really know what you're doing.