I think it was obvious from the context that "position" referred to "moral position", not "military position." I don't think anyone would argue that we couldn't significantly alter the government of any other nation if we didn't care about the consequences (many of them would require nukes).
You misunderstood ubernostrum. S/he was replying to the "(if they changed it)" in the parent post. It doesn't matter if Microsoft changed it, if they hand out binaries they must hand out source.
This is wrong. Apps that are compiled for Altivec don't run at all on G3s. That is why if you want to run Altivec code you have to detect at runtime what CPU you are on and run a non-Altivec version (or quit) if you are on a G3. So adding in optimizations for G4s do not make G3s run slower: they just run the non-optimized, plain PPC version.
You notice a speed difference between OSX and Linux because you compiled Linux from source for the G3? Huh? Perhaps it is because you are running a completely different window manager (Aqua vs. KDE/Gnome), graphics system (Quartz vs. X11), operating system (BSD vs. GNU), and kernel (Mach vs. Linux). If you really want to measure the speed difference from compiling for the G3, take a binary PPC distro and test it against the exact same distro compiled from source. Debian should suffice. However, I really doubt you will see much difference.
What you are really seeing isn't a huge difference between Linux and OSX on a G3 and a neglible difference between Linux and OSX on a G4, but a neglible difference between Linux on a G3 and a G4 and a huge difference between OSX on a G3 and a G4. And the reasons aren't suprising. The reason you don't see a large difference between Linux on a G3 and a G4 is because Linux is not (for the most part) optimized to take advantage of Altivec, the G4's main advantage over the G3, and because even if it was, Linux runs "fast enough" on a G3, so it doesn't need the extra speed those optimizations would provide (it is like the difference between 60fps and 120fps; not as dramatic as the difference between 15fps and 30fps). The reason for the large difference between OSX on a G3 and a G4 is that OSX is heavily optimized for the G4, and OSX needs the extra speed those optimizations provide. Aqua and Quartz are a lot more computationally complex than KDE/Gnome and X11. Altivec (or QuartzExtreme) put OSX into the "fast enough" category, and therefore equivalent to Linux.
Anyone can create a derivative work. The copyright holder is the only person who has the right to create a derivative work, so if a work is found by a court to be derivative, the author can't copyright it.
Taking an original story and converting it into a movie is a derivative work of that story. That is why movie studios pay money to authors to license their works with the intent of turning those works into movies. If they didn't, the author would sue the studio claiming the movie was a derivative work, get their copyright revoked, and sue for the revenues it made.
The rubric for determining a derivative work is necessarily fuzzy and subjective. Witness the furor over Alice Randall's novel, The Wind Done Gone, her retelling of Gone With the Wind from the point of view of the slaves. The current copyright holders sued Ms. Randall claiming that her book was a derivative work of Gone With the Wind. She claimed it was a parody and ended up winning on appeal, but it was a very close case. Just using the characters can be enough, so creating a sequel The Jungle Book on Mogli's experiences living with humans might be considered a derivative work, if it was still under copyright. Whether the author can own the copyright on that derivative work depends on whether the original story is in the public domain or that person gets a license from the creator of the original work.
My understanding is that only the Sorenson v3 and WM9 video formats require external libraries (dlls; they aren't supported on the Mac). The rest of the video formats have been reverse engineered and are in the source code, so they transfer to any platform you can compile on. And the MPlayer guys are trying to remove the external dependencies for those formats, too.
For Mac users, you have to check out MPlayerOSX. This is my first time using MPlayer and it is awesome! Much better than vlc or the 3ivx decoder, performance is great on my G3/400. Finally, I can watch divxs with WMA audio tracks on my Mac!
It just doesn't seem fair how easy it is: no compiling, no tweaking, just install the package and it works. Still has some polishing (switching out of full screen stops the movie), but the source is all there. A must have.
Yes, you can. GPL is copyright and is still subject to fair use, which includes quoting. So long as my new work only uses small snippets of the original, it is not considered a derivative work. The length of an acceptable quote and whether or not something is a derivative work is a value judgement that has to be decided on a case by case basis following the 4 rubrics of fair use (defined in copyright law, but in a slightly different form here).
But that is really besides the point, because what we are talking about are facts, and facts are not subject to copyright. So I can look at GPLed source code and determine that a processor has this many registers, or requires this bit set to use this feature, etc. Those are all facts, not expressions of an idea, and I can derive those from the Linux source code and put them in anything I want.
Okay, I made some mistakes in the last post. You're right, none of the problem's relate to a registrant being unable to get their record updated.
In fact, I more or less agree with all of your points. I probably shouldn't have even bothered posting that last one.
I would like to elucidate on the one point I think there could be some meaningful debate on: anonymous ownership of domain names.
I think that contact information should be optional. However, I think the owner should be listed publically. I can't think of any way one can legally, publically distribute information anonymously. The author of a piece of information can be anonymous, but if one chooses to distribute that piece of information, in a news story or a pamphlet or a book, etc., one can't do it anonymously. And the Internet is just another method for distributing information.
Perhaps I am wrong, but I think of domain names as analogous to property, the ownership of which is public record. Is that overly retrictive? I can see where anonymous publication would be useful, but it seems like all accountability is lost as well. It seems like the existing mechanisms for anonymity are enough: an author has to find someone who will bear the responsibility for publishing the information.
But it is a personal privacy issue. Verisign is breaking its contract, but by doing so it's protecting its customers' personal privacy.
I still respectfully disagree. I'm going off incomplete facts here, but it sounds like in some of the cases ICANN sites, the registrants are trying to get their contact information changed and VeriSign isn't allowing them.
I sincerely doubt VeriSign is doing this to help their customers. I have tried to change contact information with them (my dad registered a domain for his business; bad dad!) and it is a very difficult process. So whether or not in these specific cases they are trying to protect their customers privacy, I have first hand knowledge that the general complaints ICANN is raising are valid: VeriSign can be very slow or even completely unresponsive in changing WHOIS records.
Also, if you want to register a domain, there has to be some way for people to contact you. No one requires you to give your home address, but you have to give some contact information. It is like receiving mail. Use a P.O. box or your work address, but if no one can reach you in the eventuality your domain is misused, you shouldn't have a domain. With priviledges come responsibilites. I understand the various concerns such as frivolous lawsuits, but breaking one system to compensate for a broken system isn't the solution.
Please, no more pity posts for ICANN.
I also disagree with your characterization that my post was a "pity post for ICANN". It most certainly was not and I fail to see what caused you to reach that conclusion. That said, while I don't support ICANN, I'm also not going to fault them for taking a step in the right direction and I see trying to clean up the WHOIS database as a step in the right direction.
The other is the capitalist system we are in - which has been proven to work great. Individuals assert their own rights and work to benefit themselves and in doing so, benefit society at large.
No. The robber barons of the early steel and oil industries did not work to the good of society. They amassed massive personal wealth in order to create personal dynasties that still last to this day (Rockefeller, Carnegie, etc.). This was done to the detriment of the mass of society (low wages, child labor, massive numbers of industrial accidents, union busters, etc.). It is an inverse proportion: the smaller the concentration of wealth, the greater the rest of society is screwed. Look at every accumulation of massive person wealth through history and you will see the exploitation of societies for the gain of a few.
The first is the communist system. It's a great idea in principle, but as anyone older than 15 will tell you, it just doesn't work.
And that same person will tell you the same about capitalism. We live in a complex world and any simple model will eventually break down. Sure, capitalism works great at first (as does communism). There is a level playing field, lots of entities competing, fast innovation in the industry. But then one or two players emerge as the strongest and the competition dies away. The industry consolidates, barriers to entry are raised, and there is a hardening of the arteries. At this point, capitalism fails because the barriers to competition are prohibitvely high and competition dies. And this is the best case; if some players start with an unequal advantage, the hardening and consolidation can occur before the industry even begins. E.g., Microsoft entering a new industry and using its billions to bar others from competing by giving away the product or the broadband providers using legislation to make it harder for competitors to compete.
The same thing happens at a societal level. Face it, if a person is born rich, they have a large head start on everybody else. If the gap between rich and poor becomes too great, it doesn't matter how in-bred, weak, and dumb a blue-blood gets, no one can catch up. Government (societal) regulation is needed to help narrow the gap between rich and poor, to ensure that we all start on a somewhat even playing field no matter who we are born to. No society will be perfect (imperfect world again), but the society that gets closest has the best chance of success because it is less likely that their next Einstein will be shot dead in a ghetto at 15. Competition is great and the best competition occurs when everyone starts from the same place.
If...it would be impossible for eBay to succeed without infringing the patent, I see nothing wrong with eBay sharing some of their profits with the inventor who they owe their success to.
Ah, but there is an incongruency in that statement. eBay infringing the patent and owing their success to it are two entirely different things. Yes, your disclaimer says you are using a fictional patent (not very sporting, changing the subject of debate halfway through). But you don't say that it is any more meritorious than this one, only different. I do agree that the original poster's argument is flawed, but your's is equally so.
It used to be that patents were for inventions; patent applications required a working model or plans for the invention being patented. Some good examples of this (and the patent system at its best, although there were also abuses) are provided by the American gun industry in the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as the lever-action repeating rifle (the Winchester). Anyone could invent a repeating rifle, but they couldn't use the same lever mechanism to eject the spent shell and load a new one (which was an ingenious solution, both reliable and elegant) unless they licensed it (for a period of time).
Now, however, an applicant can be so abstract as to patent a general idea and not an invention. There is a level of specificity missing. You should have to provide source code, a UML design, something that goes quite a bit beyond what "software" and "business plan" patents require.
How many ideas are truly original? We are all standing on the shoulders of giants, afterall. What is important is the application of an idea, the creation of something unique.
So, eBay can not avoid infringing the patent and yet does not owe any of their success to the "inventor" (a misuse of the word) of the patent. That is a telling sign that our patent system needs some revision. Besides which, the patent was filed a couple months after the first post on eBay. Another problem with our patent system.
The press release ICANN sent out can be found here. It looks like the article was written straight from this with a reaction from VeriSign, which just muddled the real issue.
The problem isn't that VeriSign has incorrect information in the WHOIS database, it is that it makes no effort to correct that information. They have been notified to correct several records and they haven't. And in one case, VeriSign told a registrant to put in an incorrect address.
No, they aren't breaking the law, but they are breaking their contract with ICANN and so ICANN is enforcing that contract. And this isn't a personal privacy issue; that is completely separate from VeriSign not updating WHOIS records when requested and telling customers to give false information. Please, no more pity posts for VeriSign!
...while obviously what Microsoft did was bad, it isn't illegal.
That isn't what the chairman of the FTC seems to think. From the BBC article:
The FTC said Microsoft misrepresented the security of Passport's design and use.
"Companies that promise to keep personal information secure must follow reasonable and appropriate measures to do so," said Timothy Muris, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission in a statement.
"It's not only good business, it's the law," he said, "Even absent known security breaches, we will not wait to act."
Nice troll. Provide links if you want to convince me.
Yes, the Mac data bus is 64-bits wide and the address bus is 36. I don't know as much about Intel Pentium's data bus, but I thought they were 64-bits, also. Regardless, the PIV's bus speed is 400mhz (iirc; aren't they supposed to hit 533mhz soon?), or 3x the Macs, so even if they are pushing half as much data they are still 50% faster.
And regardless, I'm not comparing to Pentiums. I'm saying that the single biggest bottleneck on the Mac is the frontside bus. It doesn't matter how faster or slower it is compared to the Pentium or any other architecture. What matters is whether the CPU's data bus is holding up the processor. And all signs point to yes, it is.
Please, follow that link to BadAndy's posts and read them. There is somebody who works with G4s everyday at the hardware level. His team even looked at rolling their own DDR chip to improve their bandwidth, but after a week or two it proved to be much too expensive (they needed a custom asic, they couldn't do it with FPGAs).
I have a friend that works at AMC, and he has been able to offer some corroboration (he works mostly on XScale, but he does a little PPC). So I'm not just taking BadAndy's word for it.
Troll elsewhere.
Read some of the posts by BadAndy. He does a lot of embedded development with the G4 and knows them inside and out. I actually have this link bookmarked and check it out every morning after SlashDot.
To summarize, he would say:
The main problem with the Mac right now is CPU bandwidth, not CPU speed, so hold off until Apple does something to alleviate it. It is widely expected that they will introduce new PowerMacs with the DDR northbridge used in the new Xserve shortly (MacWorld next week or Seybold). That is the bare minimum they can do (because the bus to the CPU is still 133mhz; still, it helps with DMA and it is possible they have hacked the bus to eek out a bit more performance; we really don't know). Wait for that.
Get a dual.
Don't necessarily get the latest and greatest CPU, as there has traditionally been a lot of errata to sort out in newer CPUs. You would probably be better off with a slower, older dual.
If you don't want to wait, you would be better off finding an older dual 533 (if you can) or trying to get a good deal on the current duals (after MacWorld). The best value in the Macs available today would be a used dual 533 (if you can find someone that will part with theirs).
That said, before you do anything, WAIT. Wait until after MacWorld next week and wait until Jaguar is announced (it is supposed to ship in August, so it will probably be announced at MacWorld). Jaguar, with QuartzExtreme, will probably have a big impact on the card you want for dual monitor support.
From my experience, build to order your G4. Get the minimum RAM (single stick; if you have to choose between a 128 stick and a 256 stick you might want to go with the 256), minimum hard drive (optional, Apple isn't horrible and since you have to have one you might want to get one you'll keep) and get rid of things you don't need ($29 modem). RAM you can from Crucial or PriceWatch. Hard drive from PriceWatch or somewhere else. SuperDrives are nice.
Get the best CPU you can (see BadAndy's advice above). You don't really upgrade your CPU, so this is critical.
Don't get it from Apple, but do get RAM. It makes the biggest difference in OS X responsiveness. RAM is cheap, and while I am fine with 160MB in my iBook most of the time, I notice a difference on my slower home machine with 384MB. OS X's window server can basically use as much as you give it.
Gator's Eagle said the program is an easy way for visitors to download the software, and he emphasized that they are given the opportunity to click "No."
"There's no question that there (are) programs that are more aggressive. With this, there's some measure of permission," said Eagle.
I don't think you really understand compulsory licenses or what the RIAA is trying to do. Here is another article that should help a little.
Compulsory licenses are mandated by Congress. Radio would be impossible with out them. Individually negotiated licenses would be prohibitively complicated. Imagine spending several days negotiating a license for every 3 minutes of air time; even 20 minutes would be unworkable. Congress recognized this and set up the compulsory license.
The RIAA is doing no one any favors. Right now, the RIAA gets nothing for radio broadcasts. Congress decided that the record companies were compensated by the free publicity that radio provided, which sold records for them. It makes sense and it seems to have done pretty well for the record companies. It seems logical that this would extend to web broadcasts as well.
But the RIAA has never been happy with being left out of the radio royalty loop. And they see this as an opportunity to get a piece of the pie. So they are using the advent of a new form of broadcasting as a way to muscle their way in. Doing us a favor? Hardly. The RIAA would like to have all of the profits from music broadcasting, whether it be radio or web.
And that is why compulsory licenses are needed. There is no competition here. There are no "market forces". If they could get away with it, the copyright holders would suck up all of the profits from music broadcasting. A broadcaster doesn't have any other options.
Regarding the GPL, by using Linux you are agreeing to the GPL. Downloading it (making a copy) and using it are not "fair use" rights. Also, the GPL is not a compulsory license. A compulsory license is one that is forced by an outside party and generally refers to one forced by the government.
jwz has written up a nice article that explains how the current licensing works and how the proposed CARP licensing would work here. There is no way Internet radio will be feasible if this goes in to effect, even without the added fees. Check out the information broadcasters would be required to report to the RIAA: there is no fewer than 18 pieces of information required for each song played! Not to mention the information that must be gathered from each listener. But just in case, the fees can be applied retroactively.
I hope that if this does go into effect, there is a large backlash. Remember that this is an election year. Votes still matter and politicians still care about getting them.
If there is a fire a theater, isn't everyone in the theater affected? He may have intended your interpretation, but there is no way to derive that from what he said. Like the original poster said, it is a bad analogy.
How about instead of using the Gallup wording (see bottom of post), using:
As you may know, last year, a district court judge found that Microsoft was a monopoly and had illegally used its monopoly power to harm competitors. This past Thursday, an appeals court upheld the judge's findings, but ruled the judge had unfair bias in his proposed remedy.
What do you think the federal government should do now -- [ROTATED: allow Microsoft to go unpunished for its illegal behavior, seek a settlement with Microsoft, or go forward with the case against Microsoft in front of a new judge] -- or don't you have an opinion on this matter?
I'm guessing the result of that poll would be quite different. I think the Gallup wording was biased towards Microsoft by omitting that MICROSOFT WAS CONVICTED OF ABUSING MONOPOLY POWER! Say what you will, the fact is they were found guilty and the appeals court upheld those findings. To let them off now would be to make a mockery of our justice system. What is the point in convicting people if there are no consequences to being convicted?
The original wording for the Gallup poll was:
As you may know, last year, a district court judge ruled that Microsoft should be split into two companies. This past Thursday, an appeals court overturned the ruling and ordered the whole case sent to a different judge, because the original judge had been biased against Microsoft.
What do you think the federal government should do now -- [ROTATED: drop the case against Microsoft altogether, seek a settlement with Microsoft, or go forward with the case against Microsoft in front of a new judge] -- or don?t you have an opinion on this matter?
While I'm sure we can all appreciate the sentiment, I have to point out that it is very naive to think that a large system will not have bugs.
Even if your code is as perfect as you claim or would like it to be, the problem is that I can't think of a single company that writes 100% of the code used in their product. For instance, at my company, we just had to redesign a sub-component of our software to get around a compiler bug that was causing us to crash. So, even though our code was perfect, there was still a bug that had to be found and fixed.
Which takes us to another point. The more people working on something, the greater and more complex the codebase, the more likely inadvertent bugs are going to be introduced. So, we redesigned a piece of the code to get around a compiler bug. How does that affect the people who are using that code? If the interface had to be redesigned as well, now you have a change that could affect a significant percentage of the overall codebase and multiple other developers and an increased chance of creating a bug.
So, while I agree that developers should try harder, believing that you can completely eliminate bugs will just cause you to miss the ones that are there.
I think a better solution to the problem at hand is to hold software companies responsible for their work, just like in any other industry. I think the car industry is a great example. Just like any other complex system, cars have bugs. Two pieces have a gap between them, something was a bit shorter than it needed to be, etc. Car manufacturers try hard, very hard, to eliminate any major problems that might cause their product to crash, just like software, and also just like software, sometimes a major problem makes it into the version released to the public. But the parallels between the software and car industries ends there. When the recent problem with Ford Explorers and their tires was discovered, did Ford make customers go out and buy the new version of the Ford Explorer? Of course not. They went back and fixed it on every version of the Ford Explorer that *might* be affected by it. Why? Because, try as hard as they did to prevent any problems, it was still their fault. Not their customers.
Shouldn't the software industry be treated the same as any other? If there is a bug in Windows that allows anybody to root your machine if you are on the 'Net, shouldn't they have to fix that? Should you have to pay more because they screwed up? I don't think so.
This sounds like a recent article. Maybe the writer was trying to emulate Chris Morris? Or perhaps this is closer to an example of the kind of journalism he was satirizing.
I expect I'll read about/. readers firebombing the cars of Microsoft parents by mistake.
This is a separate issue. Unlike with DVDs, with videogames there are technological reasons for this. PAL has a higher resolution and lower framerate than NTSC, and sometimes bugs show up in PAL that aren't seen in NTSC. Generally, the videogame engine is tweaked a little, and the game has to run through another round of QA. So the game that shows up in Europe is a bit different than the one in the US.
I remember at EA we released a PAL version of FIFA with a major bug because it had been tested on PAL systems running on 110 instead of 220. So now there is a large converter that outputs 220 for PAL testing purposes.
As for Japanese/US partitioning, the reasons are a little bit less clear. I think the main reasons are licensing and language. Most licensed properties are for the Japanese arena only and the videogame publishers don't want consumers to be able to accidentally by a Japanese version of a game. I don't think it is too big a burden for those few that want Japanese language games to buy a Japanese language console, although it will be nice to have region free consoles and games. I know some of the PS2 games are being developed in both English and Japanese.
I really do not think that the fact that you are Canadian gives you any great insight on this matter.
IANAC (Canadian), but I think I might have more than pure speculation to offer. A close personal friend of mine is one of the air crewman being held in China.
First, let me point out that we WERE NOT SPYING. While it is convenient to call it that, spying by definition involves secrecy. What we were doing was intelligence gathering, and not spying, because there was no secrecy involved. We have been doing these flights for a long time. China knows it. The American public knows it (or could have, if they wanted to), and the rest of the world knows it, if they want. Secrecy is not a requirement of intelligence gathering. We routinely monitor the transmissions of other countries. If you do not like it, do not send your signals into international or U.S. territory. It is that simple. I don't want my neighbor to see me changing, so I close the blinds. If I choose not to, I can't blame my neighbor for seeing me naked.
Regarding your speculation that pilot decided "to teach the fighter pilot a lesson" is outrageous. While it might seem reasonable to someone raised on Top Gun and Hollywood movies, it does not occur in these cases. While some of our pilots engage in hot dog antics, they are generally jet pilots. The same character traits that lead to hot dogging also lead to flying the fastest planes, which the E-P3 is most definitely not. The plane bodies are from the 60's. Not only that, but the pilots are specifically chosen to avoid that kind of behavior.
Just as these missions are typical, it is also typcial to be intercepted. Chinese fly bys are part of the game, trying to make the other guy blink, and the pilots are just as determined not to blink. These missions are taken with the utmost seriousness by everyone involved.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it was obvious from the context that "position" referred to "moral position", not "military position." I don't think anyone would argue that we couldn't significantly alter the government of any other nation if we didn't care about the consequences (many of them would require nukes).
You misunderstood ubernostrum. S/he was replying to the "(if they changed it)" in the parent post. It doesn't matter if Microsoft changed it, if they hand out binaries they must hand out source.
This is wrong. Apps that are compiled for Altivec don't run at all on G3s. That is why if you want to run Altivec code you have to detect at runtime what CPU you are on and run a non-Altivec version (or quit) if you are on a G3. So adding in optimizations for G4s do not make G3s run slower: they just run the non-optimized, plain PPC version.
You notice a speed difference between OSX and Linux because you compiled Linux from source for the G3? Huh? Perhaps it is because you are running a completely different window manager (Aqua vs. KDE/Gnome), graphics system (Quartz vs. X11), operating system (BSD vs. GNU), and kernel (Mach vs. Linux). If you really want to measure the speed difference from compiling for the G3, take a binary PPC distro and test it against the exact same distro compiled from source. Debian should suffice. However, I really doubt you will see much difference.
What you are really seeing isn't a huge difference between Linux and OSX on a G3 and a neglible difference between Linux and OSX on a G4, but a neglible difference between Linux on a G3 and a G4 and a huge difference between OSX on a G3 and a G4. And the reasons aren't suprising. The reason you don't see a large difference between Linux on a G3 and a G4 is because Linux is not (for the most part) optimized to take advantage of Altivec, the G4's main advantage over the G3, and because even if it was, Linux runs "fast enough" on a G3, so it doesn't need the extra speed those optimizations would provide (it is like the difference between 60fps and 120fps; not as dramatic as the difference between 15fps and 30fps). The reason for the large difference between OSX on a G3 and a G4 is that OSX is heavily optimized for the G4, and OSX needs the extra speed those optimizations provide. Aqua and Quartz are a lot more computationally complex than KDE/Gnome and X11. Altivec (or QuartzExtreme) put OSX into the "fast enough" category, and therefore equivalent to Linux.
Nathan
Anyone can create a derivative work. The copyright holder is the only person who has the right to create a derivative work, so if a work is found by a court to be derivative, the author can't copyright it.
Taking an original story and converting it into a movie is a derivative work of that story. That is why movie studios pay money to authors to license their works with the intent of turning those works into movies. If they didn't, the author would sue the studio claiming the movie was a derivative work, get their copyright revoked, and sue for the revenues it made.
The rubric for determining a derivative work is necessarily fuzzy and subjective. Witness the furor over Alice Randall's novel, The Wind Done Gone, her retelling of Gone With the Wind from the point of view of the slaves. The current copyright holders sued Ms. Randall claiming that her book was a derivative work of Gone With the Wind. She claimed it was a parody and ended up winning on appeal, but it was a very close case. Just using the characters can be enough, so creating a sequel The Jungle Book on Mogli's experiences living with humans might be considered a derivative work, if it was still under copyright. Whether the author can own the copyright on that derivative work depends on whether the original story is in the public domain or that person gets a license from the creator of the original work.
Nathan
My understanding is that only the Sorenson v3 and WM9 video formats require external libraries (dlls; they aren't supported on the Mac). The rest of the video formats have been reverse engineered and are in the source code, so they transfer to any platform you can compile on. And the MPlayer guys are trying to remove the external dependencies for those formats, too.
For Mac users, you have to check out MPlayerOSX. This is my first time using MPlayer and it is awesome! Much better than vlc or the 3ivx decoder, performance is great on my G3/400. Finally, I can watch divxs with WMA audio tracks on my Mac!
It just doesn't seem fair how easy it is: no compiling, no tweaking, just install the package and it works. Still has some polishing (switching out of full screen stops the movie), but the source is all there. A must have.
Yes, you can. GPL is copyright and is still subject to fair use, which includes quoting. So long as my new work only uses small snippets of the original, it is not considered a derivative work. The length of an acceptable quote and whether or not something is a derivative work is a value judgement that has to be decided on a case by case basis following the 4 rubrics of fair use (defined in copyright law, but in a slightly different form here) .
But that is really besides the point, because what we are talking about are facts, and facts are not subject to copyright. So I can look at GPLed source code and determine that a processor has this many registers, or requires this bit set to use this feature, etc. Those are all facts, not expressions of an idea, and I can derive those from the Linux source code and put them in anything I want.
Hope that helps,
Nathan
Okay, I made some mistakes in the last post. You're right, none of the problem's relate to a registrant being unable to get their record updated.
In fact, I more or less agree with all of your points. I probably shouldn't have even bothered posting that last one.
I would like to elucidate on the one point I think there could be some meaningful debate on: anonymous ownership of domain names.
I think that contact information should be optional. However, I think the owner should be listed publically. I can't think of any way one can legally, publically distribute information anonymously. The author of a piece of information can be anonymous, but if one chooses to distribute that piece of information, in a news story or a pamphlet or a book, etc., one can't do it anonymously. And the Internet is just another method for distributing information.
Perhaps I am wrong, but I think of domain names as analogous to property, the ownership of which is public record. Is that overly retrictive? I can see where anonymous publication would be useful, but it seems like all accountability is lost as well. It seems like the existing mechanisms for anonymity are enough: an author has to find someone who will bear the responsibility for publishing the information.
But it is a personal privacy issue. Verisign is breaking its contract, but by doing so it's protecting its customers' personal privacy.
I still respectfully disagree. I'm going off incomplete facts here, but it sounds like in some of the cases ICANN sites, the registrants are trying to get their contact information changed and VeriSign isn't allowing them.
I sincerely doubt VeriSign is doing this to help their customers. I have tried to change contact information with them (my dad registered a domain for his business; bad dad!) and it is a very difficult process. So whether or not in these specific cases they are trying to protect their customers privacy, I have first hand knowledge that the general complaints ICANN is raising are valid: VeriSign can be very slow or even completely unresponsive in changing WHOIS records.
Also, if you want to register a domain, there has to be some way for people to contact you. No one requires you to give your home address, but you have to give some contact information. It is like receiving mail. Use a P.O. box or your work address, but if no one can reach you in the eventuality your domain is misused, you shouldn't have a domain. With priviledges come responsibilites. I understand the various concerns such as frivolous lawsuits, but breaking one system to compensate for a broken system isn't the solution.
Please, no more pity posts for ICANN.
I also disagree with your characterization that my post was a "pity post for ICANN". It most certainly was not and I fail to see what caused you to reach that conclusion. That said, while I don't support ICANN, I'm also not going to fault them for taking a step in the right direction and I see trying to clean up the WHOIS database as a step in the right direction.
Nathan
The other is the capitalist system we are in - which has been proven to work great. Individuals assert their own rights and work to benefit themselves and in doing so, benefit society at large.
No. The robber barons of the early steel and oil industries did not work to the good of society. They amassed massive personal wealth in order to create personal dynasties that still last to this day (Rockefeller, Carnegie, etc.). This was done to the detriment of the mass of society (low wages, child labor, massive numbers of industrial accidents, union busters, etc.). It is an inverse proportion: the smaller the concentration of wealth, the greater the rest of society is screwed. Look at every accumulation of massive person wealth through history and you will see the exploitation of societies for the gain of a few.
The first is the communist system. It's a great idea in principle, but as anyone older than 15 will tell you, it just doesn't work.
And that same person will tell you the same about capitalism. We live in a complex world and any simple model will eventually break down. Sure, capitalism works great at first (as does communism). There is a level playing field, lots of entities competing, fast innovation in the industry. But then one or two players emerge as the strongest and the competition dies away. The industry consolidates, barriers to entry are raised, and there is a hardening of the arteries. At this point, capitalism fails because the barriers to competition are prohibitvely high and competition dies. And this is the best case; if some players start with an unequal advantage, the hardening and consolidation can occur before the industry even begins. E.g., Microsoft entering a new industry and using its billions to bar others from competing by giving away the product or the broadband providers using legislation to make it harder for competitors to compete.
The same thing happens at a societal level. Face it, if a person is born rich, they have a large head start on everybody else. If the gap between rich and poor becomes too great, it doesn't matter how in-bred, weak, and dumb a blue-blood gets, no one can catch up. Government (societal) regulation is needed to help narrow the gap between rich and poor, to ensure that we all start on a somewhat even playing field no matter who we are born to. No society will be perfect (imperfect world again), but the society that gets closest has the best chance of success because it is less likely that their next Einstein will be shot dead in a ghetto at 15. Competition is great and the best competition occurs when everyone starts from the same place.
If...it would be impossible for eBay to succeed without infringing the patent, I see nothing wrong with eBay sharing some of their profits with the inventor who they owe their success to.
Ah, but there is an incongruency in that statement. eBay infringing the patent and owing their success to it are two entirely different things. Yes, your disclaimer says you are using a fictional patent (not very sporting, changing the subject of debate halfway through). But you don't say that it is any more meritorious than this one, only different. I do agree that the original poster's argument is flawed, but your's is equally so.
It used to be that patents were for inventions; patent applications required a working model or plans for the invention being patented. Some good examples of this (and the patent system at its best, although there were also abuses) are provided by the American gun industry in the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as the lever-action repeating rifle (the Winchester). Anyone could invent a repeating rifle, but they couldn't use the same lever mechanism to eject the spent shell and load a new one (which was an ingenious solution, both reliable and elegant) unless they licensed it (for a period of time).
Now, however, an applicant can be so abstract as to patent a general idea and not an invention. There is a level of specificity missing. You should have to provide source code, a UML design, something that goes quite a bit beyond what "software" and "business plan" patents require.
How many ideas are truly original? We are all standing on the shoulders of giants, afterall. What is important is the application of an idea, the creation of something unique.
So, eBay can not avoid infringing the patent and yet does not owe any of their success to the "inventor" (a misuse of the word) of the patent. That is a telling sign that our patent system needs some revision. Besides which, the patent was filed a couple months after the first post on eBay. Another problem with our patent system.
Yours,
Nathan
The press release ICANN sent out can be found here. It looks like the article was written straight from this with a reaction from VeriSign, which just muddled the real issue.
The problem isn't that VeriSign has incorrect information in the WHOIS database, it is that it makes no effort to correct that information. They have been notified to correct several records and they haven't. And in one case, VeriSign told a registrant to put in an incorrect address.
No, they aren't breaking the law, but they are breaking their contract with ICANN and so ICANN is enforcing that contract. And this isn't a personal privacy issue; that is completely separate from VeriSign not updating WHOIS records when requested and telling customers to give false information. Please, no more pity posts for VeriSign!
That isn't what the chairman of the FTC seems to think. From the BBC article: So what they did is illegal.
Nice troll. Provide links if you want to convince me.
Yes, the Mac data bus is 64-bits wide and the address bus is 36. I don't know as much about Intel Pentium's data bus, but I thought they were 64-bits, also. Regardless, the PIV's bus speed is 400mhz (iirc; aren't they supposed to hit 533mhz soon?), or 3x the Macs, so even if they are pushing half as much data they are still 50% faster.
And regardless, I'm not comparing to Pentiums. I'm saying that the single biggest bottleneck on the Mac is the frontside bus. It doesn't matter how faster or slower it is compared to the Pentium or any other architecture. What matters is whether the CPU's data bus is holding up the processor. And all signs point to yes, it is.
Please, follow that link to BadAndy's posts and read them. There is somebody who works with G4s everyday at the hardware level. His team even looked at rolling their own DDR chip to improve their bandwidth, but after a week or two it proved to be much too expensive (they needed a custom asic, they couldn't do it with FPGAs).
I have a friend that works at AMC, and he has been able to offer some corroboration (he works mostly on XScale, but he does a little PPC). So I'm not just taking BadAndy's word for it. Troll elsewhere.
To summarize, he would say:
That said, before you do anything, WAIT. Wait until after MacWorld next week and wait until Jaguar is announced (it is supposed to ship in August, so it will probably be announced at MacWorld). Jaguar, with QuartzExtreme, will probably have a big impact on the card you want for dual monitor support.
From my experience, build to order your G4. Get the minimum RAM (single stick; if you have to choose between a 128 stick and a 256 stick you might want to go with the 256), minimum hard drive (optional, Apple isn't horrible and since you have to have one you might want to get one you'll keep) and get rid of things you don't need ($29 modem). RAM you can from Crucial or PriceWatch. Hard drive from PriceWatch or somewhere else. SuperDrives are nice.
Get the best CPU you can (see BadAndy's advice above). You don't really upgrade your CPU, so this is critical.
Don't get it from Apple, but do get RAM. It makes the biggest difference in OS X responsiveness. RAM is cheap, and while I am fine with 160MB in my iBook most of the time, I notice a difference on my slower home machine with 384MB. OS X's window server can basically use as much as you give it.
Hope that helps,
Nathan (n8_f@maccom)
"nun soup"?
Firewire sounds like a good way to attach a CD-R or tape drive for backups.
Or a camcorder for backups.
I don't think you really understand compulsory licenses or what the RIAA is trying to do. Here is another article that should help a little.
Compulsory licenses are mandated by Congress. Radio would be impossible with out them. Individually negotiated licenses would be prohibitively complicated. Imagine spending several days negotiating a license for every 3 minutes of air time; even 20 minutes would be unworkable. Congress recognized this and set up the compulsory license.
The RIAA is doing no one any favors. Right now, the RIAA gets nothing for radio broadcasts. Congress decided that the record companies were compensated by the free publicity that radio provided, which sold records for them. It makes sense and it seems to have done pretty well for the record companies. It seems logical that this would extend to web broadcasts as well.
But the RIAA has never been happy with being left out of the radio royalty loop. And they see this as an opportunity to get a piece of the pie. So they are using the advent of a new form of broadcasting as a way to muscle their way in. Doing us a favor? Hardly. The RIAA would like to have all of the profits from music broadcasting, whether it be radio or web.
And that is why compulsory licenses are needed. There is no competition here. There are no "market forces". If they could get away with it, the copyright holders would suck up all of the profits from music broadcasting. A broadcaster doesn't have any other options.
Regarding the GPL, by using Linux you are agreeing to the GPL. Downloading it (making a copy) and using it are not "fair use" rights. Also, the GPL is not a compulsory license. A compulsory license is one that is forced by an outside party and generally refers to one forced by the government.
Anyway, reading the article will probably help.
Nathan
jwz has written up a nice article that explains how the current licensing works and how the proposed CARP licensing would work here. There is no way Internet radio will be feasible if this goes in to effect, even without the added fees. Check out the information broadcasters would be required to report to the RIAA: there is no fewer than 18 pieces of information required for each song played! Not to mention the information that must be gathered from each listener. But just in case, the fees can be applied retroactively.
I hope that if this does go into effect, there is a large backlash. Remember that this is an election year. Votes still matter and politicians still care about getting them.
If there is a fire a theater, isn't everyone in the theater affected? He may have intended your interpretation, but there is no way to derive that from what he said.
Like the original poster said, it is a bad analogy.
I'm guessing the result of that poll would be quite different. I think the Gallup wording was biased towards Microsoft by omitting that MICROSOFT WAS CONVICTED OF ABUSING MONOPOLY POWER! Say what you will, the fact is they were found guilty and the appeals court upheld those findings. To let them off now would be to make a mockery of our justice system. What is the point in convicting people if there are no consequences to being convicted?
The original wording for the Gallup poll was:
While I'm sure we can all appreciate the sentiment, I have to point out that it is very naive to think that a large system will not have bugs.
Even if your code is as perfect as you claim or would like it to be, the problem is that I can't think of a single company that writes 100% of the code used in their product. For instance, at my company, we just had to redesign a sub-component of our software to get around a compiler bug that was causing us to crash. So, even though our code was perfect, there was still a bug that had to be found and fixed.
Which takes us to another point. The more people working on something, the greater and more complex the codebase, the more likely inadvertent bugs are going to be introduced. So, we redesigned a piece of the code to get around a compiler bug. How does that affect the people who are using that code? If the interface had to be redesigned as well, now you have a change that could affect a significant percentage of the overall codebase and multiple other developers and an increased chance of creating a bug.
So, while I agree that developers should try harder, believing that you can completely eliminate bugs will just cause you to miss the ones that are there.
I think a better solution to the problem at hand is to hold software companies responsible for their work, just like in any other industry. I think the car industry is a great example. Just like any other complex system, cars have bugs. Two pieces have a gap between them, something was a bit shorter than it needed to be, etc. Car manufacturers try hard, very hard, to eliminate any major problems that might cause their product to crash, just like software, and also just like software, sometimes a major problem makes it into the version released to the public. But the parallels between the software and car industries ends there. When the recent problem with Ford Explorers and their tires was discovered, did Ford make customers go out and buy the new version of the Ford Explorer? Of course not. They went back and fixed it on every version of the Ford Explorer that *might* be affected by it. Why? Because, try as hard as they did to prevent any problems, it was still their fault. Not their customers.
Shouldn't the software industry be treated the same as any other? If there is a bug in Windows that allows anybody to root your machine if you are on the 'Net, shouldn't they have to fix that? Should you have to pay more because they screwed up? I don't think so.
Nathan
This sounds like a recent article. Maybe the writer was trying to emulate Chris Morris? Or perhaps this is closer to an example of the kind of journalism he was satirizing. /. readers firebombing the cars of Microsoft parents by mistake.
I expect I'll read about
This is a separate issue. Unlike with DVDs, with videogames there are technological reasons for this. PAL has a higher resolution and lower framerate than NTSC, and sometimes bugs show up in PAL that aren't seen in NTSC. Generally, the videogame engine is tweaked a little, and the game has to run through another round of QA. So the game that shows up in Europe is a bit different than the one in the US.
I remember at EA we released a PAL version of FIFA with a major bug because it had been tested on PAL systems running on 110 instead of 220. So now there is a large converter that outputs 220 for PAL testing purposes.
As for Japanese/US partitioning, the reasons are a little bit less clear. I think the main reasons are licensing and language. Most licensed properties are for the Japanese arena only and the videogame publishers don't want consumers to be able to accidentally by a Japanese version of a game. I don't think it is too big a burden for those few that want Japanese language games to buy a Japanese language console, although it will be nice to have region free consoles and games. I know some of the PS2 games are being developed in both English and Japanese.
I really do not think that the fact that you are Canadian gives you any great insight on this matter.
IANAC (Canadian), but I think I might have more than pure speculation to offer. A close personal friend of mine is one of the air crewman being held in China.
First, let me point out that we WERE NOT SPYING. While it is convenient to call it that, spying by definition involves secrecy. What we were doing was intelligence gathering, and not spying, because there was no secrecy involved. We have been doing these flights for a long time. China knows it. The American public knows it (or could have, if they wanted to), and the rest of the world knows it, if they want. Secrecy is not a requirement of intelligence gathering. We routinely monitor the transmissions of other countries. If you do not like it, do not send your signals into international or U.S. territory. It is that simple. I don't want my neighbor to see me changing, so I close the blinds. If I choose not to, I can't blame my neighbor for seeing me naked.
Regarding your speculation that pilot decided "to teach the fighter pilot a lesson" is outrageous. While it might seem reasonable to someone raised on Top Gun and Hollywood movies, it does not occur in these cases. While some of our pilots engage in hot dog antics, they are generally jet pilots. The same character traits that lead to hot dogging also lead to flying the fastest planes, which the E-P3 is most definitely not. The plane bodies are from the 60's. Not only that, but the pilots are specifically chosen to avoid that kind of behavior.
Just as these missions are typical, it is also typcial to be intercepted. Chinese fly bys are part of the game, trying to make the other guy blink, and the pilots are just as determined not to blink. These missions are taken with the utmost seriousness by everyone involved.