You know, one of the worst things that made YOUtube so great, is what makes this fan-movie.
As much as I love Star-Wars (and I do LOVE the Star-Wars universe), I don't think I could stand to watch much more than it's trailer, and do you know why? YOUtube!
Anyone of you guys who have ever browsed YOUtube videos, knows that it consists of ENDLESS drivel and "look-ma-I'm-on-TV" teenagers who can't get enough attention, and you've got to fight like insane for hours to get 1 % actually COOL footage.
One hour of the same attention seeking blobs of teenage pimples and whining voices, nooooooooooooooooooo thank you.;)
Prebuilt consumer computers are really crappy. Take my latest HP Pavillion Quad Core as an example, after 1 month, the keyboard stopped working, after 3 months the wireless module went to wifi-heaven where little wifi things go (All wifi's goes to heaven, the movie), and after the 5th month, the DVD stopped accepting pretty much any DVD & games even though there where no dust. I'm just waiting for the next thing to break for no reason. At work it's the same thing, the pre-built one breaks down, not the ones I built - they still stand!
Viacom are notorious for just adding to the subscribers bills without asking the customers what they want.
In Denmark there was a few years ago a big case where TV3 (satellite subscribers - subscribing to viacoms package) have been fooled into a money trap they could not get out of. There where examples of sellers treatening their subscribers with legal action and putting them into the "bad credit lists" etc.
This was a BIG thing and they've been up in the news several times.
eBay - my main addiction in life, it will be sad to see it drown in commercial trades.
The one thing I like about online auctions is that they are by and FOR average joes like me, not a bunch of insurance sellers trying to outbid eachother with gibberish.
I find it hard to believe that the average Joe's have a declining interest in eBay, it should be the other way from my own experience. Oversea eBay shopping has NEVER been bigger in eg. Denmark these times.
My experience with new used sales on the net is that it is exactly the average joe sales that make them grow in popularity because you get a real chance to get something that you really want from yesteryears and not some useless gimmick from merchandise companies that compete for the cheapest lanyards...
If eBay get filled up with nick-nack offers from commercial companies - organized...then eBay will decline severely in popularity- in fact...I'm willing to bet that it will KILL eBay entirely over 2 years and make it another alibaba outlet because the average joes sales can't be found by the other average joes......pretty much like Google today. Back when they didnt censor so much, and back when the commercial companies didnt work on outsmarting the google searches - there where a real chance of finding interesting stuff - fast. Today you need to be a real whiz with knowing how to "filter out" all the annoying "watch-me-buy-me-now" for just about anything you search for.
They could not care less about the laggy, buggy, extremely-low quality you-tube ripoffs of their shows & movies.
Viacom is in financial trouble, and Google is big and have a lot of money. Viacom are already pretty known for being "big bad money bulleys", just google for those viacom satellite customers by the thousands that are forced to keep flawed subscriptions even though they don't use it - and Viacom has been up in the news several times for their "bullying" tactics of the common public.
"I hope its not just my wishful thinking but im really starting to believe that the ball has gathered so much momentum now that their aint gonna be no turning back:)"
I agree completely!
Take Apples previous steady 10 percent of the "os market" success where based on the "it just works" analogy, right? Linux has reached exactly that area - it just WORKS.
To my personal surprise - even WINE (Windows Is Not Emulated) works incredibly well with 80 percent of the windows based software I've tired, even games....no need for Cedega anymore (and thus a subscription fee every month) - Steam worked out of the box and even installed the Steam games I've bought including the Orange Box right onto my 64-bit based Ubuntu system, WOW - Just WOW! All of the games would not even work on a windows 64 bit based system.
I am truly proud and impressed on how far we've come.
Acer is smart! They've made cheap notebooks for years, and very good ones too. I've been using countless numbers of these laptops basically because they're really cheap and the support is good.
Now they're making a huge bet on Linux, very very smart move! This is the time where Ubuntu works near perfectly on almost every pc around due to huge concentrated effort on the OS communitys part.
I've been running linux alongside windows for over 10 years, the 3 last years I've been using Linux exclusively because it really gets the job done - safely! I've noticed that my peers also switch to linux simply because it's easier to use, easier to make backups with, easier to restore - and generally way easier to upgrade without issues.
It takes even less patience than with windows, but it didn't use to be like this 10 years ago.
The one reason that older Laptops retain value after their life expectancy have run out is that they are complete compact computers that comes with screen, keyboard, storage ready to use right there and now.
What do I use them for?
I've refurbished one of the smallest laptops in the world (3010ct) from Toshiba (Weighs around 1.2 kg) as a lightweight practical surfing machine that I can take with me anywhere (take THAT pricey Macbook AIR!) cost me 15 dollars plus 10 bucks for the wireless CF card + adapter - downloaded some russian win 98 usb hack to give it usb powers + some wifi cf hack to give it wifi...voila...it's a fantastic Wireless surfer.
I've got a couple of nice IBM 600's that I've turned into portable Commodore 64's! Thanks to FRODO it instantly boots into a Commodore 64 within 10 seconds (take THAT you SLOW SLOOOW booting modern pcs that take 1-2 minutes to boot win xp!) This one can play all the cool games of our past years...and provide a nice prototyping platform to quickly try out some programming theories...
I've turned my Olivetti Echos 100E into a super-Eprom-Programming station! Yes - Todays modern PCs'doesnt come with Parallel or Serial ports (sure...usb is some sort of ultra fast serial port..but it doesnt work...and converterboards suck in general so...) I use this one to burn EPROMS with those nice 80-90's eprom programmers!
I've turned my other laptop into a Plotting Machine to make PCB's (Printed Circuit boards)...yes..it's more compatible with my old style centronic port rather than those windowsy modern equivalents that absolutely wants to control all the hardware by itself... this old unit has full "dos" control and can run old "protel" software to create those Nice Direct-to-plotter pcb layouts that make the life of a nerd a bit easier and cheaper.
So yes - There's life in them old lappies still! I love'em!
The idea of recording live-tv, shifting it so you can watch it anytime wasn't solely invented by TiVO, many Amiga users and Apple users have been using this technology LONG before people got "TiVO.
Today - In Europe (where we don't have TiVO, at least in Denmark) we use TimeShift recorders from JVC, Panasonic, United...heck...I even have a SONY myself - best thing next to buttered bread, can't do without it - to imagine that some "American court" could come in and force the companies worldwide to deactivate their TimeShift function just because TiVO says so...is ludicrous and it will NEVER EVER happen. I Skip ADS all the time with the timeshift function, TiVO can go sc*** themselves.
...and that is of course sad somehow, but he really needs to get over it, bitterness and bitching will get him absolutely nowhere.
I know - because I too am an author of a game YEARS ago...come to think of it..it's 27 years by now, I wrote an assembly game when the commodore 64 was released to the public, unfortunately I was a clueless kid just having fun - drooling over the fact that I now had the power to write ARCADE coin-up games in my very own home, just to find out later that I could have earned millions on that, and that I gave the games away for free - for someone else (who actually where businessmen) to steal - rip off...and earn on.
Now...you can call me really *stupid*....but think about this...I was 12 years old...writing my own assembly games in 1981 - how stupid is that? It's just the difference between creativity and business - business always wins - but is somewhat dependent on leeching of creative people, unfortunately there is no real symbiosis unless it goes both ways.
And yes...that's the moral of this story. I'm personally not bitter, but just kind of like "Homer" saying "d'oh!" years later. Well - live - learn - move on!
That goes for you too - my dear Russian.
This may seem strange to you...but......I live in the land of the obsolete. My entire personal workshop is filled with 80's electronics, heh..I didn't even "save" the stuff from wayback then...I just love it for the coolness factor it has to ME - not to others. It may be obsolete...heck...I know that my commodore-64 Assembly programming skills (ha! Skills!) are obsolete by now...but I WAS the first to get rid of the Commodore-64 BORDER - entirely, so what? No one knows my name - nobody cares and nobody ever gives a sh*t about it, what they do care about though...is what they have experienced in their own life. Good times man, enjoy it if you can and want to!
My lab? My heaps and boundless amount of 80's electronic components? It's my life man - calling that obsolete would be to dig me 10 feet under and say goodbye. To me these things still matter, I still play with my radio-amateur stuff, I still build radios from scratch in my spare time - and build COMPUTERS from scratch...nooooo I don't refer to putting a bunch of cards inside a cabinet with a motherboard..I am refering to actually CONSTRUCTING a computer FROM SCRATCH....yes...schematics....to the actual finish PCB! There is NO fun like it in the entire world - it may not get me laid - but it sure as h... entertain my sorry 80's carcass throughout my life,
Whats obsolete about knowledge? Did you catch my drift? A old Hippie, am I? Well... I can tell you that I work in one of this countrys most successful businesses, why? Because I survive on my basic understanding of how it all started - the now "perhaps to you" obsolete knowledge is what FOUNDS all BASICS of EVERYTHING that is CREATED TODAY.
As always , the government - usually due to absolutely severe lack of knowledge - have to comply with the business out there that usually FEAR more than actually KNOW whats going on.
Fact is:
1) The industry have NO clue if the "piracy" either gains or damages their sales, it's pure guessing - no statistics. 2) The government have to enforce the law, if someone breaks it - they create new laws so it won't happen again, unfortunately this is often based on fear rather than knowledge. You listen to the corporates that doesn't have a clue, and you certainly won't listen to the thieves (eg. pirates). 3) No way in this life or the next one will ANY ISP or the government EVER be able to monitor the petabytes of data that flows trough their lines each day, there would not even be enough workers for that...even in an overpopulated world. Even if you write intelligent software...someone has to decipher all that information and only a "human" so far . can make the final judgement on whatever case. 4) You'll only sort out the "clean people" from the "pirates" as the pirates usually are the "savy ones" that only will go deeper (tor anyone?) while the "common morons" are left to take the fall for the rest with their amateur mistakes.
Man....I sometimes wonder who the "clowns" who got the bright idea to make it the law to force ISP's keep records of all user data-transfers 1-2 years on backlog, it most certainly wasn't anyone with any computer knowledge whatsoever.
...and if you wish, you could safely leave it at that, here's why:
Imagine this - a person have a need (Like Linus had..he needed an OS for his development, he couldn't afford the *Nix, but he was smart enough to develop his own).
Now - being kind and openhearted as he is - he shared it with his friends and the world, great. What he DIDN'T expect was that it would catch on like fire and spread the same spirit all over the planet and grow into what it is today, fair enough? Heck...he even admit that himself, what can I say..the guy is more honest than ANYONE I know.
Does it really matter to you what Linus now wants? Sure - it has some "moral and spiritual" value somewhere...you know...he IS the father of Linux, but all that said...remember the other ones? You know...YOU and a million other coders that contribute every single day of your life making Linux better for everyone, now THAT MATTERS!
...and will continue to do so, and even accelerate into the future.
I've been using Open Source all the way since the start, heck...I've even contributed to it by writing Open Documents and Wikis to help guide the everyday user how to use the various applications.
I am proud of what we have achieved, I remember when people at work mocked us as "nerdy" or "hippie" for constantly advocating alternative solutions to software and hardware solutions, but after being known for solving issues that the commercial world just couldn't this is no longer the case.
Thanks to distributors like "Ubuntu" that puts community effort together in functional packages for the "everyday man" - Linux has become both friendly and usable for everyone, not to mention the efforts of the Wine team that has made it entirely possible to run your favorite apps. under Linux with ease and little "under-the-hood" work at all.
Fantastic efforts, and an even better future. Personally I think the future for OS have never looked this good.
The biggest curtain that have ever been pulled over the artists eyes is the "PRO"-Graphics card-Fad! Youre paying to feel "pro" - you dont get more "pro" for your money at all, you just get to "feel-like-pro" but very little extra to justify the real bucks youre spending on Quadro & FireGL series.
I know this, Im a "graphics pro" myself that makes a living of designing 3D-Models & prototyping every day and Ive used nearly every card known to mankind.
Heres my advice - take it or leave it:
Buy a Gaming-Nvidia card! The difference between the Gaming Series cards and the Quadro series card is just some extra driver software that is optimized for your "insert-favorite-3D-app-here", yes...there are some less pixel-flaws..but this will never ever affect your final-render unless youre using Nvidias Gelato (which has - by the way - proven in many cases to render less effectively than modern Multi-core-CPUs with software rendering)
You will save up to THOUSANDS of Dollars by not buying into the "PRO" hype, and youll be one happy puppy you didnt - and work just as efficiently (I know - we do) as the ones with the "PRO" cards, the game cards are actually using the same chipsets (remember the Quad-Mod you could perform on their cards, it aint fake you know!)...it would make absolutely NO SENSE for them business wise to produce 2 different cards when their cards can in fact do the same thing....and actually use the same chips.
Do you actually believe in the theory of a parallel universe...or anything related to a "parallel existence"?
Come on people... this is weird even by science-fiction standards, don't get me wrong - I like to dream as much as the next guy, but get real...nothing so far proves that anything even closely related to this would have any substance to it, whatsoever!
If you want "real" - why don't you try to look beyond the know universe instead, I bet you (and I hopefully..) would find something of interest there. I'm quite sure we still have something to discover on earth yet - but the real answer lies lightyears away...so why not try looking there first, eh?
Yours local..smartass...signing off for now, another beer to be conquered:)
Most people on this planet KNOWs whats right and whats wrong if we are talking the "Basics" of knowledge, but how did they all get this knowledge - by learning, sometimes the hard way.
Putting a lid on information will only make people more interested in learning about it, therefor there should be no lid on information - no matter how bad you or I think the information is. Everyone has the right to know whatever they want to know. Information should be free for anyone who desire it.
Information can not hurt anyone - only a person can be hurt by feelings, and feelings usually derive from either love or hate, and love and hate usually derive from learning either by experience or teachings.
If you teach someone that something is wrong or bad in your country, family, friends, religion or politics that someone will be shaped by that, and thus perceive information according to their environment.
A child that grows up is a product of their environment. If you sensor information or block their path to information you are inhibiting their ability to shape themselves and acquire much needed knowledge. You can dispute this fact as much as you want to - that is your right - but do not take away other peoples right to do the very same thing, if you take away the information you are doing this - in fact - you are violating everything YOU where because YOU already have the or had the privilege to know this.
We have a huge problem, we are letting ourselves be disciplined and governed by feelings, now this would be perfectly fine if you managed this on an individual basis, but people dont. They get collective and populistic about their feelings and mix it with religion and politics - this is a very dangerous mix that put our future in a mental jail where we must-not-see-because-it-is-bad-for-us.
Who decide what is bad or good information? You do! But you do not decide this for OTHERS.
It is very dangerous for a HOST to HOST information that in our society is regarded as either profane, against-insert-your-religion-of-choice-here or politically incorrect. We debate what we think and block other and future generations opportunities to LEARN for themselves based on our rules and regulations, this is the fallacy of society today.
I Praise the hacker who care enough for the individual to dare venture where all others flee scared into the arms of paid opinions, to dare host files that may be seen as "illegal" to some who does not understand the freedom they themselves was in fact born with and even fought for.
Information shall be free and available to inquisitive minds worldwide! Always!
Slashdot Mirror
...is the enemy!
...for the Slashdot Count! it haaaaaas been Slash'dotted! ;)
(for the layman, the site is down, don't bother visiting it today, wait until the traffic heat is over - then try again!)
...first they couldn't handle Cartoon Sex (Remember the Simpsons, and the guy who went to JAIL for it?)
And now, it's blood and gore, what happened to the Prison Country of the world? ;)
Wait for it...
Wait for iiiiit...
Waaaaiiit foooorrr iiiiit....
No, missed!
You know, one of the worst things that made YOUtube so great, is what makes this fan-movie.
As much as I love Star-Wars (and I do LOVE the Star-Wars universe), I don't think I could stand to watch much more
than it's trailer, and do you know why? YOUtube!
Anyone of you guys who have ever browsed YOUtube videos, knows that it consists of ENDLESS drivel and "look-ma-I'm-on-TV" teenagers who can't get enough attention, and you've got to fight like insane for hours to get 1 % actually COOL footage.
One hour of the same attention seeking blobs of teenage pimples and whining voices, nooooooooooooooooooo thank you. ;)
Same here, until my last computer - that is.
Prebuilt consumer computers are really crappy. Take my latest HP Pavillion Quad Core as an example, after 1 month, the keyboard stopped working, after 3 months the wireless module went to wifi-heaven where little wifi things go (All wifi's goes to heaven, the movie), and after the 5th month, the DVD stopped accepting pretty much any DVD & games even though there where no dust. I'm just waiting for the next thing to break for no reason. At work it's the same thing, the pre-built one breaks down, not the ones I built - they still stand!
Sure! You just need to be better at searching:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/08/12/BU163548.DTL&type=printable
Want more?
http://money.cnn.com/2004/03/09/technology/echostar_viacom/index.htm
Viacom are notorious for just adding to the subscribers bills without asking the customers what they want.
In Denmark there was a few years ago a big case where TV3 (satellite subscribers - subscribing to viacoms package) have been fooled into a money trap they could not get out of. There where examples of sellers treatening their subscribers with legal action and putting them into the "bad credit lists" etc.
This was a BIG thing and they've been up in the news several times.
eBay - my main addiction in life, it will be sad to see it drown in commercial trades.
The one thing I like about online auctions is that they are by and FOR average joes like me, not a bunch of insurance sellers trying to outbid eachother with gibberish.
I find it hard to believe that the average Joe's have a declining interest in eBay, it should be the other way from my own experience. Oversea eBay shopping has NEVER been bigger in eg. Denmark these times.
My experience with new used sales on the net is that it is exactly the average joe sales that make them grow in popularity because you get a real chance to get something that you really want from yesteryears and not some useless gimmick from merchandise companies that compete for the cheapest lanyards...
If eBay get filled up with nick-nack offers from commercial companies - organized...then eBay will decline severely in popularity- in fact...I'm willing to bet that it will KILL eBay entirely over 2 years and make it another alibaba outlet because the average joes sales can't be found by the other average joes... ...pretty much like Google today. Back when they didnt censor so much, and back when the commercial companies didnt work on outsmarting the google searches - there where a real chance of finding interesting stuff - fast. Today you need to be a real whiz with knowing how to "filter out" all the annoying "watch-me-buy-me-now" for just about anything you search for.
They could not care less about the laggy, buggy, extremely-low quality you-tube ripoffs of their shows & movies.
Viacom is in financial trouble, and Google is big and have a lot of money. Viacom are already pretty known for being "big bad money bulleys", just google for those viacom satellite customers by the thousands that are forced to keep flawed subscriptions even though they don't use it - and Viacom has been up in the news several times for their "bullying" tactics of the common public.
Pure corporate greed - nothing else!
...I've left my cellphone at home, now they'll think that I never leave my house and don't get out much!
Wonder what they'll think if I attach my phone to FIDO?
"I hope its not just my wishful thinking but im really starting to believe that the ball has gathered so much momentum now that their aint gonna be no turning back
I agree completely!
Take Apples previous steady 10 percent of the "os market" success where based on the "it just works" analogy, right? Linux has reached exactly that area - it just WORKS.
To my personal surprise - even WINE (Windows Is Not Emulated) works incredibly well with 80 percent of the windows based software I've tired, even games....no need for Cedega anymore (and thus a subscription fee every month) - Steam worked out of the box and even installed the Steam games I've bought including the Orange Box right onto my 64-bit based Ubuntu system, WOW - Just WOW! All of the games would not even work on a windows 64 bit based system.
I am truly proud and impressed on how far we've come.
Acer is smart! They've made cheap notebooks for years, and very good ones too. I've been using countless numbers of these laptops basically because they're really cheap and the support is good.
Now they're making a huge bet on Linux, very very smart move! This is the time where Ubuntu works near perfectly on almost every pc around due to huge concentrated effort on the OS communitys part.
I've been running linux alongside windows for over 10 years, the 3 last years I've been using Linux exclusively because it really gets the job done - safely! I've noticed that my peers also switch to linux simply because it's easier to use, easier to make backups with, easier to restore - and generally way easier to upgrade without issues.
It takes even less patience than with windows, but it didn't use to be like this 10 years ago.
Kudos for the effort OS-community!
...but they should at least put a warning on the box.
The one reason that older Laptops retain value after their life expectancy have run out is that they are complete compact computers that comes with screen, keyboard, storage ready to use right there and now.
...yes..it's more compatible with my old style centronic port rather than those windowsy modern equivalents that absolutely wants to control all the hardware by itself... this old unit has full "dos" control and can run old "protel" software to create those Nice Direct-to-plotter pcb layouts that make the life of a nerd a bit easier and cheaper.
What do I use them for?
I've refurbished one of the smallest laptops in the world (3010ct) from Toshiba (Weighs around 1.2 kg) as a lightweight practical surfing machine that I can take with me anywhere (take THAT pricey Macbook AIR!) cost me 15 dollars plus 10 bucks for the wireless CF card + adapter - downloaded some russian win 98 usb hack to give it usb powers + some wifi cf hack to give it wifi...voila...it's a fantastic Wireless surfer.
I've got a couple of nice IBM 600's that I've turned into portable Commodore 64's! Thanks to FRODO it instantly boots into a Commodore 64 within 10 seconds (take THAT you SLOW SLOOOW booting modern pcs that take 1-2 minutes to boot win xp!) This one can play all the cool games of our past years...and provide a nice prototyping platform to quickly try out some programming theories...
I've turned my Olivetti Echos 100E into a super-Eprom-Programming station! Yes - Todays modern PCs'doesnt come with Parallel or Serial ports (sure...usb is some sort of ultra fast serial port..but it doesnt work...and converterboards suck in general so...) I use this one to burn EPROMS with those nice 80-90's eprom programmers!
I've turned my other laptop into a Plotting Machine to make PCB's (Printed Circuit boards)
So yes - There's life in them old lappies still! I love'em!
The idea of recording live-tv, shifting it so you can watch it anytime wasn't solely invented by TiVO, many Amiga users and Apple users have been using this technology LONG before people got "TiVO.
Today - In Europe (where we don't have TiVO, at least in Denmark) we use TimeShift recorders from JVC, Panasonic, United...heck...I even have a SONY myself - best thing next to buttered bread, can't do without it - to imagine that some "American court" could come in and force the companies worldwide to deactivate their TimeShift function just because TiVO says so...is ludicrous and it will NEVER EVER happen. I Skip ADS all the time with the timeshift function, TiVO can go sc*** themselves.
...Keeping monsters out of your network. Great! Oh wait.... Thats on Cartoon Network...
...and that is of course sad somehow, but he really needs to get over it, bitterness and bitching will get him absolutely nowhere. I know - because I too am an author of a game YEARS ago...come to think of it..it's 27 years by now, I wrote an assembly game when the commodore 64 was released to the public, unfortunately I was a clueless kid just having fun - drooling over the fact that I now had the power to write ARCADE coin-up games in my very own home, just to find out later that I could have earned millions on that, and that I gave the games away for free - for someone else (who actually where businessmen) to steal - rip off...and earn on. Now...you can call me really *stupid*....but think about this...I was 12 years old...writing my own assembly games in 1981 - how stupid is that? It's just the difference between creativity and business - business always wins - but is somewhat dependent on leeching of creative people, unfortunately there is no real symbiosis unless it goes both ways. And yes...that's the moral of this story. I'm personally not bitter, but just kind of like "Homer" saying "d'oh!" years later. Well - live - learn - move on! That goes for you too - my dear Russian.
This may seem strange to you...but... ...I live in the land of the obsolete. My entire personal workshop is filled with 80's electronics, heh..I didn't even "save" the stuff from wayback then...I just love it for the coolness factor it has to ME - not to others. It may be obsolete...heck ...I know that my commodore-64 Assembly programming skills (ha! Skills!) are obsolete by now...but I WAS the first to get rid of the Commodore-64 BORDER - entirely, so what? No one knows my name - nobody cares and nobody ever gives a sh*t about it, what they do care about though...is what they have experienced in their own life. Good times man, enjoy it if you can and want to!
....to the actual finish PCB! There is NO fun like it in the entire world - it may not get me laid - but it sure as h... entertain my sorry 80's carcass throughout my life,
My lab? My heaps and boundless amount of 80's electronic components? It's my life man - calling that obsolete would be to dig me 10 feet under and say goodbye. To me these things still matter, I still play with my radio-amateur stuff, I still build radios from scratch in my spare time - and build COMPUTERS from scratch...nooooo I don't refer to putting a bunch of cards inside a cabinet with a motherboard..I am refering to actually CONSTRUCTING a computer FROM SCRATCH....yes...schematics
Whats obsolete about knowledge? Did you catch my drift? A old Hippie, am I? Well... I can tell you that I work in one of this countrys most successful businesses, why? Because I survive on my basic understanding of how it all started - the now "perhaps to you" obsolete knowledge is what FOUNDS all BASICS of EVERYTHING that is CREATED TODAY.
Did you catch that?
Well...I did! And there's no regrets about it.
As always , the government - usually due to absolutely severe lack of knowledge - have to comply with the business out there that usually FEAR more than actually KNOW whats going on.
Fact is:
1) The industry have NO clue if the "piracy" either gains or damages their sales, it's pure guessing - no statistics.
2) The government have to enforce the law, if someone breaks it - they create new laws so it won't happen again, unfortunately this is often based on fear rather than knowledge. You listen to the corporates that doesn't have a clue, and you certainly won't listen to the thieves (eg. pirates).
3) No way in this life or the next one will ANY ISP or the government EVER be able to monitor the petabytes of data that flows trough their lines each day, there would not even be enough workers for that...even in an overpopulated world. Even if you write intelligent software...someone has to decipher all that information and only a "human" so far . can make the final judgement on whatever case.
4) You'll only sort out the "clean people" from the "pirates" as the pirates usually are the "savy ones" that only will go deeper (tor anyone?) while the "common morons" are left to take the fall for the rest with their amateur mistakes.
Man....I sometimes wonder who the "clowns" who got the bright idea to make it the law to force ISP's keep records of all user data-transfers 1-2 years on backlog, it most certainly wasn't anyone with any computer knowledge whatsoever.
...and if you wish, you could safely leave it at that, here's why: Imagine this - a person have a need (Like Linus had..he needed an OS for his development, he couldn't afford the *Nix, but he was smart enough to develop his own). Now - being kind and openhearted as he is - he shared it with his friends and the world, great. What he DIDN'T expect was that it would catch on like fire and spread the same spirit all over the planet and grow into what it is today, fair enough? Heck...he even admit that himself, what can I say..the guy is more honest than ANYONE I know. Does it really matter to you what Linus now wants? Sure - it has some "moral and spiritual" value somewhere...you know...he IS the father of Linux, but all that said...remember the other ones? You know...YOU and a million other coders that contribute every single day of your life making Linux better for everyone, now THAT MATTERS!
...and will continue to do so, and even accelerate into the future.
I've been using Open Source all the way since the start, heck...I've even contributed to it by writing Open Documents and Wikis to help guide the everyday user how to use the various applications.
I am proud of what we have achieved, I remember when people at work mocked us as "nerdy" or "hippie" for constantly advocating alternative solutions to software and hardware solutions, but after being known for solving issues that the commercial world just couldn't this is no longer the case.
Thanks to distributors like "Ubuntu" that puts community effort together in functional packages for the "everyday man" - Linux has become both friendly and usable for everyone, not to mention the efforts of the Wine team that has made it entirely possible to run your favorite apps. under Linux with ease and little "under-the-hood" work at all.
Fantastic efforts, and an even better future. Personally I think the future for OS have never looked this good.
The biggest curtain that have ever been pulled over the artists eyes is the "PRO"-Graphics card-Fad! Youre paying to feel "pro" - you dont get more "pro" for your money at all, you just get to "feel-like-pro" but very little extra to justify the real bucks youre spending on Quadro & FireGL series.
I know this, Im a "graphics pro" myself that makes a living of designing 3D-Models & prototyping every day and Ive used nearly every card known to mankind.
Heres my advice - take it or leave it:
Buy a Gaming-Nvidia card! The difference between the Gaming Series cards and the Quadro series card is just some extra driver software that is optimized for your "insert-favorite-3D-app-here", yes...there are some less pixel-flaws..but this will never ever affect your final-render unless youre using Nvidias Gelato (which has - by the way - proven in many cases to render less effectively than modern Multi-core-CPUs with software rendering)
You will save up to THOUSANDS of Dollars by not buying into the "PRO" hype, and youll be one happy puppy you didnt - and work just as efficiently (I know - we do) as the ones with the "PRO" cards, the game cards are actually using the same chipsets (remember the Quad-Mod you could perform on their cards, it aint fake you know!)...it would make absolutely NO SENSE for them business wise to produce 2 different cards when their cards can in fact do the same thing....and actually use the same chips.
Do you actually believe in the theory of a parallel universe...or anything related to a "parallel existence"?
:)
Come on people... this is weird even by science-fiction standards, don't get me wrong - I like to dream as much as the next guy, but get real...nothing so far proves that anything even closely related to this would have any substance to it, whatsoever!
If you want "real" - why don't you try to look beyond the know universe instead, I bet you (and I hopefully..) would find something of interest there. I'm quite sure we still have something to discover on earth yet - but the real answer lies lightyears away...so why not try looking there first, eh?
Yours local..smartass...signing off for now, another beer to be conquered
Most people on this planet KNOWs whats right and whats wrong if we are talking the "Basics" of knowledge, but how did they all get this knowledge - by learning, sometimes the hard way. Putting a lid on information will only make people more interested in learning about it, therefor there should be no lid on information - no matter how bad you or I think the information is. Everyone has the right to know whatever they want to know. Information should be free for anyone who desire it. Information can not hurt anyone - only a person can be hurt by feelings, and feelings usually derive from either love or hate, and love and hate usually derive from learning either by experience or teachings. If you teach someone that something is wrong or bad in your country, family, friends, religion or politics that someone will be shaped by that, and thus perceive information according to their environment. A child that grows up is a product of their environment. If you sensor information or block their path to information you are inhibiting their ability to shape themselves and acquire much needed knowledge. You can dispute this fact as much as you want to - that is your right - but do not take away other peoples right to do the very same thing, if you take away the information you are doing this - in fact - you are violating everything YOU where because YOU already have the or had the privilege to know this. We have a huge problem, we are letting ourselves be disciplined and governed by feelings, now this would be perfectly fine if you managed this on an individual basis, but people dont. They get collective and populistic about their feelings and mix it with religion and politics - this is a very dangerous mix that put our future in a mental jail where we must-not-see-because-it-is-bad-for-us. Who decide what is bad or good information? You do! But you do not decide this for OTHERS. It is very dangerous for a HOST to HOST information that in our society is regarded as either profane, against-insert-your-religion-of-choice-here or politically incorrect. We debate what we think and block other and future generations opportunities to LEARN for themselves based on our rules and regulations, this is the fallacy of society today. I Praise the hacker who care enough for the individual to dare venture where all others flee scared into the arms of paid opinions, to dare host files that may be seen as "illegal" to some who does not understand the freedom they themselves was in fact born with and even fought for. Information shall be free and available to inquisitive minds worldwide! Always!
The Xbox 360 has 48 shader operations? :)
Damn...
Probably more like 48 Billion shader operations. There, go fish now!