If, further to this, we added the word "ENCRYPTED"
to the file name, and attach encrypted but freely available mp3 files, then they'll have no way of actually knowing (short of breaking each encryption key) whether the file is really what it purports to be or not.
> Why don't major vendors get the fact that some of us like our legacy stuff and don't want to move just because we "have" to?
Why don't consumers get the fact that their hardware would be faster, cleaner, easier to use, and downright sexier if legacy stuff didn't have to be supported?
Take Intel CPUs. They're a kludge. A terrible, messy, evil kludge. And they're a kludge because they have to support legacy applications that ran on the 8086.
Intel, of course, is making exactly the same mistake by attempting to emulate x86 modes on the Itaniums.
If you really, really want to use legacy stuff, then go and get a PCI to ISA Bridge or something. But don't try and force ISA compatibility into PCI-Express, because that's just going to make things slower (and messier) for everyone else.
First of all, $12,800 for 13 years of education is ridiculously low. How much did your 3 year university degree cost again?
Secondly, I completely agree with you that teachers should be payed more. This is a major problem in our (Australian) education system as well, and unfortunately nobody seems to be taking steps to redress it.
Next point. $36 million for a set of new buildings is not overly expensive, in fact it's about right. And I completely disagree that private schools should get the money - whether they do a better job is not the issue. Education should be for everybody, not just those rich enough to pay private fees.
Encouraging private citizens to contribute to private schools, however, sounds like a brilliant idea. This way the private schools get their extra funding without cutting into the pockets of the public schools.
I'll finish with a reiteration of a previous question: How much money exactly did your country spend on defence in the equivalent amount of time?
So the fact that your SAT scores have declined doesn't suggest something to you? Like... schools not getting enough money? Perhaps?
$580 billion since 1970. Dude, that's 30 years. How much was spent on defence in the same amount of time? How many kids was this spent on? How much does that amount to _per child_?
What a bullshit statistic. Considering that education is perhaps the _most_ important investment you can make for your country's future, why on earth would you want to give it to the FSF?
Do I even have to comment on how stupid this reasoning is?
How many small-time criminals are going to buy a gun if they're readily available? How many if they're not?
And these small-time criminals, who go in to a shop, panic, and pull the trigger, probably account for a very large proportion of gun-related deaths.
Oh wait, there's also the _other_ people who get their hands on a gun they don't know how to use, like children!
Go and find out one day the percentage of shootings that involved a citizen _legally_ defending themselves against a criminal, in states with gun control. It's pathetically, depressingly low.
Go back and read what they wrote. Microsoft (as in the company) are forcibly urging customers to install the upgrade. Not the OS. The company.
Forcible \For"ci*ble\, a. [Cf. OF. forcible forcible, forceable that may be forced.] 1. Possessing force;
characterized by force, efficiency, or energy; powerful; efficacious; impressive; influential.
(from the Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary)
It's not even a nasty term!
Sheesh - I mean, I know the editors get it wrong often enough, but do we really need to harsh them when they get something right?
Imagine whitehouse.com linking with a 1-second redirect to whitehouse.xxx.
Then the OLD customers go to whitehouse.com, they NEW customers can go anywhere they want, and the actual site content can still be filtered based on suffix.
An excellent point, and a well written post. If I had moderator points, they'd be going to you..:-)
However, I'm just wondering where TRUE peer-to-peer programs such as FreeNet, MojoNation, Gnutella, etc. fit in? While it's convenient and easy to download music files through Napster, it is just as convenient and easy to get the same files through one of these programs.
Furthermore, there is very little chance of the authors of these programs 'cutting a deal' with any record agency, for two reasons:
(1) The programs don't rely on a central server - there is no one to sue.
(2) The programs aren't restricted to music - any type of file can be swapped. The authors of the program have no real interest in music, as such.
Now imagine that people have to start paying for Napster downloads. Undoubtably, a significant proportion of Napster uses will do so.
However, because of the simple fact that the other p2p networks are (and will always be) free, can't we expect that a large number of Napster users will simply start using a different service?
In other words, could Napster be killing itself by making this type of deal?
The most interesting thing about all this, though, is that the true p2p networks are - even to an anti-capitalist like me - scary! There is _no_ restriction on the material that can appear on these networks. This doesn't worry me significantly - we're all old enough to make our own decisions about what to view - but it does raise unresolvable issues.
Take, for instance, child pornography. Certain adult members of the population have decided that they enjoy looking at the bodies of young children. Society has (and rightly so, in this case) decided that this is wrong - it constitutes a violation of the child's rights, and furthermore it may lead to more intrusive violations.
Yet p2p networks allow the unrestricted trading of such material.
On the other hand, though, p2p may be the only medium through which citizens of various countries can establish their basic right of unrestricted communication. How do you reconcile these two issues?
Sorry - this got way offtopic, but it's an interesting question nontheless.
The first part is fair enough - 4160 tickets, each with a 1 in 76,275,360 chance of winning means that there is a 4,160 in 76,275,360 chance of winning (or 1:18,335, approx).
However, if you have a 1 in 709,260 chance of being hit by lighning ONCE, you can't simply double the second number to get the chance of being hit by lightning TWICE.
Instead, you have to square the second number. This reflects that fact that even AFTER you've been hit by lightning, you then have a 1 in 709,260 chance of being hit AGAIN.
As a result, the probability of being hit by lightning twice is a staggeringly low 1:503,049,747,600. Hence you've got a much better chance of winning the lottery once in 80 years than being struck by lightning twice.
In fact, the probability of being hit by lightning twice is probably even lower - how many people die after being hit the first time?
Interesting....I'm fairly sure that the 10-year old child doesn't have an MIS degree...why does the parent need one?
The whole point is this. The 'war' against the internet is not founded on rational thought. It's founded on governments and commercial institutions deciding that the internet is bad because it offers the ultimate in free speech tools.
Try looking at things this way - would you let your child go and play on a busy highway? Would you let them wander the streets by themselves? Would you let your children Bungee Jump?
However, the solution to these things is NOT to ban cars, roads, and dangerous sports! Instead, the parent is supposed to attempt to keep their child away from these dangers.
How are the internet / T.V. / Computer games any different, then? It's very easy to stop a kid from going out on the internet when you aren't present - you can password-protect the computer, or take the keyboard, or simply give your kids a LITTLE BIT OF DISCIPLINE, then tell them NOT TO USE THE COMPUTER unless you are at home...
My parents did this and it worked fine for me. I'm now a computer engineer by the way, so I guess I still picked up on the technology appropriately.
They also did things like bann violent video games (this is not very hard - look at the screen shots...), restrict the amount of time I could play games on the computer (but not the amount of time I could do things like programming or school work), and flatly refuse to allow me to watch certain television programs.
And of COURSE I encountered kids at school who were more 'wordly' than I was. But you know what? When I heard things I didn't understand, my parents were there to discuss them with me.
In more recent years, as a tutor to various kids doing Maths and Physics, I've seen both ends of the scale - kids who are into every illegal thing on the 'net, and well-behaved, well-adjusted kids.
Guess what the primary difference between the two was? How well the parents related to / looked after the kids. NOT whether or not there was a computer in the house. NOT whether or not the kid had 'bad' friends.
No, the internet is blamed as a bad thing because parents can't be bothered building a relationship with their kids any more. And the government and commercial sector jump on this and use it as a tool to squash that disturbing free speech...
One of the shoddiest things about the whole office suite is the help system. Microsoft help is the WORST I've ever seen!
Besides being way too shallow, it's very difficult to find all but the simplest things.
The GUI on Word IS terrible, too. For instance:
Try putting page numbers on some pages, but not others. Try finding "Preferences" in Word (Tools..Options? Give me a break, every sane program puts it in Edit or View!). Try doing ANYTHING that isn't completely stock-standard, like having some portrait pages and some landscape pages within a single document.
Even if these things are possible, they're certainly not easy, and the help system DOES NOT.
Now, I've used Word (most versions), WordPerfect (most versions after and including 5.1, and possibly the one before), and StarOffice (5.0 onwards). Word definitely comes out worst, in my opinion.
For some things, Word is easier. For most things, it sucks.
StarOffice even has some cool little tools that NONE of the other word processors I've used have thought of. Things like being able to drag multiple points in multiple objects (without dragging the whole object). StarOffice also has a HTML editor that allows you to edit native HTML.
WordPerfect is very polished, has menu options in appropriate positions, and DOESN'T HAVE THAT STUPID PAPERCLIP...
Word - it's just awful. (this should be M$'s new motto...)
Nanotechnology (whether it will ever exist or not - and I think it will) is building machines AT the molecular level.
For instance, building molecular bearings by having a positive molecular shaft rotating inside a positive molecular ring maybe 12 molecules in circumference.
Although both are quite "lumpy", the electrostatic interactions between the two keeps the movement smooth.
Slashdot Mirror
Your samba problems may be due to the "XP firewall". Try disabling it and see if you can connect.
Cheers,
-Shane
> Why don't major vendors get the fact that some of us like our legacy stuff and don't want to move just because we "have" to?
Why don't consumers get the fact that their hardware would be faster, cleaner, easier to use, and downright sexier if legacy stuff didn't have to be supported?
Take Intel CPUs. They're a kludge. A terrible, messy, evil kludge. And they're a kludge because they have to support legacy applications that ran on the 8086.
Intel, of course, is making exactly the same mistake by attempting to emulate x86 modes on the Itaniums.
If you really, really want to use legacy stuff, then go and get a PCI to ISA Bridge or something. But don't try and force ISA compatibility into PCI-Express, because that's just going to make things slower (and messier) for everyone else.
-Shane
You should really take a look at recent proof efforts before mouthing off like this.
If I may point you to two examples:
Another point (and this is an important one): personal experiences don't generalise
Why not just expand the current p2p applications to "download RIAA content" for user's pleasure while they wait for their files to download?
That way, the more people share, the less bandwidth RIAA has to stop people from sharing...
AND, the user can read ALL about how what they're doing is wrong, so the p2p networks would actually be doing the RIAA a service!
-Shane
First of all, $12,800 for 13 years of education is ridiculously low. How much did your 3 year university degree cost again?
Secondly, I completely agree with you that teachers should be payed more. This is a major problem in our (Australian) education system as well, and unfortunately nobody seems to be taking steps to redress it.
Next point. $36 million for a set of new buildings is not overly expensive, in fact it's about right. And I completely disagree that private schools should get the money - whether they do a better job is not the issue. Education should be for everybody, not just those rich enough to pay private fees.
Encouraging private citizens to contribute to private schools, however, sounds like a brilliant idea. This way the private schools get their extra funding without cutting into the pockets of the public schools.
I'll finish with a reiteration of a previous question: How much money exactly did your country spend on defence in the equivalent amount of time?
-Shane Stephens
Uh huh.
... schools not getting enough money? Perhaps?
So the fact that your SAT scores have declined doesn't suggest something to you? Like
$580 billion since 1970. Dude, that's 30 years. How much was spent on defence in the same amount of time? How many kids was this spent on? How much does that amount to _per child_?
What a bullshit statistic. Considering that education is perhaps the _most_ important investment you can make for your country's future, why on earth would you want to give it to the FSF?
-Shane Stephens
Do I even have to comment on how stupid this reasoning is?
How many small-time criminals are going to buy a gun if they're readily available? How many if they're not?
And these small-time criminals, who go in to a shop, panic, and pull the trigger, probably account for a very large proportion of gun-related deaths.
Oh wait, there's also the _other_ people who get their hands on a gun they don't know how to use, like children!
Go and find out one day the percentage of shootings that involved a citizen _legally_ defending themselves against a criminal, in states with gun control. It's pathetically, depressingly low.
-Shane Stephens
Moron.
Go back and read what they wrote. Microsoft (as in the company) are forcibly urging customers to install the upgrade. Not the OS. The company.
Forcible \For"ci*ble\, a. [Cf. OF. forcible forcible, forceable that may be forced.] 1. Possessing force; characterized by force, efficiency, or energy; powerful; efficacious; impressive; influential.
(from the Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary)
It's not even a nasty term!
Sheesh - I mean, I know the editors get it wrong often enough, but do we really need to harsh them when they get something right?
-Shane Stephens
RRiiiiiiggggghhhhhhttttttttt.....
*you smile and nod, I'll fetch the men in the white coats*
-Shane
Just to make sure YOU understand...
...you don't have a company, product, or job without the techies that make it so.
Management are useless - they sit there feathering their own nest and talking about 'productivity', while other people go and do the real work.
-Shane Stephens
This guy's GOT to be a Microsoft C0ward.
* didn't log in
* bagging out Open Source (while pretending to be successful)
* spreading FUD
It all adds up...
-Shane
That's no argument.
Imagine whitehouse.com linking with a 1-second redirect to whitehouse.xxx.
Then the OLD customers go to whitehouse.com, they NEW customers can go anywhere they want, and the actual site content can still be filtered based on suffix.
-Shane Stephens
Hmmm - seems to me you believe that everybody who gets pregnant is a whore or a slut.
Ever heard of Rape? People like you make me sick.
-Shane Stephens
An excellent point, and a well written post. If I had moderator points, they'd be going to you.. :-)
However, I'm just wondering where TRUE peer-to-peer programs such as FreeNet, MojoNation, Gnutella, etc. fit in? While it's convenient and easy to download music files through Napster, it is just as convenient and easy to get the same files through one of these programs.
Furthermore, there is very little chance of the authors of these programs 'cutting a deal' with any record agency, for two reasons:
(1) The programs don't rely on a central server - there is no one to sue.
(2) The programs aren't restricted to music - any type of file can be swapped. The authors of the program have no real interest in music, as such.
Now imagine that people have to start paying for Napster downloads. Undoubtably, a significant proportion of Napster uses will do so.
However, because of the simple fact that the other p2p networks are (and will always be) free, can't we expect that a large number of Napster users will simply start using a different service?
In other words, could Napster be killing itself by making this type of deal?
The most interesting thing about all this, though, is that the true p2p networks are - even to an anti-capitalist like me - scary! There is _no_ restriction on the material that can appear on these networks. This doesn't worry me significantly - we're all old enough to make our own decisions about what to view - but it does raise unresolvable issues.
Take, for instance, child pornography. Certain adult members of the population have decided that they enjoy looking at the bodies of young children. Society has (and rightly so, in this case) decided that this is wrong - it constitutes a violation of the child's rights, and furthermore it may lead to more intrusive violations.
Yet p2p networks allow the unrestricted trading of such material.
On the other hand, though, p2p may be the only medium through which citizens of various countries can establish their basic right of unrestricted communication. How do you reconcile these two issues?
Sorry - this got way offtopic, but it's an interesting question nontheless.
-Shane Stephens
That's not quite true.
The first part is fair enough - 4160 tickets, each with a 1 in 76,275,360 chance of winning means that there is a 4,160 in 76,275,360 chance of winning (or 1:18,335, approx).
However, if you have a 1 in 709,260 chance of being hit by lighning ONCE, you can't simply double the second number to get the chance of being hit by lightning TWICE.
Instead, you have to square the second number. This reflects that fact that even AFTER you've been hit by lightning, you then have a 1 in 709,260 chance of being hit AGAIN.
As a result, the probability of being hit by lightning twice is a staggeringly low 1:503,049,747,600. Hence you've got a much better chance of winning the lottery once in 80 years than being struck by lightning twice.
In fact, the probability of being hit by lightning twice is probably even lower - how many people die after being hit the first time?
-Shane Stephens
Interesting....I'm fairly sure that the 10-year old child doesn't have an MIS degree...why does the parent need one?
The whole point is this. The 'war' against the internet is not founded on rational thought. It's founded on governments and commercial institutions deciding that the internet is bad because it offers the ultimate in free speech tools.
Try looking at things this way - would you let your child go and play on a busy highway? Would you let them wander the streets by themselves? Would you let your children Bungee Jump?
However, the solution to these things is NOT to ban cars, roads, and dangerous sports! Instead, the parent is supposed to attempt to keep their child away from these dangers.
How are the internet / T.V. / Computer games any different, then? It's very easy to stop a kid from going out on the internet when you aren't present - you can password-protect the computer, or take the keyboard, or simply give your kids a LITTLE BIT OF DISCIPLINE, then tell them NOT TO USE THE COMPUTER unless you are at home...
My parents did this and it worked fine for me. I'm now a computer engineer by the way, so I guess I still picked up on the technology appropriately.
They also did things like bann violent video games (this is not very hard - look at the screen shots...), restrict the amount of time I could play games on the computer (but not the amount of time I could do things like programming or school work), and flatly refuse to allow me to watch certain television programs.
And of COURSE I encountered kids at school who were more 'wordly' than I was. But you know what? When I heard things I didn't understand, my parents were there to discuss them with me.
In more recent years, as a tutor to various kids doing Maths and Physics, I've seen both ends of the scale - kids who are into every illegal thing on the 'net, and well-behaved, well-adjusted kids.
Guess what the primary difference between the two was? How well the parents related to / looked after the kids. NOT whether or not there was a computer in the house. NOT whether or not the kid had 'bad' friends.
No, the internet is blamed as a bad thing because parents can't be bothered building a relationship with their kids any more. And the government and commercial sector jump on this and use it as a tool to squash that disturbing free speech...
-Shane Stephens
What's wrong with suing the firearm companies?
Seems to me a fairly good way to restrict gun use.
-Shane
There's also a new OS in 'the pipeline', being developed by the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
m l
o .html
The OS is known as MUNGI, and is a single address-space operating system with persistent memory. This means that:
(a) There's no such thing as 'devices' everything is mapped into the one 64 bit address space (including memory on different machines)
(b) If you want to 'save' something, you stick it in memory and tag it as 'persistent' - hence, there's no such thing as files.
If you want to read more about MUNGI, check out
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~disy/Mungi/index.ht
and particularly
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~disy/Mungi/manifest
-Shane Stephens
Yes they are!
Check out, for instance, the "L4" kernel. I'd give you a reference, but I don't have one.
This is designed to be a blindingly fast (true) microkernel, with EVERYTHING except for:
Process creation
Thread creation
Message passing
Security
running at user level. Even page fault handlers and exception handlers are run at user level!
It's very interesting, and worth looking at.
-Shane Stephens
That's utter crap.
One of the shoddiest things about the whole office suite is the help system. Microsoft help is the WORST I've ever seen!
Besides being way too shallow, it's very difficult to find all but the simplest things.
The GUI on Word IS terrible, too. For instance:
Try putting page numbers on some pages, but not others. Try finding "Preferences" in Word (Tools..Options? Give me a break, every sane program puts it in Edit or View!). Try doing ANYTHING that isn't completely stock-standard, like having some portrait pages and some landscape pages within a single document.
Even if these things are possible, they're certainly not easy, and the help system DOES NOT.
Now, I've used Word (most versions), WordPerfect (most versions after and including 5.1, and possibly the one before), and StarOffice (5.0 onwards). Word definitely comes out worst, in my opinion.
For some things, Word is easier. For most things, it sucks.
StarOffice even has some cool little tools that NONE of the other word processors I've used have thought of. Things like being able to drag multiple points in multiple objects (without dragging the whole object). StarOffice also has a HTML editor that allows you to edit native HTML.
WordPerfect is very polished, has menu options in appropriate positions, and DOESN'T HAVE THAT STUPID PAPERCLIP...
Word - it's just awful.
(this should be M$'s new motto...)
-Shane Stephens
This is probably wasted, but anyway...
I can understand WHY people post comments like this. They need to feel superior to others, etc, etc, etc.
What I don't understand is how they can actually get any enjoyment out of it.
Oh well.
-Shane Stephens
I WANT THAT GAME!
I played it a few times when I was younger, but have never been able to get hold of it since.
Where o where can I get it from?
(or was it The Even More Incredible Machine?)
-Shane Stephens
Punctuation has a 't' in it. Two, actually.
Quit complaining about the punctuation in somebody's signature, and fix your own spelling problems.
-Shane Stephens
Nanotechnology (whether it will ever exist or not - and I think it will) is building machines AT the molecular level.
For instance, building molecular bearings by having a positive molecular shaft rotating inside a positive molecular ring maybe 12 molecules in circumference.
Although both are quite "lumpy", the electrostatic interactions between the two keeps the movement smooth.
-Shane