Windows 2000 and XP appear to be very stable and no one can deny that they are lightyears ahead of anything on linux when it comes to desktop comfort.
We all have our personal tastes. I feel more comfortable on my Linux box than my Win2k box, meaning I'm using almost exclusively my P2-350 instead of my 1GHz + kitchen sink box. I've never had it crash, unlike my Win2K box which crashes regularly, and I can customise it so easily (eg I like the close window widget to be on the left of the title bar so (a) I don't hit it accidentally and (b) it's the icon normally expose in windows down the stack).
I just hate it when I encounter yet another website that doesn't load using Konqueror, mozilla, opera... you fill in the blanks.
I much prefer Galeon to IE, with tabs and the ability to block images from a source with a single click.
While making the move to the semi-professional desktop, linux became more unstable (I don't know how many times I've grunted after installing yet another 2.4.x kernel)
The solution is perhaps not to keep upgrading to bleeding edge kernels? I wouldn't know where to start upgrading a kernel and don't feel any loss.
and certainly couldn't keep up with the gains made by windows on the user friendly side.
Again personal taste. I find it not very usable, apart from the universal cut and paste (not being able to paste between a KDE and Gnome app really annoys me).
Before playing some video I still have to say a prayer...
Weird, I have the opposite experience. WMP barfs at about half the files I try and play, but mplayer plays them all flawlessly. I can also real-time resize mplayer to any window size I like, which I cannot figure out how to do in WMP.
Right now, I can't keep my development pc running for more than a week because of some application that leaks memory and uses up my entire memory after a few days.
So let's look at the evidence: constant installing/uninstalling of kernals, video keeps falling over, apps leaking memory like a sieve... Sorry but it sounds like you've gone in and screwed up your workstation. Back up your work and reinstall and you should have a rock-solid desktop that plays video far better than your Win box. I mean it's like someone that goes into a Windows box, randomly deletes a load of.dlls and then blames Microsoft for the OS being unstable.
I think it's a perfectly valid point. I am a CS addict but I've never even seen a real gun. I wouldn't even know where to look for the safety catch. I usually get a high kill ratio on CS but had trouble hitting anything using my brother's air pistol. There is a gulf of difference imho between being physically trained in using a weapon designed to kill, and playing a computer game which may use a lot of keys but is still nothing like reality.
Phillip.
AOL will continue billing regardless
on
Disconnecting
·
· Score: 2
I tried using some of their free hours, and foolishly assumed they would warn me before starting to bill me. They never sent me any invoices so it was a few months before I noticed the £10/month going to AOL hidden in my statements. I phoned up and cancelled. My credit card continued to be billed. I did so again, and ditto. After I did this a few times, each time they totally ignored the fact they had told me it was cancelled, so after the final irate phone call I then called my bank and asked them to cancel my current card and send me a new one. Problem solved. Never heard from AOL again. Good riddance, though they screwed me out of about 6 months of charges for something I never used.
Phillip. PS pssst JonKatz, try getting Verisign to do something simple...
How about: Volume 1: The OO and the Imperative Approach Volume 2: Data Structures and Algorithms Volume 3: Learn C in 24hrs Volume 3a: Initialising Pointers and Stress Management Volume 3b: gdb Volume 4: Learn Java in 24hrs Volume 5: Bitter Java Volume 6: Software Engineering inc Source and Project Management Volume 7: Mythical Man Month Volume 8: How to Write a CV
Preferably in that order.:-) Those working for smaller companies may wish to order: Volume 9: The DIY DBA
Phillip.
You are missing the trojan
on
StarOffice 6.0
·
· Score: 2
As soon as I heard about Sun charging for Star Office, I switched over to OpenOffice. I haven't noticed any loss of functionality.
What I have noticed is that on a modern(500Mhz+) machine, Open Office is fast, relatively bug-free, and can open and save MSOffice documents easily. I rather like it.
I could see paying to support the project, but I don't see people paying $75 en masse for something they could get for free with OpenOffice.
So you've noticed that Open Office is fast on your 500MHz machine, and you rather like it. After a while you'll get used to it and any of its little quirks. When it comes around to renewing Office licenses at work you'll be able to say, "hey save 75% of the cost and get me an Star Office license because that's what I'm used to using anyway". Your company saves money, Sun gets their $75, part of that money goes back into improving your free Open Office that you use at home. I can't see anyone important that loses out in the deal:-)
Doesn't your first statement "From what he tells me, they were able to monitor displays from a good distance without any troubles" contradict "I don't know what this guy patented but it's already been deemed useless by 10 year old US Government research"?
Here is a good source of information about TEMPEST attacks, including the "Urban Folklore" LCD displays on laptops eliminate the risks of TEMPEST attacks (answers a few posts in this thread). It may be more than 10 years old as these guys claim to have been around 17 years.
" Just visited Dispair.com and low and behold the Classic Frowny is free to license, for a limited time. No pushing, no shoving, there are plenty to go a round."
Classic example of submarine patents. Tell everyone it's free to use, get it established as a de facto standard, and then POW. They'll probably try and use some kind of viral marketing, for example getting people to embed them in emails (what happened to the days when emails where plain grammar?).
Don't give in. Stick to Open Source emoticons, even if it does involve a length process of installing and configuring a chinese character set.
"People who commented it here actually posted either their disgust for the UI look or their reluctancy to use an OS which only happenned to get DHCP/multi-user."
They don't realise that you have to allocate limited resources to where they are needed. Until recently the only reason for DHCP is to plug a machine into a LAN. I don't know of any LAN that doesn't split its 192 block into static and dynamic range. DHCP really isn't needed, you just ask the admin for a static IP. It's only the advent of broadband which allocates via DHCP which pushed the DHCP module into being developed.
"Developping podules (hardware) for RiscOS is also as pleasant."
Podules have the drivers built into the hardware, making all RiscOS peripherals truly plug-and-play instead of plug-and-pray. Truly a godsend.
"For those that have wondered about RISC OS being ported to other ARM platforms... basically, it can't happen. RISC OS is *very* tightly bound to the Acorn-designed hardware that goes along with the ARM CPU in their systems."
That was needed to obtain the amazing speed at the time. Now hardware speed has outstripped software requirements on the desktop you can rewrite it on Intel or PPC if you wanted to. It's the look and feel, the way the 3 mouse buttons are used, the consistent context menus everywhere, drag-and-drop paradigm, etc. If you gave me RiscOS I could install on my PC...
"No-one seems to care about that. Oh, and RISC OS uses the ARM's 26-bit addressing mode, which was killed off ages ago.:-("
Wasn't that eliminated in RiscOS 4?
"At least some good stonkingly good stuff came out of Acorn. Sophie Wilson, the mega-genius, co-created the ARM chip (starting back in 1983!) and created 'Acorn Replay', a full-motion video subsystem for RISC OS (round about 1991), which was streets ahead of Apple's QuickTime."
She is also on the board of Eidos. Acorns could do full-screen FMV when PCs had trouble running a postage-stamp size AVI. This is why (correct me if I'm wrong) all the Eidos games such as Tomb Raider ran the video inserts in Replay format.
It certainly has the most intuitive and productive GUI in existance, and has done since 1989. Certainly better than Windows or Mac. It had the foresight to use co-operative multi-tasking instead of pre-emptive which leads to blazing speeds. The apps were well thought out. Its innovative use of drag and drop makes a mockery of the 'Finder' type widget you have to use *every* time you save. It would make an excellent model for KDE to aspire to. In fact a copy of the RiscOS Filer is available for Linux called ROX which has been raved about in many Linux circles. It would also be nice to copy the way every app is self-contained within its own directory. Uninstall app? Simply delete directory - no dependency hell. RiscOS front-end with Linux underneath? Mmmmmm
I'm using KDE with Galeon for the same reasons, but it is certainly where the lack of cut and paste between KDE and Gnome hurts the most. Sending people urls is one of the most common things to do.
I have to admit I'm quite excited about installing Gentoo (just waiting for my new gfx card to come through the post) and will install it instead of Mandrake 8.2. Red Hat was my first exposure to Linux and serves well as an eye opener. I tend to stick with what I know but on a spare machine I tried a couple of other distros. Mandrake 8.1 instantly converted me. Now I want a fast desktop, no worries about keeping my software up to date, and want to get rid of the bloat. The two most attractive distros are Scorcery and Gentoo, with the latter appearing much better supported. This is for my desktop machine. I'll keep Red Hat on my production server as I like the fall-back of business support, even though I never have and probably never will use it.
2.8 million dollars... what is that, like the amount Macromedia spends on catering yearly? Gimme a break. This is a nominal fee for back pay of the patent license."
That last remark reminds me of the tactics of domain squatters. Buy as many obvious ones as you can afford... hope one hits paydirt... hold domain to ransom... use money to buy as many more as possible... ad infinitum. Adobe will see the victory as encouragement and will probably pour the money back in to patenting as many obvious things as they can.
By far the best email client under Windows is The Bat!. I've been using it for over a year and it's excellent, both in terms of its ease of use and its security. I've won it a few new converts too. Newbies like the fact they can attach files by dragging files from an Explorer window directly onto the text of their message. I like it because it has many privacy things built in such as placeholders for images when viewing HTML to stop spam merchants detecting who views their emails by embedding invisible external images.
It's also feature rich. View multiple accounts, threaded conversations, etc. The software is solid as a rock and regularly updated. It costs $35 but you get a month free trial. One thing I appreciated is when I went over the 1 month it didn't lock me out from my email, it just encouraged me to pay. All in all one happy chap.
Fuel cells are closed systems, and the expensive part is recharging a cell and not filling it in the first place.
I don't understand. The hydrogen is the fuel in the fuel cell. You don't recharge a fuel cell, it works like an engine (though using the movement of electrons and protons instead of mechanical parts). And it's not a closed system. You put fuel in, and electricity and waste (water) comes out. Nothing stays internally. Read more about how they work here.
Besides, hydrogen has so many other drawbacks due to its low molecular weight, that the main problem isn't getting hydrogen it is using it.
There are two drawbacks. The first is you need to compress it to get a good power/volume ratio, and the second is that the molecules are so small they tend to leak out of anything trying to contain it. They are simple engineering problems though. The former we can already do without problem. The latter various materials are being tested for containers, as is storing the hydrogen within another compound such as boron and then using a catalyst to release it upon demand.
(if global warming is caused by us. Most scientists think it isn't)
So nearly every government in the world (except for the USA, naturally, with corrupt Bush) has signed up to the Kyoto treaty because most scientists think we have no effect on global warming? Aren't you a little divorced from reality?
So It's better just to stick with cheap, clean natural gas, or better yet, nuclear power.
Why shift our whole infrastructure to a resource that will run out such as natural gas? There are a multitude of ways of extracting the hydrogen for our fuel cells, these scientists are working out a way for the medium-term to prop up production and not a be-all and end-all solution.
Nuclear has a lot of potential, but more money needs to be put into research in ways of making the waste inert, rather than cutting research funding because nuclear is no longer 'trendy'.
Why not just host the software in Europe (and have it's theoretical 'base' there)? We are unencumbered by oppressive regimes such as the USA. Remember PGP and other encryption packages, where you could download secure versions from Europe but could only obtain crippled versions from the USA? This was used as evidence that the law was driving hi-tech business overseas and the US law was changed. Perhaps you could achieve the same with the DCMA?
It would be interesting if you could install a Voice over IP app on there. One thing I can't find anywhere is the resolution of the cam. The Nokia one is 640x480.
After all the "No Skateboarding/Bicycling/Rollerskating" signs I have seen around various towns, why would so many cities specifically allow these things on sidewalks by passing laws saying so?
Skateboards and rollerskates have no concept of brakes, which makes them unsuitable for pedestrianised areas. Bicycles are large and travel very fast, and are therefore deemed more suitable to share the road with other vehicles rather than with pedestrians. The Segway has a restricted speed, small footprint and is able to brake rapidly. On balance it is more suited to the sidewalk than the road. It doesn't seem like a great conspiracy to me, just common sense. As for specifically being mentioned in a law, if your local postal service is going to be using them then you want to makes sure their path is clear (excuse pun).
Phillip.
Re:"It sounded far better than a cell phone"
on
VoIP at $15 a Pop
·
· Score: 2
You'd be surprised how used to poor quality people can get. Give someone used to the US system a GSM phone and they will be saying every few minutes "hello? You still there?" because they think the line has dropped (and then jumping when a crystal clear voice responds). I went through the same when I moved from analogue to DECT cordless phone at home.
On the contrary it is an opt-in. You can use any media player that ignores the ID tag. There has to be some reward to encourage rewarding the artist. Much like getting a button when donating to charity, you get a token that let's you play or suppresses nag screen or however each media player wants to implement it. Maybe the media player could be more subtle and just have "freebie" stamped across the back of the vu bars, and the official band logo behind if you've rewarded the artist. There will need to be some experimenting to find the right carrot to go on the end of the stick. It will keep some big players happy, such as cable operators, as their STBs can enforce the pay-per-view.
You mean a system that retro-fits into the current P2P distribution and MP3 format? That enables people to reward the artist directly cutting out the record label middle-man, whilst being reasonably fraud-resistant? Feel free to post your comments below on the following essay: Peer-to-peer in profit. Feel free to copy it if you think it will give you an A.
Imagine that one of the pieces of spyware is designed to send out an "I'm alive!" message to a central server, to let it know that it has an activated client. This isn't too hard to imagine, I don't think. Suppose Kazaa blocked access to its network to any host that did not send an "I'm alive!" message. There you go, it's blocked.
Kazaa would lose the ability to say the use of its software is out of its control, as it is no longer truly peer to peer but falls back into the client server model. This could have legal ramifications for them down the road.
The Instant Messengers constantly change their protocols to try and break their rivals that log into their network, without that much success. The more diligent clones seem to have little trouble keeping up.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows 2000 and XP appear to be very stable and no one can deny that they are lightyears ahead of anything on linux when it comes to desktop comfort.
.dlls and then blames Microsoft for the OS being unstable.
We all have our personal tastes. I feel more comfortable on my Linux box than my Win2k box, meaning I'm using almost exclusively my P2-350 instead of my 1GHz + kitchen sink box. I've never had it crash, unlike my Win2K box which crashes regularly, and I can customise it so easily (eg I like the close window widget to be on the left of the title bar so (a) I don't hit it accidentally and (b) it's the icon normally expose in windows down the stack).
I just hate it when I encounter yet another website that doesn't load using Konqueror, mozilla, opera... you fill in the blanks.
I much prefer Galeon to IE, with tabs and the ability to block images from a source with a single click.
While making the move to the semi-professional desktop, linux became more unstable (I don't know how many times I've grunted after installing yet another 2.4.x kernel)
The solution is perhaps not to keep upgrading to bleeding edge kernels? I wouldn't know where to start upgrading a kernel and don't feel any loss.
and certainly couldn't keep up with the gains made by windows on the user friendly side.
Again personal taste. I find it not very usable, apart from the universal cut and paste (not being able to paste between a KDE and Gnome app really annoys me).
Before playing some video I still have to say a prayer...
Weird, I have the opposite experience. WMP barfs at about half the files I try and play, but mplayer plays them all flawlessly. I can also real-time resize mplayer to any window size I like, which I cannot figure out how to do in WMP.
Right now, I can't keep my development pc running for more than a week because of some application that leaks memory and uses up my entire memory after a few days.
So let's look at the evidence: constant installing/uninstalling of kernals, video keeps falling over, apps leaking memory like a sieve... Sorry but it sounds like you've gone in and screwed up your workstation. Back up your work and reinstall and you should have a rock-solid desktop that plays video far better than your Win box. I mean it's like someone that goes into a Windows box, randomly deletes a load of
Phillip.
I think it's a perfectly valid point. I am a CS addict but I've never even seen a real gun. I wouldn't even know where to look for the safety catch. I usually get a high kill ratio on CS but had trouble hitting anything using my brother's air pistol. There is a gulf of difference imho between being physically trained in using a weapon designed to kill, and playing a computer game which may use a lot of keys but is still nothing like reality.
Phillip.
I tried using some of their free hours, and foolishly assumed they would warn me before starting to bill me. They never sent me any invoices so it was a few months before I noticed the £10/month going to AOL hidden in my statements. I phoned up and cancelled. My credit card continued to be billed. I did so again, and ditto. After I did this a few times, each time they totally ignored the fact they had told me it was cancelled, so after the final irate phone call I then called my bank and asked them to cancel my current card and send me a new one. Problem solved. Never heard from AOL again. Good riddance, though they screwed me out of about 6 months of charges for something I never used.
Phillip.
PS pssst JonKatz, try getting Verisign to do something simple...
How about:
:-) Those working for smaller companies may wish to order:
Volume 1: The OO and the Imperative Approach
Volume 2: Data Structures and Algorithms
Volume 3: Learn C in 24hrs
Volume 3a: Initialising Pointers and Stress Management
Volume 3b: gdb
Volume 4: Learn Java in 24hrs
Volume 5: Bitter Java
Volume 6: Software Engineering inc Source and Project Management
Volume 7: Mythical Man Month
Volume 8: How to Write a CV
Preferably in that order.
Volume 9: The DIY DBA
Phillip.
As soon as I heard about Sun charging for Star Office, I switched over to OpenOffice. I haven't noticed any loss of functionality.
:-)
What I have noticed is that on a modern(500Mhz+) machine, Open Office is fast, relatively bug-free, and can open and save MSOffice documents easily. I rather like it.
I could see paying to support the project, but I don't see people paying $75 en masse for something they could get for free with OpenOffice.
So you've noticed that Open Office is fast on your 500MHz machine, and you rather like it. After a while you'll get used to it and any of its little quirks. When it comes around to renewing Office licenses at work you'll be able to say, "hey save 75% of the cost and get me an Star Office license because that's what I'm used to using anyway". Your company saves money, Sun gets their $75, part of that money goes back into improving your free Open Office that you use at home. I can't see anyone important that loses out in the deal
Phillip.
Doesn't your first statement "From what he tells me, they were able to monitor displays from a good distance without any troubles" contradict "I don't know what this guy patented but it's already been deemed useless by 10 year old US Government research"?
Here is a good source of information about TEMPEST attacks, including the "Urban Folklore" LCD displays on laptops eliminate the risks of TEMPEST attacks (answers a few posts in this thread). It may be more than 10 years old as these guys claim to have been around 17 years.
Phillip.
" Just visited Dispair.com and low and behold the Classic Frowny is free to license, for a limited time. No pushing, no shoving, there are plenty to go a round."
Classic example of submarine patents. Tell everyone it's free to use, get it established as a de facto standard, and then POW. They'll probably try and use some kind of viral marketing, for example getting people to embed them in emails (what happened to the days when emails where plain grammar?).
Don't give in. Stick to Open Source emoticons, even if it does involve a length process of installing and configuring a chinese character set.
Phillip.
"People who commented it here actually posted either their disgust for the UI look or their reluctancy to use an OS which only happenned to get DHCP/multi-user."
They don't realise that you have to allocate limited resources to where they are needed. Until recently the only reason for DHCP is to plug a machine into a LAN. I don't know of any LAN that doesn't split its 192 block into static and dynamic range. DHCP really isn't needed, you just ask the admin for a static IP. It's only the advent of broadband which allocates via DHCP which pushed the DHCP module into being developed.
"Developping podules (hardware) for RiscOS is also as pleasant."
Podules have the drivers built into the hardware, making all RiscOS peripherals truly plug-and-play instead of plug-and-pray. Truly a godsend.
Phillip.
"For those that have wondered about RISC OS being ported to other ARM platforms... basically, it can't happen. RISC OS is *very* tightly bound to the Acorn-designed hardware that goes along with the ARM CPU in their systems."
:-("
That was needed to obtain the amazing speed at the time. Now hardware speed has outstripped software requirements on the desktop you can rewrite it on Intel or PPC if you wanted to. It's the look and feel, the way the 3 mouse buttons are used, the consistent context menus everywhere, drag-and-drop paradigm, etc. If you gave me RiscOS I could install on my PC...
"No-one seems to care about that. Oh, and RISC OS uses the ARM's 26-bit addressing mode, which was killed off ages ago.
Wasn't that eliminated in RiscOS 4?
"At least some good stonkingly good stuff came out of Acorn. Sophie Wilson, the mega-genius, co-created the ARM chip (starting back in 1983!) and created 'Acorn Replay', a full-motion video subsystem for RISC OS (round about 1991), which was streets ahead of Apple's QuickTime."
She is also on the board of Eidos. Acorns could do full-screen FMV when PCs had trouble running a postage-stamp size AVI. This is why (correct me if I'm wrong) all the Eidos games such as Tomb Raider ran the video inserts in Replay format.
Phillip.
It certainly has the most intuitive and productive GUI in existance, and has done since 1989. Certainly better than Windows or Mac. It had the foresight to use co-operative multi-tasking instead of pre-emptive which leads to blazing speeds. The apps were well thought out. Its innovative use of drag and drop makes a mockery of the 'Finder' type widget you have to use *every* time you save. It would make an excellent model for KDE to aspire to. In fact a copy of the RiscOS Filer is available for Linux called ROX which has been raved about in many Linux circles. It would also be nice to copy the way every app is self-contained within its own directory. Uninstall app? Simply delete directory - no dependency hell. RiscOS front-end with Linux underneath? Mmmmmm
Phillip.
I'm using KDE with Galeon for the same reasons, but it is certainly where the lack of cut and paste between KDE and Gnome hurts the most. Sending people urls is one of the most common things to do.
Phillip.
I have to admit I'm quite excited about installing Gentoo (just waiting for my new gfx card to come through the post) and will install it instead of Mandrake 8.2. Red Hat was my first exposure to Linux and serves well as an eye opener. I tend to stick with what I know but on a spare machine I tried a couple of other distros. Mandrake 8.1 instantly converted me. Now I want a fast desktop, no worries about keeping my software up to date, and want to get rid of the bloat. The two most attractive distros are Scorcery and Gentoo, with the latter appearing much better supported. This is for my desktop machine. I'll keep Red Hat on my production server as I like the fall-back of business support, even though I never have and probably never will use it.
Phillip.
2.8 million dollars... what is that, like the amount Macromedia spends on catering yearly? Gimme a break. This is a nominal fee for back pay of the patent license."
... hope one hits paydirt ... hold domain to ransom ... use money to buy as many more as possible ... ad infinitum. Adobe will see the victory as encouragement and will probably pour the money back in to patenting as many obvious things as they can.
That last remark reminds me of the tactics of domain squatters. Buy as many obvious ones as you can afford
Phillip.
By far the best email client under Windows is The Bat!. I've been using it for over a year and it's excellent, both in terms of its ease of use and its security. I've won it a few new converts too. Newbies like the fact they can attach files by dragging files from an Explorer window directly onto the text of their message. I like it because it has many privacy things built in such as placeholders for images when viewing HTML to stop spam merchants detecting who views their emails by embedding invisible external images.
It's also feature rich. View multiple accounts, threaded conversations, etc. The software is solid as a rock and regularly updated. It costs $35 but you get a month free trial. One thing I appreciated is when I went over the 1 month it didn't lock me out from my email, it just encouraged me to pay. All in all one happy chap.
Phillip.
Fuel cells are closed systems, and the expensive part is recharging a cell and not filling it in the first place.
I don't understand. The hydrogen is the fuel in the fuel cell. You don't recharge a fuel cell, it works like an engine (though using the movement of electrons and protons instead of mechanical parts). And it's not a closed system. You put fuel in, and electricity and waste (water) comes out. Nothing stays internally. Read more about how they work here.
Besides, hydrogen has so many other drawbacks due to its low molecular weight, that the main problem isn't getting hydrogen it is using it.
There are two drawbacks. The first is you need to compress it to get a good power/volume ratio, and the second is that the molecules are so small they tend to leak out of anything trying to contain it. They are simple engineering problems though. The former we can already do without problem. The latter various materials are being tested for containers, as is storing the hydrogen within another compound such as boron and then using a catalyst to release it upon demand.
Phillip.
http://www.FutureEnergies.com/
(if global warming is caused by us. Most scientists think it isn't)
So nearly every government in the world (except for the USA, naturally, with corrupt Bush) has signed up to the Kyoto treaty because most scientists think we have no effect on global warming? Aren't you a little divorced from reality?
So It's better just to stick with cheap, clean natural gas, or better yet, nuclear power.
Why shift our whole infrastructure to a resource that will run out such as natural gas? There are a multitude of ways of extracting the hydrogen for our fuel cells, these scientists are working out a way for the medium-term to prop up production and not a be-all and end-all solution.
Nuclear has a lot of potential, but more money needs to be put into research in ways of making the waste inert, rather than cutting research funding because nuclear is no longer 'trendy'.
Phillip.
http://www.FutureEnergies.com/
Why not just host the software in Europe (and have it's theoretical 'base' there)? We are unencumbered by oppressive regimes such as the USA. Remember PGP and other encryption packages, where you could download secure versions from Europe but could only obtain crippled versions from the USA? This was used as evidence that the law was driving hi-tech business overseas and the US law was changed. Perhaps you could achieve the same with the DCMA?
Phillip.
It would be interesting if you could install a Voice over IP app on there. One thing I can't find anywhere is the resolution of the cam. The Nokia one is 640x480.
Phillip.
After all the "No Skateboarding/Bicycling/Rollerskating" signs I have seen around various towns, why would so many cities specifically allow these things on sidewalks by passing laws saying so?
Skateboards and rollerskates have no concept of brakes, which makes them unsuitable for pedestrianised areas. Bicycles are large and travel very fast, and are therefore deemed more suitable to share the road with other vehicles rather than with pedestrians. The Segway has a restricted speed, small footprint and is able to brake rapidly. On balance it is more suited to the sidewalk than the road. It doesn't seem like a great conspiracy to me, just common sense. As for specifically being mentioned in a law, if your local postal service is going to be using them then you want to makes sure their path is clear (excuse pun).
Phillip.
You'd be surprised how used to poor quality people can get. Give someone used to the US system a GSM phone and they will be saying every few minutes "hello? You still there?" because they think the line has dropped (and then jumping when a crystal clear voice responds). I went through the same when I moved from analogue to DECT cordless phone at home.
Phillip.
There is another mirror here.
Phillip.
On the contrary it is an opt-in. You can use any media player that ignores the ID tag. There has to be some reward to encourage rewarding the artist. Much like getting a button when donating to charity, you get a token that let's you play or suppresses nag screen or however each media player wants to implement it. Maybe the media player could be more subtle and just have "freebie" stamped across the back of the vu bars, and the official band logo behind if you've rewarded the artist. There will need to be some experimenting to find the right carrot to go on the end of the stick. It will keep some big players happy, such as cable operators, as their STBs can enforce the pay-per-view.
Phillip.
You mean a system that retro-fits into the current P2P distribution and MP3 format? That enables people to reward the artist directly cutting out the record label middle-man, whilst being reasonably fraud-resistant? Feel free to post your comments below on the following essay:
Peer-to-peer in profit. Feel free to copy it if you think it will give you an A.
Phillip.
Imagine that one of the pieces of spyware is designed to send out an "I'm alive!" message to a central server, to let it know that it has an activated client. This isn't too hard to imagine, I don't think. Suppose Kazaa blocked access to its network to any host that did not send an "I'm alive!" message. There you go, it's blocked.
Kazaa would lose the ability to say the use of its software is out of its control, as it is no longer truly peer to peer but falls back into the client server model. This could have legal ramifications for them down the road.
Phillip.
The Instant Messengers constantly change their protocols to try and break their rivals that log into their network, without that much success. The more diligent clones seem to have little trouble keeping up.
Phillip.