I've never heard of this guy. He's supposed to be a "writer", but the only thing I can find about him is his blog, and this article which he's managed to get plastered everywhere. Why do I care that his neighbor's kid was harassing him?
Apparently, you can't, since you will be sued to death by either Microsoft or Oracle. It looks like every feature needed for a useful OS is already patented by someone else.
Why is it an obvious need that I have a fire extinguisher in my house? I've had them for 15 years, and I've never put a fire out with them. Obviously, they are useless and I should just throw them out.
The author failed to mention the biggest drawback of flash memory: there is a maximum number of times that any area of flash memory can be written to. I haven't seen any analysis on this, but I suspect that you will reach the maximum cycles on the flash memory long before the mean failure time of a hard drive.
I think this is a classic case of someone who is obviously very bright academically, but who doesn't have an ounce of common sense. Yes, upon close inspection, the device might not look like a bomb, but the police don't have time for close inspection when it's the real thing. I actually WANT the police to overreact in cases like this in order to keep me safer.
I really don't understand why people keep pointing to privacy issues when it comes to your PUBLIC movements. Tracking your phone records and such is a different story, as that information is actually private. Where you go in public isn't private to begin with. It's PUBLIC, get it? That information is already out there for everyone to see. Not to mention the fact that if you're driving in a car, you're on a road, which is a government controlled area. I can't believe anyone thinks they should be able to drive in Manhattan, and their whereabouts should remain private!
I think history proves that the overall condition of society constantly improves, with a setback here and again. There may still be a huge gap between today's rich and poor when it comes to looks, money, talent, education, whatever. But compare today's poor with the poor of a hundred years ago, and things are marginally better
I have to disagree with you there. The majority of the worlds population live in India and China. In these countries, the poor aren't any better off than they were 100 years ago, while the rich are significantly better off. The trend seems to be cyclical where the gap between the rich and the poor increases until it's not maintainable, and then there is a correction. I'm not so sure that there is any overall progress made.
Dude, it's not HIS cause, it's OUR cause. He's a lawyer who works for people like us. I agree that his answers are a bit impatient, but I think a large part of his point is that the law is unclear, and that the answers to some of these questions depend on what the RIAA decides to sue us for in the future.
Although it sounds like a conspiracy theory, Ray's assertions that anti-lawyer propaganda is being spread by corporate America to erode the rights of citizens seems to have some basis. Check out this link:
http://www.out-law.com/page-3396
From the article:
"All indications are that they're part of a massive campaign by corporate America and its allies to propagandise for tort 'reform' - limits on the legal rights of individuals to hold corporate wrongdoers accountable for causing death and injury."
So I've bought the physical CD, and I can listen to it for the life of the CD. But there is no right to rip or copy the music on the CD, with the possible exception of a personal backup copy which the publishers are gratiously allowing us to make for now. Is that correct?
Sorry for the nit-picking questions, but I'm trying to zoom in on exactly what the law says I am allowed to do.
When you buy a copy of something you have rights in the copy, that's it. No metaphysical rights to listen, reproduce additional copies, etc.
Ray, since you seem to be following this thread, and some other people seem to be frustrated by the vagueness of the answers (I'm not blaming you, it sounds like the law is vague), I'd like to ask just what rights I actually get when I buy a CD. You seem to imply that I have just bought a piece of plastic, and that I don't even have the implicit right to listen to the music on it. Is this correct?
If that's true, we would have to be idiots to buy anything under that kind of agreement. I think we should be trying to educate consumers that they are buying something under terms that they would never accept if they were aware of the details.
This is a big step, because it cuts out the Labels entirely. I'd love to see this grow, and I think with the popularity of MySpace, it's a real possibility. I won't buy an DRM encumbered music, because you're really only renting it. There's no guarantee that you'll be able to play that music in the future. For example, if you at any point stop paying your subscription, you won't be able to play that music on any other device, so at that point you'll only own that music for the life of the device.
This isn't the first legal music site that doesn't use DRM, though. eMusic also uses restriction-free MP3. It's a subscription model, rather than pay-as-you-download. They also don't carry most of the popular current bands, so if you're looking for the latest song on pop radio, you won't find it. They do carry lesser known artists, and their classical and jazz sections are actually very broad, including a lot of well known artists.
That sounds good in theory, but when you try to apply it in the real world you find that people don't want to work that way. People don't want to "apply a tool to their data". They want to edit their document, and they want to do it with the application they are familiar with. They don't want to apply the "text tool" to edit the text, then find the "picture tool" to insert a picture. They want to use the menu item or the hotkey that they are familiar with and just get it done.
The kind of architecture you're talking about sounds good to the geek writing the applications, but it doesn't fit the workflow that actual users want.
OK, we don't have the launch footage because someone knocked over the camera(!?!?). And we lost contact right after launch because of a power outage. But here's a really blurry picture to prove it's up there.
Also, our business model is that if we just get it up there someone else will... um... well, rent it or lease it for something. You know, it's just like building a strip mall. If you just build the space, someone else will pay to occupy it or use it to advertise. Except, of course, that this is in space where people can't really get to or see.
This story is so sketchy, and the web site is so cheesey, I'm tempted to think this whole thing is fake. I know it's been in the news before, but so has the Phantom console. At best, it sounds like some crackpot in Real Estate came up with a stupid but futuristic sounding idea, and managed to get a lot of funding for it.
The only possible use I can see for this is to lease it to NASA. NASA could save money by abandoning the ISS and use this for a lower cost. Of course NASA ran out of useful experiments to do a long time ago, so I don't know what they would actually use this for, but it would be cheaper than what they're doing now.
Wow, you have to hand it to the Microsoft marketing guys. Microsoft finds a way to allow banks to squeeze an extra 20% (my guess) out of low-income people, which of course also increases sales for Microsoft, and they manage to spin this as a benefit to those low-income people.
I may be ignorant, but what do low-income people need PCs for anyway? Do they really need sofware to balance their checkbooks, or file their taxes? Are they really cranking out a lot of documents? It seems to me that the real need for PCs in emerging markets is for students. If Microsoft or the banks want to help these students, they should provide them with financial assistance, or no-interest loans to buy them. They shouldn't cripple them with lockouts. "I'm sorry, I couldn't finish my paper because my parents couldn't afford to pay for the computer this month".
You're obviously looking for a filesystem optimized for porn. I'm impressed that you've managed to accumulate hundreds of gigs of the stuff. Perhaps there is a Porn File System out there somewhere?
Get a junior-level software development job, and in about 5 years, you'll know the answer.
Seriously, people post questions like this about once a month, and I can't believe that they actually think they're going to get an answer in a couple of paragraphs to the quesion "how to I write good code?". If it were that easy, someone would write a book, everyone would read it, and there would be no buggy software.
1. I use an SMC2632W card in my laptop, which I can dual-boot (yes, I know it's 802.11B not 802.11G). Ubuntu and CentOS both automatically detect this card and it works with no fiddling. The first time I pluged this card in when running Windows XP, I got a prompt for a driver disk. The laptop doesn't have a floppy drive, and the card didn't come with a CD, so I had to boot to linux, download the drivers, burn a CD, reboot to Windows. In my case, Linux support was much better than Windows XP.
2. No matter which OS you're using, but especially with Linux, you should really do some research before you buy any hardware. If you're running Linux, you'll find lots of devices of all kinds that have good Linux support, but you really can't complain if you didn't check first. I have a 5 disc CD changer that I bought a long time ago when I ran Windows 98. The changer doesn't work with Windows 2000 or XP. There aren't any drivers for 2000 or XP, and I couldn't get it to work no matter what I tried. If I bought that changer today, I wouldn't blame Microsoft for the device not working. I might blame the manufacturer for not providing 2000 or XP drivers. But mostly I would be at fault for buying hardware that doesn't work with my OS.
So, my point is, although 802.11G support is spotty on Linux, saying that "WLAN support is abysmal on Linux compared to that on Windows or OS X" is greatly oversimplifying and exaggerating, and if you do some research up front, you can find a device that works just fine under Linux.
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I only read far enough to determine there's no useful information in the post.
I've never heard of this guy. He's supposed to be a "writer", but the only thing I can find about him is his blog, and this article which he's managed to get plastered everywhere. Why do I care that his neighbor's kid was harassing him?
Yggdrasil SUSE Mandrake Debian Mepis Gentoo Centos Debian Ubuntu Kubuntu OpenSUSE
The video on their website is pretty cool. It shows them making the controllers by hand, out of wood. Talk about craftsmanship.
You can also always create your own OS.
Apparently, you can't, since you will be sued to death by either Microsoft or Oracle. It looks like every feature needed for a useful OS is already patented by someone else.
Why is it an obvious need that I have a fire extinguisher in my house? I've had them for 15 years, and I've never put a fire out with them. Obviously, they are useless and I should just throw them out.
It's more like tweeting a picture of your bulging underwear to everyone rather than sending it privately to just one person.
Well, if the bullet casing is trapped between the ground and the dropping hammer, couldn't the slug be propelled out of the casing?
Some grad student is lighting up his mom's artwork with LEDs, and this is news?
The author failed to mention the biggest drawback of flash memory: there is a maximum number of times that any area of flash memory can be written to. I haven't seen any analysis on this, but I suspect that you will reach the maximum cycles on the flash memory long before the mean failure time of a hard drive.
I think this is a classic case of someone who is obviously very bright academically, but who doesn't have an ounce of common sense. Yes, upon close inspection, the device might not look like a bomb, but the police don't have time for close inspection when it's the real thing. I actually WANT the police to overreact in cases like this in order to keep me safer.
I really don't understand why people keep pointing to privacy issues when it comes to your PUBLIC movements. Tracking your phone records and such is a different story, as that information is actually private. Where you go in public isn't private to begin with. It's PUBLIC, get it? That information is already out there for everyone to see. Not to mention the fact that if you're driving in a car, you're on a road, which is a government controlled area. I can't believe anyone thinks they should be able to drive in Manhattan, and their whereabouts should remain private!
It's interesting that the word "users" features much more prominently in some of the earlier texts than it does in the later ones.
Dude, it's not HIS cause, it's OUR cause. He's a lawyer who works for people like us. I agree that his answers are a bit impatient, but I think a large part of his point is that the law is unclear, and that the answers to some of these questions depend on what the RIAA decides to sue us for in the future.
http://www.out-law.com/page-3396
From the article:
So I've bought the physical CD, and I can listen to it for the life of the CD. But there is no right to rip or copy the music on the CD, with the possible exception of a personal backup copy which the publishers are gratiously allowing us to make for now. Is that correct?
Sorry for the nit-picking questions, but I'm trying to zoom in on exactly what the law says I am allowed to do.
If that's true, we would have to be idiots to buy anything under that kind of agreement. I think we should be trying to educate consumers that they are buying something under terms that they would never accept if they were aware of the details.
This is a big step, because it cuts out the Labels entirely. I'd love to see this grow, and I think with the popularity of MySpace, it's a real possibility. I won't buy an DRM encumbered music, because you're really only renting it. There's no guarantee that you'll be able to play that music in the future. For example, if you at any point stop paying your subscription, you won't be able to play that music on any other device, so at that point you'll only own that music for the life of the device.
This isn't the first legal music site that doesn't use DRM, though. eMusic also uses restriction-free MP3. It's a subscription model, rather than pay-as-you-download. They also don't carry most of the popular current bands, so if you're looking for the latest song on pop radio, you won't find it. They do carry lesser known artists, and their classical and jazz sections are actually very broad, including a lot of well known artists.
That sounds good in theory, but when you try to apply it in the real world you find that people don't want to work that way. People don't want to "apply a tool to their data". They want to edit their document, and they want to do it with the application they are familiar with. They don't want to apply the "text tool" to edit the text, then find the "picture tool" to insert a picture. They want to use the menu item or the hotkey that they are familiar with and just get it done.
The kind of architecture you're talking about sounds good to the geek writing the applications, but it doesn't fit the workflow that actual users want.
OK, we don't have the launch footage because someone knocked over the camera(!?!?). And we lost contact right after launch because of a power outage. But here's a really blurry picture to prove it's up there.
Also, our business model is that if we just get it up there someone else will... um... well, rent it or lease it for something. You know, it's just like building a strip mall. If you just build the space, someone else will pay to occupy it or use it to advertise. Except, of course, that this is in space where people can't really get to or see.
This story is so sketchy, and the web site is so cheesey, I'm tempted to think this whole thing is fake. I know it's been in the news before, but so has the Phantom console. At best, it sounds like some crackpot in Real Estate came up with a stupid but futuristic sounding idea, and managed to get a lot of funding for it.
The only possible use I can see for this is to lease it to NASA. NASA could save money by abandoning the ISS and use this for a lower cost. Of course NASA ran out of useful experiments to do a long time ago, so I don't know what they would actually use this for, but it would be cheaper than what they're doing now.
Wow, you have to hand it to the Microsoft marketing guys. Microsoft finds a way to allow banks to squeeze an extra 20% (my guess) out of low-income people, which of course also increases sales for Microsoft, and they manage to spin this as a benefit to those low-income people.
I may be ignorant, but what do low-income people need PCs for anyway? Do they really need sofware to balance their checkbooks, or file their taxes? Are they really cranking out a lot of documents? It seems to me that the real need for PCs in emerging markets is for students. If Microsoft or the banks want to help these students, they should provide them with financial assistance, or no-interest loans to buy them. They shouldn't cripple them with lockouts. "I'm sorry, I couldn't finish my paper because my parents couldn't afford to pay for the computer this month".
You're obviously looking for a filesystem optimized for porn. I'm impressed that you've managed to accumulate hundreds of gigs of the stuff. Perhaps there is a Porn File System out there somewhere?
Get a junior-level software development job, and in about 5 years, you'll know the answer.
Seriously, people post questions like this about once a month, and I can't believe that they actually think they're going to get an answer in a couple of paragraphs to the quesion "how to I write good code?". If it were that easy, someone would write a book, everyone would read it, and there would be no buggy software.
I would make two points in response to this:
1. I use an SMC2632W card in my laptop, which I can dual-boot (yes, I know it's 802.11B not 802.11G). Ubuntu and CentOS both automatically detect this card and it works with no fiddling. The first time I pluged this card in when running Windows XP, I got a prompt for a driver disk. The laptop doesn't have a floppy drive, and the card didn't come with a CD, so I had to boot to linux, download the drivers, burn a CD, reboot to Windows. In my case, Linux support was much better than Windows XP.
2. No matter which OS you're using, but especially with Linux, you should really do some research before you buy any hardware. If you're running Linux, you'll find lots of devices of all kinds that have good Linux support, but you really can't complain if you didn't check first. I have a 5 disc CD changer that I bought a long time ago when I ran Windows 98. The changer doesn't work with Windows 2000 or XP. There aren't any drivers for 2000 or XP, and I couldn't get it to work no matter what I tried. If I bought that changer today, I wouldn't blame Microsoft for the device not working. I might blame the manufacturer for not providing 2000 or XP drivers. But mostly I would be at fault for buying hardware that doesn't work with my OS.
So, my point is, although 802.11G support is spotty on Linux, saying that "WLAN support is abysmal on Linux compared to that on Windows or OS X" is greatly oversimplifying and exaggerating, and if you do some research up front, you can find a device that works just fine under Linux.