So what's the difference between getting an email from some unknown person saying that you can order his book for $39.95, and getting a circular in your mailbox from some unknown person/company saying the same thing?
Really, I'm not trying to be a troll, I'm wondering. How is getting junk mail different from getting junk email (spam)? They both are unwanted pieces of mail you received that you'll probably end up throwing away. OK, so those who have dial-up connections actually pay to read spam, but then how much spam does the average dial-up user get in one day? (Unless they're stupid and go with AOL or some other similar company where you can get 100+ porn spams a day, or something like that.) If they get their dial-up access through someone who at least tries to care about their customers, there's less problems with spam (due to more secure information, employees of the ISP who actually care about losing customers, employees at the ISP who will respond to complaints about spam and actually do something about it, etc.).
Throwing away circulars is more of a problem than deleting spam. Circulars are made of paper & ink, they go in the trashcan, they go in a trash-collecting truck, they go to a landfill, they take up space in the landfill, they rot slowly, they hurt the environment. Spam is made of.......umm, electrons, it forces users to hit the delete button/key, it goes away forever. Which one of the two seems less of a problem to you?
I'm not saying spam is good or circulars are bad. I'm not saying that people who send 100,000 useless messages/day shouldn't be punished. I'm not saying we shouldn't have laws against spam. I'm saying that we should decide how much of a problem spam is, how much of a problem circulars are, then create laws based on the seriousness of the problems associated with both spam and circulars. Should the guy in WA have gotten off free? Should companies who do useless mass-mailings get off free? And who decides and how?
Well, on Agilent's website, they say they use planar-lightwave circuits (whatever they are) that intersect at cross points. In the cross points, there's a fluid that allows the optical signal to pass through uninhibited. To reroute the signal, they insert bubbles into the cross point. The bubble refracts the signal, sending it to a different circuit. They say the bubbles can be generated and removed "hundreds of times per second". (See Introducing the Agilent Photonic Switching Platform for more technical details.)
So, my question is: Have they perfected some way of creating bubbles of the exact same size every single time, and if so, how? Bubbles don't seem (to me) to be something you can regulate by size easily. Anyone with more info, I'd love to be further informed.
Yeah, I read that after posting. Guess I'll have to read first from now on...
Anyways, so since it seems that this will be more beneficial to genetic engineering than anything else, I wonder if we should be worried about this. It'll probably be used to research diseases, cell functions, genetics & genetic defaults. Still, I can see problems with religious groups, crazies trying to engineer new diseases to wipe us off the face of the earth, and (even less likely) secret government studies trying to biologically control us all. But seriously, I'm sure there'll be some well-founded moral objections to the technology. Besides, research in human cloning became illegal in the USA soon after Dolly, why shoule we expect this technology to stay legal? All it needs is some lab somewhere in the world to start making genetic changes, and religious/moral groups will be all over the government to make this illegal as well.
Aw sweet - I can imagine running around in a fully-interactive Quake arena using nothing but yourself and a few thousand of these bionic chips. Now that would be a useful implementation...
but what would this really open up as possible? The press release doesn't say much about implications. Still, I'd assume it'll be years before anything useful hits any market other than the government.
Oh, and an off-topic section: I'm posting this using M14, and besides the fonts, I must say it's pretty damn good.
A Quicken-like program for Linux would be a good thing. I've never used Gnucash, but it sounds like it's working out to be a useful program. We do need more GUI's - not dumbed-down GUIs, but GUIs that make things easier.
Eruantalon
Re:"New" and "Old" Makes no Sense
on
Middle Media
·
· Score: 1
Instead, the situation is a lot more complicated, and interesting - and analyzing its complexities seems (to me) more useful than making quick, inaccurate judgments.
Which was my point. Yes, categorizing by age is easy, but it's usually not the best way to do it. That, and by playing with the definitions of your categories, you can play with the results a little, and thereby bias your statistics. It's not good comparison/categorizing/statistics, but it's use very frequently.
Eruantalon
Re:Former and Latter--Quit It.
on
Middle Media
·
· Score: 1
Well, I'm still not exactly sure how to read your original post, but it makes more sense after reading this comment. So you are arguing with the semantics of using Former vs Latter? How different is this from Old vs New? Yes, I'm serious - I don't see a distinction. Different words, same idea, same comparison, right? So, with this post in mind, let me restate:
Old vs New is overused and overrated. It makes sense, it's easy to do, but one can't differentiate between old and new as easily as the statisticians would have us think.
Semantics are given too much weight and used all too frequently. Catch-phrases are always thrown around in the media (and community at large) to get noticed and listened to. People place more weight (wrongly, I think) on semantics and statistics and language than they do on data.
Is this anything like what you were saying? I'm still rather lost on this semantics idea, and I'm not really sure what you're trying to get across, but I think I agree with you.
Eruantalon
Re:Just because it's obvious to you...
on
Middle Media
·
· Score: 1
Well, he's not a technical writer - he's written for magazines/newspapers that weren't too technologically driven or centered. He knows (or seems to know - correct me if I'm wrong) much more about how to write articles that people will read and have an opinion on, and how to generate discussions based on his articles, than he does about technology and technological advancements. At least, that's what he writes about - issues rather than technology itself.
So, my point was that yes, this "middle media" has been around for years, Katz seems to think it's new, and he seems somewhat interested in this topic, given the tone of his article. It doesn't really matter, IMO, that this media has been around for years - it's the discussion of said media that matters. Personally, I think that this "middle media" is more of a transitional period where both the new and old are used to a similar extent. What will happen in the future - whether the new will replace the old - I don't know, but it's articles like these that make people think about it. That was the point I was trying to make - not argue that this "middle media" is a new and exciting thing.
Damn good thought. Seriously, I don't know. I hope that we're pushing for change, and in most ways, I believe we are. We have enemies to bring down, changes to make in the way people think about software ownership & production, new higher standards for software compatibility and usefulness - we're part of the OSS movement, dammit. That says we've got something to prove and change.
However, we do tend to like sticking with the old - the console, C (or even Fortran, Assembly, and who-knows-what), Unix time (which we should fix, at some point before 2038(?), no?). Not to say there's anything wrong with these - they worked in the past, they work now. They may not always work in the future, though. If they're still useful, use them; if there's something better, use that. I think we forget to move to the better once in a while, because we've been using the older that has always worked.
Overall, I think we're doing OK as far as embracing new things and making changes in the tech world, but we get caught up sometimes. We're probably doing a pretty damn good job initiating change, and change is a very hard thing to initiate.
Eruantalon
Re:"New" and "Old" Makes no Sense
on
Middle Media
·
· Score: 1
Why artificially divide the world between "new" and "old" media?
Because it's the easiest way to divide things. Well, let me modify that statement: Because it's easiest to tinker with the qualifications of old and new to make all items obviously fit into one category or the other. It's the easiest to play around with so you can get the results you want, thus it's the most frequently used form of differenting items when comparing them. You could argue all day about categorizing things by price, effectiveness, format, user-base, ease-of-use; but categorizing things by age is always the easier to arrive at.
The same thing is happening with print media. There are people who will take electronic over print text whenever they have the choice. All it would take to push me into that camp is the right technology for reading the text.
My first thought was that this also would push me over the edge into e-text. However, with the Palm units out, have we seen any kind of move towards e-text for Palm? Yeah, there's the Kama Sutra or however it's spelled. Anything else? Have users of the Palm gone for more e-text than books? I can't figure out myself whether I'd prefer to have an e-text of a book on a handheld unit, or have a book. There's something about books that makes them slightly more real than an e-text, IMO. I suppose it will eventually come down to some people taking strong stands on one side or the other, while the majority of people prefer what's easiest.
Eruantalon
Re:Former and Latter--Quit It.
on
Middle Media
·
· Score: 1
True, old vs new is way overdone. But people like to compare things, especially technology. Articles are always comparing the older tech vs the newer. Sure, they oversimplify everything, try to break down the categories through generalizing some aspects, further defining others, etc. This simplification and creation of merely two categories (old & new) from the wealth of technological products available in whatever area is being compared doesn't really work in real life, but it gives us some way of comparing the two. Change is about old vs new, although it's not as straightforward as everyone would like to make it out to be.
So, to the point? People will always compare the old vs the new - some kind of "human nature", though I really hate that term. We like seeing what's changed for the better and what hasn't. It's a good way to figure out if we're moving forward or backward. Sure, it's overused, but it's still a valid form of comparison.
Eruantalon
Just because it's obvious to you...
on
Middle Media
·
· Score: 3
doesn't mean Katz is dumb. So Hypermedia has been around for years. Does that mean Katz can't call it Middle Media and write a piece to generate discussion on this topic? So it's obvious that books and catalogs and CDs are still selling. I know this - I still use and buy all of them. That doesn't mean I can't have these facts pointed out to me every once in a while and actually be forced to think about why they're still selling.
Discussion and comments and arguments are what this site is about, in addition to news. So if it's not news (at least to some of us), why can't we just accept that and carry on with the discussion, comments and arguments?
Go ahead, moderate this down as inflammatory or something. I'm just speaking my mind. Think about it, and it might make sense.
That's all I can get as well. I tried the main page, and it stopped with a few non-loaded image links. I clicked on the English tab, and am waiting........and waiting.........and waiting.
There was an 'unknown error' when I tried to post this. I'm trying not to get paranoid. Please tell me this happens all the time...
Well, I got that once, but while I had lynx & 2 netscape windows trying to access the europarl site, netscape's links decided to stop working. Of course, the sparc5 I'm on could be to blame for that.... Stupid work computers.
Aha! I'd thought it was something similar to this. That makes for some very interesting technology. So if the solder-balls come up with the chip, does this mean you can't switch processors easily? Or am I misunderstanding. I'd imagine it would be just as easy as doing so on a PIII, for instance.
That is, could you just take out the whole processor and swap it for another? I'd assume the solder-balls wouldn't be connected to the chip casing? Or would they? I can't find anything about this on the site, but it wouldn't make much sense otherwise...
So why exactly are they called "balls"? I don't remember reading anything about balls being used to connect the chips to things on the Transmeta site. Is it some kind of ball & socket joint, or just a way to create a smaller area to solder things to the chip?
They've gotta be the smallest chips I've ever seen. If I ever buy a machine with a Crusoe in it, I'll be sure never to open the case for fear of the chip dropping out and being lost between the fibers of my carpet.... Yeah, I know the chip would be held in pretty well, but that would just be my luck.
OS X seems great - I like the screenshots I've seen, and the idea of BSD behind it is good too. On the other hand, is OS X supposed to be more stable than OS 8/9? My friend had both 8 & 9 on his system at one time or another, and they crashed frequently (read: at least 3 times/day). So, is X supposed to be less like Windoze and more like BSD, or just a Mac OS with a BSD base or something? Basically my question is - will it rival Linux for uptime?
Well, I know that my MS natural works great. It does take some times to get used to it (my friends all used to complain about it when they tried to do anything w/my computer), but after using it for over a year, I have problems using any other keyboard.
Now, if only someone would make a keyboard with the Caps & Ctrl keys in the positions they are on Sun machines, but leave all the other buttons alone....Yeah, I could screw around with keyboard mapping, but it'd be much easier just to have the keys in the right places.
If Microsoft would stick to making mice and keyboards, the world would be a better place.
Eruantalon
Re:Boy you people like living dangerously
on
A New DeCSS
·
· Score: 1
Also please tell me exactly how this does anything at all? So I have a program that has the name of another change anything?
(Note: I'll use A to refer to the DeCSS program that is used to unencrypt DVDs, and B to refer to the useless one that removes CSS from HTML.)
Well, for how this can do anything, I can somewhat answer. You can put a link on your server to an ftp server that has B, saying go grab this program to show you're against the prosecution of A's creators, or something like that. The more people do this, the more do the same, the more copies of B are around on the Net. Well, if the MPAA is still going around looking for A on the Net, they're gonna come across a whole lot of Bs on the Net as well. Bs they can't (really) prosecute, As they can. So it gets them to take more time trying to find those people with A on their site by having to sift through those with B. Follow me?
As to what else this would be useful for, I'm not really sure. Maybe (though it's much more likely in some parallel universe) the MPAA will stop being such dumbasses and give up because it's too much work. Though I doubt it.
As for the drug laws, I figure that there's only a few reasons they're still around:
They have been law for years, so why change?
Some specific drugs are detrimental to society, not just the individual.
If drugs were legalized, the entire teenage & young adult population of that time would either kill themselves off or live through it, having a better life afterwards.
I think #2 is a valid point - you just don't screw around with certain drugs, and certain drugs screw up more than the user. Number 3 is a forseeable outcome of legalization - I'd go crazy, how about you all? But I think we could live through it, so I see no reason so not legalize drugs based on #3. Number 1 is just plain idiocy. Things change.
So, basically, living dangerously is about the only way to get where you want to be. Well, either you'll get there, or you'll be dead. Of course, you'll be dead eventually anyways, so why not die trying to get what you want?
Sounds rather interesting then...although I think stoners and drunks would be far better at the game than other people. Too bad they don't have it round here yet....
So what exactly is this & how do you play it? You're just bouncing a ball around by your thoughts and the key is to go to sleep so you don't bounce the ball no more and win?? If so, sounds like my kinda game...
Anyone who could translate a summary from Swedish?
Really? Who cares that much about processor speeds? Once you get beyond a certain point, faster is pretty much useless for most things. Linux really doesn't need a 1Ghz - what could that much processor be used for? Windows, on the other hand, may run better (read: faster) with a 1Ghz, but even with Windows, there's a point where a faster chip doesn't make the system faster.
So Intel & Athlon want to put each other out of business. Why doesn't one of them make a revolutionary processor instead of adding zeros & ones to the x86's? I'm perfectly happy with my PII 350. Sure, I could use more ram, but my processor speed is just fine for what I need. I really don't care if there's a 10Ghz processor - I don't need or want it. I want something that will be useful to me, not a status symbol.
Come up with some new processor that can do something completely new and different. Make it faster and more reliable. Then I'll buy it.
Slashdot Mirror
So what's the difference between getting an email from some unknown person saying that you can order his book for $39.95, and getting a circular in your mailbox from some unknown person/company saying the same thing?
Really, I'm not trying to be a troll, I'm wondering. How is getting junk mail different from getting junk email (spam)? They both are unwanted pieces of mail you received that you'll probably end up throwing away. OK, so those who have dial-up connections actually pay to read spam, but then how much spam does the average dial-up user get in one day? (Unless they're stupid and go with AOL or some other similar company where you can get 100+ porn spams a day, or something like that.) If they get their dial-up access through someone who at least tries to care about their customers, there's less problems with spam (due to more secure information, employees of the ISP who actually care about losing customers, employees at the ISP who will respond to complaints about spam and actually do something about it, etc.).
Throwing away circulars is more of a problem than deleting spam. Circulars are made of paper & ink, they go in the trashcan, they go in a trash-collecting truck, they go to a landfill, they take up space in the landfill, they rot slowly, they hurt the environment. Spam is made of.......umm, electrons, it forces users to hit the delete button/key, it goes away forever. Which one of the two seems less of a problem to you?
I'm not saying spam is good or circulars are bad. I'm not saying that people who send 100,000 useless messages/day shouldn't be punished. I'm not saying we shouldn't have laws against spam. I'm saying that we should decide how much of a problem spam is, how much of a problem circulars are, then create laws based on the seriousness of the problems associated with both spam and circulars. Should the guy in WA have gotten off free? Should companies who do useless mass-mailings get off free? And who decides and how?
Eruantalon
Well, on Agilent's website, they say they use planar-lightwave circuits (whatever they are) that intersect at cross points. In the cross points, there's a fluid that allows the optical signal to pass through uninhibited. To reroute the signal, they insert bubbles into the cross point. The bubble refracts the signal, sending it to a different circuit. They say the bubbles can be generated and removed "hundreds of times per second". (See Introducing the Agilent Photonic Switching Platform for more technical details.)
So, my question is: Have they perfected some way of creating bubbles of the exact same size every single time, and if so, how? Bubbles don't seem (to me) to be something you can regulate by size easily. Anyone with more info, I'd love to be further informed.
Eruantalon
Yeah, I read that after posting. Guess I'll have to read first from now on...
Anyways, so since it seems that this will be more beneficial to genetic engineering than anything else, I wonder if we should be worried about this. It'll probably be used to research diseases, cell functions, genetics & genetic defaults. Still, I can see problems with religious groups, crazies trying to engineer new diseases to wipe us off the face of the earth, and (even less likely) secret government studies trying to biologically control us all. But seriously, I'm sure there'll be some well-founded moral objections to the technology. Besides, research in human cloning became illegal in the USA soon after Dolly, why shoule we expect this technology to stay legal? All it needs is some lab somewhere in the world to start making genetic changes, and religious/moral groups will be all over the government to make this illegal as well.
Eruantalon
Aw sweet - I can imagine running around in a fully-interactive Quake arena using nothing but yourself and a few thousand of these bionic chips. Now that would be a useful implementation...
Eruantalon
but what would this really open up as possible? The press release doesn't say much about implications. Still, I'd assume it'll be years before anything useful hits any market other than the government.
Oh, and an off-topic section: I'm posting this using M14, and besides the fonts, I must say it's pretty damn good.
Eruantalon
A Quicken-like program for Linux would be a good thing. I've never used Gnucash, but it sounds like it's working out to be a useful program. We do need more GUI's - not dumbed-down GUIs, but GUIs that make things easier.
Eruantalon
Instead, the situation is a lot more complicated, and interesting - and analyzing its complexities seems (to me) more useful than making quick, inaccurate judgments.
Which was my point. Yes, categorizing by age is easy, but it's usually not the best way to do it. That, and by playing with the definitions of your categories, you can play with the results a little, and thereby bias your statistics. It's not good comparison/categorizing/statistics, but it's use very frequently.
Eruantalon
Well, I'm still not exactly sure how to read your original post, but it makes more sense after reading this comment. So you are arguing with the semantics of using Former vs Latter? How different is this from Old vs New? Yes, I'm serious - I don't see a distinction. Different words, same idea, same comparison, right? So, with this post in mind, let me restate:
Old vs New is overused and overrated. It makes sense, it's easy to do, but one can't differentiate between old and new as easily as the statisticians would have us think.
Semantics are given too much weight and used all too frequently. Catch-phrases are always thrown around in the media (and community at large) to get noticed and listened to. People place more weight (wrongly, I think) on semantics and statistics and language than they do on data.
Is this anything like what you were saying? I'm still rather lost on this semantics idea, and I'm not really sure what you're trying to get across, but I think I agree with you.
Eruantalon
Well, he's not a technical writer - he's written for magazines/newspapers that weren't too technologically driven or centered. He knows (or seems to know - correct me if I'm wrong) much more about how to write articles that people will read and have an opinion on, and how to generate discussions based on his articles, than he does about technology and technological advancements. At least, that's what he writes about - issues rather than technology itself.
So, my point was that yes, this "middle media" has been around for years, Katz seems to think it's new, and he seems somewhat interested in this topic, given the tone of his article. It doesn't really matter, IMO, that this media has been around for years - it's the discussion of said media that matters. Personally, I think that this "middle media" is more of a transitional period where both the new and old are used to a similar extent. What will happen in the future - whether the new will replace the old - I don't know, but it's articles like these that make people think about it. That was the point I was trying to make - not argue that this "middle media" is a new and exciting thing.
Eruantalon
Damn good thought. Seriously, I don't know. I hope that we're pushing for change, and in most ways, I believe we are. We have enemies to bring down, changes to make in the way people think about software ownership & production, new higher standards for software compatibility and usefulness - we're part of the OSS movement, dammit. That says we've got something to prove and change.
However, we do tend to like sticking with the old - the console, C (or even Fortran, Assembly, and who-knows-what), Unix time (which we should fix, at some point before 2038(?), no?). Not to say there's anything wrong with these - they worked in the past, they work now. They may not always work in the future, though. If they're still useful, use them; if there's something better, use that. I think we forget to move to the better once in a while, because we've been using the older that has always worked.
Overall, I think we're doing OK as far as embracing new things and making changes in the tech world, but we get caught up sometimes. We're probably doing a pretty damn good job initiating change, and change is a very hard thing to initiate.
Eruantalon
Why artificially divide the world between "new" and "old" media?
Because it's the easiest way to divide things. Well, let me modify that statement: Because it's easiest to tinker with the qualifications of old and new to make all items obviously fit into one category or the other. It's the easiest to play around with so you can get the results you want, thus it's the most frequently used form of differenting items when comparing them. You could argue all day about categorizing things by price, effectiveness, format, user-base, ease-of-use; but categorizing things by age is always the easier to arrive at.
Eruantalon
The same thing is happening with print media. There are people who will take electronic over print text whenever they have the choice. All it would take to push me into that camp is the right technology for reading the text.
My first thought was that this also would push me over the edge into e-text. However, with the Palm units out, have we seen any kind of move towards e-text for Palm? Yeah, there's the Kama Sutra or however it's spelled. Anything else? Have users of the Palm gone for more e-text than books? I can't figure out myself whether I'd prefer to have an e-text of a book on a handheld unit, or have a book. There's something about books that makes them slightly more real than an e-text, IMO. I suppose it will eventually come down to some people taking strong stands on one side or the other, while the majority of people prefer what's easiest.
Eruantalon
True, old vs new is way overdone. But people like to compare things, especially technology. Articles are always comparing the older tech vs the newer. Sure, they oversimplify everything, try to break down the categories through generalizing some aspects, further defining others, etc. This simplification and creation of merely two categories (old & new) from the wealth of technological products available in whatever area is being compared doesn't really work in real life, but it gives us some way of comparing the two. Change is about old vs new, although it's not as straightforward as everyone would like to make it out to be.
So, to the point? People will always compare the old vs the new - some kind of "human nature", though I really hate that term. We like seeing what's changed for the better and what hasn't. It's a good way to figure out if we're moving forward or backward. Sure, it's overused, but it's still a valid form of comparison.
Eruantalon
doesn't mean Katz is dumb. So Hypermedia has been around for years. Does that mean Katz can't call it Middle Media and write a piece to generate discussion on this topic? So it's obvious that books and catalogs and CDs are still selling. I know this - I still use and buy all of them. That doesn't mean I can't have these facts pointed out to me every once in a while and actually be forced to think about why they're still selling.
Discussion and comments and arguments are what this site is about, in addition to news. So if it's not news (at least to some of us), why can't we just accept that and carry on with the discussion, comments and arguments?
Go ahead, moderate this down as inflammatory or something. I'm just speaking my mind. Think about it, and it might make sense.
Eruantalon
OK, I know www.cryptome.org has these same articles, but I thought I'd mirror them just for the hell of it.
:)
DEVELOPMENT OF SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY AND RISK OF ABUSE OF ECONOMIC INFORMATION (An appraisal of technologies of political control)
Part 2 of the article above
Part 3 of the article above
Interception Capabilities 2000, or Part 4 of the article above
Also:
AN APPRAISAL OF TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL CONTROL , or the working copy of the above article
Enjoy reading - there's a lot of it
Eruantalon
That's all I can get as well. I tried the main page, and it stopped with a few non-loaded image links. I clicked on the English tab, and am waiting........and waiting.........and waiting.
There was an 'unknown error' when I tried to post this. I'm trying not to get paranoid. Please tell me this happens all the time...
Well, I got that once, but while I had lynx & 2 netscape windows trying to access the europarl site, netscape's links decided to stop working. Of course, the sparc5 I'm on could be to blame for that.... Stupid work computers.
Eruantalon
I think. At least I've so far gotten what looks to be the header to the document. Maybe everyone with Internet access all went to this page at once.
Eruantalon
Aha! I'd thought it was something similar to this. That makes for some very interesting technology. So if the solder-balls come up with the chip, does this mean you can't switch processors easily? Or am I misunderstanding. I'd imagine it would be just as easy as doing so on a PIII, for instance.
That is, could you just take out the whole processor and swap it for another? I'd assume the solder-balls wouldn't be connected to the chip casing? Or would they? I can't find anything about this on the site, but it wouldn't make much sense otherwise...
Eruantalon
So why exactly are they called "balls"? I don't remember reading anything about balls being used to connect the chips to things on the Transmeta site. Is it some kind of ball & socket joint, or just a way to create a smaller area to solder things to the chip?
They've gotta be the smallest chips I've ever seen. If I ever buy a machine with a Crusoe in it, I'll be sure never to open the case for fear of the chip dropping out and being lost between the fibers of my carpet.... Yeah, I know the chip would be held in pretty well, but that would just be my luck.
Eruantalon
OS X seems great - I like the screenshots I've seen, and the idea of BSD behind it is good too. On the other hand, is OS X supposed to be more stable than OS 8/9? My friend had both 8 & 9 on his system at one time or another, and they crashed frequently (read: at least 3 times/day). So, is X supposed to be less like Windoze and more like BSD, or just a Mac OS with a BSD base or something? Basically my question is - will it rival Linux for uptime?
Eruantalon
Well, I know that my MS natural works great. It does take some times to get used to it (my friends all used to complain about it when they tried to do anything w/my computer), but after using it for over a year, I have problems using any other keyboard.
Now, if only someone would make a keyboard with the Caps & Ctrl keys in the positions they are on Sun machines, but leave all the other buttons alone....Yeah, I could screw around with keyboard mapping, but it'd be much easier just to have the keys in the right places.
If Microsoft would stick to making mice and keyboards, the world would be a better place.
Eruantalon
(Note: I'll use A to refer to the DeCSS program that is used to unencrypt DVDs, and B to refer to the useless one that removes CSS from HTML.)
Well, for how this can do anything, I can somewhat answer. You can put a link on your server to an ftp server that has B, saying go grab this program to show you're against the prosecution of A's creators, or something like that. The more people do this, the more do the same, the more copies of B are around on the Net. Well, if the MPAA is still going around looking for A on the Net, they're gonna come across a whole lot of Bs on the Net as well. Bs they can't (really) prosecute, As they can. So it gets them to take more time trying to find those people with A on their site by having to sift through those with B. Follow me?
As to what else this would be useful for, I'm not really sure. Maybe (though it's much more likely in some parallel universe) the MPAA will stop being such dumbasses and give up because it's too much work. Though I doubt it.
As for the drug laws, I figure that there's only a few reasons they're still around:
- They have been law for years, so why change?
- Some specific drugs are detrimental to society, not just the individual.
- If drugs were legalized, the entire teenage & young adult population of that time would either kill themselves off or live through it, having a better life afterwards.
I think #2 is a valid point - you just don't screw around with certain drugs, and certain drugs screw up more than the user. Number 3 is a forseeable outcome of legalization - I'd go crazy, how about you all? But I think we could live through it, so I see no reason so not legalize drugs based on #3. Number 1 is just plain idiocy. Things change.So, basically, living dangerously is about the only way to get where you want to be. Well, either you'll get there, or you'll be dead. Of course, you'll be dead eventually anyways, so why not die trying to get what you want?
Eruantalon
Sounds rather interesting then...although I think stoners and drunks would be far better at the game than other people. Too bad they don't have it round here yet....
Eruantalon
So what exactly is this & how do you play it? You're just bouncing a ball around by your thoughts and the key is to go to sleep so you don't bounce the ball no more and win?? If so, sounds like my kinda game...
Anyone who could translate a summary from Swedish?
Eruantalon
Really? Who cares that much about processor speeds? Once you get beyond a certain point, faster is pretty much useless for most things. Linux really doesn't need a 1Ghz - what could that much processor be used for? Windows, on the other hand, may run better (read: faster) with a 1Ghz, but even with Windows, there's a point where a faster chip doesn't make the system faster.
So Intel & Athlon want to put each other out of business. Why doesn't one of them make a revolutionary processor instead of adding zeros & ones to the x86's? I'm perfectly happy with my PII 350. Sure, I could use more ram, but my processor speed is just fine for what I need. I really don't care if there's a 10Ghz processor - I don't need or want it. I want something that will be useful to me, not a status symbol.
Come up with some new processor that can do something completely new and different. Make it faster and more reliable. Then I'll buy it.