I know a guy who was very proud of himself when he had a t-shirt saying "Jesus is a c***".
"they're just words" he told me.
I'm not really offended by this, but it's definitely designed to cause offence. I'd be betting that most people who advocated such a view could be offended by "mere words". Some thoughts: -holocaust denial -sexism -homophobia -elitism -racism etc... They're all mere words, but I think many/most people are justly still offended by them.
They have a very wide range of not-top-40 music, going back to the 1900s. Lots of Classical, jazz, rock, alternative, techno, electronica, etc. very reasonable prices. I've found so much good and varied music there - it's fantastic
I think the words you want to use are "expected outcome," which allows you to conclude that a somewhat unlikely disaster is worth avoiding more than a possible problem. Your rebuttal to Doc Ruby is correct, however (as I've said in a sibling post) why is the government ignoring global warming? - according to scientific consensus this is much more probable than a meteorite impact, and could be nearly as devastating.
I'm not saying we shouldn't worry about asteroids, but rather that this suggests that the government may have some other motive for funding such research.
What you say is correct: there is a _very_ small chance that something _very_ bad will happen. Maybe it's worth doing something about.
Having said that, we are talking about the same administration that ignores global warming - against the advice of the scientific consensus. Global warming is looking a helluva lot more likely than a deep-impact scenario! Why take precautions for a _highly_ unlikely scenario, and ignore a probable scenario? I suspect that there are other reasons, and DocRuby's suggestion seems plausible to me.
Exactly. That's the way it reads to me. Get it accepted as a standard, and then revoke it.
This type of behaviour should be remembered when thinking about ODF/OOXML. Seems to me that the words "Microsoft", and "standards" just don't go together, and that if you care, even remotely, about a level-software-playing-field you should be avoiding their products.
"iTMS+ songs are DRM free (and at $1.29, cheaper than eMusic)." Wrong. The "normal" emusic plans average at approximately 40c per song. All are DRM free, high-bitrate MP3s.
"eMusic's catalog is not identical to iTMS (eMusic is smaller/indie music)." eMusic's catalog is (I think) larger than iTunes', however it lacks the big-name, heavily-promoted music.
I'm not bagging iTunes. I agree, this AT&T eMusic plan sounds crap compared to eMusic's normal offering (which rocks). However factual inaccuracies need to be corrected.
I love eMusic, but this seems rather pricey - especially since many new phones can just browse the eMusic site and use their standard (and much cheaper) plans. That, or just download the songs on a PC and transfer them across.
What am I missing? Is downloading songs on the road such a big deal?
I'm running Ubuntu, AMD64-bit version. Thus, I haven't recompiled any apps, but have just used the pre-compiled ones.
I've installed Linux32, which includes 32-bit libraries -- thus I can run 32-bit apps in parallel with 64-bit ones.
I'm running 64-bit firefox, and have used the wrapper for flash - lets me run 32-bit flash inside 64-bit firefox with no instability - nice!
I think the other nice thing is that, because only recent CPUs support 64-bit, the apps are compiled to use all the nice features of new apps, so I reckon compiling your own loses some of the advantage..
I've thought about this too, and I agree wholeheartedly.
At risk of sounding starry-eyed, I think it's an incredibly exciting prospect -- computers providing a tailored education to children would do more for human society than probably any technological advance since agriculture. Imagine a whole planet of people who had been educated by their own personal tutor!
There are projects working on the development of a dynabook (the illustrated primer) - one is squeek (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeak) and it looks like it's got potential. Get onto it kids!
"Every attempt at Communism has turned into vicious totalitarianism. "
Meh. Every attempt at everything ends up as totalitarianism. Just because we're writing this during a short window of democracy in the West doesn't change much. Hopefully when the police-state comes, people won't put up with it for too long, and the revolution in a century or two will restore democracy (or similar). What I fear is that technology will make future police states so powerful that they'll be very difficult to overthrow.
I wouldn't be entirely surprised if by 2050 both the US and Australia are not democratic by today's standards. Not yet sure where I would go... India maybe? Europe? I live in hope...
"If MS can't find and destroy every last voucher before it is too late, they will be in a bad spot on this and their entire portfolio of patents will likely be impotent as regards any GPLv3 software."
That's what I think too. It doesn't really matter whether or not MS would lose in court for copyright violation (for distributing GPLv3 code, and then suing for patent infringement) - it'll never come to that, cause they'll never try and sue. This totally destroys their patent FUD-spreading. An imaginary conversation:
MS: you'd better not use Linux, because we might sue you for patent infringement IBM, et al: ahh! but you infringe our patents too GPL-people: and even if MS gets away with that (not likely), we'll sue them for copyright infringement.
"who are we really expecting to take Microsoft to court? "
My (naive) understanding is that this is not the issue. GPLv3 reduces the affect of MS's patent litigation threats, and represents another line of defence for Free Software. If MS sues, and they're bound by GPLv3, then they're in breach of copyright.
Of course, whether MS is legally a distributor of GPLv3 code would likely need to be decided in court, which will probably only occur as a defence for a patent suit launched by MS, which will probably never happen (their threats are empty sabre-rattling). It doesn't matter - MS have just had their threats neutralised.
(I'm not a lawyer tho - perhaps someone with more knowledge than me would care to comment?)
Maybe he'll be prepared to make a bet with his _own_ money to the effect that the bluray DRM won't be broken before 2017 (sounds a long time away don't it?)
I couldn't see anything about how far in its development it is. There are no videos of operation, just screenshots which could have been GIMPd. Anyone know if it's actually usable, or if it is very very alpha?
Slashdot Mirror
I know a guy who was very proud of himself when he had a t-shirt saying "Jesus is a c***".
"they're just words" he told me.
I'm not really offended by this, but it's definitely designed to cause offence. I'd be betting that most people who advocated such a view could be offended by "mere words". Some thoughts:
-holocaust denial
-sexism
-homophobia
-elitism
-racism
etc... They're all mere words, but I think many/most people are justly still offended by them.
How many times must it be said? The viewer is the product, their time watching adverts is what is sold to the advertisers.
Let me suggest eMusic.com
They have a very wide range of not-top-40 music, going back to the 1900s. Lots of Classical, jazz, rock, alternative, techno, electronica, etc. very reasonable prices. I've found so much good and varied music there - it's fantastic
(I have no affiliation with eMusic)
I think the words you want to use are "expected outcome," which allows you to conclude that a somewhat unlikely disaster is worth avoiding more than a possible problem. Your rebuttal to Doc Ruby is correct, however (as I've said in a sibling post) why is the government ignoring global warming? - according to scientific consensus this is much more probable than a meteorite impact, and could be nearly as devastating.
I'm not saying we shouldn't worry about asteroids, but rather that this suggests that the government may have some other motive for funding such research.
What you say is correct: there is a _very_ small chance that something _very_ bad will happen. Maybe it's worth doing something about.
Having said that, we are talking about the same administration that ignores global warming - against the advice of the scientific consensus. Global warming is looking a helluva lot more likely than a deep-impact scenario! Why take precautions for a _highly_ unlikely scenario, and ignore a probable scenario? I suspect that there are other reasons, and DocRuby's suggestion seems plausible to me.
Exactly. That's the way it reads to me. Get it accepted as a standard, and then revoke it.
This type of behaviour should be remembered when thinking about ODF/OOXML. Seems to me that the words "Microsoft", and "standards" just don't go together, and that if you care, even remotely, about a level-software-playing-field you should be avoiding their products.
What're the MS fanboys' take on this?
A lot of the parent's post is incorrect.
"iTMS+ songs are DRM free (and at $1.29, cheaper than eMusic)."
Wrong. The "normal" emusic plans average at approximately 40c per song. All are DRM free, high-bitrate MP3s.
"eMusic's catalog is not identical to iTMS (eMusic is smaller/indie music)."
eMusic's catalog is (I think) larger than iTunes', however it lacks the big-name, heavily-promoted music.
I'm not bagging iTunes. I agree, this AT&T eMusic plan sounds crap compared to eMusic's normal offering (which rocks). However factual inaccuracies need to be corrected.
Cheers.
I love eMusic, but this seems rather pricey - especially since many new phones can just browse the eMusic site and use their standard (and much cheaper) plans. That, or just download the songs on a PC and transfer them across.
What am I missing? Is downloading songs on the road such a big deal?
I'm not a nano-technologist, but I'd doubt that macroscopic ideas of friction and wear would apply to nano-machines.
I'm running Ubuntu, AMD64-bit version. Thus, I haven't recompiled any apps, but have just used the pre-compiled ones.
I've installed Linux32, which includes 32-bit libraries -- thus I can run 32-bit apps in parallel with 64-bit ones.
I'm running 64-bit firefox, and have used the wrapper for flash - lets me run 32-bit flash inside 64-bit firefox with no instability - nice!
I think the other nice thing is that, because only recent CPUs support 64-bit, the apps are compiled to use all the nice features of new apps, so I reckon compiling your own loses some of the advantage..
I've thought about this too, and I agree wholeheartedly.
At risk of sounding starry-eyed, I think it's an incredibly exciting prospect -- computers providing a tailored education to children would do more for human society than probably any technological advance since agriculture. Imagine a whole planet of people who had been educated by their own personal tutor!
There are projects working on the development of a dynabook (the illustrated primer) - one is squeek (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeak) and it looks like it's got potential. Get onto it kids!
If you're running open-source software, then upgrading to 64-bit is trivial.
I don't live in the US, so don't know the details, but correct me if I'm wrong:
you're paying for a cable TV connection - probably in the order of $30-40/month
and you're also paying $55/month just to record the shows
so you're paying $90/month to record and watch TV? Is this right? Seems a hell of a lot of money...
"Every attempt at Communism has turned into vicious totalitarianism. "
Meh. Every attempt at everything ends up as totalitarianism. Just because we're writing this during a short window of democracy in the West doesn't change much. Hopefully when the police-state comes, people won't put up with it for too long, and the revolution in a century or two will restore democracy (or similar).
What I fear is that technology will make future police states so powerful that they'll be very difficult to overthrow.
I wouldn't be entirely surprised if by 2050 both the US and Australia are not democratic by today's standards. Not yet sure where I would go... India maybe? Europe? I live in hope...
"128MB? In the mid 80s? Maybe you mean 4Mb :-)"
Actually, I think the GP probably meant 128KB.
My parents bought a 486SX33 in 1994, and that had 4MB, but in 1985....
"this would be a lot simpler and cheaper than having the humans continue the remaining 0.001 percent of the way?"
Nah - just send 'em one-way... heaps cheaper!
Ubuntu probably couldn't have acheived what it has without distributions like Mandrake who were the initial drivers of usability and simplicity.
That's the beauty of Linux - you can stand on the shoulders of those who came before!
After the cinematic masterpiece that was DooM, I just can't wait for the Halo movie.
I hope they release it in blu-ray or HD-DVD, so I can watch it in all its HighDef glory.
"If MS can't find and destroy every last voucher before it is too late, they will be in a bad spot on this and their entire portfolio of patents will likely be impotent as regards any GPLv3 software."
That's what I think too. It doesn't really matter whether or not MS would lose in court for copyright violation (for distributing GPLv3 code, and then suing for patent infringement) - it'll never come to that, cause they'll never try and sue. This totally destroys their patent FUD-spreading. An imaginary conversation:
MS: you'd better not use Linux, because we might sue you for patent infringement
IBM, et al: ahh! but you infringe our patents too
GPL-people: and even if MS gets away with that (not likely), we'll sue them for copyright infringement.
Not looking so good for MS now, is it?
"who are we really expecting to take Microsoft to court? "
My (naive) understanding is that this is not the issue. GPLv3 reduces the affect of MS's patent litigation threats, and represents another line of defence for Free Software. If MS sues, and they're bound by GPLv3, then they're in breach of copyright.
Of course, whether MS is legally a distributor of GPLv3 code would likely need to be decided in court, which will probably only occur as a defence for a patent suit launched by MS, which will probably never happen (their threats are empty sabre-rattling). It doesn't matter - MS have just had their threats neutralised.
(I'm not a lawyer tho - perhaps someone with more knowledge than me would care to comment?)
Maybe he'll be prepared to make a bet with his _own_ money to the effect that the bluray DRM won't be broken before 2017 (sounds a long time away don't it?)
There exist in-depth well researched blogs.
There exist crappy, shallow articles.
What are we linking to here, again?
I couldn't see anything about how far in its development it is. There are no videos of operation, just screenshots which could have been GIMPd. Anyone know if it's actually usable, or if it is very very alpha?
That is complete nonsense.
Many/most environmentalists are environmentalists _because_ they want to preserve humanity, and human civilisation. David Suzuki is a good example.
Your comment is as stupid as saying that uranium miners drink the blood of African children.
Mod: -1 Straw man arguement