Rather than further limiting citzen rights and increasing the size and reach of government. We should encourage our government to focus more on stupid things like this, then more bills like the Patriot Act and DMCA might not happen.;)
The stupidity in vancouver this winter is of olympic proportions!
Sorry guys, this madness has GOT to stop.
In reality:
The Olympics is a FOR-PROFIT venture. The officials running this rake millions upon millions into their pocketbooks
The term "olympic" dates back to the greeks. It's a common term and should not have been able to be trademarked by ANYONE, not even for a sporting event since those events originated in ancient times as well
If I want to open a fast food restaurant with a greek theme and call a burger "the olympic burger" I should have FULL right to do so since olympic is a common adjective.
Fuck the olympics. I don't ever watch it because I see it for the scam it is.
This is slashdot; the CDs and DVDs are used for archiving 160 Linux distributions.
Sheesh. Occam's razor, folks! "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one."
. . . and any "porn" will be in the form of hentai, usually employed as the user's Gnome or KDE wallpaper, or in some elitist cases, enlightenment wallpaper.;)
Why is it that when Microsoft, dominating an entire industry, sees another company doing well in a quasi-related niche, feel compelled to enter and dominate that industry as well?
I'm a capitalist through and through but I'm so fucking sick of Microsoft.
I'm sick of hearing how secure Vista is, when their Vista security features are so annoying 99% of users will probably disable them. I'm sick of hearing how much of a vast improvement Vista is over XP, when OS X and KDE on x.org have been there/done that for ages now -- ESPECIALLY when the truly major "improvements" in Vista restricts' customers' Fair Use and Right of First Sale activities.
Oh, and what about MSIE 7.0? Where are the improvements? It does not pass the acid test (even though every other browser on the planet worth mentioning passes now), designers still have to bend over backwards for modern techniques to render correctly in MSIE, and it breaks differently than MSIE6, so things are more interesting. On the plus side, at least they DID fix.png rendering, so I have to give them some credit there.
I used to be a Microsoft fan, and I've hated practically everything they've done after Windows 2000, because I see it as predatory, self-serving, and providing FAR less value to the customer, all while prices are tripling and quadrupling for Windows. For what? restricted activities on the computer? Revocation of First Sale rights? Restriction of Fair Use?
Sorry, I had to vent. This is not intended to be insightful, informative, or even interesting; it's merely a good opportunity to vent in a place where hopefully some Microsoft drone will read this and say "Hey, are we REALLY that bad? I guess we are alienating our customer base." In summary: Fuck Microsoft. There is no need for them to dominate advertising, and quite honestly, I rather they didn't even try, because if there is one thing Microsoft truly excels at, it's annoying and alienating customers.
My first 32-bit PC was a Compudyne; they actually offered (for the time) VERY nice cases which made serviceability easy, they used decent motherboards - not workstation quality but a hell of a lot better than the crud Dell uses today, and the price, for the time, was very reasonable. Sure, Packaged Hell, er, Packard Bell was cheaper, but they were the Dell of their day.
I think I got this spam too! I didn't know Slashdot published spam!
ALERT FOR TUES FEB 27!
NOW IS THE TIME TO GET IN THE GOLD INDUSTRY! DON'T LET THIS RUNNER PASS YOU BY! WATCH A*M*D TRADE ON TUESDAY FEBRUARY 27!
Last: $15.8(Up 7%) 1y Target Est: $17.47 Market: Bullish
With the price of precious CPUs continuing to skyrocket, mining companies had another year of record profits. With limited supply and high demand, experts agree that the CPU boom shows no signs of abating.
Eyeore, the old grey donkey, stood by the side of the stream and looked at himself in the water. "Pathetic, " he said, "that's what it is." "Oh, " said pooh. He thought for a long time.
shall never want anything I can give. Seek and you will find, in this world as well as in the next. See should not find them much more noble or disinterested than Luther's those decorations which astonish and dazzle the audience, retire, not by services done, or offered by expressions of regard and esteem by I do not want it. If your own library grows too voluminous, you will not Wee most historical events traced up to their true causes, I fear we you against either using, believing, or approving them. They are the of all the letters which either of you shall receive from me and I will years your whole depends upon them. I will tell you sincerely, my hopes knowledge of history which, of all other studies, is the most necessary German, which will be a sure way of keeping up your German, after you either wonders or admires. who were, and men of business, because they had business to do, though character. The wisest man sometimes acts weakly, and the weakest
I know many Joe-sixpack types who used Napster. then switched to Kazaa then limewire. They are fully aware, if subconsciously about Free vs. DRM in terms of control.
Of course, I invariably have to clean spyware up for these customers, but it goes to show that they are learning about the ramifications of vendor lock in and are not feeling obligated to pay obscene prices to major labels when free/free options are available.
I've asked a few why they don't use iTunes instead and a few have remarked that computer upgrades resulted in their losing access to the music (read: they don't know how to back up the licenses), they don't have an iPod, but some other brand MP3 player (read: don't know to burn it to CD and re-rip it to MP3), or don't have a Mac (read: haven't noticed the availablility of iTunes for Windows). A couple have been savvy enough to tell me that they won't pay money for music from major labels every time the format changes, but that's generally the older generation which has bought the White Album on vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, and now want a copy in "digital" format.
That is easy to sabotage. Just surf, select popular original videos like lassegg's work, flag it as a copyright violation. Go for all of the most popular videos, do the same.
Now, you just overloaded the paid auditors and broke the system, rendering it useless.
Oh, they'll successfully block naruto, but then it'll come back as narvto, narut0, and n@ruto. Then, they will have to block all those alternate spellings, and then they will have to start blocking na.ruto, and so on. It's an endless battle the media companies will. not. win.
What the media companies NEED to do is embrace and look the other way COMPLETELY when it comes low-bitrate, low-resolution encodings of their content. I've watched content on Youtube, and while I'm not running out to buy HDTV because I consider it overrated and over-hyped, Youtube clips are so crappy that they're almost painful to watch.
Now, I rip my DVDs to fit entire seasons of shows on my PDA, or six to ten full-length movies, and the resolution is fine when I'm traveling or listening to at the office. I don't watch the rips at home; I watch the full resolution DVDs (or the raw.vob files I haven't deleted from the rip yet) on my large monitor or my television set. Also, I buy the DVDs; I no longer buy CDs and made a conscious decision to spend my entertainment dollars on movies and TV show box sets instead. February (this month, and no I have not had time to watch them yet) I've purchased 22 DVDs. I may occasionally download a movie and watch at least parts of it to decide whether or not I really want to buy it, and nearly always buy it. Granted sometimes I may go to a shop which sells used DVDs for some movies, but I buy them nonetheless. Why? Because:
1. I want to do the right thing 2. I like the uncompromised quality compared to most rips 3. I like the extra features; deleted scenes, commentaries, liner notes, and so forth 4. If we hate theaters (Well, I don't hate them, I hate that all too often the movies are out of focus because theater personnel is either in need of glasses or simply do not pay attention), and don't buy the DVDs, what pays for new movies to be made? Same with Linux distros; I buy the Linux distros I use because I want development to continue. I want more movies to be made, so if I like a movie, I buy it.
TV shows? I download shows and anime otherwise unavailable in America, and I download TV shows I forget to record. As they become available on DVD I will buy the seasons. So far I've missed all but one episode of Smallville this season. I can't get the shows on ondemand from my cable provider, and they're not available on DVD yet, so I'm going to download them from a torrent site to catch up on what's been going on this season. That the network has not seen the light and is not embracing P2P and not feeding the torrent sites with advert-injected episodes is not MY fault.
No, the media companies are fighting a losing battle, and they are not seeing the potential for growth and new revenue sources by trying to shove DRM down our throats and prevent new distribution channels from developing.
If they had ANY sense whatsoever, they would be partnering with youtube to actively put their shows on the site, complete with advertisements, and they would be opening torrent sites and doing the same, all with DRM-free media. Even if they do embrace it, chances are I will still buy the DVD sets, but I'd be happy to participate in a network-endorsed P2P timeshifting option which includes the ads, because I know the advertisements, as annoying as they may be, pay for the programming.
And yet, many of us read every word of it, including the benchmarks.
I read it out of morbid curiousity because I can't stand running Windows XP on even a Pentium 4; too long from POST to being able to actually open an application.
All it takes is a few cycles of this cat-and-mouse game, and the media companies will finally realize that DRM is only wasting THEIR money in terms of licensing the broken encryption technology, the retarded (as in slow) uptake of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, and decreased sales overall while they're trying to make their customers pay per play, or at least play per player.
Eventually they will come to their senses and ship the content DRM-free. Didn't one of the Harry Potter movies ship DRM-free (no CSS) and still sell very well?
Oh there is a range issue, because the further away from the aperture of the laser, the greater the area of the beam will hit. This is less energy/area, which means the destructive force will be lower.
Besides, this kind of weapon is of limited use; there is little to no physical force behind it; the destructive energy is heat. Things won't explode like they do in Star Wars and other sci fi/fantasy movies and shows. No, you MIGHT get an explosion if you heat the fuel tanks, but more likely the application would be to heat hydraulic lines until they rupture or simply melt and leak all over, or to shine it through the window of a vehicle to blind, cook, or otherwise injure the driver/pilot/operator, or to use to ignite vegetation one's enemy is hiding behind.
Even worse: Uninstalling an OEM driver and running the Microsoft-shipped driver counts as one hardware change, then installing a new version of the OEM driver counts as a second hardware changed. I've had NIC drivers, sound card drivers, and video card drivers trigger re-activation, and forced to call the Craptivation support line.
Not true, it's driving at the most efficient point in your engine's power curve. Just off idle, you actually need to burn far more fuel than at a higher RPM.
My car gets about 27-28mpg at 65mph on level ground, but if I go a steady 77mph, it's close to 29, and at a steady 90mph I get close to 32-33mpg.
To idle in sixth, well, I'd be going about 45mph, putting excess wear on the bearings in the engine, the car would be bucking a little on hills, and I would have to actually floor it to go up the hill. Oh, and I HAVE run it in sixth on level ground, and I get less fuel mileage, about 23mpg if I recall.
Low speed does not always equate to peak efficiency. If IF you get better fuel mileage by lugging your engine, you are putting a vast amount of stress on the bearings and gears in your transmission (especially the input shaft bearings and seal), the bearings in your engine, and the cylinder walls. You are decreasing the live of your drivetrain, in your quest of saving tenths of a mile per gallon. If you want to drive like that, what you really want is a hybrid.
Actually, I want a hybrid, but I think I'm going to wait until performance hybrids come out. Lexus sort of has one, but for the price (which is out of sight) the performance is lousy.
Oh I know, I know, it's bloated, it has features 99% of users never use, but darn it, I'm one of those 1% of users and I need my full-featured curses-enabled links console browser! Point-and-click, baby!;)
Slashdot Mirror
It is like watching a train wreck, you cannot help but watch.
Except in the case of SCO, the train is heading for a compact car, and we're all rooting for the train.
Rather than further limiting citzen rights and increasing the size and reach of government. We should encourage our government to focus more on stupid things like this, then more bills like the Patriot Act and DMCA might not happen. ;)
There is no Paradroid or Elite.
Or, 5:00pm - based on a different time zone.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts, which is known for generally being stupid, is bucking its long-held tradition of stupidity by experimenting with longer school days. Check it out: http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg ?articleid=184827 , http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070224/ap_on_re_us/lo nger_school_days , http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles /2007/02/25/massachusetts_leading_national_effort_ for_longer_school_days/
Which is what happened to the unlimited speed highways in the western us.
OK, the limit was "reasonable and prudent" in those states, which in the plains and the deserts means "unless it's raining go for the rev limiter"
*sigh*
The stupidity in vancouver this winter is of olympic proportions!
Sorry guys, this madness has GOT to stop.
In reality:
The Olympics is a FOR-PROFIT venture. The officials running this rake millions upon millions into their pocketbooks
The term "olympic" dates back to the greeks. It's a common term and should not have been able to be trademarked by ANYONE, not even for a sporting event since those events originated in ancient times as well
If I want to open a fast food restaurant with a greek theme and call a burger "the olympic burger" I should have FULL right to do so since olympic is a common adjective.
Fuck the olympics. I don't ever watch it because I see it for the scam it is.
This is slashdot; the CDs and DVDs are used for archiving 160 Linux distributions.
;)
Sheesh. Occam's razor, folks! "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one."
. . . and any "porn" will be in the form of hentai, usually employed as the user's Gnome or KDE wallpaper, or in some elitist cases, enlightenment wallpaper.
Why is it that when Microsoft, dominating an entire industry, sees another company doing well in a quasi-related niche, feel compelled to enter and dominate that industry as well?
.png rendering, so I have to give them some credit there.
I'm a capitalist through and through but I'm so fucking sick of Microsoft.
I'm sick of hearing how secure Vista is, when their Vista security features are so annoying 99% of users will probably disable them.
I'm sick of hearing how much of a vast improvement Vista is over XP, when OS X and KDE on x.org have been there/done that for ages now -- ESPECIALLY when the truly major "improvements" in Vista restricts' customers' Fair Use and Right of First Sale activities.
Oh, and what about MSIE 7.0? Where are the improvements? It does not pass the acid test (even though every other browser on the planet worth mentioning passes now), designers still have to bend over backwards for modern techniques to render correctly in MSIE, and it breaks differently than MSIE6, so things are more interesting. On the plus side, at least they DID fix
I used to be a Microsoft fan, and I've hated practically everything they've done after Windows 2000, because I see it as predatory, self-serving, and providing FAR less value to the customer, all while prices are tripling and quadrupling for Windows. For what? restricted activities on the computer? Revocation of First Sale rights? Restriction of Fair Use?
Sorry, I had to vent. This is not intended to be insightful, informative, or even interesting; it's merely a good opportunity to vent in a place where hopefully some Microsoft drone will read this and say "Hey, are we REALLY that bad? I guess we are alienating our customer base." In summary: Fuck Microsoft. There is no need for them to dominate advertising, and quite honestly, I rather they didn't even try, because if there is one thing Microsoft truly excels at, it's annoying and alienating customers.
Posted using Firefox 2.0 on Linux.
An 80386, purchased in 1991 or 1992. It was right before Windows 3.1 came out.
My first 32-bit PC was a Compudyne; they actually offered (for the time) VERY nice cases which made serviceability easy, they used decent motherboards - not workstation quality but a hell of a lot better than the crud Dell uses today, and the price, for the time, was very reasonable. Sure, Packaged Hell, er, Packard Bell was cheaper, but they were the Dell of their day.
. . . and continue using grip and lame.
I think I got this spam too! I didn't know Slashdot published spam!
ALERT FOR TUES FEB 27!
NOW IS THE TIME TO GET IN THE GOLD INDUSTRY!
DON'T LET THIS RUNNER PASS YOU BY!
WATCH A*M*D TRADE ON TUESDAY FEBRUARY 27!
Last: $15.8(Up 7%)
1y Target Est: $17.47
Market: Bullish
With the price of precious CPUs continuing to skyrocket, mining
companies had another year of record profits. With limited supply and
high demand, experts agree that the CPU boom shows no signs of
abating.
Eyeore, the old grey donkey, stood by the side of the stream and looked
at himself in the water. "Pathetic, " he said, "that's what it is."
"Oh, " said pooh. He thought for a long time.
shall never want anything I can give. Seek and you will find, in this world as well as in the next. See should not find them much more noble or disinterested than Luther's those decorations which astonish and dazzle the audience, retire, not
by services done, or offered by expressions of regard and esteem by I do not want it. If your own library grows too voluminous, you will not Wee most historical events traced up to their true causes, I fear we
you against either using, believing, or approving them. They are the of all the letters which either of you shall receive from me and I will years your whole depends upon them. I will tell you sincerely, my hopes knowledge of history which, of all other studies, is the most necessary
German, which will be a sure way of keeping up your German, after you either wonders or admires. who were, and men of business, because they had business to do, though character. The wisest man sometimes acts weakly, and the weakest
(I kid, I kid)
I can't help but to point this out:
http://www.centennialbulb.org/facts.htm
If only all incandescents lasted like that!
I know many Joe-sixpack types who used Napster. then switched to Kazaa then limewire. They are fully aware, if subconsciously about Free vs. DRM in terms of control.
Of course, I invariably have to clean spyware up for these customers, but it goes to show that they are learning about the ramifications of vendor lock in and are not feeling obligated to pay obscene prices to major labels when free/free options are available.
I've asked a few why they don't use iTunes instead and a few have remarked that computer upgrades resulted in their losing access to the music (read: they don't know how to back up the licenses), they don't have an iPod, but some other brand MP3 player (read: don't know to burn it to CD and re-rip it to MP3), or don't have a Mac (read: haven't noticed the availablility of iTunes for Windows). A couple have been savvy enough to tell me that they won't pay money for music from major labels every time the format changes, but that's generally the older generation which has bought the White Album on vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, and now want a copy in "digital" format.
That is easy to sabotage. Just surf, select popular original videos like lassegg's work, flag it as a copyright violation. Go for all of the most popular videos, do the same.
Now, you just overloaded the paid auditors and broke the system, rendering it useless.
What you should then do is run an Amiga emulator in Windows 95, and in that Amiga emulator, run a C=64 emulator.
OH THE PAIN!
Oh, they'll successfully block naruto, but then it'll come back as narvto, narut0, and n@ruto. Then, they will have to block all those alternate spellings, and then they will have to start blocking na.ruto, and so on. It's an endless battle the media companies will. not. win.
.vob files I haven't deleted from the rip yet) on my large monitor or my television set. Also, I buy the DVDs; I no longer buy CDs and made a conscious decision to spend my entertainment dollars on movies and TV show box sets instead. February (this month, and no I have not had time to watch them yet) I've purchased 22 DVDs. I may occasionally download a movie and watch at least parts of it to decide whether or not I really want to buy it, and nearly always buy it. Granted sometimes I may go to a shop which sells used DVDs for some movies, but I buy them nonetheless. Why? Because:
What the media companies NEED to do is embrace and look the other way COMPLETELY when it comes low-bitrate, low-resolution encodings of their content. I've watched content on Youtube, and while I'm not running out to buy HDTV because I consider it overrated and over-hyped, Youtube clips are so crappy that they're almost painful to watch.
Now, I rip my DVDs to fit entire seasons of shows on my PDA, or six to ten full-length movies, and the resolution is fine when I'm traveling or listening to at the office. I don't watch the rips at home; I watch the full resolution DVDs (or the raw
1. I want to do the right thing
2. I like the uncompromised quality compared to most rips
3. I like the extra features; deleted scenes, commentaries, liner notes, and so forth
4. If we hate theaters (Well, I don't hate them, I hate that all too often the movies are out of focus because theater personnel is either in need of glasses or simply do not pay attention), and don't buy the DVDs, what pays for new movies to be made? Same with Linux distros; I buy the Linux distros I use because I want development to continue. I want more movies to be made, so if I like a movie, I buy it.
TV shows? I download shows and anime otherwise unavailable in America, and I download TV shows I forget to record. As they become available on DVD I will buy the seasons. So far I've missed all but one episode of Smallville this season. I can't get the shows on ondemand from my cable provider, and they're not available on DVD yet, so I'm going to download them from a torrent site to catch up on what's been going on this season. That the network has not seen the light and is not embracing P2P and not feeding the torrent sites with advert-injected episodes is not MY fault.
No, the media companies are fighting a losing battle, and they are not seeing the potential for growth and new revenue sources by trying to shove DRM down our throats and prevent new distribution channels from developing.
If they had ANY sense whatsoever, they would be partnering with youtube to actively put their shows on the site, complete with advertisements, and they would be opening torrent sites and doing the same, all with DRM-free media. Even if they do embrace it, chances are I will still buy the DVD sets, but I'd be happy to participate in a network-endorsed P2P timeshifting option which includes the ads, because I know the advertisements, as annoying as they may be, pay for the programming.
And yet, many of us read every word of it, including the benchmarks.
I read it out of morbid curiousity because I can't stand running Windows XP on even a Pentium 4; too long from POST to being able to actually open an application.
In Soviet Russia. . . uhh. . . they run XP on VIC-20?
All it takes is a few cycles of this cat-and-mouse game, and the media companies will finally realize that DRM is only wasting THEIR money in terms of licensing the broken encryption technology, the retarded (as in slow) uptake of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, and decreased sales overall while they're trying to make their customers pay per play, or at least play per player.
Eventually they will come to their senses and ship the content DRM-free. Didn't one of the Harry Potter movies ship DRM-free (no CSS) and still sell very well?
Oh there is a range issue, because the further away from the aperture of the laser, the greater the area of the beam will hit. This is less energy/area, which means the destructive force will be lower.
Besides, this kind of weapon is of limited use; there is little to no physical force behind it; the destructive energy is heat. Things won't explode like they do in Star Wars and other sci fi/fantasy movies and shows. No, you MIGHT get an explosion if you heat the fuel tanks, but more likely the application would be to heat hydraulic lines until they rupture or simply melt and leak all over, or to shine it through the window of a vehicle to blind, cook, or otherwise injure the driver/pilot/operator, or to use to ignite vegetation one's enemy is hiding behind.
Even worse:
Uninstalling an OEM driver and running the Microsoft-shipped driver counts as one hardware change, then installing a new version of the OEM driver counts as a second hardware changed. I've had NIC drivers, sound card drivers, and video card drivers trigger re-activation, and forced to call the Craptivation support line.
F*** activation.
Not true, it's driving at the most efficient point in your engine's power curve. Just off idle, you actually need to burn far more fuel than at a higher RPM.
My car gets about 27-28mpg at 65mph on level ground, but if I go a steady 77mph, it's close to 29, and at a steady 90mph I get close to 32-33mpg.
To idle in sixth, well, I'd be going about 45mph, putting excess wear on the bearings in the engine, the car would be bucking a little on hills, and I would have to actually floor it to go up the hill. Oh, and I HAVE run it in sixth on level ground, and I get less fuel mileage, about 23mpg if I recall.
Low speed does not always equate to peak efficiency. If IF you get better fuel mileage by lugging your engine, you are putting a vast amount of stress on the bearings and gears in your transmission (especially the input shaft bearings and seal), the bearings in your engine, and the cylinder walls. You are decreasing the live of your drivetrain, in your quest of saving tenths of a mile per gallon. If you want to drive like that, what you really want is a hybrid.
Actually, I want a hybrid, but I think I'm going to wait until performance hybrids come out. Lexus sort of has one, but for the price (which is out of sight) the performance is lousy.
I don't use lynx, ever. I use links.
;)
Oh I know, I know, it's bloated, it has features 99% of users never use, but darn it, I'm one of those 1% of users and I need my full-featured curses-enabled links console browser! Point-and-click, baby!