Remember that this is Sweden, not USA we talking about, in here the police doesn't have any more leeway when it comes to laws than normal citicens.
Actually here in America, the police and political elite have no more leeway than anyone else according to the law; all are accountable to the laws and ultimately to the people.
The problem is, unfortunately, that we keep reelecting corrupt bastards who twist and bend the law, and outright ignore it when they deem it to be convenient for their own purposes, and selectively enforce the laws. This is where theory vs. practice breaks down.
Let private industry fund the research then. Why should tax dollars be spent on this crap? Let cream cheese manufacturers who want to beat Kraft pool resources to fund it and cross-license any "proprietary techniques" to each other.
I'm glad that at least the info will be public for all citizens to access, that's how ALL taxpayer-funded projects SHOULD be, whether it's a design for a new screw or nut to bleeding-edge aerospace technology. If US citizens were forced to spend money on something, it belongs to the people and therefore all citizens should have equal access to the information - ALL of it. Every penny spent ought to be accounted for and ALL records and documentation ought to be released for scrutiny by citizens. I intended the original post to be half-joking and half-serious.
If tax dollars HAVE to go into developing cream cheese manufacturing techniques, why not come up with a way to make it less unhealthy to eat while you're at it?
All it takes is a google bomb to fix it by linking to the IP address. It'll get crawled and indexed on the IP, as long as the site isn't requiring host headers.:) What is the IP? Link to it in this thread and on your web sites with some phrase, like "scandalous canuck bastard" and the site will be the top hit in Google and Yahoo in a matter of days.:)
Doesn't work now.:( Hey guys, if you're reading this thread, here's what I wanted to say (well I'm expanding it a little more here on slashdot since the textarea is larger):
Glad to see you back, keep up the good show. Can you use this rebuild as an opportunity to weed out unseeded torrents, or at least make it an option to filter them out?
You've generated a lot of great press showing how corrupt the MPAA and our (I'm American) government are. Great work! I hope you guys win your upcoming legal battle. If courts actually enforced laws as written and intended, you wouldn't be in this mess to begin with, and here in America noncommercial trading would be a non-issue, but sadly our corrupt politicians keep extending copyright so it's effectively infinite and fair use is quickly disappearing. I'm glad you Europeans have a lot more common sense in that arena. Keep it up, and although we can't help you from here we are definitely rooting for you. The MPAA and RIAA still won't face the fact that "try before you buy" works even though Napster resulted in a huge spike in CD sales, and I'm sure that other P2P networks have helped to fuel the DVD sales explosion in recent years.
--Kim
P.S. I think it's high time you add to your "legal threats" page. It's great reading.:D
The point is: It's none of their fucking business what you or I am reading/downloading/uploading/etc. on the Internet, or talking about on the telephone, and furthermore, those fucks are violating the very laws they're supposed to be enforcing in the first place. It's about rights and laws, and not the fact that today I wasted most of the day reading posts on slashdot.
Only idiots throw away mod points modding funny posts down as trolls rather than spending them modding up really great posts. Just once - ONCE, I'd like to see a thread that's actually readable with the threshold set to 4 or 5. Don't waste your mod points modding down what is OBVIOUSLY not a troll, but an attempt at humor.
My guess: 4 wheels, 4 wheel drive, 4 feet off the ground?
Now tell me since where on the numbers/vehicle subject: what does 442 refer to on the later cutlasses, you know, the ones that didn't have the 400/455, (the 4-speed manual or 4BBL carburator depending on year), and no dual exhast?
Pendantic nitpicking aside, the key is Clarke faces a lawsuit from IBM for defamation if he admits it was his intention to write about an IBM computer that went nuts, killed astronauts, and potentially scuttled a billion dollar space mission.
Pardon me, but how could a work which is obviously fiction possibly be construed as defamation, even if the monopolist of the time (IBM) were mentioned by name? It was set in the future, first of all, and had a machine which was self-aware - two obviously fictional subjects. Heck, if IBM were mentioned by name, it'd have been great PR for them to get product placement in their (their logo) like Ma Bell (I think it was AT&T logo, it's been a while since I've watched it) did.
Looks like Vista will actually be more of a worthwhile upgrade than many of us (myself included) have given them credit for. Now I'm likely to avoid it for most of my systems due to the presence of DRM, but I see a lot of good in the upcoming release of Windows Forev^H^H^H^H^HVista.
From TFA:
The third added step is more protection for the System Registry and Program Files folders to prevent applications from writing without permission to the Registry or writing settings data into Program Files folders. This is also a good thing, but it creates problems for many applications, which may not successfully install or operate because they expect to be able to write where they are not "supposed" to. And to be fair, Microsoft has asked software makers for years not to write settings data to the Program Files area and to cut way back on writing to the System Registry, which should probably only ever occur during installation. Many ISVs have chosen to ignore those strong guidelines. And it's their applications that might get hung up by Vista's new protections.
To solve that problem, Microsoft is delivering custom "shims" designed to fool installing applications into thinking they're writing to the places where they expect to write, when in fact Microsoft is rerouting that data to a safer location. By working this way, Microsoft adds a significant level of protection from malware that seeks to pass itself off as other programs, or that infests the System Registry, or both. But while this is an excellent work-around, how many shims can Microsoft write for specific applications? It will probably only take care of the most visible, most popular business and entertainment apps. So it's possible that hundreds or even thousands of Windows programs will not work properly with Vista when it ships.
That's a pretty good solution for balancing the need for improved security and enforcing proper design, and continuing to allow poorly-designed apps like Quickbooks Pro to run. It's a hack to be sure, but a pretty clever one really. I wish they had done this back in the days of Wimdows 2000.
Also, I suspect that this will help to limit the problems wiruses can cause on Windows. If applications are in essence sandboxed like this, it is less likely the average script kiddie will be able to pump out viruses to wipe out entire systems. The user account will obviously remain vulnerable, but of course $HOME/%userprofile% is the most critical place to back up (in most cases) anyhow, so of course you'll be backing up your home directory on a regular basis - right?
Last thing on this subject: Do you all think that this encourages the likes of Intuit to be lazy and demand this faux-superuser access to the system since "Microsoft is handling it for us, we don't need to fix anything" or do you think these third parties will get the hint that the free-for-all access they've insisted is "essential" for all users as deprecated and fix these design problems in following releases? I tend to think that they'll continue to leave things as-is, letting Microsoft deal with the problem with this hack. This is where Microsoft catches a bad rap; they've published guidelines for proper data storage (locations, APIs to use, etc.) since Windows 2000 was in very early data, and publishers STILL insist on coding in such a way that Admin access is required. Do you think they'll view this as time to clean up, or simply let Microsoft continue to make it easy for them to be lazy?
17. Two words: Secure Desktop. You have to see this to understand why it was worth its own number on the hit parade of things you won't like about Vista. Secure Desktop is Microsoft's name for a set of dramatic visual cues that serve as a backdrop for the User Account Controls confirmation prompt. The desktop and any open windows surrounding the UAC prompt go noticeably dark. Perhaps even more important to the security involved, with the UAC prompt open and unanswered, you can't access anything
If you're wondering whether your computer will run Aero, or Windows Vista at all, download the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor. When I ran this tool from my T43 ThinkPads, it told me that they would only support Vista Basic, although that isn't quite true in Beta 2.
I tried running the upgrade advisor but it failed on SuSE. I guess Microsoft doesn't want me to upgrade. Oh well!;)
I don't think a Cray meets the final minimum requirements for Vista. A neural network will likely be the final requirement when Windows Forever ships, if you want all the eye candy.;)
That is an interesting point - if AMD does improve things at ATI then ATI cards would very well be worth looking at. However most big mergers tend to bring down the quality of the better company (look at Compaq-HP) and tend to make them more difficult, not easier to obtain customer service from. If AMD and ATI were to merge and AMD were able to force ATI to improve drivers AND technical disclosure on all fronts, then you're right; I'd have no reason to not buy ATI products, and it would no longer be a choice between "evil or more evil" (two closed-source binary-only drivers) but "Good OSS drivers vs. A good but closed source driver" - I'd choose the OSS one in that case because I know that if I have that machine still sitting around someplace running say, xastir with weather maps, I'll be able to run the latest and greatest xastir, even if I need to upgrade to X.org 12.5.1.
It is true that it is not a benchmark, but it is a fairly good indicator of relative performance between two X servers on the same box. Barring glxgears, what would you suggest as an alternative quick measurement of relative performance?
- My opionion of foo is bar (the introduction)
- Explanation of why I think foo is bar (the body)
- conclusion
Wow, you must really be informed. I on the other hand read even opposing views. I even sat through that hack Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 to see what he had to say even though it's well-known he's a hack. I figured the whole thing was BS and sure enough it was, but it was worth sitting through for the valid points he made.
If you can't get past the introduction of someone's opinion of the actions and customer service of a company, or of someone's introction of what they think on politician foo or entertainer bar, you must be VERY well informed. (s/very well informed/extremely ignorant of issues/)
Why did you throw away mod points? Follow the guidelines. If you didn't find it funny or disagree, pass the post by and when you find a really great one mod that one up. This post wasn't a troll. It was a JOKE. It was funny. Go get a sense of humor.
What would be a troll? If I were to say that ATI's CEO goes to thailand and fucks little boys (I'm not saying he does, I don't even know the CEO's name) without basis/proof, then that would be a troll (and libel on top of that). If I said his wife is a tramp, that would be a troll. I'd be attacking the persons involved rather than discussing an issue, and it wouldn't be a joke about the issue either, but an attempt at character assassination. THAT sort of thing is a troll. Making a joke about the value of one share of ATI stock is not trolling, it's joking around.
They've done something to make the software installing part of YaST take ages to start.
Go to YaST -> Installation Sources Check each source to make sure that Refresh is set to "Off"
They made "ON" the default in 10.1, presumably in response to many folks' complaining about the installer's handling of broken repositories such as Packman. (Great repository for selection, but it's perpetually broken).
Wait until they phase your super-extreme edition Radeon x87562 card out of the drivers. You'll give a shit then. If they were open source, no big deal. They'd retain the super-extreme edition Radeon x87562 server code for X.org 43.7.2 so if your system is still limping along when X.org 43.7.2 is released you'll still be able to run the latest and greatest.
As it is, ATI has already phased all Radeons prior to the 8500 out of their proprietary driver. Running an 8500 or 9500 and 7500 side by side for dual head support? Tough shit. Deal with X.org's unaccelerated Xinerama, or buy a new card. Oh, no new AGP cards? Tough shit. They have your money already. Screw maintaining customer loyalty; such is the way business is done today.
Incidentally, it's precisely that reason I will never buy a new GM. Their customer service for existing cars is horrible, and I mean HORRIBLE. Replacement parts are shitty quality, and they never, ever addressed a delaminating windshield issue (a defect in the manufacturing process, confirmed by the parts manufacturer). If it means my next car will be a new German or British car and it will be slightly slower for more money, so be it. Same thing here - crappy service from ATI, I avoid their products whenever possible. Crappy RMA process with Abit, I avoid Abit products. I buy from vendors and customers who make things a pleasure, e.g., Asus or Foxconn motherboards, Nvidia-based video cards, SuSE Linux. You know, companies (whose people) which actually consider long term ramifications of product offerings and customer service - or lack thereof.
The way I see it though, NVidia will never act first, and they shouldn't. NVidia's excellent software drivers have led them to become the undisputed favorite graphics card chipset for Linux users. The hardware performance (atleast in Windows) between the top level ATI and NVidia cards is pretty similar. So NVidia has a distinct advantage over ATI in this regard, and they won't want to give it up.
I'm confused.
How does documenting a register map, or even opening the source for drivers even, reveal the chip mask?
And how does keeping the source for the drivers closed deter competitors?
Given that ATI and NVidia both possesss or have access to electron microscopes (I cannot imagine any chip fab would not have access to at least one) and can buy each others' products anonymously OTC at the nearest Best Buy or Frys, and can decompile and reverse engineer each other's drivers, what "competitive advantage" would each be losing for the other?
No, I suspect that it's all about PR and mystique. Mystique being that "OOooh NVidia is faster than ATI this month, how did they do it?" or PR being that they don't want the Open Source implementation to outperform their binary release, and they want to avoid that public embarassment. That's my guess anyhow. With that said, as far as open source drivers go, the Radeon drivers are phenomenal compared to ATI's abysmal Catalyst release, and where Proprietary binary drivers go, NVidia's drivers are an absolute dream; thet work very well on many versions of many distributions with no hassles.
Washington residents who play poker or make other types of wagers on the Internet will be committing a Class C felony, equivalent under the law to possessing child pornography, threatening the governor or torturing an animal.
So, if you place a bet online (e.g., engage in commerce, benefiting the economy) you are as evil as purveyors of child porn?
They should make buying lottery tickets a felony. Why the hell should the gubbament have a monopoly on gambling? Allow competition, or don't allow gambling at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually here in America, the police and political elite have no more leeway than anyone else according to the law; all are accountable to the laws and ultimately to the people.
The problem is, unfortunately, that we keep reelecting corrupt bastards who twist and bend the law, and outright ignore it when they deem it to be convenient for their own purposes, and selectively enforce the laws. This is where theory vs. practice breaks down.
Let private industry fund the research then. Why should tax dollars be spent on this crap? Let cream cheese manufacturers who want to beat Kraft pool resources to fund it and cross-license any "proprietary techniques" to each other.
I'm glad that at least the info will be public for all citizens to access, that's how ALL taxpayer-funded projects SHOULD be, whether it's a design for a new screw or nut to bleeding-edge aerospace technology. If US citizens were forced to spend money on something, it belongs to the people and therefore all citizens should have equal access to the information - ALL of it. Every penny spent ought to be accounted for and ALL records and documentation ought to be released for scrutiny by citizens. I intended the original post to be half-joking and half-serious.
If tax dollars HAVE to go into developing cream cheese manufacturing techniques, why not come up with a way to make it less unhealthy to eat while you're at it?
What sets us apart from the apes is millions of nucleotides ;)
All it takes is a google bomb to fix it by linking to the IP address. It'll get crawled and indexed on the IP, as long as the site isn't requiring host headers. :) What is the IP? Link to it in this thread and on your web sites with some phrase, like "scandalous canuck bastard" and the site will be the top hit in Google and Yahoo in a matter of days. :)
Doesn't work now. :( Hey guys, if you're reading this thread, here's what I wanted to say (well I'm expanding it a little more here on slashdot since the textarea is larger):
:D
Glad to see you back, keep up the good show. Can you use this rebuild as an opportunity to weed out unseeded torrents, or at least make it an option to filter them out?
You've generated a lot of great press showing how corrupt the MPAA and our (I'm American) government are. Great work! I hope you guys win your upcoming legal battle. If courts actually enforced laws as written and intended, you wouldn't be in this mess to begin with, and here in America noncommercial trading would be a non-issue, but sadly our corrupt politicians keep extending copyright so it's effectively infinite and fair use is quickly disappearing. I'm glad you Europeans have a lot more common sense in that arena. Keep it up, and although we can't help you from here we are definitely rooting for you. The MPAA and RIAA still won't face the fact that "try before you buy" works even though Napster resulted in a huge spike in CD sales, and I'm sure that other P2P networks have helped to fuel the DVD sales explosion in recent years.
--Kim
P.S. I think it's high time you add to your "legal threats" page. It's great reading.
"The work is funded by federal grants," (snip other sources of funding, yes I know it's not ALL tax funded)
I am so glad that tax dollars extorted from me are being spent on such important projects. Thanks Uncle Sam!
That's not the point.
The point is: It's none of their fucking business what you or I am reading/downloading/uploading/etc. on the Internet, or talking about on the telephone, and furthermore, those fucks are violating the very laws they're supposed to be enforcing in the first place. It's about rights and laws, and not the fact that today I wasted most of the day reading posts on slashdot.
Are you saying you need it? What are you running, Vista?
Only idiots throw away mod points modding funny posts down as trolls rather than spending them modding up really great posts. Just once - ONCE, I'd like to see a thread that's actually readable with the threshold set to 4 or 5. Don't waste your mod points modding down what is OBVIOUSLY not a troll, but an attempt at humor.
You're what's wrong with slashdot.
Enough out of you, Wayne. By the way, shouldn't you be partying on or something?
My guess: 4 wheels, 4 wheel drive, 4 feet off the ground?
Now tell me since where on the numbers/vehicle subject: what does 442 refer to on the later cutlasses, you know, the ones that didn't have the 400/455, (the 4-speed manual or 4BBL carburator depending on year), and no dual exhast?
Pardon me, but how could a work which is obviously fiction possibly be construed as defamation, even if the monopolist of the time (IBM) were mentioned by name? It was set in the future, first of all, and had a machine which was self-aware - two obviously fictional subjects. Heck, if IBM were mentioned by name, it'd have been great PR for them to get product placement in their (their logo) like Ma Bell (I think it was AT&T logo, it's been a while since I've watched it) did.
From TFA:
That's a pretty good solution for balancing the need for improved security and enforcing proper design, and continuing to allow poorly-designed apps like Quickbooks Pro to run. It's a hack to be sure, but a pretty clever one really. I wish they had done this back in the days of Wimdows 2000.
Also, I suspect that this will help to limit the problems wiruses can cause on Windows. If applications are in essence sandboxed like this, it is less likely the average script kiddie will be able to pump out viruses to wipe out entire systems. The user account will obviously remain vulnerable, but of course $HOME/%userprofile% is the most critical place to back up (in most cases) anyhow, so of course you'll be backing up your home directory on a regular basis - right?
Last thing on this subject: Do you all think that this encourages the likes of Intuit to be lazy and demand this faux-superuser access to the system since "Microsoft is handling it for us, we don't need to fix anything" or do you think these third parties will get the hint that the free-for-all access they've insisted is "essential" for all users as deprecated and fix these design problems in following releases? I tend to think that they'll continue to leave things as-is, letting Microsoft deal with the problem with this hack. This is where Microsoft catches a bad rap; they've published guidelines for proper data storage (locations, APIs to use, etc.) since Windows 2000 was in very early data, and publishers STILL insist on coding in such a way that Admin access is required. Do you think they'll view this as time to clean up, or simply let Microsoft continue to make it easy for them to be lazy?
I tried running the upgrade advisor but it failed on SuSE. I guess Microsoft doesn't want me to upgrade. Oh well!
I don't think a Cray meets the final minimum requirements for Vista. A neural network will likely be the final requirement when Windows Forever ships, if you want all the eye candy. ;)
That is an interesting point - if AMD does improve things at ATI then ATI cards would very well be worth looking at. However most big mergers tend to bring down the quality of the better company (look at Compaq-HP) and tend to make them more difficult, not easier to obtain customer service from. If AMD and ATI were to merge and AMD were able to force ATI to improve drivers AND technical disclosure on all fronts, then you're right; I'd have no reason to not buy ATI products, and it would no longer be a choice between "evil or more evil" (two closed-source binary-only drivers) but "Good OSS drivers vs. A good but closed source driver" - I'd choose the OSS one in that case because I know that if I have that machine still sitting around someplace running say, xastir with weather maps, I'll be able to run the latest and greatest xastir, even if I need to upgrade to X.org 12.5.1.
It is true that it is not a benchmark, but it is a fairly good indicator of relative performance between two X servers on the same box. Barring glxgears, what would you suggest as an alternative quick measurement of relative performance?
So, you ignore posts that take this format:
- My opionion of foo is bar (the introduction)
- Explanation of why I think foo is bar (the body)
- conclusion
Wow, you must really be informed. I on the other hand read even opposing views. I even sat through that hack Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 to see what he had to say even though it's well-known he's a hack. I figured the whole thing was BS and sure enough it was, but it was worth sitting through for the valid points he made.
If you can't get past the introduction of someone's opinion of the actions and customer service of a company, or of someone's introction of what they think on politician foo or entertainer bar, you must be VERY well informed. (s/very well informed/extremely ignorant of issues/)
Why did you throw away mod points? Follow the guidelines. If you didn't find it funny or disagree, pass the post by and when you find a really great one mod that one up. This post wasn't a troll. It was a JOKE. It was funny. Go get a sense of humor.
What would be a troll? If I were to say that ATI's CEO goes to thailand and fucks little boys (I'm not saying he does, I don't even know the CEO's name) without basis/proof, then that would be a troll (and libel on top of that). If I said his wife is a tramp, that would be a troll. I'd be attacking the persons involved rather than discussing an issue, and it wouldn't be a joke about the issue either, but an attempt at character assassination. THAT sort of thing is a troll. Making a joke about the value of one share of ATI stock is not trolling, it's joking around.
Stop throwing away mod points.
Go to YaST -> Installation Sources
Check each source to make sure that Refresh is set to "Off"
They made "ON" the default in 10.1, presumably in response to many folks' complaining about the installer's handling of broken repositories such as Packman. (Great repository for selection, but it's perpetually broken).
Wait until they phase your super-extreme edition Radeon x87562 card out of the drivers. You'll give a shit then. If they were open source, no big deal. They'd retain the super-extreme edition Radeon x87562 server code for X.org 43.7.2 so if your system is still limping along when X.org 43.7.2 is released you'll still be able to run the latest and greatest.
As it is, ATI has already phased all Radeons prior to the 8500 out of their proprietary driver. Running an 8500 or 9500 and 7500 side by side for dual head support? Tough shit. Deal with X.org's unaccelerated Xinerama, or buy a new card. Oh, no new AGP cards? Tough shit. They have your money already. Screw maintaining customer loyalty; such is the way business is done today.
Incidentally, it's precisely that reason I will never buy a new GM. Their customer service for existing cars is horrible, and I mean HORRIBLE. Replacement parts are shitty quality, and they never, ever addressed a delaminating windshield issue (a defect in the manufacturing process, confirmed by the parts manufacturer). If it means my next car will be a new German or British car and it will be slightly slower for more money, so be it. Same thing here - crappy service from ATI, I avoid their products whenever possible. Crappy RMA process with Abit, I avoid Abit products. I buy from vendors and customers who make things a pleasure, e.g., Asus or Foxconn motherboards, Nvidia-based video cards, SuSE Linux. You know, companies (whose people) which actually consider long term ramifications of product offerings and customer service - or lack thereof.
I'm confused.
How does documenting a register map, or even opening the source for drivers even, reveal the chip mask?
And how does keeping the source for the drivers closed deter competitors?
Given that ATI and NVidia both possesss or have access to electron microscopes (I cannot imagine any chip fab would not have access to at least one) and can buy each others' products anonymously OTC at the nearest Best Buy or Frys, and can decompile and reverse engineer each other's drivers, what "competitive advantage" would each be losing for the other?
No, I suspect that it's all about PR and mystique. Mystique being that "OOooh NVidia is faster than ATI this month, how did they do it?" or PR being that they don't want the Open Source implementation to outperform their binary release, and they want to avoid that public embarassment. That's my guess anyhow. With that said, as far as open source drivers go, the Radeon drivers are phenomenal compared to ATI's abysmal Catalyst release, and where Proprietary binary drivers go, NVidia's drivers are an absolute dream; thet work very well on many versions of many distributions with no hassles.
I was referring to the Windows drivers, although it wasn't stated.
;), most open source Linux drivers are very high quality, as in stable.
However, to counter your troll
Washington residents who play poker or make other types of wagers on the Internet will be committing a Class C felony, equivalent under the law to possessing child pornography, threatening the governor or torturing an animal.
So, if you place a bet online (e.g., engage in commerce, benefiting the economy) you are as evil as purveyors of child porn?
They should make buying lottery tickets a felony. Why the hell should the gubbament have a monopoly on gambling? Allow competition, or don't allow gambling at all.
What percentage of ATI is one share?