Let's see now... MS develops great new technology, but only so far as so that it can be seen what potential it has. MS hypes (to a greater or lesser extent) this new technology. MS explains that actually this new technology won't be used in the next version of MS Windows.
What was that really good filesystem we were going to see in Windows XP, sorry I mean Vista?
Oh right, this time it is because of backwards compatibility, rather then any other reason. But still, people keep saying it, why doesn't MS just dump the crud, go with a great new secure system (MinWin sounded like a good start), and use emulation to support all the old software?
With drivers (the specific reason given here), they could easily have a backwards compatible layer implemented above the microkernal for drivers that needed it.
So, let's see if I understand this correctly, this is sorta like a Service pack three, but for Mac OS 10.5?
Does this just fix bugs? Or is it a feature release as well?
Can people on dial up get a free CD sent out?
(No, I don't use MS Windows, I also don't use Mac OS, though I have used it extensively at school/uni in the past and always preferred it to MS Windows. Mind you, it was a lot easy to fuck up the school Win98 machines then the Mac OS 9 ones... I use Ubuntu.)
Doesn't this show a problem with the market? What if I can't buy a computer with Linux easily or cheaply? (Which used to be the case, and is still the case when buying from big brand computer stores in most countries.)
Here's an analogy that I read here on Slashdot some time ago. Let's say my favourite restaurant (a Chinese place) goes out of business. Damn, I think, and start going to the Indian joint down the road.
Now, the market going to say, "there is an increased demand for Indian food", and suddenly three more Indian restaurants open up.
But I don't want Indian, I want Chinese. And there is no way to communicate to the market that I want a Chinese restaurant.
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Want another problem with the market? Most economists (from Smith on) assume perfect knowledge. Do consumers have perfect knowledge? Fuck no. If consumers had perfect knowledge lots of them wouldn't choice MS Windows.
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Meh. Don't bother buying a pre-installed Linux system unless you want to. If you have the technical knowledge to install it yourself, if you know that the hardware works, and if the hardware is what you want, then fuck, don't bother buying the more expensive one.
And you can get your money back for MS Windows, without having to give up your entire computer (even if the EULA says otherwise). Well, assuming you live somewhere with sane laws on the matter...
Here's one off the top of my head, you have your software, you release it. You charge for installing it (if people want that), for adding extra bits (releasing them for free again), customizing, localizing etc.
I can think of at least one company that does exactly this (though I forget the name at the moment... I believe it might have been Cygwin). Free Software, that was constantly developed through people wanting it to work just right for them. Of course, other companies tried the same trick with the same software, but people kept going back to the source.
Meh, I can't be bothered wasting any more time on this, but needless to say, the article has it right.
A question you should be thinking about is, "how many people will benefit from this donation?".
Let's have a look at the projects mentioned. DesktopBSD, never heard of them, probably have quite a small user-base compared to FreeBSD. FreeBSD, benefits more then just your personal desktop OS. Lots of people use it, code flows sideways to other BSD's.
KDE, benefits heaps of people, not just those using BSD based OSs, but also Linux based OSs.
OpenSSH, you would actually be donating to OpenBSD who run the OpenSSH project, but whatever. Again, code will flow sideways to other BSD's, and OpenSSH is used by sooo many people.
Next question, how popular is the project? How many donations do they get?
DesktopBSD, probably doesn't get too many donations, small user base and all that.
FreeBSD would get a bit, KDE would get a lot more (much larger userbase), and OpenBSD would get a bit as well.
So, my suggestion, don't donate to KDE if you only have minimal funds, they probably get lots of cash from other sources.
DesktopBSD might be worth chucking some money at if you like them.
But consider donating to FreeBSD or OpenBSD, even if you don't use them directly. Their code will help you (via DesktopBSD), and will also help other people. They also probably don't get so many donations because of the smaller userbase compared to KDE.
Let me rephrase that then, we only have a limited understanding of how memories are stored in the brain.
As to, can we bring someone back to life? Well no, transferring the mind of someone to another "shell" is not bringing them back to life. It is creating a copy of them.
It probably won't be an exact copy either, because you would have to force grow the clone, wipe it's present memories and implant the other ones.
While maybe possible in the future, it ain't going to happen any time soon.
So yeah, we could have a copy of a dead friend etc. Unlikely though... And all that.
(Also, out of interest, by believing a "soul", does that mean you are a dualist? That is, do you believe that there is more to the world then the "mere" physical? Do you have any proof for this, and if so, can you provided it?)
But once you enable JavaScript, and assuming you have Flash, it is actually pretty cool. You can't actually keep the picture on one part (it just keeps floating), but it's a great way to examine the whale.
Oh, and before some idiot says it, yes we all know blue whales aren't being hunted and probably won't be. However, they are threatened by extinction from various other sources, including pollution of various kinds, and too much noise meaning that they can't communicate. (And we all know what happens if you can't communicate, you can't copulate.)
You are thinking that everyone is in the good ol' USA...
Not everyone is, not even on Slashdot, not even on US-centric websites like a local news paper.
Is Slashdot willing to text Europeans and Australians? It starts getting expensive doesn't it.
Basically, unless you are something like a bank, which can require you to turn up in person, or actually resided in a specific country, then you can't do shit like using mobile phones.
It isn't my job to decide what is a trusted vendor for you. That's your job.
Obviously single developer outfits are going to have more trouble being "trusted" if for no other reason then their signing key is not signed by some key company.
Personally, I tend to be a lot more willing to download random things off the web if: The software is free software. The website "smells" clean. I've heard of the software (or had it recommended to me).
But that's for X/GNU/Linux, what about MS Windows? Well, I'm a lot more wary of that stuff.
A vendor is someone with a name, a face, a business name, an email, a phone number, a building address and so on. A trusted vendor depends on your criteria and could range from the length of time a vendor has been in operation (i.e. don't trust a two week old start up), the size of the company (a two person job might be less trust worthy then a 100 person place), and other such possibilities.
Of course, when it comes down to it, do I trust Microsoft? Well, no, they have a history of making buggy products, even if they are large and have been around a while. Do I trust IBM or Sun? A lot more then I do Microsoft, especially if the tool I'm using is free software.
And often, the most important part of trust is having that support contract if something goes wrong.
----- While I'm at it, another thing to chuck into the "how to win", backups. If something does go wrong, you can restore the system to before it went wrong, and prevent that thing from happening again.
I don't know of any tool similar to System Restore Points from MS Windows in GNU/Linux land, but dd could easily do a similar job.
Don't install system wide untrusted software, only use signed software from your public repository or from trusted vendors.
Prevent any other changes from being made to the system, mount system partitions read only.
Where users are installing software, force it into a sandbox (one for each application). Each sandbox will have limited access to the network, user files and hardware (such as web cams and microphones).
The simplest solution is to never allow software from users to run (mount home partition as no-exec). However, this doesn't cut it much of the time, which is why I would suggest doing something similar to no-exec, but as a sandbox rather then not running the file at all. I'm not sure how hard that would be, but I'm sure it is possible.
(Oh wait, are we talking about MS Windows here? I guess you can ignore what I said then...)
I knew that I would see a post saying something like this.
Yes encryption is a great thing and should be used all the time, especially on laptops. Well actually, there is one time when it *shouldn't* be used (or at least, not automatically). Want to know when that is?
For backups. Want to know the easiest way to render your carefully planned backup system useless? Forget the password for the system and not have another way in.
Oh sure, they could just write down the password (which is a good option often), but the point is, that encryption should not be automatic when making backups.
Otherwise yes, you have a point. Transferring data offsite should be encrypted. Physical security is good too, and in this case would have been more important.
I agree with ol' Tim. An ISP's job is to provide a pipe for the Internet, charge for usage, and stay out of the way. That's all.
Unless I want them to do something else. And tracking me is not something I want. That's right, spam filtering is something else that I want to be "opt-in", and content filtering, and every other bloody sort of filtering.
Actually though, I would be happy if they paid me, but for one week at a time. For that one week I'll happily browse Goatse, Goatshe, Tubgirl etc. (images downloaded, but not displayed, I'm not that crazy). Any real browsing I'll do via my own encrypted proxy set-up at my webhost.
Basically, I'm not the target audience for tracking.
Anyway, it's great to see this sort of issue on mainstream media. Now just to get the 'normal' people to read it...
For those of you who don't know what the Turing Test is (how did you manage to find Slashdot?), to quote from Wikipedia
... a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with one human and one machine, each of which try to appear human; if the judge cannot reliably tell which is which, then the machine is said to pass the test. In order to keep the test setting simple and universal (to explicitly test the linguistic capability of the machine instead of its ability to render words into audio), the conversation is usually limited to a text-only channel...
From the summary this "test" is not a strict Turing Test as it appears to be the machine talking to a human, alone, with no second human also talking to the first human. I could be wrong of course.
One of the things that makes this test so special, is that if you cannot tell the difference between a human and a computer, then essentially the computer is intelligent. Why? Because if you cannot tell the difference, what does it matter if the machine is really intelligent or not? Is the machine was really thinking or was it just cleverly programmed? The point is however, if you can't tell the difference, what does it matter? (Incidentally, I apply the same argument to the "question" of "free will".)
Anyway, if this machine (or personality) consistently passes a proper Turing Test, then yeah, that's pretty cool, and I want one on my computer, well so long as the personality type is compatible with my own (not a Marvin please...). (And I have a partner, so no need to make such jokes...)
I don't care if they have ads (that I can't see) addressing me with names that aren't mine.
I do however, care about those people who are less technologically capable, and less privacy conscious being tricked into clicking on ads because they think it is from a friend or whatever (when reading emails especially).
Just because I rarely give out my real name on the web, doesn't mean that there are people who use their real name for everything and don't mind giving it to everyone.
And that's the problem. This won't matter for most people on Slashdot, but it will matter to at least minority of people. And the people with knowledge should promote that knowledge, we should fight against this sort of thing.
(Actually, I suspect that there are a number of people who would get rather angry being addressed by their name when looking at ads. Imagine your TV saying "Hey Joe, I've got a great new beer for you to taste!" or "Hey Joe, I've got a great new computer bit", most people I know would get angry at that. Meh, now I'm starting to ramble.)
They don't get to keep their monopoly. They get to pay the fine and change their behaviour or get fined again.
That's how it works in the EU, you don't get to continue doing what you were fined for after you pay your fine! (Otherwise people would be speeding all the time, and when stopped would say, "I already paid my fine", and would get let off!)
I think it works that way in the USA too, but don't quote me on that.
It is called being a sovereign government, it means having an army, police, courts etc.
It means that the EU can decided to confiscate any and all Microsoft property and Microsoft can do fuck all about it. It means that they can simply use those Server 2008 licences, and Microsoft can do fuck all about it.
If the EU wanted, they could drop Microsoft and develop an OS based around X/GNU/Linux, and screw Microsoft. You have to remember that until this point the EU has played by the rules of the game. But in the EU, the EU writes the rules, and they can change them as and when they like.
If Microsoft tried to play hard-ball with the EU, they would lose.
Repeat after me, "You are not allowed to use a monopoly in one area to try and leverage an advantage in another area."
That is why different rules apply to Apple and various X/GNU/Linux distributors as apply to Microsoft.
Microsoft has an effective monopoly in the desktop OS market, and by bundling Windows Media Player (and MSIE for that matter...), they are creating a situation where people might use it to create WMP files (especially as that is the default).
You might say that it isn't a big deal if people rip CDs to WMP, but then they want to play them on a portable media player, they have to make sure that it plays them. The company that makes the media player is giving a kick-back (patent licencing?) to Microsoft, and thus Microsoft is leveraging its monopoly in the desktop OS to give it an advantage in another market.
That is just one example of why they shouldn't be allowed to do it, but there are plenty of others.
I never said I considered children to be the same as adults.
I said that hitting children was domestic violence which is never acceptable, and I said that children should be able to watch porn if they want to.
As to work, children are legally not allowed to work are they... They are forced to go to school, a place which most of them find boring, the teachers are often useless, and the other pupils sometimes vicious. I'll direct you to a great essay on the subject of what children should or not be allowed to do. http://peacefire.org/info/why.shtml
Yes, it's true that teenagers don't pay a lot of taxes and are usually freeloading off their parents. But that's not because teenagers are lazy or dumb, it's because they're forced to work all day in school for free. If you took a bus driver's license away and made him study Biology and American History for 10 hours a day, he'd have to move back in with his parents too.
As for hitting them to get the point across... What point? That they shouldn't watch porn? Why shouldn't they watch porn? Because it is sinful? What is sin and why is it bad? Because the bible said so? Why should I pay any heed to a book that is full of contradictions? Because you told me to and you will hit me if I don't... Great way to get your point across Dad.
Parents who use violence against kids are lazy parents and bad parents. They are lazy because they don't want to explain to their children why they should or shouldn't do something. They are bad parents because they are in effect teaching their children that violence is an acceptable substitute for rational dialogue.
Well, violence is not an acceptable substitute for rational and logical discussion, and it should not be a way of enforcing values and morals on children.
So you have no problem with a man beating their wife?
Saying that it is OK to whack a kid, is on par with saying that it is OK to whack a women (or a man). "But she/he/it didn't do what I told them to do..." Bullshit, domestic violence, of any kind, should not be tolerated.
If your partner just happens to over-cook your dinner, whipping them with a belt is A-OK? After, it is simple "cause and effect".
What happens if your partner simply forgets to get the mail, or perhaps forgot to get the milk when shopping. Is it OK then to give whip them? After all, if you do it enough, they won't forget again!
Anyway, what is wrong with children looking at porn if they want to? What right does the parent have to restrict their children from viewing images? Pornography is a victim-less crime, whether it is viewed by children or adults. Children have rights, too.
(The first few paragraphs were copied and pasted (with slight changes) from a discussion at RevLeft on the matter. That's why they might not seem to quite fit.)
>Your "Homepage" link contains a referral id granting you privileges whenever someone signs up using it. How very, very non-capitalist. (Sarcasm, can you tell it?)
Actually, as far as I know that referral doesn't grant anything. I put it up purely out of interest for myself to see how many people I attracted to RevLeft.
As for China, considering how capitalistic they are, I wouldn't be calling them any sort of communist. (And considering that communism is meant to be a class-less state-less system, I don't call any country communist.)
Not only that, I'm not even a communist (I call myself "anarchist"). (Nor do I have a MySpace account, they don't like my combination of browsing with FireFox, NoScript and no cookies. Or something anyway.)
But thanks for assuming so many things about me, and I hope you have fun in your life.
There will always be offline applications and the need for them. There are so many situations where access to the Internet is not available.
As for having the web offline... The big thing about the web is the links between the various pages. Using a tool such as HTTrack might well enable you to keep the links between pages, thus letting you have the experience of browsing multiple domains using your web browser, even when not connected. But most people just "save as" which gives a different experience depending on if you save the full page or just the HTML, and depending on which browser you use. (Thus guaranteeing that not all the links will work.)
Anyway, I would love to be able to take all the pages that I have already saved and quickly and easily form them into some sort of net, doesn't anyone have an automatic tool to do this?
(Oh and I need to both register and have cookies enabled to see the article. Fuck that. Can someone post the full text?)
We live in a capitalist system with governments and states all around. I cannot leave this system, I am forced to live in it.
What you are saying is that by even working I must support capitalism, even though I would starve otherwise.
I suggest that you head on over to my "homepage", sign up and then post there what you just posted here. It will quickly be explained to you in much greater depth then I can be bothered just now, why you are wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's see now... MS develops great new technology, but only so far as so that it can be seen what potential it has. MS hypes (to a greater or lesser extent) this new technology. MS explains that actually this new technology won't be used in the next version of MS Windows.
What was that really good filesystem we were going to see in Windows XP, sorry I mean Vista?
Oh right, this time it is because of backwards compatibility, rather then any other reason. But still, people keep saying it, why doesn't MS just dump the crud, go with a great new secure system (MinWin sounded like a good start), and use emulation to support all the old software?
With drivers (the specific reason given here), they could easily have a backwards compatible layer implemented above the microkernal for drivers that needed it.
Meh.
So, let's see if I understand this correctly, this is sorta like a Service pack three, but for Mac OS 10.5?
Does this just fix bugs? Or is it a feature release as well?
Can people on dial up get a free CD sent out?
(No, I don't use MS Windows, I also don't use Mac OS, though I have used it extensively at school/uni in the past and always preferred it to MS Windows. Mind you, it was a lot easy to fuck up the school Win98 machines then the Mac OS 9 ones... I use Ubuntu.)
Doesn't this show a problem with the market? What if I can't buy a computer with Linux easily or cheaply? (Which used to be the case, and is still the case when buying from big brand computer stores in most countries.)
Here's an analogy that I read here on Slashdot some time ago. Let's say my favourite restaurant (a Chinese place) goes out of business. Damn, I think, and start going to the Indian joint down the road.
Now, the market going to say, "there is an increased demand for Indian food", and suddenly three more Indian restaurants open up.
But I don't want Indian, I want Chinese. And there is no way to communicate to the market that I want a Chinese restaurant.
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Want another problem with the market? Most economists (from Smith on) assume perfect knowledge. Do consumers have perfect knowledge? Fuck no. If consumers had perfect knowledge lots of them wouldn't choice MS Windows.
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Meh. Don't bother buying a pre-installed Linux system unless you want to. If you have the technical knowledge to install it yourself, if you know that the hardware works, and if the hardware is what you want, then fuck, don't bother buying the more expensive one.
And you can get your money back for MS Windows, without having to give up your entire computer (even if the EULA says otherwise). Well, assuming you live somewhere with sane laws on the matter...
Here's one off the top of my head, you have your software, you release it.
You charge for installing it (if people want that), for adding extra bits (releasing them for free again), customizing, localizing etc.
I can think of at least one company that does exactly this (though I forget the name at the moment... I believe it might have been Cygwin). Free Software, that was constantly developed through people wanting it to work just right for them. Of course, other companies tried the same trick with the same software, but people kept going back to the source.
Meh, I can't be bothered wasting any more time on this, but needless to say, the article has it right.
I was never so excited about pictures of dirt. It isn't dirt.
Rocks yes, but not dirt.
And I can't just remember what the other stuff is called, but it ain't dirt.
A question you should be thinking about is, "how many people will benefit from this donation?".
Let's have a look at the projects mentioned.
DesktopBSD, never heard of them, probably have quite a small user-base compared to FreeBSD.
FreeBSD, benefits more then just your personal desktop OS. Lots of people use it, code flows sideways to other BSD's.
KDE, benefits heaps of people, not just those using BSD based OSs, but also Linux based OSs.
OpenSSH, you would actually be donating to OpenBSD who run the OpenSSH project, but whatever. Again, code will flow sideways to other BSD's, and OpenSSH is used by sooo many people.
Next question, how popular is the project? How many donations do they get?
DesktopBSD, probably doesn't get too many donations, small user base and all that.
FreeBSD would get a bit, KDE would get a lot more (much larger userbase), and OpenBSD would get a bit as well.
So, my suggestion, don't donate to KDE if you only have minimal funds, they probably get lots of cash from other sources.
DesktopBSD might be worth chucking some money at if you like them.
But consider donating to FreeBSD or OpenBSD, even if you don't use them directly. Their code will help you (via DesktopBSD), and will also help other people. They also probably don't get so many donations because of the smaller userbase compared to KDE.
Let me rephrase that then, we only have a limited understanding of how memories are stored in the brain.
As to, can we bring someone back to life? Well no, transferring the mind of someone to another "shell" is not bringing them back to life. It is creating a copy of them.
It probably won't be an exact copy either, because you would have to force grow the clone, wipe it's present memories and implant the other ones.
While maybe possible in the future, it ain't going to happen any time soon.
So yeah, we could have a copy of a dead friend etc. Unlikely though... And all that.
(Also, out of interest, by believing a "soul", does that mean you are a dualist? That is, do you believe that there is more to the world then the "mere" physical? Do you have any proof for this, and if so, can you provided it?)
Yeah, except that there is no such thing as a "soul".
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Basically, we don't have mind or memory transfers, we don't even know how memories are stored in the brain.
So even if you get a genetically identical pet, it isn't going to be the same animal, it won't have the same memories etc.
Fuck that, don't waste your cash, get another dog. One from a pound perhaps.
But once you enable JavaScript, and assuming you have Flash, it is actually pretty cool. You can't actually keep the picture on one part (it just keeps floating), but it's a great way to examine the whale.
Oh, and before some idiot says it, yes we all know blue whales aren't being hunted and probably won't be. However, they are threatened by extinction from various other sources, including pollution of various kinds, and too much noise meaning that they can't communicate. (And we all know what happens if you can't communicate, you can't copulate.)
You are thinking that everyone is in the good ol' USA...
Not everyone is, not even on Slashdot, not even on US-centric websites like a local news paper.
Is Slashdot willing to text Europeans and Australians? It starts getting expensive doesn't it.
Basically, unless you are something like a bank, which can require you to turn up in person, or actually resided in a specific country, then you can't do shit like using mobile phones.
It isn't my job to decide what is a trusted vendor for you. That's your job.
Obviously single developer outfits are going to have more trouble being "trusted" if for no other reason then their signing key is not signed by some key company.
Personally, I tend to be a lot more willing to download random things off the web if:
The software is free software.
The website "smells" clean.
I've heard of the software (or had it recommended to me).
But that's for X/GNU/Linux, what about MS Windows? Well, I'm a lot more wary of that stuff.
A vendor is someone with a name, a face, a business name, an email, a phone number, a building address and so on. A trusted vendor depends on your criteria and could range from the length of time a vendor has been in operation (i.e. don't trust a two week old start up), the size of the company (a two person job might be less trust worthy then a 100 person place), and other such possibilities.
Of course, when it comes down to it, do I trust Microsoft? Well, no, they have a history of making buggy products, even if they are large and have been around a while. Do I trust IBM or Sun? A lot more then I do Microsoft, especially if the tool I'm using is free software.
And often, the most important part of trust is having that support contract if something goes wrong.
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While I'm at it, another thing to chuck into the "how to win", backups. If something does go wrong, you can restore the system to before it went wrong, and prevent that thing from happening again.
I don't know of any tool similar to System Restore Points from MS Windows in GNU/Linux land, but dd could easily do a similar job.
Don't install system wide untrusted software, only use signed software from your public repository or from trusted vendors.
Prevent any other changes from being made to the system, mount system partitions read only.
Where users are installing software, force it into a sandbox (one for each application). Each sandbox will have limited access to the network, user files and hardware (such as web cams and microphones).
The simplest solution is to never allow software from users to run (mount home partition as no-exec). However, this doesn't cut it much of the time, which is why I would suggest doing something similar to no-exec, but as a sandbox rather then not running the file at all. I'm not sure how hard that would be, but I'm sure it is possible.
(Oh wait, are we talking about MS Windows here? I guess you can ignore what I said then...)
I knew that I would see a post saying something like this.
Yes encryption is a great thing and should be used all the time, especially on laptops. Well actually, there is one time when it *shouldn't* be used (or at least, not automatically). Want to know when that is?
For backups. Want to know the easiest way to render your carefully planned backup system useless? Forget the password for the system and not have another way in.
Oh sure, they could just write down the password (which is a good option often), but the point is, that encryption should not be automatic when making backups.
Otherwise yes, you have a point. Transferring data offsite should be encrypted. Physical security is good too, and in this case would have been more important.
I agree with ol' Tim. An ISP's job is to provide a pipe for the Internet, charge for usage, and stay out of the way. That's all.
Unless I want them to do something else. And tracking me is not something I want. That's right, spam filtering is something else that I want to be "opt-in", and content filtering, and every other bloody sort of filtering.
Actually though, I would be happy if they paid me, but for one week at a time. For that one week I'll happily browse Goatse, Goatshe, Tubgirl etc. (images downloaded, but not displayed, I'm not that crazy). Any real browsing I'll do via my own encrypted proxy set-up at my webhost.
Basically, I'm not the target audience for tracking.
Anyway, it's great to see this sort of issue on mainstream media. Now just to get the 'normal' people to read it...
From the summary this "test" is not a strict Turing Test as it appears to be the machine talking to a human, alone, with no second human also talking to the first human. I could be wrong of course.
One of the things that makes this test so special, is that if you cannot tell the difference between a human and a computer, then essentially the computer is intelligent. Why? Because if you cannot tell the difference, what does it matter if the machine is really intelligent or not? Is the machine was really thinking or was it just cleverly programmed? The point is however, if you can't tell the difference, what does it matter? (Incidentally, I apply the same argument to the "question" of "free will".)
Anyway, if this machine (or personality) consistently passes a proper Turing Test, then yeah, that's pretty cool, and I want one on my computer, well so long as the personality type is compatible with my own (not a Marvin please...). (And I have a partner, so no need to make such jokes...)
I don't care if they have ads (that I can't see) addressing me with names that aren't mine.
I do however, care about those people who are less technologically capable, and less privacy conscious being tricked into clicking on ads because they think it is from a friend or whatever (when reading emails especially).
Just because I rarely give out my real name on the web, doesn't mean that there are people who use their real name for everything and don't mind giving it to everyone.
And that's the problem. This won't matter for most people on Slashdot, but it will matter to at least minority of people. And the people with knowledge should promote that knowledge, we should fight against this sort of thing.
(Actually, I suspect that there are a number of people who would get rather angry being addressed by their name when looking at ads. Imagine your TV saying "Hey Joe, I've got a great new beer for you to taste!" or "Hey Joe, I've got a great new computer bit", most people I know would get angry at that. Meh, now I'm starting to ramble.)
They don't get to keep their monopoly. They get to pay the fine and change their behaviour or get fined again.
That's how it works in the EU, you don't get to continue doing what you were fined for after you pay your fine! (Otherwise people would be speeding all the time, and when stopped would say, "I already paid my fine", and would get let off!)
I think it works that way in the USA too, but don't quote me on that.
It is called being a sovereign government, it means having an army, police, courts etc.
It means that the EU can decided to confiscate any and all Microsoft property and Microsoft can do fuck all about it. It means that they can simply use those Server 2008 licences, and Microsoft can do fuck all about it.
If the EU wanted, they could drop Microsoft and develop an OS based around X/GNU/Linux, and screw Microsoft. You have to remember that until this point the EU has played by the rules of the game. But in the EU, the EU writes the rules, and they can change them as and when they like.
If Microsoft tried to play hard-ball with the EU, they would lose.
Repeat after me,
"You are not allowed to use a monopoly in one area to try and leverage an advantage in another area."
That is why different rules apply to Apple and various X/GNU/Linux distributors as apply to Microsoft.
Microsoft has an effective monopoly in the desktop OS market, and by bundling Windows Media Player (and MSIE for that matter...), they are creating a situation where people might use it to create WMP files (especially as that is the default).
You might say that it isn't a big deal if people rip CDs to WMP, but then they want to play them on a portable media player, they have to make sure that it plays them. The company that makes the media player is giving a kick-back (patent licencing?) to Microsoft, and thus Microsoft is leveraging its monopoly in the desktop OS to give it an advantage in another market.
That is just one example of why they shouldn't be allowed to do it, but there are plenty of others.
I said that hitting children was domestic violence which is never acceptable, and I said that children should be able to watch porn if they want to.
As to work, children are legally not allowed to work are they... They are forced to go to school, a place which most of them find boring, the teachers are often useless, and the other pupils sometimes vicious.
I'll direct you to a great essay on the subject of what children should or not be allowed to do.
http://peacefire.org/info/why.shtml
As for hitting them to get the point across...
What point? That they shouldn't watch porn? Why shouldn't they watch porn? Because it is sinful? What is sin and why is it bad? Because the bible said so? Why should I pay any heed to a book that is full of contradictions? Because you told me to and you will hit me if I don't... Great way to get your point across Dad.
Parents who use violence against kids are lazy parents and bad parents. They are lazy because they don't want to explain to their children why they should or shouldn't do something. They are bad parents because they are in effect teaching their children that violence is an acceptable substitute for rational dialogue.
Well, violence is not an acceptable substitute for rational and logical discussion, and it should not be a way of enforcing values and morals on children.
So you have no problem with a man beating their wife?
Saying that it is OK to whack a kid, is on par with saying that it is OK to whack a women (or a man). "But she/he/it didn't do what I told them to do..." Bullshit, domestic violence, of any kind, should not be tolerated.
If your partner just happens to over-cook your dinner, whipping them with a belt is A-OK?
After, it is simple "cause and effect".
What happens if your partner simply forgets to get the mail, or perhaps forgot to get the milk when shopping. Is it OK then to give whip them? After all, if you do it enough, they won't forget again!
Anyway, what is wrong with children looking at porn if they want to? What right does the parent have to restrict their children from viewing images? Pornography is a victim-less crime, whether it is viewed by children or adults. Children have rights, too.
(The first few paragraphs were copied and pasted (with slight changes) from a discussion at RevLeft on the matter. That's why they might not seem to quite fit.)
>Your "Homepage" link contains a referral id granting you privileges whenever someone signs up using it. How very, very non-capitalist. (Sarcasm, can you tell it?)
Actually, as far as I know that referral doesn't grant anything. I put it up purely out of interest for myself to see how many people I attracted to RevLeft.
As for China, considering how capitalistic they are, I wouldn't be calling them any sort of communist. (And considering that communism is meant to be a class-less state-less system, I don't call any country communist.)
Not only that, I'm not even a communist (I call myself "anarchist"). (Nor do I have a MySpace account, they don't like my combination of browsing with FireFox, NoScript and no cookies. Or something anyway.)
But thanks for assuming so many things about me, and I hope you have fun in your life.
Thanks for playing.
There will always be offline applications and the need for them. There are so many situations where access to the Internet is not available.
As for having the web offline... The big thing about the web is the links between the various pages. Using a tool such as HTTrack might well enable you to keep the links between pages, thus letting you have the experience of browsing multiple domains using your web browser, even when not connected. But most people just "save as" which gives a different experience depending on if you save the full page or just the HTML, and depending on which browser you use. (Thus guaranteeing that not all the links will work.)
Anyway, I would love to be able to take all the pages that I have already saved and quickly and easily form them into some sort of net, doesn't anyone have an automatic tool to do this?
(Oh and I need to both register and have cookies enabled to see the article. Fuck that. Can someone post the full text?)
We live in a capitalist system with governments and states all around. I cannot leave this system, I am forced to live in it.
What you are saying is that by even working I must support capitalism, even though I would starve otherwise.
I suggest that you head on over to my "homepage", sign up and then post there what you just posted here. It will quickly be explained to you in much greater depth then I can be bothered just now, why you are wrong.