linus is just a guy, quite opinionated, and quite harsh in his words at times. are we gonna see this kind of slashdot story everytime he misbehaves somewhat?
Yes.
Linus is to slashdot what, say, Tom Cruise is to tabloids.
So, yeah, just as everytime Cruise sleeps with someone, has dinner with someone, or suggests he might eat a placenta gets headlines in the rags, slashdot dutifully follows its "celebrities" around to make much ado about the minutia that go on in their lives.
I don't want governments deciding what someone can put in a product. That's a slippery pathway to doom.
Not "someone", *MONOPOLIES*. And *not* limiting the scope of their product is the slippery pathway to doom.
Ultimately the market will decide - that's a market economy.
No it won't. Monopolies are not "market economies".
If a company invests too much effort putting what I as a consumer consider useless/unimportant features into a product and thus have to charge more for it to cover the costs associated I can go use/buy the product which is just the lean metal.
No you can't. If the company has a monopoly, there are NO "other products". That is practically the *definition* of a monopoly.
Market forces do NOT correct monopolies. Monopolies are market FAILURES. The market WON'T and CAN'T regulate them, which is why government HAS to step in.
We need to have these dicussions now, before many people make costly mistakes. It will save us time and effort in the long run, if we can wake up enough people to the potential issues that arise when using these services.
I find letting people blindly run headlong into the costly mistakes first makes them much better listeners afterwards.
Maybe I don't like my friends and relatives enough:)
The Athlon XP 2400+ cpu was released in August 2002 and the Athlon 64 x2 3200+ was released in May 2005. (nearly 3 years, and easily half a dozen core revisions).
Contrast that with the Pentium 166 CPU which succeeded the Pentium 75 in one generation. (The "P54" was available in 75/90/100/120 MHz in releases staggered through '94 while its successor, the "P54C" was released staggered throughout the following year and was available at 133/150/166/200.
Even setting aside the Mhz myth, the chip makers do *seem* to be taking longer to make the same magnitude jumps in performance -- and this perception is certainly *greatly* magnified by the fact that the number of "step" products has increased vastly.
2GHz, 2.08GHz, 2.16GHz...yawn...:)
Once upon a time each new product would raise the bar another 10 - 20%... now we see a new product every 2-5% with 3 different cache sizes, and 3 different bus speed variations...or where there is no performance improvement (or perhaps its even slightly slower) but heat / power consumption has been reduced...
1) GPS can be a lot more accurate than it currently is. Especially in conjunction with cellular positioning infrastructure.
2) Nothing stopping the software from being aware there are (parallel) roadways within 3 meters (yards) that have different speed limits and using the larger of the 2 just in case.
3) Nothing says the system has to do a hard slam on the brakes. It could simply emit annoying noises, and/or prevent you from accelerating further, etc...
Speed limit regulation would be technologically difficut at best, as the car would have to "know" what the speed limit is.
In other words, in addition to the GPS system and route planning/navigation systems that many cars come with (a feature which is rapidly filtering down into midmarket cars and will soon be ubiquitous) The map database will have to add one more field to each road segment... speed limit.
"Format and Reload" with an up to date OS disc takes less time than solving many major virus/rootkit/malware problems.
As a side effect it cleans out the registry and system folders of potentially years of crud build up.
I agree most of us don't want "geek squad" dropping in the dell restore CD and saying "fixxed", especially into one of *our* highly tuned systems, loaded with dozens of applications -- but a competent tech can backup, reload, and restore the average "home users" system in the same or less time it takes most antivirus/antiadware/antirootkit kits to run and sort things out -- without the "cleansing" benefit of a fresh install.
Most users really don't run a lot of apps. If I'm working on a friend/relatives computer where they have office (maybe), itunes, and a few games -- i back up their email, documents, bookmarks, contacts, music, pictures, save games, and so forth... wipe the system, and have it back to good as new within an hour. A simple spybot + av scan can take just as long, and if the problems are major that's just getting started...
Perhaps Apple would, at first, only OEM OS X (no OEM is going to include OS X if it can't work on their PC).
Mac clones all over again. Mac OS hardware sales would be raped. They tried that.
Or maybe only via online order, which first points you to download a "compatibility test" program which will list any devices which won't work.
How many people would pass that test?
Like I said, not my problem, and not insurmountable.
But it *is* a problem, and its not going to solve itself.
BSD does not run smoothly on all hardware, countless video and audio chipsets along with all the funky crap hardware that's proprietary to a given model of laptop are constant pains. A lot of them can be *made* to work by a savvy tech type, but it won't be plug and play. And most tech savvy people don't buy the sorts of systems the average consumer ends up with. We don't usually even try with a craptastic pile of low quality proprietary junk. The average budget-ass emachine, or even Dell, Compaq, or HP wonder-box is often full of hardware that barely works under windows, never mind BSD, or Mac OS.
How about replacing the bold part with, "I guess OS X doesn't work well with crappy hardware, so I should go out and buy a Mac"?
The average consumer doesn't really beleive they have crappy hardware, especially if it worked under windows. Therefore they'll conclude its the Apple OS that's crappy.
Or the more ambivalent, "I guess OS X doesn't support much hardware yet. I guess I'll pass for now until they get their act together."
So, now Apple needs to get its act together before OS X is a viable OS? That's a big step backwards for Apples rep... OSX becomes another Linux distro... Its cool and it just works... sometimes... but the pundits will be advising customers its "not ready for the desktop yet".
For what its worth, I agree OS X for generic PC would probably sell well. But I think potential damage it would do to Apples reputation for quality and the issue of cannibalized hardware sales could easily do Apple more net harm than good.
No, I think he's suggesting its not a viable market. And I think he's right.
The majority of people who get there OSes via infringing torrents weren't likely to pay for them anyway.
While its true that some would, most probably would not.
Meanwhile, having a legit OSX for PC would likely cannibalize Apple's hardware sales, much like the mac-clones did some years back.
A side issue: a version of OS X for generic PC is still going to need drivers, and lots of them. Where are these going to come from? I don't think we can count on OEMs to produce them, especially for even slightly older product, and it would be a monumental task for Apple to do it.
Given that OS X trades partly on its reputation that it just works, thrusting it out into the generic world with dismal driver support is going to damage that reputation.
"I tried OS X on my old emachine and it failed to see my scanner, didn't work with the e-button on the case to launch internet explorer, and sleep never worked properly either -- no way I'm buying a crappy apple computer..."
What IBM could choose to do is have them scanned and provide the court with the alleged infringing documents to check against. The localized areas that score the highest could then be inspected by IBM and give their lawyers ample time to start a defense against points in the documents that will probably be areas of attack for SCO.
First, it is not IBMs job to identify things that might be infringing. It is up to SCO to identify them.
Second, forcing IBM to waste its resources identifying "possible" attacks and defending against them only serves SCO's strategy of wasting IBMs time and money.
SCO has wasted enough of IBMs time and resources with their discovery demands. If SCO didn't discover anything, or won't identify anything, its certainly not IBMs job to do THAT for them too.
Birthdate: 04/05/2006... It's not like I was born yesterday...wait...nevermind.
No you were right, you weren't born yesterday. You were born today.
However, the things that I do say over gmail and "non-controlled" mediums aren't worth the effort for someone to subpoena Google for my conversations.
What effort? Google excels at search and correlation. Supposing google has your communications email and IM history, and hosts your blog -- if all that's in the index its likely to be a very fertile harvest.
All the government has to do decide google has to give them google access to their mail archives.
If I have something that I really don't want to be traceable, then there are ways.
You might be surprised at how perfectly inane conversations can be extremely embarrassing or damaging if publicized in the right places.
No one would ever dredge up your college indiscretions during an election you were in? Sony wouldn't be interested to know that a potential employee sent an email a couple years back to their friends advising them that some Sony product was junk? Your bank wouldn't be interested to know that you sent numerous emails to your landlord letting them know rent would be a couple days late? Your insurance company wouldn't be interested to here that you got a great deal on cigars while abroad? (oh... you smoke? you said on your application you don't.)Or perhaps they'd be intrested to know that you organize campouts in the mountains -- a lot of people get hurt doing that mountain climbing stuff you know... maybe your premiums ought to be nudged up a touch. And of course, Tents-R-Us will also want to get in touch with you about any tent requirements such campouts might entail.
Google's sitting on that growing database... right now its mostly private... but you seem to think opening it up and letting everyone take a look see is a good thing...
I'd hate to live in that world.
Privacy should be the default, not something you have to go out of your way to get. If I send a private email, I expect it stay private; I don't *care* that it simply says I'll be at my friends party at 8pm. If I want to make it public that should be up to me.
Privacy is one thing, paranoia is another...don't confuse the two.
There is nothing paranoid about simply wanting your mundane life to your own private business.
You appear to be confusing "vintage and collectible erotica", which perhaps should be preserved -- with "amateur home videos" (... er... photographs?... er... slides? of your own grandmother.
It might have some historical interest, and perhaps it should be preserved. I'm not really convinced of that; I think the departed's wishes should be respected... and in the event they didn't mention it in their will... I dunno... I still have a hard time beleiving they want their amateur private porn to be published and sold by their grandchildren.
I for one would be decidely uncomfortable publishing it, and trying to make a few bucks off of it, regardless.
Having said that, I don't think Apple can slide much more into glitchy than they already are before it starts to hurt them. Microsoft, which has always been glitchy AND badly designed, may eventually get over the glitchy part, and people may get tired of overpaying for buggy products.
I'd place better odds on OS/2 coming back from the dead over MS getting over "the glitchy part" before Apple does.
Sure, cheap CD or MP3 players sound better than a cheap tape deck, but I had better ones. Denon and Nakamici (sp??)
Nakamichi
Have you tried a Nakamichi CD deck? Or are you comparing $99 cd/mp3 players to $1200 tape decks?
Nakamichi has always focussed on sound quality over features. I mean look at them, where a "good" consumer grade deck has a full color animated display, bluetooth, mp3, usb, ipod, etc -- on a Nak at the same price the ability to fast forward or skip tracks is still considered a "feature". Your paying a lot for their audio quality.
I've got cassette recordings that are 25+ years old that sound better than any MP3 you could throw my way, and nobody would ask "dude, is that from a cassette?" They sound good.
Yup, until the tapes starts wearing out. I doubt these 25 year old tapes ever spent a lot of summers in the glove box of your car. The fact that you can preserve tapes in airtight containers in a humidity controlled sunlight free basement doesn't mean its a suitable technology for portable music. MP3 for all its faults is pretty darn good at portability.
That aside, its common knowledge in audiophile circles that CD has fidelity problems due to its sample rate 44.1khz, sample space (16-bit) particularly with higher ranges. And clearly any codec that's working from CD source material is not going to transcend those limitations.
Have you tried encoding your tapes using a high end codecs with appropriate parameters? This is what DVD -Audio was all about, its just not popular because the mainstream doesn't much care, and isn't willing to pay extra for it, and the car/mp3/portability crowd isn't clamoring over it because they don't have any dvd-audio quality source to rip and the files would be too big anyways.
But I suspect you could easily find codecs that could reproduce your tapes to your satisfaction. (although the file sizes and digitization parameters might not be compatible with many non-computer playback devices.)
All money for an election should go into one pool, then all the candidates on the ballot should get an equal proportion. Want your candidate to be heard more? ok, but all the others have to be too - if your so convinced of the merits of your candidate than this shouldn't bother you at all.
What makes you think campaign contributors are convinced of the merits of their candidates? Quite the opposite is true really, most campaign contributors know full well that what they want from their candidate is in their own best interests, and not in the best interests of the people in general.
Corporations in particular don't give a crap about whats best for the electorate. Their millions in donations are, first to convince a candidate to turn his back on the people, and second to win that candidate the election.
They likely wouldn't contribute any money at all in your system... which might very well be a positive side-effect. But its important to realize that probably the vast majority of all contributions are to support a candidate who will represent the contributors private agenda -- not because they are convinced that if the public could be made aware of his merits that they would select him.
It IS misguided and unethical to, say, republish someone's book on the Internet for free under the pretense that books should be free for everyone
How is that substantially different from putting books in a library? Or should we should ban that too. After all, according to you reading books without paying for them is wrong, and putting books in libraries where anyone can go an read them for free is therefore unethical and misguided.
It has nothing to do with scientific papers and everything to do with the moral rights of an author.
1) The two are one in the same. How are the "moral rights of an author over a book he wrote" any different from the "moral rights of a scientist over a theory he developed"
2) What exactly *are* the "moral rights of an author" anyway?
If I invent fire, what moral rights are you asserting I have to force the rest of society to live in the cold EVEN if they discover fire independantly after I did?
It's akin to saying that it's not unethical to steal TVs from shop windows, because TVs should be free.
Your right. But what you fail to see is that you actually are proving MY point. What is the difference between your TV example and this:
It's akin to saying that it's not unethical to free slaves from their masters, because people should be free.
What is the difference? In one the subject is people, the other the subject is TVs. Both are physical objects in the world that can be owned or not owned. So whats the difference?
There isn't one, and once upon a time. There was no difference to society either. Both were property and it was thought illegal and unethical to steal (or liberate) either.
If RMS were alive in the 1800's claiming that freeing slaves is not unethical, what would you have said? I suspect something along the lines of:
It's akin to saying that it's not unethical to steal TVs from shop windows, because TVs should be free.
Because it applies equally.
Yet society has moved on, and vindicated the operators of the underground railroad, we generally agree now that people shouldn't be property, and that its unethical to treat them as such.
RMS is simply saying he beleives the same about "intellectual property", that it shouldn't be property, and copying it isn't inherently unethical. Perhaps he is simply ahead of his time? After all there is nothing about IP that inherently suggests people *should* own it.
Perhaps in the future we'll look back and consider your comparison of TV theft to code copying with the same disdain we would have for someone who equates stealing TVs with liberating slaves. Or perhaps not.
Regardless of what the future holds, RMS isn't advocating "stealing code" today, he isn't running or involved with an underground railway for "liberated code". He is simply an activist for what he beleives. Looking to change the way society thinks about "IP".
His license is just that his license. Nobody is obligated to use it unless they choose to; or build off of GPL'd code -- but if you use GPLed code you are*leveraging* off the work of individuals who do beleive code should be copied, and who contributed that code and made it available to other like minded individuals. If you aren't like minded -- don't use it. RMS isn't *forcing* his views on anyone. He is advocating his views and good for him. They are more enlightened than most peoples.
I for one, applaud him, and wish him luck, even though I personally do beleive there is value in patents and copyrights (although in much more limited form than what we have)
What I strongly disagree with is Stallmans misguided and unethical attitude to having the right to use the work of others even if its against their will.
Misguided and unethical?
Totally. I mean the whole science thing, of publishing results for your peers to verify and build on -- bad idea that. We'd all be better off if scientists each worked in their little labs and refused to collaborate; and then patented and licensed anything they did find out about the universe; and sued eachother if they determined that someone else came up and used one of their results (even if they came by it completely independantly)...
I think THAT is misguided and unethical.
And the tragic part is that's where science is going. The physical sciences went their first -- chemistry, biology, physics, and now even the pure scienses like mathematics are getting into the game... we are letting them patent numbers for crying out loud.
Long story short a vocal student can get what he wants just as easily if not easier than a professor. The whole point of the university system (beyond generating papers and research for more funding) is to educate. If I can't optimally absorb knowlege then there is a problem, and I will make sure damn sure that problem is resolved. Quite honestly, the students don't need your self-centered, self-absorbed pompous self either.
Aww shucks... there are two sides... sometimes teachers can be jackasses, sometimes students can. Big surprise.
The point remains that if a professor finds talking to a roomfull of laptop lids with the odd boop beep to break up the white noise of typing to be unproductive or uninspiring he (or she) should be able to change that. If your little student union wants to "make damn sure that the problem is resolved" then you should be right in there with him (or her) to find some sort of compromise.
Rresolving the problem might be to make the course available on tape, or to have full course notes made available so that laptops aren't needed. Neither side should be allowed to just railroad over the other -- as neither side wins from that. You are paying the professor very good money to lecture you -- ensuring they are in top form should be priority number one. They aren't going to be in top form if they aren't happy with the classroom arrangement.
Student unions are great tools for ensuring universities are responding to the needs of students... unfortunately the people attracted to positions of power in those student unions tend to be power tripping jackasses. Precisely the last sort of people that are really needed there.
A free thinker would say "use what works for you".
That would imply that students actually knew. Most generally don't know whats best for them. If they DID know their would probably be a lot fewer laptops at university lectures -- sure there are a few students that use them effectively, but most just spend their time transcribing, or worse getting distracted by IM, email, other homework, and solitaire...
You only get a few dozen hours to interact with the prof; spending any of it typing what they say is a waste of that time. My pen and paper notes from a 2 hour lecture regulary amounted to a dozen bullet points or diagrams.
I'd augment that with course notes made available by the prof, a tape recording, or in the odd case, by simply getting the notes off one of the other students who did do full transcription -- there's always *someone* in a class who's taking full transcription (and its often pretty organized).
I was able to spend my lecture time thinking about what was being said, and asking questions, and writing the odd note.
I did very well in university.
And while your issues with pen and paper are very real, and moving from a laptop probably made your transcription efforts easier and less painful, and I respect your desire not to go back to taking manual notes -- i contend that it was still a relative waste of time vis a vis what you -could- have been doing with that time.
I'd be more inclined to let you take a laptop to an exam than a lecture. At least with an exam (particularly where extensive case studies or essays need to be composed the utility of a word processor would come in handy; even *my* hand cramped pretty badly in 3+ hour written exams that often felt more like endurance tests at speed writing...
Of course, the possibility of cheating is so ridiculously high that it its impractical... but that's a separate issue.
Re:you don't render pixels independently...
on
ATI's 1GB Video Card
·
· Score: 1
the end result frame buffer is complete for all pixels at the same time.
Actually, that's pretty much the definition of a parallel process.;)
The point is the completion of one pixel isn't dependant on the completion of others. The fact that so much of the 'setup' is the same for all pixels just means you can acheive the equivalent of a million independantly computed pixels with far less actual effort.
In other words, if they -weren't- so easy to parallelize these optimizations would be impossible to make.
Slashdot Mirror
linus is just a guy, quite opinionated, and quite harsh in his words at times. are we gonna see this kind of slashdot story everytime he misbehaves somewhat?
Yes.
Linus is to slashdot what, say, Tom Cruise is to tabloids.
So, yeah, just as everytime Cruise sleeps with someone, has dinner with someone, or suggests he might eat a placenta gets headlines in the rags, slashdot dutifully follows its "celebrities" around to make much ado about the minutia that go on in their lives.
Naturally. :p
That's a very rational idea
Not merely rational, its integral to the new world order...
I don't want governments deciding what someone can put in a product. That's a slippery pathway to doom.
Not "someone", *MONOPOLIES*. And *not* limiting the scope of their product is the slippery pathway to doom.
Ultimately the market will decide - that's a market economy.
No it won't. Monopolies are not "market economies".
If a company invests too much effort putting what I as a consumer consider useless/unimportant features into a product and thus have to charge more for it to cover the costs associated I can go use/buy the product which is just the lean metal.
No you can't. If the company has a monopoly, there are NO "other products". That is practically the *definition* of a monopoly.
Market forces do NOT correct monopolies. Monopolies are market FAILURES. The market WON'T and CAN'T regulate them, which is why government HAS to step in.
We need to have these dicussions now, before many people make costly mistakes. It will save us time and effort in the long run, if we can wake up enough people to the potential issues that arise when using these services.
:)
I find letting people blindly run headlong into the costly mistakes first makes them much better listeners afterwards.
Maybe I don't like my friends and relatives enough
According to Wikipedia
:)
The Athlon XP 2400+ cpu was released in August 2002 and the Athlon 64 x2 3200+ was released in May 2005. (nearly 3 years, and easily half a dozen core revisions).
Contrast that with the Pentium 166 CPU which succeeded the Pentium 75 in one generation. (The "P54" was available in 75/90/100/120 MHz in releases staggered through '94 while its successor, the "P54C" was released staggered throughout the following year and was available at 133/150/166/200.
Even setting aside the Mhz myth, the chip makers do *seem* to be taking longer to make the same magnitude jumps in performance -- and this perception is certainly *greatly* magnified by the fact that the number of "step" products has increased vastly.
2GHz, 2.08GHz, 2.16GHz...yawn...
Once upon a time each new product would raise the bar another 10 - 20%... now we see a new product every 2-5% with 3 different cache sizes, and 3 different bus speed variations...or where there is no performance improvement (or perhaps its even slightly slower) but heat / power consumption has been reduced...
/shrug
1) GPS can be a lot more accurate than it currently is. Especially in conjunction with cellular positioning infrastructure.
2) Nothing stopping the software from being aware there are (parallel) roadways within 3 meters (yards) that have different speed limits and using the larger of the 2 just in case.
3) Nothing says the system has to do a hard slam on the brakes. It could simply emit annoying noises, and/or prevent you from accelerating further, etc...
Speed limit regulation would be technologically difficut at best, as the car would have to "know" what the speed limit is.
In other words, in addition to the GPS system and route planning/navigation systems that many cars come with (a feature which is rapidly filtering down into midmarket cars and will soon be ubiquitous) The map database will have to add one more field to each road segment... speed limit.
I don't think it will be very hard at all.
"Format and Reload" with an up to date OS disc takes less time than solving many major virus/rootkit/malware problems.
As a side effect it cleans out the registry and system folders of potentially years of crud build up.
I agree most of us don't want "geek squad" dropping in the dell restore CD and saying "fixxed", especially into one of *our* highly tuned systems, loaded with dozens of applications -- but a competent tech can backup, reload, and restore the average "home users" system in the same or less time it takes most antivirus/antiadware/antirootkit kits to run and sort things out -- without the "cleansing" benefit of a fresh install.
Most users really don't run a lot of apps. If I'm working on a friend/relatives computer where they have office (maybe), itunes, and a few games -- i back up their email, documents, bookmarks, contacts, music, pictures, save games, and so forth... wipe the system, and have it back to good as new within an hour. A simple spybot + av scan can take just as long, and if the problems are major that's just getting started...
No, because fat people become experts at not moving.
:)
Precisely, and it explains perfectly why Vista is taking so long to get here.
Perhaps Apple would, at first, only OEM OS X (no OEM is going to include OS X if it can't work on their PC).
Mac clones all over again. Mac OS hardware sales would be raped. They tried that.
Or maybe only via online order, which first points you to download a "compatibility test" program which will list any devices which won't work.
How many people would pass that test?
Like I said, not my problem, and not insurmountable.
But it *is* a problem, and its not going to solve itself.
BSD does not run smoothly on all hardware, countless video and audio chipsets along with all the funky crap hardware that's proprietary to a given model of laptop are constant pains. A lot of them can be *made* to work by a savvy tech type, but it won't be plug and play. And most tech savvy people don't buy the sorts of systems the average consumer ends up with. We don't usually even try with a craptastic pile of low quality proprietary junk. The average budget-ass emachine, or even Dell, Compaq, or HP wonder-box is often full of hardware that barely works under windows, never mind BSD, or Mac OS.
How about replacing the bold part with, "I guess OS X doesn't work well with crappy hardware, so I should go out and buy a Mac"?
The average consumer doesn't really beleive they have crappy hardware, especially if it worked under windows. Therefore they'll conclude its the Apple OS that's crappy.
Or the more ambivalent, "I guess OS X doesn't support much hardware yet. I guess I'll pass for now until they get their act together."
So, now Apple needs to get its act together before OS X is a viable OS? That's a big step backwards for Apples rep... OSX becomes another Linux distro... Its cool and it just works... sometimes... but the pundits will be advising customers its "not ready for the desktop yet".
For what its worth, I agree OS X for generic PC would probably sell well. But I think potential damage it would do to Apples reputation for quality and the issue of cannibalized hardware sales could easily do Apple more net harm than good.
No, I think he's suggesting its not a viable market. And I think he's right.
The majority of people who get there OSes via infringing torrents weren't likely to pay for them anyway.
While its true that some would, most probably would not.
Meanwhile, having a legit OSX for PC would likely cannibalize Apple's hardware sales, much like the mac-clones did some years back.
A side issue: a version of OS X for generic PC is still going to need drivers, and lots of them. Where are these going to come from? I don't think we can count on OEMs to produce them, especially for even slightly older product, and it would be a monumental task for Apple to do it.
Given that OS X trades partly on its reputation that it just works, thrusting it out into the generic world with dismal driver support is going to damage that reputation.
"I tried OS X on my old emachine and it failed to see my scanner, didn't work with the e-button on the case to launch internet explorer, and sleep never worked properly either -- no way I'm buying a crappy apple computer..."
What IBM could choose to do is have them scanned and provide the court with the alleged infringing documents to check against. The localized areas that score the highest could then be inspected by IBM and give their lawyers ample time to start a defense against points in the documents that will probably be areas of attack for SCO.
First, it is not IBMs job to identify things that might be infringing. It is up to SCO to identify them.
Second, forcing IBM to waste its resources identifying "possible" attacks and defending against them only serves SCO's strategy of wasting IBMs time and money.
SCO has wasted enough of IBMs time and resources with their discovery demands. If SCO didn't discover anything, or won't identify anything, its certainly not IBMs job to do THAT for them too.
Birthdate: 04/05/2006... It's not like I was born yesterday...wait...nevermind.
No you were right, you weren't born yesterday. You were born today.
However, the things that I do say over gmail and "non-controlled" mediums aren't worth the effort for someone to subpoena Google for my conversations.
What effort? Google excels at search and correlation. Supposing google has your communications email and IM history, and hosts your blog -- if all that's in the index its likely to be a very fertile harvest.
All the government has to do decide google has to give them google access to their mail archives.
If I have something that I really don't want to be traceable, then there are ways.
You might be surprised at how perfectly inane conversations can be extremely embarrassing or damaging if publicized in the right places.
No one would ever dredge up your college indiscretions during an election you were in? Sony wouldn't be interested to know that a potential employee sent an email a couple years back to their friends advising them that some Sony product was junk? Your bank wouldn't be interested to know that you sent numerous emails to your landlord letting them know rent would be a couple days late? Your insurance company wouldn't be interested to here that you got a great deal on cigars while abroad? (oh... you smoke? you said on your application you don't.)Or perhaps they'd be intrested to know that you organize campouts in the mountains -- a lot of people get hurt doing that mountain climbing stuff you know... maybe your premiums ought to be nudged up a touch. And of course, Tents-R-Us will also want to get in touch with you about any tent requirements such campouts might entail.
Google's sitting on that growing database... right now its mostly private... but you seem to think opening it up and letting everyone take a look see is a good thing...
I'd hate to live in that world.
Privacy should be the default, not something you have to go out of your way to get. If I send a private email, I expect it stay private; I don't *care* that it simply says I'll be at my friends party at 8pm. If I want to make it public that should be up to me.
Privacy is one thing, paranoia is another...don't confuse the two.
There is nothing paranoid about simply wanting your mundane life to your own private business.
You appear to be confusing "vintage and collectible erotica", which perhaps should be preserved -- with "amateur home videos" (... er ... photographs?... er... slides? of your own grandmother.
It might have some historical interest, and perhaps it should be preserved. I'm not really convinced of that; I think the departed's wishes should be respected... and in the event they didn't mention it in their will... I dunno... I still have a hard time beleiving they want their amateur private porn to be published and sold by their grandchildren.
I for one would be decidely uncomfortable publishing it, and trying to make a few bucks off of it, regardless.
Having said that, I don't think Apple can slide much more into glitchy than they already are before it starts to hurt them. Microsoft, which has always been glitchy AND badly designed, may eventually get over the glitchy part, and people may get tired of overpaying for buggy products.
I'd place better odds on OS/2 coming back from the dead over MS getting over "the glitchy part" before Apple does.
Sure, cheap CD or MP3 players sound better than a cheap tape deck, but I had better ones. Denon and Nakamici (sp??)
Nakamichi
Have you tried a Nakamichi CD deck? Or are you comparing $99 cd/mp3 players to $1200 tape decks?
Nakamichi has always focussed on sound quality over features. I mean look at them, where a "good" consumer grade deck has a full color animated display, bluetooth, mp3, usb, ipod, etc -- on a Nak at the same price the ability to fast forward or skip tracks is still considered a "feature". Your paying a lot for their audio quality.
I've got cassette recordings that are 25+ years old that sound better than any MP3 you could throw my way, and nobody would ask "dude, is that from a cassette?" They sound good.
Yup, until the tapes starts wearing out. I doubt these 25 year old tapes ever spent a lot of summers in the glove box of your car. The fact that you can preserve tapes in airtight containers in a humidity controlled sunlight free basement doesn't mean its a suitable technology for portable music. MP3 for all its faults is pretty darn good at portability.
That aside, its common knowledge in audiophile circles that CD has fidelity problems due to its sample rate 44.1khz, sample space (16-bit) particularly with higher ranges. And clearly any codec that's working from CD source material is not going to transcend those limitations.
Have you tried encoding your tapes using a high end codecs with appropriate parameters? This is what DVD -Audio was all about, its just not popular because the mainstream doesn't much care, and isn't willing to pay extra for it, and the car/mp3/portability crowd isn't clamoring over it because they don't have any dvd-audio quality source to rip and the files would be too big anyways.
But I suspect you could easily find codecs that could reproduce your tapes to your satisfaction. (although the file sizes and digitization parameters might not be compatible with many non-computer playback devices.)
All money for an election should go into one pool, then all the candidates on the ballot should get an equal proportion. Want your candidate to be heard more? ok, but all the others have to be too - if your so convinced of the merits of your candidate than this shouldn't bother you at all.
What makes you think campaign contributors are convinced of the merits of their candidates? Quite the opposite is true really, most campaign contributors know full well that what they want from their candidate is in their own best interests, and not in the best interests of the people in general.
Corporations in particular don't give a crap about whats best for the electorate. Their millions in donations are, first to convince a candidate to turn his back on the people, and second to win that candidate the election.
They likely wouldn't contribute any money at all in your system... which might very well be a positive side-effect. But its important to realize that probably the vast majority of all contributions are to support a candidate who will represent the contributors private agenda -- not because they are convinced that if the public could be made aware of his merits that they would select him.
With paypal phone...what am I supposed to do? shove it up there?
;)
-- still looking for a wife...
Go figure.
It IS misguided and unethical to, say, republish someone's book on the Internet for free under the pretense that books should be free for everyone
How is that substantially different from putting books in a library? Or should we should ban that too. After all, according to you reading books without paying for them is wrong, and putting books in libraries where anyone can go an read them for free is therefore unethical and misguided.
It has nothing to do with scientific papers and everything to do with the moral rights of an author.
1) The two are one in the same. How are the "moral rights of an author over a book he wrote" any different from the "moral rights of a scientist over a theory he developed"
2) What exactly *are* the "moral rights of an author" anyway?
If I invent fire, what moral rights are you asserting I have to force the rest of society to live in the cold EVEN if they discover fire independantly after I did?
It's akin to saying that it's not unethical to steal TVs from shop windows, because TVs should be free.
Your right. But what you fail to see is that you actually are proving MY point. What is the difference between your TV example and this:
It's akin to saying that it's not unethical to free slaves from their masters, because people should be free.
What is the difference? In one the subject is people, the other the subject is TVs. Both are physical objects in the world that can be owned or not owned. So whats the difference?
There isn't one, and once upon a time. There was no difference to society either. Both were property and it was thought illegal and unethical to steal (or liberate) either.
If RMS were alive in the 1800's claiming that freeing slaves is not unethical, what would you have said? I suspect something along the lines of:
It's akin to saying that it's not unethical to steal TVs from shop windows, because TVs should be free.
Because it applies equally.
Yet society has moved on, and vindicated the operators of the underground railroad, we generally agree now that people shouldn't be property, and that its unethical to treat them as such.
RMS is simply saying he beleives the same about "intellectual property", that it shouldn't be property, and copying it isn't inherently unethical. Perhaps he is simply ahead of his time? After all there is nothing about IP that inherently suggests people *should* own it.
Perhaps in the future we'll look back and consider your comparison of TV theft to code copying with the same disdain we would have for someone who equates stealing TVs with liberating slaves. Or perhaps not.
Regardless of what the future holds, RMS isn't advocating "stealing code" today, he isn't running or involved with an underground railway for "liberated code". He is simply an activist for what he beleives. Looking to change the way society thinks about "IP".
His license is just that his license. Nobody is obligated to use it unless they choose to; or build off of GPL'd code -- but if you use GPLed code you are*leveraging* off the work of individuals who do beleive code should be copied, and who contributed that code and made it available to other like minded individuals. If you aren't like minded -- don't use it. RMS isn't *forcing* his views on anyone. He is advocating his views and good for him. They are more enlightened than most peoples.
I for one, applaud him, and wish him luck, even though I personally do beleive there is value in patents and copyrights (although in much more limited form than what we have)
a very efficient, reliable and long lasting Ferrari that gets real good gas mileage...
*THAT* would not be a Ferrari.
What I strongly disagree with is Stallmans misguided and unethical attitude to having the right to use the work of others even if its against their will.
Misguided and unethical?
Totally. I mean the whole science thing, of publishing results for your peers to verify and build on -- bad idea that. We'd all be better off if scientists each worked in their little labs and refused to collaborate; and then patented and licensed anything they did find out about the universe; and sued eachother if they determined that someone else came up and used one of their results (even if they came by it completely independantly)...
I think THAT is misguided and unethical.
And the tragic part is that's where science is going. The physical sciences went their first -- chemistry, biology, physics, and now even the pure scienses like mathematics are getting into the game... we are letting them patent numbers for crying out loud.
Long story short a vocal student can get what he wants just as easily if not easier than a professor. The whole point of the university system (beyond generating papers and research for more funding) is to educate. If I can't optimally absorb knowlege then there is a problem, and I will make sure damn sure that problem is resolved. Quite honestly, the students don't need your self-centered, self-absorbed pompous self either.
Aww shucks... there are two sides... sometimes teachers can be jackasses, sometimes students can. Big surprise.
The point remains that if a professor finds talking to a roomfull of laptop lids with the odd boop beep to break up the white noise of typing to be unproductive or uninspiring he (or she) should be able to change that. If your little student union wants to "make damn sure that the problem is resolved" then you should be right in there with him (or her) to find some sort of compromise.
Rresolving the problem might be to make the course available on tape, or to have full course notes made available so that laptops aren't needed. Neither side should be allowed to just railroad over the other -- as neither side wins from that. You are paying the professor very good money to lecture you -- ensuring they are in top form should be priority number one. They aren't going to be in top form if they aren't happy with the classroom arrangement.
Student unions are great tools for ensuring universities are responding to the needs of students... unfortunately the people attracted to positions of power in those student unions tend to be power tripping jackasses. Precisely the last sort of people that are really needed there.
A free thinker would say "use what works for you".
That would imply that students actually knew. Most generally don't know whats best for them. If they DID know their would probably be a lot fewer laptops at university lectures -- sure there are a few students that use them effectively, but most just spend their time transcribing, or worse getting distracted by IM, email, other homework, and solitaire...
You only get a few dozen hours to interact with the prof; spending any of it typing what they say is a waste of that time. My pen and paper notes from a 2 hour lecture regulary amounted to a dozen bullet points or diagrams.
I'd augment that with course notes made available by the prof, a tape recording, or in the odd case, by simply getting the notes off one of the other students who did do full transcription -- there's always *someone* in a class who's taking full transcription (and its often pretty organized).
I was able to spend my lecture time thinking about what was being said, and asking questions, and writing the odd note.
I did very well in university.
And while your issues with pen and paper are very real, and moving from a laptop probably made your transcription efforts easier and less painful, and I respect your desire not to go back to taking manual notes -- i contend that it was still a relative waste of time vis a vis what you -could- have been doing with that time.
I'd be more inclined to let you take a laptop to an exam than a lecture. At least with an exam (particularly where extensive case studies or essays need to be composed the utility of a word processor would come in handy; even *my* hand cramped pretty badly in 3+ hour written exams that often felt more like endurance tests at speed writing...
Of course, the possibility of cheating is so ridiculously high that it its impractical... but that's a separate issue.
the end result frame buffer is complete for all pixels at the same time.
;)
Actually, that's pretty much the definition of a parallel process.
The point is the completion of one pixel isn't dependant on the completion of others. The fact that so much of the 'setup' is the same for all pixels just means you can acheive the equivalent of a million independantly computed pixels with far less actual effort.
In other words, if they -weren't- so easy to parallelize these optimizations would be impossible to make.