It seems to me that this has already been settled. I've just forgotten the outcome. Didn't Apple sue Microsoft over the "Look and Feel" of Windows violating their copyright.
This is somewhat different. There is the whole issue of "trade dress." You and I can't (legally) sell cola with a red ribbon pattern on the can like Coke's. But as long as there is no attempt to pretend that site B is site A (or confuse their identities), and site A can't show any cause for damages, there probably wouldn't be grounds for a complaint. If MyHobbes.com started talking about Linux or something, then there might be relevance.
If they aren't hurting your business or your image, why do you care? I doubt anyone will confuse the two.
Is there any motherboard yet (or announced) that will take two FPGA celerons? Say the 566s, o'clocked to 850? Or has Intel thrown a monkey-wrench in making those guys SMP?
For that matter, where are the FC-PGA dual processor boards?
Once again we have an example which I think points our need for more fine-grained access control. We need to be able to limit what apps other applications may run/interface with, and we may also want to a way to have inherited limits. I don't want most programs being able to send mail, I want them locked out unless I give them permission. I'm not sure of the technical details of implementing this, but if we want truly safe computers, this seems like the only way to me.
And your maps of the world, with the USA in the centre, which means the break has to come somewhere in India. Everyone else puts the break in the middle of the Pacific, where it doesn't matter, but that would put the USA off on the edge, can't have that...
In 35 years on this planet, most of them in the U.S., I have never seen such a map.
As for most of the rest, people generally find addition easier than subtraction.
Spelling? Does the e sound come before the r sound in center (centre)? Does colour rhyme with flour? Claiming any dialect of English as having logical spelling is an exercise in foolishness.
---
A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling by Mark Twain
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of
the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w"
spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the
"g/j" anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double
konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu
meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
I work rather closely with several people whose native language is Mandarin. When they talk amongst each other about project details, they'll often speak Chinese, but a fair amount of the vocabulary is English -- as they've explained, there simply are some concepts that don't translate.
No, a non-profit. While micropayments would be a pain in the Asti Spumante, a few hundred thousand of us contributing to an endowment should be able to accumulate enough cash to keep a reasonable Web search facility running on the interest.
Perhaps, but then we can preserve the body for future generations, with better technology, who will be able to diversify the gene pool via as-yet unknown techniques.
with 20 billion G, we could record the location of every atom in the universe. Think about it.
General estimates on the number of elementary particles in the universe yield numbers on the order of 10^80. How could you record the entire universe in something smaller than itself?
It's rather like the idea of predicting the future by building a computer to determine it based on computing the physics at the particle level; even without the Heisenberg uncertainty, the smallest computer that could do this is... the universe itself.
but the only useful data I ever get are comics (another medium increasingly being replaced by the online version-go sluggy!)
I used to read on-line comics a fair bit, but I've found that the click-traversal time is just too much. If I could get them all from a long web page, even with an ad or two mixed in, I would prefer my comics this way; but for now, paper is still easier. (And higher quality images too.)
Oh, and just as an educational issue, C++ also has namespaces. One very handy feature of namespaces is that you could use them for version identification. So if you do need to change a class, you can change the name of the namespace it is part of, and then programs will refuse to link with/work with libraries that used the previous version namespace name.
I haven't seen this used that widely yet, but namespaces are fairly new to C++.
C++ have the *huge* disadvantage that almost any change in a header (like swapping the order of the *declaration* of two virtual members function) invalidate all the code that use this class.
In C, doing the same to two members of a struct will have a similar effect, especially if one is a pointer. What makes you think C magically escapes this effect?
I think you mean Margaret, not Martha, daughter of the famous professor (whose bald pate was once mistaken for a ping-pong ball by a ping-pong playing robot.)
First, DeCSS has nothing at all to do with what you state.
I agree that it has perfectly legitimate uses. It is also a tool that can help illegal distribution of copyrighted materials, regardless of the original purpose the creator wanted it for.
If it did then the pirates would be using it instead of commercial burners.
Depends on the pirate. Movies are available on the internet, some of which may have been created with the help of DeCSS or a similar program. I'm not talking about piracy through straight DVD copy. My understanding is that I could fit a copy of a DivX;-) compressed movie on a CD, which would be cheaper than the original, or I could simply download it to my hard disk, watch it, and delete it, which would essentially be free.
However, the topic has nothing to do with "killing" DeCSS.
Pushing it underground, then. If the MPAA wins this, Red Hat et al won't ever include DeCSS or a DVD player built based on it in one of their distros. Nor will future internet appliance builders. This makes it less convenient, which means for a large group of people, it effectively "kills" it. (Since DeCSS isn't a living thing, use of the word "kills" in the original context was metaphorical anyway.)
I think killing DeCSS may cost the MPAA folks money. Maybe others have made this observation, but anyway, here goes...
DeCSS offers two nice features for movie copiers. First, with high-speed DVD readers, a movie can be ripped much faster than real-time. (6x, 10x, etc.) Second, the quality of the rip is as good as the original, since it is the original. But feeding a video stream straight into a video capture card will work to copy a DVD, and there's no reason to believe this won't be available tech for a long time to come. Movies for internet download will probably be converted to some format like DivX;-), where the quality difference from a straight rip probably isn't an issue. For someone willing to copy a movie, neither advantage is such a big deal that it will stop them from doing so. So there's no reason to expect that sources of downloadable movies will be slowed by eliminating DeCSS.
No, for the MPAA to keep people buying DVDs, it must encourage people to stay away from those sites. DeCSSing stuff for private use, while illegal under the DMCA, isn't what they care about; they want those fat checks rolling in. Now, as an average consumer, I probably won't seek out pirate sites normally. But if I find that a DVD imposes some annoyance on me that I want to get rid of, I may buy the DVD and then seek out a download site, and download and create a VCD without the forced commercials (or whatever). But once I've done that once, I've found a gateway. I know where to get those files, and I have a grievance (in my mind, at least) with the DVD vendor. In that situation, I'm more likely to go ahead and download other files, simply because I know where they are and how to get them.
If DeCSS and the like were available to me, I probably wouldn't seek out the distribution sites. Paying money for a DVD seems a fair system to most of us, and if it is overpriced, I simply don't buy it, or else I rent it. Allow me to convert it when the need arises, and then I won't seek out those download sites, and I won't get into a situation where I can easily download movies I never purchased.
Meanwhile, if I am the type to seek out such sites, the lack of DeCSS just means the files I download are trivially lower in quality. Big whoop.
Just because its a secret doesn't mean that anyone's going to tell. Who was Deep Throat?
Deep Throat wasn't a conspiracy, he was an individual. The larger the conspiracy, the harder it is to keep secret, especially ~40 years after the event as in the Kennedy assassination. You would think if a lot of people knew about it, at least one would leave a deathbed confession or something of that nature.
OK, now this is a good idea. At least it solves one of the big problems: Migration from simpler UI to a more powerful UI. It still has some problems though: Like why should that jump be discontinuous?
In some ways it doesn't have to be. I wrote a fair number of "write-only" shell scripts for administering a mailing list back in the late 80's. A GUI tool that would display the commands and most especially the linkage between them graphically, by interpreting the script file, could have been very helpful in making that a less painful process.
I think this whole situation will be an excellent comparative case study. We get two projects with, arguably, reasonably similar status. One gets corporate backing, one does not. What effect does the corporate backing have on the project? In a few years we can look back and see.
So if this is true, How come only Clinton was convicted of something ??
Oliver North was convicted. His convictions were thrown out on appeal on the grounds that the evidence was tainted by evidence he gave under immunity.
Check this for a list of convictions, a summary, etc. Bush pardoned six of the convicted government officials.
And in general, what would you rather have your president do: lie about schtupping some floozy, or sell arms to terrorism-sponsoring countries generally hostile to the United States?
Out of all the available Operating Systems out there, how many are based on just two standards?
Isn't POSIX just an interface standard, and one which does not require exclusivity? While it may have some impact on OS design, I would think it would be relatively minor. Wine, after all, gives Linux the Win32 interface; does that make Linux based on that standard, or simply compatible with it?
I may be wrong, these are not merely rhetorical questions.
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It seems to me that this has already been settled. I've just forgotten the outcome. Didn't Apple sue Microsoft over the "Look and Feel" of Windows violating their copyright.
This is somewhat different. There is the whole issue of "trade dress." You and I can't (legally) sell cola with a red ribbon pattern on the can like Coke's. But as long as there is no attempt to pretend that site B is site A (or confuse their identities), and site A can't show any cause for damages, there probably wouldn't be grounds for a complaint. If MyHobbes.com started talking about Linux or something, then there might be relevance.
If they aren't hurting your business or your image, why do you care? I doubt anyone will confuse the two.
Is there any motherboard yet (or announced) that will take two FPGA celerons? Say the 566s, o'clocked to 850? Or has Intel thrown a monkey-wrench in making those guys SMP?
For that matter, where are the FC-PGA dual processor boards?
Once again we have an example which I think points our need for more fine-grained access control. We need to be able to limit what apps other applications may run/interface with, and we may also want to a way to have inherited limits. I don't want most programs being able to send mail, I want them locked out unless I give them permission. I'm not sure of the technical details of implementing this, but if we want truly safe computers, this seems like the only way to me.
And your maps of the world, with the USA in the centre, which means the break has to come somewhere in India. Everyone else puts the break in the middle of the Pacific, where it doesn't matter, but that would put the USA off on the edge, can't have that ...
In 35 years on this planet, most of them in the U.S., I have never seen such a map.
As for most of the rest, people generally find addition easier than subtraction.
Spelling? Does the e sound come before the r sound in center (centre)? Does colour rhyme with flour? Claiming any dialect of English as having logical spelling is an exercise in foolishness.
---
A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling by Mark Twain
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of
the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w"
spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the
"g/j" anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double
konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu
meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
I work rather closely with several people whose native language is Mandarin. When they talk amongst each other about project details, they'll often speak Chinese, but a fair amount of the vocabulary is English -- as they've explained, there simply are some concepts that don't translate.
Byrd was a respectable fellow.
Umm, he's not dead. And as ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, his hiney has been kissed about as much as anyone's in D.C.
No, a non-profit. While micropayments would be a pain in the Asti Spumante, a few hundred thousand of us contributing to an endowment should be able to accumulate enough cash to keep a reasonable Web search facility running on the interest.
then it'll just be extinct again in a few years..
Perhaps, but then we can preserve the body for future generations, with better technology, who will be able to diversify the gene pool via as-yet unknown techniques.
10 billion gigs is good for about 20 million years of MP3s or a million years of DVD video.
Yeah, but I'd die before I could ever finish backing it up on floppies...
with 20 billion G, we could record the location of every atom in the universe. Think about it.
... the universe itself.
General estimates on the number of elementary particles in the universe yield numbers on the order of 10^80. How could you record the entire universe in something smaller than itself?
It's rather like the idea of predicting the future by building a computer to determine it based on computing the physics at the particle level; even without the Heisenberg uncertainty, the smallest computer that could do this is
but the only useful data I ever get are comics (another medium increasingly being replaced by the online version-go sluggy!)
I used to read on-line comics a fair bit, but I've found that the click-traversal time is just too much. If I could get them all from a long web page, even with an ad or two mixed in, I would prefer my comics this way; but for now, paper is still easier. (And higher quality images too.)
Oh, and just as an educational issue, C++ also has namespaces. One very handy feature of namespaces is that you could use them for version identification. So if you do need to change a class, you can change the name of the namespace it is part of, and then programs will refuse to link with/work with libraries that used the previous version namespace name.
I haven't seen this used that widely yet, but namespaces are fairly new to C++.
C++ have the *huge* disadvantage that almost any change in a header (like swapping the order of the *declaration* of two virtual members function) invalidate all the code that use this class.
In C, doing the same to two members of a struct will have a similar effect, especially if one is a pointer. What makes you think C magically escapes this effect?
I think you mean Margaret, not Martha, daughter of the famous professor (whose bald pate was once mistaken for a ping-pong ball by a ping-pong playing robot.)
First, DeCSS has nothing at all to do with what you state.
I agree that it has perfectly legitimate uses. It is also a tool that can help illegal distribution of copyrighted materials, regardless of the original purpose the creator wanted it for.
If it did then the pirates would be using it instead of commercial burners.
Depends on the pirate. Movies are available on the internet, some of which may have been created with the help of DeCSS or a similar program. I'm not talking about piracy through straight DVD copy. My understanding is that I could fit a copy of a DivX;-) compressed movie on a CD, which would be cheaper than the original, or I could simply download it to my hard disk, watch it, and delete it, which would essentially be free.
However, the topic has nothing to do with "killing" DeCSS.
Pushing it underground, then. If the MPAA wins this, Red Hat et al won't ever include DeCSS or a DVD player built based on it in one of their distros. Nor will future internet appliance builders. This makes it less convenient, which means for a large group of people, it effectively "kills" it. (Since DeCSS isn't a living thing, use of the word "kills" in the original context was metaphorical anyway.)
I think killing DeCSS may cost the MPAA folks money. Maybe others have made this observation, but anyway, here goes...
DeCSS offers two nice features for movie copiers. First, with high-speed DVD readers, a movie can be ripped much faster than real-time. (6x, 10x, etc.) Second, the quality of the rip is as good as the original, since it is the original. But feeding a video stream straight into a video capture card will work to copy a DVD, and there's no reason to believe this won't be available tech for a long time to come. Movies for internet download will probably be converted to some format like DivX;-), where the quality difference from a straight rip probably isn't an issue. For someone willing to copy a movie, neither advantage is such a big deal that it will stop them from doing so. So there's no reason to expect that sources of downloadable movies will be slowed by eliminating DeCSS.
No, for the MPAA to keep people buying DVDs, it must encourage people to stay away from those sites. DeCSSing stuff for private use, while illegal under the DMCA, isn't what they care about; they want those fat checks rolling in. Now, as an average consumer, I probably won't seek out pirate sites normally. But if I find that a DVD imposes some annoyance on me that I want to get rid of, I may buy the DVD and then seek out a download site, and download and create a VCD without the forced commercials (or whatever). But once I've done that once, I've found a gateway. I know where to get those files, and I have a grievance (in my mind, at least) with the DVD vendor. In that situation, I'm more likely to go ahead and download other files, simply because I know where they are and how to get them.
If DeCSS and the like were available to me, I probably wouldn't seek out the distribution sites. Paying money for a DVD seems a fair system to most of us, and if it is overpriced, I simply don't buy it, or else I rent it. Allow me to convert it when the need arises, and then I won't seek out those download sites, and I won't get into a situation where I can easily download movies I never purchased.
Meanwhile, if I am the type to seek out such sites, the lack of DeCSS just means the files I download are trivially lower in quality. Big whoop.
They just fixed it, they should have replaced it with a new Explorer!!!
With some of those nice Firestone tires, no doubt.
Just because its a secret doesn't mean that anyone's going to tell. Who was Deep Throat?
Deep Throat wasn't a conspiracy, he was an individual. The larger the conspiracy, the harder it is to keep secret, especially ~40 years after the event as in the Kennedy assassination. You would think if a lot of people knew about it, at least one would leave a deathbed confession or something of that nature.
[...] and even the party of the liars [...]
Umm, that kinda implies the other party isn't composed of liars... you don't really mean that, do you?
Have they heard from Johnny Coc(k)hran yet?
OK, now this is a good idea. At least it solves one of the big problems: Migration from simpler UI to a more powerful UI. It still has some problems though: Like why should that jump be discontinuous?
In some ways it doesn't have to be. I wrote a fair number of "write-only" shell scripts for administering a mailing list back in the late 80's. A GUI tool that would display the commands and most especially the linkage between them graphically, by interpreting the script file, could have been very helpful in making that a less painful process.
I think this whole situation will be an excellent comparative case study. We get two projects with, arguably, reasonably similar status. One gets corporate backing, one does not. What effect does the corporate backing have on the project? In a few years we can look back and see.
So if this is true, How come only Clinton was convicted of something ??
Oliver North was convicted. His convictions were thrown out on appeal on the grounds that the evidence was tainted by evidence he gave under immunity.
Check this for a list of convictions, a summary, etc. Bush pardoned six of the convicted government officials.
And in general, what would you rather have your president do: lie about schtupping some floozy, or sell arms to terrorism-sponsoring countries generally hostile to the United States?
I tell him I am and he announces, "Napster's lawyer is on the plane!" Everyone in coach cheers.
Did the people in first class boo?
Out of all the available Operating Systems out there, how many are based on just two standards?
Isn't POSIX just an interface standard, and one which does not require exclusivity? While it may have some impact on OS design, I would think it would be relatively minor. Wine, after all, gives Linux the Win32 interface; does that make Linux based on that standard, or simply compatible with it?
I may be wrong, these are not merely rhetorical questions.