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User: sm62704

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  1. Re:I'm relieved on NVIDIA's Drivers Caused 28.8% Of Vista Crashes In 2007 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Someone needs to start a movement to mandate open source. Not mandate GPL mind you; a copyright holder should be able to offer any licence (s)he wishes.

    But the law should state that binaries should not be able to be copyrighted unless the source code is open. Nobody would lose except bad coders and bad companies (which is unfortunately almost all of them).

    I'm guessing that before that happens pigs will fly.

  2. Re:I'm relieved on NVIDIA's Drivers Caused 28.8% Of Vista Crashes In 2007 · · Score: 1

    You are correct. All I was saying was that you can open your source without using the GPL.

  3. Re:I'm relieved on NVIDIA's Drivers Caused 28.8% Of Vista Crashes In 2007 · · Score: 1

    surprising amount of their logic and "acceleration magic"

    In the US, patents were supposed to prevent inventors from keeping their methods secret. I think they ought to lose any and all patents on their damned card.

    the code controlling the card contains many of the important 'tricks' to get good performance

    Then why do we need software patents?

    Even if it would be illegal, some people would modify and redistribute the code

    For what purpose? You're saying people are going to market their own Nvidea cards and get away with it?

    they make business sense.

    Sigh. Greedy evil people will steal. Too bad we can't get laws written demanding open code.

    it would reveal many of their trade secrets (some of which may be patent-protected, others not).

    You can't patent something that's a trade secret. The designs of a petented machine or process are public.

    This makes lock-in harder

    Evil. Just evil.

    Their code, in all likelihood, violates a large number of competitor patents.

    A good argument in favor of my position. In fact, all good arguments in favor of mandating that all copyrighted executables and binaries be open.

  4. Re:I'm relieved on NVIDIA's Drivers Caused 28.8% Of Vista Crashes In 2007 · · Score: 1

    YMMV.

  5. "...with the cooling of Web 2.0,..." on Is Parallelism the New New Thing? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sorry guys, web 2.0 was never cool and never will be.

  6. Re:I'll... on The Death of the Silicon Computer Chip · · Score: 1

    Silicon is dying! I knew it! The vaccuum tube ius making a comeback!

    Wait a minute, the monitor I'm staring at is a vaccuum tube. They told me vaccuum tubes were gone a couple of decades ago and they're still in guitar amps, too.

    I predict that this prediction about the demise of silicon is as accurate as their predictions about the demise of vaccuum tubes. But in four years nobody's going to remember their prediction, or mine either.

  7. Re:I'm relieved on NVIDIA's Drivers Caused 28.8% Of Vista Crashes In 2007 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Which begs the question of why the people they licensed it from demand that it not be disclosed. What are they ashamed of?

  8. Re:I'm relieved on NVIDIA's Drivers Caused 28.8% Of Vista Crashes In 2007 · · Score: 1

    Ok, they work fine under XP on my box. But you got me thinking... I have it set up for dual-boot, and if my C: drive ("/windows" under Mandriva) is too full or defragmented it will boot over and over until Windows finally comes up. I've been blaming the hardware, but I guess there's a tiny chance it COULD be the video drivers.

    Especially since at one time it got so bad it wouldn't reach Windows at all (but Linux ran fine) and reinstalling Windows fixed the problem.

    Hmm....

  9. Re:heh on Microsoft or Apple - Who Is the Faster Patcher? · · Score: 1

    Of course my posts suck, that's why most of them are rated +5 interesting and why I have excellent karma. Peace on you!

  10. Re:heh on Microsoft or Apple - Who Is the Faster Patcher? · · Score: 1

    It's my honest opinion. I firmly believe that he got us embroiled in the Iraq war to destabilise the region so his and Cheney's oil-rich families could get richer. That has been the only outcome of that meaningless war they said was "to rid Iraq of WMDs".

    I'm disgusted that when the Democrats took control of Congress he wasn't impeached for treason. Again, that's my honest opinion. Bush has harmed my country greatly, and I believe it was done callously. If Bush and Cheney weren't oil men, or Iraq and the region it is in had no oil I would think Iraq was a mistake, like Vietnam was. BTW, even though I was in no danger of being drafted I volunteered for the military during that war.

    If my honest opinion offends someone, maybe they should look at themselves and ask themselves why I might think like I do, and why it bothers them. Had I said "anyone who supports Bush is a traitor" or "Republicans are traitors" (or the opposite) than "flamebait" would be a valid point; I would be attacking them, personally. But that's not what I said nor think.

  11. Re:This guy again?!?! on SCO's "Least Supported Idea Yet" · · Score: 1

    Seems to me that Deliberately trolling and flamebaiting will destroy your excellent karma, and how would a troll get that excellent karma to begin with?

  12. Re:Have YOU listened to ONE sermon? on The Coming Digital Presidency · · Score: 1

    As I said, I found out about his church when he was running for Senate, so it's been a while since I saw it. I may have read it wrong, but it seemed he was speaking to everyone with white skin.

    Racism is and racists are tools of the rich to keep the rest of us 98% at each others' throats and attention away from the real problem: classism. Face it, nobody would mind Oprah Winfrey or Bill Cosby living next door to them, but you can bet your ass the same people who wouldn't want a bleck ghetto dweller living next door wouldn't want a redneck living next door, either.

    The only color that matters to those in power is green. The rest of us should wake up to that fact.

  13. Re:Complete change of strategy on Collective Licensing for Web-Based Music Distribution · · Score: 1

    What about "safe harbor"? ISPs aren't liable for file sharing! So why would they fall for this scam?

  14. I'm relieved on NVIDIA's Drivers Caused 28.8% Of Vista Crashes In 2007 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    28.8% of Vista's crashes over a period in 2007 were due to faulty NVIDIA drivers

    Well then it's a good thing their driver support is so crappy with Linux!

    Oh wait...

    More seriously, I rag on Nvidea for poor Linux support, and this is more of a chance to bash them, but their drivers work fine under XP. If Microsoft provided better documentation of their APIs, as the EU has been demanding, perhaps writing drivers wouldn't be such a pain in the ass?

    I also wonder why closed source vendors don't open their code. They don't have to release it under the GPL, they can reatain all their copyrights, just publish the source. How could it hurt them? They retain copyrights and presumably patents so it's not like anyone could copy them.

    Is closed source closed so that nobody will realise just how abysmally shitty their kludges are?

    If your OS crashes, your OS is crap. Microsoft, fix your OS and publish the code. Nvidea, fix your shitty drivers and open the code. Don't give up any rights, just open it.

    I'd like to see copyright law changed so that executables can't be copyrighted unless the source is also provided. How can IBM tell what parts of their code they stole from SCO? Of course the answer was "none". Time to reboot copyright law!

    -mcgrew

  15. Re:heh on Microsoft or Apple - Who Is the Faster Patcher? · · Score: 1

    Tough room. A comment I made yesterday went back and forth, it made it to +4 interesting before winding up as 0 Flamebait.

  16. Re:Klansman fallacy on The Coming Digital Presidency · · Score: 1

    If he was referring to the rich, the term "rich devils" might have been appropriate. Using the word "white" smacks of racism. And when was "childish" ever reasonable, except from a child?

    The Reverend Wright should read up on Dr. King. Now there was a good Christian preacher!

  17. And the winner is... on Microsoft or Apple - Who Is the Faster Patcher? · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    GNU!

  18. Re:Auto-pilot cars @ 150 MPH on What Will Life Be Like In 2008? · · Score: 1

    You may be right, perhaps manufacturing methods have changed but I don't see anything different about the plastic they made transistor radios out of when I was 5, and what they make TVs out of now.

    They do make more things out of plastic. TV enclosures used to be made of wood, for instance. Actually I liked the wooden ones better, at least to look at. I'd much rather have the modern electronics than what they had then; in 1969 TV sets were just beginning to be solid state. Back in the '70s they had plastic enclosures etc that were made to look like wood, they were FUGLY.

  19. Re:What's the REAL significance of any of this? on The Coming Digital Presidency · · Score: 1

    agreed

  20. Re:because it works! on Why OldTech Keeps Kicking · · Score: 1

    At one time my desk at work sat right next to a great big dot matrix prionter connected to the mainframe. God but I hated that thing!

  21. Re:Auto-pilot cars @ 150 MPH on What Will Life Be Like In 2008? · · Score: 1

    You're correct, but I was talking about sound reproduction in general. I can't figure out why they don't have "car CDs", which would be the minidisks, and they could be encoded in MP3 or other lossy format and would fit in your shirt pocket.

    I get a chuckle, whenever anyone remarks about how good my car stereoi sounds, it's always when I'm playing a CD I've sampled from vinyl! None of my equipment even in the house comes anywhere near audiophile quality; I just can't afford to be an audiophile.

    But even my old 12 inch 3 way JBLs in the living room would benefit from a higher sampling rate.

  22. Re:Auto-pilot cars @ 150 MPH on What Will Life Be Like In 2008? · · Score: 1

    Yes, but CDs are closer to LPs than tapes. And in fact my car (a 2002) has both a cassette player and a CD changer.

  23. Re:A bit presumptuous, no? on The Coming Digital Presidency · · Score: 1

    No, I saw his church's web site long before it hit the media.

  24. Re:Have YOU listened to ONE sermon? on The Coming Digital Presidency · · Score: 1

    No, I read his web site long before this flap. The words "white devils" stood out in stark contrast to his supposed Christianity.

  25. Re:Auto-pilot cars @ 150 MPH on What Will Life Be Like In 2008? · · Score: 1

    That's true, but immaterial. I was talking about the future of stereo, not necessarily car stereo.

    It's also the reason that eight tracks sucked so badly - they were supposed to be "for the car" so factory cartriges were inferior to cassettes and home made eight tracks, despite the fact that the transport speed was double the cassette and the tape width was also double.

    -mcgrew