Well gee, seeing that the material is publicly available, and already paid for ( by a compulsory TV license ) and also already available in digital form without DRM ( through the terrestrial digital broadcast ) why exactly do they have to use DRM to begin with? I only see a few reasons:
a)"Content providers" refuse to license their shows if they don't
b)They have partnered with MS and MS refuse to develop a system that doesn't.
c)Some muppet up in management still believes it can work.
d)All of the above
None of those are valid reasons why a publicly funded company should help strengthen a monopoly that has repeatedly been convicted under anti-trust legislation. Basically what it boils down to is drop the DRM or drop the public funding. As long as the material is paid for by the public it should be available to the public.
Well this is how it is done over in Sweden at least...
You get an envelope. You stick a bit of paper in it which holds the relevant information. It is counted, by hand, within 24 hours. Now ok, the US has a larger population, but that also means you have a larger number of people to do the counting.
I really don't see why you need an advanced computer system to do this once every couple of years. Keep it simple, keep it open, and keep it manual. It works.
That depends a little of how much data / settings you want to keep. If you are prepared to change your KDE settings from the default, and install all applications all over again, then the easiest way is probably to just backup all your data and reformat the drive. The advantage is that you get a clean install, but you will lose most of your customised settings.
Alternatively, if your home directory is on a separate partition you could keep that partition in which case most of your KDE settings, browser bookmarks, etc should remain intact. The drawback is that this could leave you with a GUI that is different from the Ubuntu default, meaning you may notice discrepancies from online "howtos" with regards to where certain menus and settings are found. Of course, it may not be a problem at all.
You can either use GL which is supported on virtually every platform there is, or you can go with DX10 thus limiting your market to Vista only while simultaneously taking a performance penalty... Since nobody in the right mind would go for the latter option I guess we can expect various windows bugs which adversely affect OpenGL very soon... rolled out as critical security updates of course...
Yea, because the rootkit was a one off attempt by Sony to fuck over consumers. They have never done anything like that even before or after it was discovered... Remember the mini disc? What about virtually every sony camera ever made? The PSP ? BlueRay ? Oh, and lets not forget, the PS3. Sure, the other consoles have a bunch of DRM on them as well. Now guess why I'm not buying a console, and especially not from Sony... Heck, the PS3 is probably perfectly capable of running most of my software, but I'll be damned if I am going to support blue-ray even indirectly. The DVD region codes caught me by surprise ( I found out about them when my girlfriend came back from the states and had bought me some DVDs as a present. Imagine how pleased we were when we tried to watch them together. ). This time I know just what kind of bullshit is in that thing, and I sure as hell won't be buying one.
Maybe it is interesting for applications that are sensitive, but for things like food processing they really shouldn't be needed. Every bacteria I know of contains a significant amount of water. Heat it above the boiling point and the thing will die instantly. Also, if something is so hard to reach you need this, doesn't that mean your design is a bit on crack? Somebody mentioned an artificial heart. Now personally I'd rather not have an artificial virus injected into my blood system. Think a better idea might be to build the damn things to prevent this from being needed to begin with. Would probably be cheaper in the end as well. Maybe it has a few novel applications, but it really sounds like over enginnering to solve a problem the wrong way.
When you consider the fact that all American vehicles put together (not just SUV's but every vehicle) only account for about 6% of Co2 emissions
WOHAAA! Hang on there a second. You're telling me that despite of fossil fuel power plants, intercontinental airlines, deforestation, chemical industry and whatnot, American Vehicles alone still contributes 6% of CO2 emissions and that is in your opinion a small amount? Not saying I am in favour of this scheme ( it is actually a fairly retarded way to reduce emissions ) but to talk about that as if it was negligible is really rather ignorant. Hey, I know. Since a small percentage makes no difference I assume you don't mind if we increase taxes on fossil fuels by a small amount ? Six percentage points on all gasoline and petroleum products sounds like a nice appropriate number...
It is annoying when you can't use your keyboard to input alphanumeric data. It is also annoying when you can't use the mouse to copy a link, or cut-n-paste text from some dialogue box. Moral of the story, make sure your interface supports mice AND keyboards. There is a number of disabilities that can make it difficult to use a keyboard, or a mouse. Some people prefer the keyboard, some prefer the mouse. Many window managers got it right. Take xfwm4 as an example. You can switch virtual desktops using ctrl+right/left , by clicking the little widget in the taskbar, or by moving the mouse to the edge of the screen. Furthermore, since you can rebind the keyboard short cuts you have even more options available. That is how it should be done. That way I can switch desktops easily with my mouse, and my keyboard loving mouse hating friend can rebind his 300key-super-ergonomic multimedia keyboard to do it for him.
It solves a couple of problems with wind power, but doesn't really address the main ones.
A) Wind power is expensive B) The power output is uncontrollable and unpredictable
Wind power is not being held back by environmental concerns. On the contrary it receives huge subsidies based on its renewable nature. The reason it haven't caught on is simply that it is 3-4 times as expensive per kwh as compared to a fossil fuel plant or nuclear power station. The unpredictable output would be a show stopper if you want any large fraction of your energy from wind, but in most countries today the amount of wind power used is not even close to when this starts becoming a major problem. For wind power to catch on costs must come down by a factor of 2 at the very least, and I don't see that happening by making them significantly more difficult to deploy and maintain.
The entire debate aside, why on earth is Nuclear Power plants on that list? I mean, seriously. Isn't that a bit like making a law which requires car companies to put at least one steering wheel on each car? Or to require that all commercial air planes have at least one wing... I mean without this legislation nuclear plant operators would probably just let anyone walk in carrying an explosive belt or whatnot, right ? Seriously, I'd be a lot more worried about a terror attack against a train company than a nuclear power station.
Having code only readable through the use of an advanced IDE and an XML parser is a very sensible idea until something breaks on a remote machine and your only way to access it is through an ssh session. Now, unless you are running X on the machine it means you are stuck trying to poke it in bash, and well, you will want that nice and easy flat ASCII code. Not saying this is the case for all projects, and we have IDE's like Eclipse and code::blocks for the cases when it isn't, but when you are at a terminal chances are it is because something has failed, and then you often want things to be as simple as possible. You want to be able to debug it using any terminal you happen to have available, be it a recovery login, an ssh session from a different platform, a cellphone, a pda or whatever. In contrast to a fancy IDE, an 80 collumn terminal runs on almost every platform, will be supported by almost all hardware ( even the really old stuff ) and it is usually readily available at any computer you have access to.
As for reformatting code so that it is easier for you to read, there are many IDE's out there that does this already. Most of them will do syntax highlighting, let you collapse functions by clicking a button, and they even have wizards to help you generate code for you. This is nothing new.
I dunno about the rest of you, but if ubuntu can make my 16 year old sister say "I want a computer like that" keeping in mind that she probably has no clue what the word "command line" means, then I'd say Linux has already made it. Sure, she will probably not configure the network settings on her own, but she definitely wouldn't be able to do that on windows either. I'm personally confident that she will find Firefox no more difficult to use than the windows version of the same.
Basically, if people can't cope with Ubuntu on their own, they probably can't cope with windows on their own either. The only major advantage I can think of with windows from a usability point of view is better support from certain important third parties ( nVidia, ATI etc... ). Other than that Ubuntu is superior. So I'd propose the following definition for the year of Linux: "The year of Linux is the year when nVidia and ATI give their Linux drivers priority above their Windows drivers." When that happens Microsoft can just as well throw in the towel.
2005 was the year of Linux. At least for me as that was when I nuked the final remains of my XP partition. Just as with fusion there will always be a few years to "the big breakthrough", but it is important to realise that this is simply because the goal post is being moved all the time. If Linux were to be the most common desktop OS within 5 years the goal would be moved to it being 50% of market share, which may or may not happen. Reality is that Linux has been gaining market share at a steady rate and will continue to do so for some time.
So... a heavily DRMed phone which you can't run your own applications on, even thou it is fully capable, which also forces you to use a phone provider apple chooses for you? How is this NOT an anti-trust case ? Apple was slapped in Europe for the way iTunes locked people to the iPod already. Are they literarely asking for the same thing to happen with the iPhone? Customers should be free to switch provider if the one they are with turns out to suck, and if it isn't already it certainly ought to be law that youa re not allowed to lock phones to a particular company.
PS: Taking bets on weather there will be some form of "region codes" implemented in this one.
I think it is fairly sensible to be honest. The last thing we want is a bunch of casual computer users getting a bad impression of Linux because they feel ripped of when they were expecting a Windows license. Lets face it, 99% of people who wants to buy a Linux system from Dell will just ignore the warning anyway, but this way they avoid a number of idiots buying an Ubuntu system by accident. I don't think that is a bad thing.
So... suppose I happen to be a fairly loud proponent of civil rights, and I also use iTunes. Suddenly the RIAA / iTunes decide I'm uncomfortable. Would you be surprised if suddenly a large number of songs with "my" watermark on it would appear on P2P networks? Heck, who cares about stolen iPods or Trojan's, I can avoid that. What I can't do shit about is if the record industry decides to leak something with my watermark in order to nail me in court. The only possible way for me to prevent that is to never ever purchase a song through an on-line service that uses watermarking, or move to a country where such watermarks are not recognised by law. Basically, what we need is a legal precedent or law making clear very damn quickly that this sort of thing will not be acceptable as evidence in court.
Slashdot Mirror
$ dpkg-query --list | wc -l
1100
Now I feel inferior... Maybe I should pull in KDE or GNOME to compensate...
Well gee, seeing that the material is publicly available, and already paid for ( by a compulsory TV license ) and also already available in digital form without DRM ( through the terrestrial digital broadcast ) why exactly do they have to use DRM to begin with? I only see a few reasons:
a)"Content providers" refuse to license their shows if they don't
b)They have partnered with MS and MS refuse to develop a system that doesn't.
c)Some muppet up in management still believes it can work.
d)All of the above
None of those are valid reasons why a publicly funded company should help strengthen a monopoly that has repeatedly been convicted under anti-trust legislation. Basically what it boils down to is drop the DRM or drop the public funding. As long as the material is paid for by the public it should be available to the public.
Well this is how it is done over in Sweden at least...
You get an envelope. You stick a bit of paper in it which holds the relevant information. It is counted, by hand, within 24 hours.
Now ok, the US has a larger population, but that also means you have a larger number of people to do the counting.
I really don't see why you need an advanced computer system to do this once every couple of years. Keep it simple, keep it open, and keep it manual. It works.
Really, you can buy more deadly stuff than this in your local gun shop.
That depends a little of how much data / settings you want to keep. If you are prepared to change your KDE settings from the default, and install all applications all over again, then the easiest way is probably to just backup all your data and reformat the drive. The advantage is that you get a clean install, but you will lose most of your customised settings.
Alternatively, if your home directory is on a separate partition you could keep that partition in which case most of your KDE settings, browser bookmarks, etc should remain intact. The drawback is that this could leave you with a GUI that is different from the Ubuntu default, meaning you may notice discrepancies from online "howtos" with regards to where certain menus and settings are found. Of course, it may not be a problem at all.
"It is just a phone!"
Hey, I was even nice enough not to mention all the crap you have to put up with if you buy one...
You can either use GL which is supported on virtually every platform there is, or you can go with DX10 thus limiting your market to Vista only while simultaneously taking a performance penalty... Since nobody in the right mind would go for the latter option I guess we can expect various windows bugs which adversely affect OpenGL very soon... rolled out as critical security updates of course...
Yea, because the rootkit was a one off attempt by Sony to fuck over consumers. They have never done anything like that even before or after it was discovered... Remember the mini disc? What about virtually every sony camera ever made? The PSP ? BlueRay ? Oh, and lets not forget, the PS3. Sure, the other consoles have a bunch of DRM on them as well. Now guess why I'm not buying a console, and especially not from Sony... Heck, the PS3 is probably perfectly capable of running most of my software, but I'll be damned if I am going to support blue-ray even indirectly. The DVD region codes caught me by surprise ( I found out about them when my girlfriend came back from the states and had bought me some DVDs as a present. Imagine how pleased we were when we tried to watch them together. ). This time I know just what kind of bullshit is in that thing, and I sure as hell won't be buying one.
Maybe it is interesting for applications that are sensitive, but for things like food processing they really shouldn't be needed. Every bacteria I know of contains a significant amount of water. Heat it above the boiling point and the thing will die instantly. Also, if something is so hard to reach you need this, doesn't that mean your design is a bit on crack? Somebody mentioned an artificial heart. Now personally I'd rather not have an artificial virus injected into my blood system. Think a better idea might be to build the damn things to prevent this from being needed to begin with. Would probably be cheaper in the end as well. Maybe it has a few novel applications, but it really sounds like over enginnering to solve a problem the wrong way.
WOHAAA! Hang on there a second. You're telling me that despite of fossil fuel power plants, intercontinental airlines, deforestation, chemical industry and whatnot, American Vehicles alone still contributes 6% of CO2 emissions and that is in your opinion a small amount? Not saying I am in favour of this scheme ( it is actually a fairly retarded way to reduce emissions ) but to talk about that as if it was negligible is really rather ignorant. Hey, I know. Since a small percentage makes no difference I assume you don't mind if we increase taxes on fossil fuels by a small amount ? Six percentage points on all gasoline and petroleum products sounds like a nice appropriate number
It is annoying when you can't use your keyboard to input alphanumeric data. It is also annoying when you can't use the mouse to copy a link, or cut-n-paste text from some dialogue box. Moral of the story, make sure your interface supports mice AND keyboards. There is a number of disabilities that can make it difficult to use a keyboard, or a mouse. Some people prefer the keyboard, some prefer the mouse. Many window managers got it right. Take xfwm4 as an example. You can switch virtual desktops using ctrl+right/left , by clicking the little widget in the taskbar, or by moving the mouse to the edge of the screen. Furthermore, since you can rebind the keyboard short cuts you have even more options available. That is how it should be done. That way I can switch desktops easily with my mouse, and my keyboard loving mouse hating friend can rebind his 300key-super-ergonomic multimedia keyboard to do it for him.
It solves a couple of problems with wind power, but doesn't really address the main ones.
A) Wind power is expensive
B) The power output is uncontrollable and unpredictable
Wind power is not being held back by environmental concerns. On the contrary it receives huge subsidies based on its renewable nature. The reason it haven't caught on is simply that it is 3-4 times as expensive per kwh as compared to a fossil fuel plant or nuclear power station. The unpredictable output would be a show stopper if you want any large fraction of your energy from wind, but in most countries today the amount of wind power used is not even close to when this starts becoming a major problem. For wind power to catch on costs must come down by a factor of 2 at the very least, and I don't see that happening by making them significantly more difficult to deploy and maintain.
...I go to sleep. ; )
Time to start using:r k)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_netwo
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Privacy_Guard
The alternative would be to vote the idiots out of office, but it doesn't seem as if that will happen any time soon.
If it contains the word "truth" it is not science.
If you have ever used a matrix transformation in OpenGL you've already touched some high level maths. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_algebra#Some_u seful_theorems
Trying to do computer science without maths is about as likely to succeed as doing physics without maths, and lets just say you won't get very far...
The entire debate aside, why on earth is Nuclear Power plants on that list? I mean, seriously. Isn't that a bit like making a law which requires car companies to put at least one steering wheel on each car? Or to require that all commercial air planes have at least one wing... I mean without this legislation nuclear plant operators would probably just let anyone walk in carrying an explosive belt or whatnot, right ? Seriously, I'd be a lot more worried about a terror attack against a train company than a nuclear power station.
Having code only readable through the use of an advanced IDE and an XML parser is a very sensible idea until something breaks on a remote machine and your only way to access it is through an ssh session. Now, unless you are running X on the machine it means you are stuck trying to poke it in bash, and well, you will want that nice and easy flat ASCII code. Not saying this is the case for all projects, and we have IDE's like Eclipse and code::blocks for the cases when it isn't, but when you are at a terminal chances are it is because something has failed, and then you often want things to be as simple as possible. You want to be able to debug it using any terminal you happen to have available, be it a recovery login, an ssh session from a different platform, a cellphone, a pda or whatever. In contrast to a fancy IDE, an 80 collumn terminal runs on almost every platform, will be supported by almost all hardware ( even the really old stuff ) and it is usually readily available at any computer you have access to.
As for reformatting code so that it is easier for you to read, there are many IDE's out there that does this already. Most of them will do syntax highlighting, let you collapse functions by clicking a button, and they even have wizards to help you generate code for you. This is nothing new.
Exactly. That is why I use an open system rather than Lock-In-R-Us.
I dunno about the rest of you, but if ubuntu can make my 16 year old sister say "I want a computer like that" keeping in mind that she probably has no clue what the word "command line" means, then I'd say Linux has already made it. Sure, she will probably not configure the network settings on her own, but she definitely wouldn't be able to do that on windows either. I'm personally confident that she will find Firefox no more difficult to use than the windows version of the same. Basically, if people can't cope with Ubuntu on their own, they probably can't cope with windows on their own either. The only major advantage I can think of with windows from a usability point of view is better support from certain important third parties ( nVidia, ATI etc ... ). Other than that Ubuntu is superior. So I'd propose the following definition for the year of Linux: "The year of Linux is the year when nVidia and ATI give their Linux drivers priority above their Windows drivers." When that happens Microsoft can just as well throw in the towel.
Speak for yourself. I find it quite entertaining with attractive members of either sex...
2005 was the year of Linux. At least for me as that was when I nuked the final remains of my XP partition. Just as with fusion there will always be a few years to "the big breakthrough", but it is important to realise that this is simply because the goal post is being moved all the time. If Linux were to be the most common desktop OS within 5 years the goal would be moved to it being 50% of market share, which may or may not happen. Reality is that Linux has been gaining market share at a steady rate and will continue to do so for some time.
So... a heavily DRMed phone which you can't run your own applications on, even thou it is fully capable, which also forces you to use a phone provider apple chooses for you? How is this NOT an anti-trust case ? Apple was slapped in Europe for the way iTunes locked people to the iPod already. Are they literarely asking for the same thing to happen with the iPhone? Customers should be free to switch provider if the one they are with turns out to suck, and if it isn't already it certainly ought to be law that youa re not allowed to lock phones to a particular company.
PS: Taking bets on weather there will be some form of "region codes" implemented in this one.
I think it is fairly sensible to be honest. The last thing we want is a bunch of casual computer users getting a bad impression of Linux because they feel ripped of when they were expecting a Windows license. Lets face it, 99% of people who wants to buy a Linux system from Dell will just ignore the warning anyway, but this way they avoid a number of idiots buying an Ubuntu system by accident. I don't think that is a bad thing.
So... suppose I happen to be a fairly loud proponent of civil rights, and I also use iTunes. Suddenly the RIAA / iTunes decide I'm uncomfortable. Would you be surprised if suddenly a large number of songs with "my" watermark on it would appear on P2P networks? Heck, who cares about stolen iPods or Trojan's, I can avoid that. What I can't do shit about is if the record industry decides to leak something with my watermark in order to nail me in court. The only possible way for me to prevent that is to never ever purchase a song through an on-line service that uses watermarking, or move to a country where such watermarks are not recognised by law. Basically, what we need is a legal precedent or law making clear very damn quickly that this sort of thing will not be acceptable as evidence in court.