Re:This is sad, but I think we all saw it coming
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RIAA Sues MP3.com
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· Score: 4
The only people who Don't Get It are the people who pirate MP3's. It is THESE people who are anti-technology and are preventing large scale online distribution from really happening. With the massive number of 31337 mp3 warez d000dz on the internet who insist on stealing music instead of paying for it, the RIAA realizes that it is suicide to put its property into small, easily transferred, unencrypted files and depend on the trust of the consumers for compensation. Because of all of the people who steal music by pirating MP3's, the RIAA realized that money cannot be made from this method. So they are currently investigating proprietary, closed methods of online music distribution. So to people who pirate MP3's: thanks. You already cost on an open music standard, and if you keep it up, you will cost us online distribution altogether.
Considering the RIAA brought out the compact disc (or even hi-fi analog, for that matter) they are clearly not anti-technology. The record companies want to go on-line even more than consumers do, because they would save big time money in the process (not only not having to produce physical media, but not having to go through distribution - they could sell direct).
Everybody wants on-line distribution. The companies do. The artists do. The listeners do. The only people who are stopping for it are the pirates who steal anything that can be digitized, and spit on any sort of copyright or IP law.
The "CD's cost too much so I will steal the music instead of buying it" argument holds absolutely no water whatsoever. By the same argument, you can justify that it is OK to go steal some big AlphaServer systems from Compaq because you think they are overpriced. There are ways to deal civilly if you think a company is ripping you off, e.g. boycott (and, no: stealing instead of buying a product does not constitute a boycott). Theft is theft, and it is NEVER justifiable to steal from a private company in a free market.
Before they can tackle the pronunciation of Linux, they need to work on "silicon" and "gigabyte" first. Both are pronounced wrong by 99.44% of the industry.
The issue of a university banning Napster has nothing to do with whether MP3's are illegal or not. It's their equipment and they can put whatever restrictions they want on using it. They can ban all access to MSNBC.COM or even SLASHDOT.ORG if it is wasting too much bandwidth - that would be prefectly legal. Just because you pay a service fee does NOT mean they have to provide you with full service. They offer you with what they want to, they do not offer you what you want. If a single program is using that much bandwidth (especially relative to its academic value), it only makes sense to ban it. If you don't like it, you can set up your own T1 and use it however you want.
Napster users especially need to consider the needs of the other students. 5% bandwidth is a LOT and Napster users are slowing down the efficiency of people who are doing legitimate work. You don't own the connection just because all of that bandwidth is available to you.
The whole point of any communications protocol is that date can be copied for free (unlike a concrete thing like food) and very easily. So they be trying to ban all communication (including normal speech!) because you can copy music/films etc. with them.
Patently fallacious.
What if someobody started a server with YOUR credit card numbers, YOUR social security number, your phone numbers, your home address, your birth date, etc., etc. and offered it for the world to see? Is that stuff "just data"? Would you be happy when the adminstrator of the site put the site down, or would you like to see all of your information made freely available, in order to promote your ideals of "free communication"? What if Netscape sent all of your credit card information you entered through it to some central server? Free communication right? It's just bits? How can you possibly argue? You may respond that Netscape doesn't have the permission to take your credit card number. But you don't have the permission of the music companies to take THEIR material, so you will be contradicting yourself if you use this argument.
There is all sorts of stuff which is "just data" which should not be freely distributable. How about classified government reports? Should it be legal to post those on any web site? Instructions on how to build nuclear bombs? Blueprints for proprietary items? Music falls under this category, and is owned by the owener; it is not freely distrbutable. It is NOT free communication if you do not have the permission of the owner of the material to distribute it.
This is not a technical issue. It is a legal issue. It does not matter if it is "just data", as I have demonstrated above. It is a matter of illegally pirating copywritten material. The fact that many Slashdot readers ball this up as a technical issue shows how little they understand the principles involved.
Most slashdot readers are also highly contradictory on the issue. Most Slashdot readers are up in arms if they find out Quake sends the name of their video card to some central server (which is "just bits"), but freely promote theft of copywritten music under the justification that it is "just bits". At least take a consistent stance on the issue please, and stop switching between whichever one is more convenient for YOUR OWN self interests.
Infact, I'd say it's fair use - I can tape the evening news broadcast, right? Why can't I show it to other people?
Fair use explicitly says that you can tape a show off of TV but that you can NOT give it to someone else. Therefore, this explicitly goes against fair use.
Since iCraveTV makes money off of what they are stealing from the airwaves, it makes perfect sense that they should be prosecuted. The cable companies pay for the broadcasting, so why shouldn't iCraveTV?
I do agree that Intel will not be the most affected. If "mobile internet handhelds" (or whatever the buzz-phrase is) really do take off and replace PC's, probably the companies most affected would be PC companies such as Dell, Gateway, and Compaq. Intel does have a mobile device which would probably be competitive (StrongArm, though, ironically, not x86 compatible) in such a market. But their bread and butter is in server chips, and this device would only create more servers!
I personally doubt that "mobile internet handhelds" will replace PC's, though I do not doubt that they would be extremely popular. Most people want a big monitor, and an entertainment/desktop system, which the mobile is not really compatible with. The paradigm will probably similar to modible phones and landline phones, or even PDA's and PC's, where people have a big, powerful machine at home, and a small simple one for the road.
I also doubt that Crusoe chips will be used in PC's because right now they are more expensive than Celeron, et al. Plus, we do not know the performance. Theoretically, since they are small, they could be cheaper, but IBM doesn't exactly have a good volume manufacturing record.
Of course, the PC -> handheld revolution COULD be the next mainframe -> PC revolution. However, I doubt this, because usually the really important revolutions are not hyped or predicted, but just happen.
99.44% of Slashdot readers have never even SEEN Windows 2000. The fact that they are judging it before they see it demonstrates that they have an entirely non-technical agenda, and that they simply want Microsoft products to fail, regardless of technical quality.
Either that, or they don't understand that it has absolutely nothing to do with Windows 95. A majority of Microsoft haters I've met have never even used Windows NT but think that their experience with Windows 95 makes up for it. They use their experience with Windows 95 to judge Widnows NT and spread lies as a result ("Windows doesn't haven't command history", etc.)
I am not interested in whose fault it is - Sun's or eBay's. Personally, if I were Sun, I would make pretty damn sure that one my highest profile customers had installed the patch, if it had even the slightest chance of causing a problem. It is not clear to me that Sun had made it known that the patch was important (and I understand there are hundreds of patches available for Solaris - how to decide which one is needed?)
But, anyways, if the situation was reversed, and eBay was running Microsoft, and experienced a crash (due to not installing a patch), I am certain that 99.44% of Slashdot readers would blame Microsoft, and Microsoft only [*]. (Even if it was only remotely related to Microsoft such as a non-Microsoft application which crashed when running on a Microsoft system - c.f. the Naval ship). However, if it is a non-Microsoft company, ESPECIALLY if it is a Unix related company, Slashdot readers are quick to do research and figure out why it happened. What I am interested in, is why there is this double standard. It is probably simply because most Slashdot readers have an anti-Microsoft agenda, though it might possibly be a bit deeper.
[*] You need proof of this? Look at all of the posts in THIS ARTICLE which are blaming Microsoft for a bug in IIS 4.0, which has had a patch avialble for over TWO YEARS.
eBay's servers are NOT Microsoft. Their front end web servers are Microsoft, but the back end databases are Solaris. All of the problems which eBay has had are bugs in Solaris. When eBay had problems there were SUN engineers on site to fix the problems.
Of course, since Microsoft is the scapegoat of the computer industry, people will blame the company if any of their software is involved in any way. eBay is a prime example; when the people who blame eBay find out that it was Sun's and not Microsoft's fault for the problems, they do not shift the blame to Sun, but rather shrug off the problems, and pretend to play down the incident. eBay's outage in the summer, which cost well over one and a half BILLION dollars in market capitalization, is one of the biggest industrial blunders in history, and was 100% to blame on a bug in the Solaris operating system. Yet Microsoft continues to receive the blame for it.
It is really getting out of control. There are people who really think Microsoft is to blame for the Year 2000 problem the Year 2038 problem, the Internet worm, et cetera, ad nauseum. It is so incredibly trendy to blame Microsoft that any industrial problem whatsoever is blamed on them if they had any involvement whatsoever - without even GLANCING at what the real problem was or who really was to blame.
DVD players are already VERY mainstream. There were five million sold last year. Lots and lots of non-technical people are doing DVD. Go to the DVD section at the store, and look at all of the people buying them - all kinds of people, mostly non-geeks. I don't know know where you get the notion that you can stop it by not buying one - most middle-class people already own a DVD player.
I don't understand why nobody mentioned this in 200+ comments, but the author put the #if and #endif statements backwards (i.e. in reverse order). My impression is that the author is clueless about actual programming, but tried to show off how little he know and came across really embarrassing myself. There is absolutely nothing more annoying than wannabe-programmers.
I don't see why the APPLICATION should be responsible for checking to see if a domain name is valid. That is really irresponsible programming because the standard can change at any time, and you will have to change it on an application-by-application basis. Look at the first digit of a domain being a number - it used to be that this is illegal but now it is fine, but many poorly written applications reject addresses of this type. This should be left to a library call (e.g. gethostbyname). IMHO, any program which actually checks to see if a domain is valid is broken three times over. Of course, I do agree that the domains which do end in a dash should be taken away since they are not allowed in the current standard, but not because some applications do not work with them. (As an aside: why the heck would anybody want such a domain? e-.com?? WTF???)
This is a really strange comment. The only current CISC CPU, IA-32, has _four_ registers, only one more than the 6502. The RISC processors have in the range of 32 - 64. So if anything, according to your assumption, IA-32 would bring software back to high quality levels.
Of course, not too many people program in assembly language anymore (weenies!), so it is largely irrelevant. It is certainly harder for compilers to optimize when there are only 3-4 registers available.
BSD was programmed by mainframe programmers? Er, how do you figure? Unix development - in particular what went on at Berkeley - is probably the MOST anti-mainframe development which has gone on in the industry. Jobs' embracement of Unix is extremely compatible with his old anti-mainframe views. It was in fact Unix (along with the PC) that ended the dominance of the mainframe.
No real information here - way too simplified
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G4 vs. Athlon Review
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· Score: 1
Why is every article on CPU archtecture on websites like Ars Tecnica written at a fourth grade level? I don't need a review of branch prediction and instruction decoding. Sheesh!
They should just leave it MPF which is about the only open source which does publish interesting technical information on CPU architecture.
Many members of said list (myself included) have some pretty old systems in active use, including (but not limited to) IBM XT's, 286's, S-100 bus systems, DEC MicroVAXen and MicroPDP-11, and others too numerous to list.
With only a couple of exceptions, brought on by clocks that needed a manual nudge, even these old workhorses handled the century rollover without so much as an electronic hiccup, and are still in use this morning
A lot of those old computers are far more compliant than the stuff in use today. Any VAX running VMS is compliant through 31-DEC-9999. As well all know, Unix/Linux has significant issues on 19-JAN-2038, and Windows has problems come 31-DEC-2036. It is amazing that supposedly more modern systems will be obsolete in less than 40 years, while supposedly obsolete systems have 8000 years to go.
I'm not going to stop satisfying my own needs just because some unethical law says I shouldn't. So if the record industry wants to get any of my money, they had better start bending to my specific needs as a consumer by providing a way for me to purchase only the individual songs I want, and to easily obtain legitimate copies of obscure material.
Ironically, (as another poster pointed out), 5 of the 7 albums which sold 1,000,000 copies in their first week were released in the year 2000 (i.e., long after Napster became household technology). All of these were by artists who allegedly have one good song per album (Britney Spears, N*Sync, etc.)
Clearly, the industry is enjoying monumental success -- indeed, their highest success ever -- even though they don't serve you as a customer.
Do you feel expendable yet? The industry doesn't need you. By definition, there is no money to be made off of 'obscure material'. They do not need to cater to you at all, and can make much more money catering to their core audience.
Case in point, bubblegum princess Brittany Spears has released two albums, each with a total of one catchy song. (By "catchy", I mean that the producers slaved over a rhythm track that was good enough, and simple enough, to get stuck in the heads of 12-year-old girls across America).
This is incorrect. Each album have 3 or 4 #1 hit singles.
"You don't want to hear this, but it's because those old-fashioned systems aren't GPL'd. Therefore, why waste our efforts on something somebody can make a profit from? No thanks."
Since when were people unable to profit from GPL'd software? Not only do companies such as Red Hat and VA Linux have multi-billion dollar market capitalizations, but even companies which are only peripherally involved in Linux (Compaq, IBM, Intel,...) have profited from Linux.
As I'm sure you know, Compaq likes Linux and supports Linux and sells many Alpha systems because of Linux. Compaq also sells one of those "old-fashioned systems": VMS. Surely you do not believe that DVD support is the one magic bullet which VMS needs to survive in the marketplace, and that adding this would help Compaq MORE than Linux has already helped Compaq. I do not, after all, know many potential VMS customers who are holding out until VMS supports DVD. Most of these "old-fashioned systems" are used as servers and such, and only as desktop-type systems for a few geeks at home.
In general, the Linux community does not realize how much they do have, and how popular and how good the support is. As a VMS user (thanks for mentioning it, BTW!), I would kill for the support that Linux has. You guys only get to choose between the latest Netscape and Mozilla? All we get is Netscape _3_. You don't drivers for all of the latest and greatest PCI video accelerators at the stores? We have support for _1_ PCI video card! You don't get Microsoft Office, but only StarOffice and CorelSuite (and whatever else)? We don't have ANY office suites!Scanners? DVD players? Music software? In your dreams!
There are tons of more systems which are far more "oppressed" than Linux is, and which are much more difficult to be a user for. I agree that we should try to support all of them, instead of just the most popular oppressed system (Linux).
For a short time more, most DVD equipment buyers will still be "early-adopters" who are technologically aware. These people (1) won't have any trouble understanding what region locking is
Eh?
My local Fry's sells DVD's only - no VHS. The sections is HUGE, and is always extremely crowded. The people who frequent it do not seem to be particular technologically savvy, unless you think the ability to hook up a DVD player to a TV (or pop a DVD into your DVD-ROM) makes someone a wiz. Let's be serious, a 14 year old can do this, and the problem of "region locking" is not at all difficult to comprehend, as you make it out to be. You write as if the public is stupid, and you are some self-appointed do-gooder to look out for the common good.
But, anyways, that's not my main point.
VHS tapes have at least two major encoding formats (PAL and NTSC). You cannot watch one in a set for the other, so you have the same type of limitation as DVD region encoding (the reason for this is totally different, of course, but the end result is identical).
Furthermore, it is misleading to say that a DVD player will not play all DVD's - it will certainly play all DVD's available locally. Only if you get a foreign DVD will it not work, but guess what: the VHS from that region will not work, either!
Many things don't work between countries, such as many electrical appliances, so I don't see this as a big conspiracy.
It's not an issue of being proprietary. I was merely responding to his issue that the DVD association is trying to sell DVD players by curtailing the distribution of software players. Clearly, this is false, because the VOLUME is in Windows. There are hundreds of millions of PC's running Windows, capable of playing DVD's. There are much fewer non-Windows computers capable of playing DVD's (even if they DID have the software available). If the DVD association was interested in selling players, they would go after where the volume is (Windows), not some player for Linux. I do not know how much a software DVD player costs to license, but as I said in my top post, I have not witnessed an increase in the price of video cards, since they started to come with DVD players, so I don't believe they are generating all that much revenue for anyone (besides content providers, of course. but ESR downplays that). I have no doubt that the DVD association is trying to prevent piracy, not trying to sell more players, as ESR's conspiracy theory suggests.
ESR contends that the DVDCA wants to protect players since PC's will compete against DVD players. This argument holds very little water. For starters, Windows has a much larger marketshare than Linux, and Windows machines will compete more against DVD players, but Windows ALREADY had many, many software DVD players. Furthermore, these Windows players are essentially free of cost -- every video card in the world comes with a software DVD player. and I haven't noticed an increase in the price of video cards. So I fail to see how the DVD association is trying to protect investments in hardware players by going after the Linux player, since lots and lots of Windows players exist, at very little cost.
There is other mis-information as well. For example, he contents that DeCSS was developed by Linux hackers, which as we all know isn't true. I get the feeling he hasn't been following the story too well.
Also, is it really true that you can make a bit-for-bit copy? My understanding was that this required specialized hardware, and that commdity DVD reader hardware was not capable of reading special tracks.
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The only people who Don't Get It are the people who pirate MP3's. It is THESE people who are anti-technology and are preventing large scale online distribution from really happening. With the massive number of 31337 mp3 warez d000dz on the internet who insist on stealing music instead of paying for it, the RIAA realizes that it is suicide to put its property into small, easily transferred, unencrypted files and depend on the trust of the consumers for compensation. Because of all of the people who steal music by pirating MP3's, the RIAA realized that money cannot be made from this method. So they are currently investigating proprietary, closed methods of online music distribution. So to people who pirate MP3's: thanks. You already cost on an open music standard, and if you keep it up, you will cost us online distribution altogether.
Considering the RIAA brought out the compact disc (or even hi-fi analog, for that matter) they are clearly not anti-technology. The record companies want to go on-line even more than consumers do, because they would save big time money in the process (not only not having to produce physical media, but not having to go through distribution - they could sell direct).
Everybody wants on-line distribution. The companies do. The artists do. The listeners do. The only people who are stopping for it are the pirates who steal anything that can be digitized, and spit on any sort of copyright or IP law.
The "CD's cost too much so I will steal the music instead of buying it" argument holds absolutely no water whatsoever. By the same argument, you can justify that it is OK to go steal some big AlphaServer systems from Compaq because you think they are overpriced. There are ways to deal civilly if you think a company is ripping you off, e.g. boycott (and, no: stealing instead of buying a product does not constitute a boycott). Theft is theft, and it is NEVER justifiable to steal from a private company in a free market.
Before they can tackle the pronunciation of Linux, they need to work on "silicon" and "gigabyte" first. Both are pronounced wrong by 99.44% of the industry.
The issue of a university banning Napster has nothing to do with whether MP3's are illegal or not. It's their equipment and they can put whatever restrictions they want on using it. They can ban all access to MSNBC.COM or even SLASHDOT.ORG if it is wasting too much bandwidth - that would be prefectly legal. Just because you pay a service fee does NOT mean they have to provide you with full service. They offer you with what they want to, they do not offer you what you want. If a single program is using that much bandwidth (especially relative to its academic value), it only makes sense to ban it. If you don't like it, you can set up your own T1 and use it however you want.
Napster users especially need to consider the needs of the other students. 5% bandwidth is a LOT and Napster users are slowing down the efficiency of people who are doing legitimate work. You don't own the connection just because all of that bandwidth is available to you.
The whole point of any communications protocol is that date can be copied for free (unlike a concrete thing like food) and very easily. So they be trying to ban all communication (including normal speech!) because you can copy music/films etc. with them.
Patently fallacious.
What if someobody started a server with YOUR credit card numbers, YOUR social security number, your phone numbers, your home address, your birth date, etc., etc. and offered it for the world to see? Is that stuff "just data"? Would you be happy when the adminstrator of the site put the site down, or would you like to see all of your information made freely available, in order to promote your ideals of "free communication"? What if Netscape sent all of your credit card information you entered through it to some central server? Free communication right? It's just bits? How can you possibly argue? You may respond that Netscape doesn't have the permission to take your credit card number. But you don't have the permission of the music companies to take THEIR material, so you will be contradicting yourself if you use this argument.
There is all sorts of stuff which is "just data" which should not be freely distributable. How about classified government reports? Should it be legal to post those on any web site? Instructions on how to build nuclear bombs? Blueprints for proprietary items? Music falls under this category, and is owned by the owener; it is not freely distrbutable. It is NOT free communication if you do not have the permission of the owner of the material to distribute it.
This is not a technical issue. It is a legal issue. It does not matter if it is "just data", as I have demonstrated above. It is a matter of illegally pirating copywritten material. The fact that many Slashdot readers ball this up as a technical issue shows how little they understand the principles involved.
Most slashdot readers are also highly contradictory on the issue. Most Slashdot readers are up in arms if they find out Quake sends the name of their video card to some central server (which is "just bits"), but freely promote theft of copywritten music under the justification that it is "just bits". At least take a consistent stance on the issue please, and stop switching between whichever one is more convenient for YOUR OWN self interests.
Infact, I'd say it's fair use - I can tape the evening news broadcast, right? Why can't I show it to other people?
Fair use explicitly says that you can tape a show off of TV but that you can NOT give it to someone else. Therefore, this explicitly goes against fair use.
Since iCraveTV makes money off of what they are stealing from the airwaves, it makes perfect sense that they should be prosecuted. The cable companies pay for the broadcasting, so why shouldn't iCraveTV?
I do agree that Intel will not be the most affected. If "mobile internet handhelds" (or whatever the buzz-phrase is) really do take off and replace PC's, probably the companies most affected would be PC companies such as Dell, Gateway, and Compaq. Intel does have a mobile device which would probably be competitive (StrongArm, though, ironically, not x86 compatible) in such a market. But their bread and butter is in server chips, and this device would only create more servers!
I personally doubt that "mobile internet handhelds" will replace PC's, though I do not doubt that they would be extremely popular. Most people want a big monitor, and an entertainment/desktop system, which the mobile is not really compatible with. The paradigm will probably similar to modible phones and landline phones, or even PDA's and PC's, where people have a big, powerful machine at home, and a small simple one for the road.
I also doubt that Crusoe chips will be used in PC's because right now they are more expensive than Celeron, et al. Plus, we do not know the performance. Theoretically, since they are small, they could be cheaper, but IBM doesn't exactly have a good volume manufacturing record.
Of course, the PC -> handheld revolution COULD be the next mainframe -> PC revolution. However, I doubt this, because usually the really important revolutions are not hyped or predicted, but just happen.
99.44% of Slashdot readers have never even SEEN Windows 2000. The fact that they are judging it before they see it demonstrates that they have an entirely non-technical agenda, and that they simply want Microsoft products to fail, regardless of technical quality.
Either that, or they don't understand that it has absolutely nothing to do with Windows 95. A majority of Microsoft haters I've met have never even used Windows NT but think that their experience with Windows 95 makes up for it. They use their experience with Windows 95 to judge Widnows NT and spread lies as a result ("Windows doesn't haven't command history", etc.)
I am not interested in whose fault it is - Sun's or eBay's. Personally, if I were Sun, I would make pretty damn sure that one my highest profile customers had installed the patch, if it had even the slightest chance of causing a problem. It is not clear to me that Sun had made it known that the patch was important (and I understand there are hundreds of patches available for Solaris - how to decide which one is needed?)
But, anyways, if the situation was reversed, and eBay was running Microsoft, and experienced a crash (due to not installing a patch), I am certain that 99.44% of Slashdot readers would blame Microsoft, and Microsoft only [*]. (Even if it was only remotely related to Microsoft such as a non-Microsoft application which crashed when running on a Microsoft system - c.f. the Naval ship). However, if it is a non-Microsoft company, ESPECIALLY if it is a Unix related company, Slashdot readers are quick to do research and figure out why it happened. What I am interested in, is why there is this double standard. It is probably simply because most Slashdot readers have an anti-Microsoft agenda, though it might possibly be a bit deeper.
[*] You need proof of this? Look at all of the posts in THIS ARTICLE which are blaming Microsoft for a bug in IIS 4.0, which has had a patch avialble for over TWO YEARS.
eBay's servers are NOT Microsoft. Their front end web servers are Microsoft, but the back end databases are Solaris. All of the problems which eBay has had are bugs in Solaris. When eBay had problems there were SUN engineers on site to fix the problems.
Of course, since Microsoft is the scapegoat of the computer industry, people will blame the company if any of their software is involved in any way. eBay is a prime example; when the people who blame eBay find out that it was Sun's and not Microsoft's fault for the problems, they do not shift the blame to Sun, but rather shrug off the problems, and pretend to play down the incident. eBay's outage in the summer, which cost well over one and a half BILLION dollars in market capitalization, is one of the biggest industrial blunders in history, and was 100% to blame on a bug in the Solaris operating system. Yet Microsoft continues to receive the blame for it.
It is really getting out of control. There are people who really think Microsoft is to blame for the Year 2000 problem the Year 2038 problem, the Internet worm, et cetera, ad nauseum. It is so incredibly trendy to blame Microsoft that any industrial problem whatsoever is blamed on them if they had any involvement whatsoever - without even GLANCING at what the real problem was or who really was to blame.
DVD players are already VERY mainstream. There were five million sold last year. Lots and lots of non-technical people are doing DVD. Go to the DVD section at the store, and look at all of the people buying them - all kinds of people, mostly non-geeks. I don't know know where you get the notion that you can stop it by not buying one - most middle-class people already own a DVD player.
If AOL-TW uses its monopoly in cable modems to leverage its own web browser, it will be guilty of precisely the same thing Microsoft is guilty of.
Unlikely, however. Doesn't AOL still use IE as its browser?
I don't understand why nobody mentioned this in 200+ comments, but the author put the #if and #endif statements backwards (i.e. in reverse order). My impression is that the author is clueless about actual programming, but tried to show off how little he know and came across really embarrassing myself. There is absolutely nothing more annoying than wannabe-programmers.
I don't see why the APPLICATION should be responsible for checking to see if a domain name is valid. That is really irresponsible programming because the standard can change at any time, and you will have to change it on an application-by-application basis. Look at the first digit of a domain being a number - it used to be that this is illegal but now it is fine, but many poorly written applications reject addresses of this type. This should be left to a library call (e.g. gethostbyname). IMHO, any program which actually checks to see if a domain is valid is broken three times over. Of course, I do agree that the domains which do end in a dash should be taken away since they are not allowed in the current standard, but not because some applications do not work with them. (As an aside: why the heck would anybody want such a domain? e-.com?? WTF???)
This is a really strange comment. The only current CISC CPU, IA-32, has _four_ registers, only one more than the 6502. The RISC processors have in the range of 32 - 64. So if anything, according to your assumption, IA-32 would bring software back to high quality levels.
Of course, not too many people program in assembly language anymore (weenies!), so it is largely irrelevant. It is certainly harder for compilers to optimize when there are only 3-4 registers available.
BSD was programmed by mainframe programmers? Er, how do you figure? Unix development - in particular what went on at Berkeley - is probably the MOST anti-mainframe development which has gone on in the industry. Jobs' embracement of Unix is extremely compatible with his old anti-mainframe views. It was in fact Unix (along with the PC) that ended the dominance of the mainframe.
Why is every article on CPU archtecture on websites like Ars Tecnica written at a fourth grade level? I don't need a review of branch prediction and instruction decoding. Sheesh!
They should just leave it MPF which is about the only open source which does publish interesting technical information on CPU architecture.
Many members of said list (myself included) have some pretty old systems in active use, including (but not limited to) IBM XT's, 286's, S-100 bus systems, DEC MicroVAXen and MicroPDP-11, and others too numerous to list.
With only a couple of exceptions, brought on by clocks that needed a manual nudge, even these old workhorses handled the century rollover without so much as an electronic hiccup, and are still in use this morning
A lot of those old computers are far more compliant than the stuff in use today. Any VAX running VMS is compliant through 31-DEC-9999. As well all know, Unix/Linux has significant issues on 19-JAN-2038, and Windows has problems come 31-DEC-2036. It is amazing that supposedly more modern systems will be obsolete in less than 40 years, while supposedly obsolete systems have 8000 years to go.
I'm not going to stop satisfying my own needs just because some unethical law says I shouldn't. So if the record industry wants to get any of my money, they had better start bending to my specific needs as a consumer by providing a way for me to purchase only the individual songs I want, and to easily obtain legitimate copies of obscure material.
Ironically, (as another poster pointed out), 5 of the 7 albums which sold 1,000,000 copies in their first week were released in the year 2000 (i.e., long after Napster became household technology). All of these were by artists who allegedly have one good song per album (Britney Spears, N*Sync, etc.)
Clearly, the industry is enjoying monumental success -- indeed, their highest success ever -- even though they don't serve you as a customer.
Do you feel expendable yet? The industry doesn't need you. By definition, there is no money to be made off of 'obscure material'. They do not need to cater to you at all, and can make much more money catering to their core audience.
Do you see who's in charge now?
Case in point, bubblegum princess Brittany Spears has released two albums, each with a total of one catchy song. (By "catchy", I mean that the producers slaved over a rhythm track that was good enough, and simple enough, to get stuck in the heads of 12-year-old girls across America).
This is incorrect. Each album have 3 or 4 #1 hit singles.
"You don't want to hear this, but it's because those old-fashioned systems aren't GPL'd. Therefore, why waste our efforts on something somebody can make a profit from? No thanks."
...) have profited from Linux.
Since when were people unable to profit from GPL'd software? Not only do companies such as Red Hat and VA Linux have multi-billion dollar market capitalizations, but even companies which are only peripherally involved in Linux (Compaq, IBM, Intel,
As I'm sure you know, Compaq likes Linux and supports Linux and sells many Alpha systems because of Linux. Compaq also sells one of those "old-fashioned systems": VMS. Surely you do not believe that DVD support is the one magic bullet which VMS needs to survive in the marketplace, and that adding this would help Compaq MORE than Linux has already helped Compaq. I do not, after all, know many potential VMS customers who are holding out until VMS supports DVD. Most of these "old-fashioned systems" are used as servers and such, and only as desktop-type systems for a few geeks at home.
Moderate Christiansen's post up.
In general, the Linux community does not realize how much they do have, and how popular and how good the support is. As a VMS user (thanks for mentioning it, BTW!), I would kill for the support that Linux has. You guys only get to choose between the latest Netscape and Mozilla? All we get is Netscape _3_. You don't drivers for all of the latest and greatest PCI video accelerators at the stores? We have support for _1_ PCI video card! You don't get Microsoft Office, but only StarOffice and CorelSuite (and whatever else)? We don't have ANY office suites!Scanners? DVD players? Music software? In your dreams!
There are tons of more systems which are far more "oppressed" than Linux is, and which are much more difficult to be a user for. I agree that we should try to support all of them, instead of just the most popular oppressed system (Linux).
For a short time more, most DVD equipment buyers will still be "early-adopters" who are technologically aware. These people (1) won't have any trouble understanding what region locking is
Eh?
My local Fry's sells DVD's only - no VHS. The sections is HUGE, and is always extremely crowded. The people who frequent it do not seem to be particular technologically savvy, unless you think the ability to hook up a DVD player to a TV (or pop a DVD into your DVD-ROM) makes someone a wiz. Let's be serious, a 14 year old can do this, and the problem of "region locking" is not at all difficult to comprehend, as you make it out to be. You write as if the public is stupid, and you are some self-appointed do-gooder to look out for the common good.
But, anyways, that's not my main point.
VHS tapes have at least two major encoding formats (PAL and NTSC). You cannot watch one in a set for the other, so you have the same type of limitation as DVD region encoding (the reason for this is totally different, of course, but the end result is identical).
Furthermore, it is misleading to say that a DVD player will not play all DVD's - it will certainly play all DVD's available locally. Only if you get a foreign DVD will it not work, but guess what: the VHS from that region will not work, either!
Many things don't work between countries, such as many electrical appliances, so I don't see this as a big conspiracy.
It's not an issue of being proprietary. I was merely responding to his issue that the DVD association is trying to sell DVD players by curtailing the distribution of software players. Clearly, this is false, because the VOLUME is in Windows. There are hundreds of millions of PC's running Windows, capable of playing DVD's. There are much fewer non-Windows computers capable of playing DVD's (even if they DID have the software available). If the DVD association was interested in selling players, they would go after where the volume is (Windows), not some player for Linux. I do not know how much a software DVD player costs to license, but as I said in my top post, I have not witnessed an increase in the price of video cards, since they started to come with DVD players, so I don't believe they are generating all that much revenue for anyone (besides content providers, of course. but ESR downplays that). I have no doubt that the DVD association is trying to prevent piracy, not trying to sell more players, as ESR's conspiracy theory suggests.
ESR contends that the DVDCA wants to protect players since PC's will compete against DVD players. This argument holds very little water. For starters, Windows has a much larger marketshare than Linux, and Windows machines will compete more against DVD players, but Windows ALREADY had many, many software DVD players. Furthermore, these Windows players are essentially free of cost -- every video card in the world comes with a software DVD player. and I haven't noticed an increase in the price of video cards. So I fail to see how the DVD association is trying to protect investments in hardware players by going after the Linux player, since lots and lots of Windows players exist, at very little cost.
There is other mis-information as well. For example, he contents that DeCSS was developed by Linux hackers, which as we all know isn't true. I get the feeling he hasn't been following the story too well.
Also, is it really true that you can make a bit-for-bit copy? My understanding was that this required specialized hardware, and that commdity DVD reader hardware was not capable of reading special tracks.