The EFF just got the money I had been thinking about spending on a DVD player. BTW - didn't some of the earlier articles mention that certain key clauses of the DMCA don't even start applying until October of this year?
most of the programmers that I know who use both languages would prefer to debug 20 year old COBOL than 8 year old C.
But I bet all of them (the sane ones anyway) would rather write something new with C. COBOL is a hideous language, on a par with Visual Basic;)
Only if you haven't updated your compiler in the last decade or so. Recent COBOLs are roughly even feature-wise with ANSI C as far as language constructs go and do have the advantage of being much easier to do things like indexed file I/O, screen input/output and accurate math (accountants get real picky about that).
Given my druthers, I would use a modern language instead of either one. C is just too close to a macro assembler, neither is really good for graphics or networking and they're both showing their age by now. By now, programming in either one basically serves to remind me of why I prefer Java, PHP and Perl.
COBOL is just too verbose a language to obfuscate in the way you can obfuscate C. This does have its virtues, though - most of the programmers that I know who use both languages would prefer to debug 20 year old COBOL than 8 year old C.
As for head-bashing, I agree that Motif & gtk are both wacky to program for, but what graphical API isn't? Have you ever heard anybody say that they *love* this toolkit or that one?
I've heard people say this about the BeOS API, which is actually pretty nice. Generally things just work the way you'd expect. I'm not entirely sure why, but it also feels like a more "comfortable" GUI than any of the X stuff.
I doubt that would be the case legally. More importantly, it doesn't control the viewing equipment. Either all viewing falls into "exhibition or broadcast" and is thus explicitly authorized on purchase or none of it does.
Any unauthorised copying, editing, exhibition, renting, exchanging, hiring, lending, public performances and/or broadcasts of this digital video disc or any part thereof is strictly prohibited
There's nothing in there about viewing a DVD. You can't copy it, edit it, set up an exhibition or public performance, rent it, etc. but there is NO clause prohibiting private not-for-fee playback, which is the intended market of DVDs sold to consumers.
the Democrats have been much more concerned with civil liberties such as freedom of speech and assembly
Unless, of course, you wish to be politically incorrect or espouse something that they do not agree with (Tipper Gore ring any bells?). However reprehensible you find someone else's beliefs, the 1st ammendment still applies.
If you're for freedom of speech, be honest and avoid both parties. Watching both parties try to meddle has driven a lot of people to the Libertarians...
And why is this good? Microsoft enforcing security would be a good thing, instead of continuing to ship horribly insecure systems to avoid forcing lousy programmers to clean up their code.
Microsoft's problem has always been lack of discipline - their software is the worst offender in the overwriting system files on install category. That's why they didn't do the right thing - it would have involved admitting that they had routinely broken security and stability out of sheer laziness.
If you walk into a store selling games, the vast majority are targetting the "Hey, it moved. Kill it! Whoa cool explosions!" market, which is predominantly male. Anyone who prefers games which involve more thought than reflexes is largely ignored, regardless of gender. There really aren't many games which rise above the twitch-fest level. When this changes, I think we'll see more gamers overall.
No more copyright, trademark, infringement, legal action or otherwise stories for today please, thank you. Let's just set up "Slashmark--News for Lawyers. Stuff that's argued forever." Also, anyone else here think lawsuits for linking to "blah" is lame? Can I sue a search engine yet?
I strongly doubt anyone here would mind never hearing about legal matters again. Unfortunately, the lawyers keep suing people and it's only by getting public attention that these idiot suits are fought.
What you are implying is that anyone can at any time take away something that I pay for is that right? Why dosn't anyone have any right to post to usenet? Who says?[...] I challenge the concept that just because I am on the internet that I have to follow someone's little "code of ethics"
It's almost scary to think that anyone could misunderstand the Internet on so many levels. Nobody will make you follow the rules of a community but they certainly can choose to ignore you completely when you don't. Your ISP carries packets to other networks; once a packet leaves their network they have no obligation as there is nothing they can do at that point. USENET works exactly the same way - your ISP lets you post to their server but they cannot force anyone else to put your posts on their servers.
I mean if I pay $$ to post and access usenet then that's what I am paying for.... if I don't want to follow them then I am still legally entitled to use the net in all it's forms.
Where are you entitled to anything of the sort? It's not in your ISP's contract and there's no legal backing whatsoever - where does this magical entitlement come from?
Are there no web browsers or terminals in your world? You can access USENET from anything capable of browsing the web, as well as the built in news clients in programs like Opera or Netscape, to say nothing of the numerous stand-alone programs that could be run on dedicated news-stations.
Ahh maybe you should talk to the paranoid people who run the terminals where I live and tell them that I am sure they wouldn't even care. I have never even heard of a stand alone news station in my life (not that it isn't possible). Why haven't more of the freebie e-mail people operate more of a news access system? What are they affraid of? If I have an operating budget like yahoo.com or hotmail.com of over $20,000,000 a year to do what I please with my technology what is the hold up?
Ask them. It's their business to run as they see fit...
Actually, on second thought, the last thing we need is another idiot on USENET: Forget I said anything at all about USENET being easy to access in a number of different ways. It's really very hard and confusing, far too complicated for anyone to want to use it. No fun at all. Stick to AOL - you'll fit right in there.
Well I think that this was a rather bold and audacious move by people. Concidentally is this legal? What happens if for example I am a researcher and want to send a usenet posting to someone and I use the @home service what then? Guess I'm screwed by the "wonderful" community.
It's entirely legal, and ethical as well. You have no innate right to post to USENET. Being a part of any community means that you agree to play by its rules. The Usenet Death Penalty is a last-resort measure and the disruption of innocent users is the entire point, as they may be able to get a non-responsive news admin to prevent further abuse of USENET by their users. Would you consider yourself screwed if your neighbors took legal action because your house had raw sewage spraying out into the street?
My opinion of usenet is general is bad because there are no (hint here) easy to access methods for people using what I would term "public access terminals" where you cannot easily change things and add programs and such. Telnet usually could work but would generally suck.
Are there no web browsers or terminals in your world? You can access USENET from anything capable of browsing the web, as well as the built in news clients in programs like Opera or Netscape, to say nothing of the numerous stand-alone programs that could be run on dedicated news-stations.
Free Clue: @Home service depends almost entirely on the cable company in your area. Amazingly enough, this holds true for any other sort of service!
I've used @Home with Cox in San Diego for something like 2 years at this point. Outside of the #%^#^ 128Kb outbound cap (vs. 400KBs pre-cap), the service has been good - I've had one or two outages over that entire period, maybe 10 hours total - you won't get a contract specifying that kind of uptime with a dedicated line without a LOT of money & effort! While I don't often see >1.1MB/s transfers, that's more the remote server than anything else; I frequently see 800KB/s+ agregate. I've never had a setup problem in spite of the fact that it's only been the last 2 months that I've had a computer in my house running a supported OS.
You forget the fact that Malda and crew are the only people smart enough to understand the code.
I have to agree. Based on what slashdot.org users see, it seems very safe to say that Rob & the rest are not the best programmers using the site. Even if the clueless types have problems (isn't that a law of nature?) it'd at least quiet people up if he'd do a "Take-it-or-leave-it" release...
Because MOST users don't really need SCSI. MOST users prefer the extra CPU speed to the minor improvment SCSI is. MOST users won't notice the difference between SCSI and IDE.
Of course, to be fair most users would probably stop noticing a difference past the P233MMX/32MB/IDE mark as well. If all you're doing is Office, email and web browsing, the user or the network will be the bottleneck...
Or how secure would you feel if the United States government suddenly dropped all restrictions on owning firearms?
The same as I do now. I've yet to hear of a criminal deciding to give up crime because they couldn't buy an M60 and had to settle for a pistol or rifle. Also, have you been paying any attention at all to the news for the last decade or two? Even in places like England which have much stronger gun-control laws, people like the IRA didn't seem to have any trouble killing people in various nasty fashions.
Besides, all the yahoos who might have bought M60s now make fertilizer bombs. This has not improved my sense of security...
Anyway, it is sad, but those two examples do seem justified to me. When you commit a crime, it not only affects you, but those around you as well. If a restauranteur is going to put nearly $20,000 and his car in the hands of an employee, he should take certain precautions, such as drug tests and what not. If the employee ran away with the money, the restauranteur would nonetheless be out $20k. You could probably sue the individual for the property/money, but chances are it would take many decades for them to repay it.
Let me get this straight - in your opinion, the fact that a dishonest employee could abscond with your property means the police should steal it?
Do note that your business insurance would probably cover the loss of your property due to theft but not if the police steal it^W^Whelp protect the children, significantly increasing the cost of the theft. Also, those drug test are annoying, expensive and time consuming - can anyone envision this conversation: Small Business Owner: Hey Fred - we're out of 2x4s - can you take the truck and get some from Home Despot real fast? Fred: Okay SBO: Oh wait I forgot. Here, take a whiz in this tube and we'll wait a couple days for the results so I can give you the keys.
It's not even vehicles - would you consider it right for the police to confiscate your house if you had a party at which (entirely unknown to you and against your instructions) one of the partygoers (or even a party-crasher) had a small quantity of a controlled substance?
Of course, if we really wanted to illustrate how insane the laws are, this could even have been a small amount of pot belonging to someone who is taking it medicinally, which has been legalized in some states (although the feds are pretending they've never heard of that whole "powers reserved to the states" clause). Remember too that all of your assets and possibly those of friends, family or your employer (depending on how nasty they want to be) could be seized until you proved yourself innocent over the course of many [expensive] years in court...
Almost lauded? I've noticed many of the luser-types patting one another on the back for their stupidity, practically reveling in it. Just plain pitiful, if you ask me.
I was trying to err on the diplomatic side in my original post, but I must agree. I've run into that more than a couple times myself...
Actually, one of the best ways to reduce congestion is to reduce the speed limit. For safe driving, every car needs a minimum amount of space between it and the car in front. This space is measured in units of time, the standard minimum being ~2sec (I think). The size (in ft) of this two second gap will vary based on what speed you are traveling. A two second gap at 40 mph is much shorter (in ft) than a two second gap at 80mph. Thus, a given amount of highway can safely hold less vehicles at a high speed.
However, if the average vehicle is travelling faster they'll be on that section of highway for a shorter period of time. It's a delicate balance that needs to be tuned for each freeway - too fast, and you'll get accidents from people who can't handle it. Too slow, and you'll have backups on every connecting stretch feeding traffic into the system.
(Cynically, I must note that although the safe distance should increase with speed, 90% of the drivers don't bother. Similarly, it's safer and far more efficient for people to move at a consistent [slow] speed while in a traffic jam than to do the whole start-stop-kamikaze-lane-change bit. Of course, I think we'd all agree that bad drivers are by far the worst risk.)
To move more cars through a given stretch of road during a set interval, you need to either widen the road or decrease the amount of time each car spends in it. Since widening the freeway is impractical in many cases, I think the real answer is to keep people off of the road. Public transportation needs to be taken seriously and I'd like it if a driver's license was almost as hard to get as a pilot's license (skill-wise, not cost-wise). Every day on my drive to work, I see at least one driver who simply should not be on the road...
This must be why I've never found PvP remotely amusing - it's almost as if some people have different tastes in humor.
More seriously, I think there's a very real distinction he's completely missed between people who don't know something and those who won't know it. Everyone's been in the first group at some point. Membership in the second group, however, requires someone to resist any attempt to learn about the tools they're using. Almost everyone would find it ridiculous if someone refused to learn how to drive a car but insisted on driving anyway ("What do you mean I have to get a license? I paid $BIGNUM for this car and I want to drive it NOW!"); sadly the same behaviour with a computer is not only accepted but almost lauded in certain circles...
Really, forget about guns, nuclear terrorists, earthquakes, etc. My biggest fear every day is dying on the road in a car accident (statistically it's my greatest chance of dying). Speed limiters are a long time coming.
Why do people feel the need to go 100+ MPH? If you like driving fast, then go to a race track or ride a bike as fast as you can. I use my car mainly to drive to work every day. It's silly putting everyone's life at risk on the roads because someone feels the need to "rebel" against the goverment by driving dangerously faster than everyone else. Driving is a privilege, not a right.
I'd agree with you if there was the slightest connection between the current speed limits and the safe speed for a given stretch of highway. Does anyone really think that 65MPH is the maximum safe speed for both a curvy 2-lane highway in the mountains and a 4-lane arrow-straight highway through flat ground in the desert?
I'd prefer it if we could have limits set per road (there are some freeways which should be at 85-115 because it's safe and it would help reduce the traffic congestion which is the real danger) and focus more on the basic speed law (drive at a speed which is safe).
The speed differential between cars is the real danger.Moving at the speed of traffic is much safer than following the speed limit - I've been on freeways in bad weather where 40MPH would qualify as "maniac speed" because everyone else is going 15MPH due to very low visibility and poor road conditions; I've also been on freeways where the average speed is approaching 95-100MPH and there was little danger because everyone was going roughly the same speed and it was not inherently unsafe for the freeway in question.
<RANT> I'd also like it if the police would pull over people driving slowly in the left lane(s) and explain the whole "Slower traffic move right" concept. I've seen this cause accidents, while I've never seen one caused strictly by speeding (as opposed to speeding while driving like a moron)... </RANT>
It would be nice if the people with article posting access would share a common dictionary. Don't we cover into the "Hacker != Cracker" rant often enough? Should we even need to discuss why "Red Caps" is lame?
Slashdot Mirror
The EFF just got the money I had been thinking about spending on a DVD player. BTW - didn't some of the earlier articles mention that certain key clauses of the DMCA don't even start applying until October of this year?
Given my druthers, I would use a modern language instead of either one. C is just too close to a macro assembler, neither is really good for graphics or networking and they're both showing their age by now. By now, programming in either one basically serves to remind me of why I prefer Java, PHP and Perl.
COBOL is just too verbose a language to obfuscate in the way you can obfuscate C. This does have its virtues, though - most of the programmers that I know who use both languages would prefer to debug 20 year old COBOL than 8 year old C.
I doubt that would be the case legally. More importantly, it doesn't control the viewing equipment. Either all viewing falls into "exhibition or broadcast" and is thus explicitly authorized on purchase or none of it does.
If you're for freedom of speech, be honest and avoid both parties. Watching both parties try to meddle has driven a lot of people to the Libertarians...
Was I the only one thinking a visit by photo.net would have helped a couple of those photos?
Microsoft's problem has always been lack of discipline - their software is the worst offender in the overwriting system files on install category. That's why they didn't do the right thing - it would have involved admitting that they had routinely broken security and stability out of sheer laziness.
If you walk into a store selling games, the vast majority are targetting the "Hey, it moved. Kill it! Whoa cool explosions!" market, which is predominantly male. Anyone who prefers games which involve more thought than reflexes is largely ignored, regardless of gender. There really aren't many games which rise above the twitch-fest level. When this changes, I think we'll see more gamers overall.
Actually, on second thought, the last thing we need is another idiot on USENET:
Forget I said anything at all about USENET being easy to access in a number of different ways. It's really very hard and confusing, far too complicated for anyone to want to use it. No fun at all. Stick to AOL - you'll fit right in there.
I've used @Home with Cox in San Diego for something like 2 years at this point. Outside of the #%^#^ 128Kb outbound cap (vs. 400KBs pre-cap), the service has been good - I've had one or two outages over that entire period, maybe 10 hours total - you won't get a contract specifying that kind of uptime with a dedicated line without a LOT of money & effort! While I don't often see >1.1MB/s transfers, that's more the remote server than anything else; I frequently see 800KB/s+ agregate. I've never had a setup problem in spite of the fact that it's only been the last 2 months that I've had a computer in my house running a supported OS.
Besides, all the yahoos who might have bought M60s now make fertilizer bombs. This has not improved my sense of security...
Do note that your business insurance would probably cover the loss of your property due to theft but not if the police steal it^W^Whelp protect the children, significantly increasing the cost of the theft. Also, those drug test are annoying, expensive and time consuming - can anyone envision this conversation:
Small Business Owner: Hey Fred - we're out of 2x4s - can you take the truck and get some from Home Despot real fast?
Fred: Okay
SBO: Oh wait I forgot. Here, take a whiz in this tube and we'll wait a couple days for the results so I can give you the keys.
It's not even vehicles - would you consider it right for the police to confiscate your house if you had a party at which (entirely unknown to you and against your instructions) one of the partygoers (or even a party-crasher) had a small quantity of a controlled substance?
Of course, if we really wanted to illustrate how insane the laws are, this could even have been a small amount of pot belonging to someone who is taking it medicinally, which has been legalized in some states (although the feds are pretending they've never heard of that whole "powers reserved to the states" clause). Remember too that all of your assets and possibly those of friends, family or your employer (depending on how nasty they want to be) could be seized until you proved yourself innocent over the course of many [expensive] years in court...
(Cynically, I must note that although the safe distance should increase with speed, 90% of the drivers don't bother. Similarly, it's safer and far more efficient for people to move at a consistent [slow] speed while in a traffic jam than to do the whole start-stop-kamikaze-lane-change bit. Of course, I think we'd all agree that bad drivers are by far the worst risk.)
To move more cars through a given stretch of road during a set interval, you need to either widen the road or decrease the amount of time each car spends in it. Since widening the freeway is impractical in many cases, I think the real answer is to keep people off of the road. Public transportation needs to be taken seriously and I'd like it if a driver's license was almost as hard to get as a pilot's license (skill-wise, not cost-wise). Every day on my drive to work, I see at least one driver who simply should not be on the road...
More seriously, I think there's a very real distinction he's completely missed between people who don't know something and those who won't know it. Everyone's been in the first group at some point. Membership in the second group, however, requires someone to resist any attempt to learn about the tools they're using. Almost everyone would find it ridiculous if someone refused to learn how to drive a car but insisted on driving anyway ("What do you mean I have to get a license? I paid $BIGNUM for this car and I want to drive it NOW!"); sadly the same behaviour with a computer is not only accepted but almost lauded in certain circles...
I'd prefer it if we could have limits set per road (there are some freeways which should be at 85-115 because it's safe and it would help reduce the traffic congestion which is the real danger) and focus more on the basic speed law (drive at a speed which is safe).
The speed differential between cars is the real danger.Moving at the speed of traffic is much safer than following the speed limit - I've been on freeways in bad weather where 40MPH would qualify as "maniac speed" because everyone else is going 15MPH due to very low visibility and poor road conditions; I've also been on freeways where the average speed is approaching 95-100MPH and there was little danger because everyone was going roughly the same speed and it was not inherently unsafe for the freeway in question.
<RANT> I'd also like it if the police would pull over people driving slowly in the left lane(s) and explain the whole "Slower traffic move right" concept. I've seen this cause accidents, while I've never seen one caused strictly by speeding (as opposed to speeding while driving like a moron)... </RANT>
It would be nice if the people with article posting access would share a common dictionary. Don't we cover into the "Hacker != Cracker" rant often enough? Should we even need to discuss why "Red Caps" is lame?