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Slashback: Setup, Heck, Servitude [updated]
Getcher Woody in prime operation! You may have noticed the report Saturday that Xfree86 debs are now available, and many readers pointed out problems with setting the newest XFree up. A mysteriously unnamed correspondent writes: "i've written an article to answer some of the questions raised and give an intro into how to set [XFree86 in Debian's unstable tree] up (3dx specifically)."
"Sir, I can't sell this to you without your GPS coordinates. No -- really, store policy." einstein writes "MSN and Radio Shack have gotten together to provide high speed internet access that will cover most of the continental US, looks to be great for rural areas, but the downfalls include: $59.95 a month upfront, for a year, $299 bucks in equipment, only works with Windows 98, and you have to buy a computer from Radio Shack. ugh."
D'ja ever stop to think of it this way ... Mr. Buckaroo writes: "Verant Interactive is again trying to change the license agreement of Everquest to make it legal for them to gather whatever information/files from your machine they deem necessary. They are also changing the agreement to prevent sale of characters, items, etc. I remember when games were just games."
Mr. Buckaroo included the full text of a letter to players from John Smedley Verant Interactive's president and CEO. It's long, but worth reading.Makes you think about the voluntary nature of this and the other software you use, and what you're willing to tolerate on your own system.Dear EverQuest Players,[Updated 4:10GMT by timothy:] Reader Ted Milker set me straight on the above item, writing "That letter you posted about Everquest is months old. And it all came about from Everlore copying EQ Vaults archived news. EQ Vault restored a backup, and one of Everlore's posters decided to "scoop" that story without even reading it very carefully. Ruins of Kunark has been out for months, and April is past." Sheesh -- given game development time, I thought they meant next April! Mea culpa.
An exciting time is now at hand. Within the next 2 days the Login Servers will be coming down and we will be doing a patch that will add the EverQuest Store into the front end of the game. At that time, the first product we will be offering will be the EverQuest: Ruins of Kunark (RoK) upgrade for existing customers. This will allow existing customers of EverQuest to purchase RoK for $16.95 (Plus S&H). In addition, we will offer various shipping options depending on which country you live in. EverQuest: Ruins of Kunark will be launching on April 24th. We want to insure that this product is in everybody's hands on or before that date.In addition to this change, we will also be modifying our User Agreement and Software License to add in some additional Terms and Conditions that we will require everyone to agree to before playing EverQuest.
The first of these changes concerns the selling of EverQuest Characters and Items outside of the game (i.e. things like Ebay). Here is the text of this change:
"You may not sell or auction any EverQuest characters, items, coin or copyrighted material."
You may ask why we are doing this. There are many reasons, but first and foremost of them is the amount of trouble this is causing our Customer Service group. Simply put there area lot of people out there who defraud others and we are being put in the middle of it, and we don't have the time or the resources to assist people with these disputes when they arise. The next reason is amore philosophical one and that is that we believe people should have to earn their items and characters in the game rather than from buying them outside the game. Obviously the second point can be argued from other perspectives that we do in fact respect, but we wanted you to hear ours.
The next change to the User Agreement and Software license concerns our efforts to stop people from hacking EverQuest and from doing malicious acts that we feel can affect EverQuest as an ongoing business concern. We have developed the technology to check for these hacking tools/programs and report that fact back to us. Without getting into the specifics of this technology, I can say that we in no way will search a user's harddrive(aside from the EverQuest directory during the patching process), registry nor will we send back any information other than the fact that a user is in fact running one of these programs (specifically we are NOT sending information about everything the user is running back to our servers).
It's disturbing that the amount of recent developments in the hacking community force us to do this. Many will say "ShowEQ" isn't worth worrying about. To us, it's cheating and it's not something we can allow in a game like EverQuest where it affects other people's enjoyment of the game. In addition, although this is the first time we'll be acknowledging this, ShowEQ isn't the worst offender. Recently we had someone attempting to bring down our servers with another malicious program. We were able to quickly identify what was going on and insure this didn't happen again, but nonetheless the potential is there and we need to be able to quickly identify and stop these types of programs. Again, I want to say it clearly that we will in NO WAY send any information back to the Everquest servers other than information regarding programs that we feel interfere with the intended operation of EverQuest. We have had this technology available for some time, but recently we've found it's going to be necessary to go to greater lengths to stop this kind of thing. To those of you concerned about privacy (and rightly so) I want to say that we feel it's necessary to do this but we want you to be informed that we are going to try these measures to protect both ourselves and the game's players.
Here is the text of this change:
"You hereby grant us permission to download Game-related files to you. You also grant us permission to access, extract and upload(i) Game-related data as part of the patching process and (ii)data relating to any program that we, in our reasonable discretion,determine interferes with the proper operation of EverQuest."
Involuntary servitude is another way to spell "truancy laws" Finally, Part Two of our trek through the Hellmouth is online. Read for more reactions on the world of bullies of all ages, and how to pull through it.
I wonder If EverQuest is Running Back Oriface 2000. Well, a co-worker was telling me I should get EQ, but my reply was, "I'm all set with giving out another $10 a month." Now I can happily add my privacy, and my bandwidth to that.
Gee, Verant is evil, they don't want people using programs that allow them to cheat. Of course, for Lum the Mad's main constituency, one can see why this might be a problem. Verant might be incompetent (ie, the store opening blunder and similar incidents, etc), but they're hardly evil. In any event, Everquest was a great game. It held my attention for several months, which is unusual. It also revolutionized a particular facet of the game market. I know it's influenced my own design choices, and has similarly influenced others (witness the huge spawn of RPGs since Everquest, something that I doubt it due solely to Ultima Online or Gemstone). Everquest also taught us what _not_ to do.
"You hereby grant us permission to download Game-related files to you. You also grant us permission to access, extract and upload(i) Game-related data as part of the patching process and (ii)data relating to any program that we, in our reasonable discretion,determine interferes with the proper operation of EverQuest."
I am a former EQ player.. I no longer have an account on Verant's servers. I also do not wish do conceed to their License change - am I therefore able to receive a refund for this product that I purchased? It is 'no longer the same' product now that they have altered a 'all or nothing' license to use this product.
How the heck are Verant and the like getting away with this type of behaviour? Aren't there laws against this kind of crap? Like fraud, or theft or some such thing?
You just gave the FBI a reason to knock down your door and take all your stuff. Be ready.
I use blackbox because Desktops are too distracting, but KDE2 is almost indistinguishable except for the fact IE Konqueror.
And this is coming from a devoted Gnome user (hey when you want distraction shoot up some panels.)
Course I like to mix them all. Blackbox w/ Konqueror and Gnome panels. Or uwm (god that looks cool just need to hack it to use menu the way even blackbox does), skipstone/galeon/gzilla(they look the same), and KWord.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
I love the fact I can install debs rpms etc on any Linux distro.
Just need packagemanger db converter.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
For that matter, Browne beat Buchanan here by only 68 votes, so my vote helped that margin by nearly 1.5%
Has anybody totted up the national figures for Browne? All the numbers I've seen cover Bush, Gore, Nader, and sometimes Buchanan (I assume they alone were on all 50 states' ballots).
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
I would not go to Whitefish just to sit my ass in front of the computer.
Whitefish = Big Mountain -- a skier's/boarder's dream.
Property is cheap too. You'll see tons of celebrities in Whitefish because you can get a buttload of NICE woodsy property for a fraction of what they pay in Cal/NY/wherever.
If you move to Whitefish and expect to have a decent paying job in the techie industry, you're sick in the head. They just don't have it there.
~dlb
How many cars are there in the world?
People have no problem getting service. It's a whole other question of getting ripped off. There's more regulations and limits in the auto industry (considering it's a 100 year old invention).
Lack of Libc5 compatibility? Does windows support the 286?
Libc5 is half a decade old.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
I guess they'll be knocking on the doors of my school library and confiscating the John F. True computer lab then...
~ The Irony is, The only reason I'm not at Berkeley right now is because I was on acid during my SAT's..
The info regarding having to use Win98 only (and buy the Radio Shack PC) is incorrect. While it is true that you can buy a PC with the satillite modem/software factory installed, you can also use your own PC w/ Win98/98SE/2000/Me. This setup uses a USB modem. The companies partnering to provide this net Sat. net-connection include StarBand, Dish Network, RadioShack, and good ole MS. Specific info on this new service can be found at http://www.starband.com/faq/talk.htm PS. I wonder what else Radio Shack didn't bother to mention to it's employess? Of course, it couldn't be that hardware specs changed!!
The reason why you have to run Win98 is cause the hardware/software required for the satilite link is very propriatary. They won't even sell you the board, it has to be installed at the factory, so that is why you have to buy a new computer when you get it. I worked for RadioShack (TheMan) when they were telling the associates how to sell it. (I thought it was evil and I told my supervisor that, but then, I hated selling the MSN, or the computers (thank you, but I like having a soul))
As far as reverse-enginering the satilite dish, good luck, but it's pretty screwy as I remember. It's done by Microsoft(TheMan), so I'm guessing that it would be next-to-impossible (not a taunt, just an edu-ma-cated guess) to figure out how to get it to work. Authentication would be rather difficult, as it would be hardwired into the software (this is conjecture)
-Peter Hessler
-Peter Hessler
phessler@DELETE.paychex.com
[I'm going to turn things around right now... It works both ways]
It's really because Windows is impossible to support. Redhat 7 is Redhat 7, plain and simple.
So you have Windows?
2/3.0/3.1/3.11/95 original/95A/95B/95 OSR2.5/98/98 SE/Win Me/NT 3.51/NT 4.0/Win2k?
Win16/Win32 built for 95/Win32 built for NT?
IE 3/4/5/5.5/6 beta?
x86/alpha?
Do you have xyz.dll in \windows\system?
Is it in your registry?
Do you have the latest service pack?
Don't forget the lack of proper Win 3.0 compatibility in Win 3.1 and after.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
--
--
fat lenny's gonna lick your brain today.
Before I start reading through source code (already read the docs) can anybody point me to some relevant documentation? Like on a webpage or howto somewhere?
Before somebody starts telling me about xfstt/xtt/xfsft/etc, I already had truetype support working under xfree 3.3.6. But the 4.0 server is supposed to support truetype natively. I'm interested in getting the native support working. Has anybody here done that?
The Web is like Usenet, but
the elephants are untrained.
I was kinda curious about that, too. Seems like everyone is only showing totals for Bush, Gore, Nader and Buchanan nationally. I totalled up the votes at cnn here and came out with this:
.plan.
Gore: 48,852,679
Bush: 48,608,471
Nader: 2,660,122
Buchanan: 442,814
Browne: 379,163
This is as of 12:50pm EDT.
Kinda odd they don't list Browne's total since it is pretty close to Buchanan.
Some day I hope to have a
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
For anyone who missed the news elsewhere, online retailer pets.com, best known for their commercials with their 'professional happy puppet thing' mascot, has announced that they are closing shop and liquidating their assets. They'd been trying to find a buyer or some venture capital since the summer. Quite sad... I like that sock puppet dog.
e s.htmlr y_home.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=YES&oid=-1 2422 &animal=Puppete ase_110700.html
.plan.
LINKS:
pets.com:
http://www.pets.com
commercials:
http://www.adcritic.com/content/pets.com-deliveri
mascot: (remove the space slashdot adds)
http://www.pets.com/cgi-bin/puppy/products/catego
press release:
http://www.pets.com/footer/press_release/pressrel
Why aren't the links in the paragraph?
Because the crappy slashcode bugs destroyed 3 of the URLs. As it is, they will probably show up with spaces that you'll have to remove yourself. Will they ever fix the stupid random tabs and spaces bugs????
Some day I hope to have a
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Mostly he's a loudmouth with great recognition, so he gets covered.
And hell, he did get more votes, much as I hate to admit it.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Heck, even Nader wasn't on all 50 ballots. He was a write-in in four states. In three other states he wasn't even allowed as a write-in candidate. (see here)
.plan.
Some day I hope to have a
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Are you sure it's not just that in places like that they have trouble with writing of any kind?
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
I wouldn't be suprised if it is brought back though, now that Sony owns all of Verant. Sony has lawyers that could potentially back this. And Sony has indicated they want to do similar things. So it wouldn't suprise me at all.
I'm just glad I got off evercrack long ago.
Does anyone have instructions on how to get the rage128 running with DRI? I've got it running with software rendering, but I'd love to have some zip so I can install Q3 :-) Thanks.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
I think left that M$ source code that I hacked in my EverQuest folder!!!!!!!!!
~ The Irony is, The only reason I'm not at Berkeley right now is because I was on acid during my SAT's..
And believe me, the options around here are not great. When my family first signed up for internet access ~4 years ago, there were two choices, and we were only presented with one. The maximum speed was 33.6, and since then has only risen to 56k (for my particular ISP). The service is lowsy, although the stability is decent. A quick check shows almost 3000 accounts.
But recently things have begun to change. The larger ISP in the area was bought out by CenturyTel (national telco). Goodbye customer service, hello broadband. This summer they offered it to customers in Kalispell (larger city by Whitefish), and they recently aquired another small ISP and started offering DSL in even more "rural" areas.
And what was one of the big issues the incumbant senator was running on? Wide spread broadband. I kid you not. According to common knowledge, there is only one pipe in Montana. Its not enough. My school couldn't even get a T1 line. They had to settle for DSL (for an entire school district). There is a district wide technology committee for the schools, and almost everyone recognizes the importance. Despite the lack of broadband, the internet has become very widespread in rural areas, and I can't think of a single friend who doesn't have it.
So I don't know how much of an impact the MS/RS deal will have on the area. We already have DSL in the more urban areas (a town of 4000 has it), for reasonable prices. The only benefit I can foresee is if it prompts the local telcos to built more stations in the rural areas, because DSL does no good at my house, which is many, many miles from the nearest station/DSLAM.
Any maybe timothy would care to comment on why he chose Whitefish? Perhaps he went to the entire-town-including-adults-get-dressed-up-and-pa rty Halloween celebration?
> getting broadband in Whitefish, Montana and other metropolae;
IIRC, Whitefish already has DSL. At the very least, Kalispell and the nearby areas, with (AT&T) cable internet scheduled soon. Hey, we even have a Radio shack!
Me? 7 Miles south of Kalispell sporting (in perpetuity) a 28.8 dialup connection. I'd check into the satellite deal, but that would require actually getting a job.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Why the fuck don't story submitters RTFA?
---
Moderators: I've got tons of accounts, do your worst.
I have NEVER seen a dll version be an issue in troubleshooting a system. The version of IE doesn't matter, its just an app like netscape.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Its because linux is a nightmare to support. Win98 is win98 plain and simple.
So you have linux?
kernel 2.0.x or 2.2.x
glibc or glibc2
xfree 3.3.6 or 4.0
x86 sparc alpha etc etc
did you compile module f00 into your kernel
do you have the latest kernel
See what I'm getting at? Lets not forget the lack of libc5 compatibility in redhat 7.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
According to The Rantings of Lum the Mad, EQ Vault restored an *old* backup of their newsfiles.
Five tons of flax.
Alright, you people, stop insulting people that work for my company. I don't care WHAT your personal experiences are, -I- at least am well respected by my clientele, and I try to keep all of my employees on that end of the spectrum too.
On topic:
You want to hack with the system? Great. Plunk down the $1249 for the full set of equipment, after it's installed and running, open up your shiny new Compaq, yank out the transmit and receive cards, put them in whatever box you choose. Or just install Linux onto your shiny new Compaq. Import Alan Cox to come and hack up some drivers for it. I'm all for it!
StarBand doesn't care, really, that you are using it specifically with Windows, RadioShack could care less that you are using it with Windows, Microsoft might care, but I highly doubt that StarBand or RadioShack could care less.
Now the system uses MSN as your ISP. That's the way it works. I'm sorry if that's unacceptable, but that's the way it is. Would you -rather- wait until 2002 and have DirecPC 2-way using AOL as your ISP? I didn't think so.
As I've said many times before, particularly in the article specifically about StarBand, do whatever the hell you want with the equipment - it's YOUR equipment! Just don't expect that StarBand is going to go out and offer tech support for those cards installed in a machine that hasn't been certified for use with those cards!
Why on earth would a company touting a brand new set of hardware and services go out on a total limb to try and provide support for 025742057 different hardware and software combinations? It doesn't make sense!
They are not trying to exclude Linux, or exclude non-Compaq hardware. Compaq, MSN, and RadioShack have all invested money into this service. RadioShack gets to be the primary retailer, MSN gets to be the ISP, and Compaq gets first dibs on certified hardware to run the T/R cards on.
Can any one of you tell me just what is wrong with this? Anything?
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Verant's attitude is best summed-up by this comic strip. (from 11th of Oct, so yes it's "olds".) Read that day's news for more stuff...
Alright, re-read the article, and then go catch the article from yesterday right here on /. about 2-way satellite. Duh.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Boy, I should not have been in a public lab when I read this. I almost fell out of my chair laughing!
:).
Posts like these make me wish I had some moderator points
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
Every file created by a human is copyrighted, unless the human has made the file public domain or has been dead over 70 years.
I suspect my friend who is adicted to this game won't think twice about the new rules and buy all their upgrades
I only had a slight problem..
/etc/X11/Xserver still had my X server pointing to /usr/bin/X11/XF86_SVGA instead of /usr/bin/X11/XFree86 but then of course I didn't remove xserver-svga.
That was that
The plural "metropolae" is wrong, since it assumes that the word "metropolis" was Latin. It should be "metropoleis" instead, since it's Greek. Just my $0.02, though. :-)
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
One really cool thing that RatShak/MS have done with the Starband (Gilat-to-home) system is bundle it in a uniform system.
The hardware/OS are all the same, so what you get will work- for sure (or break predictably which amounts to the same thing ;-)
This is also cool because the posited hackers will all be on the same page during development, thereby speeding things up a tad.
I have used and participated in beta testing of the Hughes DirecPC system (which once had a commercially available driver for linux) and have found it to be flaky, flaky pastry. Like all systems that use a land line return (the Hybrid Cable Modem in one incarnation springs to mind) tend to blow monkeys with relish. (The Hybrid in bi-directional wireless mode, is most fast and reliable, authentication security aside...)
All reports from Beta testers of the Starband/Gilat systems are much more positive.
Section "Module" ... and others ... ]
Load "dri"
[
EndSection
Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection
in your XF86Config file.
My mom was there a few months ago volunteering through her church at a place called Hope Ranch, which I think is actually quite a ways from Whitefish, but that's the nearest real town or city. (Which do you consider it? I dunno ...)
... but that still needs a phone for outgoing requests. Anything else is way too expensive." Sounds like I'm wrong now, unless there are factors like satellite declination which mean it won't be available there. I'd much rather have internet conectivity than phone, for obvious reasons!
She mentioned that the ranch has no regular phone connection, only a radio to town (though I was unclear as to whether 2-way telephone calls could be had over it). She was asking whether there were ways to get Internet service in a place with no phone lines, and I had to tell her "Well, there's Hughes
That area of the country is so beautiful, I'd rather like to live there if there were lower taxes (sorry to hear about that -- just wrecked my plans!) and good access.
So that's why I picked Whitefish. Besides which, it's the only town I could think of there;)
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The Everquest quote is from six months ago. eqvault's archives were screwed up and they had news from April on their main page this morning
"42"
People, don't worry about this license.
Eventually, Everquest's company will download some copyrighted file off someone's hard drive, and a full license lawyer war will ensue!
Ah, I love proprietary licenses. When people realize what this says, they'll stop buying it. As Everquest is sued.
Think of it as the natural selection of the freeest (think speech, not beer) licenses over the most restrictive.
|/usr/games/fortune
Companies are now scared of what hackers (the full force of the Open Source/Free Software leaders) can do to their hardware. Thus, they prevent us from using through patents and restrictive store agreements.
I say someone gets a bundle of those dishes from RadioShack and resells them. Or, use the copy of Win98 that came with your last computer, and tell 'em "I have Win98; see?" Then, use it with Linux and help the community find the secrets behind it.
As we've seen with Lego Mindstorms, hacking HELPS the companies, not hurts. Show them that as well.
In due course, companies won't be scared of us because of what we can do; they'll be scared of us not buying their products, as our numbers continue to soar!
Long live hackers!
|/usr/games/fortune
Verant backed down and does not scan people's computer for 'unauthorized' programs.
Verant are still evil, but his particular evil episode happened almost 6 months ago
-----
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
But think about it: how many licenses actually grant license to the wild behavior of the manufacturer?
This could be the advent of a whole new battle, not so easily dismissed in court by those who have signed the EULA but regard the contract as absurd. What happens when Microsoft starts reserving the rights openly for the dirty tricks they used to have to do in secret?
In an unusual move, Microsoft has filed suit against the online gaming company Everquest.
A Microsoft Spokesperson explained that the wording of their new License Agreement gave them the right to obtain copyrighted Microsoft Materials from their users. The offending part of the License Agreement appears below:
"...data relating to any program that we, in our reasonable discretion,determine interferes with the proper operation of EverQuest."
Microsoft has admitted that some functions of Windows can inhibit and interfere with the proper operation of Everquest, and that this new License agreement prompted them to take action.
What happened was that EQvault, an EverQuest game news site, lost their database. As they pressured their ISP to recover the most recent backup, they ran the site on an older database.. one from April.
It just so happened that the press release up above was the news posted that day.. and for most of this morning, it was the top story on EQvault. ;)
Was kind of funny watching smaller news sites leech the information; kind of gave an example of how many people steal news from other sites without ever READING it. Highly amusing to see it appear on Slashdot, though I must admit, I'm not entirely surprised. :)
Hi.
I tried these instructions earlier today, but had to slightly modify them. Instead of:
dpkg --purge xserver-svga; apt-get update; apt-get install task-x-window-system libglide3*
I had to do:
dpkg --purge xserver-svga; apt-get update; apt-get install task-x-window-system* libglide3*
This made sure that I got task-x-window-system-core which has, among other things, dexter and xf86cfg.
Anyway, not a big deal, but that fixed it up for me.
Oh yeah, one more thing: When I patched 2.2.17 for the newest 2.2.18pre the compile failed on root.c: 643 in the proc area, any hints? I ended out just going with 2.4.0pre10, so now I get better SMP blah blah blah..
Sorry for rambling, hope the above helps...
Ben
- Wedg
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;