Americans pay far less for movies and music than the rest of the world
What the shit? Why am I not living in wretched excess inside some friggin' awesome mansion that someone else cleans? How is it that damn near everything is supposely more expensive everywhere outside of America? In America, gas is cheap, music's cheap, movies are cheap, etc. It's always "what are you whining about, is way less expensive in America than." Well, damn it, are wages way higher everywhere else, too? I really want to know. I make somewhere around twice the wages of the typical American household, but I sure don't feel like a bazillionaire driving my 10-year-old car and parking it outside at my 800 square foot house with the lawn that takes roughly 15 minutes to mow with a push mower. Somehow, though, every argument that involves prices going up for something implies that America is the land of the perpetual bargain.
I wonder if, maybe, people are just full of shit? Like, perhaps fuel is "more expensive" due to the insane taxes that Europeans pay at the pump while Americans pay elsewhere, and maybe the extra $3 that I'd pay for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at amazon.co.uk is due to the cost of shipping, since I'd have to pay about $3 to get the DVD shipped to my house v/s free shipping there? I know, there's lots of "world" outside of Europe, but I don't know Amazon's African or South American sites off the top of my head (which is kinda strange now that I think about it, given the location of the Amazon).
Either way, it's pretty astonishing for a little art film like this to not only do those box office numbers, but to be ranking so high in DVD pre-orders.
Well, astonishing to someone who managed to totally avoid the media for the several months prior to its release, perhaps. Any film that gets *that* much publicity from every damned news source on the planet is bound to make a little money. I personally think it's pathetic that it *only* made that much. Then, I didn't see it - largely because I don't like cowboy movies (or shepard movies) or love stories. A combination of the two, esp. when combined with secret buttsecks, is a recipie for something I won't likely pay theater fees to see. Apparently, I'm not alone in that perception (though, I don't plan to pay to own or rent the DVD either).:)
Why don't they put a firewall in cable modems, if it's already being half a router anyway??
cost. More logic costs more money. That said, some of them are including that kind of functionailty now, but I don't have any direct experience with any of those.:)
complexity. If the user can change packet filtering rules around, that's one more fairly complicated step the phone "techs" have to be trained to deal with.
Recommendations on ordinary consumer routers??
I'd probably point you in the direction of Linksys. They're available everywhere, they're relatively inexpensive, they're part of Cisco now, and I've had good luck with Linksys stuff in general. I really like SnapGear's Lite2 (discontinued?) and Lite2+ (which is now the SG300), personally, largely for the configurability (it's just an embedded linux box running ipchains - and ou can insert arbitrary rules if the web interface is inadequate) and the "it pretty much just works out of the box" feature. But they cost a little more than typical "consumer grade" stuff, somewhere in the ~$200 range, IIRC. Then again, it's a VPN server/client, real firewall, and generally has a lot more features (that someone like you may very well never use) than the ~$50 BEFSR41.
I didn't know USR was separate again. I stopped using a modem around the time of the merge.:) Though I've got several external USR modems and a few internal (hardware-only, thank you) laying around "just in case"...
There are routers, and then there are the things that are usually called "firewalls" which differ from "just a router" in the ability to apply filtering rules more complex than just physical port and IP address, usually at least including the protocol and port, and probably also including things like network address translation (make all your internal machines look like one external IP address) and packet mangling (send stuff coming in destined for port 25 to an internal machine on port 1425). The thing connecting your home's network to the cable company, for example, is generally called a "cable modem" but it's really a bridge, which as far as I'm concerned is a router. But it doesn't typically do "firewall stuff".
Regarding the DHCP server, well, most of the home firewall solutions have things like a built-in hub and some basic services like web-based administration and a simple DHCP server. It's convenient to just tell your PCs to use DHCP - which is the default config for most everything - then do all of your configuration on the router. It makes your home network basically "just plug it in and go" for new machines and things like webcams, etc. Even if it's on a UPS, if the power goes out for, say, half a day or more - you'll probably have things go down and come back up later. I get irritated when my machines can't boot unattended, and if the windows machines are getting zeroconf addresses because the DHCP server wasn't running when they booted, it makes things annoying.
Do feel free to email me for further discussion, since posting's apt to be disabled one day soon, and I keep forgetting to check for updates.:) Username's danny, domain's dannysauer.com.
I'm glad that some of "them" do resist the calls for information, but for how long?
Precisely why I run my own mail server. My mail goes to my house on a machine I own. It might pass through a relay or two on its way, but generally mai lonly passes from the sender's ISP to my network. Same with my web presence, etc. While I do generally trust my ISP to keep my information secure, I trust myself a lot more. And since I qualify as an ISP due to the way information passes through my machines, the laws do a bit more to protect my equipment than if I was just a random home user (just a bit, though)...
Ahhh, tin cans. I remember when US Robotics was a company separate from 3Com too...:)
Just remember "cloudmaster said I need a packet-filtering router to act as a firewall" when you upgrade.:) And spring for an embedded solution (something like a snapgear unit or cisco pix 501, for example) - full PCs take too darned long to boot. Long boot times are annoying when your router's also your DHCP server, and your house loses power.
Well, I just figured that you're on/. and have multiple PCs, so they're probably networked and you're probably on broadband.:) If not, then nevermind. Mostly.:)
ZoneAlarm? You mean that software that doesn't do anything but pop up ominous warnings about "atampted attacks" to make people more paranoid so they feel compelled to upgrade to the new version? Or maybe I'm thinking of Black Ice...
Eh, whatever works for you - and that obviously works. As a security professional, though, I feel compelled to suggest the installation of a packet-filtering router (which is what *I* mean when I say firewall) between the internet and your home network.;)
The problem is that it's difficult to implement the blacklising functionality. The whitelist is easy enough, because most phone books can handle the whitelist needs of a typical user. But it's entirely plausible for someone to *not* want to talk to more people than the phone can easily store in the existing contact list - which is the only way to implement a blacklist presently. The phone would have to have enough space to store everyone you want to talk to (since that's what the contact list is for) *and* everyone you don't want to talk to.
So the idea is to come up with some software that will allow the end-user to basically develop a larger contact list which only stores phone numbers, and doesn't waste space with all of the other junk that can potentially be stored for a contact. In other words, there needs to be a way of effectively getting around the limitations imposed by most typical contact lists.
Why couldn't they charge you for it? What's the difference between the voice data going to your phone and playing out a speaker, or voice data going to your phone and being recorded? The same data goes over the network either way - and since I don't pay for voice mail calls, it'd actually make my provider *more* money...
But 10-15 of those wrong number calls won't leave you a message if your voicemail message doesn't suck (ie, just say your name in the message). If they hang up before the recording part starts, every voicemail system I've used simply doesn't record anything - so I'm not notified.
I set my phone up to only ring for people in my contact list, and just vibrate otherwise. Makes it relatively easy to ignore calls unless I'm expecting a call from someone off my list...
Warning for pedants; general overview instead of technically accurate summary following:
Well, with Win2K MS moved to the NT hardware access model, which changes the way software accesses the hardware. With Win98 and prior (maybe ME, I forget), you were basically running DOS and could directly access the hardware pretty much however you wanted. With NT and later, you essentially have to ask the OS to get to the hardware, which is just a little more difficult. So this specialized external stuff which depends on direct access to hardware woudl require a fair amount of rework to develop on post-'98 Windows. Since it's often old and unsuported, or just not making enough money to justify compeltely rewriting drivers, the PCs end up having to stay with DOS or Win 95/98.
Presumably you're also behind a decent firewall, since a whole bunch of the security updates require a reboot, and an XP box that's almost a year out-of-date on security is a scary thing indeed...;)
Apples and oranges. If one laptop weighs more and runs programs slower, but manages to get 5 bits/second more out of its 802.11g interface than another, it'd be stupid to announce the one with slightly faster WI-FI as the "best laptop". No one buys a laptop for fast networking, and even those that do aren't gonna notice the marginal speed improvement on the networking speed - or the marginal speed difference in Photoshop. Esp. if all the other programs are faster on another laptop...
As far as running CPU-intensive stuff from the comfort of your chair - I generally sit on the couch when I'm doing that too. But I'm using VNC or XDM (depnds where I am) to run the programs on a real computer and using my pansy-assed laptop as a display. With the several thousand dollars I saved by admitting to myself that I'll never get as much computing power out of a laptop, I was able to get an even faster desktop workstation, and new tires on my car.;)
But.. but... he has a system monitor thingie. Sure, the system monitor thingie doesn't do any logging, trend analysis, or alerting when things get out of bounds, but it makes pretty graphs! It's a sysadmin tool! And aterm, why, just think of the benefits it offers over the xterm which comes with X. It has, umm, transparency. Yay, transparency! Oh, and it's been dead for 5 years (ignoring the spurt of activity early in 2005 since, looking at the changelog, all they did between 0.4 in 2001 and 1.0 in 2005 was to fix some background/transparency issues).
Let's say you're a politician running for office. Your opponent finds that you're on a list of people who "either watch R-rated or X-rated content". There's no way to know the difference. The media reports that you're on a list where people who want to watch X-rated content declare their intent. Which story gets more attention, "politician on x-rated viewer list" or "no, really, I just wanted to see R-rate content"? If the person who ruined your good name ends up with a tiny fine or a month in prison, is your reputation somehow magically cleared?
Ask Pete Townsend what he thinks about this kind of thing - being accused of child pornography didn't go away when it came out that he was only doing valid research. People still think he just molests kids. People are stupid, even if you and I aren't.
So I'm curious, why does Photoshop being faster on one laptop than another mean anything? Surely if you care about all-out photoshop performance, you'll have a desktop machine with a real power supply to drive real processors, room for real memory, and a real display? This laptop's slower for almost everything else, and not appropriate for the onething it's faster at.
Yay benchmarks.:( I'd be more imperssed if they laid the laptops out on a table at a college library and timed which one got stolen fastest. That'd test the *real* value of each laptop...
Are you drawing copies of powerpoint slides, one per page? How in the hell do you get 20 full 8.5x11 pages of notes in a single class period? I think you're confusing transcription with taking notes...
Yes, it's amusing that I found the part at teh Wal Mart next door to RS.
And now that you mention it, I do remember not too long ago being surprised that all of the discrete components like resistors, LEDs, RF connectors, etc all were moved into a set of drawers instead of being hung up on the walls like they used to be. Guess they needed more room for a few more cell phone providers and some junk computer accessories.
Pornography and violence is enjoyed by many adults legally in Australia, so there should be no stigma attached to that
But there is.
Pornography does not have to be X rated and violence does not have to be the very worst of the worst that can be found on the net.
It doesn't matter - the same flag on an account is required to get the movie poster from "Lethal Weapon" as to get a full hour-long prison gang rape movie. The "don't filter my connection" request likely won't have a "why" associated. Combine that with sensationalistic media, and you've got an instant list of perverts and deviants, whether or not the people are actually deviant (not that there's anything wrong with that) or maybe just wanted unrestricted acess to medical imagery. They're all lumped into the same category, and *that* is what's frightening.
Re:Messed up sudoers
on
Sudo vs. Root
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
In addition to the other comments about using visudo (which respects the EDITOR env. variable, so if you really wanna use pico or whatever, just run "EDITOR=pico visudo"), you should always leave an active shell runnuing when you're editing something that could potentially break login access. Editing the main authentication scheme in pam.d/? Editing sudoers? Changing nsswitch.conf around? Make sure that you already have a root shell open in another terminal - either another xterm, a virtual console, or something else. Save your changes, make sure they worked, and if not, you can usually use the already-open root shell to change it back.
Yes, this is the voice of experience with breaking just about everything at some point or another - it's how you learn. Well, it's one way *I* learn, anyway.:)
They don't sell any car radios or the adaptor you might need if you want to hook up the radio antenna in your GM vehicle to your new car radio. The employee told me they don't sell "that kind of stuff" anymore...
Does the production of children (both the heavy breating at the initial stage and the creation of another organizm which consumes oxygen and produces CO2) count? Having kids really should be restricted, both to keep the population down (no more resource straining) and to keep too much CO2 from being put into the atmosphere. Since you can't prove carbon dioxide to be safe, should you be made to stop producing it?
No, that's silly? Well, at what level do we worry about it? And do we check every single gas emitted by every single process that produces any kind of gas? Shall there be flying gas monitors that detect gas emissions of everything that produces anything, issuing citations for those who are not licensesd to produce a particular gas? And what about combinations of gasses which aren't realy harmful alone, but combine to create things like acid rain?
Honestly, I'm not sure that the burden should fall exclusively on either side...
Slashdot Mirror
Americans pay far less for movies and music than the rest of the world
." Well, damn it, are wages way higher everywhere else, too? I really want to know. I make somewhere around twice the wages of the typical American household, but I sure don't feel like a bazillionaire driving my 10-year-old car and parking it outside at my 800 square foot house with the lawn that takes roughly 15 minutes to mow with a push mower. Somehow, though, every argument that involves prices going up for something implies that America is the land of the perpetual bargain.
What the shit? Why am I not living in wretched excess inside some friggin' awesome mansion that someone else cleans? How is it that damn near everything is supposely more expensive everywhere outside of America? In America, gas is cheap, music's cheap, movies are cheap, etc. It's always "what are you whining about, is way less expensive in America than
I wonder if, maybe, people are just full of shit? Like, perhaps fuel is "more expensive" due to the insane taxes that Europeans pay at the pump while Americans pay elsewhere, and maybe the extra $3 that I'd pay for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at amazon.co.uk is due to the cost of shipping, since I'd have to pay about $3 to get the DVD shipped to my house v/s free shipping there? I know, there's lots of "world" outside of Europe, but I don't know Amazon's African or South American sites off the top of my head (which is kinda strange now that I think about it, given the location of the Amazon).
Either way, it's pretty astonishing for a little art film like this to not only do those box office numbers, but to be ranking so high in DVD pre-orders.
:)
Well, astonishing to someone who managed to totally avoid the media for the several months prior to its release, perhaps. Any film that gets *that* much publicity from every damned news source on the planet is bound to make a little money. I personally think it's pathetic that it *only* made that much. Then, I didn't see it - largely because I don't like cowboy movies (or shepard movies) or love stories. A combination of the two, esp. when combined with secret buttsecks, is a recipie for something I won't likely pay theater fees to see. Apparently, I'm not alone in that perception (though, I don't plan to pay to own or rent the DVD either).
Recommendations on ordinary consumer routers??
I'd probably point you in the direction of Linksys. They're available everywhere, they're relatively inexpensive, they're part of Cisco now, and I've had good luck with Linksys stuff in general. I really like SnapGear's Lite2 (discontinued?) and Lite2+ (which is now the SG300), personally, largely for the configurability (it's just an embedded linux box running ipchains - and ou can insert arbitrary rules if the web interface is inadequate) and the "it pretty much just works out of the box" feature. But they cost a little more than typical "consumer grade" stuff, somewhere in the ~$200 range, IIRC. Then again, it's a VPN server/client, real firewall, and generally has a lot more features (that someone like you may very well never use) than the ~$50 BEFSR41.
I didn't know USR was separate again. I stopped using a modem around the time of the merge. :) Though I've got several external USR modems and a few internal (hardware-only, thank you) laying around "just in case"...
:) Username's danny, domain's dannysauer.com.
There are routers, and then there are the things that are usually called "firewalls" which differ from "just a router" in the ability to apply filtering rules more complex than just physical port and IP address, usually at least including the protocol and port, and probably also including things like network address translation (make all your internal machines look like one external IP address) and packet mangling (send stuff coming in destined for port 25 to an internal machine on port 1425). The thing connecting your home's network to the cable company, for example, is generally called a "cable modem" but it's really a bridge, which as far as I'm concerned is a router. But it doesn't typically do "firewall stuff".
Regarding the DHCP server, well, most of the home firewall solutions have things like a built-in hub and some basic services like web-based administration and a simple DHCP server. It's convenient to just tell your PCs to use DHCP - which is the default config for most everything - then do all of your configuration on the router. It makes your home network basically "just plug it in and go" for new machines and things like webcams, etc. Even if it's on a UPS, if the power goes out for, say, half a day or more - you'll probably have things go down and come back up later. I get irritated when my machines can't boot unattended, and if the windows machines are getting zeroconf addresses because the DHCP server wasn't running when they booted, it makes things annoying.
Do feel free to email me for further discussion, since posting's apt to be disabled one day soon, and I keep forgetting to check for updates.
I'm glad that some of "them" do resist the calls for information, but for how long?
Precisely why I run my own mail server. My mail goes to my house on a machine I own. It might pass through a relay or two on its way, but generally mai lonly passes from the sender's ISP to my network. Same with my web presence, etc. While I do generally trust my ISP to keep my information secure, I trust myself a lot more. And since I qualify as an ISP due to the way information passes through my machines, the laws do a bit more to protect my equipment than if I was just a random home user (just a bit, though)...
Ahhh, tin cans. I remember when US Robotics was a company separate from 3Com too... :)
:) And spring for an embedded solution (something like a snapgear unit or cisco pix 501, for example) - full PCs take too darned long to boot. Long boot times are annoying when your router's also your DHCP server, and your house loses power.
Just remember "cloudmaster said I need a packet-filtering router to act as a firewall" when you upgrade.
Well, I just figured that you're on /. and have multiple PCs, so they're probably networked and you're probably on broadband. :) If not, then nevermind. Mostly. :)
ZoneAlarm? You mean that software that doesn't do anything but pop up ominous warnings about "atampted attacks" to make people more paranoid so they feel compelled to upgrade to the new version? Or maybe I'm thinking of Black Ice...
;)
Eh, whatever works for you - and that obviously works. As a security professional, though, I feel compelled to suggest the installation of a packet-filtering router (which is what *I* mean when I say firewall) between the internet and your home network.
The problem is that it's difficult to implement the blacklising functionality. The whitelist is easy enough, because most phone books can handle the whitelist needs of a typical user. But it's entirely plausible for someone to *not* want to talk to more people than the phone can easily store in the existing contact list - which is the only way to implement a blacklist presently. The phone would have to have enough space to store everyone you want to talk to (since that's what the contact list is for) *and* everyone you don't want to talk to.
So the idea is to come up with some software that will allow the end-user to basically develop a larger contact list which only stores phone numbers, and doesn't waste space with all of the other junk that can potentially be stored for a contact. In other words, there needs to be a way of effectively getting around the limitations imposed by most typical contact lists.
Why couldn't they charge you for it? What's the difference between the voice data going to your phone and playing out a speaker, or voice data going to your phone and being recorded? The same data goes over the network either way - and since I don't pay for voice mail calls, it'd actually make my provider *more* money...
But 10-15 of those wrong number calls won't leave you a message if your voicemail message doesn't suck (ie, just say your name in the message). If they hang up before the recording part starts, every voicemail system I've used simply doesn't record anything - so I'm not notified.
I set my phone up to only ring for people in my contact list, and just vibrate otherwise. Makes it relatively easy to ignore calls unless I'm expecting a call from someone off my list...
Warning for pedants; general overview instead of technically accurate summary following:
Well, with Win2K MS moved to the NT hardware access model, which changes the way software accesses the hardware. With Win98 and prior (maybe ME, I forget), you were basically running DOS and could directly access the hardware pretty much however you wanted. With NT and later, you essentially have to ask the OS to get to the hardware, which is just a little more difficult. So this specialized external stuff which depends on direct access to hardware woudl require a fair amount of rework to develop on post-'98 Windows. Since it's often old and unsuported, or just not making enough money to justify compeltely rewriting drivers, the PCs end up having to stay with DOS or Win 95/98.
Presumably you're also behind a decent firewall, since a whole bunch of the security updates require a reboot, and an XP box that's almost a year out-of-date on security is a scary thing indeed... ;)
That's the first thing I thought when I was the picture. I mean, I could probably afford to buy a Tahoe, but the other cars on the list...
Apples and oranges. If one laptop weighs more and runs programs slower, but manages to get 5 bits/second more out of its 802.11g interface than another, it'd be stupid to announce the one with slightly faster WI-FI as the "best laptop". No one buys a laptop for fast networking, and even those that do aren't gonna notice the marginal speed improvement on the networking speed - or the marginal speed difference in Photoshop. Esp. if all the other programs are faster on another laptop...
;)
As far as running CPU-intensive stuff from the comfort of your chair - I generally sit on the couch when I'm doing that too. But I'm using VNC or XDM (depnds where I am) to run the programs on a real computer and using my pansy-assed laptop as a display. With the several thousand dollars I saved by admitting to myself that I'll never get as much computing power out of a laptop, I was able to get an even faster desktop workstation, and new tires on my car.
Doesn't have the same effect, either. :)
Sorry, I've nothing better to do right now...
But.. but... he has a system monitor thingie. Sure, the system monitor thingie doesn't do any logging, trend analysis, or alerting when things get out of bounds, but it makes pretty graphs! It's a sysadmin tool! And aterm, why, just think of the benefits it offers over the xterm which comes with X. It has, umm, transparency. Yay, transparency! Oh, and it's been dead for 5 years (ignoring the spurt of activity early in 2005 since, looking at the changelog, all they did between 0.4 in 2001 and 1.0 in 2005 was to fix some background/transparency issues).
Let's say you're a politician running for office. Your opponent finds that you're on a list of people who "either watch R-rated or X-rated content". There's no way to know the difference. The media reports that you're on a list where people who want to watch X-rated content declare their intent. Which story gets more attention, "politician on x-rated viewer list" or "no, really, I just wanted to see R-rate content"? If the person who ruined your good name ends up with a tiny fine or a month in prison, is your reputation somehow magically cleared?
Ask Pete Townsend what he thinks about this kind of thing - being accused of child pornography didn't go away when it came out that he was only doing valid research. People still think he just molests kids. People are stupid, even if you and I aren't.
So I'm curious, why does Photoshop being faster on one laptop than another mean anything? Surely if you care about all-out photoshop performance, you'll have a desktop machine with a real power supply to drive real processors, room for real memory, and a real display? This laptop's slower for almost everything else, and not appropriate for the onething it's faster at.
:( I'd be more imperssed if they laid the laptops out on a table at a college library and timed which one got stolen fastest. That'd test the *real* value of each laptop...
Yay benchmarks.
Are you drawing copies of powerpoint slides, one per page? How in the hell do you get 20 full 8.5x11 pages of notes in a single class period? I think you're confusing transcription with taking notes...
Yes, it's amusing that I found the part at teh Wal Mart next door to RS.
And now that you mention it, I do remember not too long ago being surprised that all of the discrete components like resistors, LEDs, RF connectors, etc all were moved into a set of drawers instead of being hung up on the walls like they used to be. Guess they needed more room for a few more cell phone providers and some junk computer accessories.
Pornography and violence is enjoyed by many adults legally in Australia, so there should be no stigma attached to that
But there is.
Pornography does not have to be X rated and violence does not have to be the very worst of the worst that can be found on the net.
It doesn't matter - the same flag on an account is required to get the movie poster from "Lethal Weapon" as to get a full hour-long prison gang rape movie. The "don't filter my connection" request likely won't have a "why" associated. Combine that with sensationalistic media, and you've got an instant list of perverts and deviants, whether or not the people are actually deviant (not that there's anything wrong with that) or maybe just wanted unrestricted acess to medical imagery. They're all lumped into the same category, and *that* is what's frightening.
In addition to the other comments about using visudo (which respects the EDITOR env. variable, so if you really wanna use pico or whatever, just run "EDITOR=pico visudo"), you should always leave an active shell runnuing when you're editing something that could potentially break login access. Editing the main authentication scheme in pam.d/? Editing sudoers? Changing nsswitch.conf around? Make sure that you already have a root shell open in another terminal - either another xterm, a virtual console, or something else. Save your changes, make sure they worked, and if not, you can usually use the already-open root shell to change it back.
:)
Yes, this is the voice of experience with breaking just about everything at some point or another - it's how you learn. Well, it's one way *I* learn, anyway.
They don't sell any car radios or the adaptor you might need if you want to hook up the radio antenna in your GM vehicle to your new car radio. The employee told me they don't sell "that kind of stuff" anymore...
Does the production of children (both the heavy breating at the initial stage and the creation of another organizm which consumes oxygen and produces CO2) count? Having kids really should be restricted, both to keep the population down (no more resource straining) and to keep too much CO2 from being put into the atmosphere. Since you can't prove carbon dioxide to be safe, should you be made to stop producing it?
No, that's silly? Well, at what level do we worry about it? And do we check every single gas emitted by every single process that produces any kind of gas? Shall there be flying gas monitors that detect gas emissions of everything that produces anything, issuing citations for those who are not licensesd to produce a particular gas? And what about combinations of gasses which aren't realy harmful alone, but combine to create things like acid rain?
Honestly, I'm not sure that the burden should fall exclusively on either side...