I don't suppose there's a way to run that from a Linux machine? Maybe an OSS program that knows Windows' "shutdown" program's communication protocol? (Just curious.)
"Ridiculously simple", in my opinion, is a phrase that automatically excludes Cygwin.
Don't get me wrong, Cygwin is useful in a pinch, but... simple? I don't think so.
Furthermore you don't have to be admin to run the setup tool, so while you may figure out a way to run sshd such that the kid can't kill the process, all they really need to do is open Cygwin setup, uninstall sshd, and reboot. If you don't think kids are smart enough to figure that out, then you're not qualified to answer the OP's questions:P
My parents used to do this, it was a quick and simple solution. They'd just grab the cable modem when they went to bed; that way the LAN stayed up so we could still print our homework if we needed to, but we had no internet access.
I'd buy 1 laptop per kid, at a total cost of about $300
You'd buy three laptops for a total cost of $300? I pity your (real/eventual/hypothetical) kids. I wouldn't want to check my email on a $100 laptop, let alone do homework or play games. (If you misspoke and meant $300 per laptop, that's still not much better... I wouldn't want to use it myself, so I wouldn't subject my kids to using it either.)
There are plenty of theories about God that are falsifiable - for example, religions which teach inconsistent doctrines are obviously false. Any true religion will be both self-consistent and consistent with known scientific fact. You're assuming that because you have not come across a religion meeting your satisfaction, none at all exist even among those with which you are not familiar.
The statement "God exists" is not, at present, empirically falsifiable. Somehow you're twisting that idea to mean that God must therefore not exist.
In other words, you're assuming "not falsifiable" is equivalent to "not true". Surely you can see the problem with that absurd leap of logic?
You're entitled to your opinion, as I've said, but it's silly of you to continue to pretend your opinion is absolute fact.
on the knowledge that gods have not provided guidances.
... and that's where your argument falls apart. That is not fact; you call it knowledge, but it's merely opinion.
See, you have no evidence that your opinion is correct, so you cannot call it "knowledge".
Call me cynical but if 1000 religions all claim different rules, then at least 999 are making them up.
That's not cynical, it's logical. I think religions which claim "all religions are true" are silly at best.
My odds are pretty good that the remaining religion is making it up as well since there's no bound to the number of religions. And this assumes that there is a god to begin with.
There's no real bound to the number of theories regarding how the universe came to be, either, and most of them are mutually exclusive. That doesn't mean all of them are false.
In other words, "only one can be true" does not imply "they must all be false". To claim it does is absurd.
I'm not going to try to convince you that your opinion is wrong, nor that mine is right. We're each free to believe as we wish. I'm merely trying to get you to understand that you cannot claim your opinion is fact.
Yeah... I recently bought (used) an old fat 60GB PS3 precisely because it had backward compatibility.
I haven't really been worried that they'd disable BC, but I stil told my wife to make sure she says no if something pops up asking her to update the firmware...
And frankly, I'm still not sure why someone can't create a bootable Linux image on DVD that runs completely from the disc a a "live distro" for a PS3, even with this "boot other OS" menu option stripped out?
I'm sure it's because you'd still have to modify the PS3's boot loader to check if there's a bootable DVD in the drive... but isn't that what the "OtherOS" option is managing for you (except for doing it on the hard drive)?
I've never heard of Amplitude, but Audiosurf is a pretty good music-focused PC game. (Sorry if they're completely different. What, you want me to Google Amplitude? I, uh, have to go.)
But since none of these gods have deigned to provide these morals or the required behaviors, what's a believer to do? Inventing them seems to be the only option. It also appears to me that this is exactly what every religion does.
Wait. Your complaint is that no god has given moral guidance to us, and then you turn around and state - as if it were proven fact - that every religion which claims god has given us moral guidance is just making it up?
You don't admit the possibility that even one of these religions may be correct?
You don't see the problem with that argument? It's merely "I don't believe their claims", not "no gods have given us moral guidance" as you've claimed.
It's fine to say you don't believe any religion's claims - I won't argue with you - but don't pretend your opinion is fact.
I think your counter argument falls apart because, if your father were omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent - and yet were still your father in terms of personal attachments and personality - that's exactly what he'd do, right?
You ignored the second half of my argument - that if Jim is prevented from doing anything harmful, he'll never learn what actions are harmful.
At any rate, I think people (including you) misunderstand the nature of "omnipotent" when applied to God. I propose that God's omnipotence does not extend to breaking the fundamental rules of nature (e.g. the laws of physics). Some would point out Christ's miracles as contrary to that idea, but I would point out that any sufficiently advance application of scientific knowledge is indistinguishable from magic... and given God's omniscience we can assume he is capable of sufficiently advanced applications of scientific principle;)
I think the mistake people make is in assuming that their understanding of good and evil accords, in any deep or meaningful way, with that of god (or at least, one having the 3 "O" characteristics above).
I would agree, at least in some respects. However I would go further and say that I think the real issue is that people find it easier to believe there is no God than to change their behavior to match the morals taught by whichever god in whom they would otherwise believe.
Doesn't the good and bad of life make more sense when you reject the idea of gods? It sure does to me.
Not really... unless you're one of those crazy people that thinks "God exists" (or possibly "God exists and cares about us") somehow implies "God prevents any and all suffering". By that logic, my dad should prevent any and all conceivable harm that may come upon me if it is within his power to do so, but any good parent will tell you that if you never let your kid get hurt, they'll never learn what actions cause pain (both to themselves and to others). Or that sometimes, deliberately causing some suffering in the short term prevents lots of suffering in the long term (e.g. immunizations).
Point being: in my opinion, the good and bad of life would make less sense if the idea of gods is rejected. I believe that existence for existence's sake (i.e. what we'd have if there were no gods) would be pointless.
They could try to figure out which one recently became richer (or has a friend who recently became richer), or which one rented a storage location in which to store the stolen goods, or any of a bazillion other types of normal evidence they could attempt to locate.
You know, the kind of stuff they would have tried to figure out back before DNA evidence was ever used.
So your position is that if something is widely enough used, it's ok to keep using it no matter what effect it has on others? Fascinating moral system.
Assume it is shown conclusively that this sort of sensitivity is real. How much of the population has to be certifiably affected before we ban electronics entirely? At what point do the needs of the very few outweigh the needs of the many? Why is their comfort (we're not talking survival here) so much more important than the societal improvements offered by electronics?
There's nothing fascinating about this "moral system" - it's just common sense. When something makes life easier for everyone but one in a hundred thousand people (and even those people's lives are improved in many ways), it's silly to ban it just because that tiny minority gets skin rashes or headaches.
And that's all assuming that, contrary to all available evidence, this sort of sensitivity is real.
I'll agree with your last sentence though - we're better off just pointing out that these claims have been repeatedly shown to be garbage.
And if it were you, you'd be in court now too. Which is better in the long run, hiding your SSID or spending your money on a senseless court battle (even if you eventually get it back in a countersuit)?
The problem isn't the guy thinking he gets sick from wifi (well, not directly). The problem is that the guy feels justified in suing over it.
Sony has made the statement that the feature exposes some security issue they're not comfortable with. As a result, they're turning off the feature. If you want to keep the feature, you can do so, but if you do keep it you won't be able to use those features of the machine that require PSN connectivity.
For this to be extortion, Sony would have to have something to gain. Please explain to me what Sony has to gain by disabling the "other OS" feature.
If Sony gains nothing, then it isn't extortion! The fact that you lose something is entirely irrelevant. "Extortion" carries with it an implication of the extortionist's intent - for example, mob protection rackets have one intent (even if they actually do protect the person being extorted), but private security companies have quite another (even though they're doing the same thing)!
In other words: the fact that your shop won't be protected if you don't pay your rent-a-cop doesn't mean your rent-a-cop is extorting you.
As far as I can tell, Sony gains nothing from disabling this feature, therefore it isn't extortion. Feel free to correct me.
If you want to convince Sony to put it back in, you have to tell them what they have to gain by maintaining it - and it would be better if you could show them how the gain outweighs their perceived loss in security by keeping the feature.
As for whether advertised features must always be supported in perpetuity, well, I suggest you read the fine print in your PS3 manual. I would be willing to wager that the terms of service contain clauses about feature changes, firmware updates, and so on and so forth.
As an example, EA recently released Command & Conquer 4, which requires online activation (and always-connected internet during gameplay). Suppose tomorrow they announce that on April 30, they're shutting down the C&C4 servers. It's an advertised feature, you'd cry, and integral to the functioning of the game, so they can't do that!
Well, but they can. The box says they can shut it down after giving 30 days' notice on their website (they don't even have to send out an e-mail). So sure, it'd be a jerky thing to do, since every single paying customer would be screwed out of a game in 30 days, but the fine print made it clear, and no sane lawyer would support any sort of legal action against it.
Sony is being a collective jerk here, and it makes me wary of doing business with them in the future, but let's not go crazy here. I'd bet they covered their legal bases in both the PS3's manual and the PSN Terms of Service.
If you didn't like those terms of service, you should have returned the device to the store.
If you didn't read them, well, that's your fault, isn't it? (And yes, the average person can understand ToS documents if they bother to try.)
And lest any of you call me a Sony fanboy, allow me to point out that the only Sony equipment I own is a pair of Sony Ericsson cell phones that are no longer functional, and a PS1 I got for free from a friend which is functional but rarely used.
By your logic, it's extortion for the local grocer to randomly start enforcing a "limit 3 per customer" on Coca-cola, even though you only shop their because of their low prices on Coca-cola.
By your logic, it's extortion for my landlord to tell me "pay me or I'm kicking you out".
Not every ultimatum is extortion, even if the outcome is unfavorable (and not even if both outcomes are unfavorable).
At any rate, my point is this (though you seemed to disagree with this earlier): if you want Sony to change their mind, calling their actions "extortion" is not the way to go about it.
There's a big difference here: you've always known that to use at least some PS3 content, you'd need to have an updated firmware. (I'm sure it's in the fine print on the box, or in the manual.)
So any purchases you made that depend on PSN access were implicitly based on the assumption that you'd keep your firmware updated.
If you don't keep your firmware updated, and you lose access to your content, whose fault is it?
That, by itself, is not Sony's; you knew you'd have to keep your firmware updated before you ever bought anything.
I'm not arguing that what Sony did was just fine, I'm simply arguing that it's not extortion.
It comes down to this: if you don't want to abide by Sony's terms of service for their products, then don't buy anything from them.
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I don't suppose there's a way to run that from a Linux machine? Maybe an OSS program that knows Windows' "shutdown" program's communication protocol? (Just curious.)
"Ridiculously simple", in my opinion, is a phrase that automatically excludes Cygwin.
Don't get me wrong, Cygwin is useful in a pinch, but... simple? I don't think so.
Furthermore you don't have to be admin to run the setup tool, so while you may figure out a way to run sshd such that the kid can't kill the process, all they really need to do is open Cygwin setup, uninstall sshd, and reboot. If you don't think kids are smart enough to figure that out, then you're not qualified to answer the OP's questions :P
My parents used to do this, it was a quick and simple solution. They'd just grab the cable modem when they went to bed; that way the LAN stayed up so we could still print our homework if we needed to, but we had no internet access.
remote shutoff is a ridiculously simple thing to do with a ssh script (make a button for it somewhere).
It's ridiculously simple to shut off a Windows machine remotely via ssh? Do tell.
(Remember: OP wanted the kids' computers to run Windows for game compatibility.)
I'd buy 1 laptop per kid, at a total cost of about $300
You'd buy three laptops for a total cost of $300? I pity your (real/eventual/hypothetical) kids. I wouldn't want to check my email on a $100 laptop, let alone do homework or play games. (If you misspoke and meant $300 per laptop, that's still not much better... I wouldn't want to use it myself, so I wouldn't subject my kids to using it either.)
There are plenty of theories about God that are falsifiable - for example, religions which teach inconsistent doctrines are obviously false. Any true religion will be both self-consistent and consistent with known scientific fact. You're assuming that because you have not come across a religion meeting your satisfaction, none at all exist even among those with which you are not familiar.
The statement "God exists" is not, at present, empirically falsifiable. Somehow you're twisting that idea to mean that God must therefore not exist.
In other words, you're assuming "not falsifiable" is equivalent to "not true". Surely you can see the problem with that absurd leap of logic?
You're entitled to your opinion, as I've said, but it's silly of you to continue to pretend your opinion is absolute fact.
on the knowledge that gods have not provided guidances.
... and that's where your argument falls apart. That is not fact; you call it knowledge, but it's merely opinion.
See, you have no evidence that your opinion is correct, so you cannot call it "knowledge".
Call me cynical but if 1000 religions all claim different rules, then at least 999 are making them up.
That's not cynical, it's logical. I think religions which claim "all religions are true" are silly at best.
My odds are pretty good that the remaining religion is making it up as well since there's no bound to the number of religions. And this assumes that there is a god to begin with.
There's no real bound to the number of theories regarding how the universe came to be, either, and most of them are mutually exclusive. That doesn't mean all of them are false.
In other words, "only one can be true" does not imply "they must all be false". To claim it does is absurd.
I'm not going to try to convince you that your opinion is wrong, nor that mine is right. We're each free to believe as we wish. I'm merely trying to get you to understand that you cannot claim your opinion is fact.
Yeah... I recently bought (used) an old fat 60GB PS3 precisely because it had backward compatibility.
I haven't really been worried that they'd disable BC, but I stil told my wife to make sure she says no if something pops up asking her to update the firmware...
And frankly, I'm still not sure why someone can't create a bootable Linux image on DVD that runs completely from the disc a a "live distro" for a PS3, even with this "boot other OS" menu option stripped out?
I'm sure it's because you'd still have to modify the PS3's boot loader to check if there's a bootable DVD in the drive... but isn't that what the "OtherOS" option is managing for you (except for doing it on the hard drive)?
Or Amplitude (abstract music game)?
I've never heard of Amplitude, but Audiosurf is a pretty good music-focused PC game. (Sorry if they're completely different. What, you want me to Google Amplitude? I, uh, have to go.)
The 3.21 patch doesn't remove the fat PS3's backward compatibility, does it?
But since none of these gods have deigned to provide these morals or the required behaviors, what's a believer to do? Inventing them seems to be the only option. It also appears to me that this is exactly what every religion does.
Wait. Your complaint is that no god has given moral guidance to us, and then you turn around and state - as if it were proven fact - that every religion which claims god has given us moral guidance is just making it up?
You don't admit the possibility that even one of these religions may be correct?
You don't see the problem with that argument? It's merely "I don't believe their claims", not "no gods have given us moral guidance" as you've claimed.
It's fine to say you don't believe any religion's claims - I won't argue with you - but don't pretend your opinion is fact.
Those are fair points, and I certainly agree that I don't have to look outside of a religion to find people that ignore that religion's teachings.
I think your counter argument falls apart because, if your father were omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent - and yet were still your father in terms of personal attachments and personality - that's exactly what he'd do, right?
You ignored the second half of my argument - that if Jim is prevented from doing anything harmful, he'll never learn what actions are harmful.
At any rate, I think people (including you) misunderstand the nature of "omnipotent" when applied to God. I propose that God's omnipotence does not extend to breaking the fundamental rules of nature (e.g. the laws of physics). Some would point out Christ's miracles as contrary to that idea, but I would point out that any sufficiently advance application of scientific knowledge is indistinguishable from magic... and given God's omniscience we can assume he is capable of sufficiently advanced applications of scientific principle ;)
I think the mistake people make is in assuming that their understanding of good and evil accords, in any deep or meaningful way, with that of god (or at least, one having the 3 "O" characteristics above).
I would agree, at least in some respects. However I would go further and say that I think the real issue is that people find it easier to believe there is no God than to change their behavior to match the morals taught by whichever god in whom they would otherwise believe.
Doesn't the good and bad of life make more sense when you reject the idea of gods? It sure does to me.
Not really... unless you're one of those crazy people that thinks "God exists" (or possibly "God exists and cares about us") somehow implies "God prevents any and all suffering". By that logic, my dad should prevent any and all conceivable harm that may come upon me if it is within his power to do so, but any good parent will tell you that if you never let your kid get hurt, they'll never learn what actions cause pain (both to themselves and to others). Or that sometimes, deliberately causing some suffering in the short term prevents lots of suffering in the long term (e.g. immunizations).
Point being: in my opinion, the good and bad of life would make less sense if the idea of gods is rejected. I believe that existence for existence's sake (i.e. what we'd have if there were no gods) would be pointless.
I got the impression from his post that he wanted to write it on a computer, save it to ePub, *then* upload it to his iPad.
IANAL, but I'm pretty sure possession of stolen goods isn't circumstantial evidence ;)
They could try to figure out which one recently became richer (or has a friend who recently became richer), or which one rented a storage location in which to store the stolen goods, or any of a bazillion other types of normal evidence they could attempt to locate.
You know, the kind of stuff they would have tried to figure out back before DNA evidence was ever used.
Just an idea.
breach of contract.
What contract?
So your position is that if something is widely enough used, it's ok to keep using it no matter what effect it has on others? Fascinating moral system.
Assume it is shown conclusively that this sort of sensitivity is real. How much of the population has to be certifiably affected before we ban electronics entirely? At what point do the needs of the very few outweigh the needs of the many? Why is their comfort (we're not talking survival here) so much more important than the societal improvements offered by electronics?
There's nothing fascinating about this "moral system" - it's just common sense. When something makes life easier for everyone but one in a hundred thousand people (and even those people's lives are improved in many ways), it's silly to ban it just because that tiny minority gets skin rashes or headaches.
And that's all assuming that, contrary to all available evidence, this sort of sensitivity is real.
I'll agree with your last sentence though - we're better off just pointing out that these claims have been repeatedly shown to be garbage.
And if it were you, you'd be in court now too. Which is better in the long run, hiding your SSID or spending your money on a senseless court battle (even if you eventually get it back in a countersuit)?
The problem isn't the guy thinking he gets sick from wifi (well, not directly). The problem is that the guy feels justified in suing over it.
And that's why JP Nickel gives you Both Sides.
Sony has made the statement that the feature exposes some security issue they're not comfortable with. As a result, they're turning off the feature. If you want to keep the feature, you can do so, but if you do keep it you won't be able to use those features of the machine that require PSN connectivity.
For this to be extortion, Sony would have to have something to gain. Please explain to me what Sony has to gain by disabling the "other OS" feature.
If Sony gains nothing, then it isn't extortion! The fact that you lose something is entirely irrelevant. "Extortion" carries with it an implication of the extortionist's intent - for example, mob protection rackets have one intent (even if they actually do protect the person being extorted), but private security companies have quite another (even though they're doing the same thing)!
In other words: the fact that your shop won't be protected if you don't pay your rent-a-cop doesn't mean your rent-a-cop is extorting you.
As far as I can tell, Sony gains nothing from disabling this feature, therefore it isn't extortion. Feel free to correct me.
If you want to convince Sony to put it back in, you have to tell them what they have to gain by maintaining it - and it would be better if you could show them how the gain outweighs their perceived loss in security by keeping the feature.
As for whether advertised features must always be supported in perpetuity, well, I suggest you read the fine print in your PS3 manual. I would be willing to wager that the terms of service contain clauses about feature changes, firmware updates, and so on and so forth.
As an example, EA recently released Command & Conquer 4, which requires online activation (and always-connected internet during gameplay). Suppose tomorrow they announce that on April 30, they're shutting down the C&C4 servers. It's an advertised feature, you'd cry, and integral to the functioning of the game, so they can't do that!
Well, but they can. The box says they can shut it down after giving 30 days' notice on their website (they don't even have to send out an e-mail). So sure, it'd be a jerky thing to do, since every single paying customer would be screwed out of a game in 30 days, but the fine print made it clear, and no sane lawyer would support any sort of legal action against it.
Sony is being a collective jerk here, and it makes me wary of doing business with them in the future, but let's not go crazy here. I'd bet they covered their legal bases in both the PS3's manual and the PSN Terms of Service.
If you didn't like those terms of service, you should have returned the device to the store.
If you didn't read them, well, that's your fault, isn't it? (And yes, the average person can understand ToS documents if they bother to try.)
And lest any of you call me a Sony fanboy, allow me to point out that the only Sony equipment I own is a pair of Sony Ericsson cell phones that are no longer functional, and a PS1 I got for free from a friend which is functional but rarely used.
By your logic, it's extortion for the local grocer to randomly start enforcing a "limit 3 per customer" on Coca-cola, even though you only shop their because of their low prices on Coca-cola.
By your logic, it's extortion for my landlord to tell me "pay me or I'm kicking you out".
Not every ultimatum is extortion, even if the outcome is unfavorable (and not even if both outcomes are unfavorable).
At any rate, my point is this (though you seemed to disagree with this earlier): if you want Sony to change their mind, calling their actions "extortion" is not the way to go about it.
There's a big difference here: you've always known that to use at least some PS3 content, you'd need to have an updated firmware. (I'm sure it's in the fine print on the box, or in the manual.)
So any purchases you made that depend on PSN access were implicitly based on the assumption that you'd keep your firmware updated.
If you don't keep your firmware updated, and you lose access to your content, whose fault is it?
That, by itself, is not Sony's; you knew you'd have to keep your firmware updated before you ever bought anything.
I'm not arguing that what Sony did was just fine, I'm simply arguing that it's not extortion.
It comes down to this: if you don't want to abide by Sony's terms of service for their products, then don't buy anything from them.