But in Canada minors can't enter into a binding contact so any writen agreement between the school and a studnet of less then 18 years of age would not be valid, at least here in Canada but I'd bet it's the same in the US. This is to protect minors who might not fully understand what it means to sign a contract. If no harm was done then there's no need to punish them to harshly. My friends and I did stuff with our schools shitty computers and network all the time, but we were smart enough to use stolen teacher accounts (one teacher's password was her husbands first name and he was the schools VP). It was fun and we didn't break anything cause it wouldn't accomplish anything. We just wanted to play games and install pirate/free software to do the things we otherwise wouldn't have bee able to do. Glad I did it and so were some of our teachres. The only one who really cared was the library/IT/Retard guy and he just wasn't technically capable of doing anything so all you had to do was make sure he didn't physically see you doing anything at a computer. If my school were blocking websites I'd try and bypass it and I'm sure most/.ers would too. Givem a break.
I'm glad to see Canada made the list. Laws are supposed to be put in place to benefit the voting population... I don't think copyright/patent law is really a benefit to us anymore and stronger laws even less so I'll vote against any party that bows to US pressure on this issue and convince everyone else I know to do the same. Not all Canadians are up to speed on copyright enough to care about it but if there's one thing that pisses us off it's caving to US pressure...
Yes, but the fact that the Blizzard client exchanges data just fine with other clients would suggest to me that their implementation is in fact not that broken. If Blizzard broke the protocol in any significant way then how could Blizzard clients do this?
I don't think schools should start setting up "courts" to "prosecute" their own students for copyright infringement. They wouldn't be qualified, I'd be expensive, and it's not their job. Schools should comply with the law, co-operate with the RIAA et al as little as possible and let real courts take care of the problem.
Students who are consuming excess bandwidth (for whatever purpose, no the schools business imho) should have their access restric or revoked (preferably after at least one warning). At my university they had a simple system. You could do whatever you want with your bandwidth however there was a sliding window of 1 week and if your total amount for that week exceeded x (around 500mb I think it was) then your connection was throttled down to the point where web browsing was highly annoying (but not impossible) and would stay so until the window slided enough to reduce your average. If it looked like you were up to no good (or infected with something contagious) your service would be cut (often by an automated process right away for a virus). So anyone who wanted to download a bunch of crap could go right ahead a use up their personal limited resource which no one did (very often) because slow Internet really sucks.
I couldn't accept this so I got DSL (already had a phone line included with room and bell had a deal where it was first 6mo for $20/mo and I was only gonna be there for 8) and became the guy in my building that got all the goods and used another box to share it over the local network. However whenever I wanted to play something online (I was into quake 3 at the time) I'd switch to the local network because of it's superior latency thanks to no one hosing the network
The network resources provided were more then enough to support learning and in fact met most peoples "social" needs. Everyone else worked around it (like a box at your parents house that you could VNC into and grab your D/L's next time your home). I don't think it's fair to make the average student pay more for (or have more of their money diverted to) the "social needs" (how is d/lding movies and p0rn a social need?... Ok well maybe p0rn but that's it) of a minority of bandwidth pigs (like myself).
I think it would be a good idea if schools became more like commercial ISP's providing a basic service for free (included with residence fee's, ect) and sell more bandwidth to those who want to pay. They should also be the kind of ISP's that don't keep logs for more then say 48 hours or so...
According to Wikipedia the.torrent file can be extract from the blizzard downloader and used with another bittorrent client.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_Downloader
If a normal client can exchange data with peers using the Blizzard downloader then how, broken, non-compliant can it be? Also what difference does the port in use have to do with compliance? I use uTorrent and it seems to work fine on whatever port I feel like using.
The last printer I had was some cheap Lexmark that I tossed out when it ran out of ink (back in '03). Now I do all my printing at my university where they charge $0.08 CDN for a b/w laser print (or 12 cents for a duplexed page). I looked at buying a laser printer and at the time it was going to cost about 4 cents per page for ink plus the paper so I just stuck with printing at school. It's easier because I'm usually there and I get to use high quality, high speed printers. I spend about $60 to $100 CDN per 4mo school term on printing which seems pretty reasonable as I was mostly printing proff generated notes (pdf or ppt's) which often replace the need for a textbook which usually run about $150+-$30 and sometimes much more...
It was the first time I've ever called customer service for any piece of computer hardware (besides a few hdd's, which died within warranty). I don't really want human customer service... I'm totally capable of taking care of myself and finding the drivers elsewhere, which I did as I said. I just think they should fix the support section of their website or take it off-line so customers know they don't offer that kind of service (which they basically don't). It's annoying to hunt down the drivers. You don't think so it seems but I disagree. For example I go with low end Nvidia cards over ATi in the systems I've built for myself and others for no reason other then I've always liked their unified drivers and easy setup. They're not for gaming so it really doesn't matter. That service is part of the product. Also it's a really cheap service to provide. How much would it really cost Asus to get whatever they need (be it hardware, bandwidth, or developers) to make a few improvements?
I needed to reinstall windows on a box so I went to the Asus website to see if it felt like working today. It was slow as hell as usual but when I finally got to the page for my mobo the links to where the drivers were actually hosted were completely broken. I tired again the next day and still the same thing. I was kinda pissed because I've bought a lot of Asus mobo's as well as several Asus video cards and their website has always sucked but now it's totally non functional. I know all the stuff I need (realtek audio, marvel nic, intel chipset, and the RAID drivers) but it's a pain to track all that down separately and be sure your installing the right stuff. I'd have used the original CD but it was lost in a move.
So I phoned Asus support (long distance, no toll-free or LD plan), waited on hold and politely explained the problem I was having with the website and that's it's a chronic problem. So he asked what drivers I needed and I said I needed drivers for my model number (which I gave him, can't remember it now). He then pretty much screamed at me which DRIVERS I needed (like I'm an idiot or something) so I said all of them. I thought it was understood that when reinstalling (which I had already said I was doing) it was implied that one needed the drivers for all the hardware on the board. So then a long pause (checking the website I assume) he started mumbling where I could get a some of the drivers (from non-Asus websites) and said I'd have to wait for such and such. He claimed the problems with the website were due to upgrading for Vista, yea right but I went along. I explained that it really wasn't acceptable to me to have to wait for drivers on my primary computer (my system was non-functional, almost) and asked if there was some other way he could provide me the drivers. I suggested FTP or email. He said he didn't have access to that so I asked if I could speak with a supervisor. After uttering the S-word I was quickly put on hold and then disconnected about 5 min later. All at my expense for long distance.
So now I was really quite angry so I phoned back, waited all over again. I didn't raise my voice or curse (just as before) and was as polite as I could be to the next person I talked to. I explained I had just been hung up on by someone else and the person took my name and phone number. I'm not sure what for but I gave it anyway. Then after I explained the problem he gave me a email address I could contact and that they'd email me the drivers within 24 hours. I really needed my computer working so I didn't end up bothering and found the drivers elsewhere on the net.
But anyways, my rants pretty much over and my main point is I'm not buying anymore Asus stuff until they fix their website. There's lots of other companies that make just as good mobo's AND are able to host drivers reliably. It really is an important part to the overall product offering and I can't see why a company the size of Asus can't pull off a website that works.
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But in Canada minors can't enter into a binding contact so any writen agreement between the school and a studnet of less then 18 years of age would not be valid, at least here in Canada but I'd bet it's the same in the US. This is to protect minors who might not fully understand what it means to sign a contract. If no harm was done then there's no need to punish them to harshly. My friends and I did stuff with our schools shitty computers and network all the time, but we were smart enough to use stolen teacher accounts (one teacher's password was her husbands first name and he was the schools VP). It was fun and we didn't break anything cause it wouldn't accomplish anything. We just wanted to play games and install pirate/free software to do the things we otherwise wouldn't have bee able to do. Glad I did it and so were some of our teachres. The only one who really cared was the library/IT/Retard guy and he just wasn't technically capable of doing anything so all you had to do was make sure he didn't physically see you doing anything at a computer. If my school were blocking websites I'd try and bypass it and I'm sure most /.ers would too. Givem a break.
I'm glad to see Canada made the list. Laws are supposed to be put in place to benefit the voting population... I don't think copyright/patent law is really a benefit to us anymore and stronger laws even less so I'll vote against any party that bows to US pressure on this issue and convince everyone else I know to do the same. Not all Canadians are up to speed on copyright enough to care about it but if there's one thing that pisses us off it's caving to US pressure...
Yes, but the fact that the Blizzard client exchanges data just fine with other clients would suggest to me that their implementation is in fact not that broken. If Blizzard broke the protocol in any significant way then how could Blizzard clients do this?
I don't think schools should start setting up "courts" to "prosecute" their own students for copyright infringement. They wouldn't be qualified, I'd be expensive, and it's not their job. Schools should comply with the law, co-operate with the RIAA et al as little as possible and let real courts take care of the problem. Students who are consuming excess bandwidth (for whatever purpose, no the schools business imho) should have their access restric or revoked (preferably after at least one warning). At my university they had a simple system. You could do whatever you want with your bandwidth however there was a sliding window of 1 week and if your total amount for that week exceeded x (around 500mb I think it was) then your connection was throttled down to the point where web browsing was highly annoying (but not impossible) and would stay so until the window slided enough to reduce your average. If it looked like you were up to no good (or infected with something contagious) your service would be cut (often by an automated process right away for a virus). So anyone who wanted to download a bunch of crap could go right ahead a use up their personal limited resource which no one did (very often) because slow Internet really sucks. I couldn't accept this so I got DSL (already had a phone line included with room and bell had a deal where it was first 6mo for $20/mo and I was only gonna be there for 8) and became the guy in my building that got all the goods and used another box to share it over the local network. However whenever I wanted to play something online (I was into quake 3 at the time) I'd switch to the local network because of it's superior latency thanks to no one hosing the network The network resources provided were more then enough to support learning and in fact met most peoples "social" needs. Everyone else worked around it (like a box at your parents house that you could VNC into and grab your D/L's next time your home). I don't think it's fair to make the average student pay more for (or have more of their money diverted to) the "social needs" (how is d/lding movies and p0rn a social need?... Ok well maybe p0rn but that's it) of a minority of bandwidth pigs (like myself). I think it would be a good idea if schools became more like commercial ISP's providing a basic service for free (included with residence fee's, ect) and sell more bandwidth to those who want to pay. They should also be the kind of ISP's that don't keep logs for more then say 48 hours or so...
According to Wikipedia the .torrent file can be extract from the blizzard downloader and used with another bittorrent client.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_Downloader
If a normal client can exchange data with peers using the Blizzard downloader then how, broken, non-compliant can it be? Also what difference does the port in use have to do with compliance? I use uTorrent and it seems to work fine on whatever port I feel like using.
The last printer I had was some cheap Lexmark that I tossed out when it ran out of ink (back in '03). Now I do all my printing at my university where they charge $0.08 CDN for a b/w laser print (or 12 cents for a duplexed page). I looked at buying a laser printer and at the time it was going to cost about 4 cents per page for ink plus the paper so I just stuck with printing at school. It's easier because I'm usually there and I get to use high quality, high speed printers. I spend about $60 to $100 CDN per 4mo school term on printing which seems pretty reasonable as I was mostly printing proff generated notes (pdf or ppt's) which often replace the need for a textbook which usually run about $150+-$30 and sometimes much more...
It was the first time I've ever called customer service for any piece of computer hardware (besides a few hdd's, which died within warranty). I don't really want human customer service... I'm totally capable of taking care of myself and finding the drivers elsewhere, which I did as I said. I just think they should fix the support section of their website or take it off-line so customers know they don't offer that kind of service (which they basically don't). It's annoying to hunt down the drivers. You don't think so it seems but I disagree. For example I go with low end Nvidia cards over ATi in the systems I've built for myself and others for no reason other then I've always liked their unified drivers and easy setup. They're not for gaming so it really doesn't matter. That service is part of the product. Also it's a really cheap service to provide. How much would it really cost Asus to get whatever they need (be it hardware, bandwidth, or developers) to make a few improvements?
I needed to reinstall windows on a box so I went to the Asus website to see if it felt like working today. It was slow as hell as usual but when I finally got to the page for my mobo the links to where the drivers were actually hosted were completely broken. I tired again the next day and still the same thing. I was kinda pissed because I've bought a lot of Asus mobo's as well as several Asus video cards and their website has always sucked but now it's totally non functional. I know all the stuff I need (realtek audio, marvel nic, intel chipset, and the RAID drivers) but it's a pain to track all that down separately and be sure your installing the right stuff. I'd have used the original CD but it was lost in a move. So I phoned Asus support (long distance, no toll-free or LD plan), waited on hold and politely explained the problem I was having with the website and that's it's a chronic problem. So he asked what drivers I needed and I said I needed drivers for my model number (which I gave him, can't remember it now). He then pretty much screamed at me which DRIVERS I needed (like I'm an idiot or something) so I said all of them. I thought it was understood that when reinstalling (which I had already said I was doing) it was implied that one needed the drivers for all the hardware on the board. So then a long pause (checking the website I assume) he started mumbling where I could get a some of the drivers (from non-Asus websites) and said I'd have to wait for such and such. He claimed the problems with the website were due to upgrading for Vista, yea right but I went along. I explained that it really wasn't acceptable to me to have to wait for drivers on my primary computer (my system was non-functional, almost) and asked if there was some other way he could provide me the drivers. I suggested FTP or email. He said he didn't have access to that so I asked if I could speak with a supervisor. After uttering the S-word I was quickly put on hold and then disconnected about 5 min later. All at my expense for long distance. So now I was really quite angry so I phoned back, waited all over again. I didn't raise my voice or curse (just as before) and was as polite as I could be to the next person I talked to. I explained I had just been hung up on by someone else and the person took my name and phone number. I'm not sure what for but I gave it anyway. Then after I explained the problem he gave me a email address I could contact and that they'd email me the drivers within 24 hours. I really needed my computer working so I didn't end up bothering and found the drivers elsewhere on the net. But anyways, my rants pretty much over and my main point is I'm not buying anymore Asus stuff until they fix their website. There's lots of other companies that make just as good mobo's AND are able to host drivers reliably. It really is an important part to the overall product offering and I can't see why a company the size of Asus can't pull off a website that works.