1. Get some lackey to rip the disk and distribute the result to its member stations, or
2. the music industry will perform seperate releases for said fish.
Either case does little for us. We will still get the pleasure of paying even more per track than we do now. That installer and its media files take room that could be filled with the music that is supposed to be there in the first place.
Oh wait! I forgot, that is what the bonus CD at the low price of only $16.99 is for. That other good track will be there in case you missed it being on the main release....
It means that no matter what precautions you take, an entity interested in doing you harm is going to be able to do so.
To say it again by way of/. friendly analogy, consider the copy protection/drm/fair-use struggle. Works the same way. If someone wants a copy of your work and they are willing to work at it, they are going to get it, unless you simply don't produce the work in the first place.
The last part of that analogy is worth noting. Relating it to the security problem suggests that our only total solution is to have:
NOTHING TO SECURE!
If you don't have anything then you are safe!
Security is about intimidation. Basically, you have to work hard at making any breech in your security not worth it to others.
I agree with the whole war on terrorism thing because of this. Don't like it, but understand it. As a nation we need to do it.
However, I can't seem to reconsile the need for intimidation with the current trends forming in our government right now.
Think about that for a moment in light of the copy analogy again.
What if there is nothing left to fight over? Will we be more safe?
I am talking about the basic freedoms this nation worked very hard to get for all of us. You see them eroding? I sure do.
Isn't this just like burning your money so nobody can steal it?
This whole information awareness business is unAmerican at best, a severe slap in the face to everyone who has ever fought for their freedom at worst.
Our system of government is based on a set of check and balances. The primary one being the power of the people and the power of the government.
To me, this continuing erosion of our freedoms, is a clear indication that we (the citizens) are not being anywhere near vigilant enough when it comes to our government.
Let me say it one more time as a whole:
There is no absolute security, unless you have nothing to secure.
Think about that one more time in the context of freedom. What is is worth? Is it worth a phone call or two? A letter? How about discussion with a few friends?
Maybe it is worth a careful check on your wallet each day. Where is the money going? Are you getting value for your dollar? I don't mean material value, but social and political value as well. Maybe the balance right now is tipped just a bit far toward the material side.
Why not fix that? Skip that next movie and put a little money in the hands of those willing to make some real effort in your best interests instead of their shareholders? You can always catch it later on DVD. If you really want to make a difference pay twice and buy it used! You can poke at the MPAA while feeling good at the same time because you...
DID SOMETHING!
Want some real security in your life? Start intimidating in a big way.
Get a dog.
Make sure all the lights on your house work well.
Buy a few ADT stickers. (Heh.)
Let people know how their actions affect you and why. Do it often and with candor.
Remember to vote with your feet.
Remember to vote period. It is worth it.
Encourage others to do the same. I know the latest ball game or video is a much easier topic, but that's the point isn't it?
Real security takes work.
We are not working very hard dammit!
Sorry to rant, but Jesus! I look back on my childhood and want that for my kids. Don't you?
This is exactly why we do not know our past. The percentage of us who care about it is always just low enough that it does not get done well enough in the end.
Not that we are bad, it's that we have other more pressing matters like survival.
Those languages combined tell us a story we will have a much harder time understanding without many of them.
I have often wondered about religion and why it exists. This question is always tied up with our lost roots.
Since each of us always asks these questions at some point, work done to save these languages makes sense. It also makes their loss real once you think past the purely practical matters.
remember the Oregon bill too. It has entered the next stage of the process quickly and with little resistance.
If you live in Texas or Oregon, please take the time next week to make one phone call or write one letter. It will matter.
Bills like this get OSS into the process which is very important. We need to be part of things in order for greater success later. And the states who are forward thinking enough will get to save some money and possibly build their development communities at the same time.
These bills are not against Closed software, but simply ask that taxpayers are told why they are being used over freely avaliable alternatives.
aspect of this article are total bunk. However, I do think we should rethink our spectrum.
High quality broadcasts for everyone is a pipe dream. Want to know how that works out? Check out our Citizens Band. Not pretty at all.
I am in the process of getting an amateur radio license again. HAMs do more with less spectrum than just about anybody. Doing this has made me rethink spectrum allocations and how they are wasted. The amateur bands have very reasonable band plans that allow for a number of uses and work well.
Our primary problem with spectrum use is the band planning, not the avaliable resource. (Which is limited no matter what this guy says.)
Commercial and military uses basically get what they ask for and they ask for everything they can.
Comes back to this really. We live in a competitive culture. We have given companies the same rights we have. They are better competetors than we are.
We have made a couple of IT blunders that will end up costing us quite a bit over the next few years.
DMV computer system. BTW, most of the DMV computers run win32 to access an application via terminal emulator. I have never witnessed one of these clerks use anything but that terminal emulator for what they do.
Public Water billing system. This one is pretty scary. They contract the job out to a company that delivers a poor product. There are a number of project management problems with this system that have little to do with OSS, but I can't help but wonder if fixing it would not be easier if it were OSS software.
This bill made me think a little too about return on taxpayer dollars. Lets say we do correctly spec and develop a water billing system using Open Standards and tools. Lets also say it works. Why not hire out the group that built it to other cities currently under the thumb of whatever company sold them their billing system? Seems we could get back some of our investment with services dollars while doing something good at the same time.
The more cities that use the billing system, the cheaper ongoing repairs and upgrades will be because the interest in the code is shared.
My school district is currently working hard at getting the wrinkles out of the LTSP project. Pretty cool stuff really. The schools see the dollars they spend each year and are looking hard at reductions through OSS.
Lets hope this goes somewhere?
BTW, how does one know about the hearings? They would be interesting to attend.
---Usually when there's complaints from a wide amount of people, it's "the people" you trust. Not the few who complain about the complainers. If anything, it has too many features. I believe we insult/harass/jeer at MS for doing the similar thing to Windows/Office. Called something like creeping featurism....... BUT it's different when we're talking about XFree86 cause it's LINUX stuff.
You know having fully featured infrastructure components, which X is, is damn nice when writing applications. Feature creep is bad in a word processor, good in your display system.
X has little to do with Linux. X has been around for a long time.
---Yeah, it IS getting faster...
This goes directly to the network transparency myth. X window systems tend to be a little slower on login because things run in user space. Once things are running however, there is no performance penalty at all. With X you can choose a lot of things that can affect display performance. Seems to me that other display systems don't have this option. Want a blazing fast X system? Choose reasonable window managers. A machine running TWM these days is very fast yet will still do everything needed in a nice clean minimal way.
As a comparison, I have an older SGI IRIX machine running at a blistering 30Mhz. Scrolling text in a window, minimize, raise, lower and resize are all nice and fast. X is clearly not the problem here as it has been proven to be effective for years. That machine was manufactured in 91 and will still display 3D applications in a usable way.
---Yeah right. 3-D on linux/Xfree SUCK ASS. Want compairsons? Go play X game (with port to linux) on windows and then play it on Linux. You get shit for framerates, and dont tell me you're different.
I don't think so. OpenGl based games run just as well if not better than they do under windows. My current 3D machine used to be a windows machine and I ran the game in both environments. latency was a lot lower in the X environment than it was in the win32. Lots of people see this so you can forget your one guy argument. Running programs like Maya or Pro Engineer work very nicely as well. This used to be the case, but is not anymore. So, 3D, check.
------Do you see a pattern here? X is versatile. X is extensible. X is the industry standard -- all Unix GUI programs use it.
---Yeah, and all good games are out for Windows. Windows games are the industry standard. (sound dumb? same way you sound with X)
Yeah this does sound dumb. The X window environment has been setting the bar for display systems for years. Just think, they got it right long before win32 environments were even stable. X is the industry standard in many areas. Games are a niche. An important one, mind you, for the overall consumer market, but this does not make an industry standard all by itself. High end scientific applications, Mechanical CAD, Visualization are just a few of the true industry standard applications that have all ran under X for years. Ask users of any applications in any of these areas what the transition was like when moving to the win32 platform. It took a long time for things to work as well as they did under X. Very few things are really better.
Games? Direct X? These both sound dumb to me if they are to be considered the way of the future. Games will eventually end up on whatever platform has both power and marketshare to sell copies. Linux + X can do games very well right now, but marketshare is smaller. As that changes, you will see the games same as you did for win32.
I think it says something when the best graphics guy around continues to invest in OpenGL. Direct X is a capable, but clearly dead end API. Hardly competitive at all really. Got your killer application running under Direct X, but want to run it on higher end graphics systems? Sorry, win32 only. Maybe the next revision, that they make damn sure you keep paying for, will have what you need. Using OpenGL avoids this problem nicely.
If you want do discuss other aspects of the interface, you might equate OpenGL to X in that they have the same core design ethics. OpenGL has also set the bar in its way for years before Direct X was even a consideration. To get Direct X where it needed to be Microsoft had to thrash and almost kill SGI through their Faherienhit (sometimes spelling sucks --sue me) project.
Finally, if you want to again consider industry standards, consider this:
Every last high end scientific and engineering application that actually matters uses OpenGL for its display engine. Why? Because it is accurate, stable, scaleable and just works well. Microsoft would love for this to change, but creators of these applications know all to well the dead end nature of the Direct X API.
---And you're 1 out of how many??? You need screen on another computer, use TightVNC. Uses a bunch of less bandwidth too.
I will agree with you about the bandwidth issue, though this can be mitigated with ssh and compression. However you totally miss all the points here while showing that you really have no idea why people, who know what X does, use it this way.
X is a big part of why UNIX systems are true multi-user systems and the network transparancy is the key feature making this a reality today.
Any X window user can basically run any application from any machine they want from the machine they are on. Lots of people do this. It is called multi-user computing. Most people not doing this really just don't know it is an option.
This feature has some interesting ramifications when it comes to systems design and implementation. Not having it eliminates many choices that could reduce administration and costs.
Example:
Company uses high-end MCAD product; namely, EDS I-DEAS. This is complex and powerful software with included data managment.
If you are running win32, then you have only one choice. You load that software onto every machine that will ever use it. Outfit every machine that will ever use it with high end CPU, video, disk and RAM. To administer, you must deal with each and every machine all the time. Service packs, driver changes and other things like applications that change core system shared library code hose things up on a regular basis. Heavy users as well as light duty users must possess all necessary resources on their local machine.
Upgrades to software must be deployed locally on each machine. Complex scripting is needed to really get things done in a reasonable manner. Upgrades to hardware get quite expensive over time as each user gets new hardware which means new OS which means new display and drivers along with the reloading and rebooting that comes with that.
Now consider your options when you are running a real multi-user OS and the X Window display system.
You configure one multi-cpu server and remote display on just about any 3D capable PC. Machines can be new or old just as long as they have a good network interface and graphics engine. Almost any recent vintage machine made in the last 3 years or so will perform this task nicely. Because the application is running directly on the server, many data intensive applications that used to bottleneck on the network now run smoothly. Cost per user is low because the OS is multi-user. Properly sized shared resources make for a good computing experience for all the users. For the occasional power user, go ahead and give them local compute if you need to. The choice is yours with X, you don't even get to consider it with anything else.
Now upgrade time. Add CPU or RAM to the server, all users benefit. Want to change software revisions? Great, it will take a fraction of the time because of shared code and configuration data. This leaves plenty of time to deal with those power users computing locally. Users local machine gets hosed up, what do you do? Give them a replacement one with the standard applications loaded and fix theirs as you have time without impacting their workflow at all. Since their critical data is in a shared stable environment, they will hardly notice.
When Open Office gets just a bit better, this will be possible for more mundane applications as well. The savings and advantages are obvious --if you know you have the option.
BTW, Apple is now beginning to ship an Aqua supported X server. Wonder why that is? Could it be because X has some advantages? Maybe they are interested in high-end applications being ported to the Mac. Not sure of the reason, but I am sure they would not do it if X really was as you say...
Schools all across the country are all working on implementations of the Linux Terminal server project. This project depends on X and its features. Administration will be remoted and centralized to save costs and improve response time.
At home here, I run win32, Linux and SGI irix. Each of the machines have applications I am interested in running. All the UNIX applications are avaliable on every machine with just two clicks and can be used by anyone at any time. My wife is currently watching a DVD as I type this. That same machine is providing Evolution e-mail to the win32 machine via X at the same time. Why bother running more than one mail client. With X, I can choose any client I want and use it anywhere I want.
It is easier than you think and very well worth it.
Finally, Tight VNC is pretty cool for what it is, but it is not multi-user. Sure, it will save you a trip to a machine, but will not allow any sort of multi-user action of any kind. Limited and totally non-competitive compared to X.
Network transparancy is *huge* and most of the industry is blind to it because Microsoft and Apple do not provide it. Their loss really.
---How about modularizing the obsolete crap (like the XT module in the linux kernel) or pulling the garbage out altogether? MSWindows 98 is snappy, even on quite old hardware. Now take that nice dual cpu motherboard and slap linux on that with a well-supported XFree video card. XFree runs like shit. It feels klunky and laggy. And no, I'm not using KDE to use as a test. I'm using TWM. The smallest gui manager out there.
I will give you points here. A lot of OSS software has been gaining in functionality in trade for speed. I wrote an article about this a while back titled "Where Is the New Linux Experience?" When I wrote that, I had the same experience you did.
Things are changing now. The feature growth is needed to capture users interest and get things done. Truth is, hardware fast enough to run most things is very cheap now so this is becoming less of a problem. Development is now starting to address speed issues and it is showing results. Compare KDE 3 to KDE 2 and you will notice the difference.
Given the cost savings of OSS over software you pay for, and you do pay for all that win32 or Mac software don't you? The price of a newer machine is easily justified.
The parent post is dead on. Every time X gets mentioned, people like you, who really have little grasp of the bigger picture, bitch and moan about how X doesn't do exactly what their older and inferior system does.
Doesn't the 6803 do this? It has been a while, but I remember something along those lines. Being able to finally have a true software debugger of sorts.
Ah well, I just remember really enjoying assembly language programming on that chip.
Made the 6502 and Z80 look just braindead in comparison.
Interesting CoCo 4 page! Makes me want one. Three CPU design would be interesting indeed. I wonder if all the CPU's work together in the same Ram? There are enough unused cycles in the 6809 instruction processing that two could use shared memory very well, but THREE?
those artifacts are going to be destroyed by the arrogant, oppressive and foolish actions of Saddam.
You know he does not have to keep picking fights while keeping his thumb on his own people.
This is nothing but lip service to those that believe that war is not the answer to this. I don't want the war or its costs either, but I also am tired of Saddam.
I agree with your analysis about the motivations behind this move. I also mostly agree on the subscription model for games. I am still mulling over the movie and music thing mostly because I believe that subscriptions lessen the incentive to produce quality content instead of just new content, but that is another discussion.
The problem I have with the whole thing is simple.
I don't like being treated like a 5 year old kid. It is totally ok to know how to pick locks, copy media and modify hardware. What one does with that information has consequences of course, but the sharing of this type of knowledge is not the source of the problems.
As a kid, I was shown how locks worked and was given some old locks to open for a challenge. The intent at the time was to keep an eager brain busy and learn some basic mechanical skills at the same time, plus it was fun!
Later I took apart almost everything I have ever owned. Why? To understand how it worked and to learn how it could work better for me. The good karma I have earned from this is hard not to notice. Opening locked cars, fixing broken electronics, building creative solutions to solve problems all have earned me many favors in return. Who have I harmed exactly? Maybe a few local locksmiths have lost some revenue along with the electronics shops, but the people I helped sure found something to do with their money. Maybe they purchased a coupla more movies and music titles. heh heh...
The technology I sell and service today benefits those who produce it. Maybe a few schools lost some revenue because I actually bothered to pick up a book and learn something without having someone hold my hand. Isn't this what we are supposed to be doing anyway? Helping ourselves as much as possible?
80 percent of what I know today comes from this sort of learning. Those that mentored me early on were also teaching right from wrong. It also happens to be how I continue to make my living.
Today, my very nature is being slowly criminalized for no good reason and I resent it! This is wrong no matter what the motivation and everyone here knows it. It is also not good for society in general. Don't you want to see what the upcoming talent will create in their garage when you get old. Wouldn't it be nice to say, "Wow! Nobody saw that coming!" The way things are now, you can plot your future on the corporate roadmaps.
What we don't know is what to do about it (yet).
IsoNews is a source of a lot of hard to find information that can be put to as many good uses as bad. There are many other sites that provide the same forum. Will Asscroft shut them all down? Why?
I can understand the legal reason why some mod chips are illegal along with distributing pirated media, but I cannot understand the action against this site in general because it does not address the problem.
The problem is behaviour, not knowing how or why one would bother to use or construct modchips or copy media. These things are legal and ethical no matter what anyone says. If you cannot learn how, who does that really benefit?
The problem, as I see it, is the combination of education and maturity being modeled by many technically inclined people today. I can't say I blame them. It sucks to know you are being wronged.
Understanding this is a part of the big picture that also needs to be considered if we are ever to come to any sort of humane solutions.
Back to when I was young for a moment. Hacking things was encouraged! You could go to the supermarket and get magazines that actually documented this process in some detail. Teachers encouraged the activity as well. I remember a group of us changing one of the instructional disks to tell jokes. We learned a lot and harmed nobody because THE SCHOOL COULD EASILY MAKE BACKUPS! Know what the teacher did? He had us pick something we wanted to do and helped us do it. Guess what? WE LEARNED A LOT MORE!
Having an opinion was valued and encouraged. Many a teacher challenged me as to why I believed something instead of just telling me it was not politically correct. Some of these same teachers had the freedom to nurture and channel this into good constructive growth.
I might add that the schools had more flexibility in how they dealt with problem kids and a lot fewer lawyers. Maybe this was not as bad as we make it out to be today.
I had considerable freedom in school provided that I towed the line on the basics; namely, maturity, ethics and citizenship.
Today, things are very different. We are encouraged to know what to buy to solve our problems. I know that is a very general statement, but look around. You will see it in just about everything. In my state (oregon) education is being standardized and achievment is valued over creativity. Schools are sharply limited in what they can do to correct and control kids. They also exert far more subtle control than they used to because of this.
At the same time, that standardized education does not include strong citizenship and ethics material probably because of the additional lawyers on staff today combined with their strain on the budget and the stiff education requirements leave little room. Of course the lawyers will say this material just might offend somebody as well. (Too f-ing bad I say.) Could the state find a generation of task oriented citizens easier to control as well? Hmmm...
A lot of the technical education I see my kids getting is focused on performing tasks within the technology. Big mistake because understanding the ideas behind the tech is where the better tech comes from.
Kids today have less freedom and higher demands all at the same time while teachers have less room to do what they should be doing; namely, building society one kid at a time.
The level of control our society is experiencing is at an all time high. Is it any wonder that people are acting out?
Consider our precious Xbox. (Other products have similar problems, I just want to use the Xbox as an example.) The money god says make as much as you can. That means keeping people paying which means control and limited device function designed to facillitate payment. Instead of paying a ton of lawyers, who consume a fair chunk of the profit themselves, why not actually understand what people want to do and encourage it?
They could try marketing the Xbox Plus pack. Bundle it with a free game and code book! Sell the imports at a premium to those that want them. Funny, the 'Imports' are actually made here in Microsofts case so they just get to make more money.
Go ahead and run Linux, but pay 50.00 first and remember that you still can play all the online games with no worries.
Seems to me lots of kids would enjoy a home computer that could also play hot games. Why not let them do it? You just might find your next game developer that way.
Dump some of those legal dollars into some marketing designed to distinguish and reward the right kinds of creativity from blatent self-serving piracy.
Use the law to bust those doing real damage.
Sure the hardcore crowd will see all of that for what it is and will continue to go against the business model, but lots of people will just buy the thing because it does what they want. Price it right and mix in a couple of nice features and you can make money off the whole thing and look reasonably cool at the same time.
The rest of them will be numbered too small to worry about. Besides, you can spend what you want and the hardcore crowd will still do what they want. You just make less that way.
As it stands now, the stigma of the Xbox is so great for me, I will never ever own one and I make sure and tell others why. Wonder how much annuity revenue that will end up costing?
The core of the problem here is control. Here in the land of the free, we are increasingly under the thumb of large corporations driven by shareholder demand to make money every single quarter or cease to exist. Our free market has taught us the fewer options people have, the easier it is to make money. This same market makes it hard for companies to actually try new things. Invest in a new business model, but lose money for a quarter or two? Watch your stock become worthless. Better to not even try it, it is cheaper to pay the lawyers to beat away your potential competition while limiting your customers options in ways that maximize revenue.
Is this really American? Is this sort of power what our founders intended? Will these actions and others like them really benefit society, or will they benefit governments and corporations who seek control?
I for one see this for what it is. A lame attempt to drive information underground because it does not align well with some business model and that sucks and is wrong.
For anyone that actually gets to the bottom of this comment, take note this year and next of who does what and why. Remember that when it comes time to buy something, or vote. Be sure and tell them why and tell them often.
In the last few years reports have been written about ways banks can increase revenue. In the early 90's the easiest way was to increase fees.
There are consultants that will analyze a banks customer transaction histories in order to recommend a fee structure that will retain the highest number of customers and generate the most revenue from fees while lowering costs.
They do this with the teller fee, minimum balance fee, account inactivity fee and the overdraft fee.
Recently the check cashing fee was added to both make money on both the check writer and the casher while discouraging face to face business at the bank which lowers costs.
The high growth of bank profits combined with growing negative public perception of the fees has recently sparked a few recommendations toward more reasonable structures that actually do help people and the bank without so much profit.
Try and find a couple of those. They get almost zero notice.
See how it works? Remember that the next time you read a shiny well produced brochure that 'assures' you that no other bank is working harder for you.
The banks current position is that everything works fine. Afterall, they do handle the world economy everyday, so your little small potatoes checking account is no big deal right?
Unless you can demonstrate a bank error that meets their criteria I might add, the bank basically says you must pay all fees like it or not.
So, let me tell you from experience, you are screwed. Either you pay even though you may not be totally in the wrong, or you don't.
If you pay, you will be out some cash, but the bank will be happy to let you continue doing business and will even screw you again later if you are willing.
If you don't pay, it gets worse. They charge off your account so they can get the tax benefit. They still send you to collections, and they report you to ChexSystems. This database will record your debt to your current bank and will be used as the reason you cannot get new accounts elsewhere. 95% of all banks use this. Getting a record removed is very difficult. The worst part is that even if you pay at this stage, your record will last for 7 years.
Big banks really suck right now. There are only a few laws they must follow, the rest are rules and regulations they get to set for us without our feedback. Big banks are greedy and are making more money each year. They charge fees for almost anything and have no reasonable appeal process. Currently the larger banks are even beginning to charge check cashing fees on their own checks!
You could write me a check for $5.00 and it could be worth nothing if I presented to the bank it was drafted on.
My advice to you would be to pay that bank, and realize that (1) you have no power here. --Trust me I tried hard to work through a problem with my bank and could not and (2) big banks are not working in your best interests.
Keep your banking record clean and look for a smaller bank that actually wants your business and will serve you as needed to keep it.
Things to look for:
- Low fees across the board.
- Daily caps on overdraft charges to prevent cascading fees. (This is what happened to me. $300 turned into $1100 in a couple of days !?!)
- Teller access without fees
- Reasonable ATM policy. No double dipping ATM transactions. Some bigger banks can and do charge you for use of a free ATM even though the ATM owner does not!
For those wondering, the banks that I have found particularly nasty are:
US Bank
Beginning to impose check cashing fees, highest overdraft charge with no daily cap, poor deposit policy. They hold every check they can for three days. Their own tellers advise you to cash your check then deposit cash.
Key Bank
Very strict on transaction type. Will freeze accounts for very little reason. A disagreement with a teller is enough for this. Check cashing fees with no daily cap. Poor deposit policy combined with their allowed transaction types make some common deposits very difficult.
Both banks guilty of transaction ordering with intent to charge fees. Basically they will clear large checks in order to let many smaller ones bounce. They say it is for your own good, but realistically which is better? Personally, I would rather reissue the larger check, pay the fees and use the rest of my money to cover the damage as cheap as I can. You decide.
Both banks guilty of issuing dangerous check cards by default. Check card works like credit, but with none of the protections.
All this talk of PIN theft is one thing, losing one of these cards is way worse. They can use it any number of places without a PIN and you have to pay.
Personally, the errors are likely to be unstated fees for transactions. Many places charge a fee when you use a debit card. Not all of them let you know about it even though they should. Another error comes from charges when you pay for dinner out. Remember the little place on the receipt for tips? If you don't fill it out, they can later. Problem here is that you don't always get to see the amount they key into the little visa machine. Your copy says one thing, theirs says another..
Seriously, if you are banking with a larger bank, ditch it and go shopping and tell your friends when you are done. You will be better for it.
Not really what I meant. I mean that one could get a basic OS, then choose all the other things.
Core win32 + mozilla + Open Office + Winamp for example. I really don't use Media Player or Office or IE much. I know a lot of people who do the same. Dealing with the default apps makes this more work than it needs to be.
"The whole thing depends on the power of the default.
So, you advocate removal of the default? If they don't have IE, how the hell are they going to download Mozilla?"
Yes I do. -At least with regard to lame security settings and bundled applications. People should have to do a little work to open up the machine and while doing so understand why, not the other way around.
They could use FTP, get it from a friend, purchase a nice OSS bundle for their machine while kicking something back to those working on it, it could come bundled with their new machine for added value that does not go to Redmond, or... Purchase a bigger Microsoft bundle.
"The bundled stuff presents a nice target for those who would write viruses and such.
No, user idiocy presents a nice target for those who would write viruses and such. Most infections are due to people double clicking on.exe attachments - that's not going to be fixed anytime soon."
Fixed at my place. I use Linux, IRIX and win2k. (yes I do have a family with kids) Dealing with these things is not hard.
Permissions on the real (read *nix) OSes are set so those things will not cause problems. On the win2K, things are a little more problematic, but still managable.
You are right in that many users are ignorant. A few common sense choices in the defaults (funny how that comes up again huh?) could eliminate a lot of that as well for those not willing or able to run a true-multi user OS and gain its advantages...
Making things just work automatically does most people few favors. Sure they can get going on the machine without much help, but the return on this artificial value is short lived. Soon they end up with a machine that is hopeless to work with. Then they pay again, mind you, for a fresh start. Maybe if they are lucky, they will get what they should have gotten the first time, or not...
It is not going to be fixed soon because of money and control, not because it cannot be done.
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for the big fish like Clear Channel to either:
1. Get some lackey to rip the disk and distribute the result to its member stations, or
2. the music industry will perform seperate releases for said fish.
Either case does little for us. We will still get the pleasure of paying even more per track than we do now. That installer and its media files take room that could be filled with the music that is supposed to be there in the first place.
Oh wait! I forgot, that is what the bonus CD at the low price of only $16.99 is for. That other good track will be there in case you missed it being on the main release....
absolute security. Let me say that again:
/. friendly analogy, consider the copy protection/drm/fair-use struggle. Works the same way. If someone wants a copy of your work and they are willing to work at it, they are going to get it, unless you simply don't produce the work in the first place.
There is no absolute security.
What does that mean?
It means that no matter what precautions you take, an entity interested in doing you harm is going to be able to do so.
To say it again by way of
The last part of that analogy is worth noting. Relating it to the security problem suggests that our only total solution is to have:
NOTHING TO SECURE!
If you don't have anything then you are safe!
Security is about intimidation. Basically, you have to work hard at making any breech in your security not worth it to others.
I agree with the whole war on terrorism thing because of this. Don't like it, but understand it. As a nation we need to do it.
However, I can't seem to reconsile the need for intimidation with the current trends forming in our government right now.
Think about that for a moment in light of the copy analogy again.
What if there is nothing left to fight over? Will we be more safe?
I am talking about the basic freedoms this nation worked very hard to get for all of us. You see them eroding? I sure do.
Isn't this just like burning your money so nobody can steal it?
This whole information awareness business is unAmerican at best, a severe slap in the face to everyone who has ever fought for their freedom at worst.
Our system of government is based on a set of check and balances. The primary one being the power of the people and the power of the government.
To me, this continuing erosion of our freedoms, is a clear indication that we (the citizens) are not being anywhere near vigilant enough when it comes to our government.
Let me say it one more time as a whole:
There is no absolute security, unless you have nothing to secure.
Think about that one more time in the context of freedom. What is is worth? Is it worth a phone call or two? A letter? How about discussion with a few friends?
Maybe it is worth a careful check on your wallet each day. Where is the money going? Are you getting value for your dollar? I don't mean material value, but social and political value as well. Maybe the balance right now is tipped just a bit far toward the material side.
Why not fix that? Skip that next movie and put a little money in the hands of those willing to make some real effort in your best interests instead of their shareholders? You can always catch it later on DVD. If you really want to make a difference pay twice and buy it used! You can poke at the MPAA while feeling good at the same time because you...
DID SOMETHING!
Want some real security in your life? Start intimidating in a big way.
Get a dog.
Make sure all the lights on your house work well.
Buy a few ADT stickers. (Heh.)
Let people know how their actions affect you and why. Do it often and with candor.
Remember to vote with your feet.
Remember to vote period. It is worth it.
Encourage others to do the same. I know the latest ball game or video is a much easier topic, but that's the point isn't it?
Real security takes work.
We are not working very hard dammit!
Sorry to rant, but Jesus! I look back on my childhood and want that for my kids. Don't you?
on the same plane as Mandrake maybe?
General user perception might matter more to them as they attempt to get the less savvy crowd more involved.
This is exactly why we do not know our past. The percentage of us who care about it is always just low enough that it does not get done well enough in the end.
Not that we are bad, it's that we have other more pressing matters like survival.
Those languages combined tell us a story we will have a much harder time understanding without many of them.
I have often wondered about religion and why it exists. This question is always tied up with our lost roots.
Since each of us always asks these questions at some point, work done to save these languages makes sense. It also makes their loss real once you think past the purely practical matters.
48 hours.
Whatever you think about George W. you have to admit, he is not fucking around!
remember the Oregon bill too. It has entered the next stage of the process quickly and with little resistance.
If you live in Texas or Oregon, please take the time next week to make one phone call or write one letter. It will matter.
Bills like this get OSS into the process which is very important. We need to be part of things in order for greater success later. And the states who are forward thinking enough will get to save some money and possibly build their development communities at the same time.
These bills are not against Closed software, but simply ask that taxpayers are told why they are being used over freely avaliable alternatives.
screen back. I liked it!
It is not Moz without the little green dino --even if he is pissed.
aspect of this article are total bunk. However, I do think we should rethink our spectrum.
High quality broadcasts for everyone is a pipe dream. Want to know how that works out? Check out our Citizens Band. Not pretty at all.
I am in the process of getting an amateur radio license again. HAMs do more with less spectrum than just about anybody. Doing this has made me rethink spectrum allocations and how they are wasted. The amateur bands have very reasonable band plans that allow for a number of uses and work well.
Our primary problem with spectrum use is the band planning, not the avaliable resource. (Which is limited no matter what this guy says.)
Commercial and military uses basically get what they ask for and they ask for everything they can.
Comes back to this really. We live in a competitive culture. We have given companies the same rights we have. They are better competetors than we are.
We lose.
Our fault.
Microsoft has a mindshare insecurity complex festering in it's bowels?
Spamming, ads in Linux mags, attending the Linux shows?
All in all things might continue to look up!
you will still need that loan ;)
Good call on the engine though. There is still plenty of life in the tech yet with alternative fuels and such.
With all the ways to capture information we have today, these two still are quite effective.
Other methods have more fidelity, but none have the simple human factors.
Guess I have to add paper to this list as well...
am really happy to see this.
We have made a couple of IT blunders that will end up costing us quite a bit over the next few years.
DMV computer system. BTW, most of the DMV computers run win32 to access an application via terminal emulator. I have never witnessed one of these clerks use anything but that terminal emulator for what they do.
Public Water billing system. This one is pretty scary. They contract the job out to a company that delivers a poor product. There are a number of project management problems with this system that have little to do with OSS, but I can't help but wonder if fixing it would not be easier if it were OSS software.
This bill made me think a little too about return on taxpayer dollars. Lets say we do correctly spec and develop a water billing system using Open Standards and tools. Lets also say it works. Why not hire out the group that built it to other cities currently under the thumb of whatever company sold them their billing system? Seems we could get back some of our investment with services dollars while doing something good at the same time.
The more cities that use the billing system, the cheaper ongoing repairs and upgrades will be because the interest in the code is shared.
My school district is currently working hard at getting the wrinkles out of the LTSP project. Pretty cool stuff really. The schools see the dollars they spend each year and are looking hard at reductions through OSS.
Lets hope this goes somewhere?
BTW, how does one know about the hearings? They would be interesting to attend.
---Usually when there's complaints from a wide amount of people, it's "the people" you trust. Not the few who complain about the complainers. If anything, it has too many features. I believe we insult/harass/jeer at MS for doing the similar thing to Windows/Office. Called something like creeping featurism....... BUT it's different when we're talking about XFree86 cause it's LINUX stuff.
You know having fully featured infrastructure components, which X is, is damn nice when writing applications. Feature creep is bad in a word processor, good in your display system.
X has little to do with Linux. X has been around for a long time.
---Yeah, it IS getting faster...
This goes directly to the network transparency myth. X window systems tend to be a little slower on login because things run in user space. Once things are running however, there is no performance penalty at all. With X you can choose a lot of things that can affect display performance. Seems to me that other display systems don't have this option. Want a blazing fast X system? Choose reasonable window managers. A machine running TWM these days is very fast yet will still do everything needed in a nice clean minimal way.
As a comparison, I have an older SGI IRIX machine running at a blistering 30Mhz. Scrolling text in a window, minimize, raise, lower and resize are all nice and fast. X is clearly not the problem here as it has been proven to be effective for years. That machine was manufactured in 91 and will still display 3D applications in a usable way.
---Yeah right. 3-D on linux/Xfree SUCK ASS. Want compairsons? Go play X game (with port to linux) on windows and then play it on Linux. You get shit for framerates, and dont tell me you're different.
I don't think so. OpenGl based games run just as well if not better than they do under windows. My current 3D machine used to be a windows machine and I ran the game in both environments. latency was a lot lower in the X environment than it was in the win32. Lots of people see this so you can forget your one guy argument. Running programs like Maya or Pro Engineer work very nicely as well. This used to be the case, but is not anymore. So, 3D, check.
------Do you see a pattern here? X is versatile. X is extensible. X is the industry standard -- all Unix GUI programs use it.
---Yeah, and all good games are out for Windows. Windows games are the industry standard. (sound dumb? same way you sound with X)
Yeah this does sound dumb. The X window environment has been setting the bar for display systems for years. Just think, they got it right long before win32 environments were even stable. X is the industry standard in many areas. Games are a niche. An important one, mind you, for the overall consumer market, but this does not make an industry standard all by itself. High end scientific applications, Mechanical CAD, Visualization are just a few of the true industry standard applications that have all ran under X for years. Ask users of any applications in any of these areas what the transition was like when moving to the win32 platform. It took a long time for things to work as well as they did under X. Very few things are really better.
Games? Direct X? These both sound dumb to me if they are to be considered the way of the future. Games will eventually end up on whatever platform has both power and marketshare to sell copies. Linux + X can do games very well right now, but marketshare is smaller. As that changes, you will see the games same as you did for win32.
I think it says something when the best graphics guy around continues to invest in OpenGL. Direct X is a capable, but clearly dead end API. Hardly competitive at all really. Got your killer application running under Direct X, but want to run it on higher end graphics systems? Sorry, win32 only. Maybe the next revision, that they make damn sure you keep paying for, will have what you need. Using OpenGL avoids this problem nicely.
If you want do discuss other aspects of the interface, you might equate OpenGL to X in that they have the same core design ethics. OpenGL has also set the bar in its way for years before Direct X was even a consideration. To get Direct X where it needed to be Microsoft had to thrash and almost kill SGI through their Faherienhit (sometimes spelling sucks --sue me) project.
Finally, if you want to again consider industry standards, consider this:
Every last high end scientific and engineering application that actually matters uses OpenGL for its display engine. Why? Because it is accurate, stable, scaleable and just works well. Microsoft would love for this to change, but creators of these applications know all to well the dead end nature of the Direct X API.
---And you're 1 out of how many??? You need screen on another computer, use TightVNC. Uses a bunch of less bandwidth too.
I will agree with you about the bandwidth issue, though this can be mitigated with ssh and compression. However you totally miss all the points here while showing that you really have no idea why people, who know what X does, use it this way.
X is a big part of why UNIX systems are true multi-user systems and the network transparancy is the key feature making this a reality today.
Any X window user can basically run any application from any machine they want from the machine they are on. Lots of people do this. It is called multi-user computing. Most people not doing this really just don't know it is an option.
This feature has some interesting ramifications when it comes to systems design and implementation. Not having it eliminates many choices that could reduce administration and costs.
Example:
Company uses high-end MCAD product; namely, EDS I-DEAS. This is complex and powerful software with included data managment.
If you are running win32, then you have only one choice. You load that software onto every machine that will ever use it. Outfit every machine that will ever use it with high end CPU, video, disk and RAM. To administer, you must deal with each and every machine all the time. Service packs, driver changes and other things like applications that change core system shared library code hose things up on a regular basis. Heavy users as well as light duty users must possess all necessary resources on their local machine.
Upgrades to software must be deployed locally on each machine. Complex scripting is needed to really get things done in a reasonable manner. Upgrades to hardware get quite expensive over time as each user gets new hardware which means new OS which means new display and drivers along with the reloading and rebooting that comes with that.
Now consider your options when you are running a real multi-user OS and the X Window display system.
You configure one multi-cpu server and remote display on just about any 3D capable PC. Machines can be new or old just as long as they have a good network interface and graphics engine. Almost any recent vintage machine made in the last 3 years or so will perform this task nicely. Because the application is running directly on the server, many data intensive applications that used to bottleneck on the network now run smoothly. Cost per user is low because the OS is multi-user. Properly sized shared resources make for a good computing experience for all the users. For the occasional power user, go ahead and give them local compute if you need to. The choice is yours with X, you don't even get to consider it with anything else.
Now upgrade time. Add CPU or RAM to the server, all users benefit. Want to change software revisions? Great, it will take a fraction of the time because of shared code and configuration data. This leaves plenty of time to deal with those power users computing locally. Users local machine gets hosed up, what do you do? Give them a replacement one with the standard applications loaded and fix theirs as you have time without impacting their workflow at all. Since their critical data is in a shared stable environment, they will hardly notice.
When Open Office gets just a bit better, this will be possible for more mundane applications as well. The savings and advantages are obvious --if you know you have the option.
BTW, Apple is now beginning to ship an Aqua supported X server. Wonder why that is? Could it be because X has some advantages? Maybe they are interested in high-end applications being ported to the Mac. Not sure of the reason, but I am sure they would not do it if X really was as you say...
Schools all across the country are all working on implementations of the Linux Terminal server project. This project depends on X and its features. Administration will be remoted and centralized to save costs and improve response time.
At home here, I run win32, Linux and SGI irix. Each of the machines have applications I am interested in running. All the UNIX applications are avaliable on every machine with just two clicks and can be used by anyone at any time. My wife is currently watching a DVD as I type this. That same machine is providing Evolution e-mail to the win32 machine via X at the same time. Why bother running more than one mail client. With X, I can choose any client I want and use it anywhere I want.
It is easier than you think and very well worth it.
Finally, Tight VNC is pretty cool for what it is, but it is not multi-user. Sure, it will save you a trip to a machine, but will not allow any sort of multi-user action of any kind. Limited and totally non-competitive compared to X.
Network transparancy is *huge* and most of the industry is blind to it because Microsoft and Apple do not provide it. Their loss really.
---How about modularizing the obsolete crap (like the XT module in the linux kernel) or pulling the garbage out altogether? MSWindows 98 is snappy, even on quite old hardware. Now take that nice dual cpu motherboard and slap linux on that with a well-supported XFree video card. XFree runs like shit. It feels klunky and laggy. And no, I'm not using KDE to use as a test. I'm using TWM. The smallest gui manager out there.
I will give you points here. A lot of OSS software has been gaining in functionality in trade for speed. I wrote an article about this a while back titled "Where Is the New Linux Experience?" When I wrote that, I had the same experience you did.
Things are changing now. The feature growth is needed to capture users interest and get things done. Truth is, hardware fast enough to run most things is very cheap now so this is becoming less of a problem. Development is now starting to address speed issues and it is showing results. Compare KDE 3 to KDE 2 and you will notice the difference.
Given the cost savings of OSS over software you pay for, and you do pay for all that win32 or Mac software don't you? The price of a newer machine is easily justified.
The parent post is dead on. Every time X gets mentioned, people like you, who really have little grasp of the bigger picture, bitch and moan about how X doesn't do exactly what their older and inferior system does.
Get over it, X kicks ass and the rest just don't.
I know it takes more time and does not address many people easily, but would have been as secure as she needed.
Doesn't the 6803 do this? It has been a while, but I remember something along those lines. Being able to finally have a true software debugger of sorts.
Ah well, I just remember really enjoying assembly language programming on that chip.
Made the 6502 and Z80 look just braindead in comparison.
Interesting CoCo 4 page! Makes me want one. Three CPU design would be interesting indeed. I wonder if all the CPU's work together in the same Ram? There are enough unused cycles in the 6809 instruction processing that two could use shared memory very well, but THREE?
Fun stuff!
6809 combined with the MMU system in the CoCo3 made for a very nice little computer.
8 bitters were never better than this machine.
those artifacts are going to be destroyed by the arrogant, oppressive and foolish actions of Saddam.
You know he does not have to keep picking fights while keeping his thumb on his own people.
This is nothing but lip service to those that believe that war is not the answer to this. I don't want the war or its costs either, but I also am tired of Saddam.
Choices, choices....
I agree with your analysis about the motivations behind this move. I also mostly agree on the subscription model for games. I am still mulling over the movie and music thing mostly because I believe that subscriptions lessen the incentive to produce quality content instead of just new content, but that is another discussion.
The problem I have with the whole thing is simple.
I don't like being treated like a 5 year old kid. It is totally ok to know how to pick locks, copy media and modify hardware. What one does with that information has consequences of course, but the sharing of this type of knowledge is not the source of the problems.
As a kid, I was shown how locks worked and was given some old locks to open for a challenge. The intent at the time was to keep an eager brain busy and learn some basic mechanical skills at the same time, plus it was fun!
Later I took apart almost everything I have ever owned. Why? To understand how it worked and to learn how it could work better for me. The good karma I have earned from this is hard not to notice. Opening locked cars, fixing broken electronics, building creative solutions to solve problems all have earned me many favors in return. Who have I harmed exactly? Maybe a few local locksmiths have lost some revenue along with the electronics shops, but the people I helped sure found something to do with their money. Maybe they purchased a coupla more movies and music titles. heh heh...
The technology I sell and service today benefits those who produce it. Maybe a few schools lost some revenue because I actually bothered to pick up a book and learn something without having someone hold my hand. Isn't this what we are supposed to be doing anyway? Helping ourselves as much as possible?
80 percent of what I know today comes from this sort of learning. Those that mentored me early on were also teaching right from wrong. It also happens to be how I continue to make my living.
Today, my very nature is being slowly criminalized for no good reason and I resent it! This is wrong no matter what the motivation and everyone here knows it. It is also not good for society in general. Don't you want to see what the upcoming talent will create in their garage when you get old. Wouldn't it be nice to say, "Wow! Nobody saw that coming!" The way things are now, you can plot your future on the corporate roadmaps.
What we don't know is what to do about it (yet).
IsoNews is a source of a lot of hard to find information that can be put to as many good uses as bad. There are many other sites that provide the same forum. Will Asscroft shut them all down? Why?
I can understand the legal reason why some mod chips are illegal along with distributing pirated media, but I cannot understand the action against this site in general because it does not address the problem.
The problem is behaviour, not knowing how or why one would bother to use or construct modchips or copy media. These things are legal and ethical no matter what anyone says. If you cannot learn how, who does that really benefit?
The problem, as I see it, is the combination of education and maturity being modeled by many technically inclined people today. I can't say I blame them. It sucks to know you are being wronged.
Understanding this is a part of the big picture that also needs to be considered if we are ever to come to any sort of humane solutions.
Back to when I was young for a moment. Hacking things was encouraged! You could go to the supermarket and get magazines that actually documented this process in some detail. Teachers encouraged the activity as well. I remember a group of us changing one of the instructional disks to tell jokes. We learned a lot and harmed nobody because THE SCHOOL COULD EASILY MAKE BACKUPS! Know what the teacher did? He had us pick something we wanted to do and helped us do it. Guess what? WE LEARNED A LOT MORE!
Having an opinion was valued and encouraged. Many a teacher challenged me as to why I believed something instead of just telling me it was not politically correct. Some of these same teachers had the freedom to nurture and channel this into good constructive growth.
I might add that the schools had more flexibility in how they dealt with problem kids and a lot fewer lawyers. Maybe this was not as bad as we make it out to be today.
I had considerable freedom in school provided that I towed the line on the basics; namely, maturity, ethics and citizenship.
Today, things are very different. We are encouraged to know what to buy to solve our problems. I know that is a very general statement, but look around. You will see it in just about everything. In my state (oregon) education is being standardized and achievment is valued over creativity. Schools are sharply limited in what they can do to correct and control kids. They also exert far more subtle control than they used to because of this.
At the same time, that standardized education does not include strong citizenship and ethics material probably because of the additional lawyers on staff today combined with their strain on the budget and the stiff education requirements leave little room. Of course the lawyers will say this material just might offend somebody as well. (Too f-ing bad I say.) Could the state find a generation of task oriented citizens easier to control as well? Hmmm...
A lot of the technical education I see my kids getting is focused on performing tasks within the technology. Big mistake because understanding the ideas behind the tech is where the better tech comes from.
Kids today have less freedom and higher demands all at the same time while teachers have less room to do what they should be doing; namely, building society one kid at a time.
The level of control our society is experiencing is at an all time high. Is it any wonder that people are acting out?
Consider our precious Xbox. (Other products have similar problems, I just want to use the Xbox as an example.) The money god says make as much as you can. That means keeping people paying which means control and limited device function designed to facillitate payment. Instead of paying a ton of lawyers, who consume a fair chunk of the profit themselves, why not actually understand what people want to do and encourage it?
They could try marketing the Xbox Plus pack. Bundle it with a free game and code book! Sell the imports at a premium to those that want them. Funny, the 'Imports' are actually made here in Microsofts case so they just get to make more money.
Go ahead and run Linux, but pay 50.00 first and remember that you still can play all the online games with no worries.
Seems to me lots of kids would enjoy a home computer that could also play hot games. Why not let them do it? You just might find your next game developer that way.
Dump some of those legal dollars into some marketing designed to distinguish and reward the right kinds of creativity from blatent self-serving piracy.
Use the law to bust those doing real damage.
Sure the hardcore crowd will see all of that for what it is and will continue to go against the business model, but lots of people will just buy the thing because it does what they want. Price it right and mix in a couple of nice features and you can make money off the whole thing and look reasonably cool at the same time.
The rest of them will be numbered too small to worry about. Besides, you can spend what you want and the hardcore crowd will still do what they want. You just make less that way.
As it stands now, the stigma of the Xbox is so great for me, I will never ever own one and I make sure and tell others why. Wonder how much annuity revenue that will end up costing?
The core of the problem here is control. Here in the land of the free, we are increasingly under the thumb of large corporations driven by shareholder demand to make money every single quarter or cease to exist. Our free market has taught us the fewer options people have, the easier it is to make money. This same market makes it hard for companies to actually try new things. Invest in a new business model, but lose money for a quarter or two? Watch your stock become worthless. Better to not even try it, it is cheaper to pay the lawyers to beat away your potential competition while limiting your customers options in ways that maximize revenue.
Is this really American? Is this sort of power what our founders intended? Will these actions and others like them really benefit society, or will they benefit governments and corporations who seek control?
I for one see this for what it is. A lame attempt to drive information underground because it does not align well with some business model and that sucks and is wrong.
For anyone that actually gets to the bottom of this comment, take note this year and next of who does what and why. Remember that when it comes time to buy something, or vote. Be sure and tell them why and tell them often.
It matters.
goddamed FANBOY spam?!?
Seriously, I can understand spamming for some (low) profit, but spamming without direct benefit?
It's almost better if they are behind it somehow.
some interesting spam with full screen ads for XP home edition and numerous 'informational' mailings from Microsoft concerning various products.
None of which I have asked for.
The XP ones were interesting because they did not appear to come from Microsoft and they had no call to action such as an 800 number or website.
Maybe these are related?
Wierd.
In the last few years reports have been written about ways banks can increase revenue. In the early 90's the easiest way was to increase fees.
There are consultants that will analyze a banks customer transaction histories in order to recommend a fee structure that will retain the highest number of customers and generate the most revenue from fees while lowering costs.
They do this with the teller fee, minimum balance fee, account inactivity fee and the overdraft fee.
Recently the check cashing fee was added to both make money on both the check writer and the casher while discouraging face to face business at the bank which lowers costs.
The high growth of bank profits combined with growing negative public perception of the fees has recently sparked a few recommendations toward more reasonable structures that actually do help people and the bank without so much profit.
Try and find a couple of those. They get almost zero notice.
See how it works? Remember that the next time you read a shiny well produced brochure that 'assures' you that no other bank is working harder for you.
Is that you can do nothing about it!
The banks current position is that everything works fine. Afterall, they do handle the world economy everyday, so your little small potatoes checking account is no big deal right?
Unless you can demonstrate a bank error that meets their criteria I might add, the bank basically says you must pay all fees like it or not.
So, let me tell you from experience, you are screwed. Either you pay even though you may not be totally in the wrong, or you don't.
If you pay, you will be out some cash, but the bank will be happy to let you continue doing business and will even screw you again later if you are willing.
If you don't pay, it gets worse. They charge off your account so they can get the tax benefit. They still send you to collections, and they report you to ChexSystems. This database will record your debt to your current bank and will be used as the reason you cannot get new accounts elsewhere. 95% of all banks use this. Getting a record removed is very difficult. The worst part is that even if you pay at this stage, your record will last for 7 years.
Big banks really suck right now. There are only a few laws they must follow, the rest are rules and regulations they get to set for us without our feedback. Big banks are greedy and are making more money each year. They charge fees for almost anything and have no reasonable appeal process. Currently the larger banks are even beginning to charge check cashing fees on their own checks!
You could write me a check for $5.00 and it could be worth nothing if I presented to the bank it was drafted on.
My advice to you would be to pay that bank, and realize that (1) you have no power here. --Trust me I tried hard to work through a problem with my bank and could not and (2) big banks are not working in your best interests.
Keep your banking record clean and look for a smaller bank that actually wants your business and will serve you as needed to keep it.
Things to look for:
- Low fees across the board.
- Daily caps on overdraft charges to prevent cascading fees. (This is what happened to me. $300 turned into $1100 in a couple of days !?!)
- Teller access without fees
- Reasonable ATM policy. No double dipping ATM transactions. Some bigger banks can and do charge you for use of a free ATM even though the ATM owner does not!
For those wondering, the banks that I have found particularly nasty are:
US Bank
Beginning to impose check cashing fees, highest overdraft charge with no daily cap, poor deposit policy. They hold every check they can for three days. Their own tellers advise you to cash your check then deposit cash.
Key Bank
Very strict on transaction type. Will freeze accounts for very little reason. A disagreement with a teller is enough for this. Check cashing fees with no daily cap. Poor deposit policy combined with their allowed transaction types make some common deposits very difficult.
Both banks guilty of transaction ordering with intent to charge fees. Basically they will clear large checks in order to let many smaller ones bounce. They say it is for your own good, but realistically which is better? Personally, I would rather reissue the larger check, pay the fees and use the rest of my money to cover the damage as cheap as I can. You decide.
Both banks guilty of issuing dangerous check cards by default. Check card works like credit, but with none of the protections.
All this talk of PIN theft is one thing, losing one of these cards is way worse. They can use it any number of places without a PIN and you have to pay.
Personally, the errors are likely to be unstated fees for transactions. Many places charge a fee when you use a debit card. Not all of them let you know about it even though they should. Another error comes from charges when you pay for dinner out. Remember the little place on the receipt for tips? If you don't fill it out, they can later. Problem here is that you don't always get to see the amount they key into the little visa machine. Your copy says one thing, theirs says another..
Seriously, if you are banking with a larger bank, ditch it and go shopping and tell your friends when you are done. You will be better for it.
You are dead on in this. I was raised to not live in fear, yet this is exactly what the "Home of the Brave" is asking me to do.
Makes me sick too.
Any of us here could make a plan to cause any amount of trouble with the things we have access to every day. That is what terrorism is.
Personally, I value my (remaining) freedoms and am not willing to "get ready" to lose any more.
American politics at its finest indeed.
The current boot process sucks.
SGI has been doing this right for years. Their PROM is network aware, can run basic diagnostics, uses a gui and just looks damn cool.
Much better to see "Welcome to Octane" than Beep Chuga Chuga.... Post complete Memtest and other garbage.
Lets just hope the process remains open enough to allow Open Code.
"You already [amazon.com] can [amazon.com]."
.exe attachments - that's not going to be fixed anytime soon."
Not really what I meant. I mean that one could get a basic OS, then choose all the other things.
Core win32 + mozilla + Open Office + Winamp for example. I really don't use Media Player or Office or IE much. I know a lot of people who do the same. Dealing with the default apps makes this more work than it needs to be.
"The whole thing depends on the power of the default.
So, you advocate removal of the default? If they don't have IE, how the hell are they going to download Mozilla?"
Yes I do. -At least with regard to lame security settings and bundled applications. People should have to do a little work to open up the machine and while doing so understand why, not the other way around.
They could use FTP, get it from a friend, purchase a nice OSS bundle for their machine while kicking something back to those working on it, it could come bundled with their new machine for added value that does not go to Redmond, or... Purchase a bigger Microsoft bundle.
"The bundled stuff presents a nice target for those who would write viruses and such.
No, user idiocy presents a nice target for those who would write viruses and such. Most infections are due to people double clicking on
Fixed at my place. I use Linux, IRIX and win2k. (yes I do have a family with kids) Dealing with these things is not hard.
Permissions on the real (read *nix) OSes are set so those things will not cause problems. On the win2K, things are a little more problematic, but still managable.
You are right in that many users are ignorant. A few common sense choices in the defaults (funny how that comes up again huh?) could eliminate a lot of that as well for those not willing or able to run a true-multi user OS and gain its advantages...
Making things just work automatically does most people few favors. Sure they can get going on the machine without much help, but the return on this artificial value is short lived. Soon they end up with a machine that is hopeless to work with. Then they pay again, mind you, for a fresh start. Maybe if they are lucky, they will get what they should have gotten the first time, or not...
It is not going to be fixed soon because of money and control, not because it cannot be done.