Grandpa!? Who you callin' grandpa, you whipper snapper? When I was your age, we only had BASIC, and we where HAPPY!
You kids had it easy. When I was your age, we just had ones and zeros. And sometimes we didn't have zeros, had to make do with recycled oh's and hope no one would notice.
File Express is great, and I've used it for a lot of things (mailing lists, among others, it's got great dupe checking capability). OP, however, was looking for free software, and FE is not free.
Neither, I think, are the other programs you mention, though some are abandonware.
People who have never used e-mail are going to be far more susceptible to scams that those who have used e-mail have become well aware of and learned to ignore.
They remain susceptible to telephone scams, postal scams, and that nice young man with the briefcase who runs an investment company with an office at the strip mall. But people who use e-mail remain susceptible to those scams, if they have a telephone or ever leave their mom's basement. People who don't use e-mail are, however, totally immune to e-mail scams.
For those ISP's with periodic bandwidth caps, there's already a firefox extension called Net Usage.
For those who want to keep track of bandwidth from other programs as well (or maybe just aren't in.au, whose ISPs Net Usage customizes for), there's NetMeter, which tracks all traffic through your network interface.
Peerguardian is better than nothing. But not by a lot. It maybe keeps the MafIAA from spotting you from their own IP address, but sometimes they neglect to inform PG when the IP numbers change. The MafIAA is perfectly capable of getting online via their local cable system (or one in Russia, for that matter, the tubes go everywhere), or registering a domain under an assumed name, or doing it from their mom's basement.
Azerus has a section where you can see who is seeding and leaching. It shows IP info if I'm not mistaken. Can they not do this with Torrents?
Easily.
How does that differ from Limewire?
With a torrent there isn't any way to "see all of the songs that a given file sharer is offering to others", just that one. And in fact, most people only do a few torrents at a time, so even if the RIAA could detect them, it wouldn't sound very impressive. They'd prefer to be able to go into court and say, "Look at this list! This criminal mastermind was distributing 2000 files! But we're only asking money for the five that we actually downloaded."
Prohibit using LimeWire to harvest tracking and identifying information!
BearShare actually did have a EULA that prohibited using it to collect information. It didn't help in any noticeable way. And then the RIAA lawyers beat the bear to death.
get an identical drive; put the old platter assy into the new drive's guts, or just move the good drive's electronics over
That's the hard part. "Identical" means not only model, but often revision as well. Once I did get lucky and find another drive from the same batch, and successfully trade circuit boards. But a couple of other times I failed to find the same rev. number, and the transplant didn't work.
I've been successful a few times freezing the drive (sometimes extending runtime with a can of freeze spray, an aerosol like canned air but gets a lot colder, intended to help techs find thermal problems). And mechanically abusing it (twisting it to start the platter spinning, or just whacking it.
Always have everything ready to go, if you do get it started it may work for ten minutes and quit. Maybe you'll get it started a second time, maybe not.
When the problem has (apparently) been data corruption rather than a hardware problem, I've been successful with software a few times. Once with OnTrack EasyRecovery, several times with File Scavenger. Including once where the problem was obviously a head crash, the drive made a horrid screeching sound. Couldn't get all of the data, but got some of it.
There's a pdf at http://www.hddrecovery.com.au/ that's got some other suggestions. (I have never tried that company's recovery software so have no opinion on it.)
I've never had anybody who was willing to pay to have the data recovery pros do it. But often they'd be willing to go a few hundred bucks for me to have a shot at it. Sometimes we get lucky. Sometimes we don't.
Imagine trying to communicate with a space station orbiting Jupiter and having to wait for a 35 to 52 minute delay with each question.
Don't get hung up on instant gratification. Imagine trying to communicate with the King's exploration fleet, and having to wait years for a reply. Imagine trying to ask a question of someone on the opposite US coast, and having to wait for the ship carrying your letter to sail around Cape Horn (the NY-SF clipper record was 84 days, one way).
I'm aware that it's a popular myth that hosting your site in some other country will exempt you from the laws of the country in which you live.
Of course not. But it makes it a lot harder to pursue. Dealing with your own government is numbingly frustrating as it is. Now consider having to deal with governments that are not your own, and that may not have the same priorities. So, let's see. You need to jump through the hoops of Brazil's government to compel a "privacy guard" type registrar to give the name of the domain holder. That turns out to be a mail drop in Vanuatu. Call around and try to find someone who speaks Bislama, because while you're pretty sure that whoever answers the government phone in Vanuatu understands English, they're being pricks about it. Give up on that approach, which is just as well because even if you had found someone who spoke Bislama and filed the necessary paperwork in that language with the Vanuatu Justice Ministry, it would have turned out that the mailing address is vacant lot in Amsterdam, and the email address is a free account in South Africa.
So, go after the server in the Ukraine (even though you're pretty sure the operator is backing everything up by FTP to somewhere else, and can start up at a new location on 24 hours notice). Call around to find someone who speaks Ukranian, and someone else who has a petty cash fund big enough to pay the bribe that's going to be required. On second thought, say "what the hell" and give up, you joined the force to catch bank robbers, not to play bureaucratic games in languages you don't understand, for the benefit of some company that isn't even in your country.
Besides, what makes you think the site operator is Canadian?
I am sure glad to be able to resume leaching from Canada. They blocked the country due to legal threats quite a while ago, and now seem to have forgotten to do so again.
Traceroute shows they're not in Canada anymore. The web server is in the Ukraine, the domain registration is in Brazil. So I'd guess that those legal threats are no longer a problem.
Every week I fill a 35 gallon trash bag with junk mail.
Wow. That's six gallons of junk mail every day! That's like an entire canvas mail sack daily. Or you're really fluffing it up before recycling it. Or you're in a more desirable demographic than I am (when filling out stupid surveys, I tend to claim that I am a 110 year old retired minister with no income). I get maybe a paper grocery bag (5 gallons?) in a month (or longer). Four or five pieces a day.
One problem is that voting software/hardware has to be certified by the state. A ponderous, time-consuming, and expensive bureaucratic nightmare not particularly friendly to amateurs (or even corporations, unless there's a good prospect for vast sales).
Lawyers are officers of the court. While they are not charged with enforcement per se, they are charged with presenting the law and interpreting it in good faith.
And you know this to be true in Switzerland (where the lawyer in question works)?
I also refuse to use those incentive cards at the grocery store.
Only one chain in my area has tried those (and they gave up on it later).
But when they introduced it, I went to the customer service desk and they gave me a form to fill out to register. I left the entire thing blank except for an illegible signature. The clerk said "don't you want to fill out the rest?", then shrugged and took it and gave me the card.
Or, if the clerk wants to be a Nazi, just make up information, same as you do when you register at a website. It's not like you're under oath or anything.
isn't the advertising to some extent what keeps some websites afloat?
Perhaps. What's that got to do with liking it? Proctoscopy may make me live longer, but that doesn't make me enthusiastic about having a proctoscope jammed up my butt.
As for billboards being less intrusive, that depends on the billboard and where it is, and how often you happen to visit wherever it is.
True. And not all advertising is obnoxious. Just advertising that is ugly, poorly designed, gaudy, moves on my screen, takes up space on my screen to the detriment of the page, makes the page load slower, or is for things I'm not interested in at the moment. So that includes about 75% of the advertising I see on websites ("ads that I see" does not include anything using Flash or most popups). Most of the other 25% is Google's ads, which aren't too obtrusive yet. If I'm shopping, I might even click on them.
TFA says that consumers want to see more relevant ads. It is very important to note that "more" modifies the word "relevant", not the word "ads".
The Koran incites violence against those not adherent to Islam. Do you propose banning that, too?
Don't forget the Bible. The Old Testament incites violence against those who are not Jews. ISTM the New Testament doesn't incite violence quite as much, but that didn't stop organized Christianity from running the Crusades, and God's spokesmen everywhere claim that God (or whatever his local alias is) is on their side (God did not return calls seeking clarification).
How many illegal immigrants, convicted felons, and otherwise ineligible-to-vote people are participating in elections?
There is no evidence that this is a problem. Think about it. If you're illegal and trying to hide from the government, why would you go and stand in line at a government event where your identity will be questioned, to do something that doesn't benefit you personally anyhow, something where there is a very real likelihood that you will get caught, have your ass thrown in jail, and get deported when it's all over?
If that's happening, it should be easy to find statistics on arrests, convictions, etc. Feel free to come back when you've actually got some evidence.
BTW, in many places convicted felons are as entitled to vote as you are, perhaps more so. Local rules differ.
Do they [the RIAA] operate outside the US? I've got *loads* of MP3s on my server
In the UK, they're the BPI. http://www.bpi.co.uk/ As you can see from their website, they're for "fair" copyright, that is, copyright that lasts a thousand years. Instead of having to sue people, they want your ISP to be their enforcement arm. Cheaper, easier, and if there's any flak, the ISP will be the one who catches it.
with one well placed spray of holy water, they have the ability to mow down SCO and a pack of (their own) lawyers at the same time? And this is bad how?
The problem is, we're dealing with technology. Holy water has salt in it (I suppose to keep it from getting moldy or something). Salt water is corrosive. Spray salt water over your keyboards and servers and stuff, and bad things happen.
I know, I had a client who did that. But at least when it was all over, the gear wasn't possessed any more.
With BitTorrent, Gnutella, Gnutella2, eDonkey, and some other networks, you've got the aggregate upload speed of many peers. If it's a sufficiently popular item, they'll fill all the bandwidth you have available. Singular peer to peer is so 20th century.
Slashdot Mirror
Then go aerial, affix the cat 3 to a wire (for support) and put a 10 ft pole every 10 meters or so.
For 500 meters? Better have some good lightning protection, or things will get exciting first time a thunderstorm comes along.
Grandpa!? Who you callin' grandpa, you whipper snapper? When I was your age, we only had BASIC, and we where HAPPY!
You kids had it easy. When I was your age, we just had ones and zeros. And sometimes we didn't have zeros, had to make do with recycled oh's and hope no one would notice.
File Express is relational, works under WINE.
File Express is great, and I've used it for a lot of things (mailing lists, among others, it's got great dupe checking capability). OP, however, was looking for free software, and FE is not free.
Neither, I think, are the other programs you mention, though some are abandonware.
People who have never used e-mail are going to be far more susceptible to scams that those who have used e-mail have become well aware of and learned to ignore.
They remain susceptible to telephone scams, postal scams, and that nice young man with the briefcase who runs an investment company with an office at the strip mall. But people who use e-mail remain susceptible to those scams, if they have a telephone or ever leave their mom's basement. People who don't use e-mail are, however, totally immune to e-mail scams.
For those ISP's with periodic bandwidth caps, there's already a firefox extension called Net Usage.
.au, whose ISPs Net Usage customizes for), there's NetMeter, which tracks all traffic through your network interface.
For those who want to keep track of bandwidth from other programs as well (or maybe just aren't in
Peerguardian
Peerguardian is better than nothing. But not by a lot. It maybe keeps the MafIAA from spotting you from their own IP address, but sometimes they neglect to inform PG when the IP numbers change. The MafIAA is perfectly capable of getting online via their local cable system (or one in Russia, for that matter, the tubes go everywhere), or registering a domain under an assumed name, or doing it from their mom's basement.
Azerus has a section where you can see who is seeding and leaching. It shows IP info if I'm not mistaken. Can they not do this with Torrents?
Easily.
How does that differ from Limewire?
With a torrent there isn't any way to "see all of the songs that a given file sharer is offering to others", just that one. And in fact, most people only do a few torrents at a time, so even if the RIAA could detect them, it wouldn't sound very impressive. They'd prefer to be able to go into court and say, "Look at this list! This criminal mastermind was distributing 2000 files! But we're only asking money for the five that we actually downloaded."
Prohibit using LimeWire to harvest tracking and identifying information!
BearShare actually did have a EULA that prohibited using it to collect information. It didn't help in any noticeable way. And then the RIAA lawyers beat the bear to death.
get an identical drive; put the old platter assy into the new drive's guts, or just move the good drive's electronics over
That's the hard part. "Identical" means not only model, but often revision as well. Once I did get lucky and find another drive from the same batch, and successfully trade circuit boards. But a couple of other times I failed to find the same rev. number, and the transplant didn't work.
I've been successful a few times freezing the drive (sometimes extending runtime with a can of freeze spray, an aerosol like canned air but gets a lot colder, intended to help techs find thermal problems). And mechanically abusing it (twisting it to start the platter spinning, or just whacking it.
Always have everything ready to go, if you do get it started it may work for ten minutes and quit. Maybe you'll get it started a second time, maybe not.
When the problem has (apparently) been data corruption rather than a hardware problem, I've been successful with software a few times. Once with OnTrack EasyRecovery, several times with File Scavenger. Including once where the problem was obviously a head crash, the drive made a horrid screeching sound. Couldn't get all of the data, but got some of it.
There's a pdf at http://www.hddrecovery.com.au/ that's got some other suggestions. (I have never tried that company's recovery software so have no opinion on it.)
I've never had anybody who was willing to pay to have the data recovery pros do it. But often they'd be willing to go a few hundred bucks for me to have a shot at it. Sometimes we get lucky. Sometimes we don't.
Imagine trying to communicate with a space station orbiting Jupiter and having to wait for a 35 to 52 minute delay with each question.
Don't get hung up on instant gratification. Imagine trying to communicate with the King's exploration fleet, and having to wait years for a reply. Imagine trying to ask a question of someone on the opposite US coast, and having to wait for the ship carrying your letter to sail around Cape Horn (the NY-SF clipper record was 84 days, one way).
no encryption and no answers. I smell an FBI national security letter and gag order.
And why should wikileaks care about that? The domain is registered to an address in Kenya, and the web server appears to be in Sweden.
I'm aware that it's a popular myth that hosting your site in some other country will exempt you from the laws of the country in which you live.
Of course not. But it makes it a lot harder to pursue. Dealing with your own government is numbingly frustrating as it is. Now consider having to deal with governments that are not your own, and that may not have the same priorities. So, let's see. You need to jump through the hoops of Brazil's government to compel a "privacy guard" type registrar to give the name of the domain holder. That turns out to be a mail drop in Vanuatu. Call around and try to find someone who speaks Bislama, because while you're pretty sure that whoever answers the government phone in Vanuatu understands English, they're being pricks about it. Give up on that approach, which is just as well because even if you had found someone who spoke Bislama and filed the necessary paperwork in that language with the Vanuatu Justice Ministry, it would have turned out that the mailing address is vacant lot in Amsterdam, and the email address is a free account in South Africa.
So, go after the server in the Ukraine (even though you're pretty sure the operator is backing everything up by FTP to somewhere else, and can start up at a new location on 24 hours notice). Call around to find someone who speaks Ukranian, and someone else who has a petty cash fund big enough to pay the bribe that's going to be required. On second thought, say "what the hell" and give up, you joined the force to catch bank robbers, not to play bureaucratic games in languages you don't understand, for the benefit of some company that isn't even in your country.
Besides, what makes you think the site operator is Canadian?
I am sure glad to be able to resume leaching from Canada. They blocked the country due to legal threats quite a while ago, and now seem to have forgotten to do so again.
Traceroute shows they're not in Canada anymore. The web server is in the Ukraine, the domain registration is in Brazil. So I'd guess that those legal threats are no longer a problem.
Every week I fill a 35 gallon trash bag with junk mail.
Wow. That's six gallons of junk mail every day! That's like an entire canvas mail sack daily. Or you're really fluffing it up before recycling it. Or you're in a more desirable demographic than I am (when filling out stupid surveys, I tend to claim that I am a 110 year old retired minister with no income). I get maybe a paper grocery bag (5 gallons?) in a month (or longer). Four or five pieces a day.
that members of this site haven't started an open source project
You mean, like the Electronic Voting Machine Project and OpenSTV and the Voting Software Project and the Open Voting Consortium and Blue Screen Democracy and probably a dozen other projects?
One problem is that voting software/hardware has to be certified by the state. A ponderous, time-consuming, and expensive bureaucratic nightmare not particularly friendly to amateurs (or even corporations, unless there's a good prospect for vast sales).
Lawyers are officers of the court. While they are not charged with enforcement per se, they are charged with presenting the law and interpreting it in good faith.
And you know this to be true in Switzerland (where the lawyer in question works)?
I also refuse to use those incentive cards at the grocery store.
Only one chain in my area has tried those (and they gave up on it later).
But when they introduced it, I went to the customer service desk and they gave me a form to fill out to register. I left the entire thing blank except for an illegible signature. The clerk said "don't you want to fill out the rest?", then shrugged and took it and gave me the card.
Or, if the clerk wants to be a Nazi, just make up information, same as you do when you register at a website. It's not like you're under oath or anything.
isn't the advertising to some extent what keeps some websites afloat?
Perhaps. What's that got to do with liking it? Proctoscopy may make me live longer, but that doesn't make me enthusiastic about having a proctoscope jammed up my butt.
As for billboards being less intrusive, that depends on the billboard and where it is, and how often you happen to visit wherever it is.
True. And not all advertising is obnoxious. Just advertising that is ugly, poorly designed, gaudy, moves on my screen, takes up space on my screen to the detriment of the page, makes the page load slower, or is for things I'm not interested in at the moment. So that includes about 75% of the advertising I see on websites ("ads that I see" does not include anything using Flash or most popups). Most of the other 25% is Google's ads, which aren't too obtrusive yet. If I'm shopping, I might even click on them.
TFA says that consumers want to see more relevant ads. It is very important to note that "more" modifies the word "relevant", not the word "ads".
If you can't afford $10 - $15 / YEAR for your domain then you're not getting much out of it.
Well, you're not getting much money out of it.
The Koran incites violence against those not adherent to Islam. Do you propose banning that, too?
Don't forget the Bible. The Old Testament incites violence against those who are not Jews. ISTM the New Testament doesn't incite violence quite as much, but that didn't stop organized Christianity from running the Crusades, and God's spokesmen everywhere claim that God (or whatever his local alias is) is on their side (God did not return calls seeking clarification).
How many illegal immigrants, convicted felons, and otherwise ineligible-to-vote people are participating in elections?
There is no evidence that this is a problem. Think about it. If you're illegal and trying to hide from the government, why would you go and stand in line at a government event where your identity will be questioned, to do something that doesn't benefit you personally anyhow, something where there is a very real likelihood that you will get caught, have your ass thrown in jail, and get deported when it's all over?
If that's happening, it should be easy to find statistics on arrests, convictions, etc. Feel free to come back when you've actually got some evidence.
BTW, in many places convicted felons are as entitled to vote as you are, perhaps more so. Local rules differ.
Do they [the RIAA] operate outside the US? I've got *loads* of MP3s on my server
In the UK, they're the BPI. http://www.bpi.co.uk/ As you can see from their website, they're for "fair" copyright, that is, copyright that lasts a thousand years. Instead of having to sue people, they want your ISP to be their enforcement arm. Cheaper, easier, and if there's any flak, the ISP will be the one who catches it.
with one well placed spray of holy water, they have the ability to mow down SCO and a pack of (their own) lawyers at the same time? And this is bad how?
The problem is, we're dealing with technology. Holy water has salt in it (I suppose to keep it from getting moldy or something). Salt water is corrosive. Spray salt water over your keyboards and servers and stuff, and bad things happen.
I know, I had a client who did that. But at least when it was all over, the gear wasn't possessed any more.
I don't think that will be enough for SCO.
They pulled his domains after they discovered the tour operator's name on a US Treasury blacklist.
Just another reason for people around the world to have second thoughts when they think about doing business with an American company.
No peer can upload at those speeds
With BitTorrent, Gnutella, Gnutella2, eDonkey, and some other networks, you've got the aggregate upload speed of many peers. If it's a sufficiently popular item, they'll fill all the bandwidth you have available. Singular peer to peer is so 20th century.