You claim you don't care what your audience thinks, but you obviously care that you have one. Otherwise you'd write in a journal, or type into your favorite text editor.
Of course I care that I have an audience. It's interesting knowing that people actually read the stuff I output. But it's not the primary reason to write, to me it's a nice bonus.
Actually I do write a lot in a "private" space. I've kept a pen-and-paper journal for about seven years now, and I also write a lot in a private computer-based journal (typing goes so much quicker than writing with a pen for me) that is only read by me. The personal thoughts that get put into my blog are the ones I want to share. A lot of the thoughts going on in my head are deeply personal and wouldn't be understood by the general public (hell, I myself hardly understand them sometimes) but I want to document them for my own personal history and hence they get put into a non-public media.
Blogs have empowered anyone with the ability to write about anything. Seeing as how harsh and demanding our society has become, I personally feel that it's not very surprising that so many blogs revolve around personal issues.
As someone who has a long history of suffering from Clinical Depression I know how healing it can be to be able to "bitch at an anonymous audience". Hell, just the simple fact that a lot of my close friends read my blog is a big help. The oldest form of therapy as well is just talking about how you feel, and a blog is certainly able to do that - albeit in a kind of one-way form, but none the less it gives you the power to ventilate your thoughts.
Blogs don't have to be grand on a scale. A lot of bloggers come of with some weird kind of delusion of grandeur, they write about all kinds of pompous stuff instead of writing about the really interesting things - and then they get bored and tired when they're not immediately greeted with a flood of comments about how awesome they are. Me, I have a little different approach. I write MY thoughts, and primarily it's just for ventilation of my windy head. If people like it, great. If people don't, then please move along, no need to submit a comment about how my writing sucks or something like that.
My blog often revolves around every-day things, or when the mood goes south I tend to write about that. If people aren't interested it's not my problem since I don't need to please everyone who reads my blog. I have my friends, and over the last year I've attracted a small but dedicated following who read my ravings and rantings so obviously there's something interesting there.
Sweden is also the country who has a law that you have to display information about cookies on your site (of said site uses cookies).
Apparently some politician felt that cookies was some great threat to privacy and personal security, and presto - a pointless law was introduced. Oooh, thank you politicians for keeping dear little me safe from the evil cookies!
This law went into action sometime 2003 and is IMNSHO complete f****n bullshit.
The artist should have a say as to whether they'd like to opt for a copy protection system that their holders/labels employ.
Unfortunately though, that is not how the system works. Of course, you'd think that the artist would have something to say, but once they've signed on the dotted line they have no input whatsoever (other than that they do in the studio). The label/publisher owns ALL RIGHTS to the music and can henceforth do whatever they want with it. If they want to "copyprotect" it, then they can do it.
If the artist objects then the label will go into mobster-mode and say stuff like "yeah, but if we don't copyprotect then it will get stolen and that means loss of revenue, and that means you guys get less payout, and we wouldn't want that now?"
Signing a deal with a label is essentially signing away your soul and all rights to your music.
Most car models that don't have a radio immobilizer of some kind (which is most cars) only have maybe 30 different keys for the whole model production. A lot of repo guys have key rings with all the standard keys for high-repo models.
Many older SAAB models (the 99 for example) have identical keys for the entire series. This is rather amusing, and it's a common occurence that an owner of a old-model SAAB might accidentally drive off with a different car.
It happened to my mother when she owned one. She got into the wrong car (but right color/model) and drove for about 100 ft before she realized it wasn't her car at all. Left a note with an apology and parked it in the same place. Think this happened 2-3 times in total while she owned it.
IMHO Winzip peaked at around version 5 when they finally introduced long filename support. Everything after that was more of the same, nothing really new. Sure, this "archiving faster" crap sound cool but is it really faster? And do the customer really wanna fork over cash for a 3% (or whatever) increase in zipping?
Also, I'm rather tired of using fifty billion archivers and have therefore switched to PowerArchiver which does a good job at most every format.
Huge monolithic corporation takes existing standards and mutilates it. News at eleven.
This is nothing new. Typical modus operandi from Microsoft. Take something that's not invented or controlled by them, fuck it up royally and slowly kill it using their primary product as leverage.
Aye, I can only agree. The demoscene as we old-schoolers know it and love it has unfortunately been dead for many years. The only way for the demo-parties to survive was to morph into kiddie-friendly LAN-parties, which IMHO sucks elephantballs. They're more boring than watching paint dry, and what with all the ATI and Nvidia-accelerated GPU's the ancient art of optimizing your code is pretty much gone, since every lamer has a 3+ Ghz with some fat videocard these days.
Where did all the cool hacks go? Whatever happened to code optimization? Hell, in my days the only gaming that took place was when you were stuck at some coding segment and needed to blow off steam.
(and yes, in those days we walked uphill both ways to get to school!)
twenty million fanboys drool all over their pants. News at eleven.
Seriously, am I the only scifinerd that found the series to be a complete yawn? Totally boring, and yes I did watch it on DVD in "proper" order. Didn't help with the wooden acting and the tons of scifi-clichés that was dumped upon my head.
(Yes, go ahead and mod me "flamebait" now)
Nomadic vs Non-Nomadic VoIP
on
VoIP Security
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Folks, you have to remember that this article talks about the so-called nomadic voIP-services.
I've been using VoIP for the better part of two years now, and it's maintained by my ISP. I run it over the Ethernet hookup I have, and as far as functionality is concerned I hardly notice the difference from POTS.
Outages? I've had two. Once when my apartment lost power (thus the VoIP-box lost power) and once when some major link in my ISP's chain went down. As a matter of fact, I've had FEWER problems with VoIP than POTS. My ISP/Telco also didn't charge for the days (two) of outages, of course.
As for packet priority, I can max my line, and since the phone is a non-nomadic VoIP the sound is still crystal clear since the ISP uses traffic-shaping (or something) to always put priority on the VoIP-packets.
Here in Sweden one of the biggest ISP's (called Bredbandsbolaget or "The Broadband Company" in English) have been offering 100mbits Internet for the better part of a year now.
Admittedly it's only to their fiber/LAN-customers (which I am a part of) and with a traffic cap at 300GB/month as well as a rather hefty pricetag of approx US$113/month.
You also seem to think that teaching someone about port forwarding and NAT is something that is hard to do.
I don't "think" it's hard to teach someone about NAT and portforwarding. I KNOW it's almost impossible with most people. I've spent countless hours trying to explain the basics of networking and how a NAT-box works to all walks of life (PH.D's as well as plumbers) and they all nod as if they understand it, and two days later calls me asking what the hell's going on "with that thingamajig".
So, these days I've given up. Instead I go there and fix the issue and send them a bill for my time. Borth parties are happy with that.
Yeah, but you forget that all the "cheap hardware firewalls" are nothing more than some NAT thrown in a cheap box. They have crap throughput and only the basic features. In most cases, they're not worth the plastic they're built with.
Admittedly they do help for the basic security for Joe Asshole, but they don't help if the user is a complete nitwit, and they also do introduce the analrape that NAT is for most users.
Sure, you can make little Timmys machine a bit more "secure", but also you have to teach him about portforwarding and all that crap as well, and explain to him why all of a sudden a lot of stuff (such as filetransfers over MSN/ICQ) don't work the way they should.
Most often than not the little "routers" are more pain than gain.
is already starting to shut down analog TV broadcasts. The first run starts in September and continues over the country for the next two years, and in March 2007 the whole country will be analog-free.
The debate around this runs hot, while digital provides better audio/video there's a few drawbacks (such as the high cost of recievers, and need to have a reciever for every TV) which is making people frustrated.
I used to do this too. Had a "drivers" folder where I built my own personal driver-archive, etc etc. After I got my first DSL in 2001 (now on Ethernet) I gave up on this habit since it no longer served any purpose.
I do have a friend though, he still does this. has like 20 versions of Winamp, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
and cuddle him and call him George.
You claim you don't care what your audience thinks, but you obviously care that you have one. Otherwise you'd write in a journal, or type into your favorite text editor.
Of course I care that I have an audience. It's interesting knowing that people actually read the stuff I output. But it's not the primary reason to write, to me it's a nice bonus.
Actually I do write a lot in a "private" space. I've kept a pen-and-paper journal for about seven years now, and I also write a lot in a private computer-based journal (typing goes so much quicker than writing with a pen for me) that is only read by me. The personal thoughts that get put into my blog are the ones I want to share. A lot of the thoughts going on in my head are deeply personal and wouldn't be understood by the general public (hell, I myself hardly understand them sometimes) but I want to document them for my own personal history and hence they get put into a non-public media.
Blogs have empowered anyone with the ability to write about anything. Seeing as how harsh and demanding our society has become, I personally feel that it's not very surprising that so many blogs revolve around personal issues.
As someone who has a long history of suffering from Clinical Depression I know how healing it can be to be able to "bitch at an anonymous audience". Hell, just the simple fact that a lot of my close friends read my blog is a big help. The oldest form of therapy as well is just talking about how you feel, and a blog is certainly able to do that - albeit in a kind of one-way form, but none the less it gives you the power to ventilate your thoughts.
Blogs don't have to be grand on a scale. A lot of bloggers come of with some weird kind of delusion of grandeur, they write about all kinds of pompous stuff instead of writing about the really interesting things - and then they get bored and tired when they're not immediately greeted with a flood of comments about how awesome they are. Me, I have a little different approach. I write MY thoughts, and primarily it's just for ventilation of my windy head. If people like it, great. If people don't, then please move along, no need to submit a comment about how my writing sucks or something like that.
My blog often revolves around every-day things, or when the mood goes south I tend to write about that. If people aren't interested it's not my problem since I don't need to please everyone who reads my blog. I have my friends, and over the last year I've attracted a small but dedicated following who read my ravings and rantings so obviously there's something interesting there.
Sweden is also the country who has a law that you have to display information about cookies on your site (of said site uses cookies).
Apparently some politician felt that cookies was some great threat to privacy and personal security, and presto - a pointless law was introduced. Oooh, thank you politicians for keeping dear little me safe from the evil cookies!
This law went into action sometime 2003 and is IMNSHO complete f****n bullshit.
The artist should have a say as to whether they'd like to opt for a copy protection system that their holders/labels employ.
Unfortunately though, that is not how the system works. Of course, you'd think that the artist would have something to say, but once they've signed on the dotted line they have no input whatsoever (other than that they do in the studio). The label/publisher owns ALL RIGHTS to the music and can henceforth do whatever they want with it. If they want to "copyprotect" it, then they can do it.
If the artist objects then the label will go into mobster-mode and say stuff like "yeah, but if we don't copyprotect then it will get stolen and that means loss of revenue, and that means you guys get less payout, and we wouldn't want that now?"
Signing a deal with a label is essentially signing away your soul and all rights to your music.
"Ah mon, you be tryin ta write a righteous lettah? You be definitely needin a big spliff first, mon!"
Most car models that don't have a radio immobilizer of some kind (which is most cars) only have maybe 30 different keys for the whole model production. A lot of repo guys have key rings with all the standard keys for high-repo models.
Many older SAAB models (the 99 for example) have identical keys for the entire series. This is rather amusing, and it's a common occurence that an owner of a old-model SAAB might accidentally drive off with a different car.
It happened to my mother when she owned one. She got into the wrong car (but right color/model) and drove for about 100 ft before she realized it wasn't her car at all. Left a note with an apology and parked it in the same place. Think this happened 2-3 times in total while she owned it.
IMHO Winzip peaked at around version 5 when they finally introduced long filename support. Everything after that was more of the same, nothing really new. Sure, this "archiving faster" crap sound cool but is it really faster? And do the customer really wanna fork over cash for a 3% (or whatever) increase in zipping?
Also, I'm rather tired of using fifty billion archivers and have therefore switched to PowerArchiver which does a good job at most every format.
does it run Linux?
Oh, wait...
Huge monolithic corporation takes existing standards and mutilates it. News at eleven.
This is nothing new. Typical modus operandi from Microsoft. Take something that's not invented or controlled by them, fuck it up royally and slowly kill it using their primary product as leverage.
Wow, really surprising.
...yet
It's a cool idea and I like some of it, but the shape and low contour is still something that will cause cramps from long-time use.
In my field of work I spend a lot of time using Apple mouses from the last 2-3 years, and the low shape and oblong shape is horrible.
Gimme my MX1000 any day of the week.
Assembly today is shit
Aye, I can only agree. The demoscene as we old-schoolers know it and love it has unfortunately been dead for many years. The only way for the demo-parties to survive was to morph into kiddie-friendly LAN-parties, which IMHO sucks elephantballs. They're more boring than watching paint dry, and what with all the ATI and Nvidia-accelerated GPU's the ancient art of optimizing your code is pretty much gone, since every lamer has a 3+ Ghz with some fat videocard these days.
Where did all the cool hacks go? Whatever happened to code optimization? Hell, in my days the only gaming that took place was when you were stuck at some coding segment and needed to blow off steam.
(and yes, in those days we walked uphill both ways to get to school!)
twenty million fanboys drool all over their pants. News at eleven.
Seriously, am I the only scifinerd that found the series to be a complete yawn? Totally boring, and yes I did watch it on DVD in "proper" order. Didn't help with the wooden acting and the tons of scifi-clichés that was dumped upon my head.
(Yes, go ahead and mod me "flamebait" now)
Folks, you have to remember that this article talks about the so-called nomadic voIP-services.
I've been using VoIP for the better part of two years now, and it's maintained by my ISP. I run it over the Ethernet hookup I have, and as far as functionality is concerned I hardly notice the difference from POTS.
Outages? I've had two. Once when my apartment lost power (thus the VoIP-box lost power) and once when some major link in my ISP's chain went down. As a matter of fact, I've had FEWER problems with VoIP than POTS. My ISP/Telco also didn't charge for the days (two) of outages, of course.
As for packet priority, I can max my line, and since the phone is a non-nomadic VoIP the sound is still crystal clear since the ISP uses traffic-shaping (or something) to always put priority on the VoIP-packets.
Here in Sweden one of the biggest ISP's (called Bredbandsbolaget or "The Broadband Company" in English) have been offering 100mbits Internet for the better part of a year now.
Admittedly it's only to their fiber/LAN-customers (which I am a part of) and with a traffic cap at 300GB/month as well as a rather hefty pricetag of approx US$113/month.
But it's available to the crazies who want it.
ROTFLMAO
Sir, I believe you nailed the proverbial head onto the mythical nail, and for that I salute you!
You also seem to think that teaching someone about port forwarding and NAT is something that is hard to do.
I don't "think" it's hard to teach someone about NAT and portforwarding. I KNOW it's almost impossible with most people. I've spent countless hours trying to explain the basics of networking and how a NAT-box works to all walks of life (PH.D's as well as plumbers) and they all nod as if they understand it, and two days later calls me asking what the hell's going on "with that thingamajig".
So, these days I've given up. Instead I go there and fix the issue and send them a bill for my time. Borth parties are happy with that.
Yeah, but you forget that all the "cheap hardware firewalls" are nothing more than some NAT thrown in a cheap box. They have crap throughput and only the basic features. In most cases, they're not worth the plastic they're built with.
Admittedly they do help for the basic security for Joe Asshole, but they don't help if the user is a complete nitwit, and they also do introduce the analrape that NAT is for most users.
Sure, you can make little Timmys machine a bit more "secure", but also you have to teach him about portforwarding and all that crap as well, and explain to him why all of a sudden a lot of stuff (such as filetransfers over MSN/ICQ) don't work the way they should.
Most often than not the little "routers" are more pain than gain.
I am NOT kidding. This movie is BAD.
Obviously you've never watched Manos, The Hands of Fate. That movie makes Plan 9 seem like a brilliant tribute to life.
Darl is not the only one richly deserving of jail time.
He's also not the only rich person deserving jailtime.
and what use might a windtunnel in my apartment be? It's not like I'm designing fighter-jets or the new Ford here.
The debate around this runs hot, while digital provides better audio/video there's a few drawbacks (such as the high cost of recievers, and need to have a reciever for every TV) which is making people frustrated.
You must be new here.
I used to do this too. Had a "drivers" folder where I built my own personal driver-archive, etc etc. After I got my first DSL in 2001 (now on Ethernet) I gave up on this habit since it no longer served any purpose.
I do have a friend though, he still does this. has like 20 versions of Winamp, etc.
considering that we just read an article where Gates wants to fuse everything from your cellphone to your blender to your roll of toiletpaper.