I'm Australian, and I think maybe the best thing about this place is the ACCC.
This time last year I was a super-hardcore valve fan, singing their praises and buying up pretty much every new game that came out for linux, including much of valve's catalog (which I had previously pirated). I was even thinking about trying to build a few steam boxes to sell on ebay.
One game I bought was Fez. It didn't work properly, making it unplayable. I emailled Fez support and recieved no response.
I emailled valve demanding the refund I am entitled to by law. I spent many, many emails back and forth explaining to them that I was entitled to my money back, since the thing being unplayable is clearly a major fault. They tried to tell me that the law doesn't apply to them and that I should write to their legal department and ignored my further emails... Rather than simply obeying the law and refunding the princely sum of $2.49.
The argument that our law doesn't apply to them is a joke - the law applies if you sell within australia. I was in Australia when I bought Fez. There are steam mirrors here. They are specifically marketing at Australians - If Australian laws don't apply to valve, where's my uncensored version of Left 4 Dead 2?
I complained to the ACCC and did a chargeback on my credit card - got my money back despite them. Interestingly, I still have Fez in my steam library, so it looks like i got it for free. I don't know whether the game-breaking bug has been fixed - I have no interest in playing it anymore.
I've not purchased anything through steam since, and Valve will never see another cent of my money - I don't support companies who think they're above the law.
The humble store and GOG have both made a killing off of me this year. I wonder if I can can get one or both to write Valve a nice thank-you note.
If you got a refund from valve without doing a chargeback, you were lucky. If you didn't get a refund, do a chargeback, then call the ACCC and tell them you love their work. And if you know somebody who works for the ACCC, hug them for me.
Indeed - people are complaining simply because it's different to what they're used to. Mac users don't like windows. If you switch back you'll have the same problem to a certain extent.
I'd be very interested to see how the number of complaints about the open-source software stacks up against a huge MS-imposed change like the office ribbon. I'd expect the numbers to be similar. People will complain if you change the default colour or font of something - of course they're going to complain when you switch the software they're using.
This does scream fishy to me. We all know that Ballmer flew out to Munich to try to talk them out of switching in the first place. It would be naieve to think that MS has just given up on Munich - there's too much at stake - if it goes well for Munich, other cities will follow, and then open-source could spread into the corporate sector, and that would be BAD.
A lack of integrated email/contacts/calendar? That's not a complaint - try Thunderbird with the Lightning add-on. If that doesn't do what you need, look for another option - there are probably hundreds. Maybe you want something web-based? There are a bunch of those.
Another option would be to take e.g the cost of one license for a mid-sized MS exchange server and split it into bounties for the features you want - you'd probably have your features in a couple of days. $10k would buy A LOT of open-source development. And the rest of the world gets your features too, for free! Compared with the cost of Windows licenses it's small potatoes, and it's a community service. It's win-win for everybody. Except MS.
What you might call a Troll comment, I might consider an extremely insightful and positive contribution to human society.
If I put up an inflammmatory post on an astrology forum telling people that they're idiots for believing in astrology - a position borne out by science and IMHO entirely accurate - am I trolling, or trying to enlighten people?
Is it different if I "Troll" in the same way on an anti-abortion forum? What if it's the westboro baptist church's website I'm "trolling"? What about the KKK or NAMBLA? At what point does trolling become noble?
How are you going to do away with the "Trolls" and maintain an open discussion where unpopular but correct points can be raised? I smell censorship.
So to answer your question, no - I wouldn't pay to read the same three safe opinions regurgitated over and over again.
If you feed trolls, you're an idiot. But to try to silence them would be even stupider.
of late they are doing really nice work and getting mocked despite doing real innovation
What? When? Where?
Or did you mean "innovation" in the traditional microsoft sense ("borrowing" ideas)?
I'm still yet to see a single example of Microsoft innovating, ever. But then I stopped paying attention to what they were doing nearly 10 years ago now, so maybe I'm wrong.
I simply won't buy a phone without any real input methods - I drank that koolaid once and I'm not feeling particularly masochistic - I spent a year trying to type on a touchscreen, and I'd rather have my face torn off by ravenous wolves than try it again. Haptic feedback is essential as far as I'm concerned. There are the other usability issues, like a system which assumes that I didn't mean to type what I typed, but for me it's the sense of touch which makes all the difference. Your can feel the edge of a button and tell you when your finger is improperly positioned without looking at it. you know when it has been pressed because you feel it press down. And there are more than 26 buttons - ever tried to cat ~/file.sql.gz | pv | ssh user@host "gunzip | mysql db_name" on a touchscreen? You'll wish you had a gun.
At the moment I'm using a shitty nokia because I needed a new phone immediately and that was the only one in the entire shopping centre with actual buttons.
If my choice next time is a phone with touchscreen only or no phone at all, it'll be a tough decision - no phone at all has its advantages.
I blame Tom Cruise - this notion that touchscreens aren't a horrible idea all started with Minority Report.
I expect that the NSA has done that in the proper forums for discussing classified matters: in meetings with the administration, in closed sessions of Congress, and before the courts in closed hearings.
There's your problem right there: you expect people who are demonstrably untrustworthy to do the right thing.
One thing that I can say is that if you're running a modern distro you'll likely run into problems with Unreal Tournament's sound support - it only supports OSS, and it expects that/dev/dsp exists.
On my Ubuntu 12.04 box, I have to use padsp when launching UT to get any audio, and when I do use padsp I get a ~500ms delay on the audio - it's unplayable. A real pity.
I think that this could probably be fixed by ripping out pulseaudio and installing the real OSS, but I don't know for sure and didn't want to get that drastic on my everyday machine. Also, you might find that the UT binary has old OSS libs compiled in statically, so it might not work even then.
I'd be really interested to hear anybody's solutions to this dilemma - I miss UT!
I bought one in January. It's absolutely spectacular. It's quite possibly the best computer I have ever owned.
this thing is a MAME device that costs close to $600
No. Calling it a MAME device is not even beginning to do it justice. Sure, I have something like 40,000 MAME ROMS loaded on mine, but that's just one SD card. Another SD card is a truecrypt volume. Another contains 40 years worth of X-Men comics. Another has all the SCUMM games, a ridiculous number of C64 games, and a bunch of Playstation games. I've just started playing with some of the audio production apps - soon I'll figure out how to use the pandora as a MIDI controller, that'll be cool. Chromium runs well for web browsing as long as you limit the number of tabs you have open. Office apps like Libreoffice and dia run well. But for me, I think that the terminal, scite, and ssh are the killer apps - some things aren't available on the pandora (which actually means "I haven't bothered trying to compile them yet"), sometimes I want to offload processing to a faster machine. And sometimes I need to restart my webserver... actually, the real killer "app" is the hardware keyboard.
The range of software available in the repos is staggering given the system specs (it runs blender!:O), and the quality generally high. The native games available should not be trivialised, either - special mentions go to asciiportal, boson-x, audiorace, pewpew2, and the arkanoid remake. Some of these are huge time sinks.
$600?!? pah! In AU, where we try to stay at least 10 years behind the rest of the world, it's nearly AU$800 once you throw in some accessories and shipping, but I really think it was worth every penny.
Yes, it's not as impressive in specs today as it was when it was designed. They got screwed and they had production problems, so it took a lot longer to get built than it should have. But they did manage to bring it to market eventually and they've done as much as they can to get units to the people who preordered. And they've been fairly transparent about all this, so I think that they're credible. On the other hand, I would have been really annoyed if I'd preordered and I'm glad I didn't.
People ask me what it is, and I describe it as a full computer which can do most things their laptop can do - it's the best way I've found to describe it. Flexibility is the key - I was running the JACK audio framework and a couple of software synthesizers last night and started to run out of memory, so I switched to my terminal and enabled the swap partition on my SD card. Problem solved.
I like some of the changes you 've made, but I disagree with your philosophy of standing for things. Due to this, I'm starting up a new WaylandX-ex ((https://github.com/waylandx) project on github to avoid these political issues. Join me instead!
I was being conservative, and they don't say what they're using. Based on my experience with people (they're often incompetent morons), CRC16 wouldn't suprise me.
Well, technically, after enough time somebody *will* eventually try to upload a perfectly legitimate file which just happens by coincidence to have the same hash as something that was taken down, and that uploader will get an erroneous error message blocking them from sharing their own work.
So you don't have to be distributing copyrighted material for this to be a problem, but probability is on your side - it's probably not likely to happen for decades or centuries, depending on the hashing algorithm used. But it just might happen to you tomorrow.
Or maybe he's somebody who: * cares about real-estate on his screen and the density of information displayed vs shininess. Those borders and "modern" task bar are huge! * is interested in having a UI that responds in a timely manner rather than having pretty but utterly useless animations that make him wait half a second every time he clicks on something. * wants to use less memory for caching pretty animations and more for the programs he's running * wants his processor to be working on the task he has assigned it rather than showing him shiny animations * feels like it's more important to make something stable than pretty * feels like it's more important to make something efficient than pretty * feels like it's more important to make something compatible than pretty
That's all very interesting and I'm really happy for you that you're able to follow a conversation and then summarise it, but everything you said is totally irrelevant to the point I was making. In fact, it doesn't even address my statement except to insult me. Those are some magnificent debating skills you have there - are you planning on going into politics one day?
How does any of that make the "freedom is more important than safety" quote imply that safety is not important? Please provide an explanation of how the phrase "freedom is more important than safety" indicates an absolute value for safety. Alternatively, you could just shut the hell up - that might prevent you from looking any stupider.
Now you owe me 2 IQ points in addition the AC's 5, and I'm going to stop reading this thread before I'm dragged even further down to your level of intelligence - another 200 or so posts like this and I'll be as dumb as you.
Oh... my... god... That's so retarded that reading it made me a little but stupider. You owe me 5 IQ points, and I want them back. My brain hurts.
Please go learn your englishes and gramatticals to make sure that you understand the statement, then please go learn about logic so that you understand its implications. It'll help you a lot!
His statement was "Freedom is more important than safety". This does not make any implications about how important safety is, except that it's less important than freedom. The statement contains no other information and implies no other context. It's a very simple, straightforward, and concise statement, which also happens to be true. You are either a complete idiot or completely full of shit to say that it implies anything about the value of safety. If he'd said something like "Freedom is more important than safety and nobody cares about safety" then you might have a point and not look like a complete fuckwit. But that's not what he said, so you do, and my brain hurts.
Now please, for the love of the flying spaghetti monster, do as you've been told and vanish, satisfied in the fact that you've caused me a small amount of permanent brain damage.
You're talking about software licensing, which is not the same as buying media (music/video/etc).
When I buy music, I have the right to make a backup copy, or to transfer it to another medium. The copyright laws were written before software was a consideration, so they don't tend to mention it specifically and therefore it's handled differently in some ways (e.g different licenses), but it's generally accepted that by extension this also holds true for digital media - e.g I'm allowed to take all my old C64 disks, convert them to disk images on my PC, and run them in an emulator. Any term in a license agreement which tries to stop you from doing so is an unfair contract condition and unenforceable, at least where I live. Sucks to be you if the US is different.
And excuse me, but I haven't run into any DRM that attempts to prevent backups
Early Ipods would format themselves if you plugged them into your second computer. I've seen this firsthand, too.
The first-gen DRM was quite draconian - the only reason they don't try to stop you doing these things now is that they realised very quickly that by doing things like installing rootkits they were making enemies and encouraging people to just download the version with no crap attached that was free and available on the web about 18 nanoseconds after the release - it was a far superior experience to using their crapware.
you seem to be implying that you're quite happy to just settle for whatever rights the license holders decide you can have, regardless of whether they're reasonable or not? You think all the terms in those license agreements are enforceable in every jurisdiction? lol. When apple show up to turn you into a human centipad and say that you agreed to it, you'll just go with them?
Ummm, No: What rights you have depends on your local laws. Sounds to me like you should read up on your rights.
It has never been considered copyright infringement to make a backup of something or to transfer it to another medium. DRM attempts to prevent exactly this. this is established all over the place. For me, the following excerpt from wikipedia seems relevant:
In late 2006, Australia added several 'private copying' exceptions. It is no longer an infringement of copyright to record a broadcast to watch or listen at a more convenient time (s 111), or to make a copy of a sound recording for private and domestic use (e.g., copy onto an iPod) (s 109A), or make a copy of a literary work, magazine, or newspaper article for private use (43C).
What DRM really does is two things: 1) waste resources on your computer providing absolutely nothing desirable and nothing that can't be bypassed in seconds, shortening its lifespan and increasing its energy consumption, and 2) piss off legitimate users who want to do things they're legally allowed to do, turning their customers into their enemies. Good job!
I would argue that the unrealistic stance to take is that spying is necessary - let me ask you this: why is surveillance necessary? why do you need foreign intelligence?
Are you worried about an invading army showing up on your shores tomorrow? who? You don't think you'd detect them with your radars, sonars, satellites, etc?
Maybe you need to spy so that you can get the competitive edge in business - you know, get mcdonalds into antarctica and secure those lucrative jet fighter contracts for boeing. You don't think that the US and US companies could just get along by playing fair with everyone else? You don't have a reputation for superior engineering and good manufacturing - you need to play dirty to survive? Having a reputation as "the country that always plays fair" wouldn't be worth anything at all in financial terms?
Aha, I've got it! you're worried about a sudden nuclear attack - those pesky french could always nuke Washington tomorrow, so you need to spy! You don't think that making a noble gesture like proposing a total blanket ban on nuclear weapons worldwide and offering to completely dismantle your stockpile would help relieve tensions? You really think the North Koreans would bother nuking you if you dismantled your entire stockpile? I think you'd find they just might dismantle theirs and start feeding their people a little better or risk revolution when the amazing and unprecedented news that the US just disarmed gets through to the people. Of course we'd need to send in weapons inspectors to make sure that you weren't being sneaky.
Oh, I know - it's the same answer as everything else - you're worried about terrorists killing thousands of your civillians!
Assuming that this is a real threat (something of which I've seen absolutely no evidence ever), has it not occurred to you that there might be other ways of addressing the issue that don't involve taking morally repugnant actions?
Maybe you could ask them "why do you hate our freedom?" and they'll explain that it's not your freedom they hate, it's the fact that you aid their enemies and topple their governments so that you can get cheap oil. If you guys stopped being assholes, this "problem" would go away all by itself. A great way to start having this conversation would be to start talking about redressing crimes committed by previous administrations - the terrorist threat you foam at the mouth about would lose a metric fucktonne of momentum overnight if you'd charge dubya for the war crimes he committed, for example. "Terrorist problem" solved, zero new evil done.
History does not suggest that we cannot better ourselves.
he crossed the line when he leaked information about their overseas intelligence operations
Lol, I love this argument so much.
NSA's activities outside of the United States raise no Constitutional questions
I love the way these people focus entirely on the legal issues - there's nothing in the constitution preventing the NSA from running pervasive global surveillance, therefore it's ok - it's only when they're spying on americans that there's any kind of issue. Let's just completely ignore any moral issues or questions of whether it's a good thing or not to live in a world where orwell's wildest nightmares are everyday occurrences and where all communications are monitored by blanket surveilance.
So, as an american who is unconcerned with the activities of the NSA overseas, let me ask you this: how do you feel about the "enemy" intelligence agencies monitoring everything you do and say? Ever cheat on your significant other? Maybe you're into BDSM? Or maybe you just have erectile dysfunction? How do you feel about a pakistani intelligence officer laughing at you about it? Oh, that's right - you're the one person on this planet who has nothing at all to be embarrassed about, ever.
They aren't engaged in any actions that other nation-states (including those hostile to the United States) aren't doing
Which makes it OK! Duh!
So, what you're saying is that the only reason why it's not OK to use chemical and/or biological weapons or build a doomsday device is because there are laws against it? Anything that anybody else does is OK just as long as there's no law against it - the concept of us being better than them and not using "evil" tactics doesn't exist - there's nothing inherently wrong about ethnic cleansing or human experimentation, it's just illiegal.
His activities are arguably "aid and comfort" to the enemies of the United States
Which enemies? What specific group? Terrorists? Snowden still hasn't revealed anything that a half-way competent terrorist wouldn't have assumed was in place already.
Your activities are arguably aid and comfort to the enemies of the united states: here's my case: every time I read this ridiculous argument I become a little more convinced that your government needs to fall.
Updating is the easy part - assuming you go for a debian-based server, keeping it up to date is exactly this hard:
log in every now and then (once per week is more than enough)
type 'sudo apt-get update'
type in your password
press Y
It usually takes me about 40 seconds.
You can even set up a cron job to do it automatically if that's too much work.
Setting it up properly isn't as easy as some make it sound though - if you don't know about things like Mail Transfer Agents and such it may take you a day or 2 of messing about, but the documentation is out there and it's not rocket science.
If you do go with yout own box, you'll also want to set up SPF and DKIM so that google doesn't put everything you send to gmail users into spam.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm Australian, and I think maybe the best thing about this place is the ACCC.
This time last year I was a super-hardcore valve fan, singing their praises and buying up pretty much every new game that came out for linux, including much of valve's catalog (which I had previously pirated). I was even thinking about trying to build a few steam boxes to sell on ebay.
One game I bought was Fez. It didn't work properly, making it unplayable. I emailled Fez support and recieved no response.
I emailled valve demanding the refund I am entitled to by law. I spent many, many emails back and forth explaining to them that I was entitled to my money back, since the thing being unplayable is clearly a major fault. They tried to tell me that the law doesn't apply to them and that I should write to their legal department and ignored my further emails... Rather than simply obeying the law and refunding the princely sum of $2.49.
The argument that our law doesn't apply to them is a joke - the law applies if you sell within australia. I was in Australia when I bought Fez. There are steam mirrors here. They are specifically marketing at Australians - If Australian laws don't apply to valve, where's my uncensored version of Left 4 Dead 2?
I complained to the ACCC and did a chargeback on my credit card - got my money back despite them. Interestingly, I still have Fez in my steam library, so it looks like i got it for free. I don't know whether the game-breaking bug has been fixed - I have no interest in playing it anymore.
I've not purchased anything through steam since, and Valve will never see another cent of my money - I don't support companies who think they're above the law.
The humble store and GOG have both made a killing off of me this year. I wonder if I can can get one or both to write Valve a nice thank-you note.
If you got a refund from valve without doing a chargeback, you were lucky. If you didn't get a refund, do a chargeback, then call the ACCC and tell them you love their work. And if you know somebody who works for the ACCC, hug them for me.
forgot to add obligatory link to Linux is not windows
Indeed - people are complaining simply because it's different to what they're used to. Mac users don't like windows. If you switch back you'll have the same problem to a certain extent.
I'd be very interested to see how the number of complaints about the open-source software stacks up against a huge MS-imposed change like the office ribbon. I'd expect the numbers to be similar. People will complain if you change the default colour or font of something - of course they're going to complain when you switch the software they're using.
This does scream fishy to me. We all know that Ballmer flew out to Munich to try to talk them out of switching in the first place. It would be naieve to think that MS has just given up on Munich - there's too much at stake - if it goes well for Munich, other cities will follow, and then open-source could spread into the corporate sector, and that would be BAD.
A lack of integrated email/contacts/calendar? That's not a complaint - try Thunderbird with the Lightning add-on. If that doesn't do what you need, look for another option - there are probably hundreds. Maybe you want something web-based? There are a bunch of those.
Another option would be to take e.g the cost of one license for a mid-sized MS exchange server and split it into bounties for the features you want - you'd probably have your features in a couple of days. $10k would buy A LOT of open-source development. And the rest of the world gets your features too, for free! Compared with the cost of Windows licenses it's small potatoes, and it's a community service. It's win-win for everybody. Except MS.
Define "Troll".
What you might call a Troll comment, I might consider an extremely insightful and positive contribution to human society.
If I put up an inflammmatory post on an astrology forum telling people that they're idiots for believing in astrology - a position borne out by science and IMHO entirely accurate - am I trolling, or trying to enlighten people?
Is it different if I "Troll" in the same way on an anti-abortion forum?
What if it's the westboro baptist church's website I'm "trolling"? What about the KKK or NAMBLA? At what point does trolling become noble?
How are you going to do away with the "Trolls" and maintain an open discussion where unpopular but correct points can be raised? I smell censorship.
So to answer your question, no - I wouldn't pay to read the same three safe opinions regurgitated over and over again.
If you feed trolls, you're an idiot. But to try to silence them would be even stupider.
of late they are doing really nice work and getting mocked despite doing real innovation
What?
When?
Where?
Or did you mean "innovation" in the traditional microsoft sense ("borrowing" ideas)?
I'm still yet to see a single example of Microsoft innovating, ever. But then I stopped paying attention to what they were doing nearly 10 years ago now, so maybe I'm wrong.
I simply won't buy a phone without any real input methods - I drank that koolaid once and I'm not feeling particularly masochistic - I spent a year trying to type on a touchscreen, and I'd rather have my face torn off by ravenous wolves than try it again. Haptic feedback is essential as far as I'm concerned. There are the other usability issues, like a system which assumes that I didn't mean to type what I typed, but for me it's the sense of touch which makes all the difference. Your can feel the edge of a button and tell you when your finger is improperly positioned without looking at it. you know when it has been pressed because you feel it press down. And there are more than 26 buttons - ever tried to cat ~/file.sql.gz | pv | ssh user@host "gunzip | mysql db_name" on a touchscreen? You'll wish you had a gun.
At the moment I'm using a shitty nokia because I needed a new phone immediately and that was the only one in the entire shopping centre with actual buttons.
If my choice next time is a phone with touchscreen only or no phone at all, it'll be a tough decision - no phone at all has its advantages.
I blame Tom Cruise - this notion that touchscreens aren't a horrible idea all started with Minority Report.
I expect that the NSA has done that in the proper forums for discussing classified matters: in meetings with the administration, in closed sessions of Congress, and before the courts in closed hearings.
There's your problem right there: you expect people who are demonstrably untrustworthy to do the right thing.
One thing that I can say is that if you're running a modern distro you'll likely run into problems with Unreal Tournament's sound support - it only supports OSS, and it expects that /dev/dsp exists.
On my Ubuntu 12.04 box, I have to use padsp when launching UT to get any audio, and when I do use padsp I get a ~500ms delay on the audio - it's unplayable. A real pity.
I think that this could probably be fixed by ripping out pulseaudio and installing the real OSS, but I don't know for sure and didn't want to get that drastic on my everyday machine. Also, you might find that the UT binary has old OSS libs compiled in statically, so it might not work even then.
I'd be really interested to hear anybody's solutions to this dilemma - I miss UT!
I was against this whole surveilance state thing until you pointed out that it could be used to find freaky girls...
I bought one in January. It's absolutely spectacular. It's quite possibly the best computer I have ever owned.
this thing is a MAME device that costs close to $600
No. Calling it a MAME device is not even beginning to do it justice. Sure, I have something like 40,000 MAME ROMS loaded on mine, but that's just one SD card. Another SD card is a truecrypt volume. Another contains 40 years worth of X-Men comics. Another has all the SCUMM games, a ridiculous number of C64 games, and a bunch of Playstation games. I've just started playing with some of the audio production apps - soon I'll figure out how to use the pandora as a MIDI controller, that'll be cool. Chromium runs well for web browsing as long as you limit the number of tabs you have open. Office apps like Libreoffice and dia run well. But for me, I think that the terminal, scite, and ssh are the killer apps - some things aren't available on the pandora (which actually means "I haven't bothered trying to compile them yet"), sometimes I want to offload processing to a faster machine. And sometimes I need to restart my webserver... actually, the real killer "app" is the hardware keyboard.
The range of software available in the repos is staggering given the system specs (it runs blender! :O), and the quality generally high. The native games available should not be trivialised, either - special mentions go to asciiportal, boson-x, audiorace, pewpew2, and the arkanoid remake. Some of these are huge time sinks.
$600?!? pah! In AU, where we try to stay at least 10 years behind the rest of the world, it's nearly AU$800 once you throw in some accessories and shipping, but I really think it was worth every penny.
Yes, it's not as impressive in specs today as it was when it was designed. They got screwed and they had production problems, so it took a lot longer to get built than it should have. But they did manage to bring it to market eventually and they've done as much as they can to get units to the people who preordered. And they've been fairly transparent about all this, so I think that they're credible. On the other hand, I would have been really annoyed if I'd preordered and I'm glad I didn't.
People ask me what it is, and I describe it as a full computer which can do most things their laptop can do - it's the best way I've found to describe it. Flexibility is the key - I was running the JACK audio framework and a couple of software synthesizers last night and started to run out of memory, so I switched to my terminal and enabled the swap partition on my SD card. Problem solved.
It's not just a MAME machine!
I like some of the changes you 've made, but I disagree with your philosophy of standing for things. Due to this, I'm starting up a new WaylandX-ex ((https://github.com/waylandx) project on github to avoid these political issues. Join me instead!
I tried this on my bosses mac but couldn't wind the 'win' key - can you help?
Um, yes, It *WILL* happen sooner or later.
I was being conservative, and they don't say what they're using. Based on my experience with people (they're often incompetent morons), CRC16 wouldn't suprise me.
Well, technically, after enough time somebody *will* eventually try to upload a perfectly legitimate file which just happens by coincidence to have the same hash as something that was taken down, and that uploader will get an erroneous error message blocking them from sharing their own work.
So you don't have to be distributing copyrighted material for this to be a problem, but probability is on your side - it's probably not likely to happen for decades or centuries, depending on the hashing algorithm used. But it just might happen to you tomorrow.
Or maybe he's somebody who:
* cares about real-estate on his screen and the density of information displayed vs shininess. Those borders and "modern" task bar are huge!
* is interested in having a UI that responds in a timely manner rather than having pretty but utterly useless animations that make him wait half a second every time he clicks on something.
* wants to use less memory for caching pretty animations and more for the programs he's running
* wants his processor to be working on the task he has assigned it rather than showing him shiny animations
* feels like it's more important to make something stable than pretty
* feels like it's more important to make something efficient than pretty
* feels like it's more important to make something compatible than pretty
That's all very interesting and I'm really happy for you that you're able to follow a conversation and then summarise it, but everything you said is totally irrelevant to the point I was making. In fact, it doesn't even address my statement except to insult me. Those are some magnificent debating skills you have there - are you planning on going into politics one day?
How does any of that make the "freedom is more important than safety" quote imply that safety is not important? Please provide an explanation of how the phrase "freedom is more important than safety" indicates an absolute value for safety. Alternatively, you could just shut the hell up - that might prevent you from looking any stupider.
Now you owe me 2 IQ points in addition the AC's 5, and I'm going to stop reading this thread before I'm dragged even further down to your level of intelligence - another 200 or so posts like this and I'll be as dumb as you.
Or: "chlamydia - the best of the venereal diseases!"
I don't have a better idea than democracy for how things should be run.
Agreed.
I've been looking for a democratic country to move to, but I can't think of any...
Oh... my... god... That's so retarded that reading it made me a little but stupider. You owe me 5 IQ points, and I want them back. My brain hurts.
Please go learn your englishes and gramatticals to make sure that you understand the statement, then please go learn about logic so that you understand its implications. It'll help you a lot!
His statement was "Freedom is more important than safety". This does not make any implications about how important safety is, except that it's less important than freedom. The statement contains no other information and implies no other context. It's a very simple, straightforward, and concise statement, which also happens to be true.
You are either a complete idiot or completely full of shit to say that it implies anything about the value of safety. If he'd said something like "Freedom is more important than safety and nobody cares about safety" then you might have a point and not look like a complete fuckwit. But that's not what he said, so you do, and my brain hurts.
Now please, for the love of the flying spaghetti monster, do as you've been told and vanish, satisfied in the fact that you've caused me a small amount of permanent brain damage.
You're talking about software licensing, which is not the same as buying media (music/video/etc).
When I buy music, I have the right to make a backup copy, or to transfer it to another medium. The copyright laws were written before software was a consideration, so they don't tend to mention it specifically and therefore it's handled differently in some ways (e.g different licenses), but it's generally accepted that by extension this also holds true for digital media - e.g I'm allowed to take all my old C64 disks, convert them to disk images on my PC, and run them in an emulator. Any term in a license agreement which tries to stop you from doing so is an unfair contract condition and unenforceable, at least where I live. Sucks to be you if the US is different.
And excuse me, but I haven't run into any DRM that attempts to prevent backups
Wow, you have a short memory!
I've seen this firsthand, so don't try to tell me it never happened: 100th window by Massive attack. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cactus_Data_Shield
Early Ipods would format themselves if you plugged them into your second computer. I've seen this firsthand, too.
The first-gen DRM was quite draconian - the only reason they don't try to stop you doing these things now is that they realised very quickly that by doing things like installing rootkits they were making enemies and encouraging people to just download the version with no crap attached that was free and available on the web about 18 nanoseconds after the release - it was a far superior experience to using their crapware.
you seem to be implying that you're quite happy to just settle for whatever rights the license holders decide you can have, regardless of whether they're reasonable or not? You think all the terms in those license agreements are enforceable in every jurisdiction? lol. When apple show up to turn you into a human centipad and say that you agreed to it, you'll just go with them?
Ummm, No: What rights you have depends on your local laws. Sounds to me like you should read up on your rights.
It has never been considered copyright infringement to make a backup of something or to transfer it to another medium. DRM attempts to prevent exactly this. this is established all over the place. For me, the following excerpt from wikipedia seems relevant:
In late 2006, Australia added several 'private copying' exceptions. It is no longer an infringement of copyright to record a broadcast to watch or listen at a more convenient time (s 111), or to make a copy of a sound recording for private and domestic use (e.g., copy onto an iPod) (s 109A), or make a copy of a literary work, magazine, or newspaper article for private use (43C).
What DRM really does is two things: 1) waste resources on your computer providing absolutely nothing desirable and nothing that can't be bypassed in seconds, shortening its lifespan and increasing its energy consumption, and 2) piss off legitimate users who want to do things they're legally allowed to do, turning their customers into their enemies. Good job!
if people like the parent want to paint it in such a narrow scope then I'm okay with that
You shouldn't be - it's propaganda - this line of argument diverts the discussion away from the more serious issues.
That's exactly what it's intended to do, by the way, it's a classic trick of the trade - Goebbels would be ever so proud.
I would argue that the unrealistic stance to take is that spying is necessary - let me ask you this: why is surveillance necessary? why do you need foreign intelligence?
Are you worried about an invading army showing up on your shores tomorrow? who? You don't think you'd detect them with your radars, sonars, satellites, etc?
Maybe you need to spy so that you can get the competitive edge in business - you know, get mcdonalds into antarctica and secure those lucrative jet fighter contracts for boeing. You don't think that the US and US companies could just get along by playing fair with everyone else? You don't have a reputation for superior engineering and good manufacturing - you need to play dirty to survive? Having a reputation as "the country that always plays fair" wouldn't be worth anything at all in financial terms?
Aha, I've got it! you're worried about a sudden nuclear attack - those pesky french could always nuke Washington tomorrow, so you need to spy! You don't think that making a noble gesture like proposing a total blanket ban on nuclear weapons worldwide and offering to completely dismantle your stockpile would help relieve tensions? You really think the North Koreans would bother nuking you if you dismantled your entire stockpile? I think you'd find they just might dismantle theirs and start feeding their people a little better or risk revolution when the amazing and unprecedented news that the US just disarmed gets through to the people. Of course we'd need to send in weapons inspectors to make sure that you weren't being sneaky.
Oh, I know - it's the same answer as everything else - you're worried about terrorists killing thousands of your civillians!
Assuming that this is a real threat (something of which I've seen absolutely no evidence ever), has it not occurred to you that there might be other ways of addressing the issue that don't involve taking morally repugnant actions?
Maybe you could ask them "why do you hate our freedom?" and they'll explain that it's not your freedom they hate, it's the fact that you aid their enemies and topple their governments so that you can get cheap oil. If you guys stopped being assholes, this "problem" would go away all by itself. A great way to start having this conversation would be to start talking about redressing crimes committed by previous administrations - the terrorist threat you foam at the mouth about would lose a metric fucktonne of momentum overnight if you'd charge dubya for the war crimes he committed, for example. "Terrorist problem" solved, zero new evil done.
History does not suggest that we cannot better ourselves.
OK, I'll bite.
he crossed the line when he leaked information about their overseas intelligence operations
Lol, I love this argument so much.
NSA's activities outside of the United States raise no Constitutional questions
I love the way these people focus entirely on the legal issues - there's nothing in the constitution preventing the NSA from running pervasive global surveillance, therefore it's ok - it's only when they're spying on americans that there's any kind of issue. Let's just completely ignore any moral issues or questions of whether it's a good thing or not to live in a world where orwell's wildest nightmares are everyday occurrences and where all communications are monitored by blanket surveilance.
So, as an american who is unconcerned with the activities of the NSA overseas, let me ask you this: how do you feel about the "enemy" intelligence agencies monitoring everything you do and say? Ever cheat on your significant other? Maybe you're into BDSM? Or maybe you just have erectile dysfunction? How do you feel about a pakistani intelligence officer laughing at you about it? Oh, that's right - you're the one person on this planet who has nothing at all to be embarrassed about, ever.
They aren't engaged in any actions that other nation-states (including those hostile to the United States) aren't doing
Which makes it OK! Duh!
So, what you're saying is that the only reason why it's not OK to use chemical and/or biological weapons or build a doomsday device is because there are laws against it? Anything that anybody else does is OK just as long as there's no law against it - the concept of us being better than them and not using "evil" tactics doesn't exist - there's nothing inherently wrong about ethnic cleansing or human experimentation, it's just illiegal.
His activities are arguably "aid and comfort" to the enemies of the United States
Which enemies? What specific group? Terrorists? Snowden still hasn't revealed anything that a half-way competent terrorist wouldn't have assumed was in place already.
Your activities are arguably aid and comfort to the enemies of the united states: here's my case: every time I read this ridiculous argument I become a little more convinced that your government needs to fall.
It usually takes me about 40 seconds. You can even set up a cron job to do it automatically if that's too much work. Setting it up properly isn't as easy as some make it sound though - if you don't know about things like Mail Transfer Agents and such it may take you a day or 2 of messing about, but the documentation is out there and it's not rocket science. If you do go with yout own box, you'll also want to set up SPF and DKIM so that google doesn't put everything you send to gmail users into spam.