When I was a kid, we played a lot of text adventures. Infocom had this great hint book system: the book came with visible questions, but invisible answers that could be revealed with the use of a special pen (included.)
It struck a great balance -- it was impossible to accidentally read a clue and spoil the game for yourself, but if you got to the point that you couldn't solve a puzzle and were getting really, REALLY frustrated, a simple swipe of the marker would ease your pain.
The best part: if someone in your family claimed to "figure out" the answer to the puzzle on their own, we could peek at the book to see if they'd actually cheated by revealing the clue.;)
The morality depends on your intended use, I suppose.
For instance, we occasionally play Test Drive LeMans (Dreamcast) at work in groups of four. We're at work, so none of us have any interest in sitting down and winning races against the computer in order to unlock new cars and tracks -- we just want all the cars and tracks we can get on those rare occasions when we gather to race. Cheat codes, in this case, are a godsend.
On the other hand, I'm playing Animal Crossing right now. The whole point is exploration and communication, and I'm staying as far away as possible from any kind of hints or clues as I can. The faster I get to the "end", the faster I use up the potential entertainment that the game represents.
- - -
One recent example comes to mind:
Recently a friend pointed me to a little online adventure game. I loved playing it, because I took pleasure in each puzzle I solved. My wife, on the other hand, didn't like it much. She kept asking me to give hints so that she could reach the end quickly.
It turns out she takes no pleasure from puzzle solving whatsoever -- she just wants to see the payoff, and sees the puzzles as an unwelcome obstacle. I, on the other hand, don't care about the ending that much, and take pleasure in solving each puzzle.
It's an interesting example of the points of view involved in the larger cheating issue, I think.
Best voice acting in a videogame EVER: Sinistar. That used to freak my **** out.
Creepiest: "Beware. I Live." (when he's fully assembled somewhere on the map) Second-creepiest: "I Hunger." (when he's looking around for you) Most Adrenaline-Pumping: "AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRARARAGHHHHHHHGGAGRGARAR!" (when he finds you, approximately one and a half seconds before you die.)
The From: fields are spoofed (and are different on each email) but the IP address of the originating mail server is the same on all of them. Unlike spam, I don't think this virus is spoofing the email header completely, just sending it out with a fake From: address to catch the clueless.
Of course, if it IS spoofing the IP address as well, then that just adds more fuel to the argument that these emails are useless.
(continued from previous -- I'm long-winded today)
The above burrito examples are, respectively, "nobody has guns", "some have guns, but they're concealed", "some have guns, and they're visible", and "everybody has guns, highly-motivated vs. opportunistic". Thanks for suggesting the burrito comparison; it was enjoyable to write.:)
>the high likelyhood of you having a gun doesn't make me any less likely to jack you. It just means that I'm that much more likely to shoot in the head without warning than I am to try to scare you off.
Exactly. The possibility of a gun merely modifies the approach and behavior of the criminal when committing the crime.
- - -
TheLOUDroom wrote:
>criminals would wear vests? Mmmmkay. Right. Because they're all so worry about the consequences of their actions?
Well, criminals pick their targets to increase the likelihood of success.
Example: a car thief skips the car with the alarm and breaks into the car without one, right?
So now we introduce LoJack. What does the criminal do? They steal a car and park it overnight in a parking lot nearby to see if the cops come for it, just in case it has LoJack.
Voila! They worry about the consequences of their actions ON THEMSELVES, and so have changed their behavior accordingly.
>Or maybe because they typically have their #$%& together and think things through?
The successful criminals do. That's why they don't get caught. As the security staff spokespeople in Vegas always say after talking about someone they caught: "...of course, there may be others that we don't know about, because they didn't make mistakes."
>That argument is nonsense. Using that logic, I could say that there is no point to bank vaults, crimnals will just get shaped-charge explosives.
You could say that, but I wouldn't. I would say this: If you make the vaults strong and difficult to break into, criminals will stop trying to steal the money from the vaults and try to steal it from the transfer points, or electronically, or by taking a hostage who has the key instead. Which is exactly what they do.
>Nothing is going to elimate crime, but it is possible to reduce it.
I would suggest that, while reduction is possible to a certain extent, the majority of reduction will occur in the areas of opportunistic crime; i.e., if there is no easy opportunity presenting itself, the crime may not occur. This is why weak laptop locks work so well; a casual thief won't likely have bolt cutters handy to cut the cable, and laptops are a highly attractive casual crime target.
On the other hand, any crime that is premeditated will simply be redistributed -- either to another victim of the same type of crime, or to a different type of crime with a lower risk but similar reward. Continuing the laptop example, a motivated criminal committing a premeditated laptop theft will bring bolt cutters. Improve the lock so it can't get cut, and the motivated criminal might wait outside for the laptop's owner and mug them instead.
>Maybe you can compare the situation to eating a burrito as well?
Okay, I'll bite:
Suppose you want to order a plain burrito, but it's too boring, so you want to add a sauce. The burrito shop offers three sauces. Oh, but you HATE spicy sauce -- you are highly motivated to get a tasty burrito without inflicting the harm of spicy sauce upon yourself.
If none of the sauces are labeled as spicy, and none of the sauces ARE spicy, then you can pick any sauce you want.
If none of the sauces are labeled as spicy, but you suspect that some of the sauces are spicy, and the guy behind the counter doesn't know, you might take your chances -- or you might ask for multiple sauces on the side so that you can sample them before making a decision.
If some of the sauces are clearly labeled as spicy, you will pick a non-spicy one.
If all of the sauces are labeled as spicy, you probably won't order a sauce -- but you might put some salt on your burrito, or pull some mild salsa out of the salsa bar, or next time you might bring your own non-spicy sauce......or if your desire for sauce was just a whim, and you're not highly motivated to have a tasty burrito, you might skip the sauce altogether.
If the EULA states that the software reports back to the publisher, then it seems like a reasonable practice -- provided they give refunds to people who don't agree with the EULA and return the product.
On the other hand, if they don't fess up to the reporting, or if they refuse to offer refunds to people who don't accept the snooping as a provision of use, then I don't find that to be ethical.
After all, you can put a lock on your door, and a sign that says "trespassers will be shot" -- this way, criminals can go burgle somewhere less risky, and legitimate visitors can decide if knocking on the door to say hello is worth the risk.
Or you could just leave the door unlocked, shoot anyone who walks through it that you don't like the looks of, and claim they were trespassing.
I doubt these email replies are doing any good at all.
Case in point: Every twenty minutes ago, as of first thing this morning, I have received an email with an evil.pif file (thankfully automatically deleted by my company's email server.) I know where the mails are coming from, and have contacted the abuse@[nameofispdeleted] address with the details.
As of this writing, I have received no reply, the emails are still coming, the user's account is still active, and I don't even know if they got my email, as there is no mention of an abuse department or a means of contacting them on their web site (this is a HUGE corporate ISP, too) -- abuse@[nameofispdeleted] was just my first best guess.
So, let's be honest -- if a big, well-staffed company like this isn't going to respond to a personal request to stop a one-man-virus-festival, automated emails will most likely be ignored, too.
I never played MarioKart on the SNES, but we have a Nintendo 64 at my office, right next to the Dreamcast (what can I say, the tech market died before the latest consoles came out!)
In the past, we've beat our frustrations out on Soul Caliber, wasted time with various sports games and the excellent Test Drive LeMans, and of course used our work computers for non-work activities like Unreal Tournament and Counterstrike...but those games have all come and gone, and only MarioKart 64 has remained.
Every few months, we lose interest in the game -- then a few weeks pass, someone breaks it out, and it's a festival of racing and competition ladders until we lose interest again.
Needless to say, we're anxiously awaiting the new GameCube version. In the meantime, here are the competition ladder rules we've used to good effect:
- All ladder games must have four players. - All ladder games must be played in sets of three, with the scores added together. - Lowest rung picks the maps for the three games. - If you beat someone above you, you swap places with the person on the rung immediately above you, whether they were playing or not.
We've found that this simple system motivates everyone EXCEPT the top player to play as often as possible (otherwise everyone else will knock you to the bottom of the ladder), and produces large groups of people who descend on the top player and literally drag them into the game room to defend their position.
>IF I HAVE A GUN YOU ARE LESS LIKELY TO TRY AND COMITT A CRIME AGAINST ME
That would only be the case if (a) all criminals KNEW you had a gun (so a concealed weapon, or one in your nightstand, wouldn't be a deterrent) or (b) all criminals knew EVERYONE had a gun (so they would take the trouble to wear bulletproof vests, sneak around more and be brazen less, plan to grab hostages as quickly as possible so that you wouldn't shoot, and so on).
Either way, crime wouldn't go down...in case (a), crime for YOU would go down, but up for other people*, and in case (b) crime would not go down, the nature of it would merely change to suit the new circumstances**.
*this becomes a "blame the victim" argument eventually, by the way -- the way that the "I drive an SUV to protect my family" justification becomes the "I don't worry about killing another family who owns a small car, they should have bought an SUV, too!" argument, which fails because satisfaction of the argument requires everyone else to own an SUV, at which point SUVs cease to provide any practical advantage.
**Consider the "chipped" ignition key, wherein a computerized key is required to start an expensive car. Thefts from parking lots for these vehicles went down, but carjackings (where key and owner are both present, often with tragic results) went up. It didn't stop the crime, it just changed the nature of the crime, in this case arguably for the worse. Unless all carjack victims own guns.;)
Now all we need to do is create self-replicating nano-lasers and nano-nuclear power plants, so that the nano-power plants can make more of themselves to power the nano-lasers that were made to clean up after the nano-power plants that made more of themselves to power the nano-lasers that made more of themselves to clean up after the nano-power plants...
First, you get the early adopter types to use it and spread it around by offering it for free. These same people start using it to encode movies, because they're techy types.
Once it hits the mainstream, offer multiple versions -- free, so that techies can still get it and propogate it, and ad-supported, so that nontechs who want the "extra" (ie useless) features will watch the ads.
Eventually it becomes so common within the mainstream community that you feel you can lose the free version -- the techies will move on to something else, or keep using their old free version, but the established mainstream use will keep growing -- and so will the ad revenue.
I don't LIKE it, but it certainly seems to have worked. Imagine how difficult it will be to wean our nontechnical family members to a new codec... "But you said DivX was better than all the others, and I don't care about the ads!"
"California went through rolling blackouts that were largely due to a poorly-executed deregulation of that state's power industry"
Actually, there was a significant amount of fraud involved. Check it out here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/26/national/main546097.shtml [cbsnews.com]
"Or to release music in such wonderful packaging that it is cheaper to buy it than to copy it?"
I still hold fond memories of Infocom's games, especially The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The whole package came with a ridiculous assortment of paraphernalia, including "peril-sensing sunglasses", a "subatomic space fleet" (which was too small to see and came in a small clear plastic bag) and, of course, "no towel".
I recently downloaded a copy of THGTTG to play using a Frotz emulator, and I must admit...it was OK, but I missed the physical objects that accompanied the game. I have to wonder what an original boxed version of the game, with all original items, would go for on e-bay.
In light of this, it does not seem unreasonable to expect that packaging tangible items with a CD could make that CD worth paying for over and above the (nonexistent) cost of downloading the songs over the Internet.
Did everyone post without reading the documents the original author linked to? It seems like everyone who wrote "You should have known, it's your own fault" didn't read the links to the terms of service the poster provided. There was no mention of wireless access points being a violation. The author COULD NOT have known.
"Ignorance is no excuse" is only appropriate when the information is available, but the person did not bother to look it up. In this case the information was -not- available.
Then again, if it were Microsoft who shut off his operating system access for five days because he changed a computer component, everyone on this site would be screaming about how wronged this person was.
So, anonymous person, here's what you do if you really want to do something useful:
1) Work with the IT department to revise the documentation to include the ban on wireless access points. If they're not willing to revise the documentation, they're making it up as they go along, and you have every right to feel slighted.
2) Spend some time learning about the insecurity of 802.11b, because you might not want to use it once you find out how insecure it is.
3) If, after doing the legwork, you feel wifi access points -should- be available to students, take it up as a cause. Find a secure, non-interfering way of setting one up, and propose it to the IT department. To be honest, I don't believe there is a secure and non-interfering method (yet), but it's worth a try, and you might learn something. Imagine that, learning something in college!;)
4) If you -do- find a secure and non-interfering method, and they don't want to hear about it (which is the likely response), let it go -- the network owner is the network owner. Just be glad you got the documentation changed so that other students won't shell out $$$ for wireless gear they can't use.
Impossible? Not at all -- only a foolish person would claim such a thing, and I don't believe that any respectable member of the community would claim it.
Less likely to occur? Arguably. I won't start that discussion.
Fixed more quickly? I guess we'll find out soon enough.
If they're going to go ahead with their lawsuit (which may well result in a large settlement down the road), but they're dissolving and distributing now, what happens to any monies collected from the lawsuit?
Any lawyers want to fill us in? Do the shareholders (potentially) get some of it down the road, or does it go to some other mysterious land (assuming all debts are paid off)?
In layman's terms, an emulator uses software to emulate the hardware components of a system, so that the software thinks it's running on the appropriate machine. This isn't very speedy, as dedicated hardware usually outperforms software written to emulate dedicated hardware.
A compatibility layer, on the other hand (in the sense of WINE, anyway) is a set of software APIs that perform the same functions as another set of software APIs (in this case, Linux APIs that are named the same as, and perform the same functions of, Windows APIs.) When done correctly, there should be little or no difference in speed between actual API use and compatibility API use on the same hardware.
Oh, and one more key difference: an emulator emulates hardware, so software applications still need the operating system to run on. This is why you install Windows and Linux OS's into a virtual drive when you use VMware. A compatibility layer REPLACES the OS altogether, so applications can run without Windows (or whatever the replaced OS is) being present at all.
There you go, I hope that's accurate enough for you.
I obtained a full set of CDs and installed on a Soyo Dragon/AMD Athlon motherboard, Yamaha CD burner, GeForce2 Analog/Digital video card and firewire.
1) All hardware recognized and functional, including onboard 6-channel sound, except for midi input;
2) Able to burn CDs right away, use the firewire card right away, surf to my server's samba shares right away, with no additional configuration.
3) Installed VMware with a small tweak to the location of the/usr/src files for compiling a new kernel module.
4) Used a well-known XF86Config-4 workaround to enable digital support for my Gateway FPD1500 monitor, which has always been troublesome on ANY Linux distribution.
5) Installed accelerated NVIDIA drivers from the Lycoris CD set.
I'm now a happy user, because it works on a day to day basis AND I can get under the hood and mess around. It's a great balance.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was a kid, we played a lot of text adventures. Infocom had this great hint book system: the book came with visible questions, but invisible answers that could be revealed with the use of a special pen (included.)
;)
It struck a great balance -- it was impossible to accidentally read a clue and spoil the game for yourself, but if you got to the point that you couldn't solve a puzzle and were getting really, REALLY frustrated, a simple swipe of the marker would ease your pain.
The best part: if someone in your family claimed to "figure out" the answer to the puzzle on their own, we could peek at the book to see if they'd actually cheated by revealing the clue.
The morality depends on your intended use, I suppose.
For instance, we occasionally play Test Drive LeMans (Dreamcast) at work in groups of four. We're at work, so none of us have any interest in sitting down and winning races against the computer in order to unlock new cars and tracks -- we just want all the cars and tracks we can get on those rare occasions when we gather to race. Cheat codes, in this case, are a godsend.
On the other hand, I'm playing Animal Crossing right now. The whole point is exploration and communication, and I'm staying as far away as possible from any kind of hints or clues as I can. The faster I get to the "end", the faster I use up the potential entertainment that the game represents.
- - -
One recent example comes to mind:
Recently a friend pointed me to a little online adventure game. I loved playing it, because I took pleasure in each puzzle I solved. My wife, on the other hand, didn't like it much. She kept asking me to give hints so that she could reach the end quickly.
It turns out she takes no pleasure from puzzle solving whatsoever -- she just wants to see the payoff, and sees the puzzles as an unwelcome obstacle. I, on the other hand, don't care about the ending that much, and take pleasure in solving each puzzle.
It's an interesting example of the points of view involved in the larger cheating issue, I think.
Best voice acting in a videogame EVER: Sinistar. That used to freak my **** out.
Creepiest: "Beware. I Live." (when he's fully assembled somewhere on the map)
Second-creepiest: "I Hunger." (when he's looking around for you)
Most Adrenaline-Pumping: "AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRARARAGHHHHHHHGGAGRGARAR!" (when he finds you, approximately one and a half seconds before you die.)
The From: fields are spoofed (and are different on each email) but the IP address of the originating mail server is the same on all of them. Unlike spam, I don't think this virus is spoofing the email header completely, just sending it out with a fake From: address to catch the clueless.
Of course, if it IS spoofing the IP address as well, then that just adds more fuel to the argument that these emails are useless.
(continued from previous -- I'm long-winded today)
:)
The above burrito examples are, respectively, "nobody has guns", "some have guns, but they're concealed", "some have guns, and they're visible", and "everybody has guns, highly-motivated vs. opportunistic". Thanks for suggesting the burrito comparison; it was enjoyable to write.
Arkanes wrote:
...or if your desire for sauce was just a whim, and you're not highly motivated to have a tasty burrito, you might skip the sauce altogether.
>the high likelyhood of you having a gun doesn't make me any less likely to jack you. It just means that I'm that much more likely to shoot in the head without warning than I am to try to scare you off.
Exactly. The possibility of a gun merely modifies the approach and behavior of the criminal when committing the crime.
- - -
TheLOUDroom wrote:
>criminals would wear vests? Mmmmkay. Right. Because they're all so worry about the consequences of their actions?
Well, criminals pick their targets to increase the likelihood of success.
Example: a car thief skips the car with the alarm and breaks into the car without one, right?
So now we introduce LoJack. What does the criminal do? They steal a car and park it overnight in a parking lot nearby to see if the cops come for it, just in case it has LoJack.
Voila! They worry about the consequences of their actions ON THEMSELVES, and so have changed their behavior accordingly.
>Or maybe because they typically have their #$%& together and think things through?
The successful criminals do. That's why they don't get caught. As the security staff spokespeople in Vegas always say after talking about someone they caught: "...of course, there may be others that we don't know about, because they didn't make mistakes."
>That argument is nonsense. Using that logic, I could say that there is no point to bank vaults, crimnals will just get shaped-charge explosives.
You could say that, but I wouldn't. I would say this: If you make the vaults strong and difficult to break into, criminals will stop trying to steal the money from the vaults and try to steal it from the transfer points, or electronically, or by taking a hostage who has the key instead. Which is exactly what they do.
>Nothing is going to elimate crime, but it is possible to reduce it.
I would suggest that, while reduction is possible to a certain extent, the majority of reduction will occur in the areas of opportunistic crime; i.e., if there is no easy opportunity presenting itself, the crime may not occur. This is why weak laptop locks work so well; a casual thief won't likely have bolt cutters handy to cut the cable, and laptops are a highly attractive casual crime target.
On the other hand, any crime that is premeditated will simply be redistributed -- either to another victim of the same type of crime, or to a different type of crime with a lower risk but similar reward. Continuing the laptop example, a motivated criminal committing a premeditated laptop theft will bring bolt cutters. Improve the lock so it can't get cut, and the motivated criminal might wait outside for the laptop's owner and mug them instead.
>Maybe you can compare the situation to eating a burrito as well?
Okay, I'll bite:
Suppose you want to order a plain burrito, but it's too boring, so you want to add a sauce. The burrito shop offers three sauces. Oh, but you HATE spicy sauce -- you are highly motivated to get a tasty burrito without inflicting the harm of spicy sauce upon yourself.
If none of the sauces are labeled as spicy, and none of the sauces ARE spicy, then you can pick any sauce you want.
If none of the sauces are labeled as spicy, but you suspect that some of the sauces are spicy, and the guy behind the counter doesn't know, you might take your chances -- or you might ask for multiple sauces on the side so that you can sample them before making a decision.
If some of the sauces are clearly labeled as spicy, you will pick a non-spicy one.
If all of the sauces are labeled as spicy, you probably won't order a sauce -- but you might put some salt on your burrito, or pull some mild salsa out of the salsa bar, or next time you might bring your own non-spicy sauce...
The ab
If the EULA states that the software reports back to the publisher, then it seems like a reasonable practice -- provided they give refunds to people who don't agree with the EULA and return the product.
On the other hand, if they don't fess up to the reporting, or if they refuse to offer refunds to people who don't accept the snooping as a provision of use, then I don't find that to be ethical.
After all, you can put a lock on your door, and a sign that says "trespassers will be shot" -- this way, criminals can go burgle somewhere less risky, and legitimate visitors can decide if knocking on the door to say hello is worth the risk.
Or you could just leave the door unlocked, shoot anyone who walks through it that you don't like the looks of, and claim they were trespassing.
I doubt these email replies are doing any good at all.
.pif file (thankfully automatically deleted by my company's email server.) I know where the mails are coming from, and have contacted the abuse@[nameofispdeleted] address with the details.
Case in point: Every twenty minutes ago, as of first thing this morning, I have received an email with an evil
As of this writing, I have received no reply, the emails are still coming, the user's account is still active, and I don't even know if they got my email, as there is no mention of an abuse department or a means of contacting them on their web site (this is a HUGE corporate ISP, too) -- abuse@[nameofispdeleted] was just my first best guess.
So, let's be honest -- if a big, well-staffed company like this isn't going to respond to a personal request to stop a one-man-virus-festival, automated emails will most likely be ignored, too.
I never played MarioKart on the SNES, but we have a Nintendo 64 at my office, right next to the Dreamcast (what can I say, the tech market died before the latest consoles came out!)
In the past, we've beat our frustrations out on Soul Caliber, wasted time with various sports games and the excellent Test Drive LeMans, and of course used our work computers for non-work activities like Unreal Tournament and Counterstrike...but those games have all come and gone, and only MarioKart 64 has remained.
Every few months, we lose interest in the game -- then a few weeks pass, someone breaks it out, and it's a festival of racing and competition ladders until we lose interest again.
Needless to say, we're anxiously awaiting the new GameCube version. In the meantime, here are the competition ladder rules we've used to good effect:
- All ladder games must have four players.
- All ladder games must be played in sets of three, with the scores added together.
- Lowest rung picks the maps for the three games.
- If you beat someone above you, you swap places with the person on the rung immediately above you, whether they were playing or not.
We've found that this simple system motivates everyone EXCEPT the top player to play as often as possible (otherwise everyone else will knock you to the bottom of the ladder), and produces large groups of people who descend on the top player and literally drag them into the game room to defend their position.
Whee!
>IF I HAVE A GUN YOU ARE LESS LIKELY TO TRY AND COMITT A CRIME AGAINST ME
;)
That would only be the case if (a) all criminals KNEW you had a gun (so a concealed weapon, or one in your nightstand, wouldn't be a deterrent) or (b) all criminals knew EVERYONE had a gun (so they would take the trouble to wear bulletproof vests, sneak around more and be brazen less, plan to grab hostages as quickly as possible so that you wouldn't shoot, and so on).
Either way, crime wouldn't go down...in case (a), crime for YOU would go down, but up for other people*, and in case (b) crime would not go down, the nature of it would merely change to suit the new circumstances**.
*this becomes a "blame the victim" argument eventually, by the way -- the way that the "I drive an SUV to protect my family" justification becomes the "I don't worry about killing another family who owns a small car, they should have bought an SUV, too!" argument, which fails because satisfaction of the argument requires everyone else to own an SUV, at which point SUVs cease to provide any practical advantage.
**Consider the "chipped" ignition key, wherein a computerized key is required to start an expensive car. Thefts from parking lots for these vehicles went down, but carjackings (where key and owner are both present, often with tragic results) went up. It didn't stop the crime, it just changed the nature of the crime, in this case arguably for the worse. Unless all carjack victims own guns.
In that case, call me when we discover the deep sea ocean creature that produces complete, piping hot, ready-to-eat In-n-Out burgers.
...move dowwwwwnn the bench.
Now all we need to do is create self-replicating nano-lasers and nano-nuclear power plants, so that the nano-power plants can make more of themselves to power the nano-lasers that were made to clean up after the nano-power plants that made more of themselves to power the nano-lasers that made more of themselves to clean up after the nano-power plants...
Grey goo, here we come!
Acknowledged, although it still stands as an example of "not a bad business model". :)
It's an interesting idea.
First, you get the early adopter types to use it and spread it around by offering it for free. These same people start using it to encode movies, because they're techy types.
Once it hits the mainstream, offer multiple versions -- free, so that techies can still get it and propogate it, and ad-supported, so that nontechs who want the "extra" (ie useless) features will watch the ads.
Eventually it becomes so common within the mainstream community that you feel you can lose the free version -- the techies will move on to something else, or keep using their old free version, but the established mainstream use will keep growing -- and so will the ad revenue.
I don't LIKE it, but it certainly seems to have worked. Imagine how difficult it will be to wean our nontechnical family members to a new codec... "But you said DivX was better than all the others, and I don't care about the ads!"
I originally posted this as anonymous before I realized I wasn't logged in. Now I'm modded as redundant. That'll teach me to desire karma! ;)
"California went through rolling blackouts that were largely due to a poorly-executed deregulation of that state's power industry"
l /main546097.shtml [cbsnews.com]
Actually, there was a significant amount of fraud involved. Check it out here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/26/nationa
Lycoris has a great CD Burner installed, and it works well (although an odd interface.) It also has RealPlayer installed, and it's easy to find. ;)
I guess the point -might- be this: my wife has started using Lycoris, and hasn't been bothering me to show her how to do things or to fix stuff.
She used to do that with BeOS, but couldn't do it with RedHat, Caldera or Mandrake.
Regarding this portion of the article:
"Or to release music in such wonderful packaging that it is cheaper to buy it than to copy it?"
I still hold fond memories of Infocom's games, especially The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The whole package came with a ridiculous assortment of paraphernalia, including "peril-sensing sunglasses", a "subatomic space fleet" (which was too small to see and came in a small clear plastic bag) and, of course, "no towel".
I recently downloaded a copy of THGTTG to play using a Frotz emulator, and I must admit...it was OK, but I missed the physical objects that accompanied the game. I have to wonder what an original boxed version of the game, with all original items, would go for on e-bay.
In light of this, it does not seem unreasonable to expect that packaging tangible items with a CD could make that CD worth paying for over and above the (nonexistent) cost of downloading the songs over the Internet.
Did everyone post without reading the documents the original author linked to? It seems like everyone who wrote "You should have known, it's your own fault" didn't read the links to the terms of service the poster provided. There was no mention of wireless access points being a violation. The author COULD NOT have known.
;)
"Ignorance is no excuse" is only appropriate when the information is available, but the person did not bother to look it up. In this case the information was -not- available.
Then again, if it were Microsoft who shut off his operating system access for five days because he changed a computer component, everyone on this site would be screaming about how wronged this person was.
So, anonymous person, here's what you do if you really want to do something useful:
1) Work with the IT department to revise the documentation to include the ban on wireless access points. If they're not willing to revise the documentation, they're making it up as they go along, and you have every right to feel slighted.
2) Spend some time learning about the insecurity of 802.11b, because you might not want to use it once you find out how insecure it is.
3) If, after doing the legwork, you feel wifi access points -should- be available to students, take it up as a cause. Find a secure, non-interfering way of setting one up, and propose it to the IT department. To be honest, I don't believe there is a secure and non-interfering method (yet), but it's worth a try, and you might learn something. Imagine that, learning something in college!
4) If you -do- find a secure and non-interfering method, and they don't want to hear about it (which is the likely response), let it go -- the network owner is the network owner. Just be glad you got the documentation changed so that other students won't shell out $$$ for wireless gear they can't use.
Impossible? Not at all -- only a foolish person would claim such a thing, and I don't believe that any respectable member of the community would claim it.
Less likely to occur? Arguably. I won't start that discussion.
Fixed more quickly? I guess we'll find out soon enough.
If they're going to go ahead with their lawsuit (which may well result in a large settlement down the road), but they're dissolving and distributing now, what happens to any monies collected from the lawsuit?
Any lawyers want to fill us in? Do the shareholders (potentially) get some of it down the road, or does it go to some other mysterious land (assuming all debts are paid off)?
In layman's terms, an emulator uses software to emulate the hardware components of a system, so that the software thinks it's running on the appropriate machine. This isn't very speedy, as dedicated hardware usually outperforms software written to emulate dedicated hardware.
A compatibility layer, on the other hand (in the sense of WINE, anyway) is a set of software APIs that perform the same functions as another set of software APIs (in this case, Linux APIs that are named the same as, and perform the same functions of, Windows APIs.) When done correctly, there should be little or no difference in speed between actual API use and compatibility API use on the same hardware.
Oh, and one more key difference: an emulator emulates hardware, so software applications still need the operating system to run on. This is why you install Windows and Linux OS's into a virtual drive when you use VMware. A compatibility layer REPLACES the OS altogether, so applications can run without Windows (or whatever the replaced OS is) being present at all.
There you go, I hope that's accurate enough for you.
I obtained a full set of CDs and installed on a Soyo Dragon/AMD Athlon motherboard, Yamaha CD burner, GeForce2 Analog/Digital video card and firewire.
/usr/src files for compiling a new kernel module.
1) All hardware recognized and functional, including onboard 6-channel sound, except for midi input;
2) Able to burn CDs right away, use the firewire card right away, surf to my server's samba shares right away, with no additional configuration.
3) Installed VMware with a small tweak to the location of the
4) Used a well-known XF86Config-4 workaround to enable digital support for my Gateway FPD1500 monitor, which has always been troublesome on ANY Linux distribution.
5) Installed accelerated NVIDIA drivers from the Lycoris CD set.
I'm now a happy user, because it works on a day to day basis AND I can get under the hood and mess around. It's a great balance.