Most hotels outsource their networking. I've only been to ONE that had an inhouse solution, and they were just a wide-open network (anyone could connect - no password or anything.)
Bingo. I've read that web page despite the GP's insinuation that I didn't. I addressed the screensaver issue in my post as a non-option. If any of these responders in this thread can come up with a standard way of doing this without logging out, putting the computer to sleep, or depending on setting in the screen saver, that doesn't require installing additional software, then I'd be all ears. As I said, this is ONE issue. I can't go over all of them. I'm just pointing out that OS X is not a utopian OS. It can be a pain in the ass at times.
So your answer to my problem is that I shouldn't want to do what I want to do because you never need to do what I want to do. WTF? I've also addressed the reason the screen saver is not a viable option.
You MISS THE POINT. Of COURSE I can write apple script to do something, or download something that will do it. The POINT is that the mac does not nativly do something that the other major players do. Because this very basic feature does not exist, we have to do STUPID work arounds. Logging out? Putting the computer to sleep? Stupid.
But with that comes the other side of the coin... It's so simplified that when you want to do anything out of the ordinary (and sometimes it IS just something ordinary), it becomes difficult. If you can't edit a setting with the preference tool, you have to drop down to manually editing XML, binary files, databases, etc.
For example: how do you lock the screen NOW? Trivial in Linux and Windows. On the Mac, the only way I know is to set a password for the the screensaver and wait for it to activate, or put the computer to sleep. But maybe I don't want a password on the screen saver ALL THE TIME... I'm sure I can do it with an external application or something, but it's not built-in, and should be. Is this minor? Sure, but it's one of HUNDREDS of things that bug me, and that adds up.
If you are OK working within Apple's utopian vision of computing, then the mac is awesome. I know many people love their mac's, and that's fine. If you are a tweaker that likes to customize your environment to work the way YOU work, then it may not be such a good choice.
So I plod on, spending most of my time in Linux, sometimes on the Mac, rarely on Windows. Why do all operating systems suck? Why are they just as bad now as they were 20 years ago? Where are the TRUE advances in OS and UI design? Why are we putting up with minor incremental changes that are 1.1 steps forward, one step back?
Casual copying ceased? Not hardly. Macrovision scrubbers sold by the millions. The people buying 2 VCRs and doing all the copying bought these units which sold in the $50 range. These same devices work for removing macrovision from DVD output too.
Where this is a will, there is a way. But I think you missed the point... The problem is that current releases are overpriced and restrictive. I'm buying DVD's that can scratch and break with no legal means to back them up. If I were to watch a single movie more than twice in a year, that would be a lot. At current prices, this makes ownership not very cost-effective. The current model PROMOTES illegal copying.
Maybe someone should consider that maybe it isn't a good idea that you can download a movie before it hits the theaters.
Me? I'm FINE giving the movie industry time to pay for the cost of producing a movie by having it exclusivly shown in theaters and then in the rental market for a little while before allowing the public to download it for $9.99 - 14.99 / copy in a format unencumbered by insane restrictions (DRM / DVD player restrictions from fastforwarding, etc.) If it's not a blockbuster, then sell it for $5 / download. They would make a TON of money that way. Maybe sell the MPEG4 version for 75% of a HD version... As time passes, the price can drop further.
The problem with the industry is that they refuse to listen to consumers. This gives the consumer no legal outlet to satisfy their desires. It's like prohibition and the "war on drugs." Give us a legal way, Mr. Movie Exec, and your problem will be a fraction of what it is today. I have a number of old (purchased) VHS tapes that are no longer watchable. If I could download a MP4 version for $4 - 5 I would do so. Over a few years, I would pay for HUNDREDS of good movies (classics and new releases.) This is a revenue stream that you don't have today, Mr. Movie Exec.
If France, Germany, or whatever other country wanted to, they could control their own root servers. All they would need to do is force their local ISP's to forward all root server traffic to the government run servers. Trivial to do. This is not about their lack of control - this is all about hating the US and trying to damage us in any and all ways possible without physically starting a war.
We care when we have our servers at a colo, and end up only being able to fill our racks 1/3 full due to the massive heat output and power usage. Most colo's are built for somewhere around 300W per square foot. If your servers are more efficient, you pay less for power and less for rackspace.
I guess you would be just as fucked as if someone stole the whole door, ran a bulldozer through the building, brought in a tactical nuke, a little C4, etc. Someone breaking into your house will probably go through a window, or just hip-check your front or back door where the whole jamb will splinter (very few homes in the US and elsewhere have metal door frames.)
People: We've been using battery powered locks on hotel rooms for MANY MANY years now. Ditto for RFID locks (prox cards) on commercial buildings. It's just not as big of a problem as you are making it. No lock is 100% secure. No door or building is either. It's a matter of making locks easier to use without sacrificing security or reliability. Key locks (unless you go with the very expensive commercial high-security units) are not all that secure and most can be picked in very little time. They bind, can be hard to use, slow to use, etc. Hell, I've got a front door where my wife can't unlock the deadbolt do to a binding problem.
Actually, the internet is the protocol AND IP address assignments, and the root servers that everything references. Who controls IP addresses and the root servers? THAT's the issue.
Countries can internally legislate that any access to the root-server IP's get NATed to their own government root servers. Local ISP's would do that or face criminal penalties.
Problem solved, and there is nothing the US can do to stop them. With this capability in place, governments "maintain" or "usurp" control.
As far as the UN goes however, fuckem.
Re:This sort of thing...
on
RIAA Sues a Child
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Um, your joyride analogy doesn't work.
You HAVE taken something. You took a car for a period of time. The fact that you returned it is irrelevant. You were physically in posession of the stolen merchandise. It's irrelevant that the owner didn't need to use the car at that point in time.
Copying something can not be equated with physically taking an object. Ever. It's just not the same thing which is why the laws are written the way they are.
Consumer grade means shit support and shit random hardware. The business line has a whole different US based support chain, and the parts in the same models are consistant. You get what you pay for.
Yeah, dell HOME / CONSUMER support is in India, but BUSINESS support is in the US. Just buy under the small business links and buy business models and all is fine. The latitude D810 with 2G ram and a 1900x1200 screen runs Ubuntu sweet. The only thing that isn't perfect (like on MOST laptops) is power management. Linux power management blows chunks and always has. If you get it to work at all, it takes lots of screwing around to make it work.
As for gateway, no fucking way will I touch them. Nobody in their support organization even knows what a computer IS. Gateway has a corporate policy that you CAN NOT talk to a supervisor, ever. You are done at the first asswipe that answers the phone. All levels of management are insulated from direct customer contact. Fuck Ted Waitt.
That colossally stupid thing *may* be their refusal to support OpenDoc. It is very possible that government agencies start mandating open standards (like Mass. announced recently.)
Once more and more government requires opendoc, business will need to support it, and if business needs to use SO / OO, then more migration will happen, snowballing.
Only time will tell, but if MS's sales really start to suffer, then they will have no choice but to support OpenDoc.
Oh the question was asked, many many times, but for some bizzare reason the judge has given SCO 7864372643578 chances to answer - all for the "fear" that SCO would appeal if the suit was thrown out. Let them appeal! Let's get that thrown out too! At least it wouldn't take 350 years to get a freekin decision... So yes, it does come down to the judge. What would a reasonable man do? This judge, like sooo many, is not reasonable.
We are just lucky that IBM has the cash to fight. Imagine if they sued a small linux company... What small company can afford to fight a 3+ year law suit?
Ah yes, the new thinking. Let's see how it works... Cut in pay, downsize in to smaller cubes, tell them that they are lucky that they have a job at all, and by the way, I need to you work all weekend with no bonus and no overtime. That should really help productivity!
But seriously, it's not about making employees deleriously happy - it's about making their work environment not totally suck. We are not talking about an environment loaded with free candy machines, foosball, and video games... We are talking about being honest with your employees, providing a nice, quiet, clean environment in which to work, being repectful to individuals needs, etc. These are the "free" things that make work not so bad.
You are assuming that you would be eligable for welfare. My guess is probably not. Now you could just go homeless and jobless and beg for a living, but very few seem to choose that option for some reason.
Re:Its a matter of perspective
on
Pay vs. Happiness
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I'm leary of the "give their children financial independance" part. We already have the older generation calling the younger generation "The Entitlement Generation" due to the fact that (in general) young adults seem to feel that they are "entitled" to high pay, less work, all the toys, etc.
It's not JUST the younger generation though. My sister-in-law STRONGLY feels that it's a parent's reponsibility to maximize their childrens inheritance, and vocally enough that her children are fully aware of it, and now expect it.
Me? I'm just the opposite. All a parent SHOULD do is make sure that their children have the education and capability to acheive their OWN financial independance. Anything the parents do beyond that is a "bonus". Now maybe the child, with his education and drive to work hard, decides to go into a lower paying field to help people, such as becomming a teacher... Then that "bonus" allows them to do so without sacraficing their own future. But if the kid screws around, drops out of school, smokes a lot of pot or whatever, then that child get's NOTHING and deserves NOTHING.
Keep in mind that the basics of Unix are all the same. While you do have to "port" to different flavors of Unix, it's not at all the same as porting to Windows. Been there, done that. Windows is so different that you end up needing to have a massive abstraction library - let's not even get into the problems making a cross platform GUI app. In fact, most flavors of unix are quite compatible in most ways with the exception of OS X which decided that they need to do things "differently". Anyone trying to maintain a headless xserve knows what I'm talking about. While you CAN do pretty much everything from the command line, apple has made it VERY VERY painful.
Slashdot Mirror
Most hotels outsource their networking. I've only been to ONE that had an inhouse solution, and they were just a wide-open network (anyone could connect - no password or anything.)
Bingo. I've read that web page despite the GP's insinuation that I didn't. I addressed the screensaver issue in my post as a non-option. If any of these responders in this thread can come up with a standard way of doing this without logging out, putting the computer to sleep, or depending on setting in the screen saver, that doesn't require installing additional software, then I'd be all ears. As I said, this is ONE issue. I can't go over all of them. I'm just pointing out that OS X is not a utopian OS. It can be a pain in the ass at times.
So your answer to my problem is that I shouldn't want to do what I want to do because you never need to do what I want to do. WTF? I've also addressed the reason the screen saver is not a viable option.
You MISS THE POINT. Of COURSE I can write apple script to do something, or download something that will do it. The POINT is that the mac does not nativly do something that the other major players do. Because this very basic feature does not exist, we have to do STUPID work arounds. Logging out? Putting the computer to sleep? Stupid.
I've already covered the reason the screen saver is not a viable or reasonable option.
But with that comes the other side of the coin... It's so simplified that when you want to do anything out of the ordinary (and sometimes it IS just something ordinary), it becomes difficult. If you can't edit a setting with the preference tool, you have to drop down to manually editing XML, binary files, databases, etc.
For example: how do you lock the screen NOW? Trivial in Linux and Windows. On the Mac, the only way I know is to set a password for the the screensaver and wait for it to activate, or put the computer to sleep. But maybe I don't want a password on the screen saver ALL THE TIME... I'm sure I can do it with an external application or something, but it's not built-in, and should be. Is this minor? Sure, but it's one of HUNDREDS of things that bug me, and that adds up.
If you are OK working within Apple's utopian vision of computing, then the mac is awesome. I know many people love their mac's, and that's fine. If you are a tweaker that likes to customize your environment to work the way YOU work, then it may not be such a good choice.
So I plod on, spending most of my time in Linux, sometimes on the Mac, rarely on Windows. Why do all operating systems suck? Why are they just as bad now as they were 20 years ago? Where are the TRUE advances in OS and UI design? Why are we putting up with minor incremental changes that are 1.1 steps forward, one step back?
Casual copying ceased? Not hardly. Macrovision scrubbers sold by the millions. The people buying 2 VCRs and doing all the copying bought these units which sold in the $50 range. These same devices work for removing macrovision from DVD output too.
Where this is a will, there is a way. But I think you missed the point... The problem is that current releases are overpriced and restrictive. I'm buying DVD's that can scratch and break with no legal means to back them up. If I were to watch a single movie more than twice in a year, that would be a lot. At current prices, this makes ownership not very cost-effective. The current model PROMOTES illegal copying.
No, but being forced to watch 10 minutes of trailers like Disney movies do IS an inconvenience.
Maybe someone should consider that maybe it isn't a good idea that you can download a movie before it hits the theaters.
Me? I'm FINE giving the movie industry time to pay for the cost of producing a movie by having it exclusivly shown in theaters and then in the rental market for a little while before allowing the public to download it for $9.99 - 14.99 / copy in a format unencumbered by insane restrictions (DRM / DVD player restrictions from fastforwarding, etc.) If it's not a blockbuster, then sell it for $5 / download. They would make a TON of money that way. Maybe sell the MPEG4 version for 75% of a HD version... As time passes, the price can drop further.
The problem with the industry is that they refuse to listen to consumers. This gives the consumer no legal outlet to satisfy their desires. It's like prohibition and the "war on drugs." Give us a legal way, Mr. Movie Exec, and your problem will be a fraction of what it is today. I have a number of old (purchased) VHS tapes that are no longer watchable. If I could download a MP4 version for $4 - 5 I would do so. Over a few years, I would pay for HUNDREDS of good movies (classics and new releases.) This is a revenue stream that you don't have today, Mr. Movie Exec.
If France, Germany, or whatever other country wanted to, they could control their own root servers. All they would need to do is force their local ISP's to forward all root server traffic to the government run servers. Trivial to do. This is not about their lack of control - this is all about hating the US and trying to damage us in any and all ways possible without physically starting a war.
Why would I want my movie collection at a colo? Think Myth man!!! :-)
But laptops suck for 10-drive RAID arrays and such... CPU isn't much of an issue - I/O is.
We care when we have our servers at a colo, and end up only being able to fill our racks 1/3 full due to the massive heat output and power usage. Most colo's are built for somewhere around 300W per square foot. If your servers are more efficient, you pay less for power and less for rackspace.
I guess you would be just as fucked as if someone stole the whole door, ran a bulldozer through the building, brought in a tactical nuke, a little C4, etc. Someone breaking into your house will probably go through a window, or just hip-check your front or back door where the whole jamb will splinter (very few homes in the US and elsewhere have metal door frames.)
People: We've been using battery powered locks on hotel rooms for MANY MANY years now. Ditto for RFID locks (prox cards) on commercial buildings. It's just not as big of a problem as you are making it. No lock is 100% secure. No door or building is either. It's a matter of making locks easier to use without sacrificing security or reliability. Key locks (unless you go with the very expensive commercial high-security units) are not all that secure and most can be picked in very little time. They bind, can be hard to use, slow to use, etc. Hell, I've got a front door where my wife can't unlock the deadbolt do to a binding problem.
I'm all for someone making a better lock.
There is at least one IHOP in Canada, therefore it IS "International".
Actually, the internet is the protocol AND IP address assignments, and the root servers that everything references. Who controls IP addresses and the root servers? THAT's the issue.
Countries can internally legislate that any access to the root-server IP's get NATed to their own government root servers. Local ISP's would do that or face criminal penalties.
Problem solved, and there is nothing the US can do to stop them. With this capability in place, governments "maintain" or "usurp" control.
As far as the UN goes however, fuckem.
Um, your joyride analogy doesn't work.
You HAVE taken something. You took a car for a period of time. The fact that you returned it is irrelevant. You were physically in posession of the stolen merchandise. It's irrelevant that the owner didn't need to use the car at that point in time.
Copying something can not be equated with physically taking an object. Ever. It's just not the same thing which is why the laws are written the way they are.
Consumer grade means shit support and shit random hardware. The business line has a whole different US based support chain, and the parts in the same models are consistant. You get what you pay for.
Yeah, dell HOME / CONSUMER support is in India, but BUSINESS support is in the US. Just buy under the small business links and buy business models and all is fine. The latitude D810 with 2G ram and a 1900x1200 screen runs Ubuntu sweet. The only thing that isn't perfect (like on MOST laptops) is power management. Linux power management blows chunks and always has. If you get it to work at all, it takes lots of screwing around to make it work.
As for gateway, no fucking way will I touch them. Nobody in their support organization even knows what a computer IS. Gateway has a corporate policy that you CAN NOT talk to a supervisor, ever. You are done at the first asswipe that answers the phone. All levels of management are insulated from direct customer contact. Fuck Ted Waitt.
That colossally stupid thing *may* be their refusal to support OpenDoc. It is very possible that government agencies start mandating open standards (like Mass. announced recently.)
Once more and more government requires opendoc, business will need to support it, and if business needs to use SO / OO, then more migration will happen, snowballing.
Only time will tell, but if MS's sales really start to suffer, then they will have no choice but to support OpenDoc.
Oh the question was asked, many many times, but for some bizzare reason the judge has given SCO 7864372643578 chances to answer - all for the "fear" that SCO would appeal if the suit was thrown out. Let them appeal! Let's get that thrown out too! At least it wouldn't take 350 years to get a freekin decision... So yes, it does come down to the judge. What would a reasonable man do? This judge, like sooo many, is not reasonable.
We are just lucky that IBM has the cash to fight. Imagine if they sued a small linux company... What small company can afford to fight a 3+ year law suit?
Ah yes, the new thinking. Let's see how it works... Cut in pay, downsize in to smaller cubes, tell them that they are lucky that they have a job at all, and by the way, I need to you work all weekend with no bonus and no overtime. That should really help productivity!
But seriously, it's not about making employees deleriously happy - it's about making their work environment not totally suck. We are not talking about an environment loaded with free candy machines, foosball, and video games... We are talking about being honest with your employees, providing a nice, quiet, clean environment in which to work, being repectful to individuals needs, etc. These are the "free" things that make work not so bad.
You are assuming that you would be eligable for welfare. My guess is probably not. Now you could just go homeless and jobless and beg for a living, but very few seem to choose that option for some reason.
I'm leary of the "give their children financial independance" part. We already have the older generation calling the younger generation "The Entitlement Generation" due to the fact that (in general) young adults seem to feel that they are "entitled" to high pay, less work, all the toys, etc.
It's not JUST the younger generation though. My sister-in-law STRONGLY feels that it's a parent's reponsibility to maximize their childrens inheritance, and vocally enough that her children are fully aware of it, and now expect it.
Me? I'm just the opposite. All a parent SHOULD do is make sure that their children have the education and capability to acheive their OWN financial independance. Anything the parents do beyond that is a "bonus".
Now maybe the child, with his education and drive to work hard, decides to go into a lower paying field to help people, such as becomming a teacher... Then that "bonus" allows them to do so without sacraficing their own future. But if the kid screws around, drops out of school, smokes a lot of pot or whatever, then that child get's NOTHING and deserves NOTHING.
Keep in mind that the basics of Unix are all the same. While you do have to "port" to different flavors of Unix, it's not at all the same as porting to Windows. Been there, done that. Windows is so different that you end up needing to have a massive abstraction library - let's not even get into the problems making a cross platform GUI app. In fact, most flavors of unix are quite compatible in most ways with the exception of OS X which decided that they need to do things "differently". Anyone trying to maintain a headless xserve knows what I'm talking about. While you CAN do pretty much everything from the command line, apple has made it VERY VERY painful.