just because you want content doesn't mean that I and everyone else should have to have spyware and crippleware on our systems.
DRM goes way beyond just playing some stupid videos - it's an integral plank in the war against general purpose computing.
WTF do you think Microsoft's Restricted Boot is for? it's certainly not for protection against viruses - its purpose is to control what you can install or run on your computer.
at the moment, it can be disabled on x86 computers and motherboards, but it CAN'T be disabled on ARM-based Win8 tablets. The Win8 tablets are a trial-run to get people used to the idea that they can't install other operating systems - or software bought outside of MS's app store - on the hardware they've bought.
same for iphones and ipads - you pay for them, but you don't get to really own them, or decide what you want to install or run on them. You can only run what Apple allows you to.
stock android devices are also full of spyware (for google, the manufacturers, and for telcos), but at least it's possible to install software for sources other than Google's app store (either by USB cable or from other app-stores like FDroid), and it's also possible to root them and replace the stock OS with cyanogenmod etc or even a non-Android Linux. not perfect, and they're still spy devices by default, but better than nothing.
and this is NOT just limited to phones and tablets - this is the future for PCs. Apple are already mutating OS X into an IOS style app-store only device, and microsoft is pushing for the same with Restricted Boot.
when you buy hardware with such restrictions you're voting for it with your wallet. you're saying "yes, fuck me over, take my money but retain ownership of what i've bought". people like you would buy a turd on a stick if you were told it was a better hot-dog or that you really needed it for the Full Flavour Experience<tm>
so, yes, life is about principles. partly because principles in themselves are important, but also because principles affect results.
my personal musical tastes include ambient, psychedelic ambient, category-defying stuff like Dead Can Dance and Lisa Gerrard's solo albums, chill and "trance" music of various kinds (e.g. Entheogenic), some "classical" music (for whatever that means), baroque music incl. baroque guitar with an emphasis on plucking notes rather than strumming, and lots more. i like the voice when used as an instrument but find most lyrics banal and trite (oddly, i often don't mind lyrics in languages I don't understand - *because* I don't understand them. I love Lisa Gerrard's glossolalia). i like some other forms of techno / doof, but much of it bores me.
i even like some rock tracks, either because they transcend the genre or because they have some personal significance to me...but am bored shitless with the steady diet of it on radio and TV. I like individual songs in almost every genre (notably excluding rap and C&W) but get bored when lots of songs sound the same.
my tastes evolve over time. i like some things now that i hated 20 years ago, and vice-versa but in general, i like complexity and detail....much more complexity than just the same three or four chords with an occasional key change or squeaky guitar solo.
i particularly despise hiphop, rapping, and country & western ( which is not surprising given that comprehensible lyrics tend to shit me). my dislike of these genres hasn't changed or evolved - shit is shit and even time won't improve it or change my attitude to it.
my musical tastes were probably heavily influenced by the fact that I listened to a lot of Frank Zappa as a kid because my father was a huge fan (and what kid isn't going to think Billy The Mountain or Greggary Peccary is a fucking hoot).....so I got a lot of various kinds of rock (played excellently but often with a subversive twist), mixed in with classical and orchestral and all sorts of weirdo bizarre stuff.
i haven't listened to any zappa in years but still claim to like his stuff....although the frequent overt misogyny really puts me off. i guess part of the reason i don't listen to it is because i don't want to ruin childhood memories and end up disliking it.
actually, this brings up an issue that's common with all simulations that have an economic or political model - including the sims, sim city, civilisation (and clones), and so on.
they serve as a form of propaganda for particular sets of economic, political, and cultural rules, that players internalise as they play the game.
if you program the economic rules so that piracy will ruin your businness then that is exactly what will happen in the game. it says little about the real world....and it's only really obvious in a situation like this where it is a deliberately released piece of overt propaganda.
a slightly less obvious but more troubling one is the rule in Civ (etc) that democracies aren't allowed to declare war, or that military units can force workers to be content in communism. or that corruption is universal under communism but non-existent under democracy.
on the one hand, these are just the rules of the game. on the other hand, they're political propaganda about the pros and cons of particular economic models.
it's not limited to computer games, either - the earliest version of the game that was ripped off to become monopoly was actually propaganda about the evils of landlords and capitalism....at least that was the author's intention. the rules, however, taught players that monopolies were a good thing because that's how you won the game.
matches my experience - but with the caveat that steam forgets your password if you login from another computer.
normally, this isn't a problem....but for a long time i was playing steam games in wine on linux, and had a separate wine prefix for each game (kind of like a separate container vm). this allowed me to tweak the wine settings as required for each game.
unfortunately, steam saw each wine prefix as a separate computer so it forgot my password every time i played a different game.
i don't blame steam for that...it's a minor hassle, and wine was actually pretty damn good for lots of windows games. The third-party (non-steam) DRM in some games made them unplayable, but most worked fine.
i only got around to building a windows 7 box to play the games with third-party DRM when i had most of a system in spare parts after upgrading my main computer. now all my games are on it, and i use a KVM to switch between my real computers any my games computer (which is in hibernate mode most of the time). games are all that machine ever gets used for, i wouldn't trust windows for anything else.
Console gaming was the way to go. You just started a game and played. Now it's intolerable. But your alternative is to maintain a ridiculous and expensive beast of a PC where the video card alone costs more than a console.
depends on what you want to play and what resolution your monitor is.
you don't need to spend $600+ on a video card.
a $100 or $150 card will be more than adequate for maximum or near max settings on most games at 1920x1200 (or the more common 1080p of current cheap LCDs 1920x1080).
i've got an nvidia 560Ti which cost me about $170 AUD when it was new about 18 months ago (or maybe longer, i can't remember exactly). it's overkill for most games, hundreds of fps for some (any my 1920x1200 monitor is a fixed 60fps anyway). for some games i have to turn down the anti-aliasing or something.
a current equivalent would be the 650 or 650Ti or maybe the nvidia 660 ($115, $155, and $180 respectively). or an AMD 7790 or therabouts for around $150. they're not much, if any, faster than my 560Ti but they probably use less power and run cooler & quieter.
if you've got a 2560x1440 or 2560x1600 monitor or multiple monitors with one huge virtual desktop, you might need a faster video card.
which is probably the only reason i'd consider upgrading my video card in the next few years, if i upgrade to a 27" or 30" 2560x1600 monitor. and even then i'd probably still be happy with the performance of my current card on most games (but some would make me want to upgrade)...and, most likely, i'd just wait a little while until the current $600 cards are down around $200 or so.
PC stuff gets a lot cheaper and better very quickly. console stuff gets a bit cheaper, but no better (until years later there's a new model and then it's expensive again). Android-based consoles may change that in a few years as there won't be the monopoly on console hardware.
ps: i've never owned a console as the idea of spending $600+ on a single-function gaming machine just seemed absurd...and as much again for the competing brands of consoles (xbox, sony ps, wii) if you want to play their exclusive titles too. a PC might cost as much or more but you can do a lot more with it.
also, i really hate game controllers. i've never found one i like or can even use long enough to play a game - my hands cramp in minutes. i much prefer keyboard and mouse.
the first step in getting people to accept algorithmic excuses for mass firings, hiring discrimination, and mandatory career planning is to propagandise the rare, unlikely (faked?) positive flukes.
you thought you trained to be a computer programmer, but our magic computer says you're better suited to order fulfilment in an amazon warehouse with crap conditions and crap pay.
After all, those same gamers are generally positive about Steam despite its DRM, and many of them have commented on forums like this one that it's because Steam's DRM almost always works properly without getting in the way of their enjoyment.
yes, but that only means that Steam's DRM doesn't annoy them too much. It doesn't mean that it provides any benefit or that it's good.
FWIW, I'm a steam customer and for the most part it doesn't annoy me too much. I'd prefer it didn't exist, though, because it doesn't provide ME with any benefit, and does some things that are a dis-service to me, including:
1. valve/steam get to spy on me and know when my gaming computer is turned on, what games i'm playing, when i'm playing them.
Fortunately, I only use Windows for gaming, everything else I do on linux (i used to use wine, but got sick of lots of games - that I paid for - not working under wine due to DRM so built a windows box out of mostly spare parts after my last system upgrade).
2. so count that as dis-service # 2 - DRM forced me to have a windows box in my home that i don't want, in order to play games that i bought and paid for. DRM is almost exclusively the reason why some windows games don't work on wine.
Admittedly, Steam's own DRM is not the problem here....it's third-party DRM like ubisoft or xboxlive or securom or other shit.....but why should i have to suffer that crap when i'm already suffering Steam's DRM?
3. i've bought hundreds of games from steam, but i can't let my partner (who is not a gamer) play the occasional game on her computer because that would prevent me from logging in to steam and playing a different game - NOTE: i don't want to play the same game at the same time, I want to let her play a different game.
with a CD game, i'd just be able to lend a game to her.
4. i can't re-sell games I bought that i've either finished or got bored of or just plain didn't like. I can't even give them away. Steam's DRM has stolen my right of first-sale.
BTW, DRM isn't the reason I buy games or the reason why I'm a Steam customer. Most Steam games have no DRM (aside from Steam's own). I buy games from Steam because they provide an extremely convenient means of buying a game without fucking around with CDs or going to a shop full of bratty kids. they also have really good sales. I'd still buy games via steam even if they eliminated their DRM and spyware.
in short: steam's more convenient and less hassle than bit-torrent.
i.e. the same reason why lots of people buy music from itunes etc rather than bit-torrent it....it's more convenient and less hassle.
fads and fashion are not culture. they're consumerism. culture is people DOING stuff, not BUYING stuff.
and people have been listening to the same music since the 1950s since the music industry industrialised the production process for crappy rock ballads.
(there's always been more interesting music out there too, but most people just buy rock music in all it's tediously repetitive minor variations)
mainstream movies are the same bland, repetitive crap too. granted, they often have good explosions and special effects, but how many fucking re-makes of the same movies does the world need?
make sure you have some wizards who can cast really powerful and useful spells. invisibility would be a good utility spell. fireballs too. and polymorph other when you're facing a tank. and there's no way a military helicopter can stand up to a high-level summoned demon.
hmm....some druids or clerics might help too.
(i like to mix my fantasies - they're more fun that way and no less credible)
i am, pretty much without exception, in favour of the "information wants to be free" and "censorship is evil" arguments, but i can't help seeing this Cody Wilson guy and his ilk as irresponsible ideological fuckwits.
but....well, maybe this is where the solution to US gun-nuttery lies.
your second amendment says you have the right to keep and bear arms. i won't bother re-hashing the argument over whether that's only as part of an organised/well-regulated milita or not because it's not relevant to my point here.
it doesn't say you have the right to buy or sell or trade them. or give them away. or lend them to anyone.
so if your gun nuts want guns, they can make them themselves.
of course, that'll never fly because the gun-nuts who bleat about their gun-owning rights are, for the most part, just the unwitting dupes of the gun manufacturers and their propaganda/political-lobby group, the NRA.
and that's what the gun debate is all about - the right of scumbag corporations to make shitloads of money selling weapons to anyone (even to psycopaths) without government interference or regulation. if it wasn't for that, there would be no debate.
debian already distributes zfs-fuse in the main archive.
there's no legal impediment to debian also distributing zfsonlinux as zfs-dkms and spl-dkms kernel module packages (i.e. compiles and installs the.ko modules when you install it) and zfs tools packages.
in fact, that's how the zfsonlinux project distributes for debian - as an apt-gettable repository, so installing it is as easy as adding another repo and running apt-get
In both cases, zfs-fuse and zfsonlinux, they're not distributing a derived work because it is the USER who installs it on their own system who is combining the GPL code and the CDDL code. As long as they don't distribute the result themselves, the GPL is fine with that.
You can do whatever you like (including link incompatibly-licensed, even proprietary, code) with GPLed code on your own system. The GPL's restrictions only come into effect when you want to distribute the combined work (or, in the case of GPLv3, if you want to offer it as SaaS to third-parties)
i've also been a very happy user of XFS for a very long time - it was (still is, mostly) my default file-system on linux machines.
but there really are compelling reasons why btrfs (and zfs) are steps in the right direction. the most important is error detection and correction on the data - older filesystems (like ext* and XFS) just don't and can't do this...and no, raid verification doesn't do it either. raid-arrays and even individual disks are getting so big that it's a statistical certainty that there WILL be errors in the data stored on disk. using a filesystem that can't detect those errors means you have silent corruption of your data (i.e. that you don't know about), and errors that can't be detected are also errors that can't be corrected.
the copy-on-write (COW) nature of both btrfs and ZFS is another good reason - there's *never* a time when old data is just over-written, it is copied and updated at the same time. this means that when data is written, a crash/power-failure results in either the old data OR the new data, but never a mix between the two.
another reason is that both btrfs and zfs combine the features of mdadm software raid and LVM volume management and a filesystem (but not all of the limitations/annoyances - e.g. a zfs filesystem quota or btrfs subvolume sizes are soft quotas, not volume/partition limits as they are with LVM)....and the sysadmin tools to create and manage the combination are *far* simpler to understand and use than mdadm or lvm tools. this removes a significant barrier to entry for good practices like raid and volume management.
being able to use an SSD or partition of an SSD for ZFS L2ARC (caching) and for the ZIL ("ZFS Intent Log" - a write cache for synchronous writes) is also very nice.
there are more reasons, but if you're interested, I suggest you start by reading the wikipedia pages on ZFS and btrfs.
anyway, I still use XFS - on some systems as the only filesystem. On other systems, as the root fs only but with my bulk data storage on ZFS (i haven't bothered setting up root on zfs because i haven't needed it so far and converting would require significant downtime/disruption - but i expect that future systems I build will likely be entirely ZFS).
I initially tried btrfs a few years ago but found it buggy and unreliable, and i lost my btrfs filesystems to corruption one too many times (fortunately, only a/backup mount for rsync backups so i didn't lose any irreplacable data). By all accounts the btrfs bugs (and many more) that I encountered at the time have been fixed, but my solution was to switch to zfsonlinux instead. i'm glad i did - i was skeptical before i tried it but it turns out that it's pretty much everything i ever wanted from raid and volume management and filesystems all rolled into one.
So, yeah, Linux does need a modern filesystem. Fortunately, we have two to choose from: one included with the mainline kernel (btrfs) and one (ZFS) easily installed with dkms modules and packages for most distros.
'zfs send' also has options for sending only incremental differences between snapshots.
The example $snapname variable definition only supports one snapshot per day. if you need more, include hours, minutes, and/or seconds. you can use any arbitrary string as the name of a snapshot...date/time is merely convenient, not required.
nvidia and amd don't release linux drivers for gamers.
they release them for video production companies (who almost exclusively use linux render farms) and for high-end massively parallel number-crunching / research applications that use CUDA or OpenCL.
enabling gaming on linux is just a side-effect.
(this may change with steambox or android game consoles, but even so it's still very much a seconday purpose)
P.S.: Yes, the code in the GPL codebase is essentially the same as the code in the non-GPL codebase, but the ways you can legally use it are different.
No, they're not. the GPL does not restrict usage, it only restricts re-distribution - you're only allowed to re-distribute under the same terms as the GPL (i.e. with source or offer for source and with rights to modify, re-use, and re-distribute).
You can use the code however you like, for whatever purpose you like.
This "ways you can legally use it" line is the same bullshit that Monty and Mysql AB used to spread when he/they owned the copyright to mysql - he licensed it as GPL and then tried to tell you that you had to buy a commercial license if you wanted to use it commercially. The mysql web site had that crap plastered all over it.
It was bullshit then, and it's still bullshit now.
Monty and Mysql AB made a lot of money out of that FUD and he's still got people believing it even now.
Personally, I think he has demonstrated his lack of ethics and honesty, and find it extremely difficult to believe his claim that he's doing it for the love of the code.
A VC once told me that before he invests in a start-up, he drives by their offices at 9pm on Friday night. If the parking lot is empty, that company is going to fail.
he was probably just ego-wanking all over you to make you realise what an important big man he was.
only big, already successful companies can afford to own or rent their own parking lots. startups rent office space and most of their employees rely on street parking or nearby commercial parking (or public transport, bicycles, or living withing walking distance of work etc).
The startup might rent a few parking spots for the founders or maybe top employees...but they certainly won't be in an easily identifiable Startup Inc Parking Lot that you can do a drive-by eyeball at 9pm, they'll be a few reserved spots in a nearby car park.
now go wash that VC spoof off your face. and stop lapping it up.
that sounds just like my uncle who used the same kind of "reasoning" to explain how to pick a good horse or dog that had really good odds because it just had a bad few weeks...everyone else thought they were crap, but my uncle knew better.
like every other gambler on the planet, he was a fuckwit....and confirmation bias ensured he remembered his occasional wins and forgot his hundreds of losses.
the problem with the stock markets today is that while they are supposed to be about investment and providing needed capital for expansion and productive work, they're actually about gambling and stock price manipulation....someone hacked that AP account to send that tweet precisely so that they could exploit the effect on stock prices.
banning HFT would be a good start to undo-ing that. a tobin tax and/or an extra capital gains tax on short-term speculative trades would be a great second step.
you have no fucking idea what trollable is, you moron.
you think what you're doing is trolling? it's way too fucking lame for that, nor does it mean any of the actual criteria for trolling.
you're just being an unjustifiably arrogant and pretentious smug wanker....if you're still a teenager, your mum might think it's precociously cute (nobody else would).
yes, there is. the ACMA maintains a (secret) black-list of domain names and IP addresses which contains "prohibited content" which is used in filtering software. Some ISPs voluntarily use that list to block access.
The ACMA's secret blacklist has leaked on at least one occasion in the past.
In Nov last year, the Australian Federal Police started sending mandatory block notices to ISPs.
Slashdot Mirror
DRM is a way of forcing ALL sales to be rentals.
except, no discount for being just a rental. you pay full price but still don't get to actually own what you bought.
just because you want content doesn't mean that I and everyone else should have to have spyware and crippleware on our systems.
DRM goes way beyond just playing some stupid videos - it's an integral plank in the war against general purpose computing.
WTF do you think Microsoft's Restricted Boot is for? it's certainly not for protection against viruses - its purpose is to control what you can install or run on your computer.
at the moment, it can be disabled on x86 computers and motherboards, but it CAN'T be disabled on ARM-based Win8 tablets. The Win8 tablets are a trial-run to get people used to the idea that they can't install other operating systems - or software bought outside of MS's app store - on the hardware they've bought.
same for iphones and ipads - you pay for them, but you don't get to really own them, or decide what you want to install or run on them. You can only run what Apple allows you to.
stock android devices are also full of spyware (for google, the manufacturers, and for telcos), but at least it's possible to install software for sources other than Google's app store (either by USB cable or from other app-stores like FDroid), and it's also possible to root them and replace the stock OS with cyanogenmod etc or even a non-Android Linux. not perfect, and they're still spy devices by default, but better than nothing.
and this is NOT just limited to phones and tablets - this is the future for PCs. Apple are already mutating OS X into an IOS style app-store only device, and microsoft is pushing for the same with Restricted Boot.
when you buy hardware with such restrictions you're voting for it with your wallet. you're saying "yes, fuck me over, take my money but retain ownership of what i've bought". people like you would buy a turd on a stick if you were told it was a better hot-dog or that you really needed it for the Full Flavour Experience<tm>
so, yes, life is about principles. partly because principles in themselves are important, but also because principles affect results.
my personal musical tastes include ambient, psychedelic ambient, category-defying stuff like Dead Can Dance and Lisa Gerrard's solo albums, chill and "trance" music of various kinds (e.g. Entheogenic), some "classical" music (for whatever that means), baroque music incl. baroque guitar with an emphasis on plucking notes rather than strumming, and lots more. i like the voice when used as an instrument but find most lyrics banal and trite (oddly, i often don't mind lyrics in languages I don't understand - *because* I don't understand them. I love Lisa Gerrard's glossolalia). i like some other forms of techno / doof, but much of it bores me.
i even like some rock tracks, either because they transcend the genre or because they have some personal significance to me...but am bored shitless with the steady diet of it on radio and TV. I like individual songs in almost every genre (notably excluding rap and C&W) but get bored when lots of songs sound the same.
my tastes evolve over time. i like some things now that i hated 20 years ago, and vice-versa but in general, i like complexity and detail....much more complexity than just the same three or four chords with an occasional key change or squeaky guitar solo.
i particularly despise hiphop, rapping, and country & western ( which is not surprising given that comprehensible lyrics tend to shit me). my dislike of these genres hasn't changed or evolved - shit is shit and even time won't improve it or change my attitude to it.
my musical tastes were probably heavily influenced by the fact that I listened to a lot of Frank Zappa as a kid because my father was a huge fan (and what kid isn't going to think Billy The Mountain or Greggary Peccary is a fucking hoot).....so I got a lot of various kinds of rock (played excellently but often with a subversive twist), mixed in with classical and orchestral and all sorts of weirdo bizarre stuff.
i haven't listened to any zappa in years but still claim to like his stuff....although the frequent overt misogyny really puts me off. i guess part of the reason i don't listen to it is because i don't want to ruin childhood memories and end up disliking it.
actually, this brings up an issue that's common with all simulations that have an economic or political model - including the sims, sim city, civilisation (and clones), and so on.
they serve as a form of propaganda for particular sets of economic, political, and cultural rules, that players internalise as they play the game.
if you program the economic rules so that piracy will ruin your businness then that is exactly what will happen in the game. it says little about the real world....and it's only really obvious in a situation like this where it is a deliberately released piece of overt propaganda.
a slightly less obvious but more troubling one is the rule in Civ (etc) that democracies aren't allowed to declare war, or that military units can force workers to be content in communism. or that corruption is universal under communism but non-existent under democracy.
http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Government
on the one hand, these are just the rules of the game. on the other hand, they're political propaganda about the pros and cons of particular economic models.
it's not limited to computer games, either - the earliest version of the game that was ripped off to become monopoly was actually propaganda about the evils of landlords and capitalism....at least that was the author's intention. the rules, however, taught players that monopolies were a good thing because that's how you won the game.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2986/was-monopoly-originally-meant-to-teach-people-about-the-evils-of-capitalism
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/09/how_monopoly_turns_us_into_uncreative_capitalist_vultures_partner/
matches my experience - but with the caveat that steam forgets your password if you login from another computer.
normally, this isn't a problem....but for a long time i was playing steam games in wine on linux, and had a separate wine prefix for each game (kind of like a separate container vm). this allowed me to tweak the wine settings as required for each game.
unfortunately, steam saw each wine prefix as a separate computer so it forgot my password every time i played a different game.
i don't blame steam for that...it's a minor hassle, and wine was actually pretty damn good for lots of windows games. The third-party (non-steam) DRM in some games made them unplayable, but most worked fine.
i only got around to building a windows 7 box to play the games with third-party DRM when i had most of a system in spare parts after upgrading my main computer. now all my games are on it, and i use a KVM to switch between my real computers any my games computer (which is in hibernate mode most of the time). games are all that machine ever gets used for, i wouldn't trust windows for anything else.
depends on what you want to play and what resolution your monitor is.
you don't need to spend $600+ on a video card.
a $100 or $150 card will be more than adequate for maximum or near max settings on most games at 1920x1200 (or the more common 1080p of current cheap LCDs 1920x1080).
i've got an nvidia 560Ti which cost me about $170 AUD when it was new about 18 months ago (or maybe longer, i can't remember exactly). it's overkill for most games, hundreds of fps for some (any my 1920x1200 monitor is a fixed 60fps anyway). for some games i have to turn down the anti-aliasing or something.
a current equivalent would be the 650 or 650Ti or maybe the nvidia 660 ($115, $155, and $180 respectively). or an AMD 7790 or therabouts for around $150. they're not much, if any, faster than my 560Ti but they probably use less power and run cooler & quieter.
if you've got a 2560x1440 or 2560x1600 monitor or multiple monitors with one huge virtual desktop, you might need a faster video card.
which is probably the only reason i'd consider upgrading my video card in the next few years, if i upgrade to a 27" or 30" 2560x1600 monitor. and even then i'd probably still be happy with the performance of my current card on most games (but some would make me want to upgrade)...and, most likely, i'd just wait a little while until the current $600 cards are down around $200 or so.
PC stuff gets a lot cheaper and better very quickly. console stuff gets a bit cheaper, but no better (until years later there's a new model and then it's expensive again). Android-based consoles may change that in a few years as there won't be the monopoly on console hardware.
ps: i've never owned a console as the idea of spending $600+ on a single-function gaming machine just seemed absurd...and as much again for the competing brands of consoles (xbox, sony ps, wii) if you want to play their exclusive titles too. a PC might cost as much or more but you can do a lot more with it.
also, i really hate game controllers. i've never found one i like or can even use long enough to play a game - my hands cramp in minutes. i much prefer keyboard and mouse.
none of those links do anything but prove my point - rock is tedious and repetitive.
don't you ever get bored of manufactured teen angst and synthetic teen rebellion? or even just the sound of rock guitar and drums?
I've seen ads for TBBT, and even parts of episodes recorded before or after something else I set my myth box to record.
it's unwatchable trash. lame, unfunny, stereotyped trash.
it's a modern variation of Three's Company.
the first step in getting people to accept algorithmic excuses for mass firings, hiring discrimination, and mandatory career planning is to propagandise the rare, unlikely (faked?) positive flukes.
you thought you trained to be a computer programmer, but our magic computer says you're better suited to order fulfilment in an amazon warehouse with crap conditions and crap pay.
yes, but that only means that Steam's DRM doesn't annoy them too much. It doesn't mean that it provides any benefit or that it's good.
FWIW, I'm a steam customer and for the most part it doesn't annoy me too much. I'd prefer it didn't exist, though, because it doesn't provide ME with any benefit, and does some things that are a dis-service to me, including:
1. valve/steam get to spy on me and know when my gaming computer is turned on, what games i'm playing, when i'm playing them.
Fortunately, I only use Windows for gaming, everything else I do on linux (i used to use wine, but got sick of lots of games - that I paid for - not working under wine due to DRM so built a windows box out of mostly spare parts after my last system upgrade).
2. so count that as dis-service # 2 - DRM forced me to have a windows box in my home that i don't want, in order to play games that i bought and paid for. DRM is almost exclusively the reason why some windows games don't work on wine.
Admittedly, Steam's own DRM is not the problem here....it's third-party DRM like ubisoft or xboxlive or securom or other shit.....but why should i have to suffer that crap when i'm already suffering Steam's DRM?
3. i've bought hundreds of games from steam, but i can't let my partner (who is not a gamer) play the occasional game on her computer because that would prevent me from logging in to steam and playing a different game - NOTE: i don't want to play the same game at the same time, I want to let her play a different game.
with a CD game, i'd just be able to lend a game to her.
4. i can't re-sell games I bought that i've either finished or got bored of or just plain didn't like. I can't even give them away. Steam's DRM has stolen my right of first-sale.
BTW, DRM isn't the reason I buy games or the reason why I'm a Steam customer. Most Steam games have no DRM (aside from Steam's own). I buy games from Steam because they provide an extremely convenient means of buying a game without fucking around with CDs or going to a shop full of bratty kids. they also have really good sales. I'd still buy games via steam even if they eliminated their DRM and spyware.
in short: steam's more convenient and less hassle than bit-torrent.
i.e. the same reason why lots of people buy music from itunes etc rather than bit-torrent it....it's more convenient and less hassle.
fads and fashion are not culture. they're consumerism. culture is people DOING stuff, not BUYING stuff.
and people have been listening to the same music since the 1950s since the music industry industrialised the production process for crappy rock ballads.
(there's always been more interesting music out there too, but most people just buy rock music in all it's tediously repetitive minor variations)
mainstream movies are the same bland, repetitive crap too. granted, they often have good explosions and special effects, but how many fucking re-makes of the same movies does the world need?
you forgot the final rule:
make sure you have some wizards who can cast really powerful and useful spells. invisibility would be a good utility spell. fireballs too. and polymorph other when you're facing a tank. and there's no way a military helicopter can stand up to a high-level summoned demon.
hmm....some druids or clerics might help too.
(i like to mix my fantasies - they're more fun that way and no less credible)
i am, pretty much without exception, in favour of the "information wants to be free" and "censorship is evil" arguments, but i can't help seeing this Cody Wilson guy and his ilk as irresponsible ideological fuckwits.
but....well, maybe this is where the solution to US gun-nuttery lies.
your second amendment says you have the right to keep and bear arms. i won't bother re-hashing the argument over whether that's only as part of an organised/well-regulated milita or not because it's not relevant to my point here.
it doesn't say you have the right to buy or sell or trade them. or give them away. or lend them to anyone.
so if your gun nuts want guns, they can make them themselves.
of course, that'll never fly because the gun-nuts who bleat about their gun-owning rights are, for the most part, just the unwitting dupes of the gun manufacturers and their propaganda/political-lobby group, the NRA.
and that's what the gun debate is all about - the right of scumbag corporations to make shitloads of money selling weapons to anyone (even to psycopaths) without government interference or regulation. if it wasn't for that, there would be no debate.
debian already distributes zfs-fuse in the main archive.
there's no legal impediment to debian also distributing zfsonlinux as zfs-dkms and spl-dkms kernel module packages (i.e. compiles and installs the .ko modules when you install it) and zfs tools packages.
in fact, that's how the zfsonlinux project distributes for debian - as an apt-gettable repository, so installing it is as easy as adding another repo and running apt-get
http://zfsonlinux.org/debian.html
(BTW, that repo works on Wheezy and on Sid)
In both cases, zfs-fuse and zfsonlinux, they're not distributing a derived work because it is the USER who installs it on their own system who is combining the GPL code and the CDDL code. As long as they don't distribute the result themselves, the GPL is fine with that.
You can do whatever you like (including link incompatibly-licensed, even proprietary, code) with GPLed code on your own system. The GPL's restrictions only come into effect when you want to distribute the combined work (or, in the case of GPLv3, if you want to offer it as SaaS to third-parties)
i've also been a very happy user of XFS for a very long time - it was (still is, mostly) my default file-system on linux machines.
but there really are compelling reasons why btrfs (and zfs) are steps in the right direction. the most important is error detection and correction on the data - older filesystems (like ext* and XFS) just don't and can't do this...and no, raid verification doesn't do it either. raid-arrays and even individual disks are getting so big that it's a statistical certainty that there WILL be errors in the data stored on disk. using a filesystem that can't detect those errors means you have silent corruption of your data (i.e. that you don't know about), and errors that can't be detected are also errors that can't be corrected.
the copy-on-write (COW) nature of both btrfs and ZFS is another good reason - there's *never* a time when old data is just over-written, it is copied and updated at the same time. this means that when data is written, a crash/power-failure results in either the old data OR the new data, but never a mix between the two.
another reason is that both btrfs and zfs combine the features of mdadm software raid and LVM volume management and a filesystem (but not all of the limitations/annoyances - e.g. a zfs filesystem quota or btrfs subvolume sizes are soft quotas, not volume/partition limits as they are with LVM)....and the sysadmin tools to create and manage the combination are *far* simpler to understand and use than mdadm or lvm tools. this removes a significant barrier to entry for good practices like raid and volume management.
being able to use an SSD or partition of an SSD for ZFS L2ARC (caching) and for the ZIL ("ZFS Intent Log" - a write cache for synchronous writes) is also very nice.
there are more reasons, but if you're interested, I suggest you start by reading the wikipedia pages on ZFS and btrfs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btrfs
anyway, I still use XFS - on some systems as the only filesystem. On other systems, as the root fs only but with my bulk data storage on ZFS (i haven't bothered setting up root on zfs because i haven't needed it so far and converting would require significant downtime/disruption - but i expect that future systems I build will likely be entirely ZFS).
I initially tried btrfs a few years ago but found it buggy and unreliable, and i lost my btrfs filesystems to corruption one too many times (fortunately, only a /backup mount for rsync backups so i didn't lose any irreplacable data). By all accounts the btrfs bugs (and many more) that I encountered at the time have been fixed, but my solution was to switch to zfsonlinux instead. i'm glad i did - i was skeptical before i tried it but it turns out that it's pretty much everything i ever wanted from raid and volume management and filesystems all rolled into one.
So, yeah, Linux does need a modern filesystem. Fortunately, we have two to choose from: one included with the mainline kernel (btrfs) and one (ZFS) easily installed with dkms modules and packages for most distros.
it is. here's a very simple example:
snapname=$(date +%Y%m%d)
zfs snapshot "filesystem@$snapname"
zfs send "filesystem@$snapname" | ssh remote-system zfs receive filesystem
'zfs send' also has options for sending only incremental differences between snapshots.
The example $snapname variable definition only supports one snapshot per day. if you need more, include hours, minutes, and/or seconds. you can use any arbitrary string as the name of a snapshot...date/time is merely convenient, not required.
nvidia and amd don't release linux drivers for gamers.
they release them for video production companies (who almost exclusively use linux render farms) and for high-end massively parallel number-crunching / research applications that use CUDA or OpenCL.
enabling gaming on linux is just a side-effect.
(this may change with steambox or android game consoles, but even so it's still very much a seconday purpose)
No, they're not. the GPL does not restrict usage, it only restricts re-distribution - you're only allowed to re-distribute under the same terms as the GPL (i.e. with source or offer for source and with rights to modify, re-use, and re-distribute).
You can use the code however you like, for whatever purpose you like.
This "ways you can legally use it" line is the same bullshit that Monty and Mysql AB used to spread when he/they owned the copyright to mysql - he licensed it as GPL and then tried to tell you that you had to buy a commercial license if you wanted to use it commercially. The mysql web site had that crap plastered all over it.
It was bullshit then, and it's still bullshit now.
Monty and Mysql AB made a lot of money out of that FUD and he's still got people believing it even now.
Personally, I think he has demonstrated his lack of ethics and honesty, and find it extremely difficult to believe his claim that he's doing it for the love of the code.
only the american members of anonymous will hold their protest in vienna.
those from the rest of the world have at least a basic knowledge of geography.
he was probably just ego-wanking all over you to make you realise what an important big man he was.
only big, already successful companies can afford to own or rent their own parking lots. startups rent office space and most of their employees rely on street parking or nearby commercial parking (or public transport, bicycles, or living withing walking distance of work etc).
The startup might rent a few parking spots for the founders or maybe top employees...but they certainly won't be in an easily identifiable Startup Inc Parking Lot that you can do a drive-by eyeball at 9pm, they'll be a few reserved spots in a nearby car park.
now go wash that VC spoof off your face. and stop lapping it up.
that sounds just like my uncle who used the same kind of "reasoning" to explain how to pick a good horse or dog that had really good odds because it just had a bad few weeks...everyone else thought they were crap, but my uncle knew better.
like every other gambler on the planet, he was a fuckwit....and confirmation bias ensured he remembered his occasional wins and forgot his hundreds of losses.
the problem with the stock markets today is that while they are supposed to be about investment and providing needed capital for expansion and productive work, they're actually about gambling and stock price manipulation....someone hacked that AP account to send that tweet precisely so that they could exploit the effect on stock prices.
banning HFT would be a good start to undo-ing that. a tobin tax and/or an extra capital gains tax on short-term speculative trades would be a great second step.
you have no fucking idea what trollable is, you moron.
you think what you're doing is trolling? it's way too fucking lame for that, nor does it mean any of the actual criteria for trolling.
you're just being an unjustifiably arrogant and pretentious smug wanker....if you're still a teenager, your mum might think it's precociously cute (nobody else would).
i think i'll call you Smug Wanker. and you can FOAD too.
I don't give a fuck.
being impersonated does not give you the right to spam.
your impersonator might be a "nutjob" but you've either become one due to stress and anger or you alyways were one too.
fuck off and die.
yes, there is. the ACMA maintains a (secret) black-list of domain names and IP addresses which contains "prohibited content" which is used in filtering software. Some ISPs voluntarily use that list to block access.
The ACMA's secret blacklist has leaked on at least one occasion in the past.
In Nov last year, the Australian Federal Police started sending mandatory block notices to ISPs.
more info here:
http://www.acma.gov.au/scripts/nc.dll?WEB/STANDARD/1001/pc=PC_90102
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia