Agreed. I use E16 fulltime most of the time because I'm in a dual-monitor dual-screen (not xinerama) configuration, and E17 has a few issues here. Seems no matter where I try to open an app, it always displays on:0.0. When I do manage to open the app on:0.1, if I move the window around or resize, the coordinate display is on:0.0, which is just kinda weird.
I really like Engage, though. I'd like it more if it was a bit more tightly integrated. I can't open a menu within a certain area of the icons, and if the zoom factor is set too high, the icons get cut off. Some sort of dynamic sizing would be nice to minimize the unusable area of the screen while still allowing for zooming. But the whole thing is still under development, so I'm hoping it eventually polishes up.
Probably because Windows was incredibly unlikely to reach such an uptime. It might have been obvious if it had been otherwise stable (although to most people, it would still seem like some random crash). It was prone enough to crashing that it would rarely make it to that mark anyway.
It's kinda interesting. Of course, all the asking for invites on public forums breaks the system, but if it wasn't for that, this would be a good way for Google to track people who might have similar interests (people who give invites to others are probably friends).
Cat Isle (also called CLAW) has all the items you need to complete the game. To get to Cat Isle without cheating, you want to start in one of the tree gardens in Monitor. I believe it is approximately 4 or 5 houses west of Lucilla's pub. You need is 3 crates or something equivalent. The garden has a southern entrance and a few trees immediately to the west of the entrance. I believe the closest tree is the one we want. Pile up your makeshift staircase behind the tree (close to the tree trunk), so that the top stair of your staircase is directly behind the tree trunk (again, I'm pretty certain this is correct, but I can't be sure). Climb the stairs and you should find yourself on Cat Isle.
That you can get there without the developer mode sometimes makes people less likely to consider it cheating.
Agreed, that blacksmith house is definitely true. After using it once, it became incredibly hard to resist outfitting my entire party with magic armor from that cheat room. It was also useful if the game glitched and I lost a quest item.
You'd be silly to claim you have a moral right to schematics, blueprints, and design documents for your car if there's something wrong with it
And yet, not long ago, this was a topic of much concern by auto-shops who wanted access to the error codes the car's computer would spit out so they could diagnose and fix cars.
Aside from what's already been mentioned, running a processor on a board that's overclocked is almost sure to void the warranty. Not telling your customers this is really bad juju and would probably open Asus to litigation if anyone was ever burned (ha ha) by this.
Unless the spec changes (has the DVD spec changed yet? Nope) there are no compatibility problems as long as the players are built to the spec. If they deviate from spec, it will be considered the manufacturer's fault. There is no "lost support" as per operating systems because the players are designed to have the code updated by the very body of companies who are going to maintain support. If a manufacturer skimps on memory and eventually runs out of space for keys, well you should have bought from a name brand, shouldn't you have? The spec said 16 megs, so if a manufacturer only includes 8, well that's tough shit. The spec was there for a reason.
Honestly, it's not so hard. I don't understand why people insist that support could be dropped for older machines when the code itself wouldn't be coming from the player manufacturers in the first place--as would be required if the keys were on the DVDs to prevent the need for downloading/ortherwise performing a manual operation to update your key list (again, ala the PSP, which I mentioned in multiple posts).
Sure, but a modchip itself is useless without a hacked BIOS. Just using a modchip and Cromwell, all you can run is Linux (and now FreeBSD, I guess). With a stock BIOS on the modchip, you can run whatever the XBox itself runs. It's only the modchip+modified bios combination that even allows for copyright infringement. To suggest that adding a single component which/can/ increase copyright violation is asinine, and there are too many examples in the real world which exhibit this behavior yet are completely legal.
Example 1: video capture cards. It's pretty clear that 99% of their purpose is to copy copyrighted material. Perhaps they don't circumvent any copy-protection measures, but this illustrates the concept of an additional piece of hardware that extends (greatly) your copyright violation possibilities.
Example 2: signal correctors. These do allow for the violation of copy protection measures. They can correct the signal imbalance that Macrovision uses to protect analog signals from being copied. And that's the rub, there, I guess. The DMCA ostensibly only covers the digital world, and as such,/probably/ wouldn't affect Macrovision (although the DMCA has been cited for use in many cases where no copy-protection has been circumvented--see the FedEX furniture case).
So it's a stupid law, we're in agreement there. And it really does seem to depend upon a judge's interpretation as to whether some given modification violates the DMCA. I'll hold on to the hope that, in an individual case, the judge would look at the intentions of the modder, but we can't count on that.
Some older cars get better than 40mpg without being hybrids. You just don't get all the bells and whistles of modern cars, but you also save a bundle by buying used.
Is it really so clear cut? A modchip itself does not allow you to circumvent copyprotection. It does allow you to run unsigned code--it lets you run whatever you want. If you use a hacked bios, it allows for bypassing copy protection. If you use a "legal" bios (Cromwell, for example) it allows you to run unsigned code, but not copied XBox games. I definitely think it's not as clear-cut as you indicate, but maybe my understanding of the DMCA is not as good.
Some anime writers have come out in support/favor of fansubbers when there isn't a licence in the US for the material. That may be part of where the myth came from. Nonetheless, it is still illegal, so when I see someone promote that myth, I tend to mention Berne.
And whether it hurts someone or not isn't the issue, as usual. There have been several studies indicating that people who download music illegally tend to buy more music, and that in general, music trading stimulates the music industry's economy. Nonetheless, the RIAA sues and is within their rights to do so.
Anyway, it reminds me more of the old emulation myth/software piracy myth. "It's ok if you download this, as long as you delete it within 24 hours." I can't imagine any sort of real world basis on which this might have been founded, except maybe for shareware, where such terms certainly would have been legal (although they would have been set forth by the author).
It would be like the current MPAA/RIAA models: lots of little shows that barely pay for themselves (if they even take in enough for that) with the big hits coming in to bring in the big bucks.
The source code to XBMC is presumably not illegal. There's currently no way to legally compile it, however, without paying a license fee to Microsoft. Therefore, almost any binary of XBMC is probably illegal.
Of course, you quoted someone who was talking about legal hardware. At this point in time, I don't know if modding your XBox is illegal, but I can't see how it can be.
And this shows that Japan, producer of most Anime-style animation, is a signatory of the Berne Convention, along with the US. Thus copyrights must be mutually respected across both countries.
The difficulty level for installing a device driver in any given OS is almost entirely dependant upon the developer who created the driver. It could be as simple as a script or require compiling without a makefile. In many cases, a kernel recompile may be necessary, however a monkey could do this with a good set of instructions.
To give an example, take Gentoo. With Gentoo, installation of the ipw2200 driver requires two things: 1) wireless networking support in the kernel as a module (requring a recompile if it's not there already) and 2) the command "emerge ipw2200" executed as root. The developers/packagers have made it that simple. In another Linux flavor, it may be more complicated.
That's a bit harsh. But it is sad how fast the battery capacity degrades.
2. A CDROM drive with a dodgy eject button and requires a "right click -> eject".
Never had this problem with 3 notebooks from Dell. Actually, usually the eject button is oversensitive. Also, most Dell notebooks have a Fn key combination to eject (my current one is F10)
5. A trackpad/nipple which have you chanting, "The power of Christ compels you!..."
HAHAHA, this is so true! But I've seen the same problem on IBMs (the only other notebook these days that comes with a nipple).
7. Poor performance (compared against other x86).
I've just never seen this.
9. 11. 12. 13.
I always format/reinstall and get rid of the annoying crap. Then (if I must use Windows on it) I use AVG Free for the virus scanner, and other free or cheap tools for the rest. It sucks that you've effectively paid for the crappy software, though. If only Dell would sell notebooks/PCs with no software (including OS!)
Main problems/I've/ had....
17. LCDs that overheat. Seems like a common problem, but I tend to get the high-end displays with billions of pixels.
18. Various system-board components DoA. My last laptop, it was the sound chip. Before that, some on-board memory chip (I didn't think Dell/ever/ had these).
19. The LCD hinges. My god, the LCD hinges. These things become looser than.. well, they become really loose within about a year of purchase.
20. My Precision M70 has had varios bits of UI flake off unexpectedly. If you know the model, it's the battery/power/HD indicator LED covers on the right side hinge panel. It's irritating, but non-essential.
Why didn't Mr. Schmidt google himself, find the URLs which provide that info and banish the original sources instead of the one that collected them (CNet)?
Possibly because he believes in the indexing, just not the manner in which CNet presented their article? Put simply, with enough information, you could probably find my Social Security Number. Does that mean I want it posted on a fairly major news site?
Actually what CNet did is very similar to what Google does all the time - collect publicly available info and present it in a user-friendly way.
User-friendly and inflammatory, and they called into question the ethics of a Google indexing the things that a search engine indexes.
If there wasn't for Google, there probably wouldn't have been this CNet's article.
No, it would have been whatever the next biggest search engine is, discounting any affiliate of CNet.
Except that probably any search engine could have uncovered the facts listed in that CNet article. Why, then, did the article slam Google? Because GMail scans your e-mail for keywords in order to show you ads? Any company that hosts your mail has the capability to do this, since, you know, the mail is on their server. They might even do it. We don't know. Or is it the Google Cookie that's got everyone so up-in-arms? Yet no one seems to care that Amazon tracks what you search for.
Face it. Google innovates, so they're a big target. But very little of their "privacy issues" aren't duplicated by every major online resource. There's no reason to target Google over any other company with these practices.
Interesting idea, but your target market is probably pretty slim. Lots of people who would want this would have the skills and ability to master their own LiveCD (Knoppix, at least, has a few howtos on this, and other distros actually include utilities to help you do so). On the other side of the tech spectrum, you have the users who probably don't care about Linux in the slightest. It would be a niche market, but it might be fun nonetheless.
The woe is that they want total control. The woe is that they have proposed and continue to propogate the belief that every pirated copy of a DVD actually is a lost sale. The woe is that US law does make it illegal to circumvent digital copy protection and provides no means around this for personal backups/fair use.
Anyway, as you mention, some software players had keys revoked and reissued. The point is that technology is at the point where this is a feasible and cost-effective solution for hardware players, as well. Along with that, firmware updates can be issued to close any bugs in software.
In fact, a previous poster implied that this might obsolesce hardware players faster (was that you?). I think that updatable keys and software would actually mean that the next generation of media could last longer. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will ostensibly be pushed really hard for two reasons: 1) the update to HD that manufacturers are pushing, partially due to FCC regulations and 2) because DVD has been compromised and they want to replace it with something harder to distribute online. I don't see TVs getting much higher resolution than HD for a few decades, if ever[1], and assuming a more secure DRM scheme can be created for the next-gen DVDs, there will be no need to replace the next system to help prevent piracy. It's win/win for your average consumer, though for those of us who like to exercise our rights and for pirates, there certainly is a loss.
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Agreed. I use E16 fulltime most of the time because I'm in a dual-monitor dual-screen (not xinerama) configuration, and E17 has a few issues here. Seems no matter where I try to open an app, it always displays on :0.0. When I do manage to open the app on :0.1, if I move the window around or resize, the coordinate display is on :0.0, which is just kinda weird.
I really like Engage, though. I'd like it more if it was a bit more tightly integrated. I can't open a menu within a certain area of the icons, and if the zoom factor is set too high, the icons get cut off. Some sort of dynamic sizing would be nice to minimize the unusable area of the screen while still allowing for zooming. But the whole thing is still under development, so I'm hoping it eventually polishes up.
Probably because Windows was incredibly unlikely to reach such an uptime. It might have been obvious if it had been otherwise stable (although to most people, it would still seem like some random crash). It was prone enough to crashing that it would rarely make it to that mark anyway.
It's kinda interesting. Of course, all the asking for invites on public forums breaks the system, but if it wasn't for that, this would be a good way for Google to track people who might have similar interests (people who give invites to others are probably friends).
You can actually get to Claw Island in SI without cheating. From http://www.bootstrike.com/Ultima7si/Online/faq2.ht ml
Cat Isle (also called CLAW) has all the items you need to complete the game. To get to Cat Isle without cheating, you want to start in one of the tree gardens in Monitor. I believe it is approximately 4 or 5 houses west of Lucilla's pub. You need is 3 crates or something equivalent. The garden has a southern entrance and a few trees immediately to the west of the entrance. I believe the closest tree is the one we want. Pile up your makeshift staircase behind the tree (close to the tree trunk), so that the top stair of your staircase is directly behind the tree trunk (again, I'm pretty certain this is correct, but I can't be sure). Climb the stairs and you should find yourself on Cat Isle.
That you can get there without the developer mode sometimes makes people less likely to consider it cheating.
Agreed, that blacksmith house is definitely true. After using it once, it became incredibly hard to resist outfitting my entire party with magic armor from that cheat room. It was also useful if the game glitched and I lost a quest item.
You'd be silly to claim you have a moral right to schematics, blueprints, and design documents for your car if there's something wrong with it
And yet, not long ago, this was a topic of much concern by auto-shops who wanted access to the error codes the car's computer would spit out so they could diagnose and fix cars.
Aside from what's already been mentioned, running a processor on a board that's overclocked is almost sure to void the warranty. Not telling your customers this is really bad juju and would probably open Asus to litigation if anyone was ever burned (ha ha) by this.
It's transmission within the 2.4ghz range which makes it impressive, not just that it's a "wireless transmission".
Unless the spec changes (has the DVD spec changed yet? Nope) there are no compatibility problems as long as the players are built to the spec. If they deviate from spec, it will be considered the manufacturer's fault. There is no "lost support" as per operating systems because the players are designed to have the code updated by the very body of companies who are going to maintain support. If a manufacturer skimps on memory and eventually runs out of space for keys, well you should have bought from a name brand, shouldn't you have? The spec said 16 megs, so if a manufacturer only includes 8, well that's tough shit. The spec was there for a reason.
Honestly, it's not so hard. I don't understand why people insist that support could be dropped for older machines when the code itself wouldn't be coming from the player manufacturers in the first place--as would be required if the keys were on the DVDs to prevent the need for downloading/ortherwise performing a manual operation to update your key list (again, ala the PSP, which I mentioned in multiple posts).
Sure, but a modchip itself is useless without a hacked BIOS. Just using a modchip and Cromwell, all you can run is Linux (and now FreeBSD, I guess). With a stock BIOS on the modchip, you can run whatever the XBox itself runs. It's only the modchip+modified bios combination that even allows for copyright infringement. To suggest that adding a single component which /can/ increase copyright violation is asinine, and there are too many examples in the real world which exhibit this behavior yet are completely legal.
/probably/ wouldn't affect Macrovision (although the DMCA has been cited for use in many cases where no copy-protection has been circumvented--see the FedEX furniture case).
Example 1: video capture cards. It's pretty clear that 99% of their purpose is to copy copyrighted material. Perhaps they don't circumvent any copy-protection measures, but this illustrates the concept of an additional piece of hardware that extends (greatly) your copyright violation possibilities.
Example 2: signal correctors. These do allow for the violation of copy protection measures. They can correct the signal imbalance that Macrovision uses to protect analog signals from being copied. And that's the rub, there, I guess. The DMCA ostensibly only covers the digital world, and as such,
So it's a stupid law, we're in agreement there. And it really does seem to depend upon a judge's interpretation as to whether some given modification violates the DMCA. I'll hold on to the hope that, in an individual case, the judge would look at the intentions of the modder, but we can't count on that.
Blah.
Some older cars get better than 40mpg without being hybrids. You just don't get all the bells and whistles of modern cars, but you also save a bundle by buying used.
Is it really so clear cut? A modchip itself does not allow you to circumvent copyprotection. It does allow you to run unsigned code--it lets you run whatever you want. If you use a hacked bios, it allows for bypassing copy protection. If you use a "legal" bios (Cromwell, for example) it allows you to run unsigned code, but not copied XBox games. I definitely think it's not as clear-cut as you indicate, but maybe my understanding of the DMCA is not as good.
Some anime writers have come out in support/favor of fansubbers when there isn't a licence in the US for the material. That may be part of where the myth came from. Nonetheless, it is still illegal, so when I see someone promote that myth, I tend to mention Berne.
And whether it hurts someone or not isn't the issue, as usual. There have been several studies indicating that people who download music illegally tend to buy more music, and that in general, music trading stimulates the music industry's economy. Nonetheless, the RIAA sues and is within their rights to do so.
Anyway, it reminds me more of the old emulation myth/software piracy myth. "It's ok if you download this, as long as you delete it within 24 hours." I can't imagine any sort of real world basis on which this might have been founded, except maybe for shareware, where such terms certainly would have been legal (although they would have been set forth by the author).
Not really. Not from a legal sense, anyway.
It would be like the current MPAA/RIAA models: lots of little shows that barely pay for themselves (if they even take in enough for that) with the big hits coming in to bring in the big bucks.
The source code to XBMC is presumably not illegal. There's currently no way to legally compile it, however, without paying a license fee to Microsoft. Therefore, almost any binary of XBMC is probably illegal.
Of course, you quoted someone who was talking about legal hardware. At this point in time, I don't know if modding your XBox is illegal, but I can't see how it can be.
Yup.
_ the_Protection_of_Literary_and_Artistic_Works
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for
And this shows that Japan, producer of most Anime-style animation, is a signatory of the Berne Convention, along with the US. Thus copyrights must be mutually respected across both countries.
The difficulty level for installing a device driver in any given OS is almost entirely dependant upon the developer who created the driver. It could be as simple as a script or require compiling without a makefile. In many cases, a kernel recompile may be necessary, however a monkey could do this with a good set of instructions.
To give an example, take Gentoo. With Gentoo, installation of the ipw2200 driver requires two things: 1) wireless networking support in the kernel as a module (requring a recompile if it's not there already) and 2) the command "emerge ipw2200" executed as root. The developers/packagers have made it that simple. In another Linux flavor, it may be more complicated.
Huh. That's pretty big on my friend Frank's 2000" screen.
(I dont think Dell's have made nipples on their notebooks for years have they?)
They still do, only on select notebooks. The Precision series still do, and I think the larger Latitudes might as well.
In fact, that heavily weighted my choice in notebooks, since I prefer the nipple to the touchpad anyday.
1. A battery which breaks within 3 weeks.
/I've/ had....
/ever/ had these).
.. well, they become really loose within about a year of purchase.
That's a bit harsh. But it is sad how fast the battery capacity degrades.
2. A CDROM drive with a dodgy eject button and requires a "right click -> eject".
Never had this problem with 3 notebooks from Dell. Actually, usually the eject button is oversensitive. Also, most Dell notebooks have a Fn key combination to eject (my current one is F10)
5. A trackpad/nipple which have you chanting, "The power of Christ compels you!..."
HAHAHA, this is so true! But I've seen the same problem on IBMs (the only other notebook these days that comes with a nipple).
7. Poor performance (compared against other x86).
I've just never seen this.
9. 11. 12. 13.
I always format/reinstall and get rid of the annoying crap. Then (if I must use Windows on it) I use AVG Free for the virus scanner, and other free or cheap tools for the rest. It sucks that you've effectively paid for the crappy software, though. If only Dell would sell notebooks/PCs with no software (including OS!)
Main problems
17. LCDs that overheat. Seems like a common problem, but I tend to get the high-end displays with billions of pixels.
18. Various system-board components DoA. My last laptop, it was the sound chip. Before that, some on-board memory chip (I didn't think Dell
19. The LCD hinges. My god, the LCD hinges. These things become looser than
20. My Precision M70 has had varios bits of UI flake off unexpectedly. If you know the model, it's the battery/power/HD indicator LED covers on the right side hinge panel. It's irritating, but non-essential.
Why didn't Mr. Schmidt google himself, find the URLs which provide that info and banish the original sources instead of the one that collected them (CNet)?
Possibly because he believes in the indexing, just not the manner in which CNet presented their article?
Put simply, with enough information, you could probably find my Social Security Number. Does that mean I want it posted on a fairly major news site?
Actually what CNet did is very similar to what Google does all the time - collect publicly available info and present it in a user-friendly way.
User-friendly and inflammatory, and they called into question the ethics of a Google indexing the things that a search engine indexes.
If there wasn't for Google, there probably wouldn't have been this CNet's article.
No, it would have been whatever the next biggest search engine is, discounting any affiliate of CNet.
Except that probably any search engine could have uncovered the facts listed in that CNet article. Why, then, did the article slam Google? Because GMail scans your e-mail for keywords in order to show you ads? Any company that hosts your mail has the capability to do this, since, you know, the mail is on their server. They might even do it. We don't know. Or is it the Google Cookie that's got everyone so up-in-arms? Yet no one seems to care that Amazon tracks what you search for.
Face it. Google innovates, so they're a big target. But very little of their "privacy issues" aren't duplicated by every major online resource. There's no reason to target Google over any other company with these practices.
Interesting idea, but your target market is probably pretty slim. Lots of people who would want this would have the skills and ability to master their own LiveCD (Knoppix, at least, has a few howtos on this, and other distros actually include utilities to help you do so). On the other side of the tech spectrum, you have the users who probably don't care about Linux in the slightest. It would be a niche market, but it might be fun nonetheless.
The woe is that they want total control. The woe is that they have proposed and continue to propogate the belief that every pirated copy of a DVD actually is a lost sale. The woe is that US law does make it illegal to circumvent digital copy protection and provides no means around this for personal backups/fair use.
Anyway, as you mention, some software players had keys revoked and reissued. The point is that technology is at the point where this is a feasible and cost-effective solution for hardware players, as well. Along with that, firmware updates can be issued to close any bugs in software.
In fact, a previous poster implied that this might obsolesce hardware players faster (was that you?). I think that updatable keys and software would actually mean that the next generation of media could last longer. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will ostensibly be pushed really hard for two reasons: 1) the update to HD that manufacturers are pushing, partially due to FCC regulations and 2) because DVD has been compromised and they want to replace it with something harder to distribute online. I don't see TVs getting much higher resolution than HD for a few decades, if ever[1], and assuming a more secure DRM scheme can be created for the next-gen DVDs, there will be no need to replace the next system to help prevent piracy. It's win/win for your average consumer, though for those of us who like to exercise our rights and for pirates, there certainly is a loss.