...Speaking specifically about this feature, it's not enforcing the law. They're not calling the police on you....Vote with your dollars...There's one more element that you're forgetting however, and that's the PR motive, which is why I believe is the main reason that Adobe put the feature into the product in the first place.
I already have voted with my dollars...but it doesn't hurt to drive the point home on a forum like Slashdot, no?
Regarding your point about free PR -- well, if enough people make enough noise about how it sucks, maybe less people will buy it. Maybe the rest of the software houses will learn a fast lesson on this. (Don't alienate your customers. They're not criminals, and don't like it when you assume they are.).
Finally, you're correct that they're not calling the cops on me. But they're limiting many legimate uses for their software. Fundamentally, I have the same problem with this as I have with DRM. Sure the intentions are good, but as soon as it alienates a section of a customer base, it becomes a problem. In any case, I won't be buying Photoshop for my, or my company's needs.
Maybe we can just agree that Adobe's policy is a really, really stupid one. There is absolutely nothing that will convince me otherwise. To limit a technology which has legimate uses far beyond the abuse potential -- only because a tiny fraction of the userbase abuses it is just plain dumb. I can only hope that a competing product pushes Photoshop out of the #1 seat in the marketplace and Adobe's stock drops significantly (well, maybe this won't do it -- but a string of decisions like this certainly will). Maybe then, Kevin Connor will eat his words.
Adobe doesn't even know how it works (it is a black box), not to mention having wasted any effort on it.
I see where you're coming from, but in my experience, development doesn't work like that. Nobody just drops some mystery code into their product and releases it (can you imagine this code breaking some other feature and Adobe tells their customers "well, the Fed. told us this code would work...sorry 'bout that"?). Features like this are typically worked into design specs and engineering specs. It also needs to be integrated into their codebase (even if they were just a bunch of precompiled methods) -- it needs to interface with their software somehow, no? Code like this also has to be tested, which can be a pretty major undertaking. Furthermore, for every change that's made to any part of the code, features like this (and all others) are usually tested in regression.
While Adobe may not have spent time developing the code itself, I'm fairly certain that this code adds to the bottom line of development costs...which also adds to the bottom line of the product cost to the end user (unless they tack that expenditure onto some other product).
In the end, we all pay for a "feature" that we don't want...even though we do pay for it, we'll never notice (unless we're counterfitters, in which case, we'll either use a different product, or find a way to easily circumvent the "feature"). It's downright lame and it's not their job to enforce the law. Besides, what's illegal about scanning in a $20 bill? I can think of 10 legitimate reasons to do just that right now.
What's next, anti kiddie-porn protection? At least the code will actually prevent a law from being broken (unless you're taking baby pictures and your kids like to be nude...it happens).
To use an analogy from a car. Say you need to replace a spark plug -- it's not just like an expensive spark plug -- this is like a manufacturer refusing to sell you a spark plug without the entire replacement motor.
Now I hear what you're saying about laptops just being "that way"...but it doesn't make it OK. I don't have much intention of buying a laptop until they're user servicable and suitable replacement parts are available (it's probably clear by now that I have no specific need for a laptop and when there is, my job will probably provide one). Point is, it's about as lame as Apple's iPod battery debacule, except it's an accepted industry-standard parctice.
Sympatico blocks outgoing port 25 too. But that's okay, since you can use their SMTP server. Is there any reason in particular that it *must* go through your mail server? Every ISP that I have used here (Ontario) permits relaying by anyone on their IP space, no matter what the "From:" address is, so you don't actually need to use an alternate SMTP server in most cases, even if you aren't using their provided e-mail account.
Ther are a number of reasons to use my mail server instead of theirs. My primary reason is support for end users. Our "work-at-home" employees all around the country are probably the hardest users to support. For people who work in a small regional office with no IT staff -- I can hire an IT consulting group on a retainer basis to support these people. But I've got people working out of their house in Bumfuck, Florida (or TN, AL, etc) where there's no broadband, and we're lucky to get phone lines clean enough to get PPP working over a 28.8K dialup (seriously). It's extremely difficult to get onsite support for these people. Furthermore, our employees, for the most part, aren't particularly computer savvy (on any level).
Because of this, I prefer that they use cmpany Internet services, which I'm able to control and fully support. Otherwise, my only way to field calls about "my email not working" is to make them call Earthlink (or whomever) and wait on hold for an hour. Simply put, I work for my users and have a significantly higher standard of customer service than most end user ISP's.
Strangely, my SMTP drop on an alternate port doesn't work for all of my users. I haven't had time to traubleshoot it for them yet, so I've conceeded to have them use the external SMTP service.
I guess that it doesn't seem like that big of a deal at face value -- but as the company has grown and we hire more "work at home" folks, managing these people has become sort of a nightmare...and having control over Internet services has really saved me (and my group) a lot of time and energy.
Maybe it's time to either throw in the towel and set up my own dial-up service, or find an ISP who can cater to our needs.
First you say they can't hold you to an AUP that you never signed, then you assert you can take them to small claims court and force them keep you as a customer...
Get real.
Yes...it's completely realistic. Here's my logic. I did sign an AUP -- which is completely legitimate. They cannot hold me responsible for a violation of an AUP that has changed without notification, especially if they refuse to give me the specifics of the changes to the rules. If you read the root post carefully enough, you'd be able to clearly see how this all fits together. Your facts just aren't straight.
Even though I may not win my case (although there is still a chance because there is, in fact, a contract) they have a fair chance of throwing in the towel, because court is a serious pain in the ass. What's going to cost more, giving up on a clearly unacceptable business practice, or fighting me in court? Keep in mind that since it's small claims court (or whatever low court...IANAL), I will not need to pay for legal representation so the cost to me (a PDO) is negligable.
A guaranteed success? Nope. But I'd rather stand up for myself than be pushed around by some cable company who changes rules, accuses me of violating them, but refuses to be specific about the policy itself.
Could you please elaborate on this a bit please? I'm running into the same thing on Earthlink and would appreciate some details of what you had to do and/or some links if you have some.
I'd be glad to discuss it offline. Do you have an email address (or other method) I can contact you at? (FWIW, these Earthlink issues are still ongoing).
While I cannot speak to dialup (I've not used it lately), they certainly are not doing this for "broadband" (i.e. cablemodem) -- at least not everywhere:
You're probably right -- it looks like it's a localized issue.
The underlying principle of any business is to make money...If your local gas station has to pay $1.50/gallon for gas to sell to you, they aren't going to sell it at $1.15/gallon.
I agree with you on this one. But to use your analogy, this is like your gas station selling you substandard (consumer-level) gas at full price. Furthermore, if the gas station down the street finds a way to sell gas at $1.15 -- well the $1.50 station has gotta find a better way, or go under. That's capitalism...creative destruction.
If the ISP doesn't define "average use" in advance, it's their fault -- not mine for underestimating usage. My point is that their tactics for trying to save their money are pretty underhanded. I don't think that there's any argument for your case in the root post. They wouldn't even define what excessive bandwidth use was for this person. This is not the end user's selfishness -- it's clearly the other way around. Now, if these things were clearly defined and posted from the start -- I wouldn't argue with you for a second.
Furthermore, I think that our definitions of abuse may vary here. I don't view filesharing as abuse of any service...and it clearly does not violate any written terms of (my) service contract. I've worked at ISP's before -- large and small. I know where you're coming from -- but I think that your view of this may be a little one-sided. Look at this from someone who wants to get the best value for their dollar...someone who actually uses their service for something other than reading their email and browsing the web occasionally. If the account was not meant to be used in this way -- it should be in bold print. Otherwise, your cries are falling on deaf ears.
When a single cable company has a monopoly on broadband services in an area, it's not easy to take your business elsewhere. That's precisely why legislation is needed.
Meh. I'd be content if the regulation were limited to allowing competition over their networks -- having access to the cable network's last mile be publicly available at wholesale rates. Anything else would just suck. The FCC is a freaking mess and I don't want their fingerprints on my Internet service.
Now, it may not sound like a lot to you...but when you have a couple thousand customers and a business to run, it's not a small matter. Our average ADSL customer uses less than 200MB of transfer each month.
Not to get into the middle of this flamey exchange -- but I'm not sure that I agree with your argument here. It really sounds like a case of shitty financial/price modeling and a market which no mom & pop ISP should touch with a 10 foot pole. It's not your end user's fault for using the service to it's capacity. It's your company's for improper planning
Think about it this way: When these larger companies developed their pricing models, they developed them with an assumption of a certain amount of data transferred per month. All of the big players advertised and sold unlimited use. Now, if the calculations were all based upon limited use (and their cashflow depends on limited use) -- it's the ISP's fault for not being able to provide the service they advertised.
Sounds like either the big players fucked their calculations up, or the market is evolving. I'm guessing that the latter is probably the case. My best guess is that outliers who use more bandwidth than average were initially calculated into the total cost of bandwidth. With the evolution of the Internet, more users are using more bandwidth. The outliers are now using more bandwidth than they had initially calculated, as well as the average use increasing.
Well -- instead of negotiating better bandwidth rates with their upstream providers (bandwidth's cheap these days), these Tier 3 ISP's (broadband operators) went into panic mode and are now fucking their users over to make ends meet. Not OK. I don't care who you are -- if you alienate your customers, you will lose them, especially with pretty thick competition (and ISP's going under left and right).
Fortunately (for me) TWC has not done this to me yet. I'm a relatively high-bandwidth user (mainly downstream) -- I use BitTorrent, as well as other services that may not be "average", and I do not consider my usage of these services/protocols a violation of my AUP (they don't violate anything I ever signed). The day they try to pull warning letter shit on me -- I'll take 'em to small claims court and slap an injunction on their cancellation of my account. Short of that (if I am clearly violating the AUP that they just changed under me, or if/when they start closing ports), I have no problem with explaining to them why I'm dropping their service like a bad habit. I'll also explain to them that I'll ensure that they lose other business for these practices (naming some publications that I write editorials for as well as popular blogs that I post to). Then, I'll take my dollar and pay a little more for way better service (maybe not as much speed, but definitely a company who won't fuck their customers over).
Anyway, I can't say that I don't sympathize with you. It's a tough business. But then again, why should I get screwed over because your market is shitty. Eventually, someone is going to figure out how to turn a buck and not alienate their customer base (with a reasonable price). As soon as I find that company, I'll sign up right away.
I'm a Cox customer...They also block various ports, sometimes even both ways
I just wanted to sound off on what a horribly lame policy port blocking is. Both Cox and Earthlink block outbound port 25 (Earthlink blocks for both dialup and broadband customers). While I can understand the reason for bocking these ports (preventing mail abuse) -- I find the practice both deceptive and ineffective.
It's ineffective because spammers can just run mail servers on different ports (although it may help with abuse of open relays, but many spammers are far beyond this). I have to run an instance of qmail on a weird port so my Earthlink users can connect to my mail server (long story).
I consider the practice deceptive because they advertise and sell their service as an Internet Service Provider. This suggests that they sell service to the entire Internet. I had no way of telling that the ports were blocked until after my users signed up for service. The short of it -- I'll call ISP's before telling employees that the service is supported. Maybe they should start advertising these port-blocking ISP's as pISP's, or Partial Internet Service Providers...or something.
...server which ran Linux. After I logged out I hit control-alt-del and the machine started shutting down.
Been there, done that. One of my first tasks when provisioning a RH box is to edit/etc/inittab in order to prevent CTRL+ALT+DEL shutdowns. This is especially helpful in a mixed Linux/NT environment on a KVM switch:P
So this wasn't a production machine I screwed up or anything, but I'm still a moron.
I had a Linux workstation that was ultimately adopted by the development group I worked with in the late 90's. Anyway, for some reason I needed to make a boot disk from an image. For some other reason, while typing in my command line, I was thinking fd0 but managed to type hda. So my line was dd if=/wherever/whatever.img of=/dev/hda.
Anyway, before looking at what I had typed, I hit enter. About 2ms later, I glanced up at what was on the screen and exclaimed something along the lines of "holy fscking shit!" and simultaniously hit a ctrl+c. Interestingly enough, the drive still kind of worked. I tried copying the contents of the disk over to another device, but I found that with each command - nay, each disk access, the filesystem would disintegrate further. I was able to save/home -- but I otherwise had to reOS the system.
I guess I've done much more stupid things with production machines -- but these were better machines, with storage on a NetApp NAS, which all had snapshots, so recovery was nearly instantanous.
These are not things that I include on my resume. (So -- anyone want to hire a disaster waiting to happen?);)
AI has advanced in several fields within games, but there are some reasons why learning AI is usually not used.
I spent a little bit of time in college working with AI and evolutionary computation and I can say with very little authority that AI has, in general, come a long way in the last 10 or 15 years. Also, my post was probably more of a semi-ontopic rant than anything else (with very little to do with adaptive AI). Still, I don't consider AI with adaptive difficulty all that far from a strategicly adaptive AI -- the difference is a few different variables, and a little more time spent thinking about the AI strategy.
However, to address your response, it is clear that the state of AI has actually progressed -- and I see the point that you raised about the level of AI rising with the complexity of gameplay (particularly with the addition of the Z axis to many modern games).
What I'd really like to see (to finish off my rant) is a more strategicly adaptive AI, where (for example, in RTS games) a computer opponent will start with a basic strategy, or even a pseudo-random choice from a variety of basic strategies. The basic strategy will have a number of variables in it -- like a defensive/offensive scaling variable, as well as a few others. When things don't go so well, the computer can randomly change tactics -- with a limited amount of total tactics, but just enough to keep it interesting. Strategy variables are altered until the sytstem finds that the fitness function is being met (winning the game, kill/loss ratio, etc) -- that strategy is used until the game is over, or the fitness function is no longer being met.
By now, it should be pretty clear where my knowlegde of game theory and AI ends -- but I'll still stand by my basic point. With a decent AI engine, I should be able to play a computer opponent which is different every time, and manages to be challenging without the AI having to cheat.
Considering the advances made in computing, I'm surprised that current gaming AI is still so sucky. It seems that our games have advanced only graphically and in size (I'm thinking world size -- but physical size has also grown) -- largely due to advances in memory and storage media.
As far as I can tell, AI has not advanced with current technology. I'm reminded of this while playing modern RTS games, where it seems that all computer opponents have similar stratagies, but never seem to ever actually "learn" anything (or even show a hint of adaptability). Of course, this is all purely antecdotal, but not without merit.
Any game developeres care to back me up? Or am I full of shit on this?
On the other hand, Intel could be shooting itself in the market-dominance foot here, what with them providing AMD/VIA/Linux or AMD/nVidia/Linux the perfect opportunity to come up with a non-DRM, non-Trusted-Computing alternative that will work with both Linux and older versions of Windows.
I kinda doubt that Intel will be hurting itself with this. They're releasing a new BIOS that will essentially appease MS and the rest of the DRM crowd. It will help to put Microsoft in a position to make content owners/providers feel secure and either give their business to MS, or a third party developer whose software requires an MS OS to run on.
However, AFAIK, Intel has not announced that they'll be abandoning the traditional BIOS. Furthermore, I didn't see any announcement that Intel will be building new CPU's that will only work with their new BIOS replacement. Even if Intel stops making traditional BIOS chipsets -- there are other manufacturers who will continue to supply the market as long as there is demand -- like VIA, Phoenix, nVidia, American Megatrends, etc, etc, etc. These boards (except for nVidia's) should all support the Intel chips so we can be DRM-free for a long, long time.
Worst case scenario, MS adopts these BIOS replacements for DRM exclusively, and our old chipsets get slightly more expensive. (Actually, the worst case scenario is if Congress passes a law requiring all of our computers to have MS/Intel DRM in the hardware, but I digress.) We're all still happy, and Intel will still be making a shitload of money.
--I'll call bullshit on this one. I've heard of cheap CDR media dying, and AAMOF my Memorex CDRWs die after about 5-6 rewrites, even if I blank the entire disc. Cheap(er) media is more susceptible to failure, period
You hit the nail right on the head -- cheaper media is more suseptible to failure, preiod. It's pretty much regardless of the type of media, when you buy cheap, you get cheap.
--I have some old leftover CDR media that looks TRANSLUCENT after 6-8 months. When I saw that I immediately ripped it and made a backup to non-cheap media.
See above -- buy cheap and get cheap. In all of the thousands of CD-R's I've burned, I've never experienced any problems like this.
--In fact, optical storage in general is really *not* where it should be in terms of reliability. I just bought a DVD burner +/- capable combo drive, and the DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW discs it's burned so far CANNOT BE READ in a DVD-ROM drive that was made in 2002(!!) (Could be the media, I bought Princo [possibly grade B] on the cheap. I'll have to experiment a bit more because I can't find a firmware update for the DVD-ROM drive and haven't tested DVD+R yet. But the whole situation sucks if I can only read-back the discs in the original burning-drive!!)
What's this got to do with anything? That's an incompability issue between your hardware and possibly an issue with DVD"s in general, which have never entered the discussion (AFAIK).
--FYI, the Zip drive COD hasn't been a problem for years. I use USB Zip-100, IDE Zip-100, and **original parallel-port** Zip-100 drives for critical backups (/etc,/root, et al) of my Linux boxes, and haven't had a drive or disk fail yet. Some of the disks have been reformatted from sda4 to sda1 and use ext2 filesystems, as well. At least one of the parallel drives is from when the tech was first introduced (1994?) and it's still ticking along just fine.
I have to admit, I wouldn't know about the click of death being fixed -- I won't buy iomega products anymore. Their commitment to quality has, in my experience, been subpar (I've had a number of failures from a number of Iomega products). In any case, I do not trust disc-type removable magnetic media and likely never will. I've seen too many failures and know that they are not to be trusted. I've found that tape drives are far better for backup -- the media tends to be less dense (datawise) and are (far) sheilded better which tends to make them less suseptible to magnetic erasure.
Until something better comes along, I'm using Zip disks. The larger ones will hold 750MB, and they are almost as fast as a hard drive. Plus, I can edit and save files in place, without going through some special software
It's your money...so this is all up to you. However, Zip disks are a HORRIBLE idea for removable storage if you care about reliability. If you haven't heard about it, do a google search for the click of death (or the related class-action lawsuit). The only storage media that caused more headaches for students than floppies were Zip drives. We eventually pulled them all from of our computers. After a student tried their click-of-death-infected disk on one drive and it didn't work -- they went right down the line. 6 weeks later, we had replaced the drives. Within 20 minutes of their arrival, another student did the same. The broken drives ruined each subsequent disk that went into them. Every other student who tried to use these drives after they were damaged ended up with a bad disk (that damaged their personal Zip drive after they used it in ours).
Also, as far as editing your work -- who cares? If you're using floppies for small amounts of data, you don't need to conserve your CD -- just write a revision to a different name. As far as reliability -- you're just plain wrong. CD-R's don't just die in your closet after 6-months. Something else has to happen -- like scratching from improper storage. Floppies, otoh (as well as Zip disks) are very suseptible to magnetism -- which is extremely common.
Again, do whatever you want, but removable personal magnetic media sucks ass (this means tape drives notwithstanding) -- there's very little to argue about on this point.
Anyway -- I'll concede that you may have a specific need that's different from other users (although I'd still use a network, CD burner, or USB keychain drive because floppies suck). For the purposes of this discussion, I don't care about special needs. If a bunch of people were running around using tapes for sneakernet, and I had to buy a tape drive with every computer so I could flash my BIOS, we'd be having the same argument -- and I'd still be right. For 99.9% of people, floppies are really, really stupid. Now, do you feel like discussing why punch cards need to stay around too?
And FWIW, the new common read/write media is Internet. Get a shell acocunt and start using it.
Howso? It doesn't have to run a web server (I never implied that it did) for the configurator (it just has to be easy like Linksys' web interface). The only possibility that I can see for expliots are for a MIM attack. This can be taken care of pretty easily with public key authentication, and it's still more secure than the current model (download BIOS updates over WWW/FTP unauthenticated, no hash, and no security at all). I'm not talking about any service being run on the local PC -- I'm talking about a bootable CD that runs an OS with networking support that can grab an image and install it. Mind letting us all in on the security issues are you talking about?
straight direct access to hardware without fuzz.. though if you're writing the device drivers too i can't see how it would be a THAT big of a problem in xp/nt world either..
I can't see why that can't be done with a free OS (like a Linux/BSD/etc). You don't have to run any particular OS (to have a DOS license) -- run whatever the hell you want -- just have something that can boot their image. Sure, direct hardware access isn't super-easy -- but they own the mobo, they know how it works and how to address it. They just need to slap together a kernel module and let your users boot off of a live CD. This stuff isn't that difficult -- mobo manufacturers just don't give a shit.
Yah, I know how easy it is to make an image. The point I was trrying to make is that this is neither easy nor is it intuitive for the "normal" user. Floppies need to be killed once and for all. This adherence to floppies being used for little jobs like BIOS updates just extends their lifetime. This doesn't help.
# dd if=floppy.img of=/dev/hda && reboot
Believe it or not, I've actually done this (sans the && reboot) -- very stoopid. I caught it with a ^c just after I hit enter...which was just quick enough to watch my ext2 filesystem destroy itself with each disk access. Man, that might need to go into the list of things not to do with your rootshell. (chuckle)
Even though it's slow, and small, a floppy is the one common denominator among almost every PC in use today - except mine.
Floppies Just Work(tm).
With regards to point #1, this is untrue. PC manufacturers (like IBM, Dell, and Gateway) are phasing out floppies. They don't just come with PC's anymore (and haven't for the past year or so) -- you have to specifically request/purchase one. I'd be willing to guess that CD-R's are more common than floppies now (completely antecdotal -- I have nothing objective to back this up). As far as convinence -- this is also incorrect. The only convinence left for floppies is BIOS updates.
A CD-R/CD-RW is far better for transferring files between work -- almost as good as using your network (medialess). Especially due to reliability issues. Regarding point 2 -- floppies don't just work. From your post, it seems that you've never spent time working in a college computer lab. I will tell you this from years of experience, floppies are among the most unreliable storage available. Wanna lose your data? Stick it on a floppy (or any other removable magnetic media -- like a Zip drive) and if you don't have a backup, I promise you'll lose it. I've had more angry students angry students than I can count ask me how to recover their lost thesis from a floppy. My answer was standard: "No problem, I'll help you restore it from a backup. You did back it up, didn't you?".
Floppies are a lame, obselete technology. Old computers have 'em, and new computers don't. The CD-R/RW has replaced the floppy. BIOS flashing, and people who insist on using them for sneakernet are the last holdouts.
Please, for the love of convinence, speed, usability, and reliabity, let's kill this lame-ass media. You can help!
They could pop a tcp/ip stack and a dhcp client on a chip so you could do a network download/install of a new bios from the motherboard bios menu.
That is a slick idea. The best way to do that is to build an interface ala Linksys' web configurator. This allows for smooth operation of most cable/dsl providers -- and will work with most idiosyncracies (PPPoE, etc). It'd be an easy update. I guess that either the BIOS standards are really important, or mobo manufacturers just don't give a shit (otherwise, we wouldn't be having this thread).
I'm not so concerned with OS-neutral BIOS updates. I can google for boot floppies.
The thing that gets me is that I've gotta use a floppy for BIOS updates. It's the only thing that I'll ever need a floppy for anymore (and I don't put those into any desktop machines anymore, for home or work). Why can't we just kill the floppy beast? Is it so hard to manufacturers to release updates on an ISO image (or something -- anything else!)? It costs me about the same either way (~$.75 for a floppy or CD-R). I could see the argument for floppies when AOL sent out their software on floppy discs (free media). But they don't anymore.
BTW -- why do they require DOS anyway? Do they just not want to recode their updaters? Do their coders just know DOS really well and they don't want to hire new programmers? Why can't they release on some stripped-down live Linux ISO (being free/free and all)?
Slashdot Mirror
I already have voted with my dollars...but it doesn't hurt to drive the point home on a forum like Slashdot, no?
Regarding your point about free PR -- well, if enough people make enough noise about how it sucks, maybe less people will buy it. Maybe the rest of the software houses will learn a fast lesson on this. (Don't alienate your customers. They're not criminals, and don't like it when you assume they are.).
Finally, you're correct that they're not calling the cops on me. But they're limiting many legimate uses for their software. Fundamentally, I have the same problem with this as I have with DRM. Sure the intentions are good, but as soon as it alienates a section of a customer base, it becomes a problem. In any case, I won't be buying Photoshop for my, or my company's needs.
Maybe we can just agree that Adobe's policy is a really, really stupid one. There is absolutely nothing that will convince me otherwise. To limit a technology which has legimate uses far beyond the abuse potential -- only because a tiny fraction of the userbase abuses it is just plain dumb. I can only hope that a competing product pushes Photoshop out of the #1 seat in the marketplace and Adobe's stock drops significantly (well, maybe this won't do it -- but a string of decisions like this certainly will). Maybe then, Kevin Connor will eat his words.
I see where you're coming from, but in my experience, development doesn't work like that. Nobody just drops some mystery code into their product and releases it (can you imagine this code breaking some other feature and Adobe tells their customers "well, the Fed. told us this code would work...sorry 'bout that"?). Features like this are typically worked into design specs and engineering specs. It also needs to be integrated into their codebase (even if they were just a bunch of precompiled methods) -- it needs to interface with their software somehow, no? Code like this also has to be tested, which can be a pretty major undertaking. Furthermore, for every change that's made to any part of the code, features like this (and all others) are usually tested in regression.
While Adobe may not have spent time developing the code itself, I'm fairly certain that this code adds to the bottom line of development costs...which also adds to the bottom line of the product cost to the end user (unless they tack that expenditure onto some other product).
In the end, we all pay for a "feature" that we don't want...even though we do pay for it, we'll never notice (unless we're counterfitters, in which case, we'll either use a different product, or find a way to easily circumvent the "feature"). It's downright lame and it's not their job to enforce the law. Besides, what's illegal about scanning in a $20 bill? I can think of 10 legitimate reasons to do just that right now.
What's next, anti kiddie-porn protection? At least the code will actually prevent a law from being broken (unless you're taking baby pictures and your kids like to be nude...it happens).
To use an analogy from a car. Say you need to replace a spark plug -- it's not just like an expensive spark plug -- this is like a manufacturer refusing to sell you a spark plug without the entire replacement motor.
Now I hear what you're saying about laptops just being "that way"...but it doesn't make it OK. I don't have much intention of buying a laptop until they're user servicable and suitable replacement parts are available (it's probably clear by now that I have no specific need for a laptop and when there is, my job will probably provide one). Point is, it's about as lame as Apple's iPod battery debacule, except it's an accepted industry-standard parctice.
Ther are a number of reasons to use my mail server instead of theirs. My primary reason is support for end users. Our "work-at-home" employees all around the country are probably the hardest users to support. For people who work in a small regional office with no IT staff -- I can hire an IT consulting group on a retainer basis to support these people. But I've got people working out of their house in Bumfuck, Florida (or TN, AL, etc) where there's no broadband, and we're lucky to get phone lines clean enough to get PPP working over a 28.8K dialup (seriously). It's extremely difficult to get onsite support for these people. Furthermore, our employees, for the most part, aren't particularly computer savvy (on any level).
Because of this, I prefer that they use cmpany Internet services, which I'm able to control and fully support. Otherwise, my only way to field calls about "my email not working" is to make them call Earthlink (or whomever) and wait on hold for an hour. Simply put, I work for my users and have a significantly higher standard of customer service than most end user ISP's.
Strangely, my SMTP drop on an alternate port doesn't work for all of my users. I haven't had time to traubleshoot it for them yet, so I've conceeded to have them use the external SMTP service.
I guess that it doesn't seem like that big of a deal at face value -- but as the company has grown and we hire more "work at home" folks, managing these people has become sort of a nightmare...and having control over Internet services has really saved me (and my group) a lot of time and energy.
Maybe it's time to either throw in the towel and set up my own dial-up service, or find an ISP who can cater to our needs.
Yes...it's completely realistic. Here's my logic. I did sign an AUP -- which is completely legitimate. They cannot hold me responsible for a violation of an AUP that has changed without notification, especially if they refuse to give me the specifics of the changes to the rules. If you read the root post carefully enough, you'd be able to clearly see how this all fits together. Your facts just aren't straight.
Even though I may not win my case (although there is still a chance because there is, in fact, a contract) they have a fair chance of throwing in the towel, because court is a serious pain in the ass. What's going to cost more, giving up on a clearly unacceptable business practice, or fighting me in court? Keep in mind that since it's small claims court (or whatever low court...IANAL), I will not need to pay for legal representation so the cost to me (a PDO) is negligable.
A guaranteed success? Nope. But I'd rather stand up for myself than be pushed around by some cable company who changes rules, accuses me of violating them, but refuses to be specific about the policy itself.
I'd be glad to discuss it offline. Do you have an email address (or other method) I can contact you at? (FWIW, these Earthlink issues are still ongoing).
You're probably right -- it looks like it's a localized issue.
I agree with you on this one. But to use your analogy, this is like your gas station selling you substandard (consumer-level) gas at full price. Furthermore, if the gas station down the street finds a way to sell gas at $1.15 -- well the $1.50 station has gotta find a better way, or go under. That's capitalism...creative destruction.
If the ISP doesn't define "average use" in advance, it's their fault -- not mine for underestimating usage. My point is that their tactics for trying to save their money are pretty underhanded. I don't think that there's any argument for your case in the root post. They wouldn't even define what excessive bandwidth use was for this person. This is not the end user's selfishness -- it's clearly the other way around. Now, if these things were clearly defined and posted from the start -- I wouldn't argue with you for a second.
Furthermore, I think that our definitions of abuse may vary here. I don't view filesharing as abuse of any service...and it clearly does not violate any written terms of (my) service contract. I've worked at ISP's before -- large and small. I know where you're coming from -- but I think that your view of this may be a little one-sided. Look at this from someone who wants to get the best value for their dollar...someone who actually uses their service for something other than reading their email and browsing the web occasionally. If the account was not meant to be used in this way -- it should be in bold print. Otherwise, your cries are falling on deaf ears.
Meh. I'd be content if the regulation were limited to allowing competition over their networks -- having access to the cable network's last mile be publicly available at wholesale rates. Anything else would just suck. The FCC is a freaking mess and I don't want their fingerprints on my Internet service.
Not to get into the middle of this flamey exchange -- but I'm not sure that I agree with your argument here. It really sounds like a case of shitty financial/price modeling and a market which no mom & pop ISP should touch with a 10 foot pole. It's not your end user's fault for using the service to it's capacity. It's your company's for improper planning
Think about it this way: When these larger companies developed their pricing models, they developed them with an assumption of a certain amount of data transferred per month. All of the big players advertised and sold unlimited use. Now, if the calculations were all based upon limited use (and their cashflow depends on limited use) -- it's the ISP's fault for not being able to provide the service they advertised.
Sounds like either the big players fucked their calculations up, or the market is evolving. I'm guessing that the latter is probably the case. My best guess is that outliers who use more bandwidth than average were initially calculated into the total cost of bandwidth. With the evolution of the Internet, more users are using more bandwidth. The outliers are now using more bandwidth than they had initially calculated, as well as the average use increasing.
Well -- instead of negotiating better bandwidth rates with their upstream providers (bandwidth's cheap these days), these Tier 3 ISP's (broadband operators) went into panic mode and are now fucking their users over to make ends meet. Not OK. I don't care who you are -- if you alienate your customers, you will lose them, especially with pretty thick competition (and ISP's going under left and right).
Fortunately (for me) TWC has not done this to me yet. I'm a relatively high-bandwidth user (mainly downstream) -- I use BitTorrent, as well as other services that may not be "average", and I do not consider my usage of these services/protocols a violation of my AUP (they don't violate anything I ever signed). The day they try to pull warning letter shit on me -- I'll take 'em to small claims court and slap an injunction on their cancellation of my account. Short of that (if I am clearly violating the AUP that they just changed under me, or if/when they start closing ports), I have no problem with explaining to them why I'm dropping their service like a bad habit. I'll also explain to them that I'll ensure that they lose other business for these practices (naming some publications that I write editorials for as well as popular blogs that I post to). Then, I'll take my dollar and pay a little more for way better service (maybe not as much speed, but definitely a company who won't fuck their customers over).
Anyway, I can't say that I don't sympathize with you. It's a tough business. But then again, why should I get screwed over because your market is shitty. Eventually, someone is going to figure out how to turn a buck and not alienate their customer base (with a reasonable price). As soon as I find that company, I'll sign up right away.
I just wanted to sound off on what a horribly lame policy port blocking is. Both Cox and Earthlink block outbound port 25 (Earthlink blocks for both dialup and broadband customers). While I can understand the reason for bocking these ports (preventing mail abuse) -- I find the practice both deceptive and ineffective.
It's ineffective because spammers can just run mail servers on different ports (although it may help with abuse of open relays, but many spammers are far beyond this). I have to run an instance of qmail on a weird port so my Earthlink users can connect to my mail server (long story).
I consider the practice deceptive because they advertise and sell their service as an Internet Service Provider. This suggests that they sell service to the entire Internet. I had no way of telling that the ports were blocked until after my users signed up for service. The short of it -- I'll call ISP's before telling employees that the service is supported. Maybe they should start advertising these port-blocking ISP's as pISP's, or Partial Internet Service Providers...or something.
Holy crap! People still play that game? Are the old metaservers still up? Do you play Paradise? I'm so gonna play that again.
Been there, done that. One of my first tasks when provisioning a RH box is to edit /etc/inittab in order to prevent CTRL+ALT+DEL shutdowns. This is especially helpful in a mixed Linux/NT environment on a KVM switch :P
So this wasn't a production machine I screwed up or anything, but I'm still a moron.
I had a Linux workstation that was ultimately adopted by the development group I worked with in the late 90's. Anyway, for some reason I needed to make a boot disk from an image. For some other reason, while typing in my command line, I was thinking fd0 but managed to type hda. So my line was dd if=/wherever/whatever.img of=/dev/hda.
Anyway, before looking at what I had typed, I hit enter. About 2ms later, I glanced up at what was on the screen and exclaimed something along the lines of "holy fscking shit!" and simultaniously hit a ctrl+c. Interestingly enough, the drive still kind of worked. I tried copying the contents of the disk over to another device, but I found that with each command - nay, each disk access, the filesystem would disintegrate further. I was able to save /home -- but I otherwise had to reOS the system.
I guess I've done much more stupid things with production machines -- but these were better machines, with storage on a NetApp NAS, which all had snapshots, so recovery was nearly instantanous.
These are not things that I include on my resume. (So -- anyone want to hire a disaster waiting to happen?) ;)
I spent a little bit of time in college working with AI and evolutionary computation and I can say with very little authority that AI has, in general, come a long way in the last 10 or 15 years. Also, my post was probably more of a semi-ontopic rant than anything else (with very little to do with adaptive AI). Still, I don't consider AI with adaptive difficulty all that far from a strategicly adaptive AI -- the difference is a few different variables, and a little more time spent thinking about the AI strategy.
However, to address your response, it is clear that the state of AI has actually progressed -- and I see the point that you raised about the level of AI rising with the complexity of gameplay (particularly with the addition of the Z axis to many modern games).
What I'd really like to see (to finish off my rant) is a more strategicly adaptive AI, where (for example, in RTS games) a computer opponent will start with a basic strategy, or even a pseudo-random choice from a variety of basic strategies. The basic strategy will have a number of variables in it -- like a defensive/offensive scaling variable, as well as a few others. When things don't go so well, the computer can randomly change tactics -- with a limited amount of total tactics, but just enough to keep it interesting. Strategy variables are altered until the sytstem finds that the fitness function is being met (winning the game, kill/loss ratio, etc) -- that strategy is used until the game is over, or the fitness function is no longer being met.
By now, it should be pretty clear where my knowlegde of game theory and AI ends -- but I'll still stand by my basic point. With a decent AI engine, I should be able to play a computer opponent which is different every time, and manages to be challenging without the AI having to cheat.
Considering the advances made in computing, I'm surprised that current gaming AI is still so sucky. It seems that our games have advanced only graphically and in size (I'm thinking world size -- but physical size has also grown) -- largely due to advances in memory and storage media.
As far as I can tell, AI has not advanced with current technology. I'm reminded of this while playing modern RTS games, where it seems that all computer opponents have similar stratagies, but never seem to ever actually "learn" anything (or even show a hint of adaptability). Of course, this is all purely antecdotal, but not without merit.
Any game developeres care to back me up? Or am I full of shit on this?
I kinda doubt that Intel will be hurting itself with this. They're releasing a new BIOS that will essentially appease MS and the rest of the DRM crowd. It will help to put Microsoft in a position to make content owners/providers feel secure and either give their business to MS, or a third party developer whose software requires an MS OS to run on.
However, AFAIK, Intel has not announced that they'll be abandoning the traditional BIOS. Furthermore, I didn't see any announcement that Intel will be building new CPU's that will only work with their new BIOS replacement. Even if Intel stops making traditional BIOS chipsets -- there are other manufacturers who will continue to supply the market as long as there is demand -- like VIA, Phoenix, nVidia, American Megatrends, etc, etc, etc. These boards (except for nVidia's) should all support the Intel chips so we can be DRM-free for a long, long time.
Worst case scenario, MS adopts these BIOS replacements for DRM exclusively, and our old chipsets get slightly more expensive. (Actually, the worst case scenario is if Congress passes a law requiring all of our computers to have MS/Intel DRM in the hardware, but I digress.) We're all still happy, and Intel will still be making a shitload of money.
You hit the nail right on the head -- cheaper media is more suseptible to failure, preiod. It's pretty much regardless of the type of media, when you buy cheap, you get cheap.
See above -- buy cheap and get cheap. In all of the thousands of CD-R's I've burned, I've never experienced any problems like this.
What's this got to do with anything? That's an incompability issue between your hardware and possibly an issue with DVD"s in general, which have never entered the discussion (AFAIK).
I have to admit, I wouldn't know about the click of death being fixed -- I won't buy iomega products anymore. Their commitment to quality has, in my experience, been subpar (I've had a number of failures from a number of Iomega products). In any case, I do not trust disc-type removable magnetic media and likely never will. I've seen too many failures and know that they are not to be trusted. I've found that tape drives are far better for backup -- the media tends to be less dense (datawise) and are (far) sheilded better which tends to make them less suseptible to magnetic erasure.
It's your money...so this is all up to you. However, Zip disks are a HORRIBLE idea for removable storage if you care about reliability. If you haven't heard about it, do a google search for the click of death (or the related class-action lawsuit). The only storage media that caused more headaches for students than floppies were Zip drives. We eventually pulled them all from of our computers. After a student tried their click-of-death-infected disk on one drive and it didn't work -- they went right down the line. 6 weeks later, we had replaced the drives. Within 20 minutes of their arrival, another student did the same. The broken drives ruined each subsequent disk that went into them. Every other student who tried to use these drives after they were damaged ended up with a bad disk (that damaged their personal Zip drive after they used it in ours).
Also, as far as editing your work -- who cares? If you're using floppies for small amounts of data, you don't need to conserve your CD -- just write a revision to a different name. As far as reliability -- you're just plain wrong. CD-R's don't just die in your closet after 6-months. Something else has to happen -- like scratching from improper storage. Floppies, otoh (as well as Zip disks) are very suseptible to magnetism -- which is extremely common.
Again, do whatever you want, but removable personal magnetic media sucks ass (this means tape drives notwithstanding) -- there's very little to argue about on this point.
Anyway -- I'll concede that you may have a specific need that's different from other users (although I'd still use a network, CD burner, or USB keychain drive because floppies suck). For the purposes of this discussion, I don't care about special needs. If a bunch of people were running around using tapes for sneakernet, and I had to buy a tape drive with every computer so I could flash my BIOS, we'd be having the same argument -- and I'd still be right. For 99.9% of people, floppies are really, really stupid. Now, do you feel like discussing why punch cards need to stay around too?
And FWIW, the new common read/write media is Internet. Get a shell acocunt and start using it.
Howso? It doesn't have to run a web server (I never implied that it did) for the configurator (it just has to be easy like Linksys' web interface). The only possibility that I can see for expliots are for a MIM attack. This can be taken care of pretty easily with public key authentication, and it's still more secure than the current model (download BIOS updates over WWW/FTP unauthenticated, no hash, and no security at all). I'm not talking about any service being run on the local PC -- I'm talking about a bootable CD that runs an OS with networking support that can grab an image and install it. Mind letting us all in on the security issues are you talking about?
I can't see why that can't be done with a free OS (like a Linux/BSD/etc). You don't have to run any particular OS (to have a DOS license) -- run whatever the hell you want -- just have something that can boot their image. Sure, direct hardware access isn't super-easy -- but they own the mobo, they know how it works and how to address it. They just need to slap together a kernel module and let your users boot off of a live CD. This stuff isn't that difficult -- mobo manufacturers just don't give a shit.
Yah, I know how easy it is to make an image. The point I was trrying to make is that this is neither easy nor is it intuitive for the "normal" user. Floppies need to be killed once and for all. This adherence to floppies being used for little jobs like BIOS updates just extends their lifetime. This doesn't help.
Believe it or not, I've actually done this (sans the && reboot) -- very stoopid. I caught it with a ^c just after I hit enter...which was just quick enough to watch my ext2 filesystem destroy itself with each disk access. Man, that might need to go into the list of things not to do with your rootshell. (chuckle)
With regards to point #1, this is untrue. PC manufacturers (like IBM, Dell, and Gateway) are phasing out floppies. They don't just come with PC's anymore (and haven't for the past year or so) -- you have to specifically request/purchase one. I'd be willing to guess that CD-R's are more common than floppies now (completely antecdotal -- I have nothing objective to back this up). As far as convinence -- this is also incorrect. The only convinence left for floppies is BIOS updates.
A CD-R/CD-RW is far better for transferring files between work -- almost as good as using your network (medialess). Especially due to reliability issues. Regarding point 2 -- floppies don't just work. From your post, it seems that you've never spent time working in a college computer lab. I will tell you this from years of experience, floppies are among the most unreliable storage available. Wanna lose your data? Stick it on a floppy (or any other removable magnetic media -- like a Zip drive) and if you don't have a backup, I promise you'll lose it. I've had more angry students angry students than I can count ask me how to recover their lost thesis from a floppy. My answer was standard: "No problem, I'll help you restore it from a backup. You did back it up, didn't you?".
Floppies are a lame, obselete technology. Old computers have 'em, and new computers don't. The CD-R/RW has replaced the floppy. BIOS flashing, and people who insist on using them for sneakernet are the last holdouts.
Please, for the love of convinence, speed, usability, and reliabity, let's kill this lame-ass media. You can help!
That is a slick idea. The best way to do that is to build an interface ala Linksys' web configurator. This allows for smooth operation of most cable/dsl providers -- and will work with most idiosyncracies (PPPoE, etc). It'd be an easy update. I guess that either the BIOS standards are really important, or mobo manufacturers just don't give a shit (otherwise, we wouldn't be having this thread).
I'm not so concerned with OS-neutral BIOS updates. I can google for boot floppies.
The thing that gets me is that I've gotta use a floppy for BIOS updates. It's the only thing that I'll ever need a floppy for anymore (and I don't put those into any desktop machines anymore, for home or work). Why can't we just kill the floppy beast? Is it so hard to manufacturers to release updates on an ISO image (or something -- anything else!)? It costs me about the same either way (~$.75 for a floppy or CD-R). I could see the argument for floppies when AOL sent out their software on floppy discs (free media). But they don't anymore.
BTW -- why do they require DOS anyway? Do they just not want to recode their updaters? Do their coders just know DOS really well and they don't want to hire new programmers? Why can't they release on some stripped-down live Linux ISO (being free/free and all)?
--Turkey