Linux is only free if you know how to use/maintain it.
Let me put it differently: I didn't have to pay for my OS, but I did spend countless hours learning how to make it work for me. For Windows, most people have already spent that time, and only need a step-up to the new features and annoyances. For Linux, a far larger number are starting from scratch, and let's be honest: Linux help is rare, good help is virtually impossible to find. Google anything and you will find a million forum posts and mailing list aggregators, all repeating the same question with zero answers.
I like my Linux desktop, as a coder it works well for me, but with so many cooks in the kitchen, a lot of stuff can and does go wrong, and the general attitude is "Well, you have the source. FIX IT YOURSELF, LUSER!".
The motivation simply isn't there for the developers and project maintainers, because Linux won't feed your kid or put fuel in your Honda. The free software model has very real limitations, it's amazing that things have gotten this far and continue to evolve, but we're still struggling on some aspects that cannot be solved via technological means.
That's the problem, it writes the metadata journal first, and the actual data journal later. So you wind up with metadata pointing to not-yet-written data.
Common sense says it should be the other way around: it's much easier to detect the absense of a file, than to detect that an existing file is full of gibberish.
Does the fact that a snitch has to actively participate in the swarm, not give you the hint that it's potentially inadmissible evidence ?
It's akin to a NARC selling coke to kids, so he can bust them for being dope fiends. When a cop does it, it's called entrapment - they lose their badge for a week, stalk your home, that sort of cop bullshit... When a civilian does it, as is the case with the MAFIAA and their hired techies, it's just a plain old crime like any other. Even copyright owners cannot authorize an employee to commit a crime. The fact that they don't go after their own lackeys could be considered selective or preferential enforcement, which can quickly draw the ire of a judge who isn't too old to care (yet).
I've read the blogs, and watched the indie documentaries, but I still don't understand the point/purpose of gaming leagues. If they "turn a profit", that must mean they're charging fees or taking a cut from their members' tournament winnings. What's the incentive for a pro gamer to join a league ? Why not go solo and keep the cash to themselves ?
Or is pro gaming like pro sports, where the leagues are the ones sponsoring the tournaments and it all becomes one big dumb poker game ? The main difference, of course, is thousands of people will pay to see a good sports match, which is where the real money is made. Maybe I'm not enough of a geek, but I wouldn't pay to see people play a game. I'd pay a modest fee to attend a bigass LAN party and play (read: fail), maybe learn a few tricks from the pros, but beyond that pseudo-social aspect, I fail to see the appeal of these events and organizations.
I can't even see the value for sponsors, why preach to the choir ? It's a curious phenomenon, but it is to minuscule, I can't imagine it being lucrative. Even this sellout kid "Fatal1ty" with co-branded products, most clients stared at the box, glanced at the inflated price and walked past. One guy humourously said "It's like racing stripes on a car, only it's a douchebag on a video card. Neither makes it go faster.". Yep...
Well no, in reality they should take out the Vista-specific wording and leave it as a generic, all-purpose "No buying thousands of licenses of anything without approval" rule.
In this specific case, the gist of the message is "If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it". He has identified XP as a working product that suits the needs of the government, and does not want to see asshats blowing a fortune on Vista and associated support costs, when the benefit is nil. He's basically saying the same thing millions of I.T. people have said since Vista's release.
Well now, is the imagery "inappropriate" or are you merely exercising control ?
From what I understand, U.S. law allows photography on public property, i.e. streets. If you have a problem with that, you shouldn't be complaining to Google, you need to take it up with city/state legislators.
Of course, if you're arguing that your well-being is dependent on not being able to see the outside of your house, that might be a tough sell. Put up some window-shades and a fence, if you're so concerned.
Re:Used car salesmen use the same thing
on
Cellular Repo Man
·
· Score: 1
Much like the car starter, this "kill chip" can and will be circumvented.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the kind of people who default on small payment are often the same kind of people who hang out with shady people. What? Did you think deadbeats lived in caves ?
The thing about the Quebec accent is it's the French equivalent to "redneck" English, and it often triggers similar responses. Even within Quebec, if you go to an area where the accent is less slangy than yours, people will tend to act a bit snobbish.
The result is that many educated Quebecers wind up developing two dialects, one for the pubs, and a more refined elocution for business. It's not quite Parisian French, but a hybrid somewhere in the middle.
I think you're on to something here. I've a French (Quebec) native, but my life is 99% English. The only time I ever speak french is when I'm having a few (dozen) beers with the good old boys, or when a random French client turns up.
I'll be honest, I hate French for computing. It is too verbose, and those accents are a pain in the ass, not just to type but to code for. English is much much simpler. It's also a shit language, in that it fails to properly communicate subtle nuances, and most of its words are borrowed/bastardized from foreign languages anyway. It's a mess, and people keep adding more garbage to it every day.
I have to agree with you that knowing more than just English is a great way to expand the mind. It probably does not matter which other language you learn/know, it is the effort of comparing and translating the two languages that leads to new mental processes.
Different languages, be they human or computer, follow different patterns. Most of the time, those patterns can be cross-pollinated. I've deciphered English words I had never seen, by drawing parallels with my knowledge of French etymology (Latin, Greek, German roots). In a similar way, I've applied my C++ experience to PHP code, employing solutions the average PHP drone would not likely consider (insults aside).
Because the arts graduates expect no less than $150/hour for their time, as they so joyously read in the recruitment propaganda that enticed them to blow a small fortune on tuition.
Right, but they said "same or less", which muddies up the results.
You could theoretically have 50% increase, and the other half decrease, canceling each other out, which is the point the GP was trying to hammer through your cocky little skull.
You mean he's just an average joe with books to sell ?
*SHUDDER*
The guy is smart. That doesn't automagically make him a super-outgoing entertaining celebrity, no more than any of us. I don't know what you were expecting, but he is not going to change your life. He's just a guy like you, likes to push buttons and think outside the box.
I would like to think that people more often find links in I.T. because it's an information-heavy environment. The average tech workplaces keeps track of everything in these magical files called system logs.
Convenience stores don't keep a written journal of every person walking in and out, and exactly which items they consider, with their name, address and exact time.
Combine that with the fact that electronic crimes typically require some sort of court case or long-winded investigation to nail, vs a couple of dumb cops with sticks. Lawyers procure and produce a shit-ton more documentation than a pair of tired cops.
Actually, some kids do tell their parents everything, and it can be very dangerous as there is such as thing as "too much trust". I'm no child psychologist, but in my limited acquaintances, those who were the closest to their parents were also the ones most likely to be dangerously gullible and taken advantage of by others, because they have not learned the risk inherent in (careless) honesty.
The difference is TPB is not an American company. They're not bound by American laws and money. What has permitted TPB to exist in the first place is their country's relaxed copyright laws (vs the U.S.).
They've also been operating the world's largest public tracker for YEARS, longer than anyone else. They are largely responsible for the success of BitTorrent as a protocol, by making it freely accessible to anyone and everyone without discrimination. It doesn't matter whether you're a kid in a basement, or a big business or artist joining the movement, TPB is there and you can make use of its service.
Say what you will about the copyright issue, there's no hiding the fact that a large portion of their site is used for software piracy, but it is leading people to ponder and discuss these issues, which is more than any MAFIAA drone has ever accomplished with greedy lawsuits and gag orders.
There is no question at all that copyright infringement is a crime, and TPB's founders don't argue that point at all. What they're fighting is the current implementation of copyright law, which they consider over-reaching and extortive. It is their highly-effective form of civil disobedience, and they've extended an invitation to the entire BitTorrent community to join the cause.
The fact that they can stand trial and actually put up a good fight, should be at least partial proof that what they are doing has some legitimacy. If you really want to fight piracy, go beat up the guy selling DVDRs on the street corner... that guy's just in it for himself.
Sure, the servers survived the quake, but what of the datancenter itself ? I would not be surprised if THEIR power mains or network uplinks went to shit after such a rumble.
It's cute that they're trying to preempt the worm, but to be effective they pretty much have to disable ALL potential domains. Miss one, and the worm will find it.
What I don't get is how people can still be surprised/impressed/scared by these things. Today's viruses have little in common with their elegant, obfuscated ancestors. Any twit can assemble a "virus" by tapping into the OS' libraries. Today's worms are essentially package managers, so anything you can do with legitimate software like emailing, flashing your BIOS or opening ports on your firewall, a virus can do the same things. It simply has to talk to its software repository, pull down the pieces it needs and proceed with its dirty deeds.
Hell, a tiny perl script could turn standard tools like Yum and Emerge into virus delivery agents. They already possess all the required functionality...
This is nothing special. All they're doing is embedding the key into the executable. It is no different from the numerous application vendors who bake the license into the executable, or web apps with obfuscated booby-trapped code.
The only thing Steam invented is the name. Everything else is old-hat and more of the same nonsense. The only reason they receive less hate than all the others is because they don't impose any limits on how often you can download the products you bought. That's it! That's the only difference... DigitalRiver did it way back, and they had a 7-day window for downloads, after which you were SOL. Steam kept all the bad things, but got rid of the time restriction, and somehow that makes them selfless gods ? I don't think so.
Bandwidth ? Try latency. When a game is consistently 3-4 frames behind your input, things get real frustrating real fast.
Combine that with the fact that US/Canada's networks cannot deliver 60fps 1920x1200 video with any sort of reliability or quality-of-service.
Replacing a $500 console every 3-4 years is not the end of the world. It works out to what, 10 or 15 dollars a month ? I just spent that much on lunch, big whoop! Most people spend a LOT more on the games. This company is trying to solve a problem that does not exist.
We already have online software delivery on all current-generation consoles, this streaming bullshit is redundant.
I try to use open-source solutions where possible, for a whole slew of reasons that need not be repeated here. The biggest issue I encounter is a total lack of motivation in the F/OSS community to actually fix what's broken, and let's be honest here: a ghetto mailing list or forum usually does not lead to solutions, it only leads to a bunch of people with unanswered questions, or long flame wars between rival developers.
A commercial outfit wants your money, so they will take the 2 seconds to read your trouble ticket after you've plowed through the first-level support drones. Free software developers seem too bitter to care anymore, you ask a valid question and they get all pissy. It doesn't matter that the thing doesn't do what it says on the tin, the user is always wrong regardless.
Those of you who clamor "Fix it yourself, fool!", you're missing the point. Not everyone is a developer, and while I can tweak my way through just about any C/C++ or PHP project, the same is not true of the other 99.8% of the world's computer users. Free software needs to be made accessible and friendly to the common user, not just us ninja hackers.
$0.16/GB is what an American would pay to serve content at pretty huge volumes.
European and Asian bandwidth is much more sanely priced. I'm small peas and my costs are $0.04/GB for low volume, and around $0.007 for high volume (yes, 7 tenths of a cent).
Yet another reason to thank internet porn. If porn hosting still cost $0.16/GB, it would be dead by now.
Slashdot Mirror
Linux is only free if you know how to use/maintain it.
Let me put it differently: I didn't have to pay for my OS, but I did spend countless hours learning how to make it work for me. For Windows, most people have already spent that time, and only need a step-up to the new features and annoyances. For Linux, a far larger number are starting from scratch, and let's be honest: Linux help is rare, good help is virtually impossible to find. Google anything and you will find a million forum posts and mailing list aggregators, all repeating the same question with zero answers.
I like my Linux desktop, as a coder it works well for me, but with so many cooks in the kitchen, a lot of stuff can and does go wrong, and the general attitude is "Well, you have the source. FIX IT YOURSELF, LUSER!".
The motivation simply isn't there for the developers and project maintainers, because Linux won't feed your kid or put fuel in your Honda. The free software model has very real limitations, it's amazing that things have gotten this far and continue to evolve, but we're still struggling on some aspects that cannot be solved via technological means.
That's the problem, it writes the metadata journal first, and the actual data journal later. So you wind up with metadata pointing to not-yet-written data.
Common sense says it should be the other way around: it's much easier to detect the absense of a file, than to detect that an existing file is full of gibberish.
Does the fact that a snitch has to actively participate in the swarm, not give you the hint that it's potentially inadmissible evidence ?
It's akin to a NARC selling coke to kids, so he can bust them for being dope fiends. When a cop does it, it's called entrapment - they lose their badge for a week, stalk your home, that sort of cop bullshit... When a civilian does it, as is the case with the MAFIAA and their hired techies, it's just a plain old crime like any other. Even copyright owners cannot authorize an employee to commit a crime. The fact that they don't go after their own lackeys could be considered selective or preferential enforcement, which can quickly draw the ire of a judge who isn't too old to care (yet).
I've read the blogs, and watched the indie documentaries, but I still don't understand the point/purpose of gaming leagues. If they "turn a profit", that must mean they're charging fees or taking a cut from their members' tournament winnings. What's the incentive for a pro gamer to join a league ? Why not go solo and keep the cash to themselves ?
Or is pro gaming like pro sports, where the leagues are the ones sponsoring the tournaments and it all becomes one big dumb poker game ? The main difference, of course, is thousands of people will pay to see a good sports match, which is where the real money is made. Maybe I'm not enough of a geek, but I wouldn't pay to see people play a game. I'd pay a modest fee to attend a bigass LAN party and play (read: fail), maybe learn a few tricks from the pros, but beyond that pseudo-social aspect, I fail to see the appeal of these events and organizations.
I can't even see the value for sponsors, why preach to the choir ? It's a curious phenomenon, but it is to minuscule, I can't imagine it being lucrative. Even this sellout kid "Fatal1ty" with co-branded products, most clients stared at the box, glanced at the inflated price and walked past. One guy humourously said "It's like racing stripes on a car, only it's a douchebag on a video card. Neither makes it go faster.". Yep...
Well no, in reality they should take out the Vista-specific wording and leave it as a generic, all-purpose "No buying thousands of licenses of anything without approval" rule.
In this specific case, the gist of the message is "If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it". He has identified XP as a working product that suits the needs of the government, and does not want to see asshats blowing a fortune on Vista and associated support costs, when the benefit is nil. He's basically saying the same thing millions of I.T. people have said since Vista's release.
Well now, is the imagery "inappropriate" or are you merely exercising control ?
From what I understand, U.S. law allows photography on public property, i.e. streets. If you have a problem with that, you shouldn't be complaining to Google, you need to take it up with city/state legislators.
Of course, if you're arguing that your well-being is dependent on not being able to see the outside of your house, that might be a tough sell. Put up some window-shades and a fence, if you're so concerned.
Much like the car starter, this "kill chip" can and will be circumvented.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the kind of people who default on small payment are often the same kind of people who hang out with shady people. What? Did you think deadbeats lived in caves ?
The thing about the Quebec accent is it's the French equivalent to "redneck" English, and it often triggers similar responses. Even within Quebec, if you go to an area where the accent is less slangy than yours, people will tend to act a bit snobbish.
The result is that many educated Quebecers wind up developing two dialects, one for the pubs, and a more refined elocution for business. It's not quite Parisian French, but a hybrid somewhere in the middle.
Either my german fails or that makes no sense.
My car never gave me anything :(
(trying to sweep in before the trolls show up)
I think you're on to something here. I've a French (Quebec) native, but my life is 99% English. The only time I ever speak french is when I'm having a few (dozen) beers with the good old boys, or when a random French client turns up.
I'll be honest, I hate French for computing. It is too verbose, and those accents are a pain in the ass, not just to type but to code for. English is much much simpler. It's also a shit language, in that it fails to properly communicate subtle nuances, and most of its words are borrowed/bastardized from foreign languages anyway. It's a mess, and people keep adding more garbage to it every day.
I have to agree with you that knowing more than just English is a great way to expand the mind. It probably does not matter which other language you learn/know, it is the effort of comparing and translating the two languages that leads to new mental processes.
Different languages, be they human or computer, follow different patterns. Most of the time, those patterns can be cross-pollinated. I've deciphered English words I had never seen, by drawing parallels with my knowledge of French etymology (Latin, Greek, German roots). In a similar way, I've applied my C++ experience to PHP code, employing solutions the average PHP drone would not likely consider (insults aside).
Because the arts graduates expect no less than $150/hour for their time, as they so joyously read in the recruitment propaganda that enticed them to blow a small fortune on tuition.
Right, but they said "same or less", which muddies up the results.
You could theoretically have 50% increase, and the other half decrease, canceling each other out, which is the point the GP was trying to hammer through your cocky little skull.
You mean he's just an average joe with books to sell ?
*SHUDDER*
The guy is smart. That doesn't automagically make him a super-outgoing entertaining celebrity, no more than any of us. I don't know what you were expecting, but he is not going to change your life. He's just a guy like you, likes to push buttons and think outside the box.
I would like to think that people more often find links in I.T. because it's an information-heavy environment. The average tech workplaces keeps track of everything in these magical files called system logs.
Convenience stores don't keep a written journal of every person walking in and out, and exactly which items they consider, with their name, address and exact time.
Combine that with the fact that electronic crimes typically require some sort of court case or long-winded investigation to nail, vs a couple of dumb cops with sticks. Lawyers procure and produce a shit-ton more documentation than a pair of tired cops.
Actually, some kids do tell their parents everything, and it can be very dangerous as there is such as thing as "too much trust". I'm no child psychologist, but in my limited acquaintances, those who were the closest to their parents were also the ones most likely to be dangerously gullible and taken advantage of by others, because they have not learned the risk inherent in (careless) honesty.
The difference is TPB is not an American company. They're not bound by American laws and money. What has permitted TPB to exist in the first place is their country's relaxed copyright laws (vs the U.S.).
They've also been operating the world's largest public tracker for YEARS, longer than anyone else. They are largely responsible for the success of BitTorrent as a protocol, by making it freely accessible to anyone and everyone without discrimination. It doesn't matter whether you're a kid in a basement, or a big business or artist joining the movement, TPB is there and you can make use of its service.
Say what you will about the copyright issue, there's no hiding the fact that a large portion of their site is used for software piracy, but it is leading people to ponder and discuss these issues, which is more than any MAFIAA drone has ever accomplished with greedy lawsuits and gag orders.
There is no question at all that copyright infringement is a crime, and TPB's founders don't argue that point at all. What they're fighting is the current implementation of copyright law, which they consider over-reaching and extortive. It is their highly-effective form of civil disobedience, and they've extended an invitation to the entire BitTorrent community to join the cause.
The fact that they can stand trial and actually put up a good fight, should be at least partial proof that what they are doing has some legitimacy. If you really want to fight piracy, go beat up the guy selling DVDRs on the street corner... that guy's just in it for himself.
And that is what's sorely missing from modern education: entertainment! Make it interesting and kids will actually pay attention for once :P
The few profs I remember from those days are the ones who were either supreme alpha geeks, or average joes with a sense of humor.
Sure, the servers survived the quake, but what of the datancenter itself ? I would not be surprised if THEIR power mains or network uplinks went to shit after such a rumble.
It's cute that they're trying to preempt the worm, but to be effective they pretty much have to disable ALL potential domains. Miss one, and the worm will find it.
What I don't get is how people can still be surprised/impressed/scared by these things. Today's viruses have little in common with their elegant, obfuscated ancestors. Any twit can assemble a "virus" by tapping into the OS' libraries. Today's worms are essentially package managers, so anything you can do with legitimate software like emailing, flashing your BIOS or opening ports on your firewall, a virus can do the same things. It simply has to talk to its software repository, pull down the pieces it needs and proceed with its dirty deeds.
Hell, a tiny perl script could turn standard tools like Yum and Emerge into virus delivery agents. They already possess all the required functionality...
This is nothing special. All they're doing is embedding the key into the executable. It is no different from the numerous application vendors who bake the license into the executable, or web apps with obfuscated booby-trapped code.
The only thing Steam invented is the name. Everything else is old-hat and more of the same nonsense. The only reason they receive less hate than all the others is because they don't impose any limits on how often you can download the products you bought. That's it! That's the only difference... DigitalRiver did it way back, and they had a 7-day window for downloads, after which you were SOL. Steam kept all the bad things, but got rid of the time restriction, and somehow that makes them selfless gods ? I don't think so.
Bandwidth ? Try latency. When a game is consistently 3-4 frames behind your input, things get real frustrating real fast.
Combine that with the fact that US/Canada's networks cannot deliver 60fps 1920x1200 video with any sort of reliability or quality-of-service.
Replacing a $500 console every 3-4 years is not the end of the world. It works out to what, 10 or 15 dollars a month ? I just spent that much on lunch, big whoop! Most people spend a LOT more on the games. This company is trying to solve a problem that does not exist.
We already have online software delivery on all current-generation consoles, this streaming bullshit is redundant.
<cfquery name="fetch_users" datasource="#ds#">
SELECT * FROM UserAccounts whe...
Ahh screw it!
I try to use open-source solutions where possible, for a whole slew of reasons that need not be repeated here. The biggest issue I encounter is a total lack of motivation in the F/OSS community to actually fix what's broken, and let's be honest here: a ghetto mailing list or forum usually does not lead to solutions, it only leads to a bunch of people with unanswered questions, or long flame wars between rival developers.
A commercial outfit wants your money, so they will take the 2 seconds to read your trouble ticket after you've plowed through the first-level support drones. Free software developers seem too bitter to care anymore, you ask a valid question and they get all pissy. It doesn't matter that the thing doesn't do what it says on the tin, the user is always wrong regardless.
Those of you who clamor "Fix it yourself, fool!", you're missing the point. Not everyone is a developer, and while I can tweak my way through just about any C/C++ or PHP project, the same is not true of the other 99.8% of the world's computer users. Free software needs to be made accessible and friendly to the common user, not just us ninja hackers.
I personally wish for the conficker virus to render John Markoff's computer useless for a few centuries.
$0.16/GB is what an American would pay to serve content at pretty huge volumes.
European and Asian bandwidth is much more sanely priced. I'm small peas and my costs are $0.04/GB for low volume, and around $0.007 for high volume (yes, 7 tenths of a cent).
Yet another reason to thank internet porn. If porn hosting still cost $0.16/GB, it would be dead by now.