Anybody who has access to the account login/password can do the initial setup of the parental controls and set the parental control password. Once an account is under parental control, it can only be modified with the parental control password.">
How much are you willing to bet with me that he is not going to give me his WoW login/password, eh? This only works when an adult set up WoW and premitted his kids to play the game. He bought it, installed it and initialised it himself. I don't even know his WoW username, so I can't even email Blizzard to give me access (which I doubt they will do)
I hear you. I fully understand. Gameboys, PSPs (he owns a PSP) are not banned on family parties. So no need to even hide it. When he wasn't playing WoW (and he was 13 then) he has no problem going to a family party. His 14 year old cousin was there and we played basketball and had fun in the pool.
Yeah, I know that. The problem is: how am I going to convince him to give me his password? Heck, I don't even know his username on WoW. If someone is going to set in place a technical solution it's going to be me, the default you-know-computers-guy. Would you, as a 14 year old, give the guy that is going to block his account overnight willingly your password? I think not. I know I wouldn't.
AFAIK he uses prepaid cards which are available.... I guess he pays it with his allowance. I never asked, but I don't think his mom gave him her credit card. Heck, I don't think she has a credit card. He certainly doesn't.
Personally I refuse to play games like World Of Warcraft, because I know I would be sucked up in them in no time. It's too risky for me
When I found out that my brother in law bought the game I warned him about the game. He shrugged it off. He's only 14 (my wife is 11 years older) and he clearly has no control. He lives alone with his mother, has done allnighters, has already skipped school because of the game but his grades seem still to be unaffected. His mother has no idea what to do because she has absolutely no idea about anything related to computers. When I suggested she'd take away the DSL router, hell broke loose. I think she gave it back after a mere 2 days because his behaviour became unmanagable. He didn't come to the last BBQ we organized. He spends all his days (and nights, I guess) behind his computer playing WoW.
The thing is: I can't critisize him all that much. When I was his age, I was all the time using my computer. Playing Test Drive (CGA version) for hours, or programming in Pascal. It just depended on my mood. Still, it was much easier to break away from it because there was no social component.
I just clicked on the link and I got the following (hilarious) text:
UPDATE ON THE ATTACK ON THE LIEBERMAN CAMPAIGN WEBSITE
STATEMENT FROM SEAN SMITH: "For the past 24 hours the Friends for Joe Lieberman's website and email has been totally disrupted and disabled, we believe that this is the result of a coordinated attack by our political opponents. The campaign has notified the US Attorney and the Connecticut Chief State's Attorney and the campaign will be filing a formal complaint reflecting our concerns. The campaign has also notified the State Attorney General Dick Blumenthal for his review."
"We call on Ned Lamont to make an unqualified statement denouncing this kind of dirty campaign trick and to demand whoever is responsible to cease and desist immediately. Any attempt to suppress voter participation and undermine the voting process on Election Day is deplorable and has no place in our democracy."
A few years ago, I was all about getting the latest and greatest hardware in my system.
True.... I bought a AMD MP 2400+ back in february 2003. Sure, I did some minor upgrades, but guess what machine I use now to post.... More speed? Not needed, more diskspace? More than enough for my needs, besides, I have a server for that.
Besides, I need money to get my Nissan 350Z when I plan on having my mid-life crisis.
You need a midlife crisis for that??? I bough my Audi TT in february 2001. At a "ripe" age of 24. Now I have a wife and we're thinking of children.... Midlife crise isn't needed for a sporty car (even tough a 2006 350Z will beat the crap out of my 2001 Audi TT, but I couldn't care less.)
I understand your concept. This is not going to come over well when my wife want to watch TV and I want to write some emails. But, yes, your idea is an option in some cases.
What if Microsoft stopped supporting DRM... what would the Record/Movie Industry do?
Lawsuit because they help pirates? DMCA is there for something... If they would not support DRM, your media-enabled PC would be able to play not much media anymore. I'm not saying it is right, but all current DRM media would suddenly be locked out from that new shiny Vista PC you got. Circumventing the current DRM in the OS itself is simply a big no-no with DMCA.
Most corps I deal with will delay as long as possible for several reasons. I see Vista as the #1 opportunity for alternative operating systems to gain ground.
Well, go look at slashdot posts from a few years ago.... We said exactly the same thing about Windows XP. Hey, I was running W2k back then and I said I wouldn't switch. I still think that W2k is one of the best operating systems from Redmond, but fast user switching was reason enough to go to XP... especially in a family setting.
In companies the situation is indeed different: I have worked on Win NT4.0 SP4 systems when Windows XP SP2 was current. That was at a big bank and switching to W2k or XP was not considered at that time. (I do not know what they run these days) Still, it is enough that the big boss of a company buys a new Vista PC at home and requires an upgrade in his company because he is now more familiar with Vista. I have seen these things happen....
While high resolution is nice and all, what we really need are 37" wide screen desktop monitors to come down in price.
While I agree that cheaper bigger monitors would be a good thing, I really would like to know who has that *desk* real estate for such beasts. Back when LCD monitors were a novelty and cost up to 1200€, I decided to buy one. I could have gotten a nice big aquarium of a 21" CRT for less, but I opted for a 1200€ LCD screen, simply because my desk would be too tiny having a big CRT on it. I still use my 15" LCD screen (1024x768) to this day, and it's just fine. Sure, I could put a 19" where it stands now, but much larger would be very impractical on my desk. Especially because those 19" LCDs are very affordable these days. Still, I keep my 15" LCD because it's smaller, does the job just fine and well, it was so damned expensive back then. (I know: eary adopter curse...)
Now, let's just forget doctors and lawyers for a second. Secretaries and accountants live in worlds where IT is managed for them and live in a Windows Domain, which is why one uses WinXP Pro. It's the biggest difference between Pro & Home. They have no business upgrading their works PCs in the first place.
Doctors and lawyers, may or may not live on a Windows Domain. If they do, then IT is managed for them and they have nu business upgrading. If they do not, then why did they pay for XP Pro? They don't need it!
The "Pro" part implies that there are qualified professionals doing they IT. It is not for "Professionals". I know it might be interpreted that way, but it really shouldn't.
Actually, there used to be an old small pickup in the late 70's/early 80's called the Chevy LUV...it was identical to the Isuzu PUP. You could order one with a small diesel. You still see them on Ebay once in awhile
I looked up the Chevy LUV on wikipedia . Okay, it's an old car... It's not really fair to compare to current offerings in Europe, but frankly: 1.8l diesel? My wifes diesel is 1.4l (88BHP), and I know of a few very (1.0l) small (1.2l) diesels (0.8l).
I don't know why E85 is being hyped as much as it is
The reason why it is hyped, is because current gas vehicles can burn E85 without modification. (And those that cannot, can be modified to do so). In a country, like the US, where diesel engines are not popular, E85 is the same saviour as Biodiesel is over here.
Not for me tough, I'm a gas driver in Europe. I just hope we get E85 someday:-(
Re:Some slight FUD in the summary...
on
Vista Upgrade Matrix
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
it does seem backwards that someone who paid more for XP pro has to lose all their files while XP home users do not.
Perhaps because a Pro user would know what "backup" means? Home users are at the low end of the food chain, you don't expect anything of them. A Pro user knows that an upgrade is a bad thing and will upgrade and reinstall clean.
I've never seen an "Upgrade" of a Windows system go "cleanly". The only way to be sure is to install from scratch, or go Linux;-)
Sure I did... . Oh, and that was just a stupid Samba share, I suppose that VLC is much more efficient. Perhaps your wireless setup sucks?
It wasn't a high-def movie, but frankly, I really rarely watch hi-res movies on my computer.
I switched my MythTV box from wireless g to wired 10/100
Since these days most 10/100 networks are switched networks, that doesn't surprise me at all. Try it with a hub instead... (Oh, and if you can point me to a wireless switch, I'd appreciate -- hehehe)
Hopefully, the engineer who designed this hybrid drive has, at a minimum, integrated an LCD counter and a tiny speaker into the drive. The counter shall display the running total of the number of writes to the flash memory. The tiny speaker shall beep like crazy when the total exceeds 99900.
Just enter "4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42" and everything will be okay.
Does encryption take up that much bandwidth? I never bothered doing benchmarks or so, but my wireless doesn't feel that slow (Well, as fast as 54Mbps simplex can be, of course...)
Yes, you're probably right... I do know that the aparment next to mine is inhabited by another computer scientist. (His wireless has the SSID "voodoofrog.com" and is encrypted but I don't remember if it's with WEP or WPA) I frankly don't want to take the risk with him, so I went for WPA. I'm not going to take the trouble installing a radius server tough;-)
Frankly, if you don't want others to use your wireless, just encrypt it. Annoying freeloaders this way is pretty much childish. Set up WPA-PSK (which is much easier than WEP and more secure, AFAIK) and be done with it.
Thanks, I didn't know. I kept my firmware up to date so I never had problems. In that case there is no problem and the firmware upgrade problem is only a problem for those that don't want to run the latest firmware. In that case it really is simply *their* problem.
The game WILL run on your PSP; you just need to update its firmware first. The firmware is a free download, so they're not really anything bad by you.
Not wanting to be bitchy, but how does a PSP user upgrade his firmware if he doesn't have wireless? Sure, manual download and then upload via USB (I assume). I have wireless and don't do much more than play games (so I don't care all that much about homebrew stuff, neither do I care about uploading music or videos), so I don't know how I should do it when I don't have wireless.
The thing is: there are countless 8 to 14 year olds that have this device, many that do not have access to wireless and have no clue how to handle a PSP over a USB cable. (I used to teach 13-18 year olds, and most of them couldn't handle the most basic directory structures or recognise an external USB disk.... which is how a PSP presents itself). If they get a game that isn't supported with the firmware that their PSP came with, they have no way of "upgrading". It's a gaming console: it shouldn't require mandatory upgrades.
They under no obligation to take this path in their lives.
Of course not, but they are musicians... For many of them this is not "business", but they are in it for the art. Many artists would kill to get a chance to live of their art to be able to dedicate all their time to music. To many of them, only a contract with a label could provide this to them.
Many artists choose not to take this path, and will continue to play music in their spare time. You won't find their songs in record shops tough. They have a day job to live and music becomes a hobby.
I'm not saying that all of this is right or wrong, I'm just saying that the only way of making it big time is to sign a contract with a label and accept their terms and conditions. Any other way puts you into obscurity.
I'm not a musician. I'd have no feeling for music whatsoever: people would kick me out if I even started to hum a song along, so probably I don't understand how musicians tick. All of what I might say is probably an uninformed guess. Feel free to point me out to a musician that made it big time without a label.
I'm sick of this stupid hivemind attitude where the artists are so downtrodden and abused. Like it or lump it, these people aren't being mugged of their rights, they have to willingly sign them away.
Ever considered that it could be the only way to be published big time? For them it's the choice between "A chance to make it big time" and "Would you like fries with that?"
Slashdot Mirror
I hear you. I fully understand. Gameboys, PSPs (he owns a PSP) are not banned on family parties. So no need to even hide it. When he wasn't playing WoW (and he was 13 then) he has no problem going to a family party. His 14 year old cousin was there and we played basketball and had fun in the pool.
Yeah, I know that. The problem is: how am I going to convince him to give me his password? Heck, I don't even know his username on WoW. If someone is going to set in place a technical solution it's going to be me, the default you-know-computers-guy. Would you, as a 14 year old, give the guy that is going to block his account overnight willingly your password? I think not. I know I wouldn't.
AFAIK he uses prepaid cards which are available.... I guess he pays it with his allowance. I never asked, but I don't think his mom gave him her credit card. Heck, I don't think she has a credit card. He certainly doesn't.
Personally I refuse to play games like World Of Warcraft, because I know I would be sucked up in them in no time. It's too risky for me
When I found out that my brother in law bought the game I warned him about the game. He shrugged it off. He's only 14 (my wife is 11 years older) and he clearly has no control. He lives alone with his mother, has done allnighters, has already skipped school because of the game but his grades seem still to be unaffected. His mother has no idea what to do because she has absolutely no idea about anything related to computers. When I suggested she'd take away the DSL router, hell broke loose. I think she gave it back after a mere 2 days because his behaviour became unmanagable. He didn't come to the last BBQ we organized. He spends all his days (and nights, I guess) behind his computer playing WoW.
The thing is: I can't critisize him all that much. When I was his age, I was all the time using my computer. Playing Test Drive (CGA version) for hours, or programming in Pascal. It just depended on my mood. Still, it was much easier to break away from it because there was no social component.
I just clicked on the link and I got the following (hilarious) text:
UPDATE ON THE ATTACK ON THE LIEBERMAN CAMPAIGN WEBSITE
STATEMENT FROM SEAN SMITH: "For the past 24 hours the Friends for Joe Lieberman's website and email has been totally disrupted and disabled, we believe that this is the result of a coordinated attack by our political opponents. The campaign has notified the US Attorney and the Connecticut Chief State's Attorney and the campaign will be filing a formal complaint reflecting our concerns. The campaign has also notified the State Attorney General Dick Blumenthal for his review."
"We call on Ned Lamont to make an unqualified statement denouncing this kind of dirty campaign trick and to demand whoever is responsible to cease and desist immediately. Any attempt to suppress voter participation and undermine the voting process on Election Day is deplorable and has no place in our democracy."
A few years ago, I was all about getting the latest and greatest hardware in my system.
True.... I bought a AMD MP 2400+ back in february 2003. Sure, I did some minor upgrades, but guess what machine I use now to post.... More speed? Not needed, more diskspace? More than enough for my needs, besides, I have a server for that.
Besides, I need money to get my Nissan 350Z when I plan on having my mid-life crisis.
You need a midlife crisis for that??? I bough my Audi TT in february 2001. At a "ripe" age of 24. Now I have a wife and we're thinking of children.... Midlife crise isn't needed for a sporty car (even tough a 2006 350Z will beat the crap out of my 2001 Audi TT, but I couldn't care less.)I have no idea, but perhaps your boss needs to look into databases if he has that much columns to manage ;-))
I understand your concept. This is not going to come over well when my wife want to watch TV and I want to write some emails. But, yes, your idea is an option in some cases.
What if Microsoft stopped supporting DRM... what would the Record/Movie Industry do?
Lawsuit because they help pirates? DMCA is there for something... If they would not support DRM, your media-enabled PC would be able to play not much media anymore. I'm not saying it is right, but all current DRM media would suddenly be locked out from that new shiny Vista PC you got. Circumventing the current DRM in the OS itself is simply a big no-no with DMCA.
Most corps I deal with will delay as long as possible for several reasons. I see Vista as the #1 opportunity for alternative operating systems to gain ground.
Well, go look at slashdot posts from a few years ago.... We said exactly the same thing about Windows XP. Hey, I was running W2k back then and I said I wouldn't switch. I still think that W2k is one of the best operating systems from Redmond, but fast user switching was reason enough to go to XP... especially in a family setting.
In companies the situation is indeed different: I have worked on Win NT4.0 SP4 systems when Windows XP SP2 was current. That was at a big bank and switching to W2k or XP was not considered at that time. (I do not know what they run these days) Still, it is enough that the big boss of a company buys a new Vista PC at home and requires an upgrade in his company because he is now more familiar with Vista. I have seen these things happen....
While high resolution is nice and all, what we really need are 37" wide screen desktop monitors to come down in price.
While I agree that cheaper bigger monitors would be a good thing, I really would like to know who has that *desk* real estate for such beasts. Back when LCD monitors were a novelty and cost up to 1200€, I decided to buy one. I could have gotten a nice big aquarium of a 21" CRT for less, but I opted for a 1200€ LCD screen, simply because my desk would be too tiny having a big CRT on it. I still use my 15" LCD screen (1024x768) to this day, and it's just fine. Sure, I could put a 19" where it stands now, but much larger would be very impractical on my desk. Especially because those 19" LCDs are very affordable these days. Still, I keep my 15" LCD because it's smaller, does the job just fine and well, it was so damned expensive back then. (I know: eary adopter curse...)
doctors, lawyers, secretaries, accountants, etc.
Now, let's just forget doctors and lawyers for a second. Secretaries and accountants live in worlds where IT is managed for them and live in a Windows Domain, which is why one uses WinXP Pro. It's the biggest difference between Pro & Home. They have no business upgrading their works PCs in the first place.
Doctors and lawyers, may or may not live on a Windows Domain. If they do, then IT is managed for them and they have nu business upgrading. If they do not, then why did they pay for XP Pro? They don't need it!
The "Pro" part implies that there are qualified professionals doing they IT. It is not for "Professionals". I know it might be interpreted that way, but it really shouldn't.
Actually, there used to be an old small pickup in the late 70's/early 80's called the Chevy LUV...it was identical to the Isuzu PUP. You could order one with a small diesel. You still see them on Ebay once in awhile
I looked up the Chevy LUV on wikipedia . Okay, it's an old car... It's not really fair to compare to current offerings in Europe, but frankly: 1.8l diesel? My wifes diesel is 1.4l (88BHP), and I know of a few very (1.0l) small (1.2l) diesels (0.8l).
I don't know why E85 is being hyped as much as it is
The reason why it is hyped, is because current gas vehicles can burn E85 without modification. (And those that cannot, can be modified to do so). In a country, like the US, where diesel engines are not popular, E85 is the same saviour as Biodiesel is over here.
Not for me tough, I'm a gas driver in Europe. I just hope we get E85 someday :-(
it does seem backwards that someone who paid more for XP pro has to lose all their files while XP home users do not.
Perhaps because a Pro user would know what "backup" means? Home users are at the low end of the food chain, you don't expect anything of them. A Pro user knows that an upgrade is a bad thing and will upgrade and reinstall clean.
I've never seen an "Upgrade" of a Windows system go "cleanly". The only way to be sure is to install from scratch, or go Linux ;-)
Sure I did... . Oh, and that was just a stupid Samba share, I suppose that VLC is much more efficient. Perhaps your wireless setup sucks?
It wasn't a high-def movie, but frankly, I really rarely watch hi-res movies on my computer.
I switched my MythTV box from wireless g to wired 10/100
Since these days most 10/100 networks are switched networks, that doesn't surprise me at all. Try it with a hub instead... (Oh, and if you can point me to a wireless switch, I'd appreciate -- hehehe)
Hopefully, the engineer who designed this hybrid drive has, at a minimum, integrated an LCD counter and a tiny speaker into the drive. The counter shall display the running total of the number of writes to the flash memory. The tiny speaker shall beep like crazy when the total exceeds 99900.
Just enter "4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42" and everything will be okay.
Does encryption take up that much bandwidth? I never bothered doing benchmarks or so, but my wireless doesn't feel that slow (Well, as fast as 54Mbps simplex can be, of course...)
Yes, you're probably right... I do know that the aparment next to mine is inhabited by another computer scientist. (His wireless has the SSID "voodoofrog.com" and is encrypted but I don't remember if it's with WEP or WPA) I frankly don't want to take the risk with him, so I went for WPA. I'm not going to take the trouble installing a radius server tough ;-)
Frankly, if you don't want others to use your wireless, just encrypt it. Annoying freeloaders this way is pretty much childish. Set up WPA-PSK (which is much easier than WEP and more secure, AFAIK) and be done with it.
Thanks, I didn't know. I kept my firmware up to date so I never had problems. In that case there is no problem and the firmware upgrade problem is only a problem for those that don't want to run the latest firmware. In that case it really is simply *their* problem.
The game WILL run on your PSP; you just need to update its firmware first. The firmware is a free download, so they're not really anything bad by you.
Not wanting to be bitchy, but how does a PSP user upgrade his firmware if he doesn't have wireless? Sure, manual download and then upload via USB (I assume). I have wireless and don't do much more than play games (so I don't care all that much about homebrew stuff, neither do I care about uploading music or videos), so I don't know how I should do it when I don't have wireless.
The thing is: there are countless 8 to 14 year olds that have this device, many that do not have access to wireless and have no clue how to handle a PSP over a USB cable. (I used to teach 13-18 year olds, and most of them couldn't handle the most basic directory structures or recognise an external USB disk.... which is how a PSP presents itself). If they get a game that isn't supported with the firmware that their PSP came with, they have no way of "upgrading". It's a gaming console: it shouldn't require mandatory upgrades.
They under no obligation to take this path in their lives.
Of course not, but they are musicians... For many of them this is not "business", but they are in it for the art. Many artists would kill to get a chance to live of their art to be able to dedicate all their time to music. To many of them, only a contract with a label could provide this to them.
Many artists choose not to take this path, and will continue to play music in their spare time. You won't find their songs in record shops tough. They have a day job to live and music becomes a hobby.
I'm not saying that all of this is right or wrong, I'm just saying that the only way of making it big time is to sign a contract with a label and accept their terms and conditions. Any other way puts you into obscurity.
I'm not a musician. I'd have no feeling for music whatsoever: people would kick me out if I even started to hum a song along, so probably I don't understand how musicians tick. All of what I might say is probably an uninformed guess. Feel free to point me out to a musician that made it big time without a label.
I'm sick of this stupid hivemind attitude where the artists are so downtrodden and abused. Like it or lump it, these people aren't being mugged of their rights, they have to willingly sign them away.
Ever considered that it could be the only way to be published big time? For them it's the choice between "A chance to make it big time" and "Would you like fries with that?"
The AMD here is also a 754, but it simply isn't used for games. Actually, I don't play games that much these days.