You know, this is a great idea and I was thinking the same thing a few weeks ago. Since most if not all apps try to phone home using tcpip, this should provide another level of security. Of course Sygate and Zonealarm will notify you if any app tries to make any sort of connection, but if you don't need all of your home computers to be conected to the net, use a different protocol internally.
If a company wants to collect this kind of information I'd support it as long as it was purely entirely 100% anonymous. But what guarantee do I have that just the CD, track, and time of playing are sent?
How do you know that they aren't sending your IP address when they say they aren't? How do you know they aren't sending info about files in 'My Documents' or what files are listed in the 'add/remove' section of the registry? And don't tell me the privacy policy says they aren't so they aren't-privacy policies are changed more often than my underwear, and I change that everyday!
I don't mean to get all Mulder here, but I am so tired of companies trying to sneek things past me in a 10 page licence agreement for free software that exceeds the length of my deed if I buy a $300000 house!
But seriously, people do smell differently, and I don't think it just from the food they eat. I have a poor sense of smell but I seem to be sensitive to certain types of odors, by chance all of them kinda gross-maybe it's because I grew up on a farm, who knows?
People who are related genetically seem to have have similar body ordors, so it potentially could be used to distinguish individuals.
Did you know that, under the DMCA, it is not illegal to circumvent copy protection mechanisms for the purpose of making fair use of a works? [17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(B)]
Then why is Dmitry Sklyarov on trial for violating the DMCA? Obviously anyone with 50% of a brain can see that he is just making fair use of the work. Let's take a look at what 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(B) says then:
17.1.B The prohibition contained in subparagraph (A) shall not apply to persons who are users of a copyrighted work which is in a particular class of works, if such persons are, or are likely to be in the succeeding 3-year period, adversely affected by virtue of such prohibition in their ability to make noninfringing uses of that particular class of works under this title, as determined under subparagraph (C).
I don't see anything in there mentioning fair use, do you? All I see mentioned is that you can circumvent the protection if you are 'adversely affected' by it. Am I adversely affected if I have to purchase a second CD for $15 just in case the first CD gets a scratched or lost? Probabably not. Am I adversely affected if cannot rip that same CD to mp3's? Nope, just inconvenienced. Am I adversly affected if I can't copy a DVD I just purchased to my laptop so I can watch it when I fly from New York to London? Not really. But all of the above are illegal under the DCMA and if I do any of them I am a criminal and I am placed in the same group as rapists, drug dealers, and murders.
Did you know that most people who complain with zeal that the DMCA is a bad law have never actually read it, or indeed any part of Title 17?
Did you know that most people who complain with zeal that the DMCA is a bad law are not corporations or their lawyers, but are in fact ordinary citizens.
Just put a disclaimer on you website, emails, and all your discussion board postings. Something like:
"Not intended to be viewed by anyone in the country of Australia. By viewing this you agree that you forfeit any legal recourses available, cannot hold the posting or publishing individual or party accountable for any comments that have been made"
If it works for shrink-wrap software, it should work for anything else.
They were gonna take YOU to court simply because you were asking for your keys? A while ago I would have said BS!, but you know, in this day and age I don't doubt it.
I just found out today that Quicken 2003 forces you to subsribe in order to use their product, at least here in Canada it does. The flier says that you can upgrade to Quicken 2003 XG for $59.99 and that lets you use Quicken 2003 XG for 12 months. After 12 months "customers must renew or upgrade in order to continue to use Quicken" Some bargain-the full version used to cost the same amount and you could use it for years! I'll keep using my current version until transaction downloads no longer work (or probably sooner), then dump quicken and go back to a spreadsheet.
Intuit used to a good company but its turned into garbage. I would recommend to avoid their products as well.
Pretty much what I wuz gonna say.:) I don't think it's right and obviously the company is simply trying to prevent unecessary litigation, but if I was in their position I would probably do something similar.
I did tech support years ago in the heyday of tech support and that was a time when when you had few restrictions. As long as we didn't brand products, badmouth the company no matter how bad the service was, and were nice to the customer we were free to help the customer in any way we could, short of going over to their place. The time between calls was long as were our coffee breaks.:) Nowadays what you can support is determined by scripts, your calls, lunch, breaks, wrapup time is traked to the second, and what you can't do far outnumbers what you can do. Phone tech support has turned into a sweatshop.
You have to look at BG in the context of when it was released, not by todays standards. Even movie marvels make in the 90's like Terminator 2, The Crow, and Jurassic Park are beginning to look old and a bit cheezy now. Believe me, BG is one of the better sci-fi from that period. Rent "Krull" if you don't believe me.
In 1980 (but I'm sure I saw it in theatres in 1978) , BG was the cats meow, but watching it a few years back even I was cringing.
Oh how stupid you are! Either that or you are drunk.
Maybe in NeverNeverLand everyone verifies with their IT department that every little upgrade or app is compatible with their systems, but in the real world this never happens. Tell me, how does the mighty IT dept prevent the employees from upgrading from IE5.5 to IE 6 from windows update? Or stop users from installing the latest security update for windows? Or stop you from installing the latest SP for Office? You can't, yet any of these upgrades can,and do, trash your Windows install.
Bullshit! Would you shop at a store that forced you to listen to their sales pitch everytime you entered their store, evertime you left the store, and everytime navigated to a different isle? Would you watch TV if everytime you changed the channel you were forced to watch a commercial before you could view your show? Would you read a book if evertime you ended a chapter you had to view an advertisement before you could read the next? Noone would, so why is that behavior acceptable on a website?
If a website is not making money that is their problem, not mine and noone should feel guilty for it. If a sites' content is so special then they can charge for it and get their revenue that way.
One thing advertisers don't seem to get is that popups are annoying as hell and marketers are too dense to get past this one simple fact. I could live with one popup per site but so many sites force popups on you on any link you click or any page you navigate to, when you enter their site and when you leave their site. Popups are a flawed method of receiving revenue.
Popups are no better than spam. At least with spam you can delete without viewing the message.
If some crappy website is forcing me to view their popups then it is in my right to avoid them or in other words block them. If they don't like it then shut me out, that't fine with me-I can get my info from dozens of other places on the net. Saying that it's my duty to view popups is like saying its my duty to view every billboard on my way to work.
At that rate, he probably upgraded from a Vic 20 to Windows 95.
Ahh, brings back memories when I upgraded from a Vic-20 to a C-64, although back then you didn't think of it as upgrading, more like getting a new computer.
BASIC programs no longer worked because POKE and PEEK addresses changed, the screen width changed so you had to reformat your PRINT statements, the expansion slots were different so my SuperExpander cartridge was useless in my C-64, and almost every Vic-20 game did not work.
But to get a computer with a whopping 38K free memory it was worth the hassle. WhooHoo!
Also: 4) The price M$ charges for its' Windows or Office products hasn't substantially changed over 10 years. If Win3.1 was $199 in 94 and if XP was $899 today then there would be a problem. 5) If M$ cut their prices in half, the next/. article would be something like "Microsoft using monopoly position to undercut and stifle competition" 6) Most companies have profitable divisions that subsidize other divisions that operate at a loss.
Now I don't like M$ very much myself, but there's alot of knee-jerk spindoctoring going on with some of these M$ articles, but they make for a good read.:)
DS9 had some good battle scenes but they are no match for B5. One thing B5 tried to do right was show that there is no up in space and the battles took place in a 360 degree universe with the ships flying in from all directions, instead of the flat plane "sea" battles in ST. But some DS9 battles did get pretty good with some ships flying left-right-up-down-front-back.
Not sure if this was meant to be funny or serious, but good point. The new ST's should have revisited the stories and people that were introduced in the original series more often. What happened to Balok? Or the planet with the gangsters where Kirk said "I'm putting the bag on Krako." Or Rojan and his invaders from the Andromeda galaxy that were convinced to settle on a planet in the federation instead of return back home. Or those tribes people with the white 80's hair on that planet from A private little war.
Windows does whatever I want it to do. I used Linux exclusively in the Win95/98 days but when Win2000 came out I was re-converted and I switched back. I know I had them but I can't remember the last time I had 'dll hell' in windows, but it seems half of the apps in Linux have missing dependencies, and I don't have the patience to spend an evening to track them down. Yes, urpm works wonders, but it is just another step I want to avoid. I have a finite amount of time in my life, and unlike Gimpy from The UnderGrads, I don't sit in front of a computer 24/7.
This isn't really a reason to not use Linux, but it certainly is discouraging. The linux users on IRC or newsgroups are less than helpful by large. You ask a question about how to set X,Y, or Z up, and the typical response is "You're too stupid to use Linux, go back to point-and-click-windows" Now I'm not saying every linux user is like this, but WTF are are you doing on #LINUXHELP if you aren't there to help any user with any problem? It seems too many ppl forget that 'startx' or 'ls -a' was unknown to everyone at one time, yet seem so smug that they know it now.
Not all apps I use in windows can I find in linux. There are no photo cataloging apps for linux that save thumbnails and photo info the way I want. I have tried them all but found them to be lacking in features or unstable, and no, I don't want to run webserver/php just to cataog my pics like so many apps require. I am writing my own app so maybe this deficiency will be removed soon. Openoffice is great, but 40 seconds to startup and open a word doc is kinda ridiculous considering Word does it in 4 seconds.
Radeon 9700 Pro. Need I say more? Windows drivers have been available since the card was released. Linux drivers? Maybe the next version of XFree86 will support it, maybe not.
I like Linux and wish I could convert to it. It is amazing how much it has advanced in the last five years, but the apps need a bit of work. Yes, it's the apps! I don't care what the kernel does, but if it can't support a slide scanner that window supports then I have to stick with windows.
1. Photoshop - really isn't a full featured open source equal So true. Same could be said about Photoimpact or Paint Shop Pro.
2. Open Office doesn't work with a lot of MS docs - we tried Openoffice opens anyting I throw at it, in Windows or Linux. Office XP can't even display inline images correcly that have been saved using Office 2000.
6. Though it might be short sighted, out CEO believes that you get what you pay for - free OS equals no one resposible for OS when it f@cks up.
Unfortunately this seems to be the prevalent attitude in management. More $$ means better product. Yeah right. Maybe if Linux was $1000 per copy then management would look at it more seriously.
$35 barrel of 50 gallons of oil and turn it into something they can make money with selling it for 38 cents/gallon (not including tax).
Gas is about 40% of what is derived from crude oil and ends up roughly 40% of the revenue. There's oil, diesel, kerosene, residue used for asphalt, and all the chemicals that eventually turn into all the plastics and rubbers we use in our daily lives. Most of these are sold for much more than the price of gas, and generates a nice healthy profit for the oil companies. That's probably why so far, gas is cheaper than water.
But if ppl complain about the price of gas, they have the option of walk, biking, taking the bus. Christ, I know ppl that drive to work when work is across the street.
.. I'm talking textbooks that you would use to get your degree in miocrobiology.. (I'll even lend you mine!)
You think your junior high biology textbooks will get you a degree in microbiology. BWAHAHAHAHAH!
First you say the shit themselves to death: airborne Virii and the fact that europeans settlers were too stupid to not crap and piss in their water sources.. (something that chlorinating the drinking water would have solved.. but they didnt have that back then
Then you say it was from pathogens carried by Europeans: ut mopst of what killed the tribes here in the states were virii like smallpox and the other scourges that we happily brought with us
So what is it? You say one thing, then later you say the opposite, completely contradicting youself. You lost any credibility you had, not to say you had much to begin with.
Thye body DOES get you to the target pathogen is removed state
Huh? Problems typing at an adult level I see. Here's something you'll understand then: "body sick go get disease must doctor prescribe help"
Virii and bacteria are TWO DIFFERENT THINGS I guess your junior high text books taught you something, didn't they.
Yes they will because when you turn 30 something happens that make you want to relive your youth. Or if you happen to be 50 you want to relive what it was like when you were 30.
Slashdot Mirror
Network internally with IPX/SPX or NetBEUI.
You know, this is a great idea and I was thinking the same thing a few weeks ago. Since most if not all apps try to phone home using tcpip, this should provide another level of security. Of course Sygate and Zonealarm will notify you if any app tries to make any sort of connection, but if you don't need all of your home computers to be conected to the net, use a different protocol internally.
If a company wants to collect this kind of information I'd support it as long as it was purely entirely 100% anonymous. But what guarantee do I have that just the CD, track, and time of playing are sent?
How do you know that they aren't sending your IP address when they say they aren't? How do you know they aren't sending info about files in 'My Documents' or what files are listed in the 'add/remove' section of the registry? And don't tell me the privacy policy says they aren't so they aren't-privacy policies are changed more often than my underwear, and I change that everyday!
I don't mean to get all Mulder here, but I am so tired of companies trying to sneek things past me in a 10 page licence agreement for free software that exceeds the length of my deed if I buy a $300000 house!
But seriously, people do smell differently, and I don't think it just from the food they eat. I have a poor sense of smell but I seem to be sensitive to certain types of odors, by chance all of them kinda gross-maybe it's because I grew up on a farm, who knows?
People who are related genetically seem to have have similar body ordors, so it potentially could be used to distinguish individuals.
Did you know that, under the DMCA, it is not illegal to circumvent copy protection mechanisms for the purpose of making fair use of a works? [17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(B)]
Then why is Dmitry Sklyarov on trial for violating the DMCA? Obviously anyone with 50% of a brain can see that he is just making fair use of the work. Let's take a look at what 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(B) says then:
17.1.B The prohibition contained in subparagraph (A) shall not apply to persons who are users of a copyrighted work which is in a particular class of works, if such persons are, or are likely to be in the succeeding 3-year period, adversely affected by virtue of such prohibition in their ability to make noninfringing uses of that particular class of works under this title, as determined under subparagraph (C).
I don't see anything in there mentioning fair use, do you? All I see mentioned is that you can circumvent the protection if you are 'adversely affected' by it. Am I adversely affected if I have to purchase a second CD for $15 just in case the first CD gets a scratched or lost? Probabably not. Am I adversely affected if cannot rip that same CD to mp3's? Nope, just inconvenienced. Am I adversly affected if I can't copy a DVD I just purchased to my laptop so I can watch it when I fly from New York to London? Not really. But all of the above are illegal under the DCMA and if I do any of them I am a criminal and I am placed in the same group as rapists, drug dealers, and murders.
Did you know that most people who complain with zeal that the DMCA is a bad law have never actually read it, or indeed any part of Title 17?
Did you know that most people who complain with zeal that the DMCA is a bad law are not corporations or their lawyers, but are in fact ordinary citizens.
Just put a disclaimer on you website, emails, and all your discussion board postings. Something like:
"Not intended to be viewed by anyone in the country of Australia. By viewing this you agree that you forfeit any legal recourses available, cannot hold the posting or publishing individual or party accountable for any comments that have been made"
If it works for shrink-wrap software, it should work for anything else.
...they survive as soldiers of fortune.
No, they survive in reruns.
They were gonna take YOU to court simply because you were asking for your keys? A while ago I would have said BS!, but you know, in this day and age I don't doubt it.
I just found out today that Quicken 2003 forces you to subsribe in order to use their product, at least here in Canada it does. The flier says that you can upgrade to Quicken 2003 XG for $59.99 and that lets you use Quicken 2003 XG for 12 months. After 12 months "customers must renew or upgrade in order to continue to use Quicken" Some bargain-the full version used to cost the same amount and you could use it for years! I'll keep using my current version until transaction downloads no longer work (or probably sooner), then dump quicken and go back to a spreadsheet.
Intuit used to a good company but its turned into garbage. I would recommend to avoid their products as well.
Pretty much what I wuz gonna say. :) I don't think it's right and obviously the company is simply trying to prevent unecessary litigation, but if I was in their position I would probably do something similar.
:) Nowadays what you can support is determined by scripts, your calls, lunch, breaks, wrapup time is traked to the second, and what you can't do far outnumbers what you can do. Phone tech support has turned into a sweatshop.
I did tech support years ago in the heyday of tech support and that was a time when when you had few restrictions. As long as we didn't brand products, badmouth the company no matter how bad the service was, and were nice to the customer we were free to help the customer in any way we could, short of going over to their place. The time between calls was long as were our coffee breaks.
Mulder? Nice to see you back at work....how's Scully?
...and Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist though
Is a pretty scientist that unbelievable? I didn't know nuclear scientist are supposed to be ugly? Must be all that radiation I suppose.
In 1980 (but I'm sure I saw it in theatres in 1978) , BG was the cats meow, but watching it a few years back even I was cringing.
Wanna see the really worst sci-fi? Go here
I have a Radeon 64DDR and I have yet to see images as shitty as the ones as the supposed 8500 displays on that site in Quake III.
Makes me wonder what they were really testing.
Oh how stupid you are! Either that or you are drunk.
Maybe in NeverNeverLand everyone verifies with their IT department that every little upgrade or app is compatible with their systems, but in the real world this never happens. Tell me, how does the mighty IT dept prevent the employees from upgrading from IE5.5 to IE 6 from windows update? Or stop users from installing the latest security update for windows? Or stop you from installing the latest SP for Office? You can't, yet any of these upgrades can,and do, trash your Windows install.
Bullshit! Would you shop at a store that forced you to listen to their sales pitch everytime you entered their store, evertime you left the store, and everytime navigated to a different isle? Would you watch TV if everytime you changed the channel you were forced to watch a commercial before you could view your show? Would you read a book if evertime you ended a chapter you had to view an advertisement before you could read the next? Noone would, so why is that behavior acceptable on a website?
If a website is not making money that is their problem, not mine and noone should feel guilty for it. If a sites' content is so special then they can charge for it and get their revenue that way.
One thing advertisers don't seem to get is that popups are annoying as hell and marketers are too dense to get past this one simple fact. I could live with one popup per site but so many sites force popups on you on any link you click or any page you navigate to, when you enter their site and when you leave their site. Popups are a flawed method of receiving revenue.
Popups are no better than spam. At least with spam you can delete without viewing the message.
If some crappy website is forcing me to view their popups then it is in my right to avoid them or in other words block them. If they don't like it then shut me out, that't fine with me-I can get my info from dozens of other places on the net. Saying that it's my duty to view popups is like saying its my duty to view every billboard on my way to work.
At that rate, he probably upgraded from a Vic 20 to Windows 95.
Ahh, brings back memories when I upgraded from a Vic-20 to a C-64, although back then you didn't think of it as upgrading, more like getting a new computer.
BASIC programs no longer worked because POKE and PEEK addresses changed, the screen width changed so you had to reformat your PRINT statements, the expansion slots were different so my SuperExpander cartridge was useless in my C-64, and almost every Vic-20 game did not work.
But to get a computer with a whopping 38K free memory it was worth the hassle. WhooHoo!
Also: /. article would be something like "Microsoft using monopoly position to undercut and stifle competition"
:)
4) The price M$ charges for its' Windows or Office products hasn't substantially changed over 10 years. If Win3.1 was $199 in 94 and if XP was $899 today then there would be a problem.
5) If M$ cut their prices in half, the next
6) Most companies have profitable divisions that subsidize other divisions that operate at a loss.
Now I don't like M$ very much myself, but there's alot of knee-jerk spindoctoring going on with some of these M$ articles, but they make for a good read.
DS9 had some good battle scenes but they are no match for B5. One thing B5 tried to do right was show that there is no up in space and the battles took place in a 360 degree universe with the ships flying in from all directions, instead of the flat plane "sea" battles in ST. But some DS9 battles did get pretty good with some ships flying left-right-up-down-front-back.
Zoiks! Come on, Scooby Doo was never that good.
Not sure if this was meant to be funny or serious, but good point. The new ST's should have revisited the stories and people that were introduced in the original series more often. What happened to Balok? Or the planet with the gangsters where Kirk said "I'm putting the bag on Krako." Or Rojan and his invaders from the Andromeda galaxy that were convinced to settle on a planet in the federation instead of return back home. Or those tribes people with the white 80's hair on that planet from A private little war.
Windows does whatever I want it to do. I used Linux exclusively in the Win95/98 days but when Win2000 came out I was re-converted and I switched back. I know I had them but I can't remember the last time I had 'dll hell' in windows, but it seems half of the apps in Linux have missing dependencies, and I don't have the patience to spend an evening to track them down. Yes, urpm works wonders, but it is just another step I want to avoid. I have a finite amount of time in my life, and unlike Gimpy from The UnderGrads, I don't sit in front of a computer 24/7.
This isn't really a reason to not use Linux, but it certainly is discouraging. The linux users on IRC or newsgroups are less than helpful by large. You ask a question about how to set X,Y, or Z up, and the typical response is "You're too stupid to use Linux, go back to point-and-click-windows" Now I'm not saying every linux user is like this, but WTF are are you doing on #LINUXHELP if you aren't there to help any user with any problem? It seems too many ppl forget that 'startx' or 'ls -a' was unknown to everyone at one time, yet seem so smug that they know it now.
Not all apps I use in windows can I find in linux. There are no photo cataloging apps for linux that save thumbnails and photo info the way I want. I have tried them all but found them to be lacking in features or unstable, and no, I don't want to run webserver/php just to cataog my pics like so many apps require. I am writing my own app so maybe this deficiency will be removed soon. Openoffice is great, but 40 seconds to startup and open a word doc is kinda ridiculous considering Word does it in 4 seconds.
Radeon 9700 Pro. Need I say more? Windows drivers have been available since the card was released. Linux drivers? Maybe the next version of XFree86 will support it, maybe not.
I like Linux and wish I could convert to it. It is amazing how much it has advanced in the last five years, but the apps need a bit of work. Yes, it's the apps! I don't care what the kernel does, but if it can't support a slide scanner that window supports then I have to stick with windows.
1. Photoshop - really isn't a full featured open source equal
So true. Same could be said about Photoimpact or Paint Shop Pro.
2. Open Office doesn't work with a lot of MS docs - we tried
Openoffice opens anyting I throw at it, in Windows or Linux. Office XP can't even display inline images correcly that have been saved using Office 2000.
6. Though it might be short sighted, out CEO believes that you get what you pay for - free OS equals no one resposible for OS when it f@cks up.
Unfortunately this seems to be the prevalent attitude in management. More $$ means better product. Yeah right. Maybe if Linux was $1000 per copy then management would look at it more seriously.
$35 barrel of 50 gallons of oil and turn it into something they can make money with selling it for 38 cents/gallon (not including tax).
Gas is about 40% of what is derived from crude oil and ends up roughly 40% of the revenue. There's oil, diesel, kerosene, residue used for asphalt, and all the chemicals that eventually turn into all the plastics and rubbers we use in our daily lives. Most of these are sold for much more than the price of gas, and generates a nice healthy profit for the oil companies. That's probably why so far, gas is cheaper than water.
But if ppl complain about the price of gas, they have the option of walk, biking, taking the bus. Christ, I know ppl that drive to work when work is across the street.
.. I'm talking textbooks that you would use to get your degree in miocrobiology.. (I'll even lend you mine!)
You think your junior high biology textbooks will get you a degree in microbiology. BWAHAHAHAHAH!
First you say the shit themselves to death:
airborne Virii and the fact that europeans settlers were too stupid to not crap and piss in their water sources.. (something that chlorinating the drinking water would have solved.. but they didnt have that back then
Then you say it was from pathogens carried by Europeans:
ut mopst of what killed the tribes here in the states were virii like smallpox and the other scourges that we happily brought with us
So what is it? You say one thing, then later you say the opposite, completely contradicting youself. You lost any credibility you had, not to say you had much to begin with.
Thye body DOES get you to the target pathogen is removed state
Huh? Problems typing at an adult level I see. Here's something you'll understand then: "body sick go get disease must doctor prescribe help"
Virii and bacteria are TWO DIFFERENT THINGS
I guess your junior high text books taught you something, didn't they.
When Jupiter Lander 3D comes out, then I will get excited!
Yes they will because when you turn 30 something happens that make you want to relive your youth. Or if you happen to be 50 you want to relive what it was like when you were 30.