Windows on a Cube didn't work anymore, our wireless connectivity stopped working.
You might need to get some slightly different hardware in a few cases. These items are pieces of hardware that are made in a more transparent way, and thus have open source drivers available for them. If you buy such hardware, you will typically find that its' performance isn't only better in Linux, but in Windows as well.
For starters, I suggest replacing the wireless modem or router, if you can. Get an Ethernet ADSL or ADSL2 router; there are a ton of Ethernet cards with open source drivers that work just fine, with either Linux or the BSDs.
In terms of sound cards, you can also try looking at this list. Of the cards listed there, I've used both the Intel AC97 and SiS 7012 with both Linux and FreeBSD before, and had very good results.
For video cards, I've always used an nVidia card myself. These have Linux drivers, but they are closed source, which some people object to.
For keyboards, try and stick to PS/2 rather than USB...I've heard about Ubuntu having problems with USB keyboards before.
Ubuntu has come a long way in terms of hardware support...but unfortunately some OEMs still insist on selling closed hardware of dubious quality; usually because it's cheap. If you have an offline friend who knows about Linux themselves, they may also be able to help you with this.
Buying a closed box from someone like Dell is absolute poison as far as I'm concerned...but I know there are people who like doing it.
While the average reader here has never been to such a site, porn has been a driving force in the economics and technology of the Net. Yes, I, too, have heard rumors of such things... can it really be true? Is this technological wonder known as the Internet really being used as a vehicle for pornography? No hearsay, please -- does anyone here have a definite answer, from a credible source?
While it might be untrue that the Internet owes its' existence to the porn industry to the degree that is claimed, it is true from what I've read that the porn industry and the material's distributors generally are early adopters of new technologies, particularly in such relevant areas as media storage. (DVDs and such)
When you think about it, this is actually extremely logical. It follows that individuals who are broad minded in at least one category of their thinking are more likely to thus be similarly broad minded in others.
I'll admit that when I saw the TV series, The Pretender, I always assumed that Jarod's ability to fake believable nametags and other elements of an identity were highly unrealistic. From what Abignale is saying here, maybe that isn't the case.
I'll admit that ever since I discovered the television series, real-life Pretenders according to the series' definition of the word have fascinated me. Abignale is an interesting man, as was Ferdinand Demara, the Pretender that the series was inspired by.
Does anyone know of any more examples of these types of individuals, and whether or not, given what security is like these days, they are still able to operate to the same degree?
...maybe something like the Kad Network. Decentralised, and almost completely untraceable. Create a date marked tarball of the website, and put it up. Then host a SHA256 checksum for the file on IRC somewhere, to prevent big media compromising your trust by distributing files claimed to be from you but containing viruses. They do this on P2P in order to try and deter people from using it.
Whenever you've got changes/new scores, upload another version of the tarball. You could either create a private mailing list (prolly better cos that way you can keep track of who knows about it) or use a text file on Kad itself to notify safe people about the new file.
Freenet is unbelievably slow, and contains a lot of junk that I can well understand some people not wanting to be associated with. Not only that, it being so slow means that about the only thing it's really good for hosting is HTML, and not even that in most cases.
Careful. You're treading dangerously close to saying that in some scenarios, money might actually be a positive thing. Making those sorts of statements is likely to result in torches and pitchforks being brought out, around here.;-)
What Dr. Evil isn't realising is that contrary to what he might think, Linux isn't actually a threat to Microsoft at all.
We've been waiting for the proverbial Year of the Penguin since around 1999; it still hasn't happened, and I don't think it's an unsafe bet that it most likely isn't going to, at this point.
Linux is fringe, and the sociological plague that its' userbase refers to as a "community," are their own worst enemy where it becoming anything remotely close to mainstream is concerned. It being fringe is exactly how said community like it.
Yes, yes...so Michael Dell has got on the bandwagon by shipping a few machines with Ubuntu. Go back to sleep. It is entirely unsupported, and close to unacknowledged by the company themselves...it enjoys around the same status as Blizzard's stance on using Linux with World of Warcraft.
The only two things Ballmer accomplishes by continuing to make these sorts of noises is making himself look like a moron, and adding fuel to the delusion held by the few Linux zealots who actually do want to advocate the system, that they're making some kind of concrete progress.
It's been said before. If you want mainstream UNIX, that isn't presided over by a group of basement-dwelling, adolescent genetic aberrations, go and buy yourself a Mac.
I at first thought that the RIAA having a successful legal precedent was an exclusively bad thing, of course...but then I realised something.
People have wondered how the BSD license is any more secure than straight public domain. It's more secure because it relies on conventional copyright law. It also seems to me that the idea that conventional copyright being toothless is one of the primary justifications used for existence of the GPL.
If it is demonstrated that conventional copyright law still has some teeth, then it can also be demonstrated that the BSD license is at least concievably enforceable likewise. That might not be good for people who want to swap mp3s, but it might just be good for the BSD license.
I know there was some talk a bit back about extending use of the GPL to other forms of media, such as music. Perhaps if we have a few more cases such as this, we could demonstrate that a permissive use license such as the BSD could be used even for such works, while if copyright is shown to be enforceable, would also be sufficient from a legal perspective to protect the copyright holder as well.
...if instead of being so full of praise for people dodging bullets to overthrow a dictator in other countries, Americans got off their backsides and did something about the dictator in theirs. Some of you are such utterly brainless sheep that you still don't recognise that he is one.
Is Bush going to have to start killing you en masse the way the Burmese government is doing with its' citizens before you'll recognise that, while maybe the magnitude is different, (currently) that he is still cut from the same cloth?
...it will be killed by big oil before we're ever allowed to see it.
The only time the petroleum industry is going to allow hydrogen as a viable fuel source to exist is if a) oil becomes sufficiently rare that it causes societal collapse, and b) said industry can entirely control hydrogen production and continue to make the same kinds of usurious profits from it that they have customarily made from oil.
I hate to admit it, but Hasselhoff was brilliant in that show and it would be difficult to find someone up to par (by today's, not 80's standards of course)
It's true. Hasselhoff is a lot like Shatner in that regard. There's a real paradox there with both men, in that although from any purely academic point of view, as actors they're terrible, they do have an enormous amount of charisma, magnetism, and enthusiasm...and that is what people appreciate them for.
The point is that human beings don't have to live that way. We can decide to be reasonable and rational and agree to set rules on the competitions short of life and death battles to the death. We don't have to breed like rabbits, live like pigs, and ultimately die like dogs. We are human beings, and we can make choices and live by them.
You and maybe another 5% of the population tops, maybe. The rest? Forget it. Try hanging out in almost any of the WoW forums for a few hours...you'll see exactly this sort of stupidity and viciousness being engaged in on an almost momentary basis.
The real problem is that there hasn't been any truly devastating consequences to this type of behaviour yet. (I'm talking 75% of the population gone devastating)
When there is, maybe we'll learn something. Until then, it ain't going to happen.
You make it sound as though anyone from the SFLC is capable of acting like an adult.
I vote for letting Ravicher go on as much frenzied witch hunting as he wants; with a bit of luck he'll scare anyone watching away from even the thought of using the GPL in any way whatsoever.
For icing on the cake, we could conduct a public interview concerning the case with Eben Moglen; let it be again exposed for all to see just what a cultic fruitloop he really is, as he demonstrated in front of O'Reilly.
The FSF/SFLC have more than enough rope; we need to give them as much mainstream public exposure as possible in order for them to hang themselves.
...that destroyed my trust in Wikipedia was the legion of terminally pedantic ass clowns who've apparently taken over running the site, at least far as the policing of edits is concerned. After having pretty much everything I tried to enter being continually reverted, I gave up. The only use I have for the site myself at all now is primarily as a dictionary.
The other area where the site's administration is REALLY hypocritical and unbalanced is that the rules concerning edits are only applied to articles that enough people consider important. You can write whatever the hell you want on a page referring to a television program, and hardly anyone will say anything, depending on said program's popularity.
The site is also, as I've said before, beyond hopeless when it comes to objective information about public figures, simply because articles about said individuals are usually primarily maintained by people whose bias with regards to said individual is single-mindedly positive, irrespective of what the truth might be.
The court case itself is trivial, regardless of the outcome. The point is what is going to happen to Monsoon outside the courtroom. A court case like this is the equivalent of Stallman standing up and yelling, "Attack, my children! Destroy them!" The legion of cultists are going to swarm, regardless of what the lawyers do.
The owner of Monsoon might want to start thinking about what he wants written on his headstone right about now. If it were me, I'd be checking land prices in Siberia or the Antarctic.;-)
I'd have less of a problem with people continually rubbishing Theo if there wasn't so often continual, simultaneous worship of Stallman on the other hand as well.
I will trust someone who is openly vindictive and who is willing to take responsibility for their own statements a lot more quickly than I will someone like Stallman, whose every utterance is communicated through minions and third parties.
Theo honestly being as much of an asshole as he is is actually probably the single most valuable thing about him, in my mind. Better, far better an open asshole, who you know where you stand with, than someone like Stallman who on the surface continually seeks the moral high ground, while underneath generally having motives that are far less clear. If I have to choose between evil on the surface, and evil underneath, I'll take it on the surface where I can see it.
I think that Mr Moglen and others are factually wrong as to the nature of the license. But IANAL.
Moglen and any of Stallman's other minions will argue that black is white if they think they need to convince people of that in order to further the goal of the GPL eventually being the only FOSS license in existence.
Facts don't matter. Logic doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is the establishment of a monoculture centred around the FSF, that Stallman and those answerable to him are firmly in control of.
The FSF thinks the GPL is the only license that should be allowed to exist. The FSF wants to destroy any other FOSS license in existence. The FSF doesn't want the BSDs to continue to exist as seperate entities, because if they do, people who want to use FOSS will still have somewhere else to run when the FSF inevitably makes the GPL more and more restrictive.
Unrestricted P2P across a true mesh topology is developmentally speaking, the ultimate logical destination for the Internet, in my own mind. If I was going to borrow an expression from someone the average Slashbot considers one of their patron deities, I'd even call it a "historical inevitability."
It's probably going to take a very long time. The telcos and big media can be counted on to fight it, kicking and screaming, every last milimeter of the way. Eventually however, if the net is to continue to exist at all, it will happen.
Anyone who is in a corporate environment and is forced to use it has my sympathy. However, with what my machine gets used for, I find that security in general isn't much of a concern at all. I do exercise some caution with regards to the web sites I use, but that is about all that is necessary.
If you don't use Internet Explorer, have an ISP's spam filter on, and aren't stupid, XP's security is just fine in my experience. A lot of problems come from ovine corporate employees running strange email attachments and so on, which is something I would never do.
Sounds good to me, if I were into promoting Free Software. In fact, the more pressure I could put on BSD as a license would be good, because eventually it would go away. It simplifies things by getting rid of the strongest competitor that competes for open license mindshare and that continually attacks the motives of the Free Software movement. So, if I were the Free Software guys, I'd be laughing all the way to the bank about this. As Lenin said, "Capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them."
Yep...and that's exactly the point of the GPL...which is also why I hate it, and Stallman for having written it.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows on a Cube didn't work anymore, our wireless connectivity stopped working.
You might need to get some slightly different hardware in a few cases. These items are pieces of hardware that are made in a more transparent way, and thus have open source drivers available for them. If you buy such hardware, you will typically find that its' performance isn't only better in Linux, but in Windows as well.
For starters, I suggest replacing the wireless modem or router, if you can. Get an Ethernet ADSL or ADSL2 router; there are a ton of Ethernet cards with open source drivers that work just fine, with either Linux or the BSDs.
In terms of sound cards, you can also try looking at this list. Of the cards listed there, I've used both the Intel AC97 and SiS 7012 with both Linux and FreeBSD before, and had very good results.
For video cards, I've always used an nVidia card myself. These have Linux drivers, but they are closed source, which some people object to.
For keyboards, try and stick to PS/2 rather than USB...I've heard about Ubuntu having problems with USB keyboards before.
Ubuntu has come a long way in terms of hardware support...but unfortunately some OEMs still insist on selling closed hardware of dubious quality; usually because it's cheap. If you have an offline friend who knows about Linux themselves, they may also be able to help you with this.
Buying a closed box from someone like Dell is absolute poison as far as I'm concerned...but I know there are people who like doing it.
While the average reader here has never been to such a site, porn has been a driving force in the economics and technology of the Net.
Yes, I, too, have heard rumors of such things... can it really be true? Is this technological wonder known as the Internet really being used as a vehicle for pornography? No hearsay, please -- does anyone here have a definite answer, from a credible source?
While it might be untrue that the Internet owes its' existence to the porn industry to the degree that is claimed, it is true from what I've read that the porn industry and the material's distributors generally are early adopters of new technologies, particularly in such relevant areas as media storage. (DVDs and such)
When you think about it, this is actually extremely logical. It follows that individuals who are broad minded in at least one category of their thinking are more likely to thus be similarly broad minded in others.
I'll admit that when I saw the TV series, The Pretender, I always assumed that Jarod's ability to fake believable nametags and other elements of an identity were highly unrealistic. From what Abignale is saying here, maybe that isn't the case.
I'll admit that ever since I discovered the television series, real-life Pretenders according to the series' definition of the word have fascinated me. Abignale is an interesting man, as was Ferdinand Demara, the Pretender that the series was inspired by.
Does anyone know of any more examples of these types of individuals, and whether or not, given what security is like these days, they are still able to operate to the same degree?
you dickhead. You are the reason the RIAA exists.
Yep. Want to know something else? We're winning.
...maybe something like the Kad Network. Decentralised, and almost completely untraceable. Create a date marked tarball of the website, and put it up. Then host a SHA256 checksum for the file on IRC somewhere, to prevent big media compromising your trust by distributing files claimed to be from you but containing viruses. They do this on P2P in order to try and deter people from using it.
Whenever you've got changes/new scores, upload another version of the tarball. You could either create a private mailing list (prolly better cos that way you can keep track of who knows about it) or use a text file on Kad itself to notify safe people about the new file.
Freenet is unbelievably slow, and contains a lot of junk that I can well understand some people not wanting to be associated with. Not only that, it being so slow means that about the only thing it's really good for hosting is HTML, and not even that in most cases.
Careful. You're treading dangerously close to saying that in some scenarios, money might actually be a positive thing. Making those sorts of statements is likely to result in torches and pitchforks being brought out, around here. ;-)
What Dr. Evil isn't realising is that contrary to what he might think, Linux isn't actually a threat to Microsoft at all.
We've been waiting for the proverbial Year of the Penguin since around 1999; it still hasn't happened, and I don't think it's an unsafe bet that it most likely isn't going to, at this point.
Linux is fringe, and the sociological plague that its' userbase refers to as a "community," are their own worst enemy where it becoming anything remotely close to mainstream is concerned. It being fringe is exactly how said community like it.
Yes, yes...so Michael Dell has got on the bandwagon by shipping a few machines with Ubuntu. Go back to sleep. It is entirely unsupported, and close to unacknowledged by the company themselves...it enjoys around the same status as Blizzard's stance on using Linux with World of Warcraft.
The only two things Ballmer accomplishes by continuing to make these sorts of noises is making himself look like a moron, and adding fuel to the delusion held by the few Linux zealots who actually do want to advocate the system, that they're making some kind of concrete progress.
It's been said before. If you want mainstream UNIX, that isn't presided over by a group of basement-dwelling, adolescent genetic aberrations, go and buy yourself a Mac.
Wow.
;-)
1568? In the context of the entire global population?
That's a lot.
I at first thought that the RIAA having a successful legal precedent was an exclusively bad thing, of course...but then I realised something.
People have wondered how the BSD license is any more secure than straight public domain. It's more secure because it relies on conventional copyright law. It also seems to me that the idea that conventional copyright being toothless is one of the primary justifications used for existence of the GPL.
If it is demonstrated that conventional copyright law still has some teeth, then it can also be demonstrated that the BSD license is at least concievably enforceable likewise. That might not be good for people who want to swap mp3s, but it might just be good for the BSD license.
I know there was some talk a bit back about extending use of the GPL to other forms of media, such as music. Perhaps if we have a few more cases such as this, we could demonstrate that a permissive use license such as the BSD could be used even for such works, while if copyright is shown to be enforceable, would also be sufficient from a legal perspective to protect the copyright holder as well.
...if instead of being so full of praise for people dodging bullets to overthrow a dictator in other countries, Americans got off their backsides and did something about the dictator in theirs. Some of you are such utterly brainless sheep that you still don't recognise that he is one.
Is Bush going to have to start killing you en masse the way the Burmese government is doing with its' citizens before you'll recognise that, while maybe the magnitude is different, (currently) that he is still cut from the same cloth?
...it will be killed by big oil before we're ever allowed to see it.
The only time the petroleum industry is going to allow hydrogen as a viable fuel source to exist is if a) oil becomes sufficiently rare that it causes societal collapse, and b) said industry can entirely control hydrogen production and continue to make the same kinds of usurious profits from it that they have customarily made from oil.
I hate to admit it, but Hasselhoff was brilliant in that show and it would be difficult to find someone up to par (by today's, not 80's standards of course)
It's true. Hasselhoff is a lot like Shatner in that regard. There's a real paradox there with both men, in that although from any purely academic point of view, as actors they're terrible, they do have an enormous amount of charisma, magnetism, and enthusiasm...and that is what people appreciate them for.
It's posts like this that remind me of why I consider autism such a terrible curse, both in my own case and in that of others.
If you have autism, for the sake of the rest of humanity, and ultimately yourself, there's an important life decision that you need to make...End it.
The point is that human beings don't have to live that way. We can decide to be reasonable and rational and agree to set rules on the competitions short of life and death battles to the death. We don't have to breed like rabbits, live like pigs, and ultimately die like dogs. We are human beings, and we can make choices and live by them.
You and maybe another 5% of the population tops, maybe. The rest? Forget it. Try hanging out in almost any of the WoW forums for a few hours...you'll see exactly this sort of stupidity and viciousness being engaged in on an almost momentary basis.
The real problem is that there hasn't been any truly devastating consequences to this type of behaviour yet. (I'm talking 75% of the population gone devastating)
When there is, maybe we'll learn something. Until then, it ain't going to happen.
You make it sound as though anyone from the SFLC is capable of acting like an adult.
I vote for letting Ravicher go on as much frenzied witch hunting as he wants; with a bit of luck he'll scare anyone watching away from even the thought of using the GPL in any way whatsoever.
For icing on the cake, we could conduct a public interview concerning the case with Eben Moglen; let it be again exposed for all to see just what a cultic fruitloop he really is, as he demonstrated in front of O'Reilly.
The FSF/SFLC have more than enough rope; we need to give them as much mainstream public exposure as possible in order for them to hang themselves.
...that destroyed my trust in Wikipedia was the legion of terminally pedantic ass clowns who've apparently taken over running the site, at least far as the policing of edits is concerned. After having pretty much everything I tried to enter being continually reverted, I gave up. The only use I have for the site myself at all now is primarily as a dictionary.
The other area where the site's administration is REALLY hypocritical and unbalanced is that the rules concerning edits are only applied to articles that enough people consider important. You can write whatever the hell you want on a page referring to a television program, and hardly anyone will say anything, depending on said program's popularity.
The site is also, as I've said before, beyond hopeless when it comes to objective information about public figures, simply because articles about said individuals are usually primarily maintained by people whose bias with regards to said individual is single-mindedly positive, irrespective of what the truth might be.
The court case itself is trivial, regardless of the outcome. The point is what is going to happen to Monsoon outside the courtroom. A court case like this is the equivalent of Stallman standing up and yelling, "Attack, my children! Destroy them!" The legion of cultists are going to swarm, regardless of what the lawyers do.
;-)
The owner of Monsoon might want to start thinking about what he wants written on his headstone right about now. If it were me, I'd be checking land prices in Siberia or the Antarctic.
Theo is a hot head, attention seeking flamer.
I'd have less of a problem with people continually rubbishing Theo if there wasn't so often continual, simultaneous worship of Stallman on the other hand as well.
I will trust someone who is openly vindictive and who is willing to take responsibility for their own statements a lot more quickly than I will someone like Stallman, whose every utterance is communicated through minions and third parties.
Theo honestly being as much of an asshole as he is is actually probably the single most valuable thing about him, in my mind. Better, far better an open asshole, who you know where you stand with, than someone like Stallman who on the surface continually seeks the moral high ground, while underneath generally having motives that are far less clear. If I have to choose between evil on the surface, and evil underneath, I'll take it on the surface where I can see it.
I think that Mr Moglen and others are factually wrong as to the nature of the license. But IANAL.
Moglen and any of Stallman's other minions will argue that black is white if they think they need to convince people of that in order to further the goal of the GPL eventually being the only FOSS license in existence.
Facts don't matter. Logic doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is the establishment of a monoculture centred around the FSF, that Stallman and those answerable to him are firmly in control of.
The FSF thinks the GPL is the only license that should be allowed to exist. The FSF wants to destroy any other FOSS license in existence. The FSF doesn't want the BSDs to continue to exist as seperate entities, because if they do, people who want to use FOSS will still have somewhere else to run when the FSF inevitably makes the GPL more and more restrictive.
Got to block off all possible exits.
Unrestricted P2P across a true mesh topology is developmentally speaking, the ultimate logical destination for the Internet, in my own mind. If I was going to borrow an expression from someone the average Slashbot considers one of their patron deities, I'd even call it a "historical inevitability."
It's probably going to take a very long time. The telcos and big media can be counted on to fight it, kicking and screaming, every last milimeter of the way. Eventually however, if the net is to continue to exist at all, it will happen.
...despite having XP, I don't use Windows Update.
Anyone who is in a corporate environment and is forced to use it has my sympathy. However, with what my machine gets used for, I find that security in general isn't much of a concern at all. I do exercise some caution with regards to the web sites I use, but that is about all that is necessary.
If you don't use Internet Explorer, have an ISP's spam filter on, and aren't stupid, XP's security is just fine in my experience. A lot of problems come from ovine corporate employees running strange email attachments and so on, which is something I would never do.
Oh please God, NOOOOOOO! Anything but that! We can't have people making money! Someone, please, stop them!
Yes, because as everyone knows, the FSF are the sole arbiters of the definition of an open source license.
Go back to sleep.
Sounds good to me, if I were into promoting Free Software. In fact, the more pressure I could put on BSD as a license would be good, because eventually it would go away. It simplifies things by getting rid of the strongest competitor that competes for open license mindshare and that continually attacks the motives of the Free Software movement. So, if I were the Free Software guys, I'd be laughing all the way to the bank about this. As Lenin said, "Capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them."
Yep...and that's exactly the point of the GPL...which is also why I hate it, and Stallman for having written it.