and put each output speaker in an anachoic chamber with its own high quality mike.
Slightly offtopic.. Use an attenuator and clip directly onto the analog hole between the amplifier and speaker. It's much cheaper and much better quality.
I haven't use it for piracy, but have used it to video school plays, concerts, etc. You get much better sound with proper attenuation while jacked directly into the sound system.
And what exactly IS the point of validating Ubuntu or whatever as genuine windows anyway???
Service calls. I run Ubuntu. I frequently get asked to fix a broken/owned/hosed winbox. Often the box is not on broadband, but on dial-up or has no connection whatsover. Having copies of updates and such to install on machines being rebuilt saves much time.
Have you ever re-imaged a Dell machine and then tried to use dial-up to update it? Sorry, but I don't plan on spending the entire weekend there babysitting the update.
Who thinks a blow up doll in the car will fool this technology?
More important, how many without a cell phone will be tagged because they have On Star. It may take the blinking 12 o'clockers a while to figure that one out.
(Blinking 12 o'clockers, those with every VCR and microwave clocking blinking 12:00)
Her keyboard is now squeaky clean and functions perfectly. Has anyone else tried this or any other alternate keyboards cleaning methods?
I used to work in a shop that repaired electronics and part of what we did was smoke and fire restoration. Wet smoke is corrosive. In a nutshell, some keyboards are well suited to cleaning. Most electronic components can survive a water based cleaning. If you want to kill stuff, get it wet. Leave it wet and power it up. Electrolisis will eat the metal and pollute the insulation.
With those basics on killing stuff, remember that many keyboards are of a cheap membraine with conductive plastic pads. When this sheet of rubber is sandwitched onto a printed circuit board and clamped into place by attaching this to the mechanical keys above the bumps, you have an excellent place to trap water with no ventelation if it's immersed.
To clean smoke damaged keyboards we would photocopy the keyboard (so we get things that are non-standard like the location of the esc, home, end, del, gold, do, keys back into the right spot). Pull all the keycaps, shell the case, pull the screws to seperate the switch assy, wash and dry the components and reassemble. (Don't do this on an IBM clicky keyboard!)
After reassembly, they got a nose test for odor check. If it failed, it got an ozone treatement to kill remaining smoke odor. If you are crazy enough to take apart a clicky IBM AT keyboard, look online for reassembly instructions. Getting the springs back properly is critical. Done wrong it will damage the springs. The clicky keyboard is not a membrane keyboard and has no electrical contact switches. It is a capacitive non-contact switch. Simply shell it. Leave the keycaps on. Wash it, set it on end after rinse, let it dry, and reassemble. Again, important, don't remove the keycaps. Otherwise you will spend the rest of the day trying to get all the springs back in place.
In a nutshell, when cleaning electronics, watch for assemblies that can trap water such as electric motors, some transformers, switches (including keyboards) and water unsafe parts such as paper cone speakers. Most components may be safely water and soap cleaned if they are rinsed well and dried very soon. Some early keyboards had a conductive paint that was used on the membrane for the keyboards that was water soluable. Washing these keyboards killed them. Many electronics parts distributors carried the bottle of replacement conductant to repaint the contacts on the rubber sheet. We had a bottle, but never needed it except on a TV remote.
I just have a few questions which probably are irrelevant to all this but, what happens if you have 4 or 5 people split the cost of a few albums equally and then listen to the music between themselves on a folder available over a network connection... is this breaking the law?
The simple answer is the license to listen to the CD goes with the physical CD. The legal status of who can use it is the same as if your team bought a bicycle. The one with the current physical posession can use it and nobody else. Physical posession may be given to another. The shared copy is a legal no-no. The same for a rip on your PC or iPod. All backups and copies (including your iPod) must be either destroyed (deleted) or sent with the original. The broadcasting (shared listening by streaming, and copies including the server) is not permitted.
I hope this answers your questions. As per the Kalidascope case, a DVD rip on your own home media server is OK, but it is not to be distributed outside your home and should be encrypted in it's stored state. I don't know if that rulling is the same for a music recording, but the Apple multiple authorised computer model seems to permit it.
So what if I make a backup copy of my CD and someone steals that? Am I no longer allowed to listen to my original copy or make another backup because someone stole my license?
Simple, nobody is authorised to do anything to do anything with the copy except the holder of the original. If they take the copy and don't take the original, then it becomes an illegal copy. He could be busted for it selling it at a local flea market. If you sell the original, you are required to either destroy all backup copies or transfer ownership of them with the original. Selling (or otherwise transfering) the original removes your right to any copies and backups.
unless I'm mistaken he wasn't on a P2P it was simply an open folder on the schools private network...
If that's the case, how did the RIAA even find out about it? Many companies and schools assign private IP space such as 10.x.x.x. My work PC is 10.6.205.12. Unless you have P-P running that tunnels your private IP space folder via client software, there is no way other than a computer crime to find it outside the private network. At home I have a private NAS media server at IP address 192.168.1.105. Unless there is some filesharing software on my network, that NAS and it's shared folders are not on the internet. The folders are username/password protected, so even then it's deniable they are shared on the internet. The NAS is not routed into a DMZ.
I think the folder was found because a P-P program such as KaZa exposed it to the internet at large. Does anybody know if the university has private IP space for the students?
Assuming DHCP provided private IP space can show he didn't have intent to share his folder to the internet. Having a P-P clinet running and sharing the folder with it is another story and much harder to defend. Somehow I doubt this is just an exposed Windows folder with sharing turned on.
So if I leave a CD laying on a table where someone else might see it, am I "civilly negligent"? What stupidity.
Absolutely not. When I walk away with your CD, you no longer have it or the license to listen to it. That right was transfered with the transfer of posession.
Put the CD in a glass case so I can't take it, but right under the case is a flash drive with the MP3's of the CD with a note, feel free to copy the MP3's from this flash drive.. Um then things change. Now offering to provide copies to anyone who wanted them instead of simply giving away the original is where the line was crossed.
I think a better analogy would be: If you had a case of beer in your unlocked car and some kids opened the door and took it, would you be liable for distributing alcohol to minors?
Unfortunately, that party is likely to be shown in another light. Hey, guys, the party is at my place www.KaZa.com. Bring something to share to get in. You show up with the keg of MP3's that you just lifted from the local supermarket (RIAA member's CD's) with the price tags still attached (Metadata).
It will be very hard to prove when he came to the party, he knew what he brought to share. The fact some minors may or may not have actualy taken a sample or two is not the charge. The charge is he willingly brought it to share even if the only reason for sharing was to get into the party to enjoy someone else's contributions to the shareing pot. The sharing with minors would be if the MP3's shared were of the nature they had parental advisory stuck all over them limiting access to minors. This is not the charge. Offering to share with anybody who came to the party is the charge.
Why would we jail someone for spamming? They are non-violent offenders.
Would you like to spend your entire life from birth to death deleting spam? It doesn't take long to delete a single spam, just a second or two. In the US alone, just deleting spam has taken the manhours of several peoples entire lifetimes. Just because it isn't all stacked up for a few individuals to use their entire life deleting spam but spreading it out cross the entire US population instead does not remove the fact that spam has taken several entire lifetimes of manhours to deal with the problem.
SPAM has pretty much killed my first e-mail account. Instead of checking it daily and deleting the spam, I now check it monthly for content and flush the entire thing. It's the only way to not spend lots of time sorting and just hitting delete daily. SPAM has changed e-mail from a useful tool, to someting I'm about to drop entirely. Those who need to reach me has my pager number.
I hit the Listen button on the page and an EULA popped up for iTunes. I declined. I wanted to listen to the songs, not install unauthorised software on a company computer.
Too bad the DRM free music is not in a Windows playable format and requires a software install and EULA agreement.
Apparently the Music Studios are almost bankrupt. According to Marcus Cohen "We've gone into a survival mode."
Their marketing survey department is asleep. DVD's pre-viewed at Blockbuster are 2 for $20 or 3 for $20 for films that are less than a decade old. They are THX certified, not compressed to sound loud, pixilated, and have washed out color.
CD's on the other hand have dropped the Philips specification (look for the Compact Disk tm logo next time), engineered to kill all semblance of dynamic range, and recordings over 10 years old still are priced way above most DVD's. Try pricing anything Beatles, Styx, REO Speedwagon, AC/DC, Pink Floyd, and other 30 year old recordings.
It isn't piracy that's killing them. Piracy is what is keeping the older music popular. Pricing, loss of quality (analog compression with loss of S/N ratio, dynamic range, and distortion from clipping), reliability (DRM induced), and functionality (again DRM) is what is killing them.
Just last week there was a good discussion on the quality issues and CD's from the quality days were discussed such as the 30 year old Telarc recording of the 1812 Overature. The present day recordings were only in the discussion as samples of what is wrong with today's recordings.
Observers note that widespread enforcement of the rules will likely begin by the end of 2007
And those poor districts who barely can provide any computing resources are likely to fold their IT shop as too expensive to maintain due to the legal threat of non-compliance. It's why many schools have a metal and wood shop, most have dropped Drivers Education as part of the regular HS electives.
I took Defensive Driving Drivers ED in High School. Now that I have adopted kids entering HS, we just received a notification that the Drivers Education program has been dropped. Anyone who signed-up will need to reschedule an elective class. Budget constraints were the reason for the change.
The computer classes are the next budget axe if compliance is too much of a liability for schools with limited budgets.
"Hmm, You should make a BartPE disc. I have used that on numerous occasions to fix hosed systems."
However, I am again hosed by one of the things I am missing in the requirements to do a recovery. From the BartPE site;
Requirements to build: The files from your Windows Installation CD-Rom. Supported Windows versions are:
Windows XP Home Edition (must be slip streamed with Service Pack 1 or higher) Windows XP Professional (must be slip streamed with Service Pack 1 or higher) Windows Server 2003, Web Edition Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition PE Builder runs on Windows 2000/XP/2003/BartPE systems. CD/DVD writer if you want to creat a bootable CD/DVD.
I have neither a Windows 2000 or Windows XP installation disk. I wiped my laptop from Win 2K because I bought it used and it was missing an install disk. Checking the repair manual, It never shipped with one, but had a disk re-image disk. My wife's XP machine also lacks an install disk, but does have a disk re-image disk. The lack of an install disk for Windows is the main reason for my failure to recover the laptop.
"However, three cheers for converting someone to Linux!"
I have to hand one of the cheers to the kind folks in Redmond who made recovery impossible by letting system manufactures ship stuff without an install CD as an anti-piracy measure. I have to hand the second cheer to the OSS community for providing a great OS to install. After failure in the recovery attempts, it was trash it/replace it, or convert it. Thanks for the third cheer.
My Tivo would thus be pretty useless, as would my MythTV box.
Try irblaster on your MythTV box. Use one of the free online program guides. Myth TV simply records the output of the Verizon box. irblaster takes care of the channel surfing for you.
Things are vastly different on Vista! It's changed the way I use my computer. It no longer works, so I no longer use it. I had to borrow a friend's "leenux" just to type this!
Hint; don't borrow a machine to type this. Use your machine. Boot a Ubuntu live CD. If you like it, use the install icon. It'll fix a broken Vista install in a very short time. Install Flash 9 and the restricted formats and you should be good to go. Install Acidrip, Mplayer, and a good jukebox for your multimedia fix.
Firefox, Gimp, Gaim, a SIP phone, and an office suite come standard. Burning CD and DVD's is built into the OS. No need for buying a CD burning program, photo editor, or office suite. Take the money saved on buying software and buy a TV tuner card.
What the fuck are you talking about? Any hardware that's designed in such a crippled way should be considered broken!
I can tell you have never tried to take your satelite TV access card with you on vacation to use at a rental cabin in their reciever so you don't miss your big ball game. Satelite TV has had this crippling of TV cards for decades. When you travel and want to bring your subscription with you, you need to bring the entire box, not just the card because your card marries the box at home and refuses to be of any use in somebody else's box. It's supposed to cut down on the theft of the access cards because they won't work for anybody else. Thefts now are for people wanting the hardware cards for re-programming for theft of service.
You must be able to certify that there's no way for a user to gain access to the decrypted stream.
For most slashdotters, that is the reason most are not interested in a Vista MCE machine. When decrypted stream is reachable as in the way DVD's can be accessed in Linux, then they might sell a few copies to some slashdotters. I like many will simply not bother with subscription TV at all and just use the Internet and DVD's instead. With increasing cable TV prices, does anyone have any market penetration figures? Subscriptions must be dropping as competition increases.
Actually, by testing the cards before taking them to the field, they got married to the test hardware and could no longer be married to the device in the field.
That about sums up my first experiance with satelite TV cards. They didn't come with a warning that they married the box. It's called the school of hard knocks and DRM learning curve. It looks like the TV tuner and Vista is a repeat of Satelite TV subscription card problems. There is no such thing as taking the satelite TV card with you to your snowbird cabin. You have to take the entire reciever instead. So much for packing light. It's one of several reasons I don't bother with satelite TV.
Msft does not want a lawsuit because that would bring out the dirty landry.
That's just the tip of the iceburg. A lawsuit would bring out in black and white what is infringing and what is not. What is infringing, if any, would be soon replaced. This would be the end of the MS FUD campaign. Your free software may be infringing on MS patents. You could be liable for license fees and damages. A lawsuit would throw a clear window on the issues and enable OSS to clear itself from MS FUD.
It is not in Microsoft's best intrest to fully define the risks. It is in their best intrest to keep the FUD in place to discourage Open Source Software use due to fear.
I had to laugh... when I clicked to the article, the embedded ad was this ad that people were switching from linux to windows servers....
I had to laugh because today I just converted someone's laptop to Ubuntu. They brought it to me to fix. The network jack (flow soldered to motherboard) was broken, Windows 2000 was broken (missing ntoskrnl.exe) and they were on limited income looking at the possibility of needing to purchase another laptop for internet.
There was lots of information online regarding fixing the broken OS, but all the solutions had obsticles. Solution 1 was to use the install disk to replace the hosed file. Um what install disk. Strike 1. Solution 2 was make a boot floppy from another Windows PC with the same version. OK, I made the boot floppy and oops, no floppy drive in broken laptop. I don't have a USB floppy. Strike 2. Solution 3. Toss in a PCMCIA NIC and transfer the file over ethernet. Could not boot laptop.. Used Dapper Drake live CD.. Could not access the hard drive. Same with Edgy. Tried Fiesty. I got into the HD in read only. Being unable to write to the NTFS filesystem, solution 3 was Strike 3. Used Fiesty to back-up the user directories to a NAS box. Removed the internal NIC/Modem (remember broken motherboard jacks), installed Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn, installed restricted codecs, Flash 9 , copied user files to/home/user directory and returned system to owner with PCMCIA NIC. Cost for family friend, less than $20 for parts.
Ubuntu was installed with 2 accounts. 1 is the administrator account. I did not install flash 9 on this account to discourage the new owner from running that account. The user account is set up with all the toys for a rich user experiance. Passwords and instructions were provided for both accounts.
Microsoft lost one because Windows 2000 Professionial was impossible to repair on a budget in a limited time span with limited resources such as missing CD and no floppy drive, or easly found online CD bootable recovery tools.
There were 3 chances to recover that laptop. All 3 failed. The alternative was easy to find, install, backup, configure, and restore. And as most always, the entire system required no driver downloads. It was truly plug and play unlike older versions of Windows.
I always asked if I could play that version. They wisely decline.
If they were competent, they would know the system limitations. Set the volume at the max they would use for a modern CD without blowing the system, stick in the cannon fire and let it rip. The CD has a hard digital limit that won't be exceeded. Using a modern CD will set the rest of the system to survivable levels very quickly. Remember the CD can't go over digital peak 0. Everything recorded on any CD is recorded at or below that level.
Just remember that most of the music part is 30-40 DB below peak, so it will sound quite low. Unless the system can handle a big peak, resist the urge to turn up the music. If you do, you will clip the peak, generate harmonics from clipping and blow tweeters.
They probably decline playing it simply because it's a recording from the 1970's and very few people have a real copy. (I was born in the 1950's and I have an original of that recording.)
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and put each output speaker in an anachoic chamber with its own high quality mike.
Slightly offtopic.. Use an attenuator and clip directly onto the analog hole between the amplifier and speaker. It's much cheaper and much better quality.
I haven't use it for piracy, but have used it to video school plays, concerts, etc. You get much better sound with proper attenuation while jacked directly into the sound system.
And what exactly IS the point of validating Ubuntu or whatever as genuine windows anyway???
Service calls. I run Ubuntu. I frequently get asked to fix a broken/owned/hosed winbox. Often the box is not on broadband, but on dial-up or has no connection whatsover. Having copies of updates and such to install on machines being rebuilt saves much time.
Have you ever re-imaged a Dell machine and then tried to use dial-up to update it? Sorry, but I don't plan on spending the entire weekend there babysitting the update.
Who thinks a blow up doll in the car will fool this technology?
More important, how many without a cell phone will be tagged because they have On Star. It may take the blinking 12 o'clockers a while to figure that one out.
(Blinking 12 o'clockers, those with every VCR and microwave clocking blinking 12:00)
Her keyboard is now squeaky clean and functions perfectly. Has anyone else tried this or any other alternate keyboards cleaning methods?
I used to work in a shop that repaired electronics and part of what we did was smoke and fire restoration. Wet smoke is corrosive. In a nutshell, some keyboards are well suited to cleaning. Most electronic components can survive a water based cleaning. If you want to kill stuff, get it wet. Leave it wet and power it up. Electrolisis will eat the metal and pollute the insulation.
With those basics on killing stuff, remember that many keyboards are of a cheap membraine with conductive plastic pads. When this sheet of rubber is sandwitched onto a printed circuit board and clamped into place by attaching this to the mechanical keys above the bumps, you have an excellent place to trap water with no ventelation if it's immersed.
To clean smoke damaged keyboards we would photocopy the keyboard (so we get things that are non-standard like the location of the esc, home, end, del, gold, do, keys back into the right spot). Pull all the keycaps, shell the case, pull the screws to seperate the switch assy, wash and dry the components and reassemble. (Don't do this on an IBM clicky keyboard!)
After reassembly, they got a nose test for odor check. If it failed, it got an ozone treatement to kill remaining smoke odor. If you are crazy enough to take apart a clicky IBM AT keyboard, look online for reassembly instructions. Getting the springs back properly is critical. Done wrong it will damage the springs. The clicky keyboard is not a membrane keyboard and has no electrical contact switches. It is a capacitive non-contact switch. Simply shell it. Leave the keycaps on. Wash it, set it on end after rinse, let it dry, and reassemble. Again, important, don't remove the keycaps. Otherwise you will spend the rest of the day trying to get all the springs back in place.
In a nutshell, when cleaning electronics, watch for assemblies that can trap water such as electric motors, some transformers, switches (including keyboards) and water unsafe parts such as paper cone speakers. Most components may be safely water and soap cleaned if they are rinsed well and dried very soon.
Some early keyboards had a conductive paint that was used on the membrane for the keyboards that was water soluable. Washing these keyboards killed them. Many electronics parts distributors carried the bottle of replacement conductant to repaint the contacts on the rubber sheet. We had a bottle, but never needed it except on a TV remote.
I just have a few questions which probably are irrelevant to all this but, what happens if you have 4 or 5 people split the cost of a few albums equally and then listen to the music between themselves on a folder available over a network connection... is this breaking the law?
The simple answer is the license to listen to the CD goes with the physical CD. The legal status of who can use it is the same as if your team bought a bicycle. The one with the current physical posession can use it and nobody else. Physical posession may be given to another. The shared copy is a legal no-no. The same for a rip on your PC or iPod. All backups and copies (including your iPod) must be either destroyed (deleted) or sent with the original. The broadcasting (shared listening by streaming, and copies including the server) is not permitted.
I hope this answers your questions. As per the Kalidascope case, a DVD rip on your own home media server is OK, but it is not to be distributed outside your home and should be encrypted in it's stored state. I don't know if that rulling is the same for a music recording, but the Apple multiple authorised computer model seems to permit it.
So what if I make a backup copy of my CD and someone steals that? Am I no longer allowed to listen to my original copy or make another backup because someone stole my license?
Simple, nobody is authorised to do anything to do anything with the copy except the holder of the original. If they take the copy and don't take the original, then it becomes an illegal copy. He could be busted for it selling it at a local flea market. If you sell the original, you are required to either destroy all backup copies or transfer ownership of them with the original. Selling (or otherwise transfering) the original removes your right to any copies and backups.
unless I'm mistaken he wasn't on a P2P it was simply an open folder on the schools private network...
If that's the case, how did the RIAA even find out about it? Many companies and schools assign private IP space such as 10.x.x.x. My work PC is 10.6.205.12. Unless you have P-P running that tunnels your private IP space folder via client software, there is no way other than a computer crime to find it outside the private network. At home I have a private NAS media server at IP address 192.168.1.105. Unless there is some filesharing software on my network, that NAS and it's shared folders are not on the internet. The folders are username/password protected, so even then it's deniable they are shared on the internet. The NAS is not routed into a DMZ.
I think the folder was found because a P-P program such as KaZa exposed it to the internet at large. Does anybody know if the university has private IP space for the students?
Assuming DHCP provided private IP space can show he didn't have intent to share his folder to the internet.
Having a P-P clinet running and sharing the folder with it is another story and much harder to defend.
Somehow I doubt this is just an exposed Windows folder with sharing turned on.
So if I leave a CD laying on a table where someone else might see it, am I "civilly negligent"? What stupidity.
Absolutely not. When I walk away with your CD, you no longer have it or the license to listen to it. That right was transfered with the transfer of posession.
Put the CD in a glass case so I can't take it, but right under the case is a flash drive with the MP3's of the CD with a note, feel free to copy the MP3's from this flash drive.. Um then things change. Now offering to provide copies to anyone who wanted them instead of simply giving away the original is where the line was crossed.
I think a better analogy would be: If you had a case of beer in your unlocked car and some kids opened the door and took it, would you be liable for distributing alcohol to minors?
Unfortunately, that party is likely to be shown in another light. Hey, guys, the party is at my place www.KaZa.com. Bring something to share to get in. You show up with the keg of MP3's that you just lifted from the local supermarket (RIAA member's CD's) with the price tags still attached (Metadata).
It will be very hard to prove when he came to the party, he knew what he brought to share. The fact some minors may or may not have actualy taken a sample or two is not the charge. The charge is he willingly brought it to share even if the only reason for sharing was to get into the party to enjoy someone else's contributions to the shareing pot. The sharing with minors would be if the MP3's shared were of the nature they had parental advisory stuck all over them limiting access to minors. This is not the charge. Offering to share with anybody who came to the party is the charge.
I wish him luck. He's going to need it.
6 Can I make a living at it? A.. not likely.
Why would we jail someone for spamming? They are non-violent offenders.
Would you like to spend your entire life from birth to death deleting spam? It doesn't take long to delete a single spam, just a second or two. In the US alone, just deleting spam has taken the manhours of several peoples entire lifetimes. Just because it isn't all stacked up for a few individuals to use their entire life deleting spam but spreading it out cross the entire US population instead does not remove the fact that spam has taken several entire lifetimes of manhours to deal with the problem.
SPAM has pretty much killed my first e-mail account. Instead of checking it daily and deleting the spam, I now check it monthly for content and flush the entire thing. It's the only way to not spend lots of time sorting and just hitting delete daily. SPAM has changed e-mail from a useful tool, to someting I'm about to drop entirely. Those who need to reach me has my pager number.
He should never be allowed to touch a computer again in his entire life, as far as I am concerned.
I don't mind if he touches a computer again. I do mind if it has any connections to any other computer in any fashion.
I hit the Listen button on the page and an EULA popped up for iTunes. I declined. I wanted to listen to the songs, not install unauthorised software on a company computer.
Too bad the DRM free music is not in a Windows playable format and requires a software install and EULA agreement.
Apparently the Music Studios are almost bankrupt. According to Marcus Cohen "We've gone into a survival mode."
Their marketing survey department is asleep. DVD's pre-viewed at Blockbuster are 2 for $20 or 3 for $20 for films that are less than a decade old. They are THX certified, not compressed to sound loud, pixilated, and have washed out color.
CD's on the other hand have dropped the Philips specification (look for the Compact Disk tm logo next time), engineered to kill all semblance of dynamic range, and recordings over 10 years old still are priced way above most DVD's. Try pricing anything Beatles, Styx, REO Speedwagon, AC/DC, Pink Floyd, and other 30 year old recordings.
It isn't piracy that's killing them. Piracy is what is keeping the older music popular. Pricing, loss of quality (analog compression with loss of S/N ratio, dynamic range, and distortion from clipping), reliability (DRM induced), and functionality (again DRM) is what is killing them.
Just last week there was a good discussion on the quality issues and CD's from the quality days were discussed such as the 30 year old Telarc recording of the 1812 Overature. The present day recordings were only in the discussion as samples of what is wrong with today's recordings.
countries such as Brazil, China, India or Russia, which will be responsible of 775 new PCs and laptop computers.
They are only counting the ones sold with a legal copy of Vista.
Observers note that widespread enforcement of the rules will likely begin by the end of 2007
And those poor districts who barely can provide any computing resources are likely to fold their IT shop as too expensive to maintain due to the legal threat of non-compliance. It's why many schools have a metal and wood shop, most have dropped Drivers Education as part of the regular HS electives.
I took Defensive Driving Drivers ED in High School. Now that I have adopted kids entering HS, we just received a notification that the Drivers Education program has been dropped. Anyone who signed-up will need to reschedule an elective class. Budget constraints were the reason for the change.
The computer classes are the next budget axe if compliance is too much of a liability for schools with limited budgets.
Thanks for the suggestion;
"Hmm, You should make a BartPE disc. I have used that on numerous occasions to fix hosed systems."
However, I am again hosed by one of the things I am missing in the requirements to do a recovery. From the BartPE site;
Requirements to build:
The files from your Windows Installation CD-Rom.
Supported Windows versions are:
Windows XP Home Edition (must be slip streamed with Service Pack 1 or higher)
Windows XP Professional (must be slip streamed with Service Pack 1 or higher)
Windows Server 2003, Web Edition
Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition
Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition
PE Builder runs on Windows 2000/XP/2003/BartPE systems.
CD/DVD writer if you want to creat a bootable CD/DVD.
I have neither a Windows 2000 or Windows XP installation disk. I wiped my laptop from Win 2K because I bought it used and it was missing an install disk. Checking the repair manual, It never shipped with one, but had a disk re-image disk. My wife's XP machine also lacks an install disk, but does have a disk re-image disk. The lack of an install disk for Windows is the main reason for my failure to recover the laptop.
"However, three cheers for converting someone to Linux!"
I have to hand one of the cheers to the kind folks in Redmond who made recovery impossible by letting system manufactures ship stuff without an install CD as an anti-piracy measure. I have to hand the second cheer to the OSS community for providing a great OS to install. After failure in the recovery attempts, it was trash it/replace it, or convert it. Thanks for the third cheer.
My Tivo would thus be pretty useless, as would my MythTV box.
Try irblaster on your MythTV box. Use one of the free online program guides. Myth TV simply records the output of the Verizon box. irblaster takes care of the channel surfing for you.
Things are vastly different on Vista! It's changed the way I use my computer. It no longer works, so I no longer use it. I had to borrow a friend's "leenux" just to type this!
Hint; don't borrow a machine to type this. Use your machine. Boot a Ubuntu live CD. If you like it, use the install icon. It'll fix a broken Vista install in a very short time. Install Flash 9 and the restricted formats and you should be good to go. Install Acidrip, Mplayer, and a good jukebox for your multimedia fix.
Firefox, Gimp, Gaim, a SIP phone, and an office suite come standard. Burning CD and DVD's is built into the OS. No need for buying a CD burning program, photo editor, or office suite. Take the money saved on buying software and buy a TV tuner card.
What the fuck are you talking about? Any hardware that's designed in such a crippled way should be considered broken!
I can tell you have never tried to take your satelite TV access card with you on vacation to use at a rental cabin in their reciever so you don't miss your big ball game. Satelite TV has had this crippling of TV cards for decades. When you travel and want to bring your subscription with you, you need to bring the entire box, not just the card because your card marries the box at home and refuses to be of any use in somebody else's box. It's supposed to cut down on the theft of the access cards because they won't work for anybody else. Thefts now are for people wanting the hardware cards for re-programming for theft of service.
You must be able to certify that there's no way for a user to gain access to the decrypted stream.
For most slashdotters, that is the reason most are not interested in a Vista MCE machine. When decrypted stream is reachable as in the way DVD's can be accessed in Linux, then they might sell a few copies to some slashdotters. I like many will simply not bother with subscription TV at all and just use the Internet and DVD's instead. With increasing cable TV prices, does anyone have any market penetration figures? Subscriptions must be dropping as competition increases.
Actually, by testing the cards before taking them to the field, they got married to the test hardware and could no longer be married to the device in the field.
That about sums up my first experiance with satelite TV cards. They didn't come with a warning that they married the box. It's called the school of hard knocks and DRM learning curve. It looks like the TV tuner and Vista is a repeat of Satelite TV subscription card problems. There is no such thing as taking the satelite TV card with you to your snowbird cabin. You have to take the entire reciever instead. So much for packing light. It's one of several reasons I don't bother with satelite TV.
Msft does not want a lawsuit because that would bring out the dirty landry.
That's just the tip of the iceburg. A lawsuit would bring out in black and white what is infringing and what is not. What is infringing, if any, would be soon replaced. This would be the end of the MS FUD campaign. Your free software may be infringing on MS patents. You could be liable for license fees and damages. A lawsuit would throw a clear window on the issues and enable OSS to clear itself from MS FUD.
It is not in Microsoft's best intrest to fully define the risks. It is in their best intrest to keep the FUD in place to discourage Open Source Software use due to fear.
I had to laugh... when I clicked to the article, the embedded ad was this ad that people were switching from linux to windows servers....
/home/user directory and returned system to owner with PCMCIA NIC. Cost for family friend, less than $20 for parts.
I had to laugh because today I just converted someone's laptop to Ubuntu. They brought it to me to fix. The network jack (flow soldered to motherboard) was broken, Windows 2000 was broken (missing ntoskrnl.exe) and they were on limited income looking at the possibility of needing to purchase another laptop for internet.
There was lots of information online regarding fixing the broken OS, but all the solutions had obsticles. Solution 1 was to use the install disk to replace the hosed file. Um what install disk. Strike 1. Solution 2 was make a boot floppy from another Windows PC with the same version. OK, I made the boot floppy and oops, no floppy drive in broken laptop. I don't have a USB floppy. Strike 2. Solution 3. Toss in a PCMCIA NIC and transfer the file over ethernet. Could not boot laptop.. Used Dapper Drake live CD.. Could not access the hard drive. Same with Edgy. Tried Fiesty. I got into the HD in read only. Being unable to write to the NTFS filesystem, solution 3 was Strike 3. Used Fiesty to back-up the user directories to a NAS box. Removed the internal NIC/Modem (remember broken motherboard jacks), installed Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn, installed restricted codecs, Flash 9 , copied user files to
Ubuntu was installed with 2 accounts. 1 is the administrator account. I did not install flash 9 on this account to discourage the new owner from running that account. The user account is set up with all the toys for a rich user experiance. Passwords and instructions were provided for both accounts.
Microsoft lost one because Windows 2000 Professionial was impossible to repair on a budget in a limited time span with limited resources such as missing CD and no floppy drive, or easly found online CD bootable recovery tools.
There were 3 chances to recover that laptop. All 3 failed. The alternative was easy to find, install, backup, configure, and restore. And as most always, the entire system required no driver downloads. It was truly plug and play unlike older versions of Windows.
I always asked if I could play that version. They wisely decline.
If they were competent, they would know the system limitations. Set the volume at the max they would use for a modern CD without blowing the system, stick in the cannon fire and let it rip. The CD has a hard digital limit that won't be exceeded. Using a modern CD will set the rest of the system to survivable levels very quickly. Remember the CD can't go over digital peak 0. Everything recorded on any CD is recorded at or below that level.
Just remember that most of the music part is 30-40 DB below peak, so it will sound quite low. Unless the system can handle a big peak, resist the urge to turn up the music. If you do, you will clip the peak, generate harmonics from clipping and blow tweeters.
They probably decline playing it simply because it's a recording from the 1970's and very few people have a real copy. (I was born in the 1950's and I have an original of that recording.)