Ugh! Jeez...with everything they do with spirit operating at a snail's pace ("We intend to move the spirit rover 1 cm tomorrow!"), it would be nice to see spirit programmed to BURN OFF the overcharge with some fast, sand-ripping driving. Put the peddle down and actually have it move a whole meter in a day!
Note to NASA: next time put bigger tires on it and give it balls. Base your design on a dune buggy and actually cover some distance in our lifetimes!
If any individual person (one of us, the slashdot reader, for instance) did something like this, we would be under investigation or arrest rather quickly. This is referred to in the media as "hacking". It doesn't matter one whit whether or not the victim was "wide open" or not. NOT have unbreakable defenses up on your computer does not make it A-OK for anyone to waltz on in and do whatever. It is considered a crime and many "hackers" have been prosecuted for this.
The Republicans are getting away with it. It is OK for them to do this but any human being (they aren't human) does the same thing and they're looking at jailtime.
Bullcrap! Say I. Equal enforcement of the law. Hacking into computers you do no own is considered a crime and it should be handled as such. It is obvious that Senator Hatch, hypocrit of all hypocrits, belongs in jail. His pukes did it (he probably thought it was cute and funny). How about I do it to his personal systems? Still funny? Still OK?
Ugh. As I am interested in doing some online gaming (never really having done it, just experimented via my dialup with limited success), satellite is a nonplayer. The REAL clincher, though, is the price. We pay ~$40/month for DirectTV satellite. For an internet connection to, we would have to ADD $70/month. So, pay ~$110/month for the whole ball when the satellite programing is rather weak to start with...
Not a chance. I'll wait (as long as it takes) for an airship-based broadband connection to be available before I cough up for crappy satellite (no cable available in this rural burb). Alternatively, I am hoping that a new housing development half a dozen miles away will include someone using wlan in their house...so I can piggy-back off their cable internet connection. I have the parabolic antenna just waiting for a target to come within range.
OK, having read the article, I was too simplistic, but not enough to change the argument. The airship operates at ~12 miles and covers a 40 mile circle. If it has a ground station directly below it (roughly speaking), then if you are on the edge of that 40 mile coverage, the max range your wireless signal would need to traverse is ~42 miles each way. So a two-way comm would traverse ~84 miles. This is still MUCH less than the ~112,000 mile range a two-way comm signal must traverse via satellite internet (28,000 mile high geostationary orbit, 56,000+ mile signal range up and down, then the return signal).
It wont be the same. There will be a latency but it wont be anything close to that with satellite internet. Think about it. They are talking balloons at, what, and altitude of 10 miles or so? (I haven't yet read the article but for this I don't need to). Your DirectPC satellites are geosynchronous at worst...you're talking ~28,000 miles.
Let's see, speed of light traversing 20+/- miles (up and back down each way) and this being factored into latency, vs speed of light traversing 56,000+/- miles (up and back each way). See a HUGE difference there?
Lying on such a plate would probably be fairly ineffective as the stresses would not be in the right places.
Depends on what you mean by "ineffective" and "not in the right places". Lying face-down on a properly designed vibrating bed could be...quite pleasantly stimulating; effectively acting on just the right place. If you are male, of course. If female, sitting just so on the bed should have a similar effect.
Uh...the Prime Directive is star trek nonsense. It doesn't exist. There is no Prime Directive and there shouldn't be (at least as used in Star Trek - it is FAR too restrictive).
If life was found on Mars (or any other planet/moon) then it should receive the utmost protection. This protection should NOT, however, prevent our ability to study it, in person if that is the best method. Nay, simply go the greatest extremes possible to protect the life from harm while still permitting human study of that life. If it later turns out that humans and their bacteriological and fungal fauna are not a threat to these organisms, then there should be only the most minimal protections possible used to protect the continued existence of these organisms. They are NEVER going to evolve into intelligent creatures. There are some minimal requirements for this that Mars simply doesn't fulfill. They would be stuck in their single-celled/simple multi-celled state until the Sun burns out...unless we terraform Mars and they are capable of adapting to that terraforming and we don't fill all available niches with earth organisms first.
The idea IS repugnant because it takes away an individual's choice in the matter (the extra kid's). Plus, it assumes that the kid will grow up to be useful for such an endeavor.
The idea is a non-starter. It ain't gonna happen (get that out of the way right off the top). You know it. I know it. That said, I would not have as much a problem with it if it were ENTIRELY voluntary, with the volunteers given no false information about safety, chances, etc.
I must say that I would question the humanity of such volunteers. I would question their motives (real motives, not professed). I would question their sanity. I would question their intent ("Hah! Once I get established on Mars I will declare it MINE and declare independence and setup a whacko libertarian nightmare world of do whatever the hell you want with impunity, including wiping out any indigenous lifeforms living in thermal vents in the name of property rights!")
Screen out the whackos and you are left with (still questionable) volunteers. That would be only sorta OK. The aforementioned process for Chinese victims denies choice from birth. Not acceptable.
Worried about anonymity? Certificates can be issued that authenticate an email address without full disclosure of the owner of that address (but this may not be satisfactory for stopping abuses). Anonymity and stopping SPAM may, unfortunately, be mutually exclusive goals....
One word: whistleblower.
Unless any such scheme have in it an ability (perhaps default) to, as you say, strip out anything that can specifically tie an email to a specific individual, then it sucks.
Forget encryption. All a company or government office/agency need do is decide that any encrypted emails are suspicious and likely indicative of a leak, and the sender/receiver a likely risk that needs investigation (or firing).
Come up with a scheme and frickin implement it that goes a long ways towards shutting down spam but at the same time protects (or better, furthers) the ability to be email-anonymous. This would protect the GOOD GUYS (ie, whistleblowers and Deep Throats in the "internet age"). Just make sure the system does not require a money-making organization (Verisign or M$ or the like) to act as an agent in the mix. I could go with micropayments for emails in order to kill spam off.
Just DO IT already and switch to IPv6. Everyone who has a net connection gets an IP address that is theirs. They send spam, it is identifiable as being from Joe Blow's IP address. Go have a talk with Joe Blow, perhaps with a baseball bat (to emphasize certain talking points, you understand).
Yes, of course..."environmental whackos". Want clean water? You WHACKO! Want your kids to grow up without birth defects or tumors? Freak! You LOON! Want to actually see and hear birds, have fish in streams, breathable air? What the HELL'S the matter with you, nutjob!
Terms need to be defined. What does "almost no radiation" mean? What about accidents?
I am not against nuk-u-lar engines on spacecraft. Just don't use them in the atmosphere. If you use them, use them in space where they belong.
Sheesh. That doesn't make one a "whacko". That makes one intelligent, thoughtful, considerate, and a freakin' good steward for a planet that no one owns or has total dominion over. You don't need nuk-u-lar rockets to get into orbit. You need them to get anywhere at any moderately great distance in any reasonable amount of time.
Until there is actual software available to install on system. idSoftware could have started making "preorders" available a year ago for all that means. It would be no less vaporware.
When the game actually exists for purchase. When it is available to reviewers for, well, actually reviewing (instead of simply looking at nifty video clips from in-house), THEN it wont be vaporware.
The fact of the matter is, it is STILL vaporware, just as much as it was last year or the year before. Preorder or not.
For Joe Blow email, hiding the fact that your are sending encrypted information isn't a problem. So what if someone detects that your messages are encrypted (you can tell an OpenPGP/PGP-encrypted message a mile away). The problem comes when the person sending such messages is doing so from within a business or organization. Said business or organization may take that to mean you are automatically doing something wrong rather than simply sending a personal, private message to a lover or some such. Or what if you are a whistleblower? A Good Guy/Gal, Hero? They can't see exactly what you are sending, just that you are hiding something. You get fired or placed under supersecret observation, etc.
If you can hide the fact that you are hiding information in the messages you send, then you are golden. They wont suspect you or take punitive actions against you on suspicion. You get to do your Hero Whistleblower work without detection. In order to try to shut down bad guys (spies seeking to do harm), they will automatically be shutting down Good Guys/Gals who are doing their DUTY and whistleblowing on bad doo-doo.
In short, it CAN matter a lot whether or not your encoded messages are detectable as being encoded.
OK, enough's enough. NO hotel offers free wireless. NONE. They cannot. What they are doing is an economic trick. They are paying for a connection to the internet backbone (perhaps leasing a full T1). They have sprung for APs and any other infrastructure. They are not just saying "it's all good, no problem with the money spent", and giving a free connection to patrons. What they are doing is rolling the cost into the cost of a room. You ARE paying for it, just not as a direct "WiFi Fee".
When you paid for your room, it included the overhead costs, with wifi and internet access simply folded into that. Since APs are cheap-assed (relatively speaking), then perhaps they don't pass on the cost of that and simply claim(ed) the costs in their tax filings. But the T1 line...it is NOT free and they are NOT giving it to you gratis. Somewhere, hidden, you and every other patron of that hotel are paying the expense associated with that internet connection.
People need to be accurate. There is NO such thing as free internet. Just people who are either being charitable with their money (which is fine - they ARE paying ISP costs) or they are passing the cost along by folding it into the selling price of some thing or service.
The problem with this is the same as the problem with gnutella network and the like. The problem (addressed by game theory, by the way) is that you get a huge number of cheats. Those who take, take, take, but give nothing. In gnutella, that is the overwhelmingly huge number of individuals who ONLY download but provide nothing.
Without some form of regulation, there is no way to prevent the cheats from being a large fraction of the users (being crackers, spammers, filesharing/music swapping bandwidth hogs evading RIAA, child-porn downloaders and pedophiles, and plain old "me, me, me" selfish bastards). As long as a small number of people are willing to pay ISP charges so that everyone else can use their non-free connection for free, you can get by on a bandwidth basis. Oh yes, you also need an ISP that has no heartburn with your sharing.
But...YOU are paying for your connection. You are sharing your connection because you can AFFORD to. You are also sharing your connection ONLY because, thus far, no one has taken advantage of it to do something illegal (child porn, cracking, "illegal" music downloading bigtime).
There IS no free internet anywhere. YOU are paying for it, you are merely being generous with your money (giving it to your neighbors, in effect). That's cool as you can obviously afford it. You are hosed when the feds or RIAA comes after you (or your ISP).
It is NOT a business plan to give away free internet if there is no income stream somewhere. The hardware doesn't make itself, it costs money. The actual connection via an ISP is not free EVER. It costs. I cannot see ANY business doing this (just charities like yourself) UNLESS there is an income stream to cover the costs (plus a profit...making it a business rather than a non-profit organization).
Not unrelated at all. This is direct punitive activity against those who had the temerity to actually speak out against a proposed Shrub-era government policy. This is par for the course. Shut down as much FOIA queries as possible. Classify everything. Say nothing (like, for instance, prevent government offices from telling veterans what full benefits are available to them). Hide protesters far away from any Presidential activity so as to make it appear, particularly in all news reports and images, that there are virtually no protests but only support. Par. For. The. Course. Close out public input into how government is run UNLESS said public input is in favor of current policy.
Totally relevant to the evil of punitively publishing private information about commenters (virtually all of them against the proposed government policy) in order to promot harrassment and intimidation.
I would think that the simplest and most hands-free way to do it would simply to have specified TEXT-ONLY emails and a minimal format (your comment followed by a separate address block if such was really needed). No html. Just ASCII. Then, all that is needed is a simple perl script to strip out everything except the body.
The criminals at the Treasury Dept would then only have to run a perl script on a large, concatenated list of emails and there you have it, the comments sans email addresses or home addresses.
Being Republicans, they prefer a closed government with LOTS of secrecy. Thus, they prefer to screw those citizens that have the audacity to criticize, or have any expectation of having actual input in how THEIR government is run.
What was needed to get it working? I have the mplayer plugin and all codecs installed but when I select something like npr hourly news (or any other link for that matter) instead of the inline mplayer plugin, I get the download/open dialog (KDE). If I select mplayer, it tries to open the stream/file but fails.
Are you specifically blocking realplayer communications or just a port? Before I even try Helixplayer, I will want to setup my system to block any and all attempts by the player to phone home. I don't have (and wont have) any other version of real to play with in experimentation and would greatly appreciate (as would many others I imagine) information as to how to shut down the spyware of Real/Helixplayer at the firewall/iptables level.
rule to prevent realplayer (or helix player) from phoning home and spying? How about a rule to prevent autoupdating/upgrading of the software? If I can use Helix player without being spied upon or without it automagically altering software (itself or any other, makes no difference...it is wrong) without my say-so, then I might try it. Otherwise, I'll skip by any Real streaming media and for all else keep using the best player on Earth: Mplayer.
Then read this one too. NO DRM. DRM is truly evil. Beyond that, I can live with having to provide personal information so you can presumably sell my email address - procmail, postfix, and spamassassin can cut out spam/junk mail very nicely so that even though you may sell my registration info, I wont see the junk that results.
What I cannot and will not abide is spyware. You have no right to know what I am viewing. You have no right to know when I view it. That is none of your business. It is likely not your place to try to prevent me from viewing anything I want, when I want. Your business is to provide a player, a mere tool for viewing video content. It is not your business to police or spy on the viewing habits of the user.
Finally, my computer belongs to me. Lock, stock, and barrel. What I do with it is for me to decide. What goes on it is for me to decide...no one else. Thus, you need to dump this idea of automatic updating with no warning and no input from the user. I install the software, thank you. I control it. I decide when/if to upgrade. Only I am equiped to know whether or not an upgrade is in my best interest or that some software wont screw up something else on my system.
Supply a decent player and that's it. No spyware, no content control, no secret fiddling with the software on MY system. Hands off.
And the phoning home by WMP prevents its use by me and many others as well, if/when we ever degrade ourselves by using M$ softare/OSes at all. To use that stuff is to give up your control of your own damn computer. It is to give a company total access to your hardware and much personal information. It is to have to get past a nanny to do whatever the hell you want with YOUR computer.
Sorry. Homey don't play that. NO phoning home without opt-in. No autoupdate without opt-in. Screw spyware and DRM. THAT doesn't play here.
Ya, I'll stick with mplayer for the same reason. Have you (or anyone else) managed to get mplayer to handle streaming real media crap (like that used at npr.org?
Slashdot Mirror
Ugh! Jeez...with everything they do with spirit operating at a snail's pace ("We intend to move the spirit rover 1 cm tomorrow!"), it would be nice to see spirit programmed to BURN OFF the overcharge with some fast, sand-ripping driving. Put the peddle down and actually have it move a whole meter in a day!
Note to NASA: next time put bigger tires on it and give it balls. Base your design on a dune buggy and actually cover some distance in our lifetimes!
Ah...then I recommend sending the following command: Ctrl-Alt-Del.
That should get things to right in a jiffy. OK, if it's using a PROPER os, then they should send: "shutdown -r now".
If any individual person (one of us, the slashdot reader, for instance) did something like this, we would be under investigation or arrest rather quickly. This is referred to in the media as "hacking". It doesn't matter one whit whether or not the victim was "wide open" or not. NOT have unbreakable defenses up on your computer does not make it A-OK for anyone to waltz on in and do whatever. It is considered a crime and many "hackers" have been prosecuted for this.
The Republicans are getting away with it. It is OK for them to do this but any human being (they aren't human) does the same thing and they're looking at jailtime.
Bullcrap! Say I. Equal enforcement of the law. Hacking into computers you do no own is considered a crime and it should be handled as such. It is obvious that Senator Hatch, hypocrit of all hypocrits, belongs in jail. His pukes did it (he probably thought it was cute and funny). How about I do it to his personal systems? Still funny? Still OK?
Ugh. As I am interested in doing some online gaming (never really having done it, just experimented via my dialup with limited success), satellite is a nonplayer. The REAL clincher, though, is the price. We pay ~$40/month for DirectTV satellite. For an internet connection to, we would have to ADD $70/month. So, pay ~$110/month for the whole ball when the satellite programing is rather weak to start with...
Not a chance. I'll wait (as long as it takes) for an airship-based broadband connection to be available before I cough up for crappy satellite (no cable available in this rural burb). Alternatively, I am hoping that a new housing development half a dozen miles away will include someone using wlan in their house...so I can piggy-back off their cable internet connection. I have the parabolic antenna just waiting for a target to come within range.
OK, having read the article, I was too simplistic, but not enough to change the argument. The airship operates at ~12 miles and covers a 40 mile circle. If it has a ground station directly below it (roughly speaking), then if you are on the edge of that 40 mile coverage, the max range your wireless signal would need to traverse is ~42 miles each way. So a two-way comm would traverse ~84 miles. This is still MUCH less than the ~112,000 mile range a two-way comm signal must traverse via satellite internet (28,000 mile high geostationary orbit, 56,000+ mile signal range up and down, then the return signal).
Still - no real latency issue.
hhIt wont be the same. There will be a latency but it wont be anything close to that with satellite internet. Think about it. They are talking balloons at, what, and altitude of 10 miles or so? (I haven't yet read the article but for this I don't need to). Your DirectPC satellites are geosynchronous at worst...you're talking ~28,000 miles.
Let's see, speed of light traversing 20+/- miles (up and back down each way) and this being factored into latency, vs speed of light traversing 56,000+/- miles (up and back each way). See a HUGE difference there?
The latency would be/will be a nonissue.
Lying on such a plate would probably be fairly ineffective as the stresses would not be in the right places.
Depends on what you mean by "ineffective" and "not in the right places". Lying face-down on a properly designed vibrating bed could be...quite pleasantly stimulating; effectively acting on just the right place. If you are male, of course. If female, sitting just so on the bed should have a similar effect.
Uh...the Prime Directive is star trek nonsense. It doesn't exist. There is no Prime Directive and there shouldn't be (at least as used in Star Trek - it is FAR too restrictive).
If life was found on Mars (or any other planet/moon) then it should receive the utmost protection. This protection should NOT, however, prevent our ability to study it, in person if that is the best method. Nay, simply go the greatest extremes possible to protect the life from harm while still permitting human study of that life. If it later turns out that humans and their bacteriological and fungal fauna are not a threat to these organisms, then there should be only the most minimal protections possible used to protect the continued existence of these organisms. They are NEVER going to evolve into intelligent creatures. There are some minimal requirements for this that Mars simply doesn't fulfill. They would be stuck in their single-celled/simple multi-celled state until the Sun burns out...unless we terraform Mars and they are capable of adapting to that terraforming and we don't fill all available niches with earth organisms first.
The idea IS repugnant because it takes away an individual's choice in the matter (the extra kid's). Plus, it assumes that the kid will grow up to be useful for such an endeavor.
The idea is a non-starter. It ain't gonna happen (get that out of the way right off the top). You know it. I know it. That said, I would not have as much a problem with it if it were ENTIRELY voluntary, with the volunteers given no false information about safety, chances, etc.
I must say that I would question the humanity of such volunteers. I would question their motives (real motives, not professed). I would question their sanity. I would question their intent ("Hah! Once I get established on Mars I will declare it MINE and declare independence and setup a whacko libertarian nightmare world of do whatever the hell you want with impunity, including wiping out any indigenous lifeforms living in thermal vents in the name of property rights!")
Screen out the whackos and you are left with (still questionable) volunteers. That would be only sorta OK. The aforementioned process for Chinese victims denies choice from birth. Not acceptable.
Worried about anonymity? Certificates can be issued that authenticate an email address without full disclosure of the owner of that address (but this may not be satisfactory for stopping abuses). Anonymity and stopping SPAM may, unfortunately, be mutually exclusive goals....
One word: whistleblower.
Unless any such scheme have in it an ability (perhaps default) to, as you say, strip out anything that can specifically tie an email to a specific individual, then it sucks.
Forget encryption. All a company or government office/agency need do is decide that any encrypted emails are suspicious and likely indicative of a leak, and the sender/receiver a likely risk that needs investigation (or firing).
Come up with a scheme and frickin implement it that goes a long ways towards shutting down spam but at the same time protects (or better, furthers) the ability to be email-anonymous. This would protect the GOOD GUYS (ie, whistleblowers and Deep Throats in the "internet age"). Just make sure the system does not require a money-making organization (Verisign or M$ or the like) to act as an agent in the mix. I could go with micropayments for emails in order to kill spam off.
Just DO IT already and switch to IPv6. Everyone who has a net connection gets an IP address that is theirs. They send spam, it is identifiable as being from Joe Blow's IP address. Go have a talk with Joe Blow, perhaps with a baseball bat (to emphasize certain talking points, you understand).
Yes, of course..."environmental whackos". Want clean water? You WHACKO! Want your kids to grow up without birth defects or tumors? Freak! You LOON! Want to actually see and hear birds, have fish in streams, breathable air? What the HELL'S the matter with you, nutjob!
Terms need to be defined. What does "almost no radiation" mean? What about accidents?
I am not against nuk-u-lar engines on spacecraft. Just don't use them in the atmosphere. If you use them, use them in space where they belong.
Sheesh. That doesn't make one a "whacko". That makes one intelligent, thoughtful, considerate, and a freakin' good steward for a planet that no one owns or has total dominion over. You don't need nuk-u-lar rockets to get into orbit. You need them to get anywhere at any moderately great distance in any reasonable amount of time.
Until there is actual software available to install on system. idSoftware could have started making "preorders" available a year ago for all that means. It would be no less vaporware.
When the game actually exists for purchase. When it is available to reviewers for, well, actually reviewing (instead of simply looking at nifty video clips from in-house), THEN it wont be vaporware.
The fact of the matter is, it is STILL vaporware, just as much as it was last year or the year before. Preorder or not.
For Joe Blow email, hiding the fact that your are sending encrypted information isn't a problem. So what if someone detects that your messages are encrypted (you can tell an OpenPGP/PGP-encrypted message a mile away). The problem comes when the person sending such messages is doing so from within a business or organization. Said business or organization may take that to mean you are automatically doing something wrong rather than simply sending a personal, private message to a lover or some such. Or what if you are a whistleblower? A Good Guy/Gal, Hero? They can't see exactly what you are sending, just that you are hiding something. You get fired or placed under supersecret observation, etc.
If you can hide the fact that you are hiding information in the messages you send, then you are golden. They wont suspect you or take punitive actions against you on suspicion. You get to do your Hero Whistleblower work without detection. In order to try to shut down bad guys (spies seeking to do harm), they will automatically be shutting down Good Guys/Gals who are doing their DUTY and whistleblowing on bad doo-doo.
In short, it CAN matter a lot whether or not your encoded messages are detectable as being encoded.
OK, enough's enough. NO hotel offers free wireless. NONE. They cannot. What they are doing is an economic trick. They are paying for a connection to the internet backbone (perhaps leasing a full T1). They have sprung for APs and any other infrastructure. They are not just saying "it's all good, no problem with the money spent", and giving a free connection to patrons. What they are doing is rolling the cost into the cost of a room. You ARE paying for it, just not as a direct "WiFi Fee".
When you paid for your room, it included the overhead costs, with wifi and internet access simply folded into that. Since APs are cheap-assed (relatively speaking), then perhaps they don't pass on the cost of that and simply claim(ed) the costs in their tax filings. But the T1 line...it is NOT free and they are NOT giving it to you gratis. Somewhere, hidden, you and every other patron of that hotel are paying the expense associated with that internet connection.
People need to be accurate. There is NO such thing as free internet. Just people who are either being charitable with their money (which is fine - they ARE paying ISP costs) or they are passing the cost along by folding it into the selling price of some thing or service.
The problem with this is the same as the problem with gnutella network and the like. The problem (addressed by game theory, by the way) is that you get a huge number of cheats. Those who take, take, take, but give nothing. In gnutella, that is the overwhelmingly huge number of individuals who ONLY download but provide nothing.
Without some form of regulation, there is no way to prevent the cheats from being a large fraction of the users (being crackers, spammers, filesharing/music swapping bandwidth hogs evading RIAA, child-porn downloaders and pedophiles, and plain old "me, me, me" selfish bastards). As long as a small number of people are willing to pay ISP charges so that everyone else can use their non-free connection for free, you can get by on a bandwidth basis. Oh yes, you also need an ISP that has no heartburn with your sharing.
But...YOU are paying for your connection. You are sharing your connection because you can AFFORD to. You are also sharing your connection ONLY because, thus far, no one has taken advantage of it to do something illegal (child porn, cracking, "illegal" music downloading bigtime).
There IS no free internet anywhere. YOU are paying for it, you are merely being generous with your money (giving it to your neighbors, in effect). That's cool as you can obviously afford it. You are hosed when the feds or RIAA comes after you (or your ISP).
It is NOT a business plan to give away free internet if there is no income stream somewhere. The hardware doesn't make itself, it costs money. The actual connection via an ISP is not free EVER. It costs. I cannot see ANY business doing this (just charities like yourself) UNLESS there is an income stream to cover the costs (plus a profit...making it a business rather than a non-profit organization).
Not unrelated at all. This is direct punitive activity against those who had the temerity to actually speak out against a proposed Shrub-era government policy. This is par for the course. Shut down as much FOIA queries as possible. Classify everything. Say nothing (like, for instance, prevent government offices from telling veterans what full benefits are available to them). Hide protesters far away from any Presidential activity so as to make it appear, particularly in all news reports and images, that there are virtually no protests but only support. Par. For. The. Course. Close out public input into how government is run UNLESS said public input is in favor of current policy.
Totally relevant to the evil of punitively publishing private information about commenters (virtually all of them against the proposed government policy) in order to promot harrassment and intimidation.
I would think that the simplest and most hands-free way to do it would simply to have specified TEXT-ONLY emails and a minimal format (your comment followed by a separate address block if such was really needed). No html. Just ASCII. Then, all that is needed is a simple perl script to strip out everything except the body.
The criminals at the Treasury Dept would then only have to run a perl script on a large, concatenated list of emails and there you have it, the comments sans email addresses or home addresses.
Being Republicans, they prefer a closed government with LOTS of secrecy. Thus, they prefer to screw those citizens that have the audacity to criticize, or have any expectation of having actual input in how THEIR government is run.
What was needed to get it working? I have the mplayer plugin and all codecs installed but when I select something like npr hourly news (or any other link for that matter) instead of the inline mplayer plugin, I get the download/open dialog (KDE). If I select mplayer, it tries to open the stream/file but fails.
How did you get mplayer to work with npr?
Are you specifically blocking realplayer communications or just a port? Before I even try Helixplayer, I will want to setup my system to block any and all attempts by the player to phone home. I don't have (and wont have) any other version of real to play with in experimentation and would greatly appreciate (as would many others I imagine) information as to how to shut down the spyware of Real/Helixplayer at the firewall/iptables level.
rule to prevent realplayer (or helix player) from phoning home and spying? How about a rule to prevent autoupdating/upgrading of the software? If I can use Helix player without being spied upon or without it automagically altering software (itself or any other, makes no difference...it is wrong) without my say-so, then I might try it. Otherwise, I'll skip by any Real streaming media and for all else keep using the best player on Earth: Mplayer.
Then read this one too. NO DRM. DRM is truly evil. Beyond that, I can live with having to provide personal information so you can presumably sell my email address - procmail, postfix, and spamassassin can cut out spam/junk mail very nicely so that even though you may sell my registration info, I wont see the junk that results.
What I cannot and will not abide is spyware. You have no right to know what I am viewing. You have no right to know when I view it. That is none of your business. It is likely not your place to try to prevent me from viewing anything I want, when I want. Your business is to provide a player, a mere tool for viewing video content. It is not your business to police or spy on the viewing habits of the user.
Finally, my computer belongs to me. Lock, stock, and barrel. What I do with it is for me to decide. What goes on it is for me to decide...no one else. Thus, you need to dump this idea of automatic updating with no warning and no input from the user. I install the software, thank you. I control it. I decide when/if to upgrade. Only I am equiped to know whether or not an upgrade is in my best interest or that some software wont screw up something else on my system.
Supply a decent player and that's it. No spyware, no content control, no secret fiddling with the software on MY system. Hands off.
And the phoning home by WMP prevents its use by me and many others as well, if/when we ever degrade ourselves by using M$ softare/OSes at all. To use that stuff is to give up your control of your own damn computer. It is to give a company total access to your hardware and much personal information. It is to have to get past a nanny to do whatever the hell you want with YOUR computer.
Sorry. Homey don't play that. NO phoning home without opt-in. No autoupdate without opt-in. Screw spyware and DRM. THAT doesn't play here.
Ya, I'll stick with mplayer for the same reason. Have you (or anyone else) managed to get mplayer to handle streaming real media crap (like that used at npr.org?