"Is this a mix of software and hardware? Are some DVD-ROM drives just un-regioned? Does it somehow rely on the software to participate?"
There are two schemes:
RPC-1 (the old one) - The drive itself physically has no region protection and relys on the software to check the region of the disc and act appropriately. Your average windows DVD playing software has these protections. This is very easy to bypass and usually involves some easily obtainable freeware program. Linux dvd players usually ignore regions to begin with, so an RPC1 drive + linux player = 100% region free. Judging from your comments, this is what you have.
RPC-2 (new age, ubuiquitous today) - The drive itself has region checking so first you have to bypass the hardware protection via firmware patch (often but not always available) and THEN bypass the software protection in whatever DVD playing software you use. So, an RPC-2 drive + correct firmware patch + linux player = 100% region free.
Even if you are using VideoLAN or Ogle for linux which ignore region control, your RPC-2 drive will shut you down unless its firmware is patched.
If you are buying a DVD drive for your PC, you might want to go look around for firmware patches and then make your purchase depending on what's available.
"Region codes are enforced both by the drive firmware and the player software. You'll still need a region-free DVD drive. They're hard to find, but still out there."
The linked site in the article is slashdotted, so I am going to assume that this is software for PC, as opposed to a firmware flash for home theatre DVD players.
You can just get an easily obtainable pioneer 106s slot-loading drive which can be found for less than $70CAD these days and plays damn-well near every type of CD/CD-R/CD-Rw/DVD/etc and is relatively quiet and then flash the firware with an anti-RPC firmware.
You can get hacked firmware for many, MANY PC dvd drives out there to make them region free or allow an infinite number of region change switches.
"no buts it's an acronym it might be better wirtten as L. O. L. thats is very different that letter to number replacement."
"LOL" is shorthand used for typing. To type L.O.L. you have to have to type 3 extra characters and alternate holding down and releasing the shift key to get upper case. It is way too much work. This interface between shorthand used in typing and the spoken and formal written word is the problem
I have actually said LOL out loud to my friends before. Then I literally kicked myself. Language is so habitual that you can't prevent youself from saying things like that unless you deliberately and methodically work it out of your system.
One of the most annoying ones to me is the incorrect use of the word 'so.'
Correct: "I'm so tired that I'm going to go to bed early."
Wrong: "Because I'm tired, I'm just so getting into bed early tonight." (Say it in a valley-girl kind of accent stretching out the 'soooo' and you'll get it.)
And I will b#tchslap the first person who responds saying that you can't start a sentence with the word 'because.' That's just a contrived rule (as opposed to a Law) that teachers apply to gradeschool kids because it's too easy to write a sentence fragment as opposed to a sentence when you start with 'because.'
31337-Speak may be a young-people only problem, but bad gammar in general can be found everywhere. I found the following in the regulations for a CS assignment, written by a CS Professor:
"...MUST be submitted from your user account at the university of (...) and must bare your user name supplied fromt the university..."
That had me stumped for quite a while until I figured out that he meant "bear" and not "bare."
" Riiiight...blame the Americans. Let's not blame the (typically Taiwanese) manufacturers of these shoddy drives. Remember: America Is Always Wrong."
Consider that the quality of hard drive manufacturing is a function of a pre-determined level of reliability. The corporation paying for the manufacture of the drives can pay more to get more reliable drives, but then might have trouble selling them in a market flooded with cheap drives. There is no way for the average person to touch, feel, or examine what you get when you pay more for a drive, so the HDD companies simply request lower quality drives at lower costs so they don't go out of business.
The manufacturers in Taiwan are not to blame. They make crappy hard drives if they are paid to make crappy hard drives. That is all.
"You can also use round cables. You can find these for sale at many sites, but the cheapest place I've found by far is Harbourtown Sales [yahoo.net]."
I agree that those tubes work really well... my father had a bunch of them in his oldschool SCSI supertower machine and they really tidied things up, but I haven't been able to find any for good prices within Canada these days. (It unfortunately costs insane duty + tax + fees to import from the USA.)
"WTF computer CPUs have fans that blow directly *down* on the heat sink is beyond me. "
Down? If you look at manufacturer recommendations in HS installation instructions, the FAN blows out away from the heatsink, drawing air over it. It does not blow down onto the unit. If you look around, you can find some experiments with different positionings and strangely it's often found that in the real world, having the fan blow down onto the HS gives better cooling than having it blow up!?!
I agree that the clips are easier, but I prefer the 4-bolts method because it's much more secure (no socket breakage, or it saves your board if you already broke the socket) and it's much harder to crack your CPU core.
But yes, I had to start the installation of my 8045 on one day and continue it the next so it does take a while and plenty of steady hands and expertise.
The old artic silver (i and ii) were conductive but as3 is not conductive. It is only slightly capacitive but still should be kept away from circuits. I have never had a problem though because I am careful when applying it.
Sadly, North American culture (and I can say this because I am from that continent) is beyond exceedingly wasteful (not just in relation to computers) in ways that most people don't even notice. It's hard to see the real picture when you're a part of it. I am guilty of it too, but I'm a little more sensitive to it than most folks because my parents are immigrants who grew up in a very different culture where you didn't throw out the mango peels because you can boil them to make a tasty drink.
HDD's using current technology that are $64 are simply not a sustainable way of operating in general and it is worth it now to pay more for better hard drives that will last a long time. Fortunately, there will always be a high-reliability segment of the market for servers. I have never thrown out a HDD. I even had a clock that was formerly a 40 MB drive on my shelf. I sell the ancient 100 MB scsi drives from 10+ years which all still work to collectors. Too bad most current drives will crap out by then.
"The first time around is kinda tough... but if you've done it once, you can do it again easy enough. Just have to make sure to RTFM for the mobo to set your clockspeed correctly and make sure any jumpers are where they go."
A very good point indeed. Always RTFM.
Here are some more points for would-be computer-builders.
- You need a thermal interface compound between the heatsink and CPU. Don't just assume you can get by without one. Some heatsinks come with wax on the bottom which is slightly better then nothing. But it you want to step up a notch, get yourself a Thermaltake or Thermalright as opposed to the silly "Cooler-Master" HS that came with your machine and some Artic Silver 3 thermal compound. If you want to go hardcore, get an Alpha 8045 HS for Athlons or a Thermalright SLK-600/800 for P4's plus AS3.
[I fully expect 1-2 followup posts from people who cooked their CPUs by not using a thermal interface compound.]
- Don't put one hard drive right on top of the other in 3.5" mounting slots. They generate too much heat unless you've got a fan right on top of them.
- Always set the master/slave jumpers of CD/DVD and HDD drives BEFORE you install the drive because it is hard to access/see the jumpers when the drive is mounted in the machine. Make sure you plug in CD-Audio cables before the drive is mounted.
- Don't immediately install the motherboard into the case. It is often easier to install the CPU + heatsink, plug in the HSF (heatsink fan power cable) plus set any jumpers and check for any cable orientations BEFORE you install the mobo. (The necessary connections may be behind the power supply after the mobo is installed.
- Remember that in some cases, you have to flip the orientation of the data cable for the a-drive floppy and use the IDE cable that has the twisted wire in it. (You'll know it when you see it.)
- Bundle up the wires in twist-ties and keep them out of the way so that they don't vibrate in the breeze from fans. It only takes a small touch to disrupt an HDD power cable. Some, but not all, also say that this will improve airflow. It will definitely make your case look tidier and make later work inside it more easy.
- The first time you turn the box on, be looking at the heat sink fan and make sure it starts spinning, otherwise your CPU may come to a quick death. If it spins, immediately enter the BIOS and check the temperatures and make sure they are not insane.
- Don't close the case when you're done setting up the system. This is because you probably forgot to do something and it's annoying to have to remove the screws again.
"The guy downloading it for free probably wouldn't buy it in the first place, much less go to a concert."
Of course. But I think a better point is that someone in the industry is realising that the real money maker will NOT be CDs in the coming years. They are starting to cultivate the market for concerts instead. This priority ticket purchasing with CDs would probably cause people who would never have considered going to concerts to buy concert tickets.
And live concerts, I do believe, will be the real money makers in the future as opposed to CD sales.
THANK YOU Bon Jovi et al for rewarding purchases of the CD with real perks, as opposed to assuming the purchase is a copyright infringement waiting to happen.
"I can't wait until someone creates a cell-VoIP-phone virus that scrambles your sentences into vulgarities and profanities whenever you try to call your mom."
This reminds me of a dorm room joke. If you want to spook your dorm-roommate-buddy, then do the following:
Just before the person is about to enter the room, pick up the phone and pretend to be having a terrible argument. You scream obscenities into the phone and slam the receiver down. Then, you look at your astonished room mate and say, "That was your mom, she said she'd call back."
"They ALWAYS call me if there is any "suspicious activity" on my card.
There have been times when I used my card 5 times in a single day, and of course the call me to make sure its all legitimate. I guess I don't know if all credit card companies extend such benefits to the customers, but my cards always have (Platinum, gold, and even those crappy ones you get in college when all you really wanted was a candy bar.)"
I don't know either, but my Canadian student visa card from my bank with a relatively low spending limit gets this protection. Just about 3 weeks ago I got a call from the bank telling me they had cancelled my card due to suspicious activity (passed through an unauthorised scanner) and were sending me a new one. They went through the last few charges on the phone with me and everything seemed in order.
Strangely enough, a few weeks earlier the same thing happenned to my dad with his card provided from the same bank.
But still, it was good for piece of mind, and for knowing that the number for the card I had use in many (SSL secured) online transactions was now useless to any potential fraudsters.
I don't want to give out who my credit card issuer in a public forum but e-mail me if you are interested in getting such a thing for yourself and I will tell you which bank it is.
"4) Lazy users, content to just use what's already there, abandon using AIM in droves because hey, they don't have to download MSNM."
This is part of the reason that, for years, MSFT allowed rampant pairacy the Office suite. It was not about mindshare. For every copy of Office out there, the value of the copy of Office that some business legally bought off the shelf becomes more valuable because there are more people whom they can interchange documents with. This means that it is more likely that the next person will buy a copy of Office. This is why fax machines were originally sold in pairs.
Now AOL has had a history of cutting Trillian off from AIM while MSN gives the facade of playing nice. If MSN helps trillian keep current, then they are increasing the value of the MSN messenger client, thus indirectly hurting AIM. Therefore MSFT is using AOL's moves to isolate AIM as the tools for their (AOL's) own demise. Nice.
"For the sake of the storyline we're supposed to accept the fact that Geordi LaForge and Data are *extremely smart*... Same goes for Spock on the Original Series. Other stories where the climax was resolved a different way, like through a violent confrontation it was usually Riker and Worf (or Kirk) who kicked ass and took names. When it was a tactical battle, it was Picard (or Kirk) who used his superior strategy to save the day. When it was a medical crisis, you could count on Pulaski or Crusher to handle it. (Or Bones..)"
Or when the writers realise that the problem is totally unsolvable and really screwy to begin with, they just make some sh*t up, usually involving Wesley saving the say.
"It was attacked by young radical Islamic fundamentalist men. Does it suprise you that greater attention is paid to people fit this description? Or would you prefer we waste every last resource frisking old ladies from Alberta just so it does not make you feel *uncomfortable*. Oh the discrimination!"
Part of my point is that it was like this before 9/11 as well. The discrimination was not generated by the terrorist attacks, only amplified.
"FYI, Virginia has some of the harshest anti-car laws on the books and happens to be so anal that radar detectors are illegal there."
Anal? Don't bring your radar detector to Canada... they are illegal in all parts of the country. People in my family have gotten stopped multiple times by cops because we have an air ionizer device that looks a lot like a radar detector. And here's another: those anti-photo-radar plates for your license plate are illegal. (You can sell them but you can't use them.) And they do have tint-level laws in some areas where the cops have devices to quantatatively measure your tint.
On the upside, it is supposely still legal to run a red light in Canada if you are carrying mail for the Queen. (Maybe I should write a letter to the Queen and keep it in the glove box...)
I have been to VA (before 9/11) but the cops did not hassle us in our tinted Mazda Mini-Van.
"If someone has a turban and he is in America, he is NOT Islamic. There is no possible way. Muslims do not wear turbans out of their home country. I'm willing to bet that the man you are talking about is a Sikh."
I am somewhat familiar with the Sikh faith. There have been some problems in Canada regarding the ceremonial daggers and no-weapons laws. A polititan here got in trouble for making anti-Sikh remarks some months ago.
And I do believe the guy I was talking about was born in Canada so, as you say, it does not make sense that he is Moslem. I do not know him personally, but I believe you are right about the turban/country issue.
Thank you for clearing that up. +1 informative to you.
"I'm sick of people saying "Oh, it doesn't bother me because it makes me feel safer." It DOES bother me, and NO, it DOESN'T make me feel safer. If someone wanted to get across the border with explosives or something, they're gonna do it and these stupid spot checks aren't prevent it."
It is so annoying at the borders. Going to the US with my father driving can be trying because he has one of those huge islamic-reminiscent beards (although he's not islamic) and the US border people always root through the car, look in all your containers, make a mess of everything, and don't put anything back where it was. Rude asholes. Do unto others as you would have done unto you. (If you're not white or with white people, you generally experience great discrimination at the US border crossing over from Canada. Sad but true. It's happenned to my family on numerous occasions, before and after 9/11.)
On a similar note, a friend of a friend was driving from (Alberta) Canada to the Utah early this year to attend the Salt Lake City Olympics (as a spectator) and one of the guys he was going with was Islamic and wore a turban. They got across the border without too much trouble but on the interstate, there was a period of about 15 minutes where there was a state trooper car front of them, another behind them, and one on the side, totally boxing them in. The troopers backed off eventually, but still, it is unnerving and (both this the first story are) proof that just the way you look can bring about great discrimination from fearful people.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there a way to flash the firmware on Linux?"
Usually the flash programs are for DOS so I suggest you look into getting FreeDOS or downloading a win98 bootdisk from www.bootdisk.com.
There are two schemes:
RPC-1 (the old one) - The drive itself physically has no region protection and relys on the software to check the region of the disc and act appropriately. Your average windows DVD playing software has these protections. This is very easy to bypass and usually involves some easily obtainable freeware program. Linux dvd players usually ignore regions to begin with, so an RPC1 drive + linux player = 100% region free. Judging from your comments, this is what you have.
RPC-2 (new age, ubuiquitous today) - The drive itself has region checking so first you have to bypass the hardware protection via firmware patch (often but not always available) and THEN bypass the software protection in whatever DVD playing software you use. So, an RPC-2 drive + correct firmware patch + linux player = 100% region free.
Even if you are using VideoLAN or Ogle for linux which ignore region control, your RPC-2 drive will shut you down unless its firmware is patched.
If you are buying a DVD drive for your PC, you might want to go look around for firmware patches and then make your purchase depending on what's available.
The linked site in the article is slashdotted, so I am going to assume that this is software for PC, as opposed to a firmware flash for home theatre DVD players.
You can just get an easily obtainable pioneer 106s slot-loading drive which can be found for less than $70CAD these days and plays damn-well near every type of CD/CD-R/CD-Rw/DVD/etc and is relatively quiet and then flash the firware with an anti-RPC firmware.
You can get hacked firmware for many, MANY PC dvd drives out there to make them region free or allow an infinite number of region change switches.
"LOL" is shorthand used for typing. To type L.O.L. you have to have to type 3 extra characters and alternate holding down and releasing the shift key to get upper case. It is way too much work. This interface between shorthand used in typing and the spoken and formal written word is the problem
I have actually said LOL out loud to my friends before. Then I literally kicked myself. Language is so habitual that you can't prevent youself from saying things like that unless you deliberately and methodically work it out of your system.
One of the most annoying ones to me is the incorrect use of the word 'so.'
Correct: "I'm so tired that I'm going to go to bed early."
Wrong: "Because I'm tired, I'm just so getting into bed early tonight." (Say it in a valley-girl kind of accent stretching out the 'soooo' and you'll get it.)
And I will b#tchslap the first person who responds saying that you can't start a sentence with the word 'because.' That's just a contrived rule (as opposed to a Law) that teachers apply to gradeschool kids because it's too easy to write a sentence fragment as opposed to a sentence when you start with 'because.'
"...MUST be submitted from your user account at the university of (...) and must bare your user name supplied fromt the university..."
That had me stumped for quite a while until I figured out that he meant "bear" and not "bare."
Consider that the quality of hard drive manufacturing is a function of a pre-determined level of reliability. The corporation paying for the manufacture of the drives can pay more to get more reliable drives, but then might have trouble selling them in a market flooded with cheap drives. There is no way for the average person to touch, feel, or examine what you get when you pay more for a drive, so the HDD companies simply request lower quality drives at lower costs so they don't go out of business.
The manufacturers in Taiwan are not to blame. They make crappy hard drives if they are paid to make crappy hard drives. That is all.
I agree that those tubes work really well ... my father had a bunch of them in his oldschool SCSI supertower machine and they really tidied things up, but I haven't been able to find any for good prices within Canada these days. (It unfortunately costs insane duty + tax + fees to import from the USA.)
Down? If you look at manufacturer recommendations in HS installation instructions, the FAN blows out away from the heatsink, drawing air over it. It does not blow down onto the unit. If you look around, you can find some experiments with different positionings and strangely it's often found that in the real world, having the fan blow down onto the HS gives better cooling than having it blow up!?!
So if you haven't seen it, someone else here probably has. So you don't want to read on if you want to avoid spoilers.
So essentially ... SPOILER ALERT(!!) for this whole story.
But yes, I had to start the installation of my 8045 on one day and continue it the next so it does take a while and plenty of steady hands and expertise.
The old artic silver (i and ii) were conductive but as3 is not conductive. It is only slightly capacitive but still should be kept away from circuits. I have never had a problem though because I am careful when applying it.
Tell that to the people in China who are drowning under our computer garbage.
Sadly, North American culture (and I can say this because I am from that continent) is beyond exceedingly wasteful (not just in relation to computers) in ways that most people don't even notice. It's hard to see the real picture when you're a part of it. I am guilty of it too, but I'm a little more sensitive to it than most folks because my parents are immigrants who grew up in a very different culture where you didn't throw out the mango peels because you can boil them to make a tasty drink.
HDD's using current technology that are $64 are simply not a sustainable way of operating in general and it is worth it now to pay more for better hard drives that will last a long time. Fortunately, there will always be a high-reliability segment of the market for servers. I have never thrown out a HDD. I even had a clock that was formerly a 40 MB drive on my shelf. I sell the ancient 100 MB scsi drives from 10+ years which all still work to collectors. Too bad most current drives will crap out by then.
A very good point indeed. Always RTFM.
Here are some more points for would-be computer-builders.
- You need a thermal interface compound between the heatsink and CPU. Don't just assume you can get by without one. Some heatsinks come with wax on the bottom which is slightly better then nothing. But it you want to step up a notch, get yourself a Thermaltake or Thermalright as opposed to the silly "Cooler-Master" HS that came with your machine and some Artic Silver 3 thermal compound. If you want to go hardcore, get an Alpha 8045 HS for Athlons or a Thermalright SLK-600/800 for P4's plus AS3.
[I fully expect 1-2 followup posts from people who cooked their CPUs by not using a thermal interface compound.]
- Don't put one hard drive right on top of the other in 3.5" mounting slots. They generate too much heat unless you've got a fan right on top of them.
- Always set the master/slave jumpers of CD/DVD and HDD drives BEFORE you install the drive because it is hard to access/see the jumpers when the drive is mounted in the machine. Make sure you plug in CD-Audio cables before the drive is mounted.
- Don't immediately install the motherboard into the case. It is often easier to install the CPU + heatsink, plug in the HSF (heatsink fan power cable) plus set any jumpers and check for any cable orientations BEFORE you install the mobo. (The necessary connections may be behind the power supply after the mobo is installed.
- Remember that in some cases, you have to flip the orientation of the data cable for the a-drive floppy and use the IDE cable that has the twisted wire in it. (You'll know it when you see it.)
- Bundle up the wires in twist-ties and keep them out of the way so that they don't vibrate in the breeze from fans. It only takes a small touch to disrupt an HDD power cable. Some, but not all, also say that this will improve airflow. It will definitely make your case look tidier and make later work inside it more easy.
- The first time you turn the box on, be looking at the heat sink fan and make sure it starts spinning, otherwise your CPU may come to a quick death. If it spins, immediately enter the BIOS and check the temperatures and make sure they are not insane.
- Don't close the case when you're done setting up the system. This is because you probably forgot to do something and it's annoying to have to remove the screws again.
Of course. But I think a better point is that someone in the industry is realising that the real money maker will NOT be CDs in the coming years. They are starting to cultivate the market for concerts instead. This priority ticket purchasing with CDs would probably cause people who would never have considered going to concerts to buy concert tickets.
And live concerts, I do believe, will be the real money makers in the future as opposed to CD sales.
THANK YOU Bon Jovi et al for rewarding purchases of the CD with real perks, as opposed to assuming the purchase is a copyright infringement waiting to happen.
Yeah, but is [value of $30 shareware]/[$30] > [value of photoshop]/[price of photoshop] ?
This reminds me of a dorm room joke. If you want to spook your dorm-roommate-buddy, then do the following:
Just before the person is about to enter the room, pick up the phone and pretend to be having a terrible argument. You scream obscenities into the phone and slam the receiver down. Then, you look at your astonished room mate and say, "That was your mom, she said she'd call back."
There have been times when I used my card 5 times in a single day, and of course the call me to make sure its all legitimate. I guess I don't know if all credit card companies extend such benefits to the customers, but my cards always have (Platinum, gold, and even those crappy ones you get in college when all you really wanted was a candy bar.)"
I don't know either, but my Canadian student visa card from my bank with a relatively low spending limit gets this protection. Just about 3 weeks ago I got a call from the bank telling me they had cancelled my card due to suspicious activity (passed through an unauthorised scanner) and were sending me a new one. They went through the last few charges on the phone with me and everything seemed in order.
Strangely enough, a few weeks earlier the same thing happenned to my dad with his card provided from the same bank.
But still, it was good for piece of mind, and for knowing that the number for the card I had use in many (SSL secured) online transactions was now useless to any potential fraudsters.
I don't want to give out who my credit card issuer in a public forum but e-mail me if you are interested in getting such a thing for yourself and I will tell you which bank it is.
This is part of the reason that, for years, MSFT allowed rampant pairacy the Office suite. It was not about mindshare. For every copy of Office out there, the value of the copy of Office that some business legally bought off the shelf becomes more valuable because there are more people whom they can interchange documents with. This means that it is more likely that the next person will buy a copy of Office. This is why fax machines were originally sold in pairs.
Now AOL has had a history of cutting Trillian off from AIM while MSN gives the facade of playing nice. If MSN helps trillian keep current, then they are increasing the value of the MSN messenger client, thus indirectly hurting AIM. Therefore MSFT is using AOL's moves to isolate AIM as the tools for their (AOL's) own demise. Nice.
Or when the writers realise that the problem is totally unsolvable and really screwy to begin with, they just make some sh*t up, usually involving Wesley saving the say.
Part of my point is that it was like this before 9/11 as well. The discrimination was not generated by the terrorist attacks, only amplified.
Anal? Don't bring your radar detector to Canada ... they are illegal in all parts of the country. People in my family have gotten stopped multiple times by cops because we have an air ionizer device that looks a lot like a radar detector. And here's another: those anti-photo-radar plates for your license plate are illegal. (You can sell them but you can't use them.) And they do have tint-level laws in some areas where the cops have devices to quantatatively measure your tint.
On the upside, it is supposely still legal to run a red light in Canada if you are carrying mail for the Queen. (Maybe I should write a letter to the Queen and keep it in the glove box ...)
I have been to VA (before 9/11) but the cops did not hassle us in our tinted Mazda Mini-Van.
I am somewhat familiar with the Sikh faith. There have been some problems in Canada regarding the ceremonial daggers and no-weapons laws. A polititan here got in trouble for making anti-Sikh remarks some months ago.
And I do believe the guy I was talking about was born in Canada so, as you say, it does not make sense that he is Moslem. I do not know him personally, but I believe you are right about the turban/country issue.
Thank you for clearing that up. +1 informative to you.
True. But we're so used to it that we don't usually consider it to be something debatable or out of the ordinary anymore.
It is so annoying at the borders. Going to the US with my father driving can be trying because he has one of those huge islamic-reminiscent beards (although he's not islamic) and the US border people always root through the car, look in all your containers, make a mess of everything, and don't put anything back where it was. Rude asholes. Do unto others as you would have done unto you. (If you're not white or with white people, you generally experience great discrimination at the US border crossing over from Canada. Sad but true. It's happenned to my family on numerous occasions, before and after 9/11.)
On a similar note, a friend of a friend was driving from (Alberta) Canada to the Utah early this year to attend the Salt Lake City Olympics (as a spectator) and one of the guys he was going with was Islamic and wore a turban. They got across the border without too much trouble but on the interstate, there was a period of about 15 minutes where there was a state trooper car front of them, another behind them, and one on the side, totally boxing them in. The troopers backed off eventually, but still, it is unnerving and (both this the first story are) proof that just the way you look can bring about great discrimination from fearful people.