Sounds like fun, I was contemplating putting my wife's computer into Windows mode for her so it could also act as a DVR for some video, but better not I think:)
Ditto here, I am in Canada and our local FMs are obligated to play 35% Canadian Content, which on the classic rock stations amounts to an ungodly amount of Tragically Hip, Kim Mitchel and other Canadian "talent" that would never have ever been played on radio if it weren't for government mandated quotas.
So, a few months back I went Sirius, I'd heard a lot of their music channels already via Dish Network and loved them. Since I got the service I have not heard Tragically Hip once, whereas whenever I'd go out to town in the car I'd hear them within 10-15 minutes on the OTA FM services.
I pretty much have my Sirius receiver running full time here, I don't watch much TV or anything and was also looking for some music for my home office, Sirius works perfectly. The bonus is I can also listen to it in other areas of the house since the FM transmitter is so powerful. Nothing like cranking it up on a couple of amps around the house:)
Loads and loads of great music, especially if you are into rock. Right now I've got The Vault playing in the background. I switch between that, Classic Vinyl, Classic Rewind, Octane, Buzzsaw, etc. and I am very happy with the selection available. Sure some channels can be a bit repetitive at times, but if you get sick of hearing that same song again just switch channels. I find I listen to different stuff depending on the mood.
About once a month I might listen to Howard.
I tried XM online for a month before settling on Sirius, XM just plays too much obscure stuff on their rock channels, they also lean much more towards alternative rock on the channels and I couldn't stand the channel naming, Fred? Ethel? Lucy? WTF?
Here is a great Sirius resource... www.dogstarradio.com
Re:Yep...and...
on
USB Batteries
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
How about a cell phone that has MP3 support with a camera?
I have a couple of clients forwarding their incoming email to their GoDaddy hosted domains, because of them doing this our server constantly gets listed in their "Attacking Hosts" blacklist. I've finally given up dealing with GoDaddy after at least 6 attempts to get it lifted, having it lifted and then being right back on in a couple of days. Now I just recommend the clients not use GoDaddy to forward email to as I cannot guarantee email arrives there and won't waste my resources continually asking GoDaddy to lift the block.
Only so much I can do when a client prefers to forward all their mail off my servers to outside hosts, forwarding all their mail means everything, spam and all. We filter as much spam as we can but we can't stop it all.
Add to that, most of the time for any major changes to your accounts they want you to go in person to the branch to do so, that is basic security, otherwise anyone could call up with the "relevant" information and do all sorts of nasty social engineering.
I've had accounts with HSBC for years, our mortgage is through them, the accounts are spread over two branches and you have to go to the relevant branch to make changes. They have always been fair and provided good service, once a month I have to go in-branch to deposit Adsense cheques and do so with just my bank card, I don't even know where the passbook is, but they have no problem depositing if all I have is the card.
It should also be noted that all customers have a dedicated account rep they can call.
Since when did nudity become pornography by default?
Violence can, and does, ruin some lives. In fact in many cases it can END life.
People having sex CREATES life in many cases. There is plenty of healthy pornography out there which is basically two (or more) CONSENTING adults having sex on camera.
Of course there is some shady stuff out there, but that applies to countless subjects, even your violence can be deemed harmful even if it is not real, and what about the market for snuff films, etc.?
I had a run in with my ISPs wholesalers over DNS, I always enter my own servers into my machines that I want to use, this way I can test things, make sure things work as expected, etc.
One evening I suddenly couldn't get anywhere, no DNS lookups were working on my network, hmm, do a quick SSH out to one of my servers and yes DNS is working just fine there. Hmm, turns out these fools were hijacking port 53 and just sending them to their own DNS servers.
So from then on I just tunneled everything over SSH, problem solved for me. My ISP has since switched wholesalers to much more ethical bunch.
Actually, after I posted I thought about that difference, in Canada most small towns/cities have RCMP or provincial police forces rather than town run police. Larger centers usually have their own police but the RCMP still plays a roll as well.
It is quite scary when you see villages having their own cops though, I mean it does increase the potential for abuse, especially if it can be seen as a form of revenue for the village, look out driving through town if you ain't a local:)
Well put and completely true that being nice to them will result in a response in the same fashion.
Then again, maybe our RCMP here in Canada just have to deal with a lot less of the kinds of issues you bring up, we do have less violent gun crime since guns are generally harder to get a hold of here.
I have had great experiences with the police overall, I have no criminal record and I am far from a perfect citizen or anything. My younger years were a non-stop party for the most part, and yet I came through them without a DUI or possession charge, etc. Instead all my dealings with the cops were generally civil since we showed the officer respect. Several times they pulled us over and we'd have the vehicle overcrowded or something, usually we had a non-drinking driver and I think they respected that in us. Sure they'd make us pour the booze out if it was open but then they'd just tell us to get out and walk, then drive off and we'd pile in the vehicle again (we once had 15 in a van:)) and go on our merry way.
I once was at the local truckstop for after party coffee time, it was pissing down with rain, we were pretty much gooned already and noticed a officer filling up his car at the pumps, we asked him if he was heading downtown and if we could get a lift.. sure thing, in the back we went and he dropped us off at home, even though we were pretty much drunk enough to spend the night in the drunk tank. That cop got my respect long before that night but I sure appreciated him then.
Now think about the other types who show no respect to the cops, I would bet my past history with them would have been a lot different had I shown them none.
Most of them are good guys trying to make the streets a safer place for all of us, cut them some slack and treat them with the respect they deserve for being there because you may just need to call them one day yourself.
Yes I know it still comes out unencrypted somewhere down the line but at least this is effective in keeping MY local ISP from logging my activities. It comes in handy when on the road with the laptop as well since I can find a wifi connection then shoot a ssh tunnel to home, etc.
I tunnel to a few servers at various providers so my end traffic isn't always coming from one location.
The main reasons for the encrypting are security related since I tunnel pop3, smtp, etc. securely this way. It just turns out to also be an effective method of keeping your ISP from tracking your online habits:)
That is basically what I told my ISP, as a publisher of a couple of sites that rely on ad generated revenue I was not impressed knowing this wholesaler was doing this, I noticed because they were inserting the same ads over and over and they were inserting ads on pages that actually had no ads to begin with.
Their reasoning was they had to buy expensive Cisco routers and needed to recover that cost. Yikes. My ISP dropped them fairly quickly thankfully as they did turn out to be a bunch of morons when it came to running a network anyway. His current wholesaler is providing a nice clean setup, no blocked ports and no throttles of any kind, etc.
Done! I'm in Canada and almost all my traffic coming in/out of my DSL line is encrypted. SSH tunnels are your friend:)
I started doing this since my ISP's wholesaler was using transparent proxy caches that would actually strip ads from websites and then insert their own in their place. I bitched loudly over that one and they removed me from the proxy list but it was enough to make me take control of my surfing via a SSH tunnel to the servers I operate. The bonus is I can also access content supposed to be only available in the US (like www.sho.com or the ABC online Lost episodes).
My ISP has since switched wholesalers to a more sane variety but I still keep the tunnels going.
Ditto here, we blocked all the free email providers once we realized pretty much all our fraud orders were using them and few if any legit signups used them. Gave up forwarding to the free providers abuse departments as well.
Although it is Windows only and requires Steam installed it is a great shooter, especially if you dislike the run and gun play that other games have. This game has an infantry side and an armoured tank battle side to it, both focus on realism as much as possible while maintaining a great gameplay. It requires teamwork and tactics to win.
Also of note it is takes place on the Eastern front of WWII, so it is Allies (Soviets) against Axis (Nazis) with realistic choices of weapons, classes and vehicles. The game does NOT have crosshairs on the screen either and requires the use of the gun sights to aim effectively.
It is a whole lot of fun once you get used to the gameplay, frustrating at first but worth the $25 entry fee.
Yup, I stopped going to concerts when they started getting really greedy with the ticket prices.. example..
I went to see Van Halen in 1984, the cost for that ticket including service charges was $14.75, which at the time was the price for any seat in the building.
Flash forward 20 years, now Van Halen were touring, sans a decent frontman and yet the tickets were now over $100.
That is some hefty freaking inflation within that industry for some reason. I mean I know costs go up but the 1984 show had a huge stage, amps and lights just like todays concerts, the only difference is the greed from the artists and management.
Actually I agree with you on this, we generally try and keep the outright swear words out but I try and let not so bad stuff slip by. I too have used the argument that it is kinda strange to try and censor some words but forget about the whole game being based on a very violent concept (war in general).
At the same time it is only a game and explaining to the young'uns that it is a game and that doing this stuff in real life is not so good since there aren't really any respawn opportunities when someone blows your head off IRL:)
I think for the most part it does tend to make for a nicer playing environment since it doesn't degrade into a shouting match when the teens all get mad at each other for killing/being killed.
My wife and I have a few shows we watch together, Boston Legal is pretty good just to hear some of Bill Shatner's lines (he does some pretty funny stuff there and sometimes pokes fun at his Trek roots). We watch South Park and Drawn Together each week, and a couple of other shows when they are in season.
But she'll also PVR every sitcom going, she has 2 soaps a day she watches, Judge Judy hour, etc. and I just can't handle watching that amount of TV. So, she can watch that and I'll play on the computer.:)
Just having a few shows we'll watch together each week makes her happy enough though, plus we'll watch the odd movie too, although I won't watch her "girly movies" with her, likewise she won't watch most of my scifi movies with me.
That is the argument I use with my wife, she loves to sit and watch mindless garbage on TV and I simply refuse to sit there and watch it with her, I have no use for sitcoms, endless crime dramas and reality crap that the TV networks are using the keep the sheep watching.
Instead I would much rather be either working on the computer or playing with a bunch of friends online and chatting in teamspeak.
I don't go to the bar, etc. and she knows where I am and what I am doing, she doesn't mind it at all when compared to the alternative (me going to the bar and possibly meeting some replacement wife:)).
I'm part of a clan (www.ofclan.net) that is made up of only people over 30, we have members approaching 60. We play Enemy Territory, many play for several hours daily (the retired members can put in lots of time) and our main server is full every night of the week.
On April 1 we celebrate our first anniversary as a clan, our clan is non-skills based and is purely for the social aspect of the game. It is the social aspect that keeps the members coming back.
It is quite surprising how many older players there are, our server attracts them more since we announce we're the "Old Farts" in the server name, we have many of the players on TeamSpeak when they're playing and it is a great time.
One of the nice things about our servers is we don't allow swearing in the game chat (you can however swear your heart out on our TS server). We do this because many of the members have kids who play with us on the servers or have kids who watch them play.
We also have attempted to make the servers player friendly for newbs and those of all skill levels by limiting abilities.
I can confirm Shaw being shit for Vonage. A friend of mine just got Vonage after I got it here in BC, I'm on DSL and other than an issue with the Linksys modem I was using (switched to a D-Link 300G and things are solid) my Vonage works pretty good 95% of the time, about as expected.
Now, my friend in Saskatoon decided to do the same after I was calling him on it, he is on Shaw. So, he gets his hardware and calls me, wow, breakups like crazy, you couldn't really talk to him. He calls Shaw, of course they give the speech about Extreme service and how that will fix everything. So, he signed up for that, it did drastically improve his calls but still not perfect. Now there are only minor drops but they are still there.
Meanwhile I just spent 65 minutes on the Vonage phone with a client in California also on Vonage, the call sounded excellent, not a single drop and it sounded like he was next door. He is on Verizon Fibre apparently.
Shaw are a strange beast to begin with, I run a gaming server for a bunch of us and a guy in Edmonton on Shaw gets a 20-30ms ping to this server in Seattle, even better than some people in Vancouver are getting, and yet my friend in Saskatoon on Shaw gets 100-130ms ping. Nice routing there.
Shaw's Vonage issues strangely got worse when they started to introduce the Shaw Digital Phone bundle too... coincidence?
Actually.. CTV has the rights to 2010 and 2012, so they are producing it for the world this time.
They will of course be upgrading to HD equipment for the whole thing I'm sure but expect coverage to go down a bit compared to CBC quality and quantity.
They will air it over CTV, TSN and will likely partner with other domestic broadcasters or possibly petition to allow CTV Newsnet to air content, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like fun, I was contemplating putting my wife's computer into Windows mode for her so it could also act as a DVR for some video, but better not I think :)
.../ index.adp
Try Kaspersky and see if it finds whatever this is
http://www.activevirusshield.com/antivirus/freeav
If it can't find anything then this is not a virus but a so far undetected custom trojan of some sort.
Ditto here, I am in Canada and our local FMs are obligated to play 35% Canadian Content, which on the classic rock stations amounts to an ungodly amount of Tragically Hip, Kim Mitchel and other Canadian "talent" that would never have ever been played on radio if it weren't for government mandated quotas.
:)
So, a few months back I went Sirius, I'd heard a lot of their music channels already via Dish Network and loved them. Since I got the service I have not heard Tragically Hip once, whereas whenever I'd go out to town in the car I'd hear them within 10-15 minutes on the OTA FM services.
I pretty much have my Sirius receiver running full time here, I don't watch much TV or anything and was also looking for some music for my home office, Sirius works perfectly. The bonus is I can also listen to it in other areas of the house since the FM transmitter is so powerful. Nothing like cranking it up on a couple of amps around the house
Loads and loads of great music, especially if you are into rock. Right now I've got The Vault playing in the background. I switch between that, Classic Vinyl, Classic Rewind, Octane, Buzzsaw, etc. and I am very happy with the selection available. Sure some channels can be a bit repetitive at times, but if you get sick of hearing that same song again just switch channels. I find I listen to different stuff depending on the mood.
... www.dogstarradio.com
About once a month I might listen to Howard.
I tried XM online for a month before settling on Sirius, XM just plays too much obscure stuff on their rock channels, they also lean much more towards alternative rock on the channels and I couldn't stand the channel naming, Fred? Ethel? Lucy? WTF?
Here is a great Sirius resource
How about a cell phone that has MP3 support with a camera?
:-)
Someone should patent that idea!
I have a couple of clients forwarding their incoming email to their GoDaddy hosted domains, because of them doing this our server constantly gets listed in their "Attacking Hosts" blacklist. I've finally given up dealing with GoDaddy after at least 6 attempts to get it lifted, having it lifted and then being right back on in a couple of days. Now I just recommend the clients not use GoDaddy to forward email to as I cannot guarantee email arrives there and won't waste my resources continually asking GoDaddy to lift the block.
Only so much I can do when a client prefers to forward all their mail off my servers to outside hosts, forwarding all their mail means everything, spam and all. We filter as much spam as we can but we can't stop it all.
Add to that, most of the time for any major changes to your accounts they want you to go in person to the branch to do so, that is basic security, otherwise anyone could call up with the "relevant" information and do all sorts of nasty social engineering.
I've had accounts with HSBC for years, our mortgage is through them, the accounts are spread over two branches and you have to go to the relevant branch to make changes. They have always been fair and provided good service, once a month I have to go in-branch to deposit Adsense cheques and do so with just my bank card, I don't even know where the passbook is, but they have no problem depositing if all I have is the card.
It should also be noted that all customers have a dedicated account rep they can call.
Since when did nudity become pornography by default?
Violence can, and does, ruin some lives. In fact in many cases it can END life.
People having sex CREATES life in many cases. There is plenty of healthy pornography out there which is basically two (or more) CONSENTING adults having sex on camera.
Of course there is some shady stuff out there, but that applies to countless subjects, even your violence can be deemed harmful even if it is not real, and what about the market for snuff films, etc.?
I had a run in with my ISPs wholesalers over DNS, I always enter my own servers into my machines that I want to use, this way I can test things, make sure things work as expected, etc.
One evening I suddenly couldn't get anywhere, no DNS lookups were working on my network, hmm, do a quick SSH out to one of my servers and yes DNS is working just fine there. Hmm, turns out these fools were hijacking port 53 and just sending them to their own DNS servers.
So from then on I just tunneled everything over SSH, problem solved for me. My ISP has since switched wholesalers to much more ethical bunch.
Actually, after I posted I thought about that difference, in Canada most small towns/cities have RCMP or provincial police forces rather than town run police. Larger centers usually have their own police but the RCMP still plays a roll as well.
:)
It is quite scary when you see villages having their own cops though, I mean it does increase the potential for abuse, especially if it can be seen as a form of revenue for the village, look out driving through town if you ain't a local
Well put and completely true that being nice to them will result in a response in the same fashion.
:)) and go on our merry way.
.. sure thing, in the back we went and he dropped us off at home, even though we were pretty much drunk enough to spend the night in the drunk tank. That cop got my respect long before that night but I sure appreciated him then.
Then again, maybe our RCMP here in Canada just have to deal with a lot less of the kinds of issues you bring up, we do have less violent gun crime since guns are generally harder to get a hold of here.
I have had great experiences with the police overall, I have no criminal record and I am far from a perfect citizen or anything. My younger years were a non-stop party for the most part, and yet I came through them without a DUI or possession charge, etc. Instead all my dealings with the cops were generally civil since we showed the officer respect. Several times they pulled us over and we'd have the vehicle overcrowded or something, usually we had a non-drinking driver and I think they respected that in us. Sure they'd make us pour the booze out if it was open but then they'd just tell us to get out and walk, then drive off and we'd pile in the vehicle again (we once had 15 in a van
I once was at the local truckstop for after party coffee time, it was pissing down with rain, we were pretty much gooned already and noticed a officer filling up his car at the pumps, we asked him if he was heading downtown and if we could get a lift
Now think about the other types who show no respect to the cops, I would bet my past history with them would have been a lot different had I shown them none.
Most of them are good guys trying to make the streets a safer place for all of us, cut them some slack and treat them with the respect they deserve for being there because you may just need to call them one day yourself.
Yes I know it still comes out unencrypted somewhere down the line but at least this is effective in keeping MY local ISP from logging my activities. It comes in handy when on the road with the laptop as well since I can find a wifi connection then shoot a ssh tunnel to home, etc.
:)
I tunnel to a few servers at various providers so my end traffic isn't always coming from one location.
The main reasons for the encrypting are security related since I tunnel pop3, smtp, etc. securely this way. It just turns out to also be an effective method of keeping your ISP from tracking your online habits
That is basically what I told my ISP, as a publisher of a couple of sites that rely on ad generated revenue I was not impressed knowing this wholesaler was doing this, I noticed because they were inserting the same ads over and over and they were inserting ads on pages that actually had no ads to begin with.
Their reasoning was they had to buy expensive Cisco routers and needed to recover that cost. Yikes. My ISP dropped them fairly quickly thankfully as they did turn out to be a bunch of morons when it came to running a network anyway. His current wholesaler is providing a nice clean setup, no blocked ports and no throttles of any kind, etc.
Done! I'm in Canada and almost all my traffic coming in/out of my DSL line is encrypted. SSH tunnels are your friend :)
I started doing this since my ISP's wholesaler was using transparent proxy caches that would actually strip ads from websites and then insert their own in their place. I bitched loudly over that one and they removed me from the proxy list but it was enough to make me take control of my surfing via a SSH tunnel to the servers I operate. The bonus is I can also access content supposed to be only available in the US (like www.sho.com or the ABC online Lost episodes).
My ISP has since switched wholesalers to a more sane variety but I still keep the tunnels going.
Ditto here, we blocked all the free email providers once we realized pretty much all our fraud orders were using them and few if any legit signups used them. Gave up forwarding to the free providers abuse departments as well.
... someone get the welding torches ready! This is our chance! :)
We best keep an eye on Blue's News then! :)
Speaking of that kind of thing .. if you're really into WWII FPS games then Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 might interest you.
RED ORCHESTRA LINK
Although it is Windows only and requires Steam installed it is a great shooter, especially if you dislike the run and gun play that other games have. This game has an infantry side and an armoured tank battle side to it, both focus on realism as much as possible while maintaining a great gameplay. It requires teamwork and tactics to win.
Also of note it is takes place on the Eastern front of WWII, so it is Allies (Soviets) against Axis (Nazis) with realistic choices of weapons, classes and vehicles. The game does NOT have crosshairs on the screen either and requires the use of the gun sights to aim effectively.
It is a whole lot of fun once you get used to the gameplay, frustrating at first but worth the $25 entry fee.
Yup, I stopped going to concerts when they started getting really greedy with the ticket prices .. example ..
I went to see Van Halen in 1984, the cost for that ticket including service charges was $14.75, which at the time was the price for any seat in the building.
Flash forward 20 years, now Van Halen were touring, sans a decent frontman and yet the tickets were now over $100.
That is some hefty freaking inflation within that industry for some reason. I mean I know costs go up but the 1984 show had a huge stage, amps and lights just like todays concerts, the only difference is the greed from the artists and management.
Actually I agree with you on this, we generally try and keep the outright swear words out but I try and let not so bad stuff slip by. I too have used the argument that it is kinda strange to try and censor some words but forget about the whole game being based on a very violent concept (war in general).
:)
At the same time it is only a game and explaining to the young'uns that it is a game and that doing this stuff in real life is not so good since there aren't really any respawn opportunities when someone blows your head off IRL
I think for the most part it does tend to make for a nicer playing environment since it doesn't degrade into a shouting match when the teens all get mad at each other for killing/being killed.
My wife and I have a few shows we watch together, Boston Legal is pretty good just to hear some of Bill Shatner's lines (he does some pretty funny stuff there and sometimes pokes fun at his Trek roots). We watch South Park and Drawn Together each week, and a couple of other shows when they are in season.
:)
But she'll also PVR every sitcom going, she has 2 soaps a day she watches, Judge Judy hour, etc. and I just can't handle watching that amount of TV. So, she can watch that and I'll play on the computer.
Just having a few shows we'll watch together each week makes her happy enough though, plus we'll watch the odd movie too, although I won't watch her "girly movies" with her, likewise she won't watch most of my scifi movies with me.
That is the argument I use with my wife, she loves to sit and watch mindless garbage on TV and I simply refuse to sit there and watch it with her, I have no use for sitcoms, endless crime dramas and reality crap that the TV networks are using the keep the sheep watching.
:)).
Instead I would much rather be either working on the computer or playing with a bunch of friends online and chatting in teamspeak.
I don't go to the bar, etc. and she knows where I am and what I am doing, she doesn't mind it at all when compared to the alternative (me going to the bar and possibly meeting some replacement wife
I'm part of a clan (www.ofclan.net) that is made up of only people over 30, we have members approaching 60. We play Enemy Territory, many play for several hours daily (the retired members can put in lots of time) and our main server is full every night of the week.
On April 1 we celebrate our first anniversary as a clan, our clan is non-skills based and is purely for the social aspect of the game. It is the social aspect that keeps the members coming back.
It is quite surprising how many older players there are, our server attracts them more since we announce we're the "Old Farts" in the server name, we have many of the players on TeamSpeak when they're playing and it is a great time.
One of the nice things about our servers is we don't allow swearing in the game chat (you can however swear your heart out on our TS server). We do this because many of the members have kids who play with us on the servers or have kids who watch them play.
We also have attempted to make the servers player friendly for newbs and those of all skill levels by limiting abilities.
I can confirm Shaw being shit for Vonage. A friend of mine just got Vonage after I got it here in BC, I'm on DSL and other than an issue with the Linksys modem I was using (switched to a D-Link 300G and things are solid) my Vonage works pretty good 95% of the time, about as expected.
... coincidence?
Now, my friend in Saskatoon decided to do the same after I was calling him on it, he is on Shaw. So, he gets his hardware and calls me, wow, breakups like crazy, you couldn't really talk to him. He calls Shaw, of course they give the speech about Extreme service and how that will fix everything. So, he signed up for that, it did drastically improve his calls but still not perfect. Now there are only minor drops but they are still there.
Meanwhile I just spent 65 minutes on the Vonage phone with a client in California also on Vonage, the call sounded excellent, not a single drop and it sounded like he was next door. He is on Verizon Fibre apparently.
Shaw are a strange beast to begin with, I run a gaming server for a bunch of us and a guy in Edmonton on Shaw gets a 20-30ms ping to this server in Seattle, even better than some people in Vancouver are getting, and yet my friend in Saskatoon on Shaw gets 100-130ms ping. Nice routing there.
Shaw's Vonage issues strangely got worse when they started to introduce the Shaw Digital Phone bundle too
Evidence ...
7 /Sports/ctv050207.html
http://www.cbc.ca/story/sports/national/2005/02/0
Actually .. CTV has the rights to 2010 and 2012, so they are producing it for the world this time.
They will of course be upgrading to HD equipment for the whole thing I'm sure but expect coverage to go down a bit compared to CBC quality and quantity.
They will air it over CTV, TSN and will likely partner with other domestic broadcasters or possibly petition to allow CTV Newsnet to air content, etc.