I'm a Sky customer. Their customer service has been pretty good compared to some of the competitors I have had to deal with. Virgin. BT. TalkTalk. All crap. BT (Openreach) and Virgin own most of the fibre in the country.
Sky's customer service is still not as good as Telus' or Shaw Cable's from when I used live in Vancouver.
I couldn't get my MAC (a porting code for those of you not familiar, allowing you easy transfer of your line to another ISP and/or phone provider) fast enough and went for a business-ish-class LLU service through a small independent company at the same line speed and same price; no filters, 12ms round-trip latency to continental europe (germany specifically), static IP, zone control, no quotas, no traffic shaping, no insistence that I run the terrible Sky-approved router, no restrictions at all on what you're allowed to do with your pipe as long as it's not illegal. Everyone else I know on BeThere did the same thing since none of them used Sky TV either and didn't take kindly for being punished for not giving Sky enough money.
In summary: if you don't watch satellite TV (or merely think it's overpriced), the Sky bundles are, IMHO, horrendously overpriced.
Who did you switch to? Be used to a lot the third party unbundling?
When I was a kid, we had a washing machine and dryer that lasted 20+ years. Used daily. Occasionally needed the repairman out.
In fairness, software by comparison is more like paint and a room should be repainted at least every 10 years. If you use oil paint it will last longer than latex. Latex is friendlier to the environment.
For computers that are still running windows, it is time to repaint.
University degrees about giving yourself options, and learning structured problem solving. Most, but not all, of the good to great programmers that I have seen have all had university degrees, but not necessarily Comp Sci, Comp Eng, or Comp informics. One of the best programmers has a philosophy degree. The university degrees are about giving you broad perspective, and not just about giving you the skillz.
Having an university degree is not essential, but it is way easier to get ahead faster. The vast majority of people I know who do not have degrees tend to be very naive about their view of the world and problem solving. Learning calculus may not give you direct programming skills, but it will give you another lens in which to view the problems that you need to solve, as just about any subject that has any rigor. The old adage of "you only get out of something what you put into it" definitely applies. If you are cruising through uni on all the fluff courses, your not doing yourself any favours.
It sounds like you want to get out into industry, but consider your financial implications if you do. Personal circumstances vary hugely, so if you are not giving up a free or heavily subsidized education by parents or scholarships, then my advice is get out to industry, and see what's what, as quick as possible. If you're currently on student loan it will not cost you anything to wait a few years, and you'll probably value the university education more. Who know, you might that you actually want to that Zoology degree.
I think it is pretty clear that you are not better off with Windows 8. MS only started punishing people with wanting to stay on Windows XP 2 years ago. 10 years after that version was release. Unfortunately MS is punishing people with this new version.
The issue of hardware. Your Linux experience is based on the hardware you get. Get the wrong hardware it runs like crap, get the right hardware, Linux runs like a champ. Companies like Dell that sells systems preloaded with Linux are risky because the don't really give you a good compatible system. You need to spec out each component. Windows has the drivers and they work. Thus getting a Windows system much more reliable.
I had a room full of PCs 3+ years old which are running fine for the most part, but the laptop batteries don't hold a charge, not enough memory to run Windows XP + AV + Line of Business Apps. Our company wanted to donate to the systems to a worthwhile cause, as it seems wasteful to chuck them out because they are not suitable for our needs, but the systems are okay for internet, word processing, RDP, solitaire etc. Anyway, I loaded Xubuntu 12.04 on all them and every one of them works well, and each one had full driver support for wireless straight after the install--except one with a Broadcom chipset, a simple Google search gave me the answer to that. I did not have to chase down drivers from the manufacturers website, as I would have had to do if I loaded XP, and none of them would run Windows 7.
Each system was a painless install, and worked as you would expect after the install. Why would I waste time loading Windows? Xubuntu/Linux is the superior option in this case. Perhaps because this hardware is a few years old, it now has better linux support. My girlfriend has a scanner that does not have support beyond Windows XP; the Scanner is 7 years old. It does not work on Windows Vista or 7, but it works great with linux. Not in all cases, but certainly in many cases, I am now finding that Linux has better support than Windows does. Furthermore, I have an old Toshiba latop which is 64bit capable, but the Toshiba website has no listed support for 64 under Windows, however 64 bit works great under linux.
My expeience with new hardware and Linux has been that there have niggles from time to time, but I have experienced that with Windows as well. My view is that Linux's hardware support is just as good as Windows, and in the case of older hardware often better. The reputation that Linux being hard to configure, setup, and use is now largely undeserved.
While Windows has support from Microsoft and/or the hardware manufactures, this support is limited, and doubtful if any of the hardware venders would offer support for this hardware anyway. I do wholly question the actual value of MS Windows products outside of being locked into the platform because of line-of-business applications.
The reason for charging for subscriptions and at the news stand was to determine readership metrics. It was a very good model, as people would only pay money to buy something that they where interested in, so the more people you had buying something the more readers you had, and thus the more you could charge for your ad space. This was a simple model, which Murdoch understood.
Newspapers and most lay periodicals (technical/professional/trade journals and consumer reports not-so-much) for decades have made almost all their money from Advertising. Advertising boycotts have previously had a major editorial impact on the Media. Charging people for print subscriptions is basically a mechanism to track and understand readership dynamics, and to understand how much ad space is worth. Now, with the internet, we get much more detailed metrics directly on what people are reading on our websites, and what they are not, and what the space is worth, which is basically volume driven now, price-per-view, and price-per- click. So the metrics of what people are willing to pay for to read is basically redundant, because why would I pay for something, when I can get it (better) for free?
As before it matters how many people look at something, but now also on how many people directly act on that ad. Page 3 ad's have always been the most expensive, because the most people look at those ad's, but we would only have a rough idea on conversion. Now we can put an ad on a website, a person can click through and buy something--obviously the most case scenario from an advertisers point of view, and now very easy to measure the success or failure on for everyone involved, or they can ignore the ad, and we'll hope that they might come back someday.
From a print sense, Murdoch is basically imposing an Advert boycott on himself, which is insane from a business point of view.
The paywall is a complete failure, both in the sense of Murdoch's understanding of what IT is--how information is now created and consumed--and the real sense on how best run his business. Being an information reseller, as that what Murdoch is, is now much more nuanced, and finely grained. It's not this simple equation of how many readers I equals how much I can charge for ad-space, but how many people I can get to click through.
Perhaps the real reason is that Murdoch is trying to get a larger cut from Google/MS/Yahoo for adspace, as he thinks his ad-space is more valuable than Joe-blogger. Or perhaps Grandpa Murdoch doesn't get it. Either-way, my view is that paywalls will actually increase diversity, and increase traffic to independent media sources, so in some sense, I'm all for paywalls, as sites that put their content behind pay-walls won't get indexed by search engines, and then will be come irrelevant.
If they (AP, NAA, Murdoch--I'll call them whiners) can't configure their robots.txt files to stop google etc from indexing them, then what makes you think that they could analyse their logs. Actually, they probably do not realize there are logs. It seems most people don't--when colleagues, friends and family ask me about various problems they are having with their (IT) systems, I ask them what their log system / event viewer says, and most of the time, the response I get is either "oh ya, I forgot to look at the logs" or "There are logs?"
Google should just decrease the whiners' page ranks, and promote independent media where possible.
Ultimately I think the whiners are trying to shift the blame of their failing business models and plans away from themselves to SbE (Somebody Else) just as the music and movie industries have done (and continue to do) to blame "filesharers" and get P2P technology banned, made illegal and throttled. I find it highly annoying, maybe even insulting, when I try to download an Ubuntu ISO through BT only get 40kbs, but get 320 kbs when I download off of their servers directly.
Intelligent autos are a good idea, but what about intelligent hybrids? Wouldn't they be 33% more efficient too if they coasted to a stop rather than using their electric motor to recharge the battery?
One of the important things about hybrids is that they are a bridge to the electric auto. In a couple of years we will see hybrids that we'll be able to plug into the wall, offering us a choice of whether we'll want to use Fossil Fuels or not.
The argument that you are just moving the smoking stack with the electric car does not hold water when it is examined: when you consider that power plants offer economy of scale, both in terms of environmental pollutants, in terms of cost of watt of energy produced. When current technologies are compared, 1 regular fossil fuel powered auto has about the same environmental impact as 12 electric powered cars.
We need Oil for other things than just as a cheap source of power. We use it to product all sorts of goods, and what will happen when we run out of it? We know it's environmental consequences are huge. It is time to start looking for other, cleaner, sustainable sources of power. I would say that from the little that I know, that we're about to make some huge technological advances with solar. But this still begs the question to me: Is oil not a important component part of Solar collectors, and electrical wiring (shielding). It just seems terribly wasteful to me to be simply burning Oil just to make power when there are other sources.
Yep, I would tend to think that dogs are certainly a more appropriate topic for Mr Katz to write about than geeks. I do, however, wonder how dogs feel about his treatment of their world...
I had to dig around Microsoft's website for this, but the download version/liecense is a one year liecense. Then you have to buy it if you want to continue to use it.
I think I am going patent "sitting", and then "sitting at a computer terminal for the purposes of entering, and/or obtaining information."
I'm sure everyone is goig to appreciaten and utilize these novel concepts, and everyone's lives will be made better. Soon, after that, I am going to patent walking.
Sheesh, we're to these people get off, but then agian we all should get off our lazy apathetic buts, and do something about the process.
Yet another case of people not willing to take responsiblity for the rope that is given to them and they end up hanging themselves. I have worked in the computer/tech service industry for over 15 years and I have only rarely seen computer problems originate from the technology itself. Almost all the problems originate from someone attempting to use the software in some inappropriate or ignorant way.
I don't know where this idea came from that one should be able to use something with out any sort of learning curve. We all have had to learn how to speak, read, write, balance a bicycle, drive a car, factor a quadratic, play monoply, whatever. It takes a carpender a lifetime to become an expert craftsman, but to learn the basic skills takes a few years--computers are no different. In my experience most people just don't want to learn, and when it breaks want to blame someone else because they didn't take regular backups, they loaded spyware with their Share-AZA, they keep getting viruses because they haven't installed a reasonable firewall, etc.
As for trying to blame GPL software authors, again this is blaming a guy who saved your life for saving your life. GPL authors have been nice enough to share the creation with us, have given us the option to use it for free, and modify it, fix it, use it in another way altogether, all for free. I think people keep forgetting that they have the freedom not to do things: as in not use computers because if they don't like them and they don't like software that is on them. So please do us all a favour and your complaining. Then they can either start writing their own, or exercise your freedom and don't use a computer. Which part of "use at your own risk," "no warranty," and "free of charge" don't you understand?
If I write a piece of software and I want to share it with people. I created a solution to a problem that worked for me; but if it doesn't work for you why should I be responsible for the consequences, consequences usually arising out of ignorance 9 times out of 10 in my experience.
Lastly, keep in mind that someone isn't going to die if your Linux box, or MacOS X box core dumps, or your Windows box bluescreens. There is a very good chance that if your brakes fail then someone could die, or at least be seriously maimed.
Or rather, Apple should call their bluff and start signing artists/agents directly. Maybe that will put an end to this Music/Movie/Entertainment/Media raquet for once and for all.
On that note, we don't need new legislation for "new media." The only thing that has changed is how quickly and the granularity of information delivery. Don't support any politician who claims that we need new laws.
This reminds me of myself and my sister fighting over a cookie when we were a kids. My mother solved the dispute by making one of us divide the cookie in two, and the other got to choose which half they wanted.
Under the same logic used for this "font arguement", any document created with a GPL licensed software would be covered by the GPL. So a picture created using The Gimp would be by default a GPL'd document image. I don't believe that this is the case, as the GPL covers any modifications made to the product that the GPL covers. But I don't think that a new image created The Gimp is nessarily covered by the GPL. Moreover a program compiled by the GCC I don't think nessescarily is covered by the GPL. Moreover, it would make anyone using GnuPG software in violation of its licence simply because they are not distributing the source of the message that they send using the software.
For me it follows, that a document created, then rendered using a GPL font would not be covered by the GPL. I would think that if you modified the font itself, then released the rendered document to the public you are compelled to release the source to the modifications of the font. Furthermore, if you release a docuement rendered using a GPL font, you might also be compelled to release the source the font that the document is using.
However, if the document, or software that you modify and is covered by the GPL, I do not think that you are compelled to release any changes. That just makes no sense at all for variety of reasons.
But I am no lawyer, nor do I know what specific licenses GnuPG, GCC or the Gimp are released under, so I could be completely wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Be used to run O2's Service.
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/may/04/sky-o2-broadband-deal-transfer
I'm a Sky customer. Their customer service has been pretty good compared to some of the competitors I have had to deal with. Virgin. BT. TalkTalk. All crap. BT (Openreach) and Virgin own most of the fibre in the country.
Sky's customer service is still not as good as Telus' or Shaw Cable's from when I used live in Vancouver.
I couldn't get my MAC (a porting code for those of you not familiar, allowing you easy transfer of your line to another ISP and/or phone provider) fast enough and went for a business-ish-class LLU service through a small independent company at the same line speed and same price; no filters, 12ms round-trip latency to continental europe (germany specifically), static IP, zone control, no quotas, no traffic shaping, no insistence that I run the terrible Sky-approved router, no restrictions at all on what you're allowed to do with your pipe as long as it's not illegal. Everyone else I know on BeThere did the same thing since none of them used Sky TV either and didn't take kindly for being punished for not giving Sky enough money.
In summary: if you don't watch satellite TV (or merely think it's overpriced), the Sky bundles are, IMHO, horrendously overpriced.
Who did you switch to? Be used to a lot the third party unbundling?
When I was a kid, we had a washing machine and dryer that lasted 20+ years. Used daily. Occasionally needed the repairman out.
In fairness, software by comparison is more like paint and a room should be repainted at least every 10 years. If you use oil paint it will last longer than latex. Latex is friendlier to the environment.
For computers that are still running windows, it is time to repaint.
Uhm, the *ARE* killing security updates for the *OS*.
MS is continuing to support (make) updates for the their security software that runs on Windows XP.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/mmpc/archive/2014/01/15/microsoft-antimalware-support-for-windows-xp.aspx
So, it turns out you don't look like an ass.
Were you using Forefront or Security Essentials?
Just to remind everyone that these are the guys that produce OpenSSH.
http://www.openssh.com
If OpenBSD is not worth it, then maybe OpenSSH might be?
University degrees about giving yourself options, and learning structured problem solving. Most, but not all, of the good to great programmers that I have seen have all had university degrees, but not necessarily Comp Sci, Comp Eng, or Comp informics. One of the best programmers has a philosophy degree. The university degrees are about giving you broad perspective, and not just about giving you the skillz.
Having an university degree is not essential, but it is way easier to get ahead faster. The vast majority of people I know who do not have degrees tend to be very naive about their view of the world and problem solving. Learning calculus may not give you direct programming skills, but it will give you another lens in which to view the problems that you need to solve, as just about any subject that has any rigor. The old adage of "you only get out of something what you put into it" definitely applies. If you are cruising through uni on all the fluff courses, your not doing yourself any favours.
It sounds like you want to get out into industry, but consider your financial implications if you do. Personal circumstances vary hugely, so if you are not giving up a free or heavily subsidized education by parents or scholarships, then my advice is get out to industry, and see what's what, as quick as possible. If you're currently on student loan it will not cost you anything to wait a few years, and you'll probably value the university education more. Who know, you might that you actually want to that Zoology degree.
I think it is pretty clear that you are not better off with Windows 8. MS only started punishing people with wanting to stay on Windows XP 2 years ago. 10 years after that version was release. Unfortunately MS is punishing people with this new version.
I have to take issue with this:
The issue of hardware. Your Linux experience is based on the hardware you get. Get the wrong hardware it runs like crap, get the right hardware, Linux runs like a champ. Companies like Dell that sells systems preloaded with Linux are risky because the don't really give you a good compatible system. You need to spec out each component. Windows has the drivers and they work. Thus getting a Windows system much more reliable.
I had a room full of PCs 3+ years old which are running fine for the most part, but the laptop batteries don't hold a charge, not enough memory to run Windows XP + AV + Line of Business Apps. Our company wanted to donate to the systems to a worthwhile cause, as it seems wasteful to chuck them out because they are not suitable for our needs, but the systems are okay for internet, word processing, RDP, solitaire etc. Anyway, I loaded Xubuntu 12.04 on all them and every one of them works well, and each one had full driver support for wireless straight after the install--except one with a Broadcom chipset, a simple Google search gave me the answer to that. I did not have to chase down drivers from the manufacturers website, as I would have had to do if I loaded XP, and none of them would run Windows 7.
Each system was a painless install, and worked as you would expect after the install. Why would I waste time loading Windows? Xubuntu/Linux is the superior option in this case. Perhaps because this hardware is a few years old, it now has better linux support. My girlfriend has a scanner that does not have support beyond Windows XP; the Scanner is 7 years old. It does not work on Windows Vista or 7, but it works great with linux. Not in all cases, but certainly in many cases, I am now finding that Linux has better support than Windows does. Furthermore, I have an old Toshiba latop which is 64bit capable, but the Toshiba website has no listed support for 64 under Windows, however 64 bit works great under linux.
My expeience with new hardware and Linux has been that there have niggles from time to time, but I have experienced that with Windows as well. My view is that Linux's hardware support is just as good as Windows, and in the case of older hardware often better. The reputation that Linux being hard to configure, setup, and use is now largely undeserved.
While Windows has support from Microsoft and/or the hardware manufactures, this support is limited, and doubtful if any of the hardware venders would offer support for this hardware anyway. I do wholly question the actual value of MS Windows products outside of being locked into the platform because of line-of-business applications.
The reason for charging for subscriptions and at the news stand was to determine readership metrics. It was a very good model, as people would only pay money to buy something that they where interested in, so the more people you had buying something the more readers you had, and thus the more you could charge for your ad space. This was a simple model, which Murdoch understood.
Newspapers and most lay periodicals (technical/professional/trade journals and consumer reports not-so-much) for decades have made almost all their money from Advertising. Advertising boycotts have previously had a major editorial impact on the Media. Charging people for print subscriptions is basically a mechanism to track and understand readership dynamics, and to understand how much ad space is worth. Now, with the internet, we get much more detailed metrics directly on what people are reading on our websites, and what they are not, and what the space is worth, which is basically volume driven now, price-per-view, and price-per- click. So the metrics of what people are willing to pay for to read is basically redundant, because why would I pay for something, when I can get it (better) for free?
As before it matters how many people look at something, but now also on how many people directly act on that ad. Page 3 ad's have always been the most expensive, because the most people look at those ad's, but we would only have a rough idea on conversion. Now we can put an ad on a website, a person can click through and buy something--obviously the most case scenario from an advertisers point of view, and now very easy to measure the success or failure on for everyone involved, or they can ignore the ad, and we'll hope that they might come back someday.
From a print sense, Murdoch is basically imposing an Advert boycott on himself, which is insane from a business point of view.
The paywall is a complete failure, both in the sense of Murdoch's understanding of what IT is--how information is now created and consumed--and the real sense on how best run his business. Being an information reseller, as that what Murdoch is, is now much more nuanced, and finely grained. It's not this simple equation of how many readers I equals how much I can charge for ad-space, but how many people I can get to click through.
Perhaps the real reason is that Murdoch is trying to get a larger cut from Google/MS/Yahoo for adspace, as he thinks his ad-space is more valuable than Joe-blogger. Or perhaps Grandpa Murdoch doesn't get it. Either-way, my view is that paywalls will actually increase diversity, and increase traffic to independent media sources, so in some sense, I'm all for paywalls, as sites that put their content behind pay-walls won't get indexed by search engines, and then will be come irrelevant.
I can't wait for a paywall on Myspace!
If they (AP, NAA, Murdoch--I'll call them whiners) can't configure their robots.txt files to stop google etc from indexing them, then what makes you think that they could analyse their logs. Actually, they probably do not realize there are logs. It seems most people don't--when colleagues, friends and family ask me about various problems they are having with their (IT) systems, I ask them what their log system / event viewer says, and most of the time, the response I get is either "oh ya, I forgot to look at the logs" or "There are logs?"
Google should just decrease the whiners' page ranks, and promote independent media where possible.
Ultimately I think the whiners are trying to shift the blame of their failing business models and plans away from themselves to SbE (Somebody Else) just as the music and movie industries have done (and continue to do) to blame "filesharers" and get P2P technology banned, made illegal and throttled. I find it highly annoying, maybe even insulting, when I try to download an Ubuntu ISO through BT only get 40kbs, but get 320 kbs when I download off of their servers directly.
CarbonFibre!
or maybe Leather
Intelligent autos are a good idea, but what about intelligent hybrids? Wouldn't they be 33% more efficient too if they coasted to a stop rather than using their electric motor to recharge the battery?
One of the important things about hybrids is that they are a bridge to the electric auto. In a couple of years we will see hybrids that we'll be able to plug into the wall, offering us a choice of whether we'll want to use Fossil Fuels or not.
The argument that you are just moving the smoking stack with the electric car does not hold water when it is examined: when you consider that power plants offer economy of scale, both in terms of environmental pollutants, in terms of cost of watt of energy produced. When current technologies are compared, 1 regular fossil fuel powered auto has about the same environmental impact as 12 electric powered cars.
We need Oil for other things than just as a cheap source of power. We use it to product all sorts of goods, and what will happen when we run out of it? We know it's environmental consequences are huge. It is time to start looking for other, cleaner, sustainable sources of power. I would say that from the little that I know, that we're about to make some huge technological advances with solar. But this still begs the question to me: Is oil not a important component part of Solar collectors, and electrical wiring (shielding). It just seems terribly wasteful to me to be simply burning Oil just to make power when there are other sources.
We have got to stop using Fossil Fuels. W
Yep, I would tend to think that dogs are certainly a more appropriate topic for Mr Katz to write about than geeks. I do, however, wonder how dogs feel about his treatment of their world...
Such a bold statement from a company which has yet to produce any of it's own software.
=)
uhm, just set up VPN end points. The linksys ones are pretty easy to set up--even for complete newbs.
I had to dig around Microsoft's website for this, but the download version/liecense is a one year liecense. Then you have to buy it if you want to continue to use it.
It is $59.99CAD in Canada on the shelves.
Yes, but will spinal cells cure nose injuries?
I think I am going patent "sitting", and then "sitting at a computer terminal for the purposes of entering, and/or obtaining information."
I'm sure everyone is goig to appreciaten and utilize these novel concepts, and everyone's lives will be made better. Soon, after that, I am going to patent walking.
Sheesh, we're to these people get off, but then agian we all should get off our lazy apathetic buts, and do something about the process.
Yet another case of people not willing to take responsiblity for the rope that is given to them and they end up hanging themselves. I have worked in the computer/tech service industry for over 15 years and I have only rarely seen computer problems originate from the technology itself. Almost all the problems originate from someone attempting to use the software in some inappropriate or ignorant way.
I don't know where this idea came from that one should be able to use something with out any sort of learning curve. We all have had to learn how to speak, read, write, balance a bicycle, drive a car, factor a quadratic, play monoply, whatever. It takes a carpender a lifetime to become an expert craftsman, but to learn the basic skills takes a few years--computers are no different. In my experience most people just don't want to learn, and when it breaks want to blame someone else because they didn't take regular backups, they loaded spyware with their Share-AZA, they keep getting viruses because they haven't installed a reasonable firewall, etc.
As for trying to blame GPL software authors, again this is blaming a guy who saved your life for saving your life. GPL authors have been nice enough to share the creation with us, have given us the option to use it for free, and modify it, fix it, use it in another way altogether, all for free. I think people keep forgetting that they have the freedom not to do things: as in not use computers because if they don't like them and they don't like software that is on them. So please do us all a favour and your complaining. Then they can either start writing their own, or exercise your freedom and don't use a computer. Which part of "use at your own risk," "no warranty," and "free of charge" don't you understand?
If I write a piece of software and I want to share it with people. I created a solution to a problem that worked for me; but if it doesn't work for you why should I be responsible for the consequences, consequences usually arising out of ignorance 9 times out of 10 in my experience.
Lastly, keep in mind that someone isn't going to die if your Linux box, or MacOS X box core dumps, or your Windows box bluescreens. There is a very good chance that if your brakes fail then someone could die, or at least be seriously maimed.
Or rather, Apple should call their bluff and start signing artists/agents directly. Maybe that will put an end to this Music/Movie/Entertainment/Media raquet for once and for all.
On that note, we don't need new legislation for "new media." The only thing that has changed is how quickly and the granularity of information delivery. Don't support any politician who claims that we need new laws.
This reminds me of myself and my sister fighting over a cookie when we were a kids. My mother solved the dispute by making one of us divide the cookie in two, and the other got to choose which half they wanted.
I've never had a problem with spyware/adware/malware running emacs. If only people would listen to me .... sheesh.
Under the same logic used for this "font arguement", any document created with a GPL licensed software would be covered by the GPL. So a picture created using The Gimp would be by default a GPL'd document image. I don't believe that this is the case, as the GPL covers any modifications made to the product that the GPL covers. But I don't think that a new image created The Gimp is nessarily covered by the GPL. Moreover a program compiled by the GCC I don't think nessescarily is covered by the GPL. Moreover, it would make anyone using GnuPG software in violation of its licence simply because they are not distributing the source of the message that they send using the software.
For me it follows, that a document created, then rendered using a GPL font would not be covered by the GPL. I would think that if you modified the font itself, then released the rendered document to the public you are compelled to release the source to the modifications of the font. Furthermore, if you release a docuement rendered using a GPL font, you might also be compelled to release the source the font that the document is using.
However, if the document, or software that you modify and is covered by the GPL, I do not think that you are compelled to release any changes. That just makes no sense at all for variety of reasons.
But I am no lawyer, nor do I know what specific licenses GnuPG, GCC or the Gimp are released under, so I could be completely wrong.
Uhm, it sounds like you WAP is defective. Especially if you have tried every other channel and you have tried an unique SSID.
Forget pets, I bet they would make nice, soft, fuzzy slippers.