Correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't I just stick gnutella on all the computers in the network and just point them at each other? I've never tried it, but I've thought about doing that for finding stuff on a small network.
As for spying, that's what back orifice is for. I'm used to/. being paranoid, but not *that* paranoid.
This is off-topic, but I believe relavent. Your post reminded me of the idea.
Lets say I use a good encryption program, say E4M on a windows box, and make several encrypted volumes. Now, if I name the first volume "pedophilia", the second "drug deals", the third one "playstation 2 warez", etc, can the name alone be used to try to convict me of some crime?
This random thought brought to you by a 8 random hours of work with nothing to do.
You don't need one big bomb to make a "weapon(s) of mass destruction." During WWII, the allied forces firebombed Dresden, which almost totally destroyed the city, and some argue that the destruction was greater then Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
The analogy would be a shotgun. Sure, a 45 slug is larger then one shotgun pellet, but the group of pellets will do much more damage at close range then the one slug.
Although I haven't heard of the "flying crowbar" idea before, its feasible. If the "crowbar" can survive reentry, its going to hit the ground with a lot of force, and it wouldn't be hard to design the "crowbars" to shatter on impact, spreading shrapnel all over the area. As long as there is enough "crowbars" to hit the area, there will be widespread destruction.
I'm sure you are being humorous, but let me take your idea seriously, for a sec. All you need is your OS of choice, modified for hotkeys to control your media player of choice (of course, that will start up automatically). Then, grab a keyboard encoder (about $150 at Happs Controls, or you can rip apart a keyboard and have fun with playing with hardware (not that hard, really). Then just mount the buttons up on the dash, and you are set. As for the display, well, that's another post.
One word: HUNTING!. Since you seem unfamiliar with the word, let me explain. You pay money to the government (usually the state, which uses it for conservation), get a permit, take the big bad evil gun (a rifle or shotgun in most cases, but sometimes a handgun is used), and shoot some non-human creature (whatever the permit says you can shoot). Then you take your kill home and eat it, if its something big, like a deer, you have meat for awhile.
Sure, it may seem cruel, but I've seen wild animals, and I know how most domesticated livestock is raised, and the agribusiness farms are the cruel part.
Oh, and I don't hunt. I occasionally speak out against the current system of hunting, since I believe the state DNR prefers to keep deer numbers artificially high in order to get more revenue. However, your argument is flawed, and I must point it out. There are plenty of legitimate arguments for gun control, but "guns are evil" is not one of them.
Now, I believe (and if I'm wrong, correct me), that when a bit is written to the hard drive, there is a minor amount of error where it could be written to physical area of the hard drive. The error isn't enough to make it interfer with the other bits of data on the hard drive, but is enough that there is a decent amount of chance that you could pull off the previous value of the bit from the hard drive, if you tried hard enough.
Also, when a bit is changed from one state to another, if the bit is changed, it might vary slightly (but still in the range of tolerance) if the bit was changed from 0 to 1 or 1 to 0 instead of the bit being 1 before or 0 before and remaining unchanged. Think of it as the magnetic field defining the bit as being not as strong as if the bit was not "flipped".
Now, the way to get around this is to write random bits of data to the hard drive several times. Another poster has commented that seven is the magic number, and since I've heard that number before, I have to agree. So fill the hard drive with random bits seven times and the original data can be assumed destroyed.
Using the Linux Router Project, its possible to use a 486 as a router with no hard disk, only one floppy disk. A 486 doesn't need a fan on the CPU, if it has a properly sized heatsink. However, you still have the P/S fan, unless you want to see about grabbing an old Macintosh machine and adapting the P/S over (I assume its possible, any info?). Therefore, with no hardware hacking, you are reduced to 1 fan (in the P/S), and a floppy disk drive as the things that are most likely to fail (because of the moving parts), and the fan should be the only cause of noise once the thing boots. With hardware hacking of the P/S, there is no extra noise.
As for dust, any machine can be dusty, I don't see why a properly cleaned old machine will gather dust faster then a new machine. Any machine does need proper air flow if it generates heat, fan or no fan. The only remaining factors are electricity and size. The electricity cost should be offset by the low/free cost of the hardware, and for those who are interested in conserving energy, reuse of an older machine with a higher energy draw is probably less energy then manufacturing a new machine. As for size, well, I can't win them all.:)
By not being able to copy the latest Britany Spears song from some guy in Vermont?
This is censorship?
Since when? you didn't create the song, you don't own the rights to the song.
It's amazing how bloody stupid people can be these days.
Assuming that I am not a criminal and I used Napster to find unknown artists who have choosen Napster and other P2P means of distributing their music with their permission, then I have been censored by a court-induced filtering system that is so paranoid that it returns no songs for the word "dog"!
Its the equivelent of a court ordering all file servers to filter their files to prevent piracy. Searching for "windows"? You must be a pirate, since there is no free software that uses the term windows. Or how about "office"? Most people can only think of one software company that releases a program that has the word "office" in it. Thanks to the RIAA, the precedent has been set for this sort of action.
Off topic, but you reminded me of a bug I once saw on a page of "most interesting bugs" in an older version of multics. It seems that the entire OS was swappable, and in one version, the swapper-out module could swap out the swapper-in module...
Agreed. The "it's intuitive" is crap. You hit "start" to shutdown the system. To make a startup disk you go to "add/remove programs". Windows has many little "features" like these that we no longer notice because most of us are very familiar with the windows desktop. No more, no less.
Sludge writes: Sure, a skilled programmer could cheat. It's been possible to look through walls in games since there was access to hack up openGL drivers to add 50% opacity to all surfaces.
This is about cheating for the masses. When users have to click a checkbox to enable a cheat, there is bound to be more cheaters because it is more accessible. In that respect, Asus opened the door to something new and bad.
Your argument can be extended to prove that script kiddies don't exist in large numbers, since few script kiddies have the programming skill to write their own tools... The warez scene must be dead too, since how many people that deal in warez (especially the games) know how to crack them?
People forget that the internet provides us with all sorts of information, including plenty of client-side mods that can be used for things like cheating, as well as tools for the script kiddies and warez for those without the knowledge/resources to crack their own. To believe that the removal of see-through drivers will stop cheating is naive. People cheat because they want to. Anyways, I doubt this makes it that much easier, most of the gamers I know don't even look at their video card settings (or have any computer knowledge besides getting their games to work).
OTOH, this does make me rather sad. There could be some legitimate uses for this driver. Just because the majority of people use something for doing wrong doesn't make the "something" wrong, does it? Or do we want to ban p2p filesharing since most people use it to trade copywrited songs? Then we can ban file transfer ability in IRC clients since 99% of the time, they only seem to be distributing songs/video, and we should really stop allowing individuals to have ftp (sure, it has legitimate purposes, but people can use it for bad things). I'm rather sick of slashdot atm. A community that rushes to defend DeCSS and yells about copywrite protection features in new versions of windows has no qualms about being hypocrits when it comes to something they don't understand.
I can imagine a win32 version of this thing myself. Think if its nice enough to actually output what its doing to a window.
Cheeseworm Win32 Version...
Scanning hard disk...
Possible Trojan (VNC.exe) found, removing now...
Possible Virus (Filemon.exe) found, removing now...
Argh!
(Btw, I selected these 2 examples since some anti-virus programs have a huge problem with both of them, since VNC opens a "port" on your computer to remotely access the desktop, and Filemon embeds itself into the system and checks what files are accessing other files.)
When someone of superior skill (such as yourself) stays in one area and kills other players, usually from afar. Sniping can only be done by the good players. See also "skilled player", "experienced".
Camping
When someone of inferior skill (such as another player, usually one you dislike) manages to kill you (often from a distance) by staying in one spot. Camping is only done by inexperienced players, because its the only way that they can kill people. See also "cheap", "newbie".
Needless to say, I've managed to become sick of playing with more then a few people.
I have an old (AMD, I believe) 286 with the original case, p/s, motherboard, and memory, that still works. The only thing is that the hard drive is going. I have never, in my experience, destroyed computer memory, cpus, or motherboards (dealing with the small collection of about 10 computers I have owned) by excessive "wear". Video, IDE, and serial/printer port cards have never failed on me either, including the old 8-bit cards I have pulled out of an 8088 I was given a long time ago. (A used sound card I bought for about $5 did develop problems on me though, after more then a year of use.) In my experience, a properly maintained pre-486/66 should never fail on the motherboard side, since I would venture that the cpu fan failing is probably one of the major ways of destroying the cpu in an older system. However, most of the used hard drives I have had (IDE) have developed problems. I have little luck with older color monitors, although my 9" amber is running well. I'm guessing that the problem is with the capacitors drying out after awhile, based on my limited experience with arcade machines, however, I can't guess why my trusty amber is immune or why my motherboards aren't also vulnerable, unless its because they seem to run cooler. (Speaking of motherboards, I have had a slight problem with one motherboard with the plastic cracking in the memory slots.) Anyways, I guess I'd have to sum it all up by saying that most older pc hardware is pretty trustworthy, save for the hard drives. Just keep it cool, make sure its not around moisture, and don't subject it to any voltage spikes or weird power fluctuations. It works for me.
Agreed! I'm in a dialup-only community, and I would happily pay an extra $1 - $5/month (and even take the pain of switching ISPs) if I could get a static IP address. Also, in this day and age of Evercrack and UO players, reliability is a must. My last ISP let me be connected for days on end, and knowing my gaming friends, any ISP that doesn't allow you to play a game of TFC without getting disconnected after a few minutes won't get business from a lot of gamers. So, be reliable, and try to offer features that the other guys don't have.
Also, have you considered other business opertunities to combine with your ISP idea? Dialup is the only service many naive computer users use, perhaps you could start to advertise internet training classes (a security-on-the-net-for-dummies would probably do well) as well as a small upgrade/repair business if you want. If you are in a rural location like me, with high prices locally, there is a pretty good profit margin involved.
An Anonymous Coward writes "Judging by the Back Orfice encryption i suspect that this encryption will either a)Be terribly slow that no one will want to use it. or B)It will get cracked in a week." Now I'm not sure about the original BO's encryption, but BO2k has the option for plugins that can choose Blowfish, Triple-DES, or other encryption schemes for data. Doubtful that someone will crack that in a week. As for speed, I have yet to use BO2k (I'm currently experimenting with VNC, although BO2k seems to have more features), but I doubt that it is terribly slow. (Btw, if anyone does use BO2k, can you comment on the speed under a decent computer (say anything higher then a P200) with a strong encryption scheme? Thanks.)
Re:The first exploit.
on
Cracking OSX
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· Score: 3
You're new here, right? Half the time, us posters can't be bothered with reading the article, much less knowing anything about what we are discussing.:)
Reading your post, I had an interesting idea. Each phone probably plays a certain number of tones at max. Each phone probably has a certain range of notes. So, there is a set number of permutations that can be played on the phone. All you really need to do is get some hard drive space, write a script to output all the permutations, copywrite it, and then sue anyone who "dares" to use your "original" work.
Of course, this idea is safely in the realm of fiction, right?
Although the tech support employees may be the immediate cause of the complaints, I think the fault should rest on the shoulders of the company itself.
Unless the company is in the business of selling service (instead of software), tech support is just a waste of money for the company. The company has your money, so why should it waste time solving your problem? Especially if the company has a large share of a specific niche and has locked the user in with its proprietary formats. (Btw, this is why windows sucks. It doesn't have any *real* competition in the consumer OS market. No, Apple isn't competition, it doesn't have enough games for Joe Consumer.)
Now I've never worked tech support, but I did a year in the computer services department of my college, where I was expected to help students and staff, and most of the problems that were brought to me were easily fixed. I'm guessing that most technical support questions, especially for software aimed at the average user, are as easily solved, especially when you consider that a company might be supporting a few products, and will probably have a large enough staff to train specific people in specific products. Of course, this assumes the company wants to spend extra money to support its products...
IANAL, but if they gave me unlimited access, including no bandwidth restrictions, and later they terminated my account because I was distributing a few GPL'ed programs I made and sharing a few other selected free programs I like, I'd give serious thought about suing the company. They breeched the contract we had.
More interestingly, if I was an amature artist distributing free low-quality mp3s of my work to get people to buy my CDs, and they cut off my access (and again, I wasn't violating the contract), I'd start to ask about laws against interferring with legitimate commerce.
Reminds me of the time when a friend and myself were trying to think of a get-rich quick scheme. The plan was to find something that sounds great and we could sell for a lot of money (it needn't have to work). We finally decided that Teflon-coated heatsinks would make a lot of money with the right advertising campaign.
Just think about it. As the commercial says, nothing sticks to Teflon, so it should be the ideal substance to disappate heat.:) Plus, say you sell these heatsinks at $35, buy them at $5 in bulk, and apply the coating for a few dollars apiece, so the profit margin is good. The average Joe is dumb enough not to know that Teflon probably wouldn't make a great heatsink, and the word "Teflon" sounds impressive, and is easily remembered for consumers to request, next time they buy or upgrade a computer...
We came up with more absolutely worthless products that night, but danged if I can remember them now.:)
You answered the points well, but I just want to add my $.02 to the discussion.
Automatically catalogues media clips (BeOS does this to an extent, I've heard)
The problem with this is that media clips can be in several different formats, and at several different sampling rates, plus they might have different lengths. If we have the raw data in a known format always arranged in the same way, we have a good chance of building up a databaase to catalog the data, as long as there is a large demand for it. The CDDB is a good example of this. However, there is no equivelent way to classify mp3s. My computer has a hard time going through my mp3 collection and telling me when two songs sound familiar.
However, for a lot of formats, it doesn't really matter. Having to manually enter the name of an movie when I rip it from a DVD isn't a great difficulty for me.
Displays information services in an acceptable format on a TV screen.
I haven't tried this in linux, but windows 98 (and I believe windows ME) has dual monitor support, and its possible to send output of one program to a different monitor. It probably wouldn't be that hard to set up the second video card to use TV-out and just connect it to a TV. I'm looking into doing something simular for a more "classic" feel for my console/arcade game emulation collection.
kaisyain writes "
Slashdot has continually said that the MPAA should got after individual copyright infrigers rather than services like Napster. Yet as soon as the MPAA does that it becomes labelled "intimidation tactics". I read the article and from what I gathered Excite@Home told people if they didn't stop sharing copyright material they would lose their service.
"
So, why am I upset? Because, I read the article, and it sounds like that the MPAA is going after the protocol and not the pirates. Even if I was to agree that all p2p copywrited-file sharing was against the law, we must go after users only after we have some indication of wrong doing.
I could open a gnutella server tomarrow filled with only my mp3s to share the music I created with the world. As far as I know, this is still legal in the United States. Then, in my eyes, my computer is providing no copywrited material, and any search requests that pass through my computer are not my concern, in the same way that it would not be my concern to read every email sent through a server to see if it was breaking the law.
This is similar to the DeCSS case. It doesn't matter if you are using DeCSS to access a legally purchased DVD, it is still illegal. Soon, I fear, MPAA will try to pressure politicians to ban most consumer p2p filesharing, as well as pressure ISPs to close certain ports and ignore certain protocols. Then my life becomes more difficult and I become more annoyed. What comes next? IRC file sharing? Home FTP servers? Home web servers? Will I have to apply for a permit if I want to run a MUD with FTP access for the coders? Will I have to run down to the local courthouse and pay $20 in filing fees and then pressure/pay more money to my ISP so they will allow incoming http requests to my computer just so I can show someone a webpage I'm working on that accesses a mySQL database through a PHP frontend?
I've used shoutcast to hear a private piano performance given by someone I met in an IRC channel once. I've used ICQ file-sharing to swap raw code files before.
I don't believe a protocol, a program, a bit of code, or an idea should be made illegal. However, the MPAA and the RIAA would love to make things like Napster and Gnutella illegal, under the guise of copywrite infringement. This is wrong! Its simular to the idea that when I buy a blank tape, I am taxed, since its assumed that I'm going to use the tape to duplicate a copywrited work illegally. What happens if tomarrow Gnutella starts incorperating encryption and other methods to protect the privacy of the users? Will the MPAA sue any user then? Or will they sue the coders? (Lawyers have used the law to pressure coders before). Once this happens, what will be the next target? Will PGP be attacked since users may be sharing copywrited material? I may sound like a delusional fanatic, but what happens when someone writes a plugin for a popular IM client with filesharing that uses PGP to encrypt files, and the MPAA/RIAA decides to nip the problem in the bud by starting an ad-campaign that suggests the major use of PGP is to trade child porn through email.
That's why I have a problem with what the MPAA is doing.
Slashdot Mirror
Correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't I just stick gnutella on all the computers in the network and just point them at each other? I've never tried it, but I've thought about doing that for finding stuff on a small network.
As for spying, that's what back orifice is for. I'm used to /. being paranoid, but not *that* paranoid.
This is off-topic, but I believe relavent. Your post reminded me of the idea.
Lets say I use a good encryption program, say E4M on a windows box, and make several encrypted volumes. Now, if I name the first volume "pedophilia", the second "drug deals", the third one "playstation 2 warez", etc, can the name alone be used to try to convict me of some crime?
This random thought brought to you by a 8 random hours of work with nothing to do.
You don't need one big bomb to make a "weapon(s) of mass destruction." During WWII, the allied forces firebombed Dresden, which almost totally destroyed the city, and some argue that the destruction was greater then Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
The analogy would be a shotgun. Sure, a 45 slug is larger then one shotgun pellet, but the group of pellets will do much more damage at close range then the one slug.
Although I haven't heard of the "flying crowbar" idea before, its feasible. If the "crowbar" can survive reentry, its going to hit the ground with a lot of force, and it wouldn't be hard to design the "crowbars" to shatter on impact, spreading shrapnel all over the area. As long as there is enough "crowbars" to hit the area, there will be widespread destruction.
I'm sure you are being humorous, but let me take your idea seriously, for a sec. All you need is your OS of choice, modified for hotkeys to control your media player of choice (of course, that will start up automatically). Then, grab a keyboard encoder (about $150 at Happs Controls, or you can rip apart a keyboard and have fun with playing with hardware (not that hard, really). Then just mount the buttons up on the dash, and you are set. As for the display, well, that's another post.
One word: HUNTING!. Since you seem unfamiliar with the word, let me explain. You pay money to the government (usually the state, which uses it for conservation), get a permit, take the big bad evil gun (a rifle or shotgun in most cases, but sometimes a handgun is used), and shoot some non-human creature (whatever the permit says you can shoot). Then you take your kill home and eat it, if its something big, like a deer, you have meat for awhile.
Sure, it may seem cruel, but I've seen wild animals, and I know how most domesticated livestock is raised, and the agribusiness farms are the cruel part.
Oh, and I don't hunt. I occasionally speak out against the current system of hunting, since I believe the state DNR prefers to keep deer numbers artificially high in order to get more revenue. However, your argument is flawed, and I must point it out. There are plenty of legitimate arguments for gun control, but "guns are evil" is not one of them.
Now, I believe (and if I'm wrong, correct me), that when a bit is written to the hard drive, there is a minor amount of error where it could be written to physical area of the hard drive. The error isn't enough to make it interfer with the other bits of data on the hard drive, but is enough that there is a decent amount of chance that you could pull off the previous value of the bit from the hard drive, if you tried hard enough.
Also, when a bit is changed from one state to another, if the bit is changed, it might vary slightly (but still in the range of tolerance) if the bit was changed from 0 to 1 or 1 to 0 instead of the bit being 1 before or 0 before and remaining unchanged. Think of it as the magnetic field defining the bit as being not as strong as if the bit was not "flipped".
Now, the way to get around this is to write random bits of data to the hard drive several times. Another poster has commented that seven is the magic number, and since I've heard that number before, I have to agree. So fill the hard drive with random bits seven times and the original data can be assumed destroyed.
Okay, lemme think about it.
Using the Linux Router Project, its possible to use a 486 as a router with no hard disk, only one floppy disk. A 486 doesn't need a fan on the CPU, if it has a properly sized heatsink. However, you still have the P/S fan, unless you want to see about grabbing an old Macintosh machine and adapting the P/S over (I assume its possible, any info?). Therefore, with no hardware hacking, you are reduced to 1 fan (in the P/S), and a floppy disk drive as the things that are most likely to fail (because of the moving parts), and the fan should be the only cause of noise once the thing boots. With hardware hacking of the P/S, there is no extra noise.
As for dust, any machine can be dusty, I don't see why a properly cleaned old machine will gather dust faster then a new machine. Any machine does need proper air flow if it generates heat, fan or no fan. The only remaining factors are electricity and size. The electricity cost should be offset by the low/free cost of the hardware, and for those who are interested in conserving energy, reuse of an older machine with a higher energy draw is probably less energy then manufacturing a new machine. As for size, well, I can't win them all. :)
sheldon writes:
How have you been censored?
By not being able to copy the latest Britany Spears song from some guy in Vermont?
This is censorship?
Since when? you didn't create the song, you don't own the rights to the song.
It's amazing how bloody stupid people can be these days.
Assuming that I am not a criminal and I used Napster to find unknown artists who have choosen Napster and other P2P means of distributing their music with their permission, then I have been censored by a court-induced filtering system that is so paranoid that it returns no songs for the word "dog"!
Its the equivelent of a court ordering all file servers to filter their files to prevent piracy. Searching for "windows"? You must be a pirate, since there is no free software that uses the term windows. Or how about "office"? Most people can only think of one software company that releases a program that has the word "office" in it. Thanks to the RIAA, the precedent has been set for this sort of action.
I do however have to agree with your sig. :)
Off topic, but you reminded me of a bug I once saw on a page of "most interesting bugs" in an older version of multics. It seems that the entire OS was swappable, and in one version, the swapper-out module could swap out the swapper-in module...
Agreed. The "it's intuitive" is crap. You hit "start" to shutdown the system. To make a startup disk you go to "add/remove programs". Windows has many little "features" like these that we no longer notice because most of us are very familiar with the windows desktop. No more, no less.
Sure, a skilled programmer could cheat. It's been possible to look through walls in games since there was access to hack up openGL drivers to add 50% opacity to all surfaces.
This is about cheating for the masses. When users have to click a checkbox to enable a cheat, there is bound to be more cheaters because it is more accessible. In that respect, Asus opened the door to something new and bad.
Your argument can be extended to prove that script kiddies don't exist in large numbers, since few script kiddies have the programming skill to write their own tools... The warez scene must be dead too, since how many people that deal in warez (especially the games) know how to crack them?
People forget that the internet provides us with all sorts of information, including plenty of client-side mods that can be used for things like cheating, as well as tools for the script kiddies and warez for those without the knowledge/resources to crack their own. To believe that the removal of see-through drivers will stop cheating is naive. People cheat because they want to. Anyways, I doubt this makes it that much easier, most of the gamers I know don't even look at their video card settings (or have any computer knowledge besides getting their games to work).
OTOH, this does make me rather sad. There could be some legitimate uses for this driver. Just because the majority of people use something for doing wrong doesn't make the "something" wrong, does it? Or do we want to ban p2p filesharing since most people use it to trade copywrited songs? Then we can ban file transfer ability in IRC clients since 99% of the time, they only seem to be distributing songs/video, and we should really stop allowing individuals to have ftp (sure, it has legitimate purposes, but people can use it for bad things). I'm rather sick of slashdot atm. A community that rushes to defend DeCSS and yells about copywrite protection features in new versions of windows has no qualms about being hypocrits when it comes to something they don't understand.
Not sure about BBS games, but if they are anything like muds, people find ways to cheat. Remember, we are all bright monkeys.
Heh. If I had the connection, and the space on my (it used to be a large...) 17.2 gig drive, I'd offer to remotely store that anime for you... :o)
I can imagine a win32 version of this thing myself. Think if its nice enough to actually output what its doing to a window.
Cheeseworm Win32 Version...
Scanning hard disk...
Possible Trojan (VNC.exe) found, removing now...
Possible Virus (Filemon.exe) found, removing now...
Argh!
(Btw, I selected these 2 examples since some anti-virus programs have a huge problem with both of them, since VNC opens a "port" on your computer to remotely access the desktop, and Filemon embeds itself into the system and checks what files are accessing other files.)
Sniping
- When someone of superior skill (such as yourself) stays in one area and kills other players, usually from afar. Sniping can only be done by the good players. See also "skilled player", "experienced".
CampingNeedless to say, I've managed to become sick of playing with more then a few people.
I have an old (AMD, I believe) 286 with the original case, p/s, motherboard, and memory, that still works. The only thing is that the hard drive is going. I have never, in my experience, destroyed computer memory, cpus, or motherboards (dealing with the small collection of about 10 computers I have owned) by excessive "wear". Video, IDE, and serial/printer port cards have never failed on me either, including the old 8-bit cards I have pulled out of an 8088 I was given a long time ago. (A used sound card I bought for about $5 did develop problems on me though, after more then a year of use.) In my experience, a properly maintained pre-486/66 should never fail on the motherboard side, since I would venture that the cpu fan failing is probably one of the major ways of destroying the cpu in an older system. However, most of the used hard drives I have had (IDE) have developed problems. I have little luck with older color monitors, although my 9" amber is running well. I'm guessing that the problem is with the capacitors drying out after awhile, based on my limited experience with arcade machines, however, I can't guess why my trusty amber is immune or why my motherboards aren't also vulnerable, unless its because they seem to run cooler. (Speaking of motherboards, I have had a slight problem with one motherboard with the plastic cracking in the memory slots.) Anyways, I guess I'd have to sum it all up by saying that most older pc hardware is pretty trustworthy, save for the hard drives. Just keep it cool, make sure its not around moisture, and don't subject it to any voltage spikes or weird power fluctuations. It works for me.
Agreed! I'm in a dialup-only community, and I would happily pay an extra $1 - $5/month (and even take the pain of switching ISPs) if I could get a static IP address. Also, in this day and age of Evercrack and UO players, reliability is a must. My last ISP let me be connected for days on end, and knowing my gaming friends, any ISP that doesn't allow you to play a game of TFC without getting disconnected after a few minutes won't get business from a lot of gamers. So, be reliable, and try to offer features that the other guys don't have.
Also, have you considered other business opertunities to combine with your ISP idea? Dialup is the only service many naive computer users use, perhaps you could start to advertise internet training classes (a security-on-the-net-for-dummies would probably do well) as well as a small upgrade/repair business if you want. If you are in a rural location like me, with high prices locally, there is a pretty good profit margin involved.
An Anonymous Coward writes "Judging by the Back Orfice encryption i suspect that this encryption will either a)Be terribly slow that no one will want to use it. or B)It will get cracked in a week." Now I'm not sure about the original BO's encryption, but BO2k has the option for plugins that can choose Blowfish, Triple-DES, or other encryption schemes for data. Doubtful that someone will crack that in a week. As for speed, I have yet to use BO2k (I'm currently experimenting with VNC, although BO2k seems to have more features), but I doubt that it is terribly slow. (Btw, if anyone does use BO2k, can you comment on the speed under a decent computer (say anything higher then a P200) with a strong encryption scheme? Thanks.)
You're new here, right? Half the time, us posters can't be bothered with reading the article, much less knowing anything about what we are discussing. :)
Reading your post, I had an interesting idea. Each phone probably plays a certain number of tones at max. Each phone probably has a certain range of notes. So, there is a set number of permutations that can be played on the phone. All you really need to do is get some hard drive space, write a script to output all the permutations, copywrite it, and then sue anyone who "dares" to use your "original" work.
Of course, this idea is safely in the realm of fiction, right?
Although the tech support employees may be the immediate cause of the complaints, I think the fault should rest on the shoulders of the company itself.
Unless the company is in the business of selling service (instead of software), tech support is just a waste of money for the company. The company has your money, so why should it waste time solving your problem? Especially if the company has a large share of a specific niche and has locked the user in with its proprietary formats. (Btw, this is why windows sucks. It doesn't have any *real* competition in the consumer OS market. No, Apple isn't competition, it doesn't have enough games for Joe Consumer.)
Now I've never worked tech support, but I did a year in the computer services department of my college, where I was expected to help students and staff, and most of the problems that were brought to me were easily fixed. I'm guessing that most technical support questions, especially for software aimed at the average user, are as easily solved, especially when you consider that a company might be supporting a few products, and will probably have a large enough staff to train specific people in specific products. Of course, this assumes the company wants to spend extra money to support its products...
IANAL, but if they gave me unlimited access, including no bandwidth restrictions, and later they terminated my account because I was distributing a few GPL'ed programs I made and sharing a few other selected free programs I like, I'd give serious thought about suing the company. They breeched the contract we had.
More interestingly, if I was an amature artist distributing free low-quality mp3s of my work to get people to buy my CDs, and they cut off my access (and again, I wasn't violating the contract), I'd start to ask about laws against interferring with legitimate commerce.
Just my $.02
Reminds me of the time when a friend and myself were trying to think of a get-rich quick scheme. The plan was to find something that sounds great and we could sell for a lot of money (it needn't have to work). We finally decided that Teflon-coated heatsinks would make a lot of money with the right advertising campaign.
Just think about it. As the commercial says, nothing sticks to Teflon, so it should be the ideal substance to disappate heat. :) Plus, say you sell these heatsinks at $35, buy them at $5 in bulk, and apply the coating for a few dollars apiece, so the profit margin is good. The average Joe is dumb enough not to know that Teflon probably wouldn't make a great heatsink, and the word "Teflon" sounds impressive, and is easily remembered for consumers to request, next time they buy or upgrade a computer...
We came up with more absolutely worthless products that night, but danged if I can remember them now. :)
You answered the points well, but I just want to add my $.02 to the discussion.
Automatically catalogues media clips (BeOS does this to an extent, I've heard)
The problem with this is that media clips can be in several different formats, and at several different sampling rates, plus they might have different lengths. If we have the raw data in a known format always arranged in the same way, we have a good chance of building up a databaase to catalog the data, as long as there is a large demand for it. The CDDB is a good example of this. However, there is no equivelent way to classify mp3s. My computer has a hard time going through my mp3 collection and telling me when two songs sound familiar.
However, for a lot of formats, it doesn't really matter. Having to manually enter the name of an movie when I rip it from a DVD isn't a great difficulty for me.
Displays information services in an acceptable format on a TV screen.
I haven't tried this in linux, but windows 98 (and I believe windows ME) has dual monitor support, and its possible to send output of one program to a different monitor. It probably wouldn't be that hard to set up the second video card to use TV-out and just connect it to a TV. I'm looking into doing something simular for a more "classic" feel for my console/arcade game emulation collection.
kaisyain writes " Slashdot has continually said that the MPAA should got after individual copyright infrigers rather than services like Napster. Yet as soon as the MPAA does that it becomes labelled "intimidation tactics". I read the article and from what I gathered Excite@Home told people if they didn't stop sharing copyright material they would lose their service. "
So, why am I upset? Because, I read the article, and it sounds like that the MPAA is going after the protocol and not the pirates. Even if I was to agree that all p2p copywrited-file sharing was against the law, we must go after users only after we have some indication of wrong doing.
I could open a gnutella server tomarrow filled with only my mp3s to share the music I created with the world. As far as I know, this is still legal in the United States. Then, in my eyes, my computer is providing no copywrited material, and any search requests that pass through my computer are not my concern, in the same way that it would not be my concern to read every email sent through a server to see if it was breaking the law.
This is similar to the DeCSS case. It doesn't matter if you are using DeCSS to access a legally purchased DVD, it is still illegal. Soon, I fear, MPAA will try to pressure politicians to ban most consumer p2p filesharing, as well as pressure ISPs to close certain ports and ignore certain protocols. Then my life becomes more difficult and I become more annoyed. What comes next? IRC file sharing? Home FTP servers? Home web servers? Will I have to apply for a permit if I want to run a MUD with FTP access for the coders? Will I have to run down to the local courthouse and pay $20 in filing fees and then pressure/pay more money to my ISP so they will allow incoming http requests to my computer just so I can show someone a webpage I'm working on that accesses a mySQL database through a PHP frontend?
I've used shoutcast to hear a private piano performance given by someone I met in an IRC channel once. I've used ICQ file-sharing to swap raw code files before.
I don't believe a protocol, a program, a bit of code, or an idea should be made illegal. However, the MPAA and the RIAA would love to make things like Napster and Gnutella illegal, under the guise of copywrite infringement. This is wrong! Its simular to the idea that when I buy a blank tape, I am taxed, since its assumed that I'm going to use the tape to duplicate a copywrited work illegally. What happens if tomarrow Gnutella starts incorperating encryption and other methods to protect the privacy of the users? Will the MPAA sue any user then? Or will they sue the coders? (Lawyers have used the law to pressure coders before). Once this happens, what will be the next target? Will PGP be attacked since users may be sharing copywrited material? I may sound like a delusional fanatic, but what happens when someone writes a plugin for a popular IM client with filesharing that uses PGP to encrypt files, and the MPAA/RIAA decides to nip the problem in the bud by starting an ad-campaign that suggests the major use of PGP is to trade child porn through email.
That's why I have a problem with what the MPAA is doing.