So wouldn't the logical thing to do be encrypt everything? If they had to try and decrypt every packet in the "buffer" I think the point of even trying to unencrypt anything would be worthless. If I had a VoIP system I would want it setup in such a way that I control how the conversation is encrypted so I could use whatever algorithm and passcodes I damn well want. I am sure the government will try to make this type of setup illegal or demand a backdoor though.
Would these rules also require that this site refrain from having 'Barbie' in the meta tags?
If this was a feeble attempt at a joke it was neither funny nor relevant since that would be a valid page to have "Barbie" in the meta tags since it is not missleading nor is it a porn page. You could have at least linked to a Barbie porn page so some boobs could have been seen to brighten up some slashdot readers day. Please refrain from wasting peoples time next time you post.
So, basically, insurance requirements are mostly pushed on people by an intrusive bureaucracy that is in bed with the insurance companies. And that's my concern with technology, it makes it easier for the government to take away your freedom and force you to pay for services you don't want or need.
Oh, I agree completely about being forced to pay for services/programs that I don't want or need (social security since I will never see any of the money I am paying into it again) and I don't like it much either, but in the case of car insurance forcing everyone to have it is good not for the reason so much of protecting against theft, etc but to protect people from some uninsured knucklehead in a $200 piece of shit car who slams into me and totals my brand new truck. Why should I have to pay for that damage by having insurance while the other uninsured person is only out $200? Insurance in this case would allow me to get payment from his insurance company instead of having to go after him/her directly and possibly not being able to get a dime. So sure, if the person who hit me did have insurance then they wouldn't directly be paying me but the insurance company they are paying would have to, so what is wrong with that? Everyone who belongs to an insurance company pays in a little bit of money and if they have an accident they possibly get a lot of money back out, sounds like a good thing to me.
Massive punitive damages need to be done away with and it is unfair to put the burden of those payments on the people who pay for insurance but in the case I described above insurance is most desirable for everyone unless you are the one driving the worthless car. Also, if I ended up being injured in the crash then the other person damn well have to pay for my medical bills and forcing insurance is the only way to make that possible for everyone.
Would you seriously rather live in a country that doesn't require car insurance and if so what good reasons do you have for it?
From the article: Some systems can read up to 60 plates per second, and they work at highway speeds and acute angles.
The next step is connecting the technology to databases that will tell cops whether a sexual offender has failed to register in the state or is loitering too close to a school, or whether a driver has an outstanding warrant. It could also snag you if you're uninsured, if your license expired last week or even if your library books are overdue.
Ok, I don't have a problem with this being used to see if a license matches something in a database where the person has commited a significant crime and/or shouldn't be on the road (uninsured, no drivers license for the person the vehicle is registered to), but I do have a problem with it being used for minor violations such as a very recently expired license plate or an extreme like they mentioned such as library books overdue. I think it should only be allowed to be used in situations that keep the community safer (such as to find possible robbery suspects, child crime offenders, people with warrants) as well as against repeat/excessive offenders (parking tickets, a license plate that has been expired 1-2 months or longer), and not just to get everyone for any type of violation no matter how small. I know it most likely will be used for any violation just because of the added revenue and that is pretty pathetic. I am glad I almost exclusively use mass transit nowadays.
Re:What's the copy protection like?
on
Prey Review
·
· Score: 1
You know, I've noticed a simple work around for most games that require the CD be in the drive (Rise of Legends, C&C:Generals, others.) After the game is loaded to main menu, I eject the CD. Runs fine without the CD.
That is not a work around since you still initially need the CD. Of course if you do a full install it won't need to access the CD except for the initial validation.
Now I spend $15 a month for my gaming needs, instead of the $200 I previous spent buying a new game every week.
Holy shit, why on Earth would you buy a brand new game a week? Unless you didn't have a job at the time (which is unlikely if you could afford that much per month) then how could you possibly play all those games with only a week each? I could see buying a used game per week if you found some games you really liked in the bargain bin, but buying a brand new game per week just sounds wasteful.
If I was you I would consider WoW a godsend for my checking account.:-)
A few, mainly Red Hat, Debian, Xandros, Mandrake (before Mandriva), Damn Small Linux, and a few others, that was why I just said linux as a general term.
I find it much easier to upgrade packages on my Debian system than it is on a Windows system.
I find both relatively easy, I just have had more problems along with harder to find solutions on linux systems. Windows is made for the dummy user, linux really is not. I do not understand how a person who is proficient at installing/upgrading software on linux has a harder time doing the same thing for Windows.
I also don't need to reboot my systems every time there is a small upgrade. The only time the system should need a reboot is when the kernel or possibly modules (device drivers) get upgraded.
I rarely have to reboot anymore on my Windows boxes for small upgrades. A lot of times a prompt will come up saying to reboot but most of the time I have found it is not necessary to do so. The last time I was forced to reboot was about a month or so ago when I installed the newest nVidia video card drivers, before that was a couple of months when I put some more RAM in my machine. I do admit that a Windows box must be restarted more often than linux boxes but the amount of times a reboot is really needed for Windows has been so low in my experience that it does not matter.
I put playing games under the novelty category. Definitly not a production activity.
While not a "production activity" it does give Windows a big advantage over other OS's for people who do enjoy games. Talking about games I was responding more to when you said "Maybe some day it will mature enough to be useful", this is a very useful feature to a game player, I was just stating that Windows can serve some useful purposes.
If Windows were so secure, I wouldn't be hearing the same questions from people all the time about how to get rid of viruses and trojans.
I bet if you left an unpatched linux box open to the world it would get owned as well. The reason you don't see the virus/trojan problems so often on linux machines is not only because it is relatively more secure, but mainly because virus/trojan writers don't target it since they go after the most used OS world wide instead. They can get more results that way, especially malware/adaware folks.
Thank you! I think that's the first time I've been called a zealot. My original message was going for a "funny" tag by using sarcasm, but your response was better than anything I could have ever dreamed.
I responded late at night when I was tired and did not sense any sarcasm at all (which is easy to do on the internet). I have come across many posts such as yours that were not meant to be sarcastic and I just figured yours was another one. How you worded things did come across with a zealot tone by saying Windows is a novelty, unuseful OS.
I wasn't saying it could keep thieves out, I was specifically saying it would act as a deterrant to keep homeless people a distance away from people trying to use the ATM. Most people think you need an ATM card to open the door, so if they don't have one they might give the door a tug and see it is locked and then take off. If there was no lock on the door then a homeless person would try to open the door and get right in, if the door was locked they couldn't get in unless they had a card to swipe. Yes, it is shitty security through obscurity but it is better than no lock at all since at least a person needs a mag swipe card.
I lived for 3 years in an area that had a high homeless population and not having homeless people 2 feet away from me staring at the money and asking for some of it every time I was finishing up a transaction at an ATM would have been really nice and having a keycard access type of setup works really well for that. If there are people hanging out inside the mantrap then security can kick them out of there while security can't do anything about people hanging out right next to an ATM that is on the sidewalk (which most of the ATMs were where I lived). Sure, you might say security could do the same thing with an unlocked door but that is not the point, the point is that the amount of incidents of people getting inside who shouldn't be inside would be much, much less by forcing the person to have some type of mag swipe.
Yet his basic point is valid - if any freaking card will open the door, and everyone has some kind of card, why have a door?
Before this article did you know that swiping any card would open the ATM door? I sure didn't and I bet most people assume some type of ATM card is needed to gain access. So it is better to have the locked door because it does keep the homeless people out who probably don't have anything to swipe and even if they do they most likely don't realize they can use just any mag stripe card to get in. I don't know about you but I would much prefer to have a locked door that needs something to open it rather than an always unlocked door. Not so much for the reason of preventing a potential robbery (since the robber just has to wait for you to exit the mantrap) but for the reason of keeping the homeless person a decent distance from me while I am getting my money, it would be uncomfortable to have them begging for some cash say 2 feet to the left of the ATM I am trying to use.
maybe this is a dumb question but...seeing as you were at the bank anyway, wouldn't it have been easier for them to just give you some money?
This is a dumb question because by having his student card instantly turned into an ATM card he has something to use until his new ATM card is mailed to him (if he even had a new one mailed). I know when I was in college I used the ATM's every 1-2 days, I didn't want to walk around with more money than I had to and since most campuses I have been to have ATM's all over the place it just was easier and safer to do it that way rather then withdraw a larger amount of cash and not have to hit up the ATM's as often.
That is a good point and they very well might watermark the resultant video in some way. I wouldn't be suprised if it didn't take too long for someone to figure out how they are watermarking the image and how to cover it up however.
Granny doesn't have an always on connection and X-windows over a non stable dial up connection could be a pain too. Her computer is also an old Pentium 75MHz which might make running X-windows slow as hell (I don't know for sure though). It might be possible to do it that way but after getting disconnected a few times I probably would go back to just explaining it to her over the phone.
I will mention that this does work nicely over a decent connection that is always on. It was how I did all of my assignments while I was in college, I just setup an X-server on my Unix account and did almost everything from my own room instead of being forced to go to the computer labs (WAY across campus) and sit at a Sparc workstation.
The shocking part is that there are still people using Windows
Why is this shocking? Windows has the highest market share and comes pre-installed on way more than the majority of pre-built computers. It is what people are used to using since it is the OS that most people started out on, so the majority of people are more comfortable using Windows since they don't have to learn something new. A lot of people also just don't know any better. They don't realize or care that there are other OS's available, as long as they can surf the web, check their e-mail, use MS Office applications, and play their games what incentive do they have to move to anything else?
The package management system is horribly antiquainted, the dependancy checking leaves a lot to be desired, and then there are the security holes in the stock applications that come with the OS.
Oh, sounds a lot like linux (although it has gotten better recently). I am not a fan of how Windows goes about these things either, but I must say that I have had much more frustrating times with dependency and package management problems on linux than on any Windows machine. On Windows it usually goes like this:
1) Try and install upgrade to software. 2) It doesn't work. 3) Uninstall software package completely. 4) Reinstall software. 5) It magically works.
Yes, it is horrible that a lot of upgrades work that way but at least that is usually all that is needed. With linux on the otherhand I have literally had to spend days sometimes trying to get packages upgraded/working properly, even with Yum and other package handlers. One pain in the ass that I remember off the top of my head was when I was trying to upgrade some Perl MySQL module after upgrading the MySQL server, it literally took me 3 hair pulling days to finally get everything working right and the whole problem was caused by an error with CPAN (I can't remember exactly right now what the error was).
If I had to direct my 91 year old grandmother over the phone how to install some software I would much prefer she be running Windows than linux. It would be great if everyone ran linux but I think you are getting ahead of yourself if you honestly believe that it is easier to use than Windows. Now if you are a Mac guy then you could be right, but I have very limited Mac experience.
Linux is also not immune to having stock applications that have security holes and need to be patched right away, Windows is not alone at all in that regard either. After freshly installing either Windows or linux I have to go through the process of applying the needed patches on both.
Maybe some day it will mature enough to be useful, but for now it's just a novelty that still isn't up to being used in a production environment.
If you play games then Windows is very useful since the majority of games are developed for the Windows platform. It also can be made pretty damn secure as long as you lock it down reasonably well, I have not had any problems at all for the last 4 years on my Windows XP Pro boxes at work or home. My work box also is very useful for Windows development, so it is not just a "novelty" and actually is up to being used in a "production environment".
I don't know what OS you use but you really need to get over your zealotry, you just sound like all of the other zealot sheep who love to rip Windows to pieces even though it does have some useful purposes that they always fail to acknowledge. Windows has its quirks (and quite a few) but so does every other OS that I have used.
From the CinemaNow Webpage: "To watch the movie or burn it to DVD, you will need CinemaNow's easy-to-use DVD Burner software"
So it is not just an easy distributable ISO that you download. I can see how they can prevent making more than one copy from the image file since you must use their own burning software but I fail to see what would stop a person from making a copy of the newly burned DVD. I also would be curious as to how they unforce the one copy limit, the only way that makes sense to me is to force the user to be online and do some type of validating with their servers, otherwise just making a copy of the file before burning it would be able to get around the one copy limit since they would have to edit the file in some way to recognize it as "used".
Either way, if the resulting disc is playable in a standalone DVD player then there is no way to prevent the movie from being lifted off the disc. This model might look good to a suit who doesn't know any better because they think, "This is great, even if the image file is shared over the internet it can only be used once!", and while that is true they will probably overlook the fact that people can still copy and create images of the burned disc just as easily as before.
If you want to compare someone with 7 million dollars to someone who makes 40k a year, then why not compare the 40k/yr joe sixpack with an average Somolian.... They worked hard (or at least their family did), to get to the position they are in. They deserve to live their dream, with their mansion and two vacation homes, just as much as joe sixpack has the right to make 50x the income of an average Somolian.
I don't know how you got modded insightful but that is besides the point. You are the one who is mixing things up, the comparison is not just between two people where one of them makes a huge amount of money more than the other, it is about that situation with both people working at the same company and living in the same country with the same average cost of living.
If a working class person loses their job they might get some unemployment payments if they are lucky and if they do end up losing their house then it will take work for them to find some shelter and food. If a CxO loses his job most likely he will get a golden parachute and not have any real problems, he also most likely will not have a problem finding another business to take him on as CxO where he can start the process over again.
People deserve to live their dreams if they earn them, they do not deserve to live those dreams through dirty business practices and screwing over the average worker which happens way more often than it should. It is hard to do anything about the situation since most of the higher ups are protected since they are buddy buddy with the board members and everyone scratches everyone elses back.
If CxO's want to be compensated so much because of all the "risk" they must take, then they should likewise be forced to lose everything if the business goes tits up. That is not the case though, if a business takes on a new CxO and goes tits up after 2 years that CxO will get away with multiple millions of dollars while long term workers for the company sometimes have to struggle just to get a fraction of their pension that they deserve for their dedication to the company. That is just wrong and should be criminal.
If you're using an external drive and playing a game or doing anything else CPU AND hard drive intensive you'll definitely appreciate Firewire.
I put all of my games and other software that are HD intensive onto one of my 3 internal SATA drives, I don't see a need to put stuff like that on an external drive. My external HD's are mainly only used for the storage of movies, music, and other files that I may want to be portable. Even so I have had great experience burning off ISO's on my external USB 2.0 drive while watching high definition video that was stored on the same drive while also downloading torrents onto the same drive. Sure, with firewire it may have done the job more efficiently but I did not notice any performance problems so USB 2.0 does the job fine for me.
Does having the option of a higher performance port available for people who need or want it hurt you? You know you can get a Firewire card for about $20 right?
No, it does not hurt me and I don't think having it available is a horrible thing, I just think it would make life easier for the average user if there was one standardized port that did everything. Then there would not be the confusion when a new device is purchased about how to attach it to the computer, they would just plug it into one of available ports since they would all be the same. I would much rather have a computer with 12 standard ports than something that must be split up between 2 or more types of ports, it is a limiting factor is all that I am saying. It is also a pain when purchasing devices because if you want firewire a lot of times there is a higher price that must be paid for it, if everything just needed to support one type of port things would be much easier and cheaper.
Firewire is great and is superior to USB 2.0 and if it was cheaper and had the market share that USB has then I would be all for it being the standard, but that is not the case and that is why I think USB should be the standard. Computer life would just be easier and more enjoyable for everyone.
What the hell are you going to connect your Digital Video camera to?... Try getting a consumer video camera user to set up their camera with that "USB streaming" shit, and see how quickly they become frustrated. It often just fails to work, or at minimum, needs a bunch of stupid drivers.
I mentioned that firewire was superior for DV in my post. Anyway having a camera's USB 2.0 interface not work correctly is the manufacturers fault, not the interfaces fault. I also have hooked up many video cameras using the USB interface and they ALL worked just by plugging them in. To the OS's I use it just appeared as another removable hard disk, it was FAR from painful to get it working.
And even if you can get it working, the performance sucks. If by "sucks" you mean takes a minimal amount of time more to copy the video off then you are correct. However if it only takes a minute or two longer to transfer the video using USB 2.0 people WON'T CARE or NOTICE.
Also consider that USB is a shared interface - you don't want all your other USB gear interfering with high bandwidth tasks.
Ok, I would bet 99% of users only have one device saturating the USB 2.0 interface at a time, so because it is shared is not a big hinderance. Most people hook up their iPod and transfer music to it or hook up their camera and transfer the video off of it, but rarely do they do anything else that is bandwidth intensive at the same time. I don't think my mouse/keyboard/UPS/etc that share the USB connection will be affected, even if I was burning a CD/DVD I would be fine (I have done this many times).
Firewire is not bad, but it just does not have the market share that USB already has or the price advantage and that is why USB is the better choice and will win out in the end.
What relevant gains does firewire have that justifies its higher cost over USB 2.0 for the average consumer? Firewire is superior to USB 2.0 but unless you are using all external devices and doing a whole lot of digital video editing or other activity that needs large amounts of bandwidth then the extra cost versus the performance gained is not worth it. Most people just need to transfer a few hundred megs (not gigs, although USB 2.0 still is not shabby at doing that either) of data or hook up an external CD/DVD burner and paying extra for a firewire connection is pointless for them, there will be almost no performance gain.
I think one port as the standard, being USB 2.0, which is "good enough" and cheaper is much better than having firewire ports as the standard. USB already has many more devices in the market versus firewire. Does a mouse need a firewire connection?
Um, listen kid, take your fanboyism somewhere else. I am not a "fan boy", so shut your mouth AC, I stated facts.
He mentioned Firewire because the initial iMac design didn't come with Firewire. Specifying it had Firewire was a way of pointing out that his iMac was one of the newer (and substantially faster) designs. If you had been a real geek and not a fanboy you would know this.
Both of his posts related to how internet was not perceivably faster on his old Mac vs. his new Mac so by him mentioning firewire on both served no other purpose than to claim the firewire had something to do with it. I doubted a cable modem ever had a firewire port but since I know many of them have USB ports I wouldn't have been suprised if some did have firewire ports, so thats why I wrongly assumed he may actually own one that did have a firewire port. I also have heard of "IP over firewire" so possibly he thought if he had that setup (one Mac connected to the modem and then shared to the other Mac's via firewire) that that may make the internet faster compared to a normal ethernet connection even though the real limit is the ISP's downstream cap.
CPU intensive sites? Holy crap, what sites are you visiting? Flash is not CPU intensive.
Flash can be CPU intensive, but nothing like streaming video, try sites with streaming video on an 8 year old machine and compare it to a top of the line machine and then get back to me. Some myspace pages also bring my computer to a crawl, webpages are not universally fast as you imply.
Basically you need to shut your mouth for a while and start learning, otherwise you're just going to continue to look like a schmuck. Yes, I'm sure the elitist fanboys you hang out with eat it up every time you repeat the same misinformation you've told each other countless times before, but you know what - they're also schmucks. Be very careful about what information you put into your head, because sometimes it's hard to get that information out.
Everything I stated was correct, based on the moderation of my post I do not think I look like a scmuck. Also, what "misinformation" was I spewing out? I think you need to take that last sentence of your post and follow it yourself.
It's not a PC. PCs care about that stuff. Macs just work.
A firewire connection to the cable modem won't make a difference so I don't know why you keep mentioning it, any PC that has a network card for the last 10 years had at least a 10 Mbps card if not a 10/100 Mbps card which both will max out the cable modems downstream just as much as a firewire connection would. Cable ISPs just don't provide the bandwidth for a firewire connection to have ANY advantage. Firewire was great for bandwidth intensive devices before USB 2.0, but now that USB 2.0 is the norm firewire is just about pointless and I hope it disappears fast and we just have one standard port.
Switching to the Mac mini - same basic firewire, same cable modem. No perceptible difference.
Comparing an 8 year old PC to a PC now on non CPU intensive sites will give you "No perceptible difference." as well as long as both machines aren't bogged down by spyware/adware. Trying both PC/Mac setups on CPU intensive sites will most definitely have the newer machines performing much better.
Anyway, you can keep paying extra money for your Macs and thinking they are the greatest things on Earth, I will keep spending my money on much cheaper hardware which has always been easier/cheaper to upgrade/custum build my own computer myself (I have heard Macs are getting better in this area, but I do not know for sure) and also "just work". I also don't have the pompousness that a lot of Mac owners (such as you) have which I think is much preferable.
What is stopping you then from becoming one?... All the other folks out there, they're no smarter than you or else they'd be on TV so they're just a bunch of cooky conspiracy theorists so never mind listening to them, okay?
I actually was very intrigued when I first learned that people thought the landing was faked. I did a lot of research looking at both sides and I finally decided there was more convincing evidence on the side saying the landings were real. There definitely is still a lot of strange occurrences such as how many of the main people involved mysteriously died but I still think the landings were real.
Here are a couple links that I liked (and could still find since it has been a while since I researched) which debunked many of the "conspiracy theorists" claims:
Ok, seriously, how can you lose ~99% of the data from something that is such a HUGE part of history? It is not like this was video of the 30th space shuttle launch or something, this was the first time humans had landed on the MOON. I would think that somebody would realize this and would have taken much more care of those tapes.
Since the PDF is slashdotted so I can't read it I also am curious as to why if "the last place on earth which can actually read these tapes" closes down someone won't be able to save whatever is required to read the tapes, are they just going to trash the machines? That would seem pretty stupid to me. Anyone have any answers?
The worst part is the conspiracy theorists claiming the landing never occurred are going to go nuts over this. Almost all the tapes of the landing mysteriously disappear as well as the only way to read the tapes, if I was one of them I would go nuts too.
Second hand games are not a source of revenue for game publishers.
Second hand games are not a direct source of revenue for game publishers which is obvious so I wonder why you even mentioned it. Look at what the poster mentioned:
"Over the last 2 days I've traded in about 6 games and bought two new ones...So nintendo has really won because they get a sale they otherwise wouldn't have had and when I eventually trade in metriod/mario I might buy another new game"
So basically a lot of times when people trade in old games they use the money to buy brand new games which they could not have afforded otherwise. Now the game companies will argue that they deserve a total of 8 sales if the 6 traded in games ended up being bought but in the long run I don't think the used game market really hurts the companies, they still make a lot of money and not allowing the resale of games you are bored of playing would be downright wrong.
The only upside for publishers and development houses is that resale shops do provide a great system for game awareness, but this is a backhanded compliment in that they are not making any money from each new person that buys the single copy of a game that's been traded in by 15 different people.
I do not know so I must ask do you believe game manufacturers deserve to make money from each new person that buys the single copy of a game that is traded in? Replace "publishers and development houses" with car manufacturers and "resale shops" with used car lots: the used car market hurts car manufacturers since they only make money off the first sale.
People can argue "well one is a license vs. a physical object" and while this is true as long as the game sold is the original disc then in my eyes selling it transfers the already existing license to the new disc owner, so no new license is created or taken away, the ownership of the license just changes.
The used game market is not an unfair market and the only fair thing I can see companies doing about it is just not providing support to anyone but the original purchaser, I do think that would be fair.
Now an interesting concept is if in the future when internet access truly does exist EVERYWHERE (and is fast enough everywhere) could game companies start only distributing software via the internet using some type of authentication? Using this model would definately kill the used game market since no physical disc exists and they finally would have the power to control the licenses since it could be tied to an account (which I would desire to be able to be tied to more than a single console). It wouldn't stop "piracy" but that is not the topic at hand. If they lowered the prices of the games (since they would not have to pay for the manufacturing/distribution of the discs anymore) I think I would prefer this method as long as there was some guarantee that the servers for the games would be around for quite awhile (I know, very risky since who can trust big companies?). If it was setup the right way the reason I would prefer it is because it would be nice to have access to all "my games" without having to lug discs around wherever I go and I would also like not having to worry about losing/damaging the game discs or stolen game discs. It would also be nice to have instant access to any game I wanted especially when a highly popular game is released and I wouldn't have to pre-order it and then wait in a long line at the store to pick up my copy. Just a random thought.
Slashdot Mirror
So wouldn't the logical thing to do be encrypt everything? If they had to try and decrypt every packet in the "buffer" I think the point of even trying to unencrypt anything would be worthless. If I had a VoIP system I would want it setup in such a way that I control how the conversation is encrypted so I could use whatever algorithm and passcodes I damn well want. I am sure the government will try to make this type of setup illegal or demand a backdoor though.
Would these rules also require that this site refrain from having 'Barbie' in the meta tags?
If this was a feeble attempt at a joke it was neither funny nor relevant since that would be a valid page to have "Barbie" in the meta tags since it is not missleading nor is it a porn page. You could have at least linked to a Barbie porn page so some boobs could have been seen to brighten up some slashdot readers day. Please refrain from wasting peoples time next time you post.
So, basically, insurance requirements are mostly pushed on people by an intrusive bureaucracy that is in bed with the insurance companies. And that's my concern with technology, it makes it easier for the government to take away your freedom and force you to pay for services you don't want or need.
Oh, I agree completely about being forced to pay for services/programs that I don't want or need (social security since I will never see any of the money I am paying into it again) and I don't like it much either, but in the case of car insurance forcing everyone to have it is good not for the reason so much of protecting against theft, etc but to protect people from some uninsured knucklehead in a $200 piece of shit car who slams into me and totals my brand new truck. Why should I have to pay for that damage by having insurance while the other uninsured person is only out $200? Insurance in this case would allow me to get payment from his insurance company instead of having to go after him/her directly and possibly not being able to get a dime. So sure, if the person who hit me did have insurance then they wouldn't directly be paying me but the insurance company they are paying would have to, so what is wrong with that? Everyone who belongs to an insurance company pays in a little bit of money and if they have an accident they possibly get a lot of money back out, sounds like a good thing to me.
Massive punitive damages need to be done away with and it is unfair to put the burden of those payments on the people who pay for insurance but in the case I described above insurance is most desirable for everyone unless you are the one driving the worthless car. Also, if I ended up being injured in the crash then the other person damn well have to pay for my medical bills and forcing insurance is the only way to make that possible for everyone.
Would you seriously rather live in a country that doesn't require car insurance and if so what good reasons do you have for it?
From the article:
Some systems can read up to 60 plates per second, and they work at highway speeds and acute angles.
The next step is connecting the technology to databases that will tell cops whether a sexual offender has failed to register in the state or is loitering too close to a school, or whether a driver has an outstanding warrant. It could also snag you if you're uninsured, if your license expired last week or even if your library books are overdue.
Ok, I don't have a problem with this being used to see if a license matches something in a database where the person has commited a significant crime and/or shouldn't be on the road (uninsured, no drivers license for the person the vehicle is registered to), but I do have a problem with it being used for minor violations such as a very recently expired license plate or an extreme like they mentioned such as library books overdue. I think it should only be allowed to be used in situations that keep the community safer (such as to find possible robbery suspects, child crime offenders, people with warrants) as well as against repeat/excessive offenders (parking tickets, a license plate that has been expired 1-2 months or longer), and not just to get everyone for any type of violation no matter how small. I know it most likely will be used for any violation just because of the added revenue and that is pretty pathetic. I am glad I almost exclusively use mass transit nowadays.
You know, I've noticed a simple work around for most games that require the CD be in the drive (Rise of Legends, C&C:Generals, others.) After the game is loaded to main menu, I eject the CD. Runs fine without the CD.
That is not a work around since you still initially need the CD. Of course if you do a full install it won't need to access the CD except for the initial validation.
Now I spend $15 a month for my gaming needs, instead of the $200 I previous spent buying a new game every week.
:-)
Holy shit, why on Earth would you buy a brand new game a week? Unless you didn't have a job at the time (which is unlikely if you could afford that much per month) then how could you possibly play all those games with only a week each? I could see buying a used game per week if you found some games you really liked in the bargain bin, but buying a brand new game per week just sounds wasteful.
If I was you I would consider WoW a godsend for my checking account.
Linux is just the kernel. What OS were you using?
A few, mainly Red Hat, Debian, Xandros, Mandrake (before Mandriva), Damn Small Linux, and a few others, that was why I just said linux as a general term.
I find it much easier to upgrade packages on my Debian system than it is on a Windows system.
I find both relatively easy, I just have had more problems along with harder to find solutions on linux systems. Windows is made for the dummy user, linux really is not. I do not understand how a person who is proficient at installing/upgrading software on linux has a harder time doing the same thing for Windows.
I also don't need to reboot my systems every time there is a small upgrade. The only time the system should need a reboot is when the kernel or possibly modules (device drivers) get upgraded.
I rarely have to reboot anymore on my Windows boxes for small upgrades. A lot of times a prompt will come up saying to reboot but most of the time I have found it is not necessary to do so. The last time I was forced to reboot was about a month or so ago when I installed the newest nVidia video card drivers, before that was a couple of months when I put some more RAM in my machine. I do admit that a Windows box must be restarted more often than linux boxes but the amount of times a reboot is really needed for Windows has been so low in my experience that it does not matter.
I put playing games under the novelty category. Definitly not a production activity.
While not a "production activity" it does give Windows a big advantage over other OS's for people who do enjoy games. Talking about games I was responding more to when you said "Maybe some day it will mature enough to be useful", this is a very useful feature to a game player, I was just stating that Windows can serve some useful purposes.
If Windows were so secure, I wouldn't be hearing the same questions from people all the time about how to get rid of viruses and trojans.
I bet if you left an unpatched linux box open to the world it would get owned as well. The reason you don't see the virus/trojan problems so often on linux machines is not only because it is relatively more secure, but mainly because virus/trojan writers don't target it since they go after the most used OS world wide instead. They can get more results that way, especially malware/adaware folks.
Thank you! I think that's the first time I've been called a zealot. My original message was going for a "funny" tag by using sarcasm, but your response was better than anything I could have ever dreamed.
I responded late at night when I was tired and did not sense any sarcasm at all (which is easy to do on the internet). I have come across many posts such as yours that were not meant to be sarcastic and I just figured yours was another one. How you worded things did come across with a zealot tone by saying Windows is a novelty, unuseful OS.
I wasn't saying it could keep thieves out, I was specifically saying it would act as a deterrant to keep homeless people a distance away from people trying to use the ATM. Most people think you need an ATM card to open the door, so if they don't have one they might give the door a tug and see it is locked and then take off. If there was no lock on the door then a homeless person would try to open the door and get right in, if the door was locked they couldn't get in unless they had a card to swipe. Yes, it is shitty security through obscurity but it is better than no lock at all since at least a person needs a mag swipe card.
I lived for 3 years in an area that had a high homeless population and not having homeless people 2 feet away from me staring at the money and asking for some of it every time I was finishing up a transaction at an ATM would have been really nice and having a keycard access type of setup works really well for that. If there are people hanging out inside the mantrap then security can kick them out of there while security can't do anything about people hanging out right next to an ATM that is on the sidewalk (which most of the ATMs were where I lived). Sure, you might say security could do the same thing with an unlocked door but that is not the point, the point is that the amount of incidents of people getting inside who shouldn't be inside would be much, much less by forcing the person to have some type of mag swipe.
Yet his basic point is valid - if any freaking card will open the door, and everyone has some kind of card, why have a door?
Before this article did you know that swiping any card would open the ATM door? I sure didn't and I bet most people assume some type of ATM card is needed to gain access. So it is better to have the locked door because it does keep the homeless people out who probably don't have anything to swipe and even if they do they most likely don't realize they can use just any mag stripe card to get in. I don't know about you but I would much prefer to have a locked door that needs something to open it rather than an always unlocked door. Not so much for the reason of preventing a potential robbery (since the robber just has to wait for you to exit the mantrap) but for the reason of keeping the homeless person a decent distance from me while I am getting my money, it would be uncomfortable to have them begging for some cash say 2 feet to the left of the ATM I am trying to use.
maybe this is a dumb question but...seeing as you were at the bank anyway, wouldn't it have been easier for them to just give you some money?
This is a dumb question because by having his student card instantly turned into an ATM card he has something to use until his new ATM card is mailed to him (if he even had a new one mailed). I know when I was in college I used the ATM's every 1-2 days, I didn't want to walk around with more money than I had to and since most campuses I have been to have ATM's all over the place it just was easier and safer to do it that way rather then withdraw a larger amount of cash and not have to hit up the ATM's as often.
That is a good point and they very well might watermark the resultant video in some way. I wouldn't be suprised if it didn't take too long for someone to figure out how they are watermarking the image and how to cover it up however.
Granny doesn't have an always on connection and X-windows over a non stable dial up connection could be a pain too. Her computer is also an old Pentium 75MHz which might make running X-windows slow as hell (I don't know for sure though). It might be possible to do it that way but after getting disconnected a few times I probably would go back to just explaining it to her over the phone.
I will mention that this does work nicely over a decent connection that is always on. It was how I did all of my assignments while I was in college, I just setup an X-server on my Unix account and did almost everything from my own room instead of being forced to go to the computer labs (WAY across campus) and sit at a Sparc workstation.
The shocking part is that there are still people using Windows
Why is this shocking? Windows has the highest market share and comes pre-installed on way more than the majority of pre-built computers. It is what people are used to using since it is the OS that most people started out on, so the majority of people are more comfortable using Windows since they don't have to learn something new. A lot of people also just don't know any better. They don't realize or care that there are other OS's available, as long as they can surf the web, check their e-mail, use MS Office applications, and play their games what incentive do they have to move to anything else?
The package management system is horribly antiquainted, the dependancy checking leaves a lot to be desired, and then there are the security holes in the stock applications that come with the OS.
Oh, sounds a lot like linux (although it has gotten better recently). I am not a fan of how Windows goes about these things either, but I must say that I have had much more frustrating times with dependency and package management problems on linux than on any Windows machine. On Windows it usually goes like this:
1) Try and install upgrade to software.
2) It doesn't work.
3) Uninstall software package completely.
4) Reinstall software.
5) It magically works.
Yes, it is horrible that a lot of upgrades work that way but at least that is usually all that is needed. With linux on the otherhand I have literally had to spend days sometimes trying to get packages upgraded/working properly, even with Yum and other package handlers. One pain in the ass that I remember off the top of my head was when I was trying to upgrade some Perl MySQL module after upgrading the MySQL server, it literally took me 3 hair pulling days to finally get everything working right and the whole problem was caused by an error with CPAN (I can't remember exactly right now what the error was).
If I had to direct my 91 year old grandmother over the phone how to install some software I would much prefer she be running Windows than linux. It would be great if everyone ran linux but I think you are getting ahead of yourself if you honestly believe that it is easier to use than Windows. Now if you are a Mac guy then you could be right, but I have very limited Mac experience.
Linux is also not immune to having stock applications that have security holes and need to be patched right away, Windows is not alone at all in that regard either. After freshly installing either Windows or linux I have to go through the process of applying the needed patches on both.
Maybe some day it will mature enough to be useful, but for now it's just a novelty that still isn't up to being used in a production environment.
If you play games then Windows is very useful since the majority of games are developed for the Windows platform. It also can be made pretty damn secure as long as you lock it down reasonably well, I have not had any problems at all for the last 4 years on my Windows XP Pro boxes at work or home. My work box also is very useful for Windows development, so it is not just a "novelty" and actually is up to being used in a "production environment".
I don't know what OS you use but you really need to get over your zealotry, you just sound like all of the other zealot sheep who love to rip Windows to pieces even though it does have some useful purposes that they always fail to acknowledge. Windows has its quirks (and quite a few) but so does every other OS that I have used.
From the CinemaNow Webpage: "To watch the movie or burn it to DVD, you will need CinemaNow's easy-to-use DVD Burner software"
So it is not just an easy distributable ISO that you download. I can see how they can prevent making more than one copy from the image file since you must use their own burning software but I fail to see what would stop a person from making a copy of the newly burned DVD. I also would be curious as to how they unforce the one copy limit, the only way that makes sense to me is to force the user to be online and do some type of validating with their servers, otherwise just making a copy of the file before burning it would be able to get around the one copy limit since they would have to edit the file in some way to recognize it as "used".
Either way, if the resulting disc is playable in a standalone DVD player then there is no way to prevent the movie from being lifted off the disc. This model might look good to a suit who doesn't know any better because they think, "This is great, even if the image file is shared over the internet it can only be used once!", and while that is true they will probably overlook the fact that people can still copy and create images of the burned disc just as easily as before.
If you want to compare someone with 7 million dollars to someone who makes 40k a year, then why not compare the 40k/yr joe sixpack with an average Somolian.... They worked hard (or at least their family did), to get to the position they are in. They deserve to live their dream, with their mansion and two vacation homes, just as much as joe sixpack has the right to make 50x the income of an average Somolian.
I don't know how you got modded insightful but that is besides the point. You are the one who is mixing things up, the comparison is not just between two people where one of them makes a huge amount of money more than the other, it is about that situation with both people working at the same company and living in the same country with the same average cost of living.
If a working class person loses their job they might get some unemployment payments if they are lucky and if they do end up losing their house then it will take work for them to find some shelter and food. If a CxO loses his job most likely he will get a golden parachute and not have any real problems, he also most likely will not have a problem finding another business to take him on as CxO where he can start the process over again.
People deserve to live their dreams if they earn them, they do not deserve to live those dreams through dirty business practices and screwing over the average worker which happens way more often than it should. It is hard to do anything about the situation since most of the higher ups are protected since they are buddy buddy with the board members and everyone scratches everyone elses back.
If CxO's want to be compensated so much because of all the "risk" they must take, then they should likewise be forced to lose everything if the business goes tits up. That is not the case though, if a business takes on a new CxO and goes tits up after 2 years that CxO will get away with multiple millions of dollars while long term workers for the company sometimes have to struggle just to get a fraction of their pension that they deserve for their dedication to the company. That is just wrong and should be criminal.
I could figure out what girls were thinking and probably get laid more often.
I agree with that sentence, but I find it odd coming from a person whose handle is "P3NIS_CLEAVER".
If you're using an external drive and playing a game or doing anything else CPU AND hard drive intensive you'll definitely appreciate Firewire.
I put all of my games and other software that are HD intensive onto one of my 3 internal SATA drives, I don't see a need to put stuff like that on an external drive. My external HD's are mainly only used for the storage of movies, music, and other files that I may want to be portable. Even so I have had great experience burning off ISO's on my external USB 2.0 drive while watching high definition video that was stored on the same drive while also downloading torrents onto the same drive. Sure, with firewire it may have done the job more efficiently but I did not notice any performance problems so USB 2.0 does the job fine for me.
Does having the option of a higher performance port available for people who need or want it hurt you? You know you can get a Firewire card for about $20 right?
No, it does not hurt me and I don't think having it available is a horrible thing, I just think it would make life easier for the average user if there was one standardized port that did everything. Then there would not be the confusion when a new device is purchased about how to attach it to the computer, they would just plug it into one of available ports since they would all be the same. I would much rather have a computer with 12 standard ports than something that must be split up between 2 or more types of ports, it is a limiting factor is all that I am saying. It is also a pain when purchasing devices because if you want firewire a lot of times there is a higher price that must be paid for it, if everything just needed to support one type of port things would be much easier and cheaper.
Firewire is great and is superior to USB 2.0 and if it was cheaper and had the market share that USB has then I would be all for it being the standard, but that is not the case and that is why I think USB should be the standard. Computer life would just be easier and more enjoyable for everyone.
What the hell are you going to connect your Digital Video camera to?... Try getting a consumer video camera user to set up their camera with that "USB streaming" shit, and see how quickly they become frustrated. It often just fails to work, or at minimum, needs a bunch of stupid drivers.
I mentioned that firewire was superior for DV in my post. Anyway having a camera's USB 2.0 interface not work correctly is the manufacturers fault, not the interfaces fault. I also have hooked up many video cameras using the USB interface and they ALL worked just by plugging them in. To the OS's I use it just appeared as another removable hard disk, it was FAR from painful to get it working.
And even if you can get it working, the performance sucks.
If by "sucks" you mean takes a minimal amount of time more to copy the video off then you are correct. However if it only takes a minute or two longer to transfer the video using USB 2.0 people WON'T CARE or NOTICE.
Also consider that USB is a shared interface - you don't want all your other USB gear interfering with high bandwidth tasks.
Ok, I would bet 99% of users only have one device saturating the USB 2.0 interface at a time, so because it is shared is not a big hinderance. Most people hook up their iPod and transfer music to it or hook up their camera and transfer the video off of it, but rarely do they do anything else that is bandwidth intensive at the same time. I don't think my mouse/keyboard/UPS/etc that share the USB connection will be affected, even if I was burning a CD/DVD I would be fine (I have done this many times).
Firewire is not bad, but it just does not have the market share that USB already has or the price advantage and that is why USB is the better choice and will win out in the end.
What relevant gains does firewire have that justifies its higher cost over USB 2.0 for the average consumer? Firewire is superior to USB 2.0 but unless you are using all external devices and doing a whole lot of digital video editing or other activity that needs large amounts of bandwidth then the extra cost versus the performance gained is not worth it. Most people just need to transfer a few hundred megs (not gigs, although USB 2.0 still is not shabby at doing that either) of data or hook up an external CD/DVD burner and paying extra for a firewire connection is pointless for them, there will be almost no performance gain.
I think one port as the standard, being USB 2.0, which is "good enough" and cheaper is much better than having firewire ports as the standard. USB already has many more devices in the market versus firewire. Does a mouse need a firewire connection?
Um, listen kid, take your fanboyism somewhere else.
I am not a "fan boy", so shut your mouth AC, I stated facts.
He mentioned Firewire because the initial iMac design didn't come with Firewire. Specifying it had Firewire was a way of pointing out that his iMac was one of the newer (and substantially faster) designs. If you had been a real geek and not a fanboy you would know this.
Both of his posts related to how internet was not perceivably faster on his old Mac vs. his new Mac so by him mentioning firewire on both served no other purpose than to claim the firewire had something to do with it. I doubted a cable modem ever had a firewire port but since I know many of them have USB ports I wouldn't have been suprised if some did have firewire ports, so thats why I wrongly assumed he may actually own one that did have a firewire port. I also have heard of "IP over firewire" so possibly he thought if he had that setup (one Mac connected to the modem and then shared to the other Mac's via firewire) that that may make the internet faster compared to a normal ethernet connection even though the real limit is the ISP's downstream cap.
CPU intensive sites? Holy crap, what sites are you visiting? Flash is not CPU intensive.
Flash can be CPU intensive, but nothing like streaming video, try sites with streaming video on an 8 year old machine and compare it to a top of the line machine and then get back to me. Some myspace pages also bring my computer to a crawl, webpages are not universally fast as you imply.
Basically you need to shut your mouth for a while and start learning, otherwise you're just going to continue to look like a schmuck. Yes, I'm sure the elitist fanboys you hang out with eat it up every time you repeat the same misinformation you've told each other countless times before, but you know what - they're also schmucks. Be very careful about what information you put into your head, because sometimes it's hard to get that information out.
Everything I stated was correct, based on the moderation of my post I do not think I look like a scmuck. Also, what "misinformation" was I spewing out? I think you need to take that last sentence of your post and follow it yourself.
It's not a PC. PCs care about that stuff. Macs just work.
A firewire connection to the cable modem won't make a difference so I don't know why you keep mentioning it, any PC that has a network card for the last 10 years had at least a 10 Mbps card if not a 10/100 Mbps card which both will max out the cable modems downstream just as much as a firewire connection would. Cable ISPs just don't provide the bandwidth for a firewire connection to have ANY advantage. Firewire was great for bandwidth intensive devices before USB 2.0, but now that USB 2.0 is the norm firewire is just about pointless and I hope it disappears fast and we just have one standard port.
Switching to the Mac mini - same basic firewire, same cable modem.
No perceptible difference.
Comparing an 8 year old PC to a PC now on non CPU intensive sites will give you "No perceptible difference." as well as long as both machines aren't bogged down by spyware/adware. Trying both PC/Mac setups on CPU intensive sites will most definitely have the newer machines performing much better.
Anyway, you can keep paying extra money for your Macs and thinking they are the greatest things on Earth, I will keep spending my money on much cheaper hardware which has always been easier/cheaper to upgrade/custum build my own computer myself (I have heard Macs are getting better in this area, but I do not know for sure) and also "just work". I also don't have the pompousness that a lot of Mac owners (such as you) have which I think is much preferable.
Hey thanks! Someone mod antdude up, I would but obviously that is not an option for me.
What is stopping you then from becoming one?... All the other folks out there, they're no smarter than you or else they'd be on TV so they're just a bunch of cooky conspiracy theorists so never mind listening to them, okay?
n %20the%20Moon.htm
I actually was very intrigued when I first learned that people thought the landing was faked. I did a lot of research looking at both sides and I finally decided there was more convincing evidence on the side saying the landings were real. There definitely is still a lot of strange occurrences such as how many of the main people involved mysteriously died but I still think the landings were real.
Here are a couple links that I liked (and could still find since it has been a while since I researched) which debunked many of the "conspiracy theorists" claims:
http://www.braeunig.us/space/hoax.htm and http://www.redzero.demon.co.uk/moonhoax/ and http://www.thekeyboard.org.uk/Did%20we%20land%20o
This is an interesting neutral site: http://www.xenophilia.com/zb0003.htm
Here is one of the "conspiracy theorists" sites I found interesting:
http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk/cosmicapollo.html
Ok, seriously, how can you lose ~99% of the data from something that is such a HUGE part of history? It is not like this was video of the 30th space shuttle launch or something, this was the first time humans had landed on the MOON. I would think that somebody would realize this and would have taken much more care of those tapes.
Since the PDF is slashdotted so I can't read it I also am curious as to why if "the last place on earth which can actually read these tapes" closes down someone won't be able to save whatever is required to read the tapes, are they just going to trash the machines? That would seem pretty stupid to me. Anyone have any answers?
The worst part is the conspiracy theorists claiming the landing never occurred are going to go nuts over this. Almost all the tapes of the landing mysteriously disappear as well as the only way to read the tapes, if I was one of them I would go nuts too.
Second hand games are not a source of revenue for game publishers.
Second hand games are not a direct source of revenue for game publishers which is obvious so I wonder why you even mentioned it. Look at what the poster mentioned:
"Over the last 2 days I've traded in about 6 games and bought two new ones...So nintendo has really won because they get a sale they otherwise wouldn't have had and when I eventually trade in metriod/mario I might buy another new game"
So basically a lot of times when people trade in old games they use the money to buy brand new games which they could not have afforded otherwise. Now the game companies will argue that they deserve a total of 8 sales if the 6 traded in games ended up being bought but in the long run I don't think the used game market really hurts the companies, they still make a lot of money and not allowing the resale of games you are bored of playing would be downright wrong.
The only upside for publishers and development houses is that resale shops do provide a great system for game awareness, but this is a backhanded compliment in that they are not making any money from each new person that buys the single copy of a game that's been traded in by 15 different people.
I do not know so I must ask do you believe game manufacturers deserve to make money from each new person that buys the single copy of a game that is traded in? Replace "publishers and development houses" with car manufacturers and "resale shops" with used car lots: the used car market hurts car manufacturers since they only make money off the first sale.
People can argue "well one is a license vs. a physical object" and while this is true as long as the game sold is the original disc then in my eyes selling it transfers the already existing license to the new disc owner, so no new license is created or taken away, the ownership of the license just changes.
The used game market is not an unfair market and the only fair thing I can see companies doing about it is just not providing support to anyone but the original purchaser, I do think that would be fair.
Now an interesting concept is if in the future when internet access truly does exist EVERYWHERE (and is fast enough everywhere) could game companies start only distributing software via the internet using some type of authentication? Using this model would definately kill the used game market since no physical disc exists and they finally would have the power to control the licenses since it could be tied to an account (which I would desire to be able to be tied to more than a single console). It wouldn't stop "piracy" but that is not the topic at hand. If they lowered the prices of the games (since they would not have to pay for the manufacturing/distribution of the discs anymore) I think I would prefer this method as long as there was some guarantee that the servers for the games would be around for quite awhile (I know, very risky since who can trust big companies?). If it was setup the right way the reason I would prefer it is because it would be nice to have access to all "my games" without having to lug discs around wherever I go and I would also like not having to worry about losing/damaging the game discs or stolen game discs. It would also be nice to have instant access to any game I wanted especially when a highly popular game is released and I wouldn't have to pre-order it and then wait in a long line at the store to pick up my copy. Just a random thought.