I totally agree about the responsiveness and how snappy Opera is versus firefox, that was what initially got me using Opera a few years ago over Moz. It is my main browser as well on Windows. I have noticed that on some websites Opera does seem to have run away memory issues where I have to close it using task manager, it does not happen very often but it does occur. I have also noticed that if I leave msdn.com open in a tab that there seems to be a memory leak and I need to close and restart Opera to get the memory back as just closing the tab does not seem to work. When this last issue occurs the mem usage goes to 100MB+, it is quite annoying. Overall I am a happy Opera user, I don't need all of the extensions available to firefox as Opera has everything I currently need.
I used to agree but after downloading and installing Opera 9.0 it is using 33MB RAM with just this slashdot article open while IE and FireFox are hovering around using 23MB RAM. While typing that last sentence it has now gone up to 34.5MB. I love Opera and it has everything I need and has always been fast and reliable but this is starting to worry me. There are only 34 comments in this thread so far, what is so much memory being used for? I suspect some type of caching but of what on a slashdot article page? Strange.
I live in the Midwest as well, specifically the Chicago area. You should see if peapod.com delivers in your area. I have used them 5 times and they are great, even with perishables. I wait until I need a decent amount of stuff before I order because if your order is over $100 then the delivery fee goes down to $6.95 instead of $9.95. The prices are marked up a bit but if you watch for the specials I have noticed a lot of times it will be cheaper than the local grocery stores. They have a wide selection of items (everything I want to get at the local store is available online) and to me it is worth the slightly higher prices to have everything delivered right to my front door.
If you do use them then definitely make sure to check out the items that are on sale to save money and you can also save even more money by selecting a delivery time when they will already be in your area because you can usually get $1.50 off just by doing that. Oh, one more thing is they do accept all manufacturers coupons, you just have to give them to the driver when your order is delivered and he will apply them to the order price.
I live in the Chicago area and get all of my groceries delivered using peapod.com. I was a little worried about ordering perishables but I have no complaints after using them 5 times so far. They also deliver alcoholic beverages, their liqour selection isn't huge but they do have a decent selection of beer.
I am not against all "piracy", in fact I am quite pissed over how our fair use rights are being trampled here in the US, but I wanted to mention one thing in regard to your comment: Kind of destroys the "Piracy hurts record sales" argument.
I think a big difference between a feature film and a porn film is the price to produce them. A feature film usually costs tens of millions of dollars while a porn, even with some well known porn stars most likely will cost orders of magnitudes less (I wouldn't be suprised if the average was well under $100,000). The point I am getting at is there will always be people who will be complete freeloaders even if the material is available at fair prices so piracy probably has some negative impact on sales yet it is much easier for a porn producer to make a profit since his initial cost to produce the movie was so much lower (plus being able to anonymously order porn over the internet and have it arrive in an unmarked box is a big thing for people who have issues with going into a porn store).
Another reason I think porns sales are less affected by piracy is it is a lot more fun to go to a porn store (especially with your significant other) and pick up some things than always download the videos off the internet.
So white people should be pulled over at random in Oklahoma City?
That would be using a MUCH smaller sample size to use for profiling than what has been used to profile the average terrorist. I mean just look at how many attacks have been carried out by Jihadists/radical Islamics/Muslims in the last FIVE MONTHS: http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/index.html#Attac ks
I mean Jesus tapdancing Christ, most of these attacks were carried out in the name of religion. Tell me again why profiling people who practice a religion that has a higher than normal number of people who commit violence (especially against "infidels") is wrong? This is not a small number, you can't ignore the facts.
I initially had your point of view but then considered that it is very easy to defeat by using someone who does not fit the description using "Using all the data available to determine those most likely to have what you are looking for". I think a mixed approach would be better, something like dedicate 80% of the resources to searching people using profiling (and search ALL of them) and search the other 20% randomly. This should rule out initial matches while still catching a few oddballs that don't meet the profiling standards at all and I think it would be much more successful than 100% random checking (which I don't think they do anyway).
People who bitch about the profiling can choose not to fly, I would rather waste 5 minutes of my time getting checked if I knew the skies were safer.
4. How to not hate the world is 86463 easy steps Step 1: Get laid.
I found your insightful mod humorous but the funniest part is that what you said is actually true! I can't name one person I know who just got laid and was not in a good mood.
I don't know why that posted Anonymously since I didn't check the box, but here it is again:
I mean, content control aside, why keep data on cumbersome disks when we have an Internet?
A few good reasons I can think of to keep data on optical discs are:
1) If you/someone you know doesn't have/can't connect to the internet then being able to access the files on a disc is very nice.
i.e. Sending DVD's of videos,pictures,software to your friend who only has dial up/no internet. Being able to give someone a disc also can be much easier if they are not very technical since you don't have to explain to them where they need to go on the internet as well as how to access/download the file, with a disc they can just put it in the drive and depending how their computer is set up it might even do everything automatically for them.
2) Unless you setup a server yourself then I don't know how much I trust any company with backups of my very important files both from a security standpoint and also what happens if the company goes belly up and you no longer have access to that data?
3) DVD's allow you to create your own discs that you can give someone to put in their DVD player to easily let them see pictures/videos without having to rely on internet access.
4) If you re-install Windows it is not recommended to connect to the internet before you have the machine properly patched, this is safest to do by making a disc with all the patches on it as well as some other software you may wish to install as well such as AV/firewall software (I admit this could be done just as easily with an external HD as well).
5) The discs are inexpensive so they are perfect for distribution. I already mentioned sharing files with family and friends but it also can apply to business as well. If you are at a tradeshow I think handing out discs with demos (to people who request them) would be much more effective than handing them a card with the web address they can download the demo from. I know if I had a bag full of papers/pens/all the other junk they hand out at those things that I would be more likely to actually try out a demo if I had the disc in hand.
Basically I don't think optical discs are going anywhere for a while. I wouldn't use them for long term storage/backup as I think using a RAID setup along with some offsite backup is much better, but for some things and especially for people who want to share information and have slow/non-existant internet connections putting everything on the web is just not as good of a system as putting that information on discs. It's cheap, easy to use (yes there are still people who don't know how to e-mail or use the web, I talked to one yesterday), and the only requirement to access the data is to have a drive that is compatible with the disc and software that can access that data.
Yes, they have low prices, but at what cost? You might find the following article about how they outsource their maintenance mainly to El Salvador where according to the article:
"Roughly one-third of the Salvadoran mechanics have passed the exam that qualifies them for the Federal Aviation Administration's license, while in the United States, such licenses are required for all mechanics employed directly by the airlines."
Kind of scary, eh?
They are truly the model of how an airline should be, focused on the passenger, their cost, and experience, not simply a government-bailed-out bloated corporation that sells seats next to each other for hundreds and thousands different than the seat next to them.
Have a good read and get back to me on if you think the lowest prices possible is worth the safety risks, which I see you did not mention they focus on safety.
I have no problem if these rich fucks go to jail, that is all.
The purpose of jail is to keep DANGEROUS people out of the regular public and rehabilitate them until they can safely be let back into society. If someone "cheats" the system then make them pay the price plus a hefty fine. Sending them to jail is fucking retarded and serves no point other than to "make an example" of them. Jail should be reserved for violent offenders and violent offenders only.
You are correct if only a single bit were to be used. However, he said 2 bits which makes what he said possible since he mentioned only 3 different rules since 1-10 are the same, so the 2 bit binary equivalent would be:
00 = You start counting from zero. 01 = Do not talk about geek fight club. 10 = Do not talk about geek fight club. 11 = Only two bits to the rules.
Oh, and there is a 2nd rule (10) so when he said "There is no second rule" he was incorrect.
many publishers are furious that they have to spend support money on consumers who have not actually contributed a dime to the company's coffers.
How is this an issue? Sure, the person who bought the used game didn't contribute more money to the game makers coffers, but they still got that initial money from the original owner who WON'T be needing support anymore. So they lose one person to support and gain one, I think that cancels things out fairly.
I also really wonder how much support console games really need. I would think that PC games need an huge amount more people supporting the games since both bug fixes can actually be applied to PC games and not really on consoles and also PC's can be configured completely differently and have software conflicting with other software which are issues a console does not have.
All I can say to the game companies is quit your bitching you greedy son of bitches. If it was game copying they would have a leg to stand on but they have nothing to complain about here.
How do they prove you were sharing the whole file? As far as I know p2p works by downloading from multiple connections and unless they dedicated a single connection to each of the 3500 or so people they charged can you still get charged if you don't deliver the whole shared file? I know some p2p apps check for junk data, so what if you insert N amount of junk data into what you are sharing which makes it unusable on its own? One situation I can think of is if you were sharing JPEG images have 90% of people sharing portions of the image data as well as ALL the data in between the JPEG markers (I picked the majority sharing this data since its the majority of the data) and 10% of people only sharing the markers and offsets to the next markers with the rest of the data in between being junk random data. You could use some other flag to indicate which of the two types of data the people are actually sharing so the application wouldn't download too much known junk data. Either data downloaded from a single peer on its own is basically unusable and on its own could not be used to render an image, could something similar be done for MP3s and does anyone know the legality of it?
Nowhere does it say environment and I highly doubt that was what was intended and more than likely was a typo by the attorney. What is says in the license is "You must not use the program in a network or on more than one computer." If they didn't intend it to be used in a networked environment then why would they even include the internet updater since the internet is the biggest network in the world? The other reason I believe this to be a typo is because if you look at the feature limitations found here http://www.grisoft.com/doc/289/lng/us/tpl/tpl01#Li mitations it says:
"AVG Free Edition cannot be installed on server operating systems (such as Windows Server 2003), nor can it be used for the scanning of network drives."
By reading that it looks like they intended "in" to be "over" in the license and that was the attorneys attempt to say you can't use it to scan drives over the network. I think someone should contact them about that (I would but I purchased a license so its a non-issue for me).
I also don't see a problem with the single computer restriction. If it is going to be used on multiple computers owned by the same person then they shouldn't be a total freeloader and pony up the whole $109/2 years for the SoHo license which gives you 5 licenses so its only $10.90 per computer per year (there is also a 2 user package available). If you can't afford that then how can you afford to have so many computers (both purchase and/or if you got them for free pay for the electricity for all of them)? Also, the single user restriction should not be a limitation for a family that has children and computers for each child since each family member is entitled to their own single user license. This restriction is only an issue for the freeloaders who don't think that maybe the developers of the software might like to be able to eat something besides Ramen noodles all the time.
It's not a bad lightweight av solution, but it seems really dated in terms of how it actually finds infection (ala scan only).
That is because they want you to buy a license to get the "Resident Shield" protection which is described directly from their website as "The powerful AVG Resident Shield provides maximum protection by scanning every file opened, executed, or saved. It will also prevent the opening or executing of infected files.".
Honestly, I am happy to pay the license fee (right now you can get 2 years for less than 40 USD which is NOT expensive) since AVG doesn't slow my system to a crawl at times like Norton does on my work computer. I used the free edition most of my college years and was so impressed with it that I decided to buy a license for the Professional edition once I graduated and could actually afford to pay for more than rent, food, and tuition (well not all of it, had to get some loans of course). While I used the free edition I didn't really find it too much of a hassle to have to manually scan files that I downloaded before I opened them and yes I know that the average user probably wouldn't do that but this is an Ask Slashdot question so I would assume the person asking the question could manage to do that.
And you really have to ask, why is an instant-messaging text system letting you send ANY files in the first place?
IM software is obviously a communication tool, having the ability to send/recieve files instantly is a damn useful and needed feature. E-mail is great, but it's a pain in the ass to send large files by e-mail since you are limited in the size of attachments.
And I can just as easily blame "cool" creeping featurism in the IM client. "Hey, look, now we can send files too!"
This has been a feature for a LONG time. I started using AIM (well AOL at this time) and ICQ around 1996 and while I didn't use them to send files at first I remember around 1998 I used ICQ for sending/receiving files with people I met on IRC. It's a basic and needed tool and is not bloat which is your point you seemed to be trying to get across.
Instead of bitching, write a proxy program that sends a text file over SSH connection with rate limiting.
A good idea but I what your are describing probably is harder than most of the entry level programs I had to do. Plus, I never understood people who cheated on assignments. If you really want to be a decent programmer then why spend money to learn how to copy and paste? I usually went into the computer labs the day before assignments were due and I can't recall how many times I was offered money to turn over my code that actually worked. It would have been easy to just do that then actually work at a shit job on campus but the fear of getting caught along with the moral instict of not wanting to "help" a future programmer be a POS made me decide not to do that.
As far as teaching it, I would start with notepad and the command line for the first few weeks I completely agree. My intro to programming class at the Ohio State University was taught with Java and using a GUI from the start was pretty confusing to me. It wasn't too hard, I finsished all the assignment easily and got an A in the class but I think keeping it at the command line level would have been better. It wouldn't have been as "pretty", but everything we did could have easily been accomplished in C/C++ using cin/cout and I think I would have learned more about what was actually going on at a lower level (which is where I work at my current job).
Slashdot Mirror
I know that trick and it doesn't work at the msdn site.
I totally agree about the responsiveness and how snappy Opera is versus firefox, that was what initially got me using Opera a few years ago over Moz. It is my main browser as well on Windows. I have noticed that on some websites Opera does seem to have run away memory issues where I have to close it using task manager, it does not happen very often but it does occur. I have also noticed that if I leave msdn.com open in a tab that there seems to be a memory leak and I need to close and restart Opera to get the memory back as just closing the tab does not seem to work. When this last issue occurs the mem usage goes to 100MB+, it is quite annoying. Overall I am a happy Opera user, I don't need all of the extensions available to firefox as Opera has everything I currently need.
I used to agree but after downloading and installing Opera 9.0 it is using 33MB RAM with just this slashdot article open while IE and FireFox are hovering around using 23MB RAM. While typing that last sentence it has now gone up to 34.5MB. I love Opera and it has everything I need and has always been fast and reliable but this is starting to worry me. There are only 34 comments in this thread so far, what is so much memory being used for? I suspect some type of caching but of what on a slashdot article page? Strange.
I live in the Midwest as well, specifically the Chicago area. You should see if peapod.com delivers in your area. I have used them 5 times and they are great, even with perishables. I wait until I need a decent amount of stuff before I order because if your order is over $100 then the delivery fee goes down to $6.95 instead of $9.95. The prices are marked up a bit but if you watch for the specials I have noticed a lot of times it will be cheaper than the local grocery stores. They have a wide selection of items (everything I want to get at the local store is available online) and to me it is worth the slightly higher prices to have everything delivered right to my front door.
If you do use them then definitely make sure to check out the items that are on sale to save money and you can also save even more money by selecting a delivery time when they will already be in your area because you can usually get $1.50 off just by doing that. Oh, one more thing is they do accept all manufacturers coupons, you just have to give them to the driver when your order is delivered and he will apply them to the order price.
I live in the Chicago area and get all of my groceries delivered using peapod.com. I was a little worried about ordering perishables but I have no complaints after using them 5 times so far. They also deliver alcoholic beverages, their liqour selection isn't huge but they do have a decent selection of beer.
I am not against all "piracy", in fact I am quite pissed over how our fair use rights are being trampled here in the US, but I wanted to mention one thing in regard to your comment: Kind of destroys the "Piracy hurts record sales" argument.
I think a big difference between a feature film and a porn film is the price to produce them. A feature film usually costs tens of millions of dollars while a porn, even with some well known porn stars most likely will cost orders of magnitudes less (I wouldn't be suprised if the average was well under $100,000). The point I am getting at is there will always be people who will be complete freeloaders even if the material is available at fair prices so piracy probably has some negative impact on sales yet it is much easier for a porn producer to make a profit since his initial cost to produce the movie was so much lower (plus being able to anonymously order porn over the internet and have it arrive in an unmarked box is a big thing for people who have issues with going into a porn store).
Another reason I think porns sales are less affected by piracy is it is a lot more fun to go to a porn store (especially with your significant other) and pick up some things than always download the videos off the internet.
So white people should be pulled over at random in Oklahoma City?
c ks
That would be using a MUCH smaller sample size to use for profiling than what has been used to profile the average terrorist. I mean just look at how many attacks have been carried out by Jihadists/radical Islamics/Muslims in the last FIVE MONTHS: http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/index.html#Atta
I mean Jesus tapdancing Christ, most of these attacks were carried out in the name of religion. Tell me again why profiling people who practice a religion that has a higher than normal number of people who commit violence (especially against "infidels") is wrong? This is not a small number, you can't ignore the facts.
I initially had your point of view but then considered that it is very easy to defeat by using someone who does not fit the description using "Using all the data available to determine those most likely to have what you are looking for". I think a mixed approach would be better, something like dedicate 80% of the resources to searching people using profiling (and search ALL of them) and search the other 20% randomly. This should rule out initial matches while still catching a few oddballs that don't meet the profiling standards at all and I think it would be much more successful than 100% random checking (which I don't think they do anyway).
People who bitch about the profiling can choose not to fly, I would rather waste 5 minutes of my time getting checked if I knew the skies were safer.
4. How to not hate the world is 86463 easy steps
Step 1: Get laid.
I found your insightful mod humorous but the funniest part is that what you said is actually true! I can't name one person I know who just got laid and was not in a good mood.
I want to play Mo Quake!
I don't know why that posted Anonymously since I didn't check the box, but here it is again:
I mean, content control aside, why keep data on cumbersome disks when we have an Internet?
A few good reasons I can think of to keep data on optical discs are:
1) If you/someone you know doesn't have/can't connect to the internet then being able to access the files on a disc is very nice.
i.e. Sending DVD's of videos,pictures,software to your friend who only has dial up/no internet. Being able to give someone a disc also can be much easier if they are not very technical since you don't have to explain to them where they need to go on the internet as well as how to access/download the file, with a disc they can just put it in the drive and depending how their computer is set up it might even do everything automatically for them.
2) Unless you setup a server yourself then I don't know how much I trust any company with backups of my very important files both from a security standpoint and also what happens if the company goes belly up and you no longer have access to that data?
3) DVD's allow you to create your own discs that you can give someone to put in their DVD player to easily let them see pictures/videos without having to rely on internet access.
4) If you re-install Windows it is not recommended to connect to the internet before you have the machine properly patched, this is safest to do by making a disc with all the patches on it as well as some other software you may wish to install as well such as AV/firewall software (I admit this could be done just as easily with an external HD as well).
5) The discs are inexpensive so they are perfect for distribution. I already mentioned sharing files with family and friends but it also can apply to business as well. If you are at a tradeshow I think handing out discs with demos (to people who request them) would be much more effective than handing them a card with the web address they can download the demo from. I know if I had a bag full of papers/pens/all the other junk they hand out at those things that I would be more likely to actually try out a demo if I had the disc in hand.
Basically I don't think optical discs are going anywhere for a while. I wouldn't use them for long term storage/backup as I think using a RAID setup along with some offsite backup is much better, but for some things and especially for people who want to share information and have slow/non-existant internet connections putting everything on the web is just not as good of a system as putting that information on discs. It's cheap, easy to use (yes there are still people who don't know how to e-mail or use the web, I talked to one yesterday), and the only requirement to access the data is to have a drive that is compatible with the disc and software that can access that data.
Oh yeah, I forgot the water part. That just speeds the reaction up though right?
Dry ice will work as well, and is probably easier to get/use than either liquid nitrogen or hydrochloric acid.
Even easier, just get some Drano, the original crystal kind. I had a lot of fun making "Drano bombs" when I was younger.
Preview the damn post first next time and you won't need to edit it.
Yes, they have low prices, but at what cost? You might find the following article about how they outsource their maintenance mainly to El Salvador where according to the article:
c le/2005/09/27/AR2005092701467.html
"Roughly one-third of the Salvadoran mechanics have passed the exam that qualifies them for the Federal Aviation Administration's license, while in the United States, such licenses are required for all mechanics employed directly by the airlines."
Kind of scary, eh?
They are truly the model of how an airline should be, focused on the passenger, their cost, and experience, not simply a government-bailed-out bloated corporation that sells seats next to each other for hundreds and thousands different than the seat next to them.
Have a good read and get back to me on if you think the lowest prices possible is worth the safety risks, which I see you did not mention they focus on safety.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
I have no problem if these rich fucks go to jail, that is all.
The purpose of jail is to keep DANGEROUS people out of the regular public and rehabilitate them until they can safely be let back into society. If someone "cheats" the system then make them pay the price plus a hefty fine. Sending them to jail is fucking retarded and serves no point other than to "make an example" of them. Jail should be reserved for violent offenders and violent offenders only.
You are correct if only a single bit were to be used. However, he said 2 bits which makes what he said possible since he mentioned only 3 different rules since 1-10 are the same, so the 2 bit binary equivalent would be:
00 = You start counting from zero.
01 = Do not talk about geek fight club.
10 = Do not talk about geek fight club.
11 = Only two bits to the rules.
Oh, and there is a 2nd rule (10) so when he said "There is no second rule" he was incorrect.
many publishers are furious that they have to spend support money on consumers who have not actually contributed a dime to the company's coffers.
How is this an issue? Sure, the person who bought the used game didn't contribute more money to the game makers coffers, but they still got that initial money from the original owner who WON'T be needing support anymore. So they lose one person to support and gain one, I think that cancels things out fairly.
I also really wonder how much support console games really need. I would think that PC games need an huge amount more people supporting the games since both bug fixes can actually be applied to PC games and not really on consoles and also PC's can be configured completely differently and have software conflicting with other software which are issues a console does not have.
All I can say to the game companies is quit your bitching you greedy son of bitches. If it was game copying they would have a leg to stand on but they have nothing to complain about here.
How do they prove you were sharing the whole file? As far as I know p2p works by downloading from multiple connections and unless they dedicated a single connection to each of the 3500 or so people they charged can you still get charged if you don't deliver the whole shared file? I know some p2p apps check for junk data, so what if you insert N amount of junk data into what you are sharing which makes it unusable on its own? One situation I can think of is if you were sharing JPEG images have 90% of people sharing portions of the image data as well as ALL the data in between the JPEG markers (I picked the majority sharing this data since its the majority of the data) and 10% of people only sharing the markers and offsets to the next markers with the rest of the data in between being junk random data. You could use some other flag to indicate which of the two types of data the people are actually sharing so the application wouldn't download too much known junk data. Either data downloaded from a single peer on its own is basically unusable and on its own could not be used to render an image, could something similar be done for MP3s and does anyone know the legality of it?
After I helped my dad manually remove a trojan horse from his computer
:-)
Dang, do you have a personal mainframe or something to be able to fit that trojan horse in?
* Installation and use in a network environment.
i mitations it says:
Nowhere does it say environment and I highly doubt that was what was intended and more than likely was a typo by the attorney. What is says in the license is "You must not use the program in a network or on more than one computer." If they didn't intend it to be used in a networked environment then why would they even include the internet updater since the internet is the biggest network in the world? The other reason I believe this to be a typo is because if you look at the feature limitations found here http://www.grisoft.com/doc/289/lng/us/tpl/tpl01#L
"AVG Free Edition cannot be installed on server operating systems (such as Windows Server 2003), nor can it be used for the scanning of network drives."
By reading that it looks like they intended "in" to be "over" in the license and that was the attorneys attempt to say you can't use it to scan drives over the network. I think someone should contact them about that (I would but I purchased a license so its a non-issue for me).
I also don't see a problem with the single computer restriction. If it is going to be used on multiple computers owned by the same person then they shouldn't be a total freeloader and pony up the whole $109/2 years for the SoHo license which gives you 5 licenses so its only $10.90 per computer per year (there is also a 2 user package available). If you can't afford that then how can you afford to have so many computers (both purchase and/or if you got them for free pay for the electricity for all of them)? Also, the single user restriction should not be a limitation for a family that has children and computers for each child since each family member is entitled to their own single user license. This restriction is only an issue for the freeloaders who don't think that maybe the developers of the software might like to be able to eat something besides Ramen noodles all the time.
It's not a bad lightweight av solution, but it seems really dated in terms of how it actually finds infection (ala scan only).
That is because they want you to buy a license to get the "Resident Shield" protection which is described directly from their website as "The powerful AVG Resident Shield provides maximum protection by scanning every file opened, executed, or saved. It will also prevent the opening or executing of infected files.".
Honestly, I am happy to pay the license fee (right now you can get 2 years for less than 40 USD which is NOT expensive) since AVG doesn't slow my system to a crawl at times like Norton does on my work computer. I used the free edition most of my college years and was so impressed with it that I decided to buy a license for the Professional edition once I graduated and could actually afford to pay for more than rent, food, and tuition (well not all of it, had to get some loans of course). While I used the free edition I didn't really find it too much of a hassle to have to manually scan files that I downloaded before I opened them and yes I know that the average user probably wouldn't do that but this is an Ask Slashdot question so I would assume the person asking the question could manage to do that.
And you really have to ask, why is an instant-messaging text system letting you send ANY files in the first place?
IM software is obviously a communication tool, having the ability to send/recieve files instantly is a damn useful and needed feature. E-mail is great, but it's a pain in the ass to send large files by e-mail since you are limited in the size of attachments.
And I can just as easily blame "cool" creeping featurism in the IM client. "Hey, look, now we can send files too!"
This has been a feature for a LONG time. I started using AIM (well AOL at this time) and ICQ around 1996 and while I didn't use them to send files at first I remember around 1998 I used ICQ for sending/receiving files with people I met on IRC. It's a basic and needed tool and is not bloat which is your point you seemed to be trying to get across.
Instead of bitching, write a proxy program that sends a text file over SSH connection with rate limiting.
A good idea but I what your are describing probably is harder than most of the entry level programs I had to do. Plus, I never understood people who cheated on assignments. If you really want to be a decent programmer then why spend money to learn how to copy and paste? I usually went into the computer labs the day before assignments were due and I can't recall how many times I was offered money to turn over my code that actually worked. It would have been easy to just do that then actually work at a shit job on campus but the fear of getting caught along with the moral instict of not wanting to "help" a future programmer be a POS made me decide not to do that.
As far as teaching it, I would start with notepad and the command line for the first few weeks I completely agree. My intro to programming class at the Ohio State University was taught with Java and using a GUI from the start was pretty confusing to me. It wasn't too hard, I finsished all the assignment easily and got an A in the class but I think keeping it at the command line level would have been better. It wouldn't have been as "pretty", but everything we did could have easily been accomplished in C/C++ using cin/cout and I think I would have learned more about what was actually going on at a lower level (which is where I work at my current job).