The sad irony is that MS lowered the standards to get Vista onto machines that could not support Aero. The original assumption that no one would buy these machines if consumers knew that they could not upgrade from XP to Vista. Considering the negative experiences that many of them consumers had on these machines, many of them don't want Vista nowadays.
This is certainly true.
I've got a Vista machine at home... 64-bit, dual core, 4 gigs of RAM... Runs fine. I might very well be better off with some other choice of OS, but I don't have any genuine issues running Vista. It is at least functional.
I've seen clients bring in Vista machines that are barely functional. They complain about how slow the machine is, how hard it is to do any work. These machines have the bare minimum hardware necessary to boot the OS. They've got 1 GB or less of RAM, a crappy on-board GPU, and some kind of underpowered budget CPU. And these people are miserable with Vista.
If Microsoft had required manufacturers to ship computers with decent hardware you wouldn't be seeing nearly as many people complaining about Vista.
Although I agree with the justice of going after them for misleading statements, I reckon all-in-all these people are better off, having got a PC with XP rather than being forced to wrestle the leviathan.
I think you misunderstand.
This isn't about whether a computer shipped with Vista or XP, this is about how a computer was labeled.
Microsoft has a qualification process that decides what sticker you're allowed to put on your PC. If your machine meets the requirements you are allowed to brand your computer as "Vista Capable".
Microsoft intentionally lowered the requirements for their sticker program in order to include computers that probably should not have qualified.
This means that there are people out there who bought computers intending to run Vista on them, and thought that the machine was capable of running Vista, and were then disappointed to find out that they could only run a very limited version of Vista.
You can certainly argue that XP is a better OS than Vista, and I don't think you'll see a whole lot of people disagreeing with you around here. But the fact of the matter is that people expected something that they weren't getting.
Re:Denial works well here.
on
Googling Security
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Google's reputation, however, is mighty squeaky clean, and until it is revealed just exactly what kind of information their computers can put together from your web habits (and what, exactly, they do with it), I have a feeling we'll be in denial about it for a very long time.
It isn't denial, it's personal experience.
Google has been turning out very useful products that pretty much do what they're supposed to. They've been doing some philanthropic stuff too. They give back to the community with their Summer of Code and things like that. Overall, my personal experiences regarding Google are positive. Thus far I do not have reason to distrust them inordinately. This doesn't mean that I'll blindly go along with anything and everything they do, but I don't question their every decision either.
By contrast, I've got a long history of frustration with Microsoft. Product after product released late and in buggy condition. Patches that break more than they fix. Hours of frustration trying to troubleshoot issues and track down fixes. Constant press releases about how wonderful the new version will be, and then most of the new features don't show up. I'm talking about a good 10+ years of frustration with Microsoft. So, naturally, I'm a bit skeptical when they announce a new product.
Wouldn't constructing floodbanks (dikes) be a must cheaper option? Here in Amsterdam we live 1.5 meter below sea level but I have no reason to worry...
The issue is really with the unique geography of the Maldives. The country is actually a chain of 1,000+ tiny islands - some of them barely large enough to actually be called an island. You'd have to import all the raw materials for those dikes, and you'd wind up with more wall than land in many places.
I think that hard drives fail earlier and more often than people realize.
I've believed for a while now that "winrot" and general perceived operating system instability are most often caused by hard drives in the beginning stages of failure.
I think it's an underrated cause of random crashes, and boot errors such as "missing c:\windows\system32\hal.dll, etc"
I wish the hardware vendors (Dell, Gateway, Apple, etc) would take more responsbility and be quicker to blame the drive (and replace it), instead of blindly having the end user run the recovery routine. Performing the recovery only papers over the underlying problem by temporarily rebuilding the file system. Because the substrate upon which the operating system rests is decaying, it's only a matter of time before the problems crop up again.
It's really hard to say...
A failing HDD certainly can cause trouble. And I've definitely seen Dell blame Windows for what was ultimately a hardware failure. But Windows certainly has plenty of issues as well.
I really hate to say it, but we've pretty much hit the point where many people are better off treating a computer as disposable.
Most folks are able to use a Windows machine without too many issues for 1 or 2 years. After that it starts getting crudded up with malware. Many of these users are unable to keep the malware off their machine in the first place, and are completely unable to clean it off once it arrives. So then they're looking at either spending some time on the phone with Dell learning how to reload their machines, or they'll pay someone like me a couple hundred dollars to reload it for them.
Or, they could buy a new computer from Dell for $400 or so. It won't have all the malware that their old machine is bogged down with, it'll have newer hardware, it'll have newer software, and it'll come with a new warranty. Sounds like an all-around win to me.
Unfortunately, that doesn't encourage anyone to actually turn out a quality product. Why bother fixing all the issues with Windows if we can sell another license in a couple years by leaving it this way? Why bother building higher quality hardware if we can sell another machine in a couple years by leaving it this way?
The alternative, of course, is to bypass the whole OEM market and do it yourself. But that's beyond the scope of what most home users are willing to do.
As far as home chemistry is concerned you can thank illegal drug users for the need to clamp down on lab equipment and supplies. The sad truth is that all of us need to help ferret out illegal drug users and get them put away or whatever if we intend to live in a free society. Perhaps people in some areas can't see the problem. They only need have lived in an area that has fallen to drugs to understand the intense violence and total terror that such a neighborhood can come to when drugs run rampant.
WTF?
Illegal drug users aren't doing much of anything to hurt anyone else. They may very well fry their own brains... And might, while under the influence, do some harm to folks around them. But I doubt if it is any more significant than the damage that alcoholics do on a daily basis.
Illegal drug users aren't to blame for this. The response to these illegal drug users is.
By cracking down so hard on illegal drugs we've turned it into an insanely profitable industry. That's why there's so much money and violence surrounding the drug trade. How much violence do you see surrounding the alcohol trade these days? When's the last time you saw a shootout in the street over a six-pack of beer? Take a look at what was going on during prohibition and you'd see a very different picture.
There's no way that taking away liberties is going to increase freedom. By telling folks that "all of us need to help ferret out illegal drug users" you're turning everyone against their neighbors. You won't have to worry about the US Government spying on your anymore, you'll have to worry about your next-door neighbor instead. How is that a step in the right direction? How does that increase freedom?
No amount of intrusion, snooping, or policing is going to stamp out illegal drug use. No society in history has been able to pull that off. Just like abortion and prostitution - it is here to stay, whether we like it or not.
All we do by criminalizing these drugs is push them underground, make it more expensive to traffic in them... Which raises the prices... Which makes it more profitable... All of which eventually leads to people deciding that a pile of drugs, valued at several million dollars, is worth a few human lives.
excuse me but this is total bullshit. oldest trick in the book. if you are behind in technology, pop out a card with huge ram and try to get some sales.
lets face it. nvidia has fallen behind ati in the chip race. you can place any number of 4870s in a setup as much as you like to equate the power of any monolithic nvidia card and they always kick the living daylights out of that nvidia card in terms of cost/performance per unit of processing power.
In case the $3,500 price tag didn't tip you off, this isn't a gaming/enthusiast card. This is a Quadro - a professional card for high-end 3D rendering. Stuff like generating film-grade 3D or insane CAD stuff. Actually, due to the design of the card, it'd be pretty horrible at playing games.
This thing is aimed at high-end scientific calculation and professional-grade rendering.
ATI may, or may not, have something comparable. ATI may even have something better. I don't know, I don't follow the GPU industry very closely. But claiming that they're just slapping a bunch of RAM on a card to drum up sales is just plain wrong. Hell, the blurb here on Slashdot even mentions the fact that it has 240 cores.
I fail to see how this is unique other than it being done "live" (which just means the VM is suspended, and the state of everything moved to the new machine and the VM resumed).
You just completely missed the point. The VM was not suspended, moved, and resumed. It was moved live. The VM never stopped doing its thing. It was up, running, and servicing requests the whole time.
...which isn't terribly amazing. I know VMWare can do that now. The big deal is apparently that it moved from one CPU vendor to another. I didn't realize this was so tricky... I kind of figured that x86 was x86 regardless of vendor. Obviously, I was wrong.
I mean, with high quality onboard audio (7.1, dolby etc) now pretty much standard on even budget motherboards, aren't the days of buying a separate soundcard history now?
Indeed. For most purposes the on-board sound is more than good enough these days. I haven't bought a sound card for personal use in years. The last motherboard I bought came with 7.1 built-in, and I only have crappy desktop stereo speakers.
If one of my clients does need a separate sound card I'll go with Turtle Beach. They've been a great alternative to Creative for many years now.
Does anyone seriously treat any wireless transmission as if it was secure?
Not by choice, no... But for some applications you're stuck with wireless whether you want it or not.
We support a few medical offices where the doctors insist on roaming all over the place with their tablets. We tried using a wired network and providing tons of jacks, but it wasn't enough. They insisted on wireless. So we've got medical information flying over the airwaves all day long.
It's encrypted, of course... Used WPA... But now I see that we may have to change that. And that's going to be an issue.
If anyone who cares to listen can easily pick up everything being sent from your computer it's only a matter of time and CPU power before they can read it.
Brute-forcing most encryption is kind of pointless. Obviously if you're doing something stupid like ROT13 you can crack that very quickly and easily... But most of the decent stuff takes a good amount of time to crack. So I'm not really worried about anyone brute-forcing our WLAN - it'd be much easier to dress up as a copier repair man and plug into a live jack inside the building. But at least with wired networking you do have physical security... With wireless you give up that physical security in favor or encryption - which we've seen get broken over and over again.
The big issue with wireless is that you're often stuck with the lowest common denominator. At home I've got an old PDA that only does WEP - cannot do WPA on it at all. So that's the best encryption I can use on my WLAN if I want my PDA to connect. Some people have old hardware... Barcode scanners, or tablets, or ancient WAPs... And that old hardware might not be able to do WPA, or WPA2, or whatever the currently secure protocol is.
So if WPA really isn't secure anymore, and we need to switch these medical offices over to WPA2 now, we may need to purchase new hardware. And depending on how much that new hardware is going to cost, or how different it is from the doctor's favorite tablet, or whatever...it may not get approved. And we may wind up having to stick with the older, less-secure protocol.
That might work on some or most files, but there still is no replacement for Acrobat.
Depends on what you need Acrobat for...
If all you want to do is view a PDF, you certainly don't need Adobe Reader (which is what the story talks about). There are plenty of perfectly good alternatives out there, and Foxit is one of them.
If you want to create a PDF, you frequently don't actually need Adobe. We've got tons of clients who basically just want to email a simple word/text/whatever document to someone with relative certainty that they'll be able to open it, view it, and print it - but not make changes. These clients are often under the impression that the only software that can possibly do what they want is Adobe. In fact, Foxit and PDFCreator often do what they need.
Sure, if you're looking to embed all sorts of flashy graphics and movies and stuff... Make an editable form... Embed keywords or something... Adobe is the way to go. But for basic stuff, why bother?
McCain just too much risk of Palin becoming president. I think she would have made us look back on the "golden years of Bush"
Palin really worried me. My biggest fear wasn't that McCain would get elected, it was that something would happen and we'd wind up with Palin as president. Not because of a lack of experience, but because she honestly seemed a little unhinged to me.
Claiming that being Governor of Alaska makes you an expert on energy and foreign relations... Being so rabidly anti-choice... Attributing much of your success to a genuine witch hunter... Creationism...
The American people seem to think he is. I certainly have to say that his tax plan sounds better to me than McCain's did... And his VP didn't want to secede from the union, and isn't a creationist... And Obama isn't as anti-choice... And he hasn't been agreeing with W on almost everything over the last few years...
Would McCain have been worse than Bush?
I dunno... I'm not sure that anyone could be worse than W. But I'll tell you that Palin really made me nervous, especially given McCain's age and health.
The only thing I can hope for is that the Republicans can filibuster the Democrats' bills. Not so much to push a Republican agenda, but to keep either party from screwing us any more than they currently do.
Unfortunately, I think I'm going to have to agree with you. There are certainly some changes that I'd love to see happen... But Washington does best when there's a near-deadlock. When nobody can just push their agenda through.
Did Puerto Rico vote? American Samoa? Marshall islanders? You crazy cats have taxation without representation, have colonies without a vote. I recall that sort of nonsense stirred a revolution once before...
Indeed. We need to either cut them free or turn them into real states. Empires are out of style.
Actually, that's almost exactly what has to happen. We've run up one hell of a debt over the last few years... Billions and billions of dollars... Someone has to pay for it eventually. And the only way the US government can come up with cash is by taxing people.
Us not withdrawing from Iraq?
We will. Mostly... Kinda... Eventually...
I don't believe for a moment that we'll be pulling out in the next six months or so, but even W was working on a plan to get out of Iraq. The Iraqi government doesn't want us there anymore, and the American people don't want us there anymore. We're on our way out.
But I'm sure we'll have some kind of a presence there for decades. Some kind of ginormous embassy, or a permanent military base, or advisers of some sort.
Whether most slashdotters with decent IT careers end up paying more taxes?
Depends on what you mean by "decent IT career." If you're making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, I'd expect to pay more taxes. If you aren't making that much, I'd expect to pay less. If you're somewhere in the middle, I wouldn't expect much change.
Everyone talks about Obama's tax plan as if they've never heard of a progressive tax... Democrats have always talked about taxing the wealthy and helping out the poor. That's one of the defining characteristics of the Democratic party. Kerry had a similar plan, as did Gore, as did Clinton. It's nothing new.
Don't take this wrong, McCain sucks too. I just wish people would stop drinking from either coolaid.
Actually... Despite the fact that I voted for Obama... I don't think I'd claim that "McCain sucks too." He's given an awful lot to this country, made tons of sacrifices. And he really is trying to make America a better place - I just disagree with him on the mechanics.
As for the coolaid... Unfortunately we seem to be stuck with this two-party system. Lots of entrenched politicians who don't seem all that interested in really accomplishing a whole lot. I sincerely doubt Obama's ability to deliver on much of the change he talked about. Not because I think he's a bad politician or ineffective or anything like that, but because I think it's unlikely a single person will be able to affect decades of momentum very much.
But Obama did get a hell of a lot of support from regular people... Huge voter turnout, lots of small donations... He doesn't seem to be as deeply tied to the lobbyists as some other politicians are... And he does seem to be making some efforts at bipartisanship... So we might get some change...
And maybe this election cycle will start us in the right direction. Ron Paul actually looked halfway viable for a while there. I disagree with him on mechanics too, but seeing more viable candidates with interesting ideas is certainly better than seeing the same two candidates year after year.
Hope because the idiots that have been running the country for nearly a decade are gone, fear that the new bunch of idiots aren't any better.
That's really my major fear. Sure, it all sounded pretty good while he was campaigning... All kinds of wonderful change and all that... But I'm really wondering how much of it will materialize.
I know most campaign promises never really show up. And I understand that there's a real limit to what the President can accomplish on his own. But neither of those is really what I'm worried about...
The hundreds of politicians in Washington have been doing business as usual for decades. Sure, a few red seats turned blue... But they're pretty much the same kind of people that were there before. And a lot of the Democrats in the House and Senate have been there for a couple years now. Why should I believe that just because we've got a new President we're going to see an end to all the "business as usual" politics?
And then there's the damage that W did to the notions of oversight and transparency... W proved that his administration could do pretty much whatever they felt like with absolutely no repercussions. If you can do what you want, and get away with it, why wouldn't you? With that kind of obvious evidence in front of him, what's to keep Obama from running the same kind of administration?
Why do you care how we look to the rest of the world? Let's worry about the problems in our country. I really don't give two shits about how some snoppy European views our country.
The United States does not exist in a vacuum. We cannot ignore the world around us.
Our economy is dependent on other economies all over the world. We're constantly importing and exporting goods. How we are viewed by the rest of the world, and how the rest of the world is willing to do business with us, dramatically impacts our own economy.
We're at war in two countries. We have enemies in other countries. If we can improve how the rest of the world views us we might not have so many enemies out there. At the very least some of our friends might be more willing to support us against those enemies.
I guess it might be nice if they open-sourced the software so that people could run their own servers... But I really have to kind of wonder what the point would be. What makes these games fun isn't the amazing engines or terrific game mechanics - its the players.
These days there's hardly any gopher servers out there (yes, I know there are a few) - so gopher clients aren't particularly useful.
Players move on to the newest, shiniest games out there. Without constant upgrades and expansions, players get bored pretty darn quick. And then your playerbase shrinks... There aren't enough people around to get groups or run raids... Which means less fun for the remaining players... And before too long there's nobody left to play with.
I suppose someone might pick up an open-sourced game server and expand/improve it enough to keep people playing... Might even do a good enough job to get people to pay for it... But I really have a hard time seeing any game living for terribly long after it's been abandoned by the original company.
I mean, there's a reason these games go under in the first place - they aren't making enough money because there aren't enough people playing them. Open sourcing the code might allow a few die-hard fans to keep playing... But the odds are pretty damn good the game will be dead (or close enough) before too long anyway.
And really, as an MMOG player myself, that doesn't bother me. Unlike a novel or a CD or something like that I don't feel that I'm purchasing an item when I buy an MMOG. I feel more like I'm joining a club... What I gain is the fun, experience, and memories of playing with other people. Not an item that I can revisit later on. It's like when you go on vacation to Mexico - what do you really have to show for your money when all is said and done? A few souvenirs maybe... Some photos... But the main thing you have are the memories of what you did.
First off, I have a hard time seeing a home user coming up with 12 TB of data anytime soon.
How about 250 GB of data? That's the size of entry-level HDs nowadays. Burn it to 15 DVDs?
Actually, that's not a bad idea. And it isn't all that hard to do. Decent burner software like Nero will split the backup and ask for additional discs as you go. A relatively fast burner isn't that expensive, and you can keep working while your discs burn. I'll routinely kick it off on a Saturday morning while I'm doing housework, checking email, reading the news, and playing games. I just have to swap out discs periodically. Not a big deal. Takes a little while, but I don't have to give it my undivided attention.
You could dump it to a NAS and then unplug the thing and stick it in a safe deposit box. Or you can print everything out and mail it to your uncle. Or you can burn a pile of DVDs and hide them throughout the woods. But unless you've got your data offsite it is not protected.
None of these stupid suggestions are online, so they're useless. For home users, the ONLY realistic offsite backup solution in online backup over the internet. And it's expensive and time-consuming for large amounts of data.
I was being sarcastic... But I don't see why it is unreasonable to expect home users to make use of an offline backup. It isn't much different than keeping copies of birth certificates, titles, deeds, treasured photos, and whatever else in a safe deposit box. I mean...everyone has a safe deposit box, right? I make a trip to the bank at least once a week to drop something in my safe deposit box. How else do you ensure that in the event of a fire/burglary/whatever you can go on with your life? Important data doesn't have to be digital.
If you've got more data you could get yourself an external HDD, or a few USB flash drives, or a cheap NAS and dump the data to it.
Backing up to an external HDD or NAS is backuing up hard disks with other hard disks at the same location. I fail to see how this is significant different from RAID (except slower).
Sure, you're still vulnerable to a HDD failure, which is why I suggested a NAS for a few USB flash drives. But it gets an offline/offsite copy of your data, which makes it harder to accidentally delete something. And it will also protect you from fire/burglary/whatever. Yes, it's a pain...but this is important data, right?
RAID + as much internet backup as you can afford is THE solution for home users.
I wouldn't know. I've seen some on-line backup solutions... I've supported a client or two with them... But I've never made use of them myself.
I've got about 100 GB of data that is actually important, which gets backed up about once a week to DVD and stuffed in a safe deposit box. I've got another 200 GB or so of data that isn't really important, but I'd rather not lose it (save games, movies, music, etc.) - which gets backed up to DVD every couple months.
I've been playing with the idea of buying myself a tape drive. They aren't cheap... About $1,000 for an LTO1... But it would make my backups a lot easier, and therefor more frequent, and therefor I'd feel safer about the whole thing. An LTO1 only holds about 200 GB compressed, which I've already exceeded, but you can always throw in a second (or third, or fourth...) tape.
I'm sorry, but I'm getting seriously tired of people looking down from the pedestal of how it "ought" to be done, how you do it at work, how you would do it if you had 20k to blow on a backup solution, and trying to apply that to the home user. Even the tape comment in the summary is horseshit, because even exceptionally savvy home users are not going to pay for a tape drive and enough tapes to archive serious data, more less handle shipping the backups offsite professionally.
This is serious news. As it stands, the home user that actually sets up a RAID 5 raid is in the top percentile for actually giving a crap about home data. Once that becomes a non-issue, then the point has come when a reasonable backup is out of reach of 99% of private individuals. This, at the same time as more and more people are actually needing a decent solution.
First off, I have a hard time seeing a home user coming up with 12 TB of data anytime soon. Sure, it's possible... But I find it unlikely. I also find it unlikely that your average home user is going to be savvy enough to even know what a RAID-5 is. We've got plenty of home users who've been keeping all their precious family photos on a single SD card with absolutely no backup at all.
And if your home user does actually have 12 TB of data, in a RAID-5, that's not going to be a cheap pile of hardware. If they've got that kind of money to spend on storage, why wouldn't they spend some money to actually protect that data?
Next up, a RAID (1, 5, 10, various combinations there-of) does not protect you from the single biggest threat to your data - user error. A RAID will not make it any easier to recover data that you've accidentally deleted.
Accidentally delete a pile of Timmy's graduation photos? Tough. Even if you've got a working RAID-5 you aren't going to have an easy time getting them back.
How 'bout your house burns down with your RAID-5 in it? Your data is still toast, even if it was on a RAID.
Anyone who cares about their data - home user or business - needs an offsite copy of it. Doesn't need to be a tape... You could dump it to a NAS and then unplug the thing and stick it in a safe deposit box. Or you can print everything out and mail it to your uncle. Or you can burn a pile of DVDs and hide them throughout the woods. But unless you've got your data offsite it is not protected.
As far as getting a backup working... These days it's pretty damn trivial.
If you don't have a ton of data you can just burn it to DVDs easily enough.
If you've got more data you could get yourself an external HDD, or a few USB flash drives, or a cheap NAS and dump the data to it.
You can also get an LTO1 drive for about $1,000 if you really wanted to go with a tape.
The downside of this is that other companies that make not-fun games don't get any purchase - we did the same with Spore, just trying it out and really hated it so EA will not get any purchase this year and the game is no longer on our systems... we thought it sucked that badly (DRM issues aside).
Steam has a really great try before you buy free download on some of the games.
What ever happened to decent demos of games? Or shareware/trialware? There was a time when pretty much every game had a demo out, usually before the game itself was released. It was great advertising for a game... Stirred up lots of enthusiasm... And it gave people a chance to try a game before paying for it.
Right now I'm agonizing over Dead Space for PC. It looks like a decent game, looks like something I'd really enjoy. And I've got some cash set aside at the moment from a recent bonus. But I've heard reports that the keyboard/mouse controls are horrible and you really need to use a controller to enjoy Dead Space on a PC. I don't want to buy a game for $50 only to find out that I need to spend another $30 on a controller just to play it. I'd love to play a demo of the game to see how it works, but there isn't one out there.
If a game is good, charge a nominal fee which includes patches, etc and ability to play online.
Those who dont want to pay can play the local version (and may get hooked and end up paying)
Hellgate did this exact thing, but unintentionally.
I downloaded a cracked copy of Hellgate and started playing through the single-player. I enjoyed it. Threw a copy of it on my wife's computer, she enjoyed it. Threw a copy on my kid's computer, he enjoyed it. Reminded us all a lot of Diablo II, and we used to have a ton of fun playing Diablo II on-line. Of course the on-line play wasn't going to work with the cracked copy...
So we ran out and bought three copies of Hellgate at the local GameStop. We played on-line using their free multiplayer for a good several months... And then my wife and I wound up with a paid subscription for a couple months after that.
The availability of a cracked single-player version of the game definitely got Flagship Studios a couple sales that they wouldn't have had otherwise.
P2P services and computers are the same as radio/tapes and dual cassette decks, and they start applying a double standard?
For the most part, I agree with you.
Copying a song onto your MP3 player or backing it up on a NAS isn't much different than making a duplicate tape. Where the similarities break down is with the sharing of music between people. P2P services allow you to share music that you legally purchase with thousands of people who did not purchase it - something that can be interpreted as distribution. It's a little different than handing out a mix tape to a couple friends.
The main problem we're seeing, at least in regards to the music industry, is that the big publishers are basically obsolete. The advent of the Internet has largely rendered them useless. I can easily record my own music on my computer and throw it on a website...other people can download it from my site, make payments to me on-line... It is no longer necessary for me to get "discovered" by some big label in order to get my music out there and make money.
All this new legislation... The re-definition of copyright terms... The introduction of the DMCA... That's all largely an attempt by these obsolete publishers/distributors to keep their revenue stream alive.
It won't work. Ultimately these companies will either change or fail, and we'll wind up with a whole new way of doing business. But for the time being certain things are illegal and colleges do wind up in the middle of it all.
Colleges are put in the very uncomfortable position of ISP for their residential students.
and they should behave like an ISP and stop filtering crap for unrelated corporate interests.
Just follow the law and provide information if served with proper papers, and let the students *gasp*, make their own choices and take responsibility for them.
That's fine with me... I don't see why a college should go out of its way to prevent students from making stupid decisions. Maybe a public service message or two, but that's about it.
The issue that a lot of colleges face is sharing resources between academics and the residential students. Unless you have a dedicated pipe and IT staff (which my college did not) then the dorms are using the same resources (bandwidth and IT staff time) as your classrooms/labs/whatever.
So you can let your students make their own mistakes and download gigs of music and get themselves slapped with a lawsuit... But all those students downloading gigs of music are slowing down your labs. And now some professor wants to know why he can't get his email, or why the latest Linux distribution is taking so long to download.
So a lot of colleges wind up filtering crap anyway - not for unrelated corporate interests, but for their own interests. They'll put a cap on bandwidth to the dorms... Maybe turn off some popular P2P ports... Possibly block some game traffic...
And then some student will get slapped with a lawsuit for downloading something they shouldn't have... And because this is America, they start pointing fingers - the college was already filtering traffic, why didn't they filter this site? Some parent gets bent out of shape because their innocent child went off to college and was allowed to get corrupted and broke the law. And the college starts worrying about bad publicity... And the RIAA (or whoever) starts wondering who else on the campus network is downloading things they shouldn't...
And before you know it you've got a college spending thousands of dollars trying to keep its students from downloading crap they shouldn't be.
The students could actually buy music. I doubt itunes is blocked. If they suddenly realize that they cant afford everything they want for zero effort, then they just got a free basic economics lesson.
I bet the college network prevents people running mass-mailing spam businesses from their dorm room too. Is that also a right for every student?
Did you read the original post I was referring to? Did you actually read my post? I wasn't suggesting that anyone should be pirating anything.
The original post suggested that academic networks should only be used for academic traffic. I was illustrating various instances where it might be difficult to differentiate between academic and non-academic traffic. What does purchasing music on iTunes, as opposed to downloading it P2P, have to do with whether traffic is academic in nature or not?
Are you suggesting that all iTunes traffic is academic in nature and should not be blocked? Because if you aren't, that still leaves you with the same situation I suggested in my post - suppose a student has purchased a song through iTunes with the sole intention of writing a report about it. How do you differentiate that academic iTunes traffic from some guy who's just buying music on iTunes to listen to it for fun?
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The sad irony is that MS lowered the standards to get Vista onto machines that could not support Aero. The original assumption that no one would buy these machines if consumers knew that they could not upgrade from XP to Vista. Considering the negative experiences that many of them consumers had on these machines, many of them don't want Vista nowadays.
This is certainly true.
I've got a Vista machine at home... 64-bit, dual core, 4 gigs of RAM... Runs fine. I might very well be better off with some other choice of OS, but I don't have any genuine issues running Vista. It is at least functional.
I've seen clients bring in Vista machines that are barely functional. They complain about how slow the machine is, how hard it is to do any work. These machines have the bare minimum hardware necessary to boot the OS. They've got 1 GB or less of RAM, a crappy on-board GPU, and some kind of underpowered budget CPU. And these people are miserable with Vista.
If Microsoft had required manufacturers to ship computers with decent hardware you wouldn't be seeing nearly as many people complaining about Vista.
Although I agree with the justice of going after them for misleading statements, I reckon all-in-all these people are better off, having got a PC with XP rather than being forced to wrestle the leviathan.
I think you misunderstand.
This isn't about whether a computer shipped with Vista or XP, this is about how a computer was labeled.
Microsoft has a qualification process that decides what sticker you're allowed to put on your PC. If your machine meets the requirements you are allowed to brand your computer as "Vista Capable".
Microsoft intentionally lowered the requirements for their sticker program in order to include computers that probably should not have qualified.
This means that there are people out there who bought computers intending to run Vista on them, and thought that the machine was capable of running Vista, and were then disappointed to find out that they could only run a very limited version of Vista.
You can certainly argue that XP is a better OS than Vista, and I don't think you'll see a whole lot of people disagreeing with you around here. But the fact of the matter is that people expected something that they weren't getting.
Google's reputation, however, is mighty squeaky clean, and until it is revealed just exactly what kind of information their computers can put together from your web habits (and what, exactly, they do with it), I have a feeling we'll be in denial about it for a very long time.
It isn't denial, it's personal experience.
Google has been turning out very useful products that pretty much do what they're supposed to. They've been doing some philanthropic stuff too. They give back to the community with their Summer of Code and things like that. Overall, my personal experiences regarding Google are positive. Thus far I do not have reason to distrust them inordinately. This doesn't mean that I'll blindly go along with anything and everything they do, but I don't question their every decision either.
By contrast, I've got a long history of frustration with Microsoft. Product after product released late and in buggy condition. Patches that break more than they fix. Hours of frustration trying to troubleshoot issues and track down fixes. Constant press releases about how wonderful the new version will be, and then most of the new features don't show up. I'm talking about a good 10+ years of frustration with Microsoft. So, naturally, I'm a bit skeptical when they announce a new product.
Wouldn't constructing floodbanks (dikes) be a must cheaper option? Here in Amsterdam we live 1.5 meter below sea level but I have no reason to worry...
The issue is really with the unique geography of the Maldives. The country is actually a chain of 1,000+ tiny islands - some of them barely large enough to actually be called an island. You'd have to import all the raw materials for those dikes, and you'd wind up with more wall than land in many places.
I think that hard drives fail earlier and more often than people realize.
I've believed for a while now that "winrot" and general perceived operating system instability are most often caused by hard drives in the beginning stages of failure.
I think it's an underrated cause of random crashes, and boot errors such as "missing c:\windows\system32\hal.dll, etc"
I wish the hardware vendors (Dell, Gateway, Apple, etc) would take more responsbility and be quicker to blame the drive (and replace it), instead of blindly having the end user run the recovery routine. Performing the recovery only papers over the underlying problem by temporarily rebuilding the file system. Because the substrate upon which the operating system rests is decaying, it's only a matter of time before the problems crop up again.
It's really hard to say...
A failing HDD certainly can cause trouble. And I've definitely seen Dell blame Windows for what was ultimately a hardware failure. But Windows certainly has plenty of issues as well.
I really hate to say it, but we've pretty much hit the point where many people are better off treating a computer as disposable.
Most folks are able to use a Windows machine without too many issues for 1 or 2 years. After that it starts getting crudded up with malware. Many of these users are unable to keep the malware off their machine in the first place, and are completely unable to clean it off once it arrives. So then they're looking at either spending some time on the phone with Dell learning how to reload their machines, or they'll pay someone like me a couple hundred dollars to reload it for them.
Or, they could buy a new computer from Dell for $400 or so. It won't have all the malware that their old machine is bogged down with, it'll have newer hardware, it'll have newer software, and it'll come with a new warranty. Sounds like an all-around win to me.
Unfortunately, that doesn't encourage anyone to actually turn out a quality product. Why bother fixing all the issues with Windows if we can sell another license in a couple years by leaving it this way? Why bother building higher quality hardware if we can sell another machine in a couple years by leaving it this way?
The alternative, of course, is to bypass the whole OEM market and do it yourself. But that's beyond the scope of what most home users are willing to do.
As far as home chemistry is concerned you can thank illegal drug users for the need to clamp down on lab equipment and supplies. The sad truth is that all of us need to help ferret out illegal drug users and get them put away or whatever if we intend to live in a free society. Perhaps people in some areas can't see the problem. They only need have lived in an area that has fallen to drugs to understand the intense violence and total terror that such a neighborhood can come to when drugs run rampant.
WTF?
Illegal drug users aren't doing much of anything to hurt anyone else. They may very well fry their own brains... And might, while under the influence, do some harm to folks around them. But I doubt if it is any more significant than the damage that alcoholics do on a daily basis.
Illegal drug users aren't to blame for this. The response to these illegal drug users is.
By cracking down so hard on illegal drugs we've turned it into an insanely profitable industry. That's why there's so much money and violence surrounding the drug trade. How much violence do you see surrounding the alcohol trade these days? When's the last time you saw a shootout in the street over a six-pack of beer? Take a look at what was going on during prohibition and you'd see a very different picture.
There's no way that taking away liberties is going to increase freedom. By telling folks that "all of us need to help ferret out illegal drug users" you're turning everyone against their neighbors. You won't have to worry about the US Government spying on your anymore, you'll have to worry about your next-door neighbor instead. How is that a step in the right direction? How does that increase freedom?
No amount of intrusion, snooping, or policing is going to stamp out illegal drug use. No society in history has been able to pull that off. Just like abortion and prostitution - it is here to stay, whether we like it or not.
All we do by criminalizing these drugs is push them underground, make it more expensive to traffic in them... Which raises the prices... Which makes it more profitable... All of which eventually leads to people deciding that a pile of drugs, valued at several million dollars, is worth a few human lives.
excuse me but this is total bullshit. oldest trick in the book. if you are behind in technology, pop out a card with huge ram and try to get some sales.
lets face it. nvidia has fallen behind ati in the chip race. you can place any number of 4870s in a setup as much as you like to equate the power of any monolithic nvidia card and they always kick the living daylights out of that nvidia card in terms of cost/performance per unit of processing power.
In case the $3,500 price tag didn't tip you off, this isn't a gaming/enthusiast card. This is a Quadro - a professional card for high-end 3D rendering. Stuff like generating film-grade 3D or insane CAD stuff. Actually, due to the design of the card, it'd be pretty horrible at playing games.
This thing is aimed at high-end scientific calculation and professional-grade rendering.
ATI may, or may not, have something comparable. ATI may even have something better. I don't know, I don't follow the GPU industry very closely. But claiming that they're just slapping a bunch of RAM on a card to drum up sales is just plain wrong. Hell, the blurb here on Slashdot even mentions the fact that it has 240 cores.
I fail to see how this is unique other than it being done "live" (which just means the VM is suspended, and the state of everything moved to the new machine and the VM resumed).
You just completely missed the point. The VM was not suspended, moved, and resumed. It was moved live. The VM never stopped doing its thing. It was up, running, and servicing requests the whole time.
I mean, with high quality onboard audio (7.1, dolby etc) now pretty much standard on even budget motherboards, aren't the days of buying a separate soundcard history now?
Indeed. For most purposes the on-board sound is more than good enough these days. I haven't bought a sound card for personal use in years. The last motherboard I bought came with 7.1 built-in, and I only have crappy desktop stereo speakers.
If one of my clients does need a separate sound card I'll go with Turtle Beach. They've been a great alternative to Creative for many years now.
Does anyone seriously treat any wireless transmission as if it was secure?
Not by choice, no... But for some applications you're stuck with wireless whether you want it or not.
We support a few medical offices where the doctors insist on roaming all over the place with their tablets. We tried using a wired network and providing tons of jacks, but it wasn't enough. They insisted on wireless. So we've got medical information flying over the airwaves all day long.
It's encrypted, of course... Used WPA... But now I see that we may have to change that. And that's going to be an issue.
If anyone who cares to listen can easily pick up everything being sent from your computer it's only a matter of time and CPU power before they can read it.
Brute-forcing most encryption is kind of pointless. Obviously if you're doing something stupid like ROT13 you can crack that very quickly and easily... But most of the decent stuff takes a good amount of time to crack. So I'm not really worried about anyone brute-forcing our WLAN - it'd be much easier to dress up as a copier repair man and plug into a live jack inside the building. But at least with wired networking you do have physical security... With wireless you give up that physical security in favor or encryption - which we've seen get broken over and over again.
The big issue with wireless is that you're often stuck with the lowest common denominator. At home I've got an old PDA that only does WEP - cannot do WPA on it at all. So that's the best encryption I can use on my WLAN if I want my PDA to connect. Some people have old hardware... Barcode scanners, or tablets, or ancient WAPs... And that old hardware might not be able to do WPA, or WPA2, or whatever the currently secure protocol is.
So if WPA really isn't secure anymore, and we need to switch these medical offices over to WPA2 now, we may need to purchase new hardware. And depending on how much that new hardware is going to cost, or how different it is from the doctor's favorite tablet, or whatever...it may not get approved. And we may wind up having to stick with the older, less-secure protocol.
That might work on some or most files, but there still is no replacement for Acrobat.
Depends on what you need Acrobat for...
If all you want to do is view a PDF, you certainly don't need Adobe Reader (which is what the story talks about). There are plenty of perfectly good alternatives out there, and Foxit is one of them.
If you want to create a PDF, you frequently don't actually need Adobe. We've got tons of clients who basically just want to email a simple word/text/whatever document to someone with relative certainty that they'll be able to open it, view it, and print it - but not make changes. These clients are often under the impression that the only software that can possibly do what they want is Adobe. In fact, Foxit and PDFCreator often do what they need.
Sure, if you're looking to embed all sorts of flashy graphics and movies and stuff... Make an editable form... Embed keywords or something... Adobe is the way to go. But for basic stuff, why bother?
McCain just too much risk of Palin becoming president. I think she would have made us look back on the "golden years of Bush"
Palin really worried me. My biggest fear wasn't that McCain would get elected, it was that something would happen and we'd wind up with Palin as president. Not because of a lack of experience, but because she honestly seemed a little unhinged to me.
Claiming that being Governor of Alaska makes you an expert on energy and foreign relations... Being so rabidly anti-choice... Attributing much of your success to a genuine witch hunter... Creationism...
Certainly not someone I'd want as President.
Is Obama really that much better than McCain?
The American people seem to think he is. I certainly have to say that his tax plan sounds better to me than McCain's did... And his VP didn't want to secede from the union, and isn't a creationist... And Obama isn't as anti-choice... And he hasn't been agreeing with W on almost everything over the last few years...
Would McCain have been worse than Bush?
I dunno... I'm not sure that anyone could be worse than W. But I'll tell you that Palin really made me nervous, especially given McCain's age and health.
The only thing I can hope for is that the Republicans can filibuster the Democrats' bills. Not so much to push a Republican agenda, but to keep either party from screwing us any more than they currently do.
Unfortunately, I think I'm going to have to agree with you. There are certainly some changes that I'd love to see happen... But Washington does best when there's a near-deadlock. When nobody can just push their agenda through.
Did Puerto Rico vote? American Samoa? Marshall islanders? You crazy cats have taxation without representation, have colonies without a vote. I recall that sort of nonsense stirred a revolution once before...
Indeed. We need to either cut them free or turn them into real states. Empires are out of style.
Finally we can tax ourselves into prosperity!
Actually, that's almost exactly what has to happen. We've run up one hell of a debt over the last few years... Billions and billions of dollars... Someone has to pay for it eventually. And the only way the US government can come up with cash is by taxing people.
Us not withdrawing from Iraq?
We will. Mostly... Kinda... Eventually...
I don't believe for a moment that we'll be pulling out in the next six months or so, but even W was working on a plan to get out of Iraq. The Iraqi government doesn't want us there anymore, and the American people don't want us there anymore. We're on our way out.
But I'm sure we'll have some kind of a presence there for decades. Some kind of ginormous embassy, or a permanent military base, or advisers of some sort.
Whether most slashdotters with decent IT careers end up paying more taxes?
Depends on what you mean by "decent IT career." If you're making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, I'd expect to pay more taxes. If you aren't making that much, I'd expect to pay less. If you're somewhere in the middle, I wouldn't expect much change.
Everyone talks about Obama's tax plan as if they've never heard of a progressive tax... Democrats have always talked about taxing the wealthy and helping out the poor. That's one of the defining characteristics of the Democratic party. Kerry had a similar plan, as did Gore, as did Clinton. It's nothing new.
Don't take this wrong, McCain sucks too. I just wish people would stop drinking from either coolaid.
Actually... Despite the fact that I voted for Obama... I don't think I'd claim that "McCain sucks too." He's given an awful lot to this country, made tons of sacrifices. And he really is trying to make America a better place - I just disagree with him on the mechanics.
As for the coolaid... Unfortunately we seem to be stuck with this two-party system. Lots of entrenched politicians who don't seem all that interested in really accomplishing a whole lot. I sincerely doubt Obama's ability to deliver on much of the change he talked about. Not because I think he's a bad politician or ineffective or anything like that, but because I think it's unlikely a single person will be able to affect decades of momentum very much.
But Obama did get a hell of a lot of support from regular people... Huge voter turnout, lots of small donations... He doesn't seem to be as deeply tied to the lobbyists as some other politicians are... And he does seem to be making some efforts at bipartisanship... So we might get some change...
And maybe this election cycle will start us in the right direction. Ron Paul actually looked halfway viable for a while there. I disagree with him on mechanics too, but seeing more viable candidates with interesting ideas is certainly better than seeing the same two candidates year after year.
Hope because the idiots that have been running the country for nearly a decade are gone, fear that the new bunch of idiots aren't any better.
That's really my major fear. Sure, it all sounded pretty good while he was campaigning... All kinds of wonderful change and all that... But I'm really wondering how much of it will materialize.
I know most campaign promises never really show up. And I understand that there's a real limit to what the President can accomplish on his own. But neither of those is really what I'm worried about...
The hundreds of politicians in Washington have been doing business as usual for decades. Sure, a few red seats turned blue... But they're pretty much the same kind of people that were there before. And a lot of the Democrats in the House and Senate have been there for a couple years now. Why should I believe that just because we've got a new President we're going to see an end to all the "business as usual" politics?
And then there's the damage that W did to the notions of oversight and transparency... W proved that his administration could do pretty much whatever they felt like with absolutely no repercussions. If you can do what you want, and get away with it, why wouldn't you? With that kind of obvious evidence in front of him, what's to keep Obama from running the same kind of administration?
Why do you care how we look to the rest of the world? Let's worry about the problems in our country. I really don't give two shits about how some snoppy European views our country.
The United States does not exist in a vacuum. We cannot ignore the world around us.
Our economy is dependent on other economies all over the world. We're constantly importing and exporting goods. How we are viewed by the rest of the world, and how the rest of the world is willing to do business with us, dramatically impacts our own economy.
We're at war in two countries. We have enemies in other countries. If we can improve how the rest of the world views us we might not have so many enemies out there. At the very least some of our friends might be more willing to support us against those enemies.
I guess it might be nice if they open-sourced the software so that people could run their own servers... But I really have to kind of wonder what the point would be. What makes these games fun isn't the amazing engines or terrific game mechanics - its the players.
These days there's hardly any gopher servers out there (yes, I know there are a few) - so gopher clients aren't particularly useful.
Players move on to the newest, shiniest games out there. Without constant upgrades and expansions, players get bored pretty darn quick. And then your playerbase shrinks... There aren't enough people around to get groups or run raids... Which means less fun for the remaining players... And before too long there's nobody left to play with.
I suppose someone might pick up an open-sourced game server and expand/improve it enough to keep people playing... Might even do a good enough job to get people to pay for it... But I really have a hard time seeing any game living for terribly long after it's been abandoned by the original company.
I mean, there's a reason these games go under in the first place - they aren't making enough money because there aren't enough people playing them. Open sourcing the code might allow a few die-hard fans to keep playing... But the odds are pretty damn good the game will be dead (or close enough) before too long anyway.
And really, as an MMOG player myself, that doesn't bother me. Unlike a novel or a CD or something like that I don't feel that I'm purchasing an item when I buy an MMOG. I feel more like I'm joining a club... What I gain is the fun, experience, and memories of playing with other people. Not an item that I can revisit later on. It's like when you go on vacation to Mexico - what do you really have to show for your money when all is said and done? A few souvenirs maybe... Some photos... But the main thing you have are the memories of what you did.
First off, I have a hard time seeing a home user coming up with 12 TB of data anytime soon.
How about 250 GB of data? That's the size of entry-level HDs nowadays. Burn it to 15 DVDs?
Actually, that's not a bad idea. And it isn't all that hard to do. Decent burner software like Nero will split the backup and ask for additional discs as you go. A relatively fast burner isn't that expensive, and you can keep working while your discs burn. I'll routinely kick it off on a Saturday morning while I'm doing housework, checking email, reading the news, and playing games. I just have to swap out discs periodically. Not a big deal. Takes a little while, but I don't have to give it my undivided attention.
You could dump it to a NAS and then unplug the thing and stick it in a safe deposit box. Or you can print everything out and mail it to your uncle. Or you can burn a pile of DVDs and hide them throughout the woods. But unless you've got your data offsite it is not protected.
None of these stupid suggestions are online, so they're useless. For home users, the ONLY realistic offsite backup solution in online backup over the internet. And it's expensive and time-consuming for large amounts of data.
I was being sarcastic... But I don't see why it is unreasonable to expect home users to make use of an offline backup. It isn't much different than keeping copies of birth certificates, titles, deeds, treasured photos, and whatever else in a safe deposit box. I mean...everyone has a safe deposit box, right? I make a trip to the bank at least once a week to drop something in my safe deposit box. How else do you ensure that in the event of a fire/burglary/whatever you can go on with your life? Important data doesn't have to be digital.
If you've got more data you could get yourself an external HDD, or a few USB flash drives, or a cheap NAS and dump the data to it.
Backing up to an external HDD or NAS is backuing up hard disks with other hard disks at the same location. I fail to see how this is significant different from RAID (except slower).
Sure, you're still vulnerable to a HDD failure, which is why I suggested a NAS for a few USB flash drives. But it gets an offline/offsite copy of your data, which makes it harder to accidentally delete something. And it will also protect you from fire/burglary/whatever. Yes, it's a pain...but this is important data, right?
RAID + as much internet backup as you can afford is THE solution for home users.
I wouldn't know. I've seen some on-line backup solutions... I've supported a client or two with them... But I've never made use of them myself.
I've got about 100 GB of data that is actually important, which gets backed up about once a week to DVD and stuffed in a safe deposit box. I've got another 200 GB or so of data that isn't really important, but I'd rather not lose it (save games, movies, music, etc.) - which gets backed up to DVD every couple months.
I've been playing with the idea of buying myself a tape drive. They aren't cheap... About $1,000 for an LTO1... But it would make my backups a lot easier, and therefor more frequent, and therefor I'd feel safer about the whole thing. An LTO1 only holds about 200 GB compressed, which I've already exceeded, but you can always throw in a second (or third, or fourth...) tape.
I'm sorry, but I'm getting seriously tired of people looking down from the pedestal of how it "ought" to be done, how you do it at work, how you would do it if you had 20k to blow on a backup solution, and trying to apply that to the home user. Even the tape comment in the summary is horseshit, because even exceptionally savvy home users are not going to pay for a tape drive and enough tapes to archive serious data, more less handle shipping the backups offsite professionally.
This is serious news. As it stands, the home user that actually sets up a RAID 5 raid is in the top percentile for actually giving a crap about home data. Once that becomes a non-issue, then the point has come when a reasonable backup is out of reach of 99% of private individuals. This, at the same time as more and more people are actually needing a decent solution.
First off, I have a hard time seeing a home user coming up with 12 TB of data anytime soon. Sure, it's possible... But I find it unlikely. I also find it unlikely that your average home user is going to be savvy enough to even know what a RAID-5 is. We've got plenty of home users who've been keeping all their precious family photos on a single SD card with absolutely no backup at all.
And if your home user does actually have 12 TB of data, in a RAID-5, that's not going to be a cheap pile of hardware. If they've got that kind of money to spend on storage, why wouldn't they spend some money to actually protect that data?
Next up, a RAID (1, 5, 10, various combinations there-of) does not protect you from the single biggest threat to your data - user error. A RAID will not make it any easier to recover data that you've accidentally deleted.
Accidentally delete a pile of Timmy's graduation photos? Tough. Even if you've got a working RAID-5 you aren't going to have an easy time getting them back.
How 'bout your house burns down with your RAID-5 in it? Your data is still toast, even if it was on a RAID.
Anyone who cares about their data - home user or business - needs an offsite copy of it. Doesn't need to be a tape... You could dump it to a NAS and then unplug the thing and stick it in a safe deposit box. Or you can print everything out and mail it to your uncle. Or you can burn a pile of DVDs and hide them throughout the woods. But unless you've got your data offsite it is not protected.
As far as getting a backup working... These days it's pretty damn trivial.
If you don't have a ton of data you can just burn it to DVDs easily enough.
If you've got more data you could get yourself an external HDD, or a few USB flash drives, or a cheap NAS and dump the data to it.
You can also get an LTO1 drive for about $1,000 if you really wanted to go with a tape.
The downside of this is that other companies that make not-fun games don't get any purchase - we did the same with Spore, just trying it out and really hated it so EA will not get any purchase this year and the game is no longer on our systems... we thought it sucked that badly (DRM issues aside).
Steam has a really great try before you buy free download on some of the games.
What ever happened to decent demos of games? Or shareware/trialware? There was a time when pretty much every game had a demo out, usually before the game itself was released. It was great advertising for a game... Stirred up lots of enthusiasm... And it gave people a chance to try a game before paying for it.
Right now I'm agonizing over Dead Space for PC. It looks like a decent game, looks like something I'd really enjoy. And I've got some cash set aside at the moment from a recent bonus. But I've heard reports that the keyboard/mouse controls are horrible and you really need to use a controller to enjoy Dead Space on a PC. I don't want to buy a game for $50 only to find out that I need to spend another $30 on a controller just to play it. I'd love to play a demo of the game to see how it works, but there isn't one out there.
If a game is good, charge a nominal fee which includes patches, etc and ability to play online.
Those who dont want to pay can play the local version (and may get hooked and end up paying)
Hellgate did this exact thing, but unintentionally.
I downloaded a cracked copy of Hellgate and started playing through the single-player. I enjoyed it. Threw a copy of it on my wife's computer, she enjoyed it. Threw a copy on my kid's computer, he enjoyed it. Reminded us all a lot of Diablo II, and we used to have a ton of fun playing Diablo II on-line. Of course the on-line play wasn't going to work with the cracked copy...
So we ran out and bought three copies of Hellgate at the local GameStop. We played on-line using their free multiplayer for a good several months... And then my wife and I wound up with a paid subscription for a couple months after that.
The availability of a cracked single-player version of the game definitely got Flagship Studios a couple sales that they wouldn't have had otherwise.
P2P services and computers are the same as radio/tapes and dual cassette decks, and they start applying a double standard?
For the most part, I agree with you.
Copying a song onto your MP3 player or backing it up on a NAS isn't much different than making a duplicate tape. Where the similarities break down is with the sharing of music between people. P2P services allow you to share music that you legally purchase with thousands of people who did not purchase it - something that can be interpreted as distribution. It's a little different than handing out a mix tape to a couple friends.
The main problem we're seeing, at least in regards to the music industry, is that the big publishers are basically obsolete. The advent of the Internet has largely rendered them useless. I can easily record my own music on my computer and throw it on a website...other people can download it from my site, make payments to me on-line... It is no longer necessary for me to get "discovered" by some big label in order to get my music out there and make money.
All this new legislation... The re-definition of copyright terms... The introduction of the DMCA... That's all largely an attempt by these obsolete publishers/distributors to keep their revenue stream alive.
It won't work. Ultimately these companies will either change or fail, and we'll wind up with a whole new way of doing business. But for the time being certain things are illegal and colleges do wind up in the middle of it all.
Colleges are put in the very uncomfortable position of ISP for their residential students.
and they should behave like an ISP and stop filtering crap for unrelated corporate interests.
Just follow the law and provide information if served with proper papers, and let the students *gasp*, make their own choices and take responsibility for them.
That's fine with me... I don't see why a college should go out of its way to prevent students from making stupid decisions. Maybe a public service message or two, but that's about it.
The issue that a lot of colleges face is sharing resources between academics and the residential students. Unless you have a dedicated pipe and IT staff (which my college did not) then the dorms are using the same resources (bandwidth and IT staff time) as your classrooms/labs/whatever.
So you can let your students make their own mistakes and download gigs of music and get themselves slapped with a lawsuit... But all those students downloading gigs of music are slowing down your labs. And now some professor wants to know why he can't get his email, or why the latest Linux distribution is taking so long to download.
So a lot of colleges wind up filtering crap anyway - not for unrelated corporate interests, but for their own interests. They'll put a cap on bandwidth to the dorms... Maybe turn off some popular P2P ports... Possibly block some game traffic...
And then some student will get slapped with a lawsuit for downloading something they shouldn't have... And because this is America, they start pointing fingers - the college was already filtering traffic, why didn't they filter this site? Some parent gets bent out of shape because their innocent child went off to college and was allowed to get corrupted and broke the law. And the college starts worrying about bad publicity... And the RIAA (or whoever) starts wondering who else on the campus network is downloading things they shouldn't...
And before you know it you've got a college spending thousands of dollars trying to keep its students from downloading crap they shouldn't be.
The students could actually buy music. I doubt itunes is blocked.
If they suddenly realize that they cant afford everything they want for zero effort, then they just got a free basic economics lesson.
I bet the college network prevents people running mass-mailing spam businesses from their dorm room too. Is that also a right for every student?
Did you read the original post I was referring to? Did you actually read my post? I wasn't suggesting that anyone should be pirating anything.
The original post suggested that academic networks should only be used for academic traffic. I was illustrating various instances where it might be difficult to differentiate between academic and non-academic traffic. What does purchasing music on iTunes, as opposed to downloading it P2P, have to do with whether traffic is academic in nature or not?
Are you suggesting that all iTunes traffic is academic in nature and should not be blocked? Because if you aren't, that still leaves you with the same situation I suggested in my post - suppose a student has purchased a song through iTunes with the sole intention of writing a report about it. How do you differentiate that academic iTunes traffic from some guy who's just buying music on iTunes to listen to it for fun?