A graphical installer which installs a complete ready-to-use system (KDE, Gnome, Apache, Office apps etc.) with some mouseclicks would certainly give Debian a nice boost.
I'm not disagreeing - but why limit it to a graphical installer? Why not have two installation "modes"? "Simple", which asks as few questions as possible, installs a usable system, then exits, and "Advanced", which asks more questions, and allows the experienced user to install only what they want to install, rather than what was chosen for them?
I'm talking at the lowest level here -- have install scripts that handle both cases above, then wrap whatever shell (text/graphics) around them you want. That way you don't end up with the installer failing because it can't figure out how to run X on a machine that won't ever run X in it's lifecycle anyway =)
Agree as well - the only time there seems to be a problem is when you have some rather non-standard hardware (eg: an older Sony laptop).
I've installed Debian on everything from pre-built workstations, to self-assembled servers, to my laptop, and I'd have to say the only one that gave me a problem was my laptop (mainly because most of the hardware in it needs drivers that aren't included in the default kernel).
Compiling a custom kernel fixed the problem. Packaging it with kernel-package (very easy) and saving it away makes any required reinstall a breeze.
Now, as we move towards a newer distribution (Woody is supposed to be released "real soon now"), this may not be a problem, as the default kernel *may* support my hardware - but I'm sure there will alwayx be people who have something exotic that doesn't work out-of-the-box (so to speak, when there is no real "box"...). The same troubles hold true on the Windows side of things as well, when things don't work right off, and you need a driver download, although their proprietarity allows them to pressure paranoid manufacturers into only supporting their OS (but that gets into another issue entirely...), so more drivers are generally available from the get-go.
Would it be nice to have a pointy-clicky Debian installer? Sure...as long as I can type -expert at the prompt and get to the one I'm familiar with. Redhat did that transition right, IMHO - you can always start up the text-based installer instead of the graphical one if you prefer, but the graphical one is the default, so people who equate "graphical" with "user friendly" are taken care of. I wouldn't be upset if Debian did something similar, just wrapping their text installer in a graphical shell, while allowing the user to use the medium of their choice.
Restoring from a backup is so much easier than trying to get your system to the point where u destroyed it.
Sure, unless it's so completely inconvenient to pull a proper backup that a reinstall is more manageable. For "modern" machines, this generally isn't an issue, as most have some easy removable mass-storage available (eg: CD-R/CD-RW, etc...) - but some older machines, particularly ones like my laptop, fall into a bit of a weird area.
Sure - I suppose I could transfer a couple gigabytes out over the network to do a proper backup -- but it's quicker and easier to just pull:
# dpkg --get-selections >selections.txt
...store that file, along with a custom kernel package (older laptops like mine need rather exotic hardware support that isn't in the default kernels) somewhere down/home (which is, of course, a seperate partition from the rest of the system;P ).
Then, if/when I do something stupid, it's a quick reformat of all but/home, a trip through the Debian installer to install the base system, install my kernel, then:
...and I'm pretty much right back where I started. I can get the whole process done in about 1/2 hour - which is a bit shorter than backing up and restoring everyhing =)
Now, if I had a CD-R on the laptop, that would be a different story. Sure, I could get an external one - but that money (IMHO) would be better spent on a better laptop a few years down the road.
Re:LOTR will never get best picture
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LoTR Takes 4 Oscars
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· Score: 1, Offtopic
"I realize that this bill basically says you can tap someone's phone for jaywalking, and normally I would say, 'No way,' " said Del. Dana Lee Dembrow (D-Montgomery). "But after what happened on September 11th, I say screw 'em."
Translation (and mind you, this is coming from an elected official): "Becase some terrorists hijaaked planes and ran them into the WTC last year, we should be able to tap your phone if you jaywalk - because everyone knows jaywalkers are as criminal as terrorists!"
...I am in an Apple marketing deptarment... Why don't people consider Macs. Did you know its really not a money issue.
What question are you really looking to answer with this? Why don't people think of getting a Mac, or why don't people get a Mac?
The answer is different in many cases - and, of course, both are important, as in order to get "the other 95%", you need to solve both problems.
The answer to the first problem (which is the question you posed, regardless of whether you really meant the second or not) is simple - perceived flaws/incompatibilities.
There's the perceived speed difference based on Mhz - which, thanks to AMD, may be easier to overcome now.
There's the perceived lack of software (outside of the multimedia niches which are well-known). People aren't going to want to switch to a platform they feel has less software.
There's the fear of "leaving the fold", which in some cases goes hand in hand with the perceived lack of software. People don't want to be incompatible with their friends, neighbors, or coworkers. They want to bring things home from work, and use them at home in the same way they do at the office.
There's the "comfortability" factor. Most people don't want to learn a second OS. (Heck, most people don't want to learn one OS!) Chances are, they're forced to use a Wintel machine at work, and that's "enough" for them to have to deal with. (I'm not talking the geek crowd here - I'm talking about people like my relatives)
There are more, but I think those are some of the big ones.
The answer to the second question, which IMHO is the one that really matters (as it doesn't matter if someone thinks about buying a Mac if in the end they don't) is a bit more subtle, and involves at least one more issue, in addition to the ones above.
Price.
I know a lot of people who do consider Macs, and hold a lot of respect for them. But, these same people don't run Macs. Why? Because they can either build their own system for less than half the price (no 3 year warranty, admittedly), or can buy what they feel is a comparable system for less, by sticking to the Wintel platform.
Now - if the prices were the same, I know many of those people would go with the Mac. If Apple could match the price point of x86 hardware, more people would switch. (those "sitting on the fence", so-to-speak)
If OSX were available for x86, I know many of those same people would use it, rather than Windows. But, I also know that Apple views itself as a hardware company, and views competition in the MS-dominated x86 OS market to be roughly akin to slitting their own throat.
(rambling a bit now...) That's quite a catch-22 situation, isn't it? The one OS that could be a true competitor for MS on x86 won't happen because of the perceived impossibility of competing with MS. Since the Darwin core runs on x86 already, we know that at least part of the work is already done -- really it's just getting te Quartz/Carbon/Cocoa layers on top (kinda like putting the candy shell on the M&M...). Hardware shouldn't be a limiter at that level, as both platforms use the same video hardware, USB, etc... I'd imagine at least one chap at Apple has already gotten that working, but they don't release for obvious reasons. It's interesting that the MS stranglehold on the OS market is so tight that even potential competitors won't consider competing. (Free OSs not withstanding =) )
There's an answer to your questions somewhere in there - I've just now realized the fallacies of posting before my second cup of coffee - so I'll leave off here =)
Hmm...drop the serial/parallel/ps2 ports, and pick up 2 more USB...then add 2 Firewire ports. Might not drop the size (what with the extra 4 connectors and such) but it would make for a very tasty little machine...
But, as has been said by others, they're primarily targetting the embedded market, and only have light interest in a bunch of geeks looking to build their own tiny machine - so the parallel/serial/ps2 ports make a lot of sense.
Still wouldn't mind a second model without the legacy ports;P
Sad but true - there's a live action La Blue Girl. Saw it on sale at last year's Otakon. From the pics on the back of the VHS case, it looked to contain quite a few "naughty tentacles".
Well, that definitely helped - I had the autohinted/unhinted settings opposite of yours. Flipping 'em around did a world of good - although I wouldn't say my results were as good or better than in Opera. Maybe it's just a personal preference =)
Another weirdness I noticed was that bold or italic text wasn't being rendered for Truetype fonts - the font was simply being displayed as normal. Type1 fonts rendered bold and italic, but only "normal" unstyled text was being given the aa treatment. Odd, since Opera seems to deal with them just fine. (so it doesn't look like a library issue per-se) Yours seems to do at least Type1 fonts just fine in all cases, so it's obviously a setting on my end that's off =)
According to apt, I'm up-to-date with freetype2 -- so that's not the issue (unfortunately).
It's definitely much better than before, however - and any improvement is good, IMHO.
A mere 3.5 hours after I saw this post and I got antialiased truetype fonts working... and let me tell you.... they look GREAT!
Really? I played with it, and they ended up looking really ugly on my Debian box, compared to the AA fonts in Opera/Konq... Pointing at the same fonts too.
Did you have to play with the various antialiasing settings to get them looking right, or did you just turn 'em on, fill in the path, and go?
(apologies if <sarcasm> was implied in the parent...;P )
They could simply pare down the standard RH distro to one CD, with just enough to get the base system installed, get X up and running, and get the user on the network (dialup or ethernet) - then download the rest. Kindof like a Debian net-install.
For all I know, RH may have this ability already, and all AOL would have to do would be the paring down to one CD.
If they make sure there's an installer on the CD for people who already have a RH/rpm-based install, that would cover most of the bases. Of course, this would leave deb and tgz-based distros out of the mix - but those could be optional downloads if they decided to provide them.
I don't think it lived up to the FF name (lack of fantasy elements, magic, chocobos, etc...) but for what it was - a work of art - it really pushed a lot of boundaries, and succeeded in showing what can be done with the technology we have.
So if a TiVo-type device was made which could decrypt uncopyable TV transmissions, then PROVIDED the same device ensured fair use (by, perhaps, automatically erasing the recordings once viewed to ensure it remainined in the province of time shifting), would that be legal under the DMCA?
Nope - because the producer of the TiVo-type device is providing you with a means of circumventing the copy protection. *You* aren't doing the decrypting - it is - and therefore it's illegal. This is the part that sucks.
If you built the device yourself, without receiving plans from anyone, cooked up the decryption algorythms yourself, implemented them yourself, and never distributed the device, you *might* be within the bounds of the DMCA. Most people don't have the skills or time to do this, and if the SSSCA gets passed, even if you had the skills and time, you wouldn't be able to get the materials from which to build such a device.
THis all has to stop somewhere - it's getting out of hand, and it looks like Boucher may be one of the only ones in the US gov't that cares.
Let's say a bunch of friends and I buy copies of the game, but we only have 56k modems and crappy phone lines to connect to the 'net. Ping times to BNet stink, even on a good DSL connection. Let's also say that none of us have higher-end computers with enough juice to play the game and host a TCP/IP game at the same time, but we do have an extra machine we can tie into the mix. So, we set up a bnetd server locally in order to play some games together, on a halfway decent connection, without the relatively high latency one gets with the official servers, especially during peak times. We have fun, with the game we legally bought.
Just because something might allow something illegal to be done, doesn't mean that it is, in and of itself, illegal. A gun could be used to rob a bank - yet you can walk into a gun shop, or even WalMart (if you're buying a rifle) and buy one. You can even buy ammunition for the gun, although it could cause signifigant harm to someone if you shot them with it. It's perfectly legal to own ammunition, and even use it - for hunting, target practice, etc...
Why don't the servers ask for a CD key? Then leave it to Blizzard to authenticate the key?
Well, there's the pseudo-trojan problem - someone other than the bnetd people modify the code to export the validated CD key to a file (or website, IRC channel, etc...) as being "good" - then publish the list. If they marketed themselves as a different project, they would probably catch quite a few legitimate users before being found out. Those keys they caught would become "public", and pretty much useless.
Of course, with Blizzard doing nothing to prevent the shills on BNet from masquerading as "official" Blizzard employees to con (gullible) users out of their CD keys, account passwords, etc... it doesn't seem like they are all that concerned about protecting their CD key system, in general.
I'm not sure if there is a solution that will be able to authenticate the key without exposing it at some point for retrieval - unless the comparison code is put in the client, rather than the server (so the key is never sent over the network, encrypted or not) - but that opens it up to be patched around. Passing the CD key (in any form) will allow it to be captured, and for the above scenario to take place.
Maybe not..."framing" in this sense may not mean the literal "using frames", but rather "making it appear the the full-size image originates from your site, and not the site of the actual originator" (since they've previously said that thumbnailing with a link is not a problem).
In that case, Google's fine, as they make no bones about the fact that they are, in fact, just an indexing service, and not the originator of the image. They even show the original page as context, as well as providing a link to "deframe" the original page (twice, actually, one in the upper right labelled "Remove Frame", and one just below the picture, labelled with the full URL of the originating page).
I'd say they give proper credit, and I can't imagine many people having a problem with it.
I still on occasion need to get emails from people who I have never worked with before. and I don't see how reverse filtering would help
This is why there is no one solution that will work. Reverse filtering a "whitelist" of addresses you know are legitimate is a good start.
Also filter known mailing lists that you've subscribed to into their own folder(s).
Follow that by "blacklisting" known offenders, so subsequent mailings from them get thrown in the bitbucket (or a designated SPAM folder, if you prefer)
Filter anything not addressed directly to you (IE: your address in the To or CC field) into a "suspect" folder. These can sometimes be legitimate mailings, but most often are spam.
This leaves a signifigantly reduced ammount of mail in your main Inbox, and allows you to selectively read what you want to read. The longer your "blacklist" gets, the less actual spam will show up in your "suspect" folder. The longer your "whitelist" gets, the less legitimate email will end up in the "suspect" folder. Eventually, you'll find that you seldom get new mail in your "suspect" folder at all - and when you do, it's most likely spam, unless you're expecting something.
I use Mail::Audit to do my filtering, using the above method - and it has *nearly* eliminated my 50+ spam/day problem. I'm down to 2-3 a week, and I expect that to drop even more when I add razor to my filterset.
Junkmail cannot climb stairs unaided. When you walk up stairs and leave the junkmail behind, it is powerless to follow.
Of course, some of us who live in apartment buildings just chuck it in the conveniently placed trash recepticle right next to the mailboxes (which, btw, junkmail is also unable to escape from, unaided) - but hey - to each their own =)
Austin Powers: One Shag is Not Enough - "Plot" involves Austin and Dr. Evil vying to get back into some chick's pants - and she ends up with Fat Bastard and/or MiniMe in the end...
You know...you have a point there, that players who are damn good should make more than those who don't.
But...
Shouldn't the salaries be a *bit* less? I mean, we have people starving in the streets, unable to afford food or the basic necessities of life, yet someone who is good at playing baseball makes $15 mil + a year?
It's understandable that people who are good at something be compensated for it...but shouldn't that compensation be proportional to the field? AFAIK the only two industries other than Big Sports that can match those kinds of paychecks are Government and the ultra-high eschelons of Big Business.
Minimum wage is what? 5.75 an hour? There are people making just that, and trying to eke out an existance. Some work 2-3 jobs, and try to support a family, pulling in weekly pay of maybe $500 (generally less). Yet someone else who happens to be very good at throwing a small ball (and who may or may not have any other talents) gets paid $10,000-$100,000 for a few hours of work? Does that make sense?
Imagine what would happen if all the players making more than $150k/year were brought down to that level (which should be more than comfortable to live on - I make 1/3 of that, and am managing to support myself and my fiancee just fine) and the extra money freed up was given back to society -- possibly to subsidize decent housing, food, and medical care for the rest of society - wouldn't the country be a better place? I think it would.
But I'm just one voice. I'm sure there are others who will disagree. Take my opinion as you will =)
Why I didn't buy from Loki
on
Last Word on Loki
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Let me prefeace this by saying that I'm an avid linux user, and an avid game player. I'm (presumably) the target market that Loki was shooting for.
Yet I didn't buy any games from them. Why?
Simply put, they didn't release anything that I wanted to play. I had Quake 3 and UT - I didn't need any other FPS games. I had played Heroes III before (yes, under Windows), and while it's a nice game, it's not something I would be willing to purchase a copy of for linux - it just didn't enthrall me that much. I was a fan of the old Descent games, but for me they lost some of their flavor after Descent 2, regardless of the eyecandy that was added.
I will admit - I was SORELY tempted to buy Rune - but after playing the demo, I wasn't totally impressed by the gameplay. Sure, melee is fun - but it got old after about an hour.
What I would have bought (and still will buy, if anyone makes them), no questions asked:
Ports of Bioware's Infinity Engine games (Baldurs Gate I/II, Icewind Dale, Planescape Torment) - these are, quite simply, incredible games. They have metric tons of gameplay, replay value, and storyline. That's why they're still fun today.
Ports of Diablo II and Starcraft - yes, I know these are from Blizzard, who will never, ever, release a linux version - but they were DAMN good games that are still loads of fun now, well after the release.
I don't feel bad about not buying their games - I refuse to buy something I don't want, even to support a company that *might* in the future produce something I would like to buy. While I support *what* they were doing, I think their choice of games to do it with was poor (albeit probably the only choice they had in this world of "Intellectual Property" lawsuits)
Didn't they get eaten by the stilted-english-talking fish guys? (can't remember their name - it's been FOREVER since I've played SC2, and like you, I never played SC3)
Slashdot Mirror
...that way we could finally find out if the "fish guys" (sorry - can't remember what they were actually called) actually DID eat the Androsynth... =)
A graphical installer which installs a complete ready-to-use system (KDE, Gnome, Apache, Office apps etc.) with some mouseclicks would certainly give Debian a nice boost.
I'm not disagreeing - but why limit it to a graphical installer? Why not have two installation "modes"? "Simple", which asks as few questions as possible, installs a usable system, then exits, and "Advanced", which asks more questions, and allows the experienced user to install only what they want to install, rather than what was chosen for them?
I'm talking at the lowest level here -- have install scripts that handle both cases above, then wrap whatever shell (text/graphics) around them you want. That way you don't end up with the installer failing because it can't figure out how to run X on a machine that won't ever run X in it's lifecycle anyway =)
Agree as well - the only time there seems to be a problem is when you have some rather non-standard hardware (eg: an older Sony laptop).
I've installed Debian on everything from pre-built workstations, to self-assembled servers, to my laptop, and I'd have to say the only one that gave me a problem was my laptop (mainly because most of the hardware in it needs drivers that aren't included in the default kernel).
Compiling a custom kernel fixed the problem. Packaging it with kernel-package (very easy) and saving it away makes any required reinstall a breeze.
Now, as we move towards a newer distribution (Woody is supposed to be released "real soon now"), this may not be a problem, as the default kernel *may* support my hardware - but I'm sure there will alwayx be people who have something exotic that doesn't work out-of-the-box (so to speak, when there is no real "box"...). The same troubles hold true on the Windows side of things as well, when things don't work right off, and you need a driver download, although their proprietarity allows them to pressure paranoid manufacturers into only supporting their OS (but that gets into another issue entirely...), so more drivers are generally available from the get-go.
Would it be nice to have a pointy-clicky Debian installer? Sure...as long as I can type -expert at the prompt and get to the one I'm familiar with. Redhat did that transition right, IMHO - you can always start up the text-based installer instead of the graphical one if you prefer, but the graphical one is the default, so people who equate "graphical" with "user friendly" are taken care of. I wouldn't be upset if Debian did something similar, just wrapping their text installer in a graphical shell, while allowing the user to use the medium of their choice.
Sorry for rambling - need more coffee!
Restoring from a backup is so much easier than trying to get your system to the point where u destroyed it.
/home (which is, of course, a seperate partition from the rest of the system ;P ).
/home, a trip through the Debian installer to install the base system, install my kernel, then:
Sure, unless it's so completely inconvenient to pull a proper backup that a reinstall is more manageable. For "modern" machines, this generally isn't an issue, as most have some easy removable mass-storage available (eg: CD-R/CD-RW, etc...) - but some older machines, particularly ones like my laptop, fall into a bit of a weird area.
Sure - I suppose I could transfer a couple gigabytes out over the network to do a proper backup -- but it's quicker and easier to just pull:
# dpkg --get-selections >selections.txt
...store that file, along with a custom kernel package (older laptops like mine need rather exotic hardware support that isn't in the default kernels) somewhere down
Then, if/when I do something stupid, it's a quick reformat of all but
# dpkg --set-selections <selections.txt
# apt-get -u dist-upgrade
...and I'm pretty much right back where I started. I can get the whole process done in about 1/2 hour - which is a bit shorter than backing up and restoring everyhing =)
Now, if I had a CD-R on the laptop, that would be a different story. Sure, I could get an external one - but that money (IMHO) would be better spent on a better laptop a few years down the road.
...it's the...SMELL...
"I realize that this bill basically says you can tap someone's phone for jaywalking, and normally I would say, 'No way,' " said Del. Dana Lee Dembrow (D-Montgomery). "But after what happened on September 11th, I say screw 'em."
Translation (and mind you, this is coming from an elected official): "Becase some terrorists hijaaked planes and ran them into the WTC last year, we should be able to tap your phone if you jaywalk - because everyone knows jaywalkers are as criminal as terrorists!"
+1 Scary
...I am in an Apple marketing deptarment...
Why don't people consider Macs. Did you know its really not a money issue.
What question are you really looking to answer with this? Why don't people think of getting a Mac, or why don't people get a Mac?
The answer is different in many cases - and, of course, both are important, as in order to get "the other 95%", you need to solve both problems.
The answer to the first problem (which is the question you posed, regardless of whether you really meant the second or not) is simple - perceived flaws/incompatibilities.
There's the perceived speed difference based on Mhz - which, thanks to AMD, may be easier to overcome now.
There's the perceived lack of software (outside of the multimedia niches which are well-known). People aren't going to want to switch to a platform they feel has less software.
There's the fear of "leaving the fold", which in some cases goes hand in hand with the perceived lack of software. People don't want to be incompatible with their friends, neighbors, or coworkers. They want to bring things home from work, and use them at home in the same way they do at the office.
There's the "comfortability" factor. Most people don't want to learn a second OS. (Heck, most people don't want to learn one OS!) Chances are, they're forced to use a Wintel machine at work, and that's "enough" for them to have to deal with. (I'm not talking the geek crowd here - I'm talking about people like my relatives)
There are more, but I think those are some of the big ones.
The answer to the second question, which IMHO is the one that really matters (as it doesn't matter if someone thinks about buying a Mac if in the end they don't) is a bit more subtle, and involves at least one more issue, in addition to the ones above.
Price.
I know a lot of people who do consider Macs, and hold a lot of respect for them. But, these same people don't run Macs. Why? Because they can either build their own system for less than half the price (no 3 year warranty, admittedly), or can buy what they feel is a comparable system for less, by sticking to the Wintel platform.
Now - if the prices were the same, I know many of those people would go with the Mac. If Apple could match the price point of x86 hardware, more people would switch. (those "sitting on the fence", so-to-speak)
If OSX were available for x86, I know many of those same people would use it, rather than Windows. But, I also know that Apple views itself as a hardware company, and views competition in the MS-dominated x86 OS market to be roughly akin to slitting their own throat.
(rambling a bit now...) That's quite a catch-22 situation, isn't it? The one OS that could be a true competitor for MS on x86 won't happen because of the perceived impossibility of competing with MS. Since the Darwin core runs on x86 already, we know that at least part of the work is already done -- really it's just getting te Quartz/Carbon/Cocoa layers on top (kinda like putting the candy shell on the M&M...). Hardware shouldn't be a limiter at that level, as both platforms use the same video hardware, USB, etc... I'd imagine at least one chap at Apple has already gotten that working, but they don't release for obvious reasons. It's interesting that the MS stranglehold on the OS market is so tight that even potential competitors won't consider competing. (Free OSs not withstanding =) )
There's an answer to your questions somewhere in there - I've just now realized the fallacies of posting before my second cup of coffee - so I'll leave off here =)
Hmm...drop the serial/parallel/ps2 ports, and pick up 2 more USB...then add 2 Firewire ports. Might not drop the size (what with the extra 4 connectors and such) but it would make for a very tasty little machine...
;P
But, as has been said by others, they're primarily targetting the embedded market, and only have light interest in a bunch of geeks looking to build their own tiny machine - so the parallel/serial/ps2 ports make a lot of sense.
Still wouldn't mind a second model without the legacy ports
Sad but true - there's a live action La Blue Girl. Saw it on sale at last year's Otakon. From the pics on the back of the VHS case, it looked to contain quite a few "naughty tentacles".
Well, that definitely helped - I had the autohinted/unhinted settings opposite of yours. Flipping 'em around did a world of good - although I wouldn't say my results were as good or better than in Opera. Maybe it's just a personal preference =)
Another weirdness I noticed was that bold or italic text wasn't being rendered for Truetype fonts - the font was simply being displayed as normal. Type1 fonts rendered bold and italic, but only "normal" unstyled text was being given the aa treatment. Odd, since Opera seems to deal with them just fine. (so it doesn't look like a library issue per-se) Yours seems to do at least Type1 fonts just fine in all cases, so it's obviously a setting on my end that's off =)
According to apt, I'm up-to-date with freetype2 -- so that's not the issue (unfortunately).
It's definitely much better than before, however - and any improvement is good, IMHO.
A mere 3.5 hours after I saw this post and I got antialiased truetype fonts working... and let me tell you.... they look GREAT!
Really? I played with it, and they ended up looking really ugly on my Debian box, compared to the AA fonts in Opera/Konq... Pointing at the same fonts too.
Did you have to play with the various antialiasing settings to get them looking right, or did you just turn 'em on, fill in the path, and go?
(apologies if <sarcasm> was implied in the parent...;P )
Not necessarily...
They could simply pare down the standard RH distro to one CD, with just enough to get the base system installed, get X up and running, and get the user on the network (dialup or ethernet) - then download the rest. Kindof like a Debian net-install.
For all I know, RH may have this ability already, and all AOL would have to do would be the paring down to one CD.
If they make sure there's an installer on the CD for people who already have a RH/rpm-based install, that would cover most of the bases. Of course, this would leave deb and tgz-based distros out of the mix - but those could be optional downloads if they decided to provide them.
Make that three of us who liked it.
I don't think it lived up to the FF name (lack of fantasy elements, magic, chocobos, etc...) but for what it was - a work of art - it really pushed a lot of boundaries, and succeeded in showing what can be done with the technology we have.
If only it hadn't tanked on paper...
So if a TiVo-type device was made which could decrypt uncopyable TV transmissions, then PROVIDED the same device ensured fair use (by, perhaps, automatically erasing the recordings once viewed to ensure it remainined in the province of time shifting), would that be legal under the DMCA?
Nope - because the producer of the TiVo-type device is providing you with a means of circumventing the copy protection. *You* aren't doing the decrypting - it is - and therefore it's illegal. This is the part that sucks.
If you built the device yourself, without receiving plans from anyone, cooked up the decryption algorythms yourself, implemented them yourself, and never distributed the device, you *might* be within the bounds of the DMCA. Most people don't have the skills or time to do this, and if the SSSCA gets passed, even if you had the skills and time, you wouldn't be able to get the materials from which to build such a device.
THis all has to stop somewhere - it's getting out of hand, and it looks like Boucher may be one of the only ones in the US gov't that cares.
I believe the acronym is Generic interface to FastTrack =)
So, it's like the vending machines in Japan? ;P
Signifigant Non-Infringing Uses...
I agree.
Let's say a bunch of friends and I buy copies of the game, but we only have 56k modems and crappy phone lines to connect to the 'net. Ping times to BNet stink, even on a good DSL connection. Let's also say that none of us have higher-end computers with enough juice to play the game and host a TCP/IP game at the same time, but we do have an extra machine we can tie into the mix. So, we set up a bnetd server locally in order to play some games together, on a halfway decent connection, without the relatively high latency one gets with the official servers, especially during peak times. We have fun, with the game we legally bought.
Just because something might allow something illegal to be done, doesn't mean that it is, in and of itself, illegal. A gun could be used to rob a bank - yet you can walk into a gun shop, or even WalMart (if you're buying a rifle) and buy one. You can even buy ammunition for the gun, although it could cause signifigant harm to someone if you shot them with it. It's perfectly legal to own ammunition, and even use it - for hunting, target practice, etc...
Why don't the servers ask for a CD key? Then leave it to Blizzard to authenticate the key?
Well, there's the pseudo-trojan problem - someone other than the bnetd people modify the code to export the validated CD key to a file (or website, IRC channel, etc...) as being "good" - then publish the list. If they marketed themselves as a different project, they would probably catch quite a few legitimate users before being found out. Those keys they caught would become "public", and pretty much useless.
Of course, with Blizzard doing nothing to prevent the shills on BNet from masquerading as "official" Blizzard employees to con (gullible) users out of their CD keys, account passwords, etc... it doesn't seem like they are all that concerned about protecting their CD key system, in general.
I'm not sure if there is a solution that will be able to authenticate the key without exposing it at some point for retrieval - unless the comparison code is put in the client, rather than the server (so the key is never sent over the network, encrypted or not) - but that opens it up to be patched around. Passing the CD key (in any form) will allow it to be captured, and for the above scenario to take place.
Maybe not..."framing" in this sense may not mean the literal "using frames", but rather "making it appear the the full-size image originates from your site, and not the site of the actual originator" (since they've previously said that thumbnailing with a link is not a problem).
In that case, Google's fine, as they make no bones about the fact that they are, in fact, just an indexing service, and not the originator of the image. They even show the original page as context, as well as providing a link to "deframe" the original page (twice, actually, one in the upper right labelled "Remove Frame", and one just below the picture, labelled with the full URL of the originating page).
I'd say they give proper credit, and I can't imagine many people having a problem with it.
I still on occasion need to get emails from people who I have never worked with before. and I don't see how reverse filtering would help
This is why there is no one solution that will work. Reverse filtering a "whitelist" of addresses you know are legitimate is a good start.
Also filter known mailing lists that you've subscribed to into their own folder(s).
Follow that by "blacklisting" known offenders, so subsequent mailings from them get thrown in the bitbucket (or a designated SPAM folder, if you prefer)
Filter anything not addressed directly to you (IE: your address in the To or CC field) into a "suspect" folder. These can sometimes be legitimate mailings, but most often are spam.
This leaves a signifigantly reduced ammount of mail in your main Inbox, and allows you to selectively read what you want to read. The longer your "blacklist" gets, the less actual spam will show up in your "suspect" folder. The longer your "whitelist" gets, the less legitimate email will end up in the "suspect" folder. Eventually, you'll find that you seldom get new mail in your "suspect" folder at all - and when you do, it's most likely spam, unless you're expecting something.
I use Mail::Audit to do my filtering, using the above method - and it has *nearly* eliminated my 50+ spam/day problem. I'm down to 2-3 a week, and I expect that to drop even more when I add razor to my filterset.
Junkmail cannot climb stairs unaided. When you walk up stairs and leave the junkmail behind, it is powerless to follow.
Of course, some of us who live in apartment buildings just chuck it in the conveniently placed trash recepticle right next to the mailboxes (which, btw, junkmail is also unable to escape from, unaided) - but hey - to each their own =)
Austin Powers: One Shag is Not Enough - "Plot" involves Austin and Dr. Evil vying to get back into some chick's pants - and she ends up with Fat Bastard and/or MiniMe in the end...
Players get paid a lot because they are damn good
You know...you have a point there, that players who are damn good should make more than those who don't.
But...
Shouldn't the salaries be a *bit* less? I mean, we have people starving in the streets, unable to afford food or the basic necessities of life, yet someone who is good at playing baseball makes $15 mil + a year?
It's understandable that people who are good at something be compensated for it...but shouldn't that compensation be proportional to the field? AFAIK the only two industries other than Big Sports that can match those kinds of paychecks are Government and the ultra-high eschelons of Big Business.
Minimum wage is what? 5.75 an hour? There are people making just that, and trying to eke out an existance. Some work 2-3 jobs, and try to support a family, pulling in weekly pay of maybe $500 (generally less). Yet someone else who happens to be very good at throwing a small ball (and who may or may not have any other talents) gets paid $10,000-$100,000 for a few hours of work? Does that make sense?
Imagine what would happen if all the players making more than $150k/year were brought down to that level (which should be more than comfortable to live on - I make 1/3 of that, and am managing to support myself and my fiancee just fine) and the extra money freed up was given back to society -- possibly to subsidize decent housing, food, and medical care for the rest of society - wouldn't the country be a better place? I think it would.
But I'm just one voice. I'm sure there are others who will disagree. Take my opinion as you will =)
Let me prefeace this by saying that I'm an avid linux user, and an avid game player. I'm (presumably) the target market that Loki was shooting for.
Yet I didn't buy any games from them. Why?
Simply put, they didn't release anything that I wanted to play. I had Quake 3 and UT - I didn't need any other FPS games. I had played Heroes III before (yes, under Windows), and while it's a nice game, it's not something I would be willing to purchase a copy of for linux - it just didn't enthrall me that much. I was a fan of the old Descent games, but for me they lost some of their flavor after Descent 2, regardless of the eyecandy that was added.
I will admit - I was SORELY tempted to buy Rune - but after playing the demo, I wasn't totally impressed by the gameplay. Sure, melee is fun - but it got old after about an hour.
What I would have bought (and still will buy, if anyone makes them), no questions asked:
Ports of Bioware's Infinity Engine games (Baldurs Gate I/II, Icewind Dale, Planescape Torment) - these are, quite simply, incredible games. They have metric tons of gameplay, replay value, and storyline. That's why they're still fun today.
Ports of Diablo II and Starcraft - yes, I know these are from Blizzard, who will never, ever, release a linux version - but they were DAMN good games that are still loads of fun now, well after the release.
I don't feel bad about not buying their games - I refuse to buy something I don't want, even to support a company that *might* in the future produce something I would like to buy. While I support *what* they were doing, I think their choice of games to do it with was poor (albeit probably the only choice they had in this world of "Intellectual Property" lawsuits)
Final Fantasy VII took it further, with mini games (Chocobo Racing, Chocobo Breeding, arcade games, etc.)
Am I the only one who got seriously addicted to the snowboarding game at the Gold Saucer? =)
Didn't they get eaten by the stilted-english-talking fish guys? (can't remember their name - it's been FOREVER since I've played SC2, and like you, I never played SC3)