Although, depending on the age of the grandchild, they could then be in trouble.
The idea that one person is responsible for all usage of an Internet connection is crazy though. It would be hard enough to ensure kids aren't doing anything they shouldn't, but at least parents are meant to have control over their kids. I live with two friends, both in their twenties. It's my name on the bill, because it's my name on the phone line, because it was my name on the phone line on the last few places, because about 6 years ago we moved into a flat and I happened to be the guy that called the phone company.
Am I expected to be in attendance whenever they're using the Internet, and tell them they're bad twenty-somethings if they go to the wrong sites? Maybe I should try firewalling off all outgoing traffic except to ports 80 and 443 - this would mostly be interesting to discover whether they crack the firewall, tunnel over HTTP, or replace the router completely, but the point is it just wouldn't work.
Err, if we exempt home use of copyright material, there's not a lot left. Sure, cinemas, and err... err... well, I'm sure there's other stuff, but I can't think of any off hand.
The XBox 360 will, yes, probably have as much DRM as the PS3, which is to say, you won't be able to import the games and the disks will be dang hard to read in anything else. However, based on the Sony's willingness to release a root kit on a CD, I do not feel confident that the PS3 won't (for example) report back every game, DVD, CD, etc. I play to Sony, incase they're copied.
More importantly, even if the XBox 360 and PS3 have exactly as much DRM, the key point is to get it into Sony's thick (apparently, incredibly thick) skull that if they sell products with rootkits (or which in any other way are likely to be harmful to my systems), I'm going to avoid them and everything they sell like the plague.
What really gets me about these "browser wars" is that so many people think it's a good idea if one brower wins. It will be VERY bad if Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera, or whatever other browser becomes the one most people use. The only good outcome is where there are at least three competing browsers (Firefox, IE, and Opera or Safari should do the trick), or we'll continue to have the situation where lazy web developers test their stuff with one browser, and assume it's okay, because "it's the browser most people use".
I hear this a lot, but so far I've only found one bug in Firefox, and it was listed as already fixed in bugzilla. So, I'm testing, really I am, but it works great for me!
Exactly. Another example; as part of my job, I work on a managed learning environment. This is tied into both Oracle, and the database tables used within the university's data warehouse, so it wouldn't really be useful for anywhere else, and relies on commercial software. However, we still release the code, because it costs us nothing to do so, and maybe someone will find it useful as an example of a fairly large web application.
See, I'm not against adverts per se, especially if I'm getting something out of it. The problem I have with adverts is there are too many of them; I don't have a car, I don't want a car, I really don't want car insurance. Same goes for kids (and I find adverts with cute kids mostly annoying). Oh, and I don't want a loan. Given that seems to cover the vast majority of adverts I see at the moment, if I could get this across to the broadcaster, maybe they could take all those adverts out, and solve the problem of too many adverts.
If Google (or, frankly, why Google, it's not that complex, anyone else fancy a go?) could give me half as many adverts, but targetted to things I'm likely to want, I'd be a hell of a lot less likely to reach for that fast forward button, and the advertisers would probably sell more stuff. Just a thought...
As a developer, there are times we'll just gloss over a security problem to get the worst of it fixed ASAP with the least risk of breaking something else in the progress (and there are also holes that I'm desperately hoping no-one finds before I have time to completely rewrite the code, and beat to death the programmer responsible for it in the first place, but that's a rant for another day).
It's possible that the first fix was just a temporary measure they knew wouldn't break anything else, while they rewrote the problem function and put it through proper testing. On the other hand, this is Microsoft, so I may be being overgenerous here...
Good point on the raising a family. I'm definitely part of the/. group that doesn't have to worry about kids, so not something I've ever really thought about. We (I share with two other people) definitely don't have a lot of space though, as there's no longer anywhere close to work, and bigger, that's really in our budget, but that's a rant for another day.
Not so convinced about telecommuting - as someone with the option of working from home, I still go to the office almost everyday. I find it easier to work, the space is better organised (although lack of any formal office space at home obviously doesn't help), and I actually quite like getting out of the house.
It's very useful if I'm mildly ill (and particularly good for not giving everyone else whatever I've got), waiting for a parcel or similar, but that's about it.
I should add, I walk to work, so environmental impact is essentially a non-issue. If I didn't live within walking distance, maybe I could afford to have an office in my house!
1. People buy DVDs in shops? Strange stuff, I swear by Amazon.co.uk (it's got search, and a great selection).
2. Agree
3. I tend to only find DVD storage space an issue for TV shows (to anyone producing TV shows on DVD - putting your DVDs one to a box is a massive waste of space). If it's a real nuisance for you, invest in a DVD folder. Sure, you lose the pretty packaging, but it doesn't seem you wanted it anyway.
4. Never saw this as a big problem. Just sort your DVDs alphabetically then perform a binary search across them:)
5. Unskippable parts make me want to kill the person responsible, slowly. Region codes mostly just irk me, although that may be because they're easy to work around these days. CSS doesn't bother me, except for the fact that I can neither back up DVDs, nor get a free replacement if I send one back to the manufacturer. Mostly this seems to be an issue with movie publishers believing they're doing the customer a favour by letting buy (a license to watch???) their content.
Yes, it's a nuisance. When I put a movie DVD into my DVD player, I feel it should assume I want to play the movie (TV show DVDs should probably start on the first episode), not watch the copyright notice in 8 different languages, then watch some stupid menu intro sequence that someone thought was kinda cool......sorry, ranting...
Seriously though; okay, fine, you really want to make sure I can't claim I didn't know it was copyrighted, then put a copyright note on a piece of paper in with the packaging. Do not stuff in video streams that disable the fast forward, pause, rewind and STOP buttons!
A brief (1, maybe 2 second) fade in/out or similar for the main menu is okay, but keep it short, I'm not there to marvel at the DVD authoring company's leet skillz with 3D programs (especially when they're really not that good).
Oh, and if you want to put trailers onto a movie disk, make them an option off the main menu. Do not auto play them, and if you disable my fast forward button during them that's going to be last disk I ever buy from you. Putting your company's logo in an unskippable section is a particularly good way of reminding me not to buy your DVDs in future, thankyou (Contender Entertainment, this means you).
(I'm saying this as someone who had a very large DVD collection, although has sold off about half of it now so it fits in their available physical storage space)
Maybe it's just me, but I'd much rather have my data on a large number of semi-fragile (and personally, I've never had a problem with scratched DVDs, but maybe I just take care of them better than most people) discs, rather than one or two less fragile, but still fragile, discs. It also makes backup easier, IMHO; for music, rsyncing to my laptop makes sense, but for gigabytes of video files it would take too long, and too much of my laptop's storage space. Backing up to DVDs makes more sense, and if you're going to do that, might as well burn two copies and not bother keeping it on your hard drive.
Having said that, I'm more looking to online video download for watch once stuff; if I want to keep it, I'd rather have some good packaging and properly pressed DVDs.
Out of curiousity, what size of app are you working on, and do you have co-developers who have to read your code?
Not that anything's wrong with PHP, but I suspect that if we'd written our current major web app (70k lines of code, excluding HTML, and 140 individual servlets) in PHP, I'd have a lot of very unhappy colleagues.
Given that Microsoft frequently tells people Linux is harder to use, surely it's the ideal platform for writers. Maybe even OpenBSD - it's a real pain to work with, sure, but think how secure your systems are, and the amount of cred you can get for doing your own patching from source diffs.
Seriously though, using a Mac has nothing to do with level of technical competence. I'm a university graduate (Computer Science), with significant experience of Windows 98/XP, OS X (as well as older versions), Linux (RedHat, Debian and Ubuntu distributions) and OpenBSD (for a few months, then decided we didn't need _that_ much security, and it was taking too much time to admin). I've worked with FreeBSD, NetBSD, Workbench (Amiga) and various other OSes too, but not in so much depth.
At the end of the day, we use Linux for servers, OS X for desktops, and I've got a Windows box at home for playing games on, which is what I think each OS is best suited to:)
Jack's clothes are disintergrated
"Okay defabricator, does exactly what it says on the tin. Ladies, am I naked in front of thousands of viewers?"
"Yes."
"Ladies your ratings just went up."
- Jack Harkness and the Trinny and Suzanna bots, Bad Wolf
Or maybe I think it's a good idea to support the content producers, so they, err, produce more content?
This is not to say what Apple is currently offering is something I'm interested in - I'm looking for PAL/NTSC resolution video (ideally HDTV, but lets walk before we run). I'm also not so interested in being able to watch it again and again - if files came with a DRM license to watch twice (watch once is just an invitation for a poorly timed power cut), but cost less, that would be ideal for me.
However, I'd settle for PAL/NTSC resolution for now:)
Thing is, I'm puzzled by this use of the words "urgent" and "e-mail" in the same sentance. I can't be the only person that doesn't send urgent stuff through a medium they've seen eat messages outright, lose them in filters, or delay for 4 hours because it's a bad day. Or is e-mail at other companies much more reliable (I'd just like to point out, I'm not responsible for the e-mail servers here!)?
If it's urgent, call me. I don't see the problem here?
Or, and I suspect this is a large group, those of us who would quite like to ditch cable (well, satellite in my case) television. What Apple are offering isn't perfect - I'm not likely to want to watch these over and over again, let alone deal with actually storing all the shows I want, so being able to pay for a cheaper DRM'd version, with a license to watch the show twice (not once - watch once stuff is just an invitation for a powercut halfway through, or similar).
In the meantime, I get about half my TV shows by DVD rental, which works as a good comprimise.
Just a thought, but have you considered buying the console after launch, once the early adopter premium has gone? Everyone seems to be looking at the launch prices as if they'll never drop.
Here in the UK, consoles tend to launch at closer to $500 (PS2 and XBox both launched at 300 UKP, and I'm assuming an exchange rate of 1 UKP=1.8 USD). XBox games were around $80 (50 UKP) at launch. This didn't stop me picking both consoles at $320-ish, and games at $50-ish. Maybe it's just here there's such a large drop...
The big efficiency issue with cows, however, is people putting them on land that would be fine for growing more or less anything directly consumable by humans, which happens a lot more due to the increased demand for meat, because everyone seems to have this belief it's a good idea to eat lots of it. Actual recommended daily intake of meat is 5-7 ounces/140-200 grams.
So, right, yeah, had a point. Cattle aren't efficient if used where vegatables/fruit could be grown, and eating less wouldn't do you us any harm.
Out of curiousity, do you approach most problems by asserting they're not your fault, and hoping they will cease to be problems?:)
Seriously though, there seem to be a lot of people who assume that if global warming isn't humanity's fault (and I'm not exactly convinced), it is a non-issue...
Yeah, this would more involve the EU going "We don't like the US, everyone use our nameservers instead of theirs", and everyone else looking at them like they've lost it.
Slashdot Mirror
Although, depending on the age of the grandchild, they could then be in trouble.
The idea that one person is responsible for all usage of an Internet connection is crazy though. It would be hard enough to ensure kids aren't doing anything they shouldn't, but at least parents are meant to have control over their kids. I live with two friends, both in their twenties. It's my name on the bill, because it's my name on the phone line, because it was my name on the phone line on the last few places, because about 6 years ago we moved into a flat and I happened to be the guy that called the phone company.
Am I expected to be in attendance whenever they're using the Internet, and tell them they're bad twenty-somethings if they go to the wrong sites? Maybe I should try firewalling off all outgoing traffic except to ports 80 and 443 - this would mostly be interesting to discover whether they crack the firewall, tunnel over HTTP, or replace the router completely, but the point is it just wouldn't work.
> demand an exemption for home use.
Err, if we exempt home use of copyright material, there's not a lot left. Sure, cinemas, and err... err... well, I'm sure there's other stuff, but I can't think of any off hand.
Care to reference?
The XBox 360 will, yes, probably have as much DRM as the PS3, which is to say, you won't be able to import the games and the disks will be dang hard to read in anything else. However, based on the Sony's willingness to release a root kit on a CD, I do not feel confident that the PS3 won't (for example) report back every game, DVD, CD, etc. I play to Sony, incase they're copied.
More importantly, even if the XBox 360 and PS3 have exactly as much DRM, the key point is to get it into Sony's thick (apparently, incredibly thick) skull that if they sell products with rootkits (or which in any other way are likely to be harmful to my systems), I'm going to avoid them and everything they sell like the plague.
What really gets me about these "browser wars" is that so many people think it's a good idea if one brower wins. It will be VERY bad if Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera, or whatever other browser becomes the one most people use. The only good outcome is where there are at least three competing browsers (Firefox, IE, and Opera or Safari should do the trick), or we'll continue to have the situation where lazy web developers test their stuff with one browser, and assume it's okay, because "it's the browser most people use".
</rant>
I hear this a lot, but so far I've only found one bug in Firefox, and it was listed as already fixed in bugzilla. So, I'm testing, really I am, but it works great for me!
Exactly. Another example; as part of my job, I work on a managed learning environment. This is tied into both Oracle, and the database tables used within the university's data warehouse, so it wouldn't really be useful for anywhere else, and relies on commercial software. However, we still release the code, because it costs us nothing to do so, and maybe someone will find it useful as an example of a fairly large web application.
:) )
(It's at http://sourceforge.net/projects/mms-mle/ if anyone does want an example of a fairly large web application
It is, literally, open source. The fact that the source isn't immediately useful doesn't make it any less open source.
See, I'm not against adverts per se, especially if I'm getting something out of it. The problem I have with adverts is there are too many of them; I don't have a car, I don't want a car, I really don't want car insurance. Same goes for kids (and I find adverts with cute kids mostly annoying). Oh, and I don't want a loan. Given that seems to cover the vast majority of adverts I see at the moment, if I could get this across to the broadcaster, maybe they could take all those adverts out, and solve the problem of too many adverts.
If Google (or, frankly, why Google, it's not that complex, anyone else fancy a go?) could give me half as many adverts, but targetted to things I'm likely to want, I'd be a hell of a lot less likely to reach for that fast forward button, and the advertisers would probably sell more stuff. Just a thought...
As a developer, there are times we'll just gloss over a security problem to get the worst of it fixed ASAP with the least risk of breaking something else in the progress (and there are also holes that I'm desperately hoping no-one finds before I have time to completely rewrite the code, and beat to death the programmer responsible for it in the first place, but that's a rant for another day).
It's possible that the first fix was just a temporary measure they knew wouldn't break anything else, while they rewrote the problem function and put it through proper testing. On the other hand, this is Microsoft, so I may be being overgenerous here...
Good point on the raising a family. I'm definitely part of the /. group that doesn't have to worry about kids, so not something I've ever really thought about. We (I share with two other people) definitely don't have a lot of space though, as there's no longer anywhere close to work, and bigger, that's really in our budget, but that's a rant for another day.
Not so convinced about telecommuting - as someone with the option of working from home, I still go to the office almost everyday. I find it easier to work, the space is better organised (although lack of any formal office space at home obviously doesn't help), and I actually quite like getting out of the house.
It's very useful if I'm mildly ill (and particularly good for not giving everyone else whatever I've got), waiting for a parcel or similar, but that's about it.
I should add, I walk to work, so environmental impact is essentially a non-issue. If I didn't live within walking distance, maybe I could afford to have an office in my house!
1. People buy DVDs in shops? Strange stuff, I swear by Amazon.co.uk (it's got search, and a great selection).
:)
2. Agree
3. I tend to only find DVD storage space an issue for TV shows (to anyone producing TV shows on DVD - putting your DVDs one to a box is a massive waste of space). If it's a real nuisance for you, invest in a DVD folder. Sure, you lose the pretty packaging, but it doesn't seem you wanted it anyway.
4. Never saw this as a big problem. Just sort your DVDs alphabetically then perform a binary search across them
5. Unskippable parts make me want to kill the person responsible, slowly. Region codes mostly just irk me, although that may be because they're easy to work around these days. CSS doesn't bother me, except for the fact that I can neither back up DVDs, nor get a free replacement if I send one back to the manufacturer. Mostly this seems to be an issue with movie publishers believing they're doing the customer a favour by letting buy (a license to watch???) their content.
Yes, it's a nuisance. When I put a movie DVD into my DVD player, I feel it should assume I want to play the movie (TV show DVDs should probably start on the first episode), not watch the copyright notice in 8 different languages, then watch some stupid menu intro sequence that someone thought was kinda cool... ...sorry, ranting...
Seriously though; okay, fine, you really want to make sure I can't claim I didn't know it was copyrighted, then put a copyright note on a piece of paper in with the packaging. Do not stuff in video streams that disable the fast forward, pause, rewind and STOP buttons!
A brief (1, maybe 2 second) fade in/out or similar for the main menu is okay, but keep it short, I'm not there to marvel at the DVD authoring company's leet skillz with 3D programs (especially when they're really not that good).
Oh, and if you want to put trailers onto a movie disk, make them an option off the main menu. Do not auto play them, and if you disable my fast forward button during them that's going to be last disk I ever buy from you. Putting your company's logo in an unskippable section is a particularly good way of reminding me not to buy your DVDs in future, thankyou (Contender Entertainment, this means you).
(I'm saying this as someone who had a very large DVD collection, although has sold off about half of it now so it fits in their available physical storage space)
Maybe it's just me, but I'd much rather have my data on a large number of semi-fragile (and personally, I've never had a problem with scratched DVDs, but maybe I just take care of them better than most people) discs, rather than one or two less fragile, but still fragile, discs. It also makes backup easier, IMHO; for music, rsyncing to my laptop makes sense, but for gigabytes of video files it would take too long, and too much of my laptop's storage space. Backing up to DVDs makes more sense, and if you're going to do that, might as well burn two copies and not bother keeping it on your hard drive.
Having said that, I'm more looking to online video download for watch once stuff; if I want to keep it, I'd rather have some good packaging and properly pressed DVDs.
Partially in response to Pxtl's message (http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=165966& cid=13845107), partially just to support what I'm saying, the source code is at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mms-mle/
Feel free to poke at if you want. It's not in readily compilable condition, and is mostly open source because we can, but nevermind...
Note to self - write article claiming people who use the online name "Xugumad" at 100% more productive than regular employees :)
Out of curiousity, what size of app are you working on, and do you have co-developers who have to read your code?
Not that anything's wrong with PHP, but I suspect that if we'd written our current major web app (70k lines of code, excluding HTML, and 140 individual servlets) in PHP, I'd have a lot of very unhappy colleagues.
Given that Microsoft frequently tells people Linux is harder to use, surely it's the ideal platform for writers. Maybe even OpenBSD - it's a real pain to work with, sure, but think how secure your systems are, and the amount of cred you can get for doing your own patching from source diffs.
:)
Seriously though, using a Mac has nothing to do with level of technical competence. I'm a university graduate (Computer Science), with significant experience of Windows 98/XP, OS X (as well as older versions), Linux (RedHat, Debian and Ubuntu distributions) and OpenBSD (for a few months, then decided we didn't need _that_ much security, and it was taking too much time to admin). I've worked with FreeBSD, NetBSD, Workbench (Amiga) and various other OSes too, but not in so much depth.
At the end of the day, we use Linux for servers, OS X for desktops, and I've got a Windows box at home for playing games on, which is what I think each OS is best suited to
The quote in full:
"What's a Defabricator?"
Jack's clothes are disintergrated
"Okay defabricator, does exactly what it says on the tin. Ladies, am I naked in front of thousands of viewers?"
"Yes."
"Ladies your ratings just went up."
- Jack Harkness and the Trinny and Suzanna bots, Bad Wolf
With thanks to Wikiquote
Or maybe I think it's a good idea to support the content producers, so they, err, produce more content?
:)
This is not to say what Apple is currently offering is something I'm interested in - I'm looking for PAL/NTSC resolution video (ideally HDTV, but lets walk before we run). I'm also not so interested in being able to watch it again and again - if files came with a DRM license to watch twice (watch once is just an invitation for a poorly timed power cut), but cost less, that would be ideal for me.
However, I'd settle for PAL/NTSC resolution for now
Thing is, I'm puzzled by this use of the words "urgent" and "e-mail" in the same sentance. I can't be the only person that doesn't send urgent stuff through a medium they've seen eat messages outright, lose them in filters, or delay for 4 hours because it's a bad day. Or is e-mail at other companies much more reliable (I'd just like to point out, I'm not responsible for the e-mail servers here!)?
If it's urgent, call me. I don't see the problem here?
Or, and I suspect this is a large group, those of us who would quite like to ditch cable (well, satellite in my case) television. What Apple are offering isn't perfect - I'm not likely to want to watch these over and over again, let alone deal with actually storing all the shows I want, so being able to pay for a cheaper DRM'd version, with a license to watch the show twice (not once - watch once stuff is just an invitation for a powercut halfway through, or similar).
In the meantime, I get about half my TV shows by DVD rental, which works as a good comprimise.
Just a thought, but have you considered buying the console after launch, once the early adopter premium has gone? Everyone seems to be looking at the launch prices as if they'll never drop.
Here in the UK, consoles tend to launch at closer to $500 (PS2 and XBox both launched at 300 UKP, and I'm assuming an exchange rate of 1 UKP=1.8 USD). XBox games were around $80 (50 UKP) at launch. This didn't stop me picking both consoles at $320-ish, and games at $50-ish. Maybe it's just here there's such a large drop...
Not to mention deforestation so they have somewhere to put cows. Y'know, until the ground becomes unusable because it no longer has forest to protect it from the weather.
The big efficiency issue with cows, however, is people putting them on land that would be fine for growing more or less anything directly consumable by humans, which happens a lot more due to the increased demand for meat, because everyone seems to have this belief it's a good idea to eat lots of it. Actual recommended daily intake of meat is 5-7 ounces/140-200 grams.
So, right, yeah, had a point. Cattle aren't efficient if used where vegatables/fruit could be grown, and eating less wouldn't do you us any harm.
Out of curiousity, do you approach most problems by asserting they're not your fault, and hoping they will cease to be problems? :)
Seriously though, there seem to be a lot of people who assume that if global warming isn't humanity's fault (and I'm not exactly convinced), it is a non-issue...
Yeah, this would more involve the EU going "We don't like the US, everyone use our nameservers instead of theirs", and everyone else looking at them like they've lost it.
Which, y'know...