NO, they are providing a genuine service that the RIAA wants millions of people to use. Big difference.
MS has the right to get into bed with the RIAA. The RIAA has the right to protect their IP. However, if this or any other protection scheme is to be cooked up, I should not have to use a particular brand or model of VHS, DVD, VCD, CD, TV or Gaming device in order to entertain myself with their IP.
I have the right to use any make or model of digital information rendering device to access the information I PAID TO ACCESS. I should not have to use MS windows and an MS/RIAA/MPAA sanctioned device that only runs on Windows XP5.1 with an HP DVD/CD/VCD player model 8569 with hardware rev. 2.0h1, SoundBlaster Audio H4x0r 2002 piped into a special DRM compatible set of speakers to listen to a fuckin CD on my computer.
oh,and i forgot one thing. Mod me down if you like, but lose the penguin. For corp-linux, just get a cool logo, no mascots. Penguins aren't cool on wall street ya know?
This is not to say we abandon Debian or Slack or whatever, but let's take something and make it USER-FRIENDLY. Everybody get together and:
1) Make an idiot-proof packaging system. One-click, install, run program. If the user sees any dependency complaints, it means we have failed. The sheeple won't tolerate it.
2) Default to either Gnome or KDE, doesnt matter which, just flip a coin, - users and CFO's don't care about free-beer/free-speech, they just want a GUI.
3) Get some office apps up and running on it and run with it. make the apps easy, intuitive and try not to prefix all of them with a K* or a gn* , it makes it difficult to assess the purpose of the program. Not Good.
4) Think of your Mom, when you think about Linux. Until it stops making you laugh, we're not there yet.
Most importantly, do our best to wage our wars of ideology and whose-geekier-than thou in the back-room. Keep it out of this one distro. In short create MS-Linux before MS does. You don't have to use it, or love it. But if it took off, it could surplant MS in pockets and we would find ourselves administrating, supporting and developing on an OS other than windows.
Stop bickering amongst ourselves, get our shit together, and make a frigging corporate distro.
RH and Mandrake and every other small for-profit distro ought to consolidate( probably survive longer too) and create one massive FUCK-YOU-MS distro that is cheap, easy and directly competes with XP.
Too true, too true. Lusers can barely use Windows, how much worse could it be by switching the idiots over to Mandrake? We'd all probably get a lot more respect and money, and have more interesting, challenging jobs too, if all those STUPID people out there were sat in front of a nix box. Take Back The Network!!!
First, if any of you bothered to read the article you will see that it is simply a request no to go around fucking things up. It makes the job of the intelligence community alot easier to sort out the real terrorists from the s'kiddie who just watched the Matrix 30 times in a row and wants to hack the CIA website to impress his 13-year old crush.
Second, any hacker would make a better bullet-catcher, and yield better results too, rather than gulping Cola in a dark room in front of a monitor at the Pentagon. Besides, just *what* in Afghanistan are you going to hack?
I agree with you there, but the thing is that most users couldnt give a crap about leveraging their computing power. Sad but true. I feel strongly that the general public wants the computer to operate more like an appliance. Nobody ever had difficulty figuring out an atari or playstation -- or at least not much.:)
For the rest of us, we have *nix. Besides, clueless users, lo how I despise them, keep me in a job. Just wish I didn't have to deal with them over the phone.
I dunno about XP. Fast, stable and *really* easy to use. Most lusers would love it. They probably won't see it though. They have their computers and really, how many people need a 1.4Ghz box to read their email? There is no killer app requiring a new machine that everyone wants to get access to, not like getting on the 'Net was in 95. I'm sure XP is bloated and all, when I installed an early build , I think it ate up just under a gig of space for the install, not much more than a current install of W2K. I think that most of the buyers will be the stragglers that don't own a PC yet, or those who are stil on 133-266 wintels. feh. Just another OS release, for now. Too bad the market isn't better, or we could all ride another surge in PC home buying and corporate sales.
Mr. Gibson is IMNHO, an alarmist in regards to the networking code in XP.
I don't believe that the Internet will crumble under the weight of packeting XP boxes. Is your local cable or dsl network under siege by all the s'kiddies using *nix? No.
On the other hand, maybe MS has plans to implement a computer operator license $$$cheme, similar to a driver's license? After all, at some point, something deleterious is going to happen from the misuse of Windows ( SirCam, CodeRed, Nimda, -- I'm still getting hit by that shit) Ah, the mind dreams strange things on the graveyard shift....
I think that given a differnt economic climate and a killer app, that XP could be as revolutionary as Win 95. I've only seen an early build of XP, but it's Tonka Truck/Fisher Price look and feel is nice and non-intimidating, kinda like a whizz-bang Flashed-out website. I think most users will love it. I work tech support, I know how much something like this is what people want and need. Easy to use. Just like the TV.
And as for you... well I don't feel like giving you a civil response at all. No doubt you're a card carrying member of the NRA. That's nice. we don't have nearly the murder rate you do, neither does the U.K. Ever wonder why? Oh, and you don't need to remind me what a responsible gun-owner you are, er, that is until a Canadian gets on your bad side, right? My son hasn't shot himself yet playing with Daddy's gun yet, How about yours?
I can spot an American coming from a 100 METRES:) They're always pudgy and round, expect everything to be just like it is in AmeriKKKa, and speak loudly with a garish twang.
You wanna eviscerate me? Come catch me if you can fatty.
Oh that's right, I forgot. I AM uninformed. I live in a democracy ( in a loose sense ) like you do. I live in a capitalist economy like you do. We have healthcare, schooling, elections, freedom of speech ( the canadian version ), a Bill of Rights ( the candadian version of your Constitution ) , and are almost indistinguishable from you in most ways, except for our pronunciation of - about- .
I guess, however, that depite having been fed and breathed your American culture through the idiot-box, news, paper, and magazines for 27 years, lived next-door, and generally been your economic and political ally ( with a healthy dose of our maple-leaf conservatism ), makes me an uninformed armchair liberal know-nothing. Well, considering that I can find YOUR country on a map, and the average american thinks that Canada is a state ( here come the flames...) and CAN'T find Canada on a map, I think that I am quite well-informed thank you.
If my original post got your hackles up, I apologise, that was not my intention. I don't mean to attack your way of life, it's pretty damn similar to mine remember? It just bothers me how blood-thirsty the situation is becoming. And as you are the only superpower in the sandbox, when you say "jump", most jump. I just don't like the way things are proceeding. And let's not kid ourselves. People will die. No matter what the damn thing is called. Don't bury your dead yet, OK?, you need to make room for more.
I'm really sorry to post this in this thread, but the whole WTC thing is really too big to fit into a nicely packaged slashdot topic.
Look, as a Canadian observer, I wonder about a few things.
1). Just what the hell about this mess qualifies this as a "WAR"? A war is 2 or more identifiable military groups in uniform killing each other off until the other is exhausted|defeated|runs out of young people to throw at the problem. Or perhaps the American public feels that this is better akin to your War On Drugs?
3).Within a week of the WTC incident, your president's State of the Union address was in effect, a declaration of "WAR" against the government of Afghanistan and any one else on their side. Them's fightin' words. Hope you don't piss off too many other small, 4th world nations with nothing to lose. I hear Pakistan has The Bomb.
.
4). Your own propaganda machines quickly turned the attacks ( and I do agreee they were attacks)
into comparisons with Pearl Harbour, then nursed and fed the idea of WAR into everyones minds, and then moved on to massaging all your brains into an easy-going dinner conversation on suspending some of your freedoms during this time of war.
I really want to avoid sounding like a crackpot but it's too late: To me, as an observer, it all just smacks of 1984. Another manufactured "war", every one of you a suspect ( god help you if you're of Arab descent), under constant surveillance, watching your country win battles over "the enemy" in a far off place you never see except through the lens of Big brother's eye. maybe not exactly, but the parralels are there, and I can't comprehend the pace at which talk of war and suspension of liberties took place. Fishy.
It pisses me off that this attack is now an excuse to bolster your sagging economy by waging a war on innocents in another country you couldn't give two shits about otherwise. You want vengeance againt those persons responsible? They're already dead. You want they're accomplices? They're the walking dead who have nothing to lose. You can find them in the hills and caves of Afghainstan. They're young men who have nothing except their pride, and the ability to kill you where you stand. They dont know any other way. YOU on the other hand, have much to lose.
They already "won". A few crackpots with fucking boxcutters took out the heart of your economy! HA! And now you're willing to bend over to your corrupt president who fixed a fucking election ( ooh!, we must rally behind the president during these hard times!) so that he can "toil and not falter" dropping fucking bombs on illiterate desert nomads, who probably don't even know what's happened in world in the last 3 MONTHS, let alone 2 weeks. And what sickens me the most is the complacency of my goverment, and the EU governments to allow yours to simply declare a fucking war out of the blue, as if revenge is OK. What happened to the UN or NATO?
I am sorry that this happened to you, I 'm sorry for all the American children who have no parent(s), and I'm sorry for the Afgani|Pakistani children without limbs and eyeballs after this WAR begins. And I'm sorry to see that we're all a still a bunch of assholes waving rocks and sticks. Just imagine spending your life tending cattle with your AK at your side because you never know when the next faceless superpower is gonna try to bomb you back to the Stone Age.
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
I don't know what to say. My typing skills are crap and my knowledge of programming and Unix are pretty slim ( compared to the esteemed patrons of/.:)
I can use Linux and FreeBSD, run Apache, POP, SMTP, trouble shoot x86, know a smidgen of perl, good on a command line, and generally get a boner over computers.
I dont' have any formal education or A+/MSCE or whatever. I've been studying the W2K MSCE courses and find them to be low on real content.
However, I, a lowly helpdesk tech at an ISP making 12/hr, regularly solve and tackle issues that the "network/systems admin" at every damn small business in my city can't solve. Talking to secretaries and assistants who are either the "IT" person responsible, or the "admin" is in Malaysia on vacation, only to find out that the problem (80% of the time) is on their end. Usually an NT server that needs rebooting or some routine LAN/Systems config that needs attending.
A sample:
It is fscking frustrating to explain to an "senior admin" that the DNS cache on our end is NOT resonsible for their mail delivery problems, mainly because there is no MX defined for his domain, and we don't even host it.
How about explaining to another "admin" that the reason their LAN is down is not because our link to them is down, but simple troubleshooting revealing that their store bought DSL router is misconfigured.
Or even this gem. Client berrates me on their mail problem, I KNOW they have a screwed exhange server on the premises, I call the admin, he doesn't even know if the xchange is config'd to route outgoing mail directly or relayed through us first! He is painting a house right now, but he'll get his assistant to go over to the client's office and "have a look". Sure enough, damn echange server is backed up. Oh, and the secretary who called in the first place felt that it was my responsibilty to improve her computer's boot up time. Seems the admins had outfitted the office with P133's and the girls around the office had a penchant for bloatware(AIM/ICQ etc)
I'm getting sick of all these lousy part-time admins/contractors and office staff who register domains using their personal hotmail accounts. Too many companies bet their tech investments on having a staffer double as the IT person. So, to anybody out there who can't find a decent tech/junior admin to bust his ass for the love of it, why don't you try scouring the desperate pondscum of lowly ISP and helpdesk techs before wasting your time on a freshly graduated MCSE who heard the pay was good.
Passengers out onto the runway, grab hold of the plane, push it until it gets into the air, hop on, then jump off when it hits the ground. They grab the plane again, push it back into the air, hop on, jump of...
MAC Airways
The cashiers, flight attendants, and pilots all look the same, and act the same. When you ask them questions about the flight, they reply that you don't want to know, and would you please return to your seat and watch the movie.
Windows Airlines
The terminal is neat and clen, the attendants courteous, the pilots capable. The fleet of Lear jets the carrier operates is immense. Your jet takes off without a hitch, pushes above the clouds, and at 20,000 feet, explodes without warning.
Fly Windows NT
Passengers carry their seats out onto the tarmac and place them in the outline of a plane. They sit down, flap their arms, and make jet swooshing sounds as if they are flying.
Unix Express
Passengers bring a piece of the airplane and a box of tools with them to the airport. They gather on the tarmac, arguing about what kind of plane they want to build. The passengers split into groups and build several different aircraft but give them all the same name. Only some passengers reach their destination, but all of them believe they arrived.
Hey Jackass:)
http://roaringpenguin.net/pppoe. It works great with RedHat, however I could not get it to compile under FreeBSD. Read the docs, it claims support for NetBSD. Why don't you try it out under OpenBSD?
FreeBSD has kernel support for PPPoE, all you need to do is add a couple lines to your kernel file and recompile. I have been using FreeBSD's kernel PPPoE for nearly a year, and it works fine except for the reasons below.
PPPoE ( and ADSL for that matter) is
1) It is slow. I have a 2.5Mbps downstream capacity and only ever achieve 90K max download speed. That's a third of the line capacity. I'm probably about 2-3km from the CO though.
2) I DO have static IP's. Again, I can run all the services you do, albeit slowly.
3) Two months ago, my max upload, ( which is all I really use the line for anyway) tanked out at 20K upstream. It was at 40K before. I cannot send or receive large files via ftp that are larger than ~10MB or the connection stalls. This goes for my ftp server and for pulling large files down from other servers as well. This is PPPoE in action.
4) ADSL is a hack. The only reason I got it was because I did not want the cable company cutting me off for running a server. 4 months waiting period, and $100 CDN/month for a 2.5Mbps line and two static IP's. I still have my cable line for $40 CDN/month and it will kick the shit out of ANY *DSL solution anyday. I remember a year ago all the slashbots slamming cable and touting *DSL. Heh, now you're all fucked.
5) In 2 weeks I will be cancelling my ADSL account. Partly because I cannot afford to pay $100/ month to run a streaming audio server that tanks at 20K up. The other reason is that my former cocksucker employers aquired my company AND my ADSL provider and then sacked us all. That's about the time my line speed took a nosedive. Fuck them, no more money from me.
6) ADSL is a joke. There exists no low cost solution for people like us who would like cheap, always available bandwidth,that we can legally ( ie without hassle) run servers on. DSL is for consumers, just like cable. This is because DSL cuts into the Telco's T1/DS0 profits, and the DSL resellers cut into the Telco's DSL profits. This is just high grade ISDN folks. Unreliable, flaky, bad for the customer, worse for the reseller, and a pain in the bottom line for the Telco. Count on DSL dying a slow, gruesome death, with help from Co-lo providers, web-hosting providers, cable companies, and the Telco. They all want DSL dead.
After using cable and DSL side-by-side, I want DSL dead too. Unfortunately, co-lo and hosting does not allow the freedom of managing your own box in your home. But I guess that's the point. I'm sure alot of people would like to see all those evil home servers dissapear, and businesses go back to T1's.
Who watches the most music videos?
Who are the advertisers targeting?
Which segment of the populace define their social behaviour and identity the most through music, media and movies?
Who are most of the media's biggest investments(boybands, Britney, etc) targeted to?
Who has the disposable income?
Who can they best imprint their product on?
And finally, Whose net-savvy, rebellious file-trading practices could hurt the profit margin the most?
Hint: the answer lies in the subject line.
Now for my anecdotal contribution to the whole P2P vs. RIAA issue:
A number of weeks ago I went to the record store (first time in over a year, and it's because I could actaully AFFORD to, not because I pirated it all year). I had been listening to the Brand New Heavies and decided that I really liked them. I had known about them by name for a long time, but P2P allowed me to *listen* and decide if I liked them. They were not on the radio, not in the jukebox at the store, not at a club, but on the net. And I took myself down to the record shop and found the Brand New Heavies, and guess how much the CD (a compilation- 17 tracks) cost?
$55.00 CDN! Add another 14% in sales tax and I'm out $62.70 CDN! For one friggin' CD! WTF!?! So I hummed and hawed and finally said fuck this and purchased 3 other cds for roughly the same amount of money. 3 times the fun, except the Brand New Heavies will not see my money anytime soon, and I'm out an album I really wanted to buy but could not justify the cost. I doubt they had anything to do with the pricetag, but it's sad because I like them alot, but the fuckin industry sharks just got in the way. They don't care though, I'm over 25 and not part of their profitable demographic.
No , I don't think I'm biased. I'm not going to say I fancy myself to be like the early radio hobbyists, nor am I like a VC. But within months of discovering the 'net (I'm a late bloomer), I knew that an online radio station would be very cool. Preferably a "pirate" one. Of course, my "idea" is a few years late, and P2P has rendered a site like mine pretty friggin' useless. It's just a hobby, and makes me happy.
Heh, that's exactly what the network is for. Stockholders, VC's and CEO's control the Internet, because they OWN it. You do not. Neither do I. Huge, global, all-encompassing media conglomerates and Telecommunications giants ARE building their own network, and the free ride is almost over.
I read an old Wired article once that was about the pioneering days of the original radio buffs and hobbyists, and how eventually the free ride ended and we wound up with modern day radio as a result. Sorry guys, the Arpanet is dead, it died back in the early 90's.
This is inevitable. Unless we all chuck out a whole shitload of money (read:taxes) to support this beast-- private interests, the all-mighty buck, and old-fashioned red-blooded American capitalism will decide the next incarnation of the net. It's just so ironic to hear all the socialist rhetoric. The Sixties are over guys, and I need to get fed, because the postwar treasurechest is near empty. The great economic juggernaut of America, land of the free, home of the brave. A country bouyed by the downtrodden, underpaid, underfed masses of the world, built on the genocide of the American Indian, and the slavery of Africans. Fucking people over is the great New World past time.
Corporations are slowly becoming more powerful than goverments, and we are moving towards a technocracy. Get used to it. It's a natural phenomenon. The printed word, the telegraph, the radio, the TV, the Internet. Information is free. It's transmission is not. So until we are all psychic, chances are some privately held, for-profit individual or group will determine what we see, hear, and think. If you doubt it, look at the natural world. YOU are the universe, part and parcel, and obey its LAWS. The laws are amoral and without judgement. They simply are. And if you look at the course of human history and animal behaviour, you will see that there has always been and still are elite groups of people who control the masses resources.
Thank you for holding, a representative will be with you shortly. Welcome to Disney Internet, please have your IPV6 address, and your computer operator license ID ready, and the first available service rep will assist you.
As much I believe that we should be able to whip out a.xxx or a.biz or whatever the people and the market want, it simply will not work.
New.net is trying to peer up with ISPs to get them to modify their hints file or named.conf to alow resolution of all the pseudo TLDS's. Great. So only the peple who use new.net or have dl their nifty patch can see these sites? What if I set up a similar system here in Canada? Then when my swell Windows 9x box looks up asciiporn.xxx, where will it take you? To the UK site asciiporn.xxx.new.net, or to asciiporn.xxx.myisp.ca? Hmmm? It will depend on the order of your search domains. If new.net is first on the list to check unqualified names, I get the UK site. If not, I get the Canadian site. For those of you who think that DNS is broken now, just wait. You and I will be looking up the same "name" and possible get totally different sites, depending on our ISP or what region we are in.
The only way I can see around this is to get a really short domain containing only ONE letter. For example, x.com. Very 21st century. Then, as the holder of that domain, allow others to use *.xxx.x.com or *.kids.x.com. x.com is better than new.net, as using x.com is much easier to imprint in the brain for that average user.
I know that new.net is trying to do this, but in order for this to succeed, you basically need to be a carrier or in the postion to meter out the bandwith to major ISP's, and coerce them into modifying their name resolution. Asking or setting up an alliance wont cut it. You need to be the big dog who calls the shots. Not likely gonna happen with a start-up during the dot-com-crunch.
Apart form all the references (or ripoffs?) to other films - Wizard of Oz, Bladerunner, Close encounters of the third kind- , I couldn't help but notice a similarity between Teddy and HAL. Especially the part where Teddy warns David not to do what Martin dares him to.
AI "That's not a good idea David."
2001 "I'm afraid I can't do that Dave."
Another moment was when the fleshfair guy is taking Teddy to the lost and found and Teddy kept repeating that he "must find David". Kind of in the same creepy way that HAL kept pleading "stop Dave, please st....op....D..aaaave.
I know the context was slightly different, but the voice and the inflection, and the fact that Teddy was unmistakably artificial and knew it, and David was unmistakably "human" (in the sense that he had no firm idea of what he really was). Kind of a human trait if you ask me.
Ya know, I'm totally embarrased to say this, but when I first discovered/. , I thought Anonymous Coward was a real account. I didnt clue in until I noticed that AC was responding to its own posts:P
<Dons flame-retardant suit in preparation for the inevitable onslaught.>
Slashdot Mirror
I have mod points and I wish there was an option for "scathing perspective" or similiar...
MS has the right to get into bed with the RIAA. The RIAA has the right to protect their IP.
However, if this or any other protection scheme is to be cooked up, I should not have to use a particular brand or model of VHS, DVD, VCD, CD, TV or Gaming device in order to entertain myself with their IP.
I have the right to use any make or model of digital information rendering device to access the information I PAID TO ACCESS. I should not have to use MS windows and an MS/RIAA/MPAA sanctioned device that only runs on Windows XP5.1 with an HP DVD/CD/VCD player model 8569 with hardware rev. 2.0h1, SoundBlaster Audio H4x0r 2002 piped into a special DRM compatible set of speakers to listen to a fuckin CD on my computer.
Feel free to mod me into oblivion.
Could someone please explain what a PHB is? I haven't been able to grok the meaning in the context it's used in. Thanks
oh ,and i forgot one thing. Mod me down if you like, but lose the penguin. For corp-linux, just get a cool logo, no mascots. Penguins aren't cool on wall street ya know?
Everybody get behind *one* distro. No more snide bitching about RH or Mandrake. Show a corporate face to the public, and market it like hell. Take some IPO money and throw up some sexy T.V. adverts with a song by Moby in the background. Show some suits with expensive cars interfacing with Corp_linux© 1.0. Some newspaper, trade publications adverts too.
This is not to say we abandon Debian or Slack or whatever, but let's take something and make it USER-FRIENDLY. Everybody get together and:
1) Make an idiot-proof packaging system. One-click, install, run program. If the user sees any dependency complaints, it means we have failed. The sheeple won't tolerate it.
2) Default to either Gnome or KDE, doesnt matter which, just flip a coin, - users and CFO's don't care about free-beer/free-speech, they just want a GUI.
3) Get some office apps up and running on it and run with it. make the apps easy, intuitive and try not to prefix all of them with a K* or a gn* , it makes it difficult to assess the purpose of the program. Not Good.
4) Think of your Mom, when you think about Linux. Until it stops making you laugh, we're not there yet.
Most importantly, do our best to wage our wars of ideology and whose-geekier-than thou in the back-room. Keep it out of this one distro. In short create MS-Linux before MS does. You don't have to use it, or love it. But if it took off, it could surplant MS in pockets and we would find ourselves administrating, supporting and developing on an OS other than windows.
Stop bickering amongst ourselves, get our shit together, and make a frigging corporate distro.
RH and Mandrake and every other small for-profit distro ought to consolidate( probably survive longer too) and create one massive FUCK-YOU-MS distro that is cheap, easy and directly competes with XP.
Mon-Fri, we kick ass as a unified Corp-Linux© entity for the benefit of getting Linux out there,
and on your days off you can wage a holy war on vi vs. emacs
Too true, too true. Lusers can barely use Windows, how much worse could it be by switching the idiots over to Mandrake? We'd all probably get a lot more respect and money, and have more interesting, challenging jobs too, if all those STUPID people out there were sat in front of a nix box. Take Back The Network!!!
Second, any hacker would make a better bullet-catcher, and yield better results too, rather than gulping Cola in a dark room in front of a monitor at the Pentagon. Besides, just *what* in Afghanistan are you going to hack?
For the rest of us, we have *nix. Besides, clueless users, lo how I despise them, keep me in a job.
Just wish I didn't have to deal with them over the phone.
I dunno about XP. Fast, stable and *really* easy to use. Most lusers would love it. They probably won't see it though. They have their computers and really, how many people need a 1.4Ghz box to read their email? There is no killer app requiring a new machine that everyone wants to get access to, not like getting on the 'Net was in 95. I'm sure XP is bloated and all, when I installed an early build , I think it ate up just under a gig of space for the install, not much more than a current install of W2K. I think that most of the buyers will be the stragglers that don't own a PC yet, or those who are stil on 133-266 wintels. feh. Just another OS release, for now. Too bad the market isn't better, or we could all ride another surge in PC home buying and corporate sales.
I don't believe that the Internet will crumble under the weight of packeting XP boxes. Is your local cable or dsl network under siege by all the s'kiddies using *nix? No.
On the other hand, maybe MS has plans to implement a computer operator license $$$cheme, similar to a driver's license? After all, at some point, something deleterious is going to happen from the misuse of Windows ( SirCam, CodeRed, Nimda, -- I'm still getting hit by that shit) Ah, the mind dreams strange things on the graveyard shift....
I think that given a differnt economic climate and a killer app, that XP could be as revolutionary as Win 95. I've only seen an early build of XP, but it's Tonka Truck/Fisher Price look and feel is nice and non-intimidating, kinda like a whizz-bang Flashed-out website. I think most users will love it. I work tech support, I know how much something like this is what people want and need. Easy to use. Just like the TV.
Not everyone is a slashdotter after all.
i think it is the name of a rugby team, hence he must be a rugby star.
No doubt you're a card carrying member of the NRA. That's nice. we don't have nearly the murder rate you do, neither does the U.K. Ever wonder why? Oh, and you don't need to remind me what a responsible gun-owner you are, er, that is until a Canadian gets on your bad side, right? My son hasn't shot himself yet playing with Daddy's gun yet, How about yours?
I can spot an American coming from a 100 METRES :) They're always pudgy and round, expect everything to be just like it is in AmeriKKKa, and speak loudly with a garish twang.
You wanna eviscerate me? Come catch me if you can fatty.
I guess, however, that depite having been fed and breathed your American culture through the idiot-box, news, paper, and magazines for 27 years, lived next-door, and generally been your economic and political ally ( with a healthy dose of our maple-leaf conservatism ), makes me an uninformed armchair liberal know-nothing. Well, considering that I can find YOUR country on a map, and the average american thinks that Canada is a state ( here come the flames...) and CAN'T find Canada on a map, I think that I am quite well-informed thank you.
If my original post got your hackles up, I apologise, that was not my intention. I don't mean to attack your way of life, it's pretty damn similar to mine remember? It just bothers me how blood-thirsty the situation is becoming. And as you are the only superpower in the sandbox, when you say "jump", most jump. I just don't like the way things are proceeding. And let's not kid ourselves. People will die. No matter what the damn thing is called. Don't bury your dead yet, OK?, you need to make room for more.
Look, as a Canadian observer, I wonder about a few things.
1). Just what the hell about this mess qualifies this as a "WAR"? A war is 2 or more identifiable military groups in uniform killing each other off until the other is exhausted|defeated|runs out of young people to throw at the problem. Or perhaps the American public feels that this is better akin to your War On Drugs?
2). The media and government sure were quick to settle on America's new Bad Guy of the Week©, Osama Bin Laden. With all the intelligence that fingered him so quickly AFTER the fact, you would think that a multi-billion dollar intelligence agency could get some wind of things PRIOR to the bombings. After all, your government helped fund and train the man during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
3).Within a week of the WTC incident, your president's State of the Union address was in effect, a declaration of "WAR" against the government of Afghanistan and any one else on their side. Them's fightin' words. Hope you don't piss off too many other small, 4th world nations with nothing to lose. I hear Pakistan has The Bomb.
.
4). Your own propaganda machines quickly turned the attacks ( and I do agreee they were attacks)
into comparisons with Pearl Harbour, then nursed and fed the idea of WAR into everyones minds, and then moved on to massaging all your brains into an easy-going dinner conversation on suspending some of your freedoms during this time of war.
I really want to avoid sounding like a crackpot but it's too late: To me, as an observer, it all just smacks of 1984. Another manufactured "war", every one of you a suspect ( god help you if you're of Arab descent), under constant surveillance, watching your country win battles over "the enemy" in a far off place you never see except through the lens of Big brother's eye. maybe not exactly, but the parralels are there, and I can't comprehend the pace at which talk of war and suspension of liberties took place. Fishy.
It pisses me off that this attack is now an excuse to bolster your sagging economy by waging a war on innocents in another country you couldn't give two shits about otherwise. You want vengeance againt those persons responsible? They're already dead. You want they're accomplices? They're the walking dead who have nothing to lose. You can find them in the hills and caves of Afghainstan. They're young men who have nothing except their pride, and the ability to kill you where you stand. They dont know any other way. YOU on the other hand, have much to lose.
They already "won". A few crackpots with fucking boxcutters took out the heart of your economy! HA! And now you're willing to bend over to your corrupt president who fixed a fucking election ( ooh!, we must rally behind the president during these hard times!) so that he can "toil and not falter" dropping fucking bombs on illiterate desert nomads, who probably don't even know what's happened in world in the last 3 MONTHS, let alone 2 weeks. And what sickens me the most is the complacency of my goverment, and the EU governments to allow yours to simply declare a fucking war out of the blue, as if revenge is OK. What happened to the UN or NATO?
I am sorry that this happened to you, I 'm sorry for all the American children who have no parent(s), and I'm sorry for the Afgani|Pakistani children without limbs and eyeballs after this WAR begins. And I'm sorry to see that we're all a still a bunch of assholes waving rocks and sticks. Just imagine spending your life tending cattle with your AK at your side because you never know when the next faceless superpower is gonna try to bomb you back to the Stone Age.
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
I don't know what to say. My typing skills are crap and my knowledge of programming and Unix are pretty slim ( compared to the esteemed patrons of
I can use Linux and FreeBSD, run Apache, POP, SMTP, trouble shoot x86, know a smidgen of perl, good on a command line, and generally get a boner over computers.
I dont' have any formal education or A+/MSCE or whatever. I've been studying the W2K MSCE courses and find them to be low on real content.
However, I, a lowly helpdesk tech at an ISP making 12/hr, regularly solve and tackle issues that the "network/systems admin" at every damn small business in my city can't solve.
Talking to secretaries and assistants who are either the "IT" person responsible, or the "admin" is in Malaysia on vacation, only to find out that the problem (80% of the time) is on their end. Usually an NT server that needs rebooting or some routine LAN/Systems config that needs attending.
A sample:
It is fscking frustrating to explain to an "senior admin" that the DNS cache on our end is NOT resonsible for their mail delivery problems, mainly because there is no MX defined for his domain, and we don't even host it.
How about explaining to another "admin" that the reason their LAN is down is not because our link to them is down, but simple troubleshooting revealing that their store bought DSL router is misconfigured.
Or even this gem. Client berrates me on their mail problem, I KNOW they have a screwed exhange server on the premises, I call the admin, he doesn't even know if the xchange is config'd to route outgoing mail directly or relayed through us first! He is painting a house right now, but he'll get his assistant to go over to the client's office and "have a look". Sure enough, damn echange server is backed up. Oh, and the secretary who called in the first place felt that it was my responsibilty to improve her computer's boot up time. Seems the admins had outfitted the office with P133's and the girls around the office had a penchant for bloatware(AIM/ICQ etc)
I'm getting sick of all these lousy part-time admins/contractors and office staff who register domains using their personal hotmail accounts. Too many companies bet their tech investments on having a staffer double as the IT person. So, to anybody out there who can't find a decent tech/junior admin to bust his ass for the love of it, why don't you try scouring the desperate pondscum of lowly ISP and helpdesk techs before wasting your time on a freshly graduated MCSE who heard the pay was good.
For those of who are too green to know... care to elaborate on signal11?
If Operating Systems Were Airlines
DOS Air
Passengers out onto the runway, grab hold of the plane, push it until it gets into the air, hop on, then jump off when it hits the ground. They grab the plane again, push it back into the air, hop on, jump of...
MAC Airways
The cashiers, flight attendants, and pilots all look the same, and act the same. When you ask them questions about the flight, they reply that you don't want to know, and would you please return to your seat and watch the movie.
Windows Airlines
The terminal is neat and clen, the attendants courteous, the pilots capable. The fleet of Lear jets the carrier operates is immense. Your jet takes off without a hitch, pushes above the clouds, and at 20,000 feet, explodes without warning.
Fly Windows NT
Passengers carry their seats out onto the tarmac and place them in the outline of a plane. They sit down, flap their arms, and make jet swooshing sounds as if they are flying.
Unix Express
Passengers bring a piece of the airplane and a box of tools with them to the airport. They gather on the tarmac, arguing about what kind of plane they want to build. The passengers split into groups and build several different aircraft but give them all the same name. Only some passengers reach their destination, but all of them believe they arrived.
http://roaringpenguin.net/pppoe. It works great with RedHat, however I could not get it to compile under FreeBSD. Read the docs, it claims support for NetBSD. Why don't you try it out under OpenBSD?
FreeBSD has kernel support for PPPoE, all you need to do is add a couple lines to your kernel file and recompile. I have been using FreeBSD's kernel PPPoE for nearly a year, and it works fine except for the reasons below.
PPPoE ( and ADSL for that matter) is
1) It is slow. I have a 2.5Mbps downstream capacity and only ever achieve 90K max download speed. That's a third of the line capacity. I'm probably about 2-3km from the CO though.
2) I DO have static IP's. Again, I can run all the services you do, albeit slowly.
3) Two months ago, my max upload, ( which is all I really use the line for anyway) tanked out at 20K upstream. It was at 40K before. I cannot send or receive large files via ftp that are larger than ~10MB or the connection stalls. This goes for my ftp server and for pulling large files down from other servers as well. This is PPPoE in action.
4) ADSL is a hack. The only reason I got it was because I did not want the cable company cutting me off for running a server. 4 months waiting period, and $100 CDN/month for a 2.5Mbps line and two static IP's. I still have my cable line for $40 CDN/month and it will kick the shit out of ANY *DSL solution anyday. I remember a year ago all the slashbots slamming cable and touting *DSL. Heh, now you're all fucked.
5) In 2 weeks I will be cancelling my ADSL account. Partly because I cannot afford to pay $100/ month to run a streaming audio server that tanks at 20K up. The other reason is that my former cocksucker employers aquired my company AND my ADSL provider and then sacked us all. That's about the time my line speed took a nosedive. Fuck them, no more money from me.
6) ADSL is a joke. There exists no low cost solution for people like us who would like cheap, always available bandwidth,that we can legally ( ie without hassle) run servers on. DSL is for consumers, just like cable. This is because DSL cuts into the Telco's T1/DS0 profits, and the DSL resellers cut into the Telco's DSL profits. This is just high grade ISDN folks. Unreliable, flaky, bad for the customer, worse for the reseller, and a pain in the bottom line for the Telco. Count on DSL dying a slow, gruesome death, with help from Co-lo providers, web-hosting providers, cable companies, and the Telco. They all want DSL dead.
After using cable and DSL side-by-side, I want DSL dead too. Unfortunately, co-lo and hosting does not allow the freedom of managing your own box in your home. But I guess that's the point. I'm sure alot of people would like to see all those evil home servers dissapear, and businesses go back to T1's.
Who watches the most music videos?
Who are the advertisers targeting?
Which segment of the populace define their social behaviour and identity the most through music, media and movies?
Who are most of the media's biggest investments(boybands, Britney, etc) targeted to?
Who has the disposable income?
Who can they best imprint their product on?
And finally, Whose net-savvy, rebellious file-trading practices could hurt the profit margin the most?
Hint: the answer lies in the subject line.
Now for my anecdotal contribution to the whole P2P vs. RIAA issue:
A number of weeks ago I went to the record store (first time in over a year, and it's because I could actaully AFFORD to, not because I pirated it all year). I had been listening to the Brand New Heavies and decided that I really liked them. I had known about them by name for a long time, but P2P allowed me to *listen* and decide if I liked them. They were not on the radio, not in the jukebox at the store, not at a club, but on the net. And I took myself down to the record shop and found the Brand New Heavies, and guess how much the CD (a compilation- 17 tracks) cost? $55.00 CDN! Add another 14% in sales tax and I'm out $62.70 CDN! For one friggin' CD! WTF!?! So I hummed and hawed and finally said fuck this and purchased 3 other cds for roughly the same amount of money. 3 times the fun, except the Brand New Heavies will not see my money anytime soon, and I'm out an album I really wanted to buy but could not justify the cost. I doubt they had anything to do with the pricetag, but it's sad because I like them alot, but the fuckin industry sharks just got in the way. They don't care though, I'm over 25 and not part of their profitable demographic.
No , I don't think I'm biased. I'm not going to say I fancy myself to be like the early radio hobbyists, nor am I like a VC. But within months of discovering the 'net (I'm a late bloomer), I knew that an online radio station would be very cool. Preferably a "pirate" one. Of course, my "idea" is a few years late, and P2P has rendered a site like mine pretty friggin' useless. It's just a hobby, and makes me happy.
I read an old Wired article once that was about the pioneering days of the original radio buffs and hobbyists, and how eventually the free ride ended and we wound up with modern day radio as a result. Sorry guys, the Arpanet is dead, it died back in the early 90's.
This is inevitable. Unless we all chuck out a whole shitload of money (read:taxes) to support this beast-- private interests, the all-mighty buck, and old-fashioned red-blooded American capitalism will decide the next incarnation of the net. It's just so ironic to hear all the socialist rhetoric. The Sixties are over guys, and I need to get fed, because the postwar treasurechest is near empty. The great economic juggernaut of America, land of the free, home of the brave. A country bouyed by the downtrodden, underpaid, underfed masses of the world, built on the genocide of the American Indian, and the slavery of Africans. Fucking people over is the great New World past time.
Corporations are slowly becoming more powerful than goverments, and we are moving towards a technocracy. Get used to it. It's a natural phenomenon. The printed word, the telegraph, the radio, the TV, the Internet. Information is free. It's transmission is not. So until we are all psychic, chances are some privately held, for-profit individual or group will determine what we see, hear, and think. If you doubt it, look at the natural world. YOU are the universe, part and parcel, and obey its LAWS. The laws are amoral and without judgement. They simply are. And if you look at the course of human history and animal behaviour, you will see that there has always been and still are elite groups of people who control the masses resources.
Thank you for holding, a representative will be with you shortly. Welcome to Disney Internet, please have your IPV6 address, and your computer operator license ID ready, and the first available service rep will assist you.
New.net is trying to peer up with ISPs to get them to modify their hints file or named.conf to alow resolution of all the pseudo TLDS's. Great. So only the peple who use new.net or have dl their nifty patch can see these sites? What if I set up a similar system here in Canada? Then when my swell Windows 9x box looks up asciiporn.xxx, where will it take you? To the UK site asciiporn.xxx.new.net, or to asciiporn.xxx.myisp.ca? Hmmm? It will depend on the order of your search domains. If new.net is first on the list to check unqualified names, I get the UK site. If not, I get the Canadian site. For those of you who think that DNS is broken now, just wait. You and I will be looking up the same "name" and possible get totally different sites, depending on our ISP or what region we are in.
The only way I can see around this is to get a really short domain containing only ONE letter. For example, x.com. Very 21st century. Then, as the holder of that domain, allow others to use *.xxx.x.com or *.kids.x.com. x.com is better than new.net, as using x.com is much easier to imprint in the brain for that average user.
I know that new.net is trying to do this, but in order for this to succeed, you basically need to be a carrier or in the postion to meter out the bandwith to major ISP's, and coerce them into modifying their name resolution. Asking or setting up an alliance wont cut it. You need to be the big dog who calls the shots. Not likely gonna happen with a start-up during the dot-com-crunch.
AI "That's not a good idea David."
2001 "I'm afraid I can't do that Dave."
Another moment was when the fleshfair guy is taking Teddy to the lost and found and Teddy kept repeating that he "must find David". Kind of in the same creepy way that HAL kept pleading "stop Dave, please st....op....D..aaaave.
I know the context was slightly different, but the voice and the inflection, and the fact that Teddy was unmistakably artificial and knew it, and David was unmistakably "human" (in the sense that he had no firm idea of what he really was). Kind of a human trait if you ask me.
<Dons flame-retardant suit in preparation for the inevitable onslaught.>