Quit whining and go submit a useful comment...
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DMCA Comments HOWTO
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Ok, the DMCA sucks monkey balls, we all know this. But rather than sit here and rant about it, try and find a good, specific example in your life that shows where something should be allow. The idea isn't to just sit and bash the DMCA, they are just going to shitcan your comment and you will have gained nothing. Personally, I have already found one item that I felt needed to be included with this ruling: DVD Region Encoding. I don't know if it is allowed or not, but considering that it is a technological measure which controls access to a copyrighted work, hacking my DVD player to ignore it just might be a crime under this law.
Sure, it took me the better part of an hour to craft what I thought was a good argument for the inclusion of circumvention of Region Encoding in this ruling. Luckily I didn't have to go far to find a concrete example, the "Futurama" DVDs. (Love the show, really want the DVDs. They were only released in the UK a.k.a. Region 2.)
My point is, if you have something you want to be able to hack, then get off your ass and go tell the people that are going to make the descion.
I agree, we have a fundemental difference of opinion.
Though, I don't think its an issue about right and wrong. Its an issue of how you interperet online interactions. You use the analogy of the apple cart vendor, and, in that context, it would appear that someone using your site is stealing if they don't allow pop-ups. However, like most physical/online analogies, I belive that it is flawed. A web site is not exactly an apple cart. First, do you in any way tell a visitor that they are expected to generate revenue for you to access the information?
Short answer, no. I went to your site, and looked for any sort of statement that I was required to click on a link and/or allow pop-ups. In fact, what I did find, in your useage rules was the following statement:
The reason I have all this information on the internet is so it is freely available.
So, is it there to be "freely available" or is it there to generate revenue?
At the very least the apple cart (in your analogy) would have a sign that says "Apples $1/lbs", or some such.
Moreover, there is a difference in general expectation. If I go to a store/cart, it is generally accepted that I must pay for an item/service. When requesting a web page, this expectation does not exist. The general consensus is that, if a web pages exists and has no provisions to prevent access, it is available for public consumption. And this is where the largest flaw in the analogy exists, expectation.
And, much like your apple cart, you have the right to refuse service to any person you do not wish to serve. If you don't want people to use your site, that have pop-ups disabled, configure your server to refuse requests from them. If someone then, either ignores your terms of usage, or circumvents the protections you have in place, then yes, they are stealing.
My point is, that what you have effectivly done is put a cart full of apples out in a public area and put a sign on it that says "Apples, Have One". There doesn't seem to be mechanism by which to pay for them, there is no one standing around asking people to pay for them, in short, by all apperances you intended to give the apples away for free.
This is markedly different than the subway turnstyle. To begin with, in order for me to enter the subway, I must, in some way, bypass the turnstyle. Said turnstyle will have a mechanism for payment, and usually, a sign or placard that states what I need to remit in order to pass. There is a barrier, however weak, that prevents access until I provide the necessary items. Your site has no such barrier, there is no password, nothing which would prevent access unless the proper items were provided. This can be as simple as denying access if a cookie cannot be set, or as complex as a password system. But as currently stands, there is no barrier.
You also use the analogy of stealing cable. Again, there are a few differences. First and foremost, when stealing cable, you start off by tampering with equipment that you do not own. Moreover, if you have payed for any sort of basic service and you use a device to descramble other channels you are probably in breech of contract. Lastly, once again there is the concept of a barrier. If its a case of scaling the pole, opening the box and making modifications, you opened the box, which is a barrier. If its a descrambler, you have used a device to overcome some sort of encryption, again a barrier. Your site has no barrier.
You analogy is flawed, your site is not an apple cart. Visitors have no reason to expect that they are required to allow the pop-ups on your site. No matter what you want, I still can configure my system to disallow them. Pop-up blockers have never been outlawed, and there is no precident in court that states that using them is theft. If you don't want me there because of it, put up a prominent sign saying so, otherwise, don't expect me to re-configure my system, I have no reason to expect that it is necessary. If you want to call me a thief over it, then might I suggest filing charges against me.
Also, there is no barrier on your site which requires me to remit any sort of payment, wherether directly or indirectly. Again, the onus is on you, not me. When I went to your site, I wasn't stopped because I didn't remit payment, in fact, payment was never requested of me. You have an area that is advertised as being open to the public, you placed it on a server on the internet, and you provided a link in a public place. Now you are upset because I went there and didn't pay you? The door was opened by you, there wasn't a turnstyle, there is no reason for me to expect to have to pay. On the other hand, there is a term for advertising something for free and then trying to force payment when people come to get it. Its called fraud.
In closing, put up a sign, put up a barrier no matter how weak. Then if someone circumvents it I will agree with you that it is theft.
I will agree that you have a right to run your website as you see fit. If you want to run a site that uses pop-ups/unders for revenue generation, that is your perogitive. However, expecting that I will configure my machine, such that it provides you with the greatest amount of revenue is simply silly. In the same strain as you having the right to run your business as you see fit, I have the right to configure my computer as I see fit. That's the bitch about freedom, its a two way street.
From what you have said in your posts, I might recommend that you run some sort of software, similar to what anti-leech is offereing. It will provide some level of garantee that anyone accessing your site is providing you revenue. Again, you are free to do this, its your site. However, calling someone, such as myself, a thief, because we refuese to allow pop-ups/unders and cookies is bordering on liable. And also sounds like you are trying to avoid taking the blame for your own failure.
Given your situation, though, I would recommend that you switch over to a subscription model. If the service you provide is that unique, and that valuable, you will probably be able to get $5 or so per year out of the hard-core users of your site. With a bit of cost analysis, you should be able to come up with a good price to charge, which will support your site, and not be too high as to drive away your users. For Example:
200,000 unique IP's per month.
Assume that 10% are the hard-core users.
200,000 * 10% = 20,000 Users
Charge them $5 per year membership
20,000 * $5 = $100,000 per year
Now, I don't think $5 per year is very high if you have a good, and somewhat unique site. And even if you only get 5% of that 200,000 that still works out to $50,000 a year, still not bad.
Basically, all I am trying to say is, you have the right to run your business as you see fit. And I have the right to configure my machine as I see fit. If you are unable to keep your business going, then that is your fault, not mine. In the US you have the right to the pursuit of happiness, you don't have a right to happiness, you have to earn that. If you can't get there because you have picked a business model that is broken, whether by design, or technology, that is your fault.
Personally, I would love to have a safe and effective pill, similar to the one for women. As it is, I'm in one of those long term relationships, and we have sex frequently. My g/f is on the pill, which is nice, helps suppress acne, timing on her periods is regular, etc. Problem is, its only 98% or so effective, which means that there is a 2% chance of her getting pregent if we do it at the wrong time of the month. Cosidering that we are likely to have sex 1 to 2 times during that period, I don't really like the way the math of it starts to work out. So, we bag it. And let me tell you I hate condoms, or as we call them, the wall of anti-orgasm. They are really great if you want to go forever, you can't feel much through them. I would love to have another simple solution.
I've often thought that a male pill would be perfect for me. She's on hers, I'm on mine, if each pill is indiviually 98% effective that's a much better risk factor,.04% I believe. I could ditch those damn condoms and just enjoy better sex. Of course, everything I have heard about the male pills, which are being tested, is that they are basically huge doses of Testosterone. Which can lead to being even harrier, more violent, and whole host of other problems. Given the choice between that and condoms, I'd choose condoms. As it is, we have just worked out a system, where by we start without it, then, as I get close, we stop and put it on. Its not perfect, and does occasionally lead to "slips" but that is what the pill is for, as a saftey net for the few times that, for whatever reason, I don't have my hat on.
For the average home user disabling this service may be a bit difficult, especially on a 9X derivitive. Personally I feel the better method is to install a software firewall of one sort or another. Personally, I run Zone Alarm. Its a nice, simple, easy to install firewall. It may not be the best protection in the world, but its a start. On top of that, I use a router with a builtin firewall, and lock down every port that I don't need open. But at the very least, a software firewall will stop most of the simple hacks and its easy enough for the average end user.
Also, one question I had running around the back of my head about this whole Messenger Service hack: On a Win2k machine, when someone NET SEND's you there is usually an entry in the Event Log, which, I believe, usually includes the sender. Does this hold true to messages over the internet, and if so, can this information be used to track down the sender's IP address?
Na, I say we have more fun. If someone finds his address, and posts it, we could all send him a polite letter asking him to stop his activities. Not an email, but a real letter(no threats, just a polite please stop), with a stamp on it and everything. Basically, we'll/. his mail box.
I've got $20 in my hand that I'd give to that effort in a second.
I'm sure I've got a spare $20 around here somewhere.
Though I would also be happy to see someone throw a firebomb in this guy's new house. This idiot is very pleased with himself, and is completely remorseless, maybe its time to show him why you don't piss off a mob.
Sadly, in the end I don't think there is anything we can really do to stop him. Sure, it might be possible to find and wipe his system, but what good would it do? I'm sure this guy backs up his lists constantly, and if he has half a clue, he probably has all of his servers imaged/ghosted. He'd be spamming again within the day.
As for the firebomb idea, while it would give me a warm fuzzy feeling to see this guy made to pay for being a parasite on the internet, please no one do it. All its going to do is hurt his home owner's insurance company, not him. Not to mention that it really is a bad way to deal with the problem. What we need to do is start pushing laws that will prohibit this sort of BS. Sure it'll be an uphill battle, and there will probably be a large number of laws that get killed by the courts, but all we need is for 1 good federal anti-spam law to stick, and we win. Look at the fight to enforce filtering in libraries, they have lost a dozen times, but they keep passing more laws. Eventually, the courts are going to let one of them stand, its just a matter of time and patience. That is what we really need to do, we need to get us a couple of senetors to start introducing anti-spam legislation, and getting it passed. Eventually something will pass, and the courts will let it stand, then we'll be able to shut this idiot down.
So, instead of spending your $20 getting this idiot's system wiped for less than a day, we should start pooling that money to buy a senetor. It worked for Disney.
I have to agree, I've found this particularly disturbing myself.
For example, look at the venerable Loony Toons. How many times does Bugs make Fudd shoot himself? Or cause other bodily harm to Fudd? But this is just normal good slap-stick comedy.
Also, how many TV shows do we have out there now that have no problem showing a shoot-out In all its gory detail?
But God help us if a breast pops out. Personally I'd much rather we turned this sort of thing around a bit. Lets go ahead and show naked people on TV, both women and men. I don't mean hardcore porn, that is probably a bit too much, but why not allow TV shows to show nudity? And, at the same time, lets start treating violence with the draconian measures we have used for sex. No more showing people getting shot, no more blood everywhere, save that sort of stuff for the cable channels and movies. Sure they would still be able to imply violence, (i.e. you see a guy with a gun pointed at him, camera pans to a window, you hear a gun shot.) but not show it.
Afterall, sex is a natural thing, and a good thing. Teenages shouldn't be made to feel ashamed for wanting to explore it. And it shouldn't bother parents to discus it with thier children. If anything, the parents should be the ones who control the child's introduction to it. A teen-age boy is going to get a hold of porn. He's going to find something to look at while he masturbates his willy raw. You aren't going to stop them, so why not make a descion as to what it will be?
Let me stop and ask a question, how many of us searched our parents room when they were out? How many of us found the Playboy or Penthouse, or better yet the movie Dad had stashed away somewhere? I did, those were my first experiences of human sexuality. And, if I am cursed with kids, I have every intention of having a few items "hidden" in the house. I'll make sure those items are carefully selected to present a view of sex, to my child, that most agrees with my beliefs. If I have a kid, I it want to know that sex is a good thing, and that violence should be used only when other methods fail. One way to do that is to control what input that child gets, and I intend to do just that. And it would be nice if the media helped out just a bit.
My home copies are on 2 identical RAID 5 systems backed up to compressed Exabyte tape librarys (one in my apartment, one connected wirelessly to my garage on the same property but 3 buildings away). The apartments have a sprinkler system, so the RAID and Exabyte cabinets are tented with plastic.
This reminded me of a customer of the company I work for. They had a system set up with 2 Servers, a data mirror between them, and each server had the database mirrored localy. Basically, there were 4 drives with identical copies of the database. Actually a pretty normal setup for us. However, they made the simple mistake of not having an off-site backup, and lost thier data when someone flew a plane into the building. (They used to be in the WTC.)
Fortunatly, the data really wasn't the, lose it and the business dies, type. It was just a pain for them to have to re-create. But still, made me realize that shit can happen on a large scale, and its worthwhile to keep a copy of important data somewhere else.
As for my home machine, I don't bother. What am I going to lose? My Diablo 2 characters, oh well, it'll be fun building up new ones; my RPG notes, what few I have written down I could redo from scratch easily enough; my porn collection, I thought that's what the internet was for, a mass porn storage and retrieval system.
If it matters, put it somewhere well away from the system. Safe Deposit box, Exchange CDs with a friend. A local solution is just asking for something to manage to take both the system and the backup out in one fell swoop.
I got about half way through the terms of posting before getting a headache. But one thing that did strike me, was that they make a point about DVD protection schemes being protected. They claim that since you can get the works on VHS tape, you have no need to be able to de-scramble a DVD disk. Nice, they pretty much shoot down any arguments for DeCSS before they are even made.
Though I still wonder if it would be worth arguing that I should be able to buy a DVD player with region coding disabled. Afterall, I would like to have the Futurama DVD, but live in the US. Since it was not released in any region 1 country I'm pretty much screwed. Not to mention that it interferes with international commerce.
You would probably want to know what those trajectories were before launching your second nuke, and those are going to be hard to predict.
I agree, this could be a problem. Though you will have a vague idea of where the bits are going to go. You would be able to expect that they would all follow the trajectory of the original object, though modified slightly due to the explosion.
The object of the follow-up devices wouldn't be to hit pieces individually, but mearly to explode near the remaining pieces and push them into a safer trajectory. As such, I think you could simply explode them at a "best guess" location, maybe also have a bit of fuel on them for manuvering to make last minute corrections.
Also, this doesn't need to be an exact science really. if it misses us by 1000 miles, or a million miles it won't make a huge difference, as long as it misses.
Also, we could withstand the impact of a dozen or so Tunguska sized impacts, they would suck, no doubt, but if we could just get the vast majority of the mass of the object to miss us it would save lots of lives. Though I still would agree with the article, it would be nice, if we had enough warning, to use a non-nuclear approch. I'm thinking more of the short term warning.
Think about an asteroid of a significant size, something on the order of some percent points of Earth's size. Now, if you break such a beast without making sure all pieces will miss (that is, that your bomb will not only break it, but break in such a way that its resultant angular momentum will change drastically), you have just increased the chance that not one, but two or three asteroids with enough mass to destroy civilisation will hit the planet.
I've always wondered something about this line of reasoning. Everytime I see an argument against the nuclear option, there seems to be an assumption of using only one device. I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to use several devices to disperse an asteroid around our planet? For example, the first device is launched, then after a bit of a lag, say a few days, a second is launched, wash, rinse, repeate.
My thought is that we could start by fragmenting the object. Then, using a string of devices, both slow and deflect the resultant cloud of matter. In the article they stated that using a nuclear blast near an object, but not on it, to try and push the object off course would probably fail, since the object would absorb the energy. But would this hold true if the object was fragmented? Each piece would be eaiser to move, and most likely, the "cloud", if you will, would have more surface area to be hit by the blast, assuming the same distance from the center of the explosion, more energy would be transfered to the "cloud" than would have been to the object.
Ideally, if you have a year or so of warning, and you launch with a 1 day delay between devices, you could probably put 100 or so devices on the object before it reached the Earth. and basically set up a poor man's orion drive for the object, or resultant "cloud". What are the possible failings of this idea?
This is the quote that bugged me too. I thought the whole point of Judical Review was to detarmine if a law was constitutional, not if it came close. I really do hope that this law gets dragged in front of the Supreme Court. And, better yet, that this sort of thing gets publicised in the mass media.
What's next, "Well, if the person wasn't pointing a gun at the officer, he was at least thinking about it." God willing this law will get put in the trash bin were it belongs, but looking at the way things are going at the moment, I'm not going to hold my breath.
Makes me wonder, how hard is it for a US citizen to become a Canadian citizen?
Actually, we have one of these here in California. It requires that all advertisments have an ADV: at the beginning of the subject line, and that all adult advertiments have an ADLTADV: at the beginning of the subject line. This is for both outgoing mail, and mail that is sent to people here in CA. The problem that we face is enforcement. First, its a criminal law, as such, the suit must be brought by the state, not individuals. Second, it is kinda tough to enforce, the spammers are pretty slippery.
Now if we could get something like this at the federal level, ya it might work better. Also, I would like to see it made into a civil law not just of a criminal one. (i.e. if someone spams me without the appropriate subject header I can sue them in small claims court.)
If you are going to make quotes like this, at least get the numbers straight. This is mostly just the standard "whitey is keeping us down" FUD.
Quotes from ACLU:
* The race of the victim is often a decisive factor in capital sentencing decisions. Almost all death sentences in this country - 81 percent - involve white victims. 174 black people have been executed for killing a white person, but only 12 white people have been executed for killing a black person.
I won't dispute these numbers, I don't have the refences. However, I wonder, what the ratios look like. Basically, how many black killing white murder convictions where there in that period? And how many white killing black murder convictions? Then figure out the ratio of convictions to death penalty rulings. Just quoting that there were more DP ruling for one group than another group fails to show anything more than one group had more DP ruling than the other; this is not a good way to do a comparision. How many DP rulings per capital conviction for each group would be a better way to gauge it.
* There is a double standard for rich and poor. The quality of legal representation is a better predictor of whether or not someone will be sentenced to death than the facts of the crime. The quality of legal representation depends on whether or not you can hire a lawyer. Almost all people on death row could not afford to hire a qualified attorney.
I won't argue this, being able to hire a better lawyer is an advantage. For those of us without the money to hire a Dream Team of lawyers life sucks if we get caught.
* From 1988-1994, out of 52 defendants in capital cases in the federal courts, 39 (75%) were black, and 34 of those received death out of 47 total death recommendations.
I think you tracked across on the chart wrong. It was actually, 39 cases submitted, 34 authroized by the attorney general to seek the DP, 8 convictions, and 3 sentanced to death. For a grand total of 8% of the cases submitted for Black. And in comparison, 7 submitted, 7 authorized, 3 convictions and 2 sentanced to the DP for White. Grand total 28% of cases submitted.
Thought the convictions per DP number is really what we should look at. 37% and 67%. Though with the small sample sizes this data is not really that useful.
Refernce: USDOJ Doc Page 3.
* From 1995-2000, out of 682 capital cases, 324 (48%) went to blacks, and 71 (of 159) of those received death.
Same mistake as above, tracked to the wrong value in the table. Its actually, 324 cases submitted, 71 authorized to seek DP by the Attorney General, 13 Sentenced to DP, 4%.
Not mentioned by you but... 134 Cases subbmitted, 44 authorized to seek, 4 sentenced, 3%.
Refernce: USDOJ Doc Page 3.
Funny, I don't see your 15x number, or any support for that claim.
I realize this whole thing is only loosely related to the topic, but I hate racist crap like this. And, yes, hating white people is racist.
Thankfully I am not forced to use XP at work (our IT director feels roughly the same way about it), but I know many people who are, and every one of them has continuous difficulty with it.
Sounds like you have a problem between the chair and the keyboard. I've been running XP for close to a year now, and haven't had any stability issues. And I'm one of those horrible people that install and try things out constantly. (What can I say? I'm a technophile).
So why am I using XP? Ok, first and foremost, games. Plus, having MS give a a free copy of XP Pro helped. The driver support is nice, I've almost never had to run around the internet looking for drivers. And not having to track down a million different dependancies just to install a driver.
Also, I don't hate MS, I have no reason to. What exactly did they ever do to me? Overcharge me for the OS? No, they charged a price, and it was not above the amount I was willing to pay for it. Security holes? Not seen an OS that didn't have those since I ran DOS 2.11 (I think that the lack of networking might have helped a bit). Horrendous licensing agreements? Not really, so I can't put it on multipul machines, that's fine, I see no reason that I should expect it to be free. Monoploistic practices? In a lot of ways Netscape did themselves in, I gave both a try, I forget version numbers, but I liked IE better at the time. Same reason I now use Mozilla, I like it better.
So far the only reason I have considered switching to Linux was the inital buy in cost. $0 vs $250, nice trade off. Of course there is the learning curve to deal with. The phun of drivers to deal with. The fact that I'm not a programmer, and so don't need to be able, nor am I able, to read/modify the source code. And of couse, there are the ever present man pages, oh boy is that ever one of the worst sets of documentation I have ever seen. I challenge anyone to hand those to a user, that has no programming knowledge, and have that user explain them to you.
Now maybe it was just the distrobution I was trying (RH 7.0), but the attempts I have made at working with Linux have left me less than happy. And it eats up time, which I consider to have value.
Well, often sites offering...completely legal software for download will use popups for their download windows...;)
While I have seen this sort of thing, usually on places such as download.com.com, they are also usually kind enough to provide a link to click on, if for some reason the pop-up fails to start the downloand. Ok, so it requires one more click, but for not having to click 50 billion or so times to close pop-ups, I figure its a good trade off.
Again, not seen much use for pop-ups, especially the kind that happen when first loading or unloading a page.
There's a site-specific whitelist feature? Where? That sounds much easier than repeatedly changing the pref whenever I want to turn on popups...
I have to ask. When would you ever want pop-ups enabled?
I've been running without pop-ups since I discovered Mozilla, both at home and work, and not once have I had a need to have pop-ups turned on. Its made my whole internet experience much better.
I also make use of my HOSTS file to kill most banners on sites I visit. Just find the URL for where the banner image is loaded from, create an entry that points that URL to 127.0.0.1, and that banner becomes defunct. Mind you, you might need to clear your disk cache out, so it doesn't get loaded locally; but, I do that on a regular basis anyhow.
While I personally prefer to implement my own firewall, and enjoy the freedom to do more or less what I want, I think it would be better all round if the standard "problem" ports (netbios,http,smtp,dns etc) were blocked by default for all new subscribers to a service, but could be unblocked if the subscriber so requested.
This reminds me of the scam the telephone companies pull. They start off by putting your name, address, and telephone number into a phone book, which is given to all subscribers, including telemarketers.
Then they turn around and sell you the service of not having your number listed in the phone book. You have to pay them, for them to not do anything! And it gets better, the telemarketers still manage to get your name and number, could it be that the phone company is selling them a list of numbers that are unlisted?
Now if you are thinking to yourself, "but they have to filter out the list of unlisted subscribers, that could be difficult." That is pure BS, its as easy as select * from TblPhoneNumbers where unlisted != True
I just thank God that our government, somehow, had the presence of mind to force the phone companies to give you caller ID block for free. Sure, telemarketers can get it for free, too; but then, its a hell of a lot eaiser to nail a telemarketing company for calling you again, when you asked to be put on thier do not call list. I guess even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Plus, you can do like I do, use a cell phone for everything, have a land line for DSL only. then just ignore the land line. Did you know its illegal for a telemarketer to call a cell phone? Why? Beacuse it would force you to pay for thier advertising, and this is a form of fraud. Next time you get a call from one of them, tell them its a cell phone number, see how quick they hang-up.
To get back to the topic, I don't want to see any sort of port blocking going on at the ISP level. Its just creating another way for the ISP to bilk money out of you. In fact, I'm about to swicth ISP for this exact reason. I intend to run a web/mail server, I figure it'll be a good learning experience. My current ISP (won't name names here, but it rhymes with Verizon.), won't allow servers, plus it would cost a good bit more to get a static IP address. So off I go to another ISP, same price, servers allowed, and they only sell static IP's.
The reason I mentioned it, is that a large part of my job is system building and integration, between 3 and 5 computers a week on average. That's a lot of hard drives going through. Mind you, we try and keep off the bleeding edge of technology, in our industry its a bad idea, but we have enough volume that I think I've seen a good sample size.
Buy Western Digital. I've been using them for several years now, both at home and at work. I can count, on one hand, the number of failed drives I have had to deal with. And most of those were under warranty.
Personally, I view this as a classic example of, you get what you pay for. Sure, WD might be a bit more expensive than other drives, but on the other hand, have you ever had to deal with a customer who just lost a database that will take days to rebuild? Not pretty.
The point is not if Windows is better than Linux or vice versa. The point is are they in competition. That is the point. The answer is yes. Therefore MS was right, and there is no monopoly.
I would agree, MS is not technically a monopoly. They do, however, have a dominant market position, which they have been abusing. While they do have the right to negotiate contracts any way they see fit, they are doing so from a position of having a huge advantage. That I think, is the main thrust of the whole suit against them. Imagine Best Buy, for example, they plan to sell computers, so they enter into talks with MS for an OEM license. MS can basically dictate terms, what is Best Buy going to do? Threaten to go to a different OS, not likely. Consumers want Windows, and BB is trying to put out a line of budget PCs for those consumers, so they either swallow the shit that is fed to them by MS, or are forced to jack up the price of the PC to cover the retail cost of Windows. When you are talking about a $500 PC, tacking on an extra $100 for the OS is a 20% increse in price, not something that they want to do, it'd push them over the price point that they wanted, and put them as more expensive than the competition.
I think that this is less about a true monoploy, than is is about abusing a dominant market position. Using that position to stifle competitors, and using it to break into new markets with a horribly lopsided advantage.
But that's just my take on this mess, I could be wrong.
The fact is - it is fact - you can run without MS on your desktop perfectly fine and do all the core functions and specialized functions that you can do with Windows. You can do it on Apple's stuff, you can do it on Linux stuff, and you can do it *BSD's stuff. And most of it can be done not only cheaper but FOR FREE.
Everything? If you are talking about business software, I'll agree, it can be done. Though I would question how far reaching the ability to play games goes. Sure, there are games that have been ported to Linux, but is it really happening at a pace to keep up with the really avid gamer? Not to mention, that the time required for a port would keep one well behind the curve for the latest games, assuming that a game they want gets ported at all.
As for the free part of Linix, that is a huge advanatage, especially for business desktops. Though I think this is ignoring the costs associated with re-training. Sure, Gnome, KDE, etc. are all very close to windows in function, and in many cases in usage. But don't fool yourself, they are not the same. Moreover, they look and feel different, and that is going to scare non-tech types. In the end, it would probably be worth it, if you are in a position to do so, to switch a company over to Linux, but it would not be a very easy transition to make, and may get killed by managment.
That's a fact. Linux as a collective has everything any individual needs to ditch Windows. Might they need a bit more RAM? Yeah, maybe. Might it be inconveinent? Yes. But this isn't about inconveince. From day one the argument was that MS is a monopoly, that no one else has a chance to suceed in the desktop space.
I think you have hit on one of the biggest problems facing Linux, convenience. You claim that this isn't about inconvience, I belive that you are mistaken. What are computers but a more convenient way of doing things? This is true of most tools humans have created, if not all. We want to be able to do something that we cannot do on our own. So we create a tool to do it. Eventually someone else comes along and improves that tool, and the older version slow fades, often kept around for those few times when the newer tool would be more trouble to setup and use.
Computers are the same thing, they are just a tool. We started off with the old punch-card machines, now we have a PC with a hard-drive. The Operating System is simply the handle for the tool, it allows us to use it. The current iteration of Windows is the most familiar way to use the tool, and most convenient, for a large number of users. Linux has been offered up as a replacement, but few people have bothered to adopt it because it requires far to much effort on thier part to use. They may see that, if they could use it, it would offer an advantage, but, for most mudane tasks, its too much trouble to bother with. People want simple, and easy to use. That is one of the reasons humans use computers, they make many tasks simpler. Sure, Linux offers some advantages, but, for most people, its not enough of one to go through the trouble.
Prince of Persia, now there was a cool game. I loved the sword fights in it. Not only did you have to worry about attacking, but parrying as well. And, it didn't degenerate into a button mashing fest, or jumping around maddly swinging(*cough* Jedi Knight 2 *cough*). Actually, from what I remember, trying to win by button mashing tended to get you killed. You actually had to think your way through the fight.
I do have to give credit where its due. The 3D version of Prince of Persia that came out some time ago did a great job of capturing the feel of the old game, though I was still killed far too many times because of the camera angle.
Speaking of camera angle, am I the only one who finds this to be the biggest problem with 3D games? You effectivly have 2 choices: first person, which lacks good periphieral vision; or 3rd person, which gives pretty good periphieral vision, but then makes lining up a jump a real pain, also, if the controls are based on the camera they will often change on you while you are in mid-air, really screwing the jump.
Also for what its worth, someone above mentioned Thief, I really like the idea, but all of the Zombie levels and the semi-steampunk atmosphere really detracted from that game. Though I would love to see that engine applied to a Ninja-esque game (and for god's sake, put in a story co-op mode, real ninja worked in groups). I would love to play as a ninja that actually concentrates on stealth. (I tried tenchu, nice idea, really bad controls, stupid enemies, and really bad controls. Did I mention that the controls sucked?)
Oh well, guess I'm just ranting about not being able to find a game I like recently. I'll stop.
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Ok, the DMCA sucks monkey balls, we all know this. But rather than sit here and rant about it, try and find a good, specific example in your life that shows where something should be allow. The idea isn't to just sit and bash the DMCA, they are just going to shitcan your comment and you will have gained nothing. Personally, I have already found one item that I felt needed to be included with this ruling: DVD Region Encoding. I don't know if it is allowed or not, but considering that it is a technological measure which controls access to a copyrighted work, hacking my DVD player to ignore it just might be a crime under this law.
Sure, it took me the better part of an hour to craft what I thought was a good argument for the inclusion of circumvention of Region Encoding in this ruling. Luckily I didn't have to go far to find a concrete example, the "Futurama" DVDs. (Love the show, really want the DVDs. They were only released in the UK a.k.a. Region 2.)
My point is, if you have something you want to be able to hack, then get off your ass and go tell the people that are going to make the descion.
I agree, we have a fundemental difference of opinion.
Though, I don't think its an issue about right and wrong. Its an issue of how you interperet online interactions. You use the analogy of the apple cart vendor, and, in that context, it would appear that someone using your site is stealing if they don't allow pop-ups. However, like most physical/online analogies, I belive that it is flawed. A web site is not exactly an apple cart. First, do you in any way tell a visitor that they are expected to generate revenue for you to access the information?
Short answer, no. I went to your site, and looked for any sort of statement that I was required to click on a link and/or allow pop-ups. In fact, what I did find, in your useage rules was the following statement:
The reason I have all this information on the internet is so it is freely available.
So, is it there to be "freely available" or is it there to generate revenue?
At the very least the apple cart (in your analogy) would have a sign that says "Apples $1/lbs", or some such.
Moreover, there is a difference in general expectation. If I go to a store/cart, it is generally accepted that I must pay for an item/service. When requesting a web page, this expectation does not exist. The general consensus is that, if a web pages exists and has no provisions to prevent access, it is available for public consumption. And this is where the largest flaw in the analogy exists, expectation.
And, much like your apple cart, you have the right to refuse service to any person you do not wish to serve. If you don't want people to use your site, that have pop-ups disabled, configure your server to refuse requests from them. If someone then, either ignores your terms of usage, or circumvents the protections you have in place, then yes, they are stealing.
My point is, that what you have effectivly done is put a cart full of apples out in a public area and put a sign on it that says "Apples, Have One". There doesn't seem to be mechanism by which to pay for them, there is no one standing around asking people to pay for them, in short, by all apperances you intended to give the apples away for free.
This is markedly different than the subway turnstyle. To begin with, in order for me to enter the subway, I must, in some way, bypass the turnstyle. Said turnstyle will have a mechanism for payment, and usually, a sign or placard that states what I need to remit in order to pass. There is a barrier, however weak, that prevents access until I provide the necessary items. Your site has no such barrier, there is no password, nothing which would prevent access unless the proper items were provided. This can be as simple as denying access if a cookie cannot be set, or as complex as a password system. But as currently stands, there is no barrier.
You also use the analogy of stealing cable. Again, there are a few differences. First and foremost, when stealing cable, you start off by tampering with equipment that you do not own. Moreover, if you have payed for any sort of basic service and you use a device to descramble other channels you are probably in breech of contract. Lastly, once again there is the concept of a barrier. If its a case of scaling the pole, opening the box and making modifications, you opened the box, which is a barrier. If its a descrambler, you have used a device to overcome some sort of encryption, again a barrier. Your site has no barrier.
You analogy is flawed, your site is not an apple cart. Visitors have no reason to expect that they are required to allow the pop-ups on your site. No matter what you want, I still can configure my system to disallow them. Pop-up blockers have never been outlawed, and there is no precident in court that states that using them is theft. If you don't want me there because of it, put up a prominent sign saying so, otherwise, don't expect me to re-configure my system, I have no reason to expect that it is necessary. If you want to call me a thief over it, then might I suggest filing charges against me.
Also, there is no barrier on your site which requires me to remit any sort of payment, wherether directly or indirectly. Again, the onus is on you, not me. When I went to your site, I wasn't stopped because I didn't remit payment, in fact, payment was never requested of me. You have an area that is advertised as being open to the public, you placed it on a server on the internet, and you provided a link in a public place. Now you are upset because I went there and didn't pay you? The door was opened by you, there wasn't a turnstyle, there is no reason for me to expect to have to pay. On the other hand, there is a term for advertising something for free and then trying to force payment when people come to get it. Its called fraud.
In closing, put up a sign, put up a barrier no matter how weak. Then if someone circumvents it I will agree with you that it is theft.
I will agree that you have a right to run your website as you see fit. If you want to run a site that uses pop-ups/unders for revenue generation, that is your perogitive. However, expecting that I will configure my machine, such that it provides you with the greatest amount of revenue is simply silly. In the same strain as you having the right to run your business as you see fit, I have the right to configure my computer as I see fit. That's the bitch about freedom, its a two way street.
From what you have said in your posts, I might recommend that you run some sort of software, similar to what anti-leech is offereing. It will provide some level of garantee that anyone accessing your site is providing you revenue. Again, you are free to do this, its your site. However, calling someone, such as myself, a thief, because we refuese to allow pop-ups/unders and cookies is bordering on liable. And also sounds like you are trying to avoid taking the blame for your own failure.
Given your situation, though, I would recommend that you switch over to a subscription model. If the service you provide is that unique, and that valuable, you will probably be able to get $5 or so per year out of the hard-core users of your site. With a bit of cost analysis, you should be able to come up with a good price to charge, which will support your site, and not be too high as to drive away your users. For Example: 200,000 unique IP's per month.
Assume that 10% are the hard-core users.
200,000 * 10% = 20,000 Users
Charge them $5 per year membership
20,000 * $5 = $100,000 per year
Now, I don't think $5 per year is very high if you have a good, and somewhat unique site. And even if you only get 5% of that 200,000 that still works out to $50,000 a year, still not bad.
Basically, all I am trying to say is, you have the right to run your business as you see fit. And I have the right to configure my machine as I see fit. If you are unable to keep your business going, then that is your fault, not mine. In the US you have the right to the pursuit of happiness, you don't have a right to happiness, you have to earn that. If you can't get there because you have picked a business model that is broken, whether by design, or technology, that is your fault.
Personally, I would love to have a safe and effective pill, similar to the one for women. As it is, I'm in one of those long term relationships, and we have sex frequently. My g/f is on the pill, which is nice, helps suppress acne, timing on her periods is regular, etc. Problem is, its only 98% or so effective, which means that there is a 2% chance of her getting pregent if we do it at the wrong time of the month. Cosidering that we are likely to have sex 1 to 2 times during that period, I don't really like the way the math of it starts to work out. So, we bag it. And let me tell you I hate condoms, or as we call them, the wall of anti-orgasm. They are really great if you want to go forever, you can't feel much through them. I would love to have another simple solution. .04% I believe. I could ditch those damn condoms and just enjoy better sex. Of course, everything I have heard about the male pills, which are being tested, is that they are basically huge doses of Testosterone. Which can lead to being even harrier, more violent, and whole host of other problems. Given the choice between that and condoms, I'd choose condoms. As it is, we have just worked out a system, where by we start without it, then, as I get close, we stop and put it on. Its not perfect, and does occasionally lead to "slips" but that is what the pill is for, as a saftey net for the few times that, for whatever reason, I don't have my hat on.
I've often thought that a male pill would be perfect for me. She's on hers, I'm on mine, if each pill is indiviually 98% effective that's a much better risk factor,
For the average home user disabling this service may be a bit difficult, especially on a 9X derivitive. Personally I feel the better method is to install a software firewall of one sort or another. Personally, I run Zone Alarm. Its a nice, simple, easy to install firewall. It may not be the best protection in the world, but its a start. On top of that, I use a router with a builtin firewall, and lock down every port that I don't need open. But at the very least, a software firewall will stop most of the simple hacks and its easy enough for the average end user.
Also, one question I had running around the back of my head about this whole Messenger Service hack: On a Win2k machine, when someone NET SEND's you there is usually an entry in the Event Log, which, I believe, usually includes the sender. Does this hold true to messages over the internet, and if so, can this information be used to track down the sender's IP address?
Na, I say we have more fun. If someone finds his address, and posts it, we could all send him a polite letter asking him to stop his activities. Not an email, but a real letter(no threats, just a polite please stop), with a stamp on it and everything. Basically, we'll /. his mail box.
I've got $20 in my hand that I'd give to that effort in a second.
I'm sure I've got a spare $20 around here somewhere.
Though I would also be happy to see someone throw a firebomb in this guy's new house. This idiot is very pleased with himself, and is completely remorseless, maybe its time to show him why you don't piss off a mob.
Sadly, in the end I don't think there is anything we can really do to stop him. Sure, it might be possible to find and wipe his system, but what good would it do? I'm sure this guy backs up his lists constantly, and if he has half a clue, he probably has all of his servers imaged/ghosted. He'd be spamming again within the day.
As for the firebomb idea, while it would give me a warm fuzzy feeling to see this guy made to pay for being a parasite on the internet, please no one do it. All its going to do is hurt his home owner's insurance company, not him. Not to mention that it really is a bad way to deal with the problem.
What we need to do is start pushing laws that will prohibit this sort of BS. Sure it'll be an uphill battle, and there will probably be a large number of laws that get killed by the courts, but all we need is for 1 good federal anti-spam law to stick, and we win. Look at the fight to enforce filtering in libraries, they have lost a dozen times, but they keep passing more laws. Eventually, the courts are going to let one of them stand, its just a matter of time and patience. That is what we really need to do, we need to get us a couple of senetors to start introducing anti-spam legislation, and getting it passed. Eventually something will pass, and the courts will let it stand, then we'll be able to shut this idiot down.
So, instead of spending your $20 getting this idiot's system wiped for less than a day, we should start pooling that money to buy a senetor. It worked for Disney.
I have to agree, I've found this particularly disturbing myself.
For example, look at the venerable Loony Toons. How many times does Bugs make Fudd shoot himself? Or cause other bodily harm to Fudd? But this is just normal good slap-stick comedy.
Also, how many TV shows do we have out there now that have no problem showing a shoot-out In all its gory detail?
But God help us if a breast pops out. Personally I'd much rather we turned this sort of thing around a bit. Lets go ahead and show naked people on TV, both women and men. I don't mean hardcore porn, that is probably a bit too much, but why not allow TV shows to show nudity? And, at the same time, lets start treating violence with the draconian measures we have used for sex. No more showing people getting shot, no more blood everywhere, save that sort of stuff for the cable channels and movies. Sure they would still be able to imply violence, (i.e. you see a guy with a gun pointed at him, camera pans to a window, you hear a gun shot.) but not show it.
Afterall, sex is a natural thing, and a good thing. Teenages shouldn't be made to feel ashamed for wanting to explore it. And it shouldn't bother parents to discus it with thier children. If anything, the parents should be the ones who control the child's introduction to it. A teen-age boy is going to get a hold of porn. He's going to find something to look at while he masturbates his willy raw. You aren't going to stop them, so why not make a descion as to what it will be?
Let me stop and ask a question, how many of us searched our parents room when they were out? How many of us found the Playboy or Penthouse, or better yet the movie Dad had stashed away somewhere? I did, those were my first experiences of human sexuality. And, if I am cursed with kids, I have every intention of having a few items "hidden" in the house. I'll make sure those items are carefully selected to present a view of sex, to my child, that most agrees with my beliefs. If I have a kid, I it want to know that sex is a good thing, and that violence should be used only when other methods fail. One way to do that is to control what input that child gets, and I intend to do just that. And it would be nice if the media helped out just a bit.
My home copies are on 2 identical RAID 5 systems backed up to compressed Exabyte tape librarys (one in my apartment, one connected wirelessly to my garage on the same property but 3 buildings away). The apartments have a sprinkler system, so the RAID and Exabyte cabinets are tented with plastic.
This reminded me of a customer of the company I work for. They had a system set up with 2 Servers, a data mirror between them, and each server had the database mirrored localy. Basically, there were 4 drives with identical copies of the database. Actually a pretty normal setup for us. However, they made the simple mistake of not having an off-site backup, and lost thier data when someone flew a plane into the building. (They used to be in the WTC.)
Fortunatly, the data really wasn't the, lose it and the business dies, type. It was just a pain for them to have to re-create. But still, made me realize that shit can happen on a large scale, and its worthwhile to keep a copy of important data somewhere else.
As for my home machine, I don't bother. What am I going to lose? My Diablo 2 characters, oh well, it'll be fun building up new ones; my RPG notes, what few I have written down I could redo from scratch easily enough; my porn collection, I thought that's what the internet was for, a mass porn storage and retrieval system.
If it matters, put it somewhere well away from the system. Safe Deposit box, Exchange CDs with a friend. A local solution is just asking for something to manage to take both the system and the backup out in one fell swoop.
I got about half way through the terms of posting before getting a headache. But one thing that did strike me, was that they make a point about DVD protection schemes being protected. They claim that since you can get the works on VHS tape, you have no need to be able to de-scramble a DVD disk. Nice, they pretty much shoot down any arguments for DeCSS before they are even made.
Though I still wonder if it would be worth arguing that I should be able to buy a DVD player with region coding disabled. Afterall, I would like to have the Futurama DVD, but live in the US. Since it was not released in any region 1 country I'm pretty much screwed. Not to mention that it interferes with international commerce.
You would probably want to know what those trajectories were before launching your second nuke, and those are going to be hard to predict.
I agree, this could be a problem. Though you will have a vague idea of where the bits are going to go. You would be able to expect that they would all follow the trajectory of the original object, though modified slightly due to the explosion.
The object of the follow-up devices wouldn't be to hit pieces individually, but mearly to explode near the remaining pieces and push them into a safer trajectory. As such, I think you could simply explode them at a "best guess" location, maybe also have a bit of fuel on them for manuvering to make last minute corrections.
Also, this doesn't need to be an exact science really. if it misses us by 1000 miles, or a million miles it won't make a huge difference, as long as it misses.
Also, we could withstand the impact of a dozen or so Tunguska sized impacts, they would suck, no doubt, but if we could just get the vast majority of the mass of the object to miss us it would save lots of lives. Though I still would agree with the article, it would be nice, if we had enough warning, to use a non-nuclear approch. I'm thinking more of the short term warning.
Think about an asteroid of a significant size, something on the order of some percent points of Earth's size. Now, if you break such a beast without making sure all pieces will miss (that is, that your bomb will not only break it, but break in such a way that its resultant angular momentum will change drastically), you have just increased the chance that not one, but two or three asteroids with enough mass to destroy civilisation will hit the planet.
I've always wondered something about this line of reasoning. Everytime I see an argument against the nuclear option, there seems to be an assumption of using only one device. I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to use several devices to disperse an asteroid around our planet? For example, the first device is launched, then after a bit of a lag, say a few days, a second is launched, wash, rinse, repeate.
My thought is that we could start by fragmenting the object. Then, using a string of devices, both slow and deflect the resultant cloud of matter. In the article they stated that using a nuclear blast near an object, but not on it, to try and push the object off course would probably fail, since the object would absorb the energy. But would this hold true if the object was fragmented? Each piece would be eaiser to move, and most likely, the "cloud", if you will, would have more surface area to be hit by the blast, assuming the same distance from the center of the explosion, more energy would be transfered to the "cloud" than would have been to the object.
Ideally, if you have a year or so of warning, and you launch with a 1 day delay between devices, you could probably put 100 or so devices on the object before it reached the Earth. and basically set up a poor man's orion drive for the object, or resultant "cloud". What are the possible failings of this idea?
This is the quote that bugged me too. I thought the whole point of Judical Review was to detarmine if a law was constitutional, not if it came close. I really do hope that this law gets dragged in front of the Supreme Court. And, better yet, that this sort of thing gets publicised in the mass media.
What's next, "Well, if the person wasn't pointing a gun at the officer, he was at least thinking about it." God willing this law will get put in the trash bin were it belongs, but looking at the way things are going at the moment, I'm not going to hold my breath.
Makes me wonder, how hard is it for a US citizen to become a Canadian citizen?
Actually, we have one of these here in California. It requires that all advertisments have an ADV: at the beginning of the subject line, and that all adult advertiments have an ADLTADV: at the beginning of the subject line. This is for both outgoing mail, and mail that is sent to people here in CA. The problem that we face is enforcement. First, its a criminal law, as such, the suit must be brought by the state, not individuals. Second, it is kinda tough to enforce, the spammers are pretty slippery.
Now if we could get something like this at the federal level, ya it might work better. Also, I would like to see it made into a civil law not just of a criminal one. (i.e. if someone spams me without the appropriate subject header I can sue them in small claims court.)
If you are going to make quotes like this, at least get the numbers straight. This is mostly just the standard "whitey is keeping us down" FUD.
Quotes from ACLU:
* The race of the victim is often a decisive factor in capital sentencing decisions. Almost all death sentences in this country - 81 percent - involve white victims. 174 black people have been executed for killing a white person, but only 12 white people have been executed for killing a black person.
I won't dispute these numbers, I don't have the refences. However, I wonder, what the ratios look like. Basically, how many black killing white murder convictions where there in that period? And how many white killing black murder convictions? Then figure out the ratio of convictions to death penalty rulings. Just quoting that there were more DP ruling for one group than another group fails to show anything more than one group had more DP ruling than the other; this is not a good way to do a comparision. How many DP rulings per capital conviction for each group would be a better way to gauge it.
* There is a double standard for rich and poor. The quality of legal representation is a better predictor of whether or not someone will be sentenced to death than the facts of the crime. The quality of legal representation depends on whether or not you can hire a lawyer. Almost all people on death row could not afford to hire a qualified attorney.
I won't argue this, being able to hire a better lawyer is an advantage. For those of us without the money to hire a Dream Team of lawyers life sucks if we get caught.
* From 1988-1994, out of 52 defendants in capital cases in the federal courts, 39 (75%) were black, and 34 of those received death out of 47 total death recommendations.
I think you tracked across on the chart wrong. It was actually, 39 cases submitted, 34 authroized by the attorney general to seek the DP, 8 convictions, and 3 sentanced to death. For a grand total of 8% of the cases submitted for Black. And in comparison, 7 submitted, 7 authorized, 3 convictions and 2 sentanced to the DP for White. Grand total 28% of cases submitted.
Thought the convictions per DP number is really what we should look at. 37% and 67%. Though with the small sample sizes this data is not really that useful.
Refernce: USDOJ Doc Page 3.
* From 1995-2000, out of 682 capital cases, 324 (48%) went to blacks, and 71 (of 159) of those received death.
Same mistake as above, tracked to the wrong value in the table. Its actually, 324 cases submitted, 71 authorized to seek DP by the Attorney General, 13 Sentenced to DP, 4%.
Not mentioned by you but... 134 Cases subbmitted, 44 authorized to seek, 4 sentenced, 3%.
Refernce: USDOJ Doc Page 3.
Funny, I don't see your 15x number, or any support for that claim.
I realize this whole thing is only loosely related to the topic, but I hate racist crap like this. And, yes, hating white people is racist.
Thankfully I am not forced to use XP at work (our IT director feels roughly the same way about it), but I know many people who are, and every one of them has continuous difficulty with it.
Sounds like you have a problem between the chair and the keyboard. I've been running XP for close to a year now, and haven't had any stability issues. And I'm one of those horrible people that install and try things out constantly. (What can I say? I'm a technophile).
So why am I using XP? Ok, first and foremost, games. Plus, having MS give a a free copy of XP Pro helped. The driver support is nice, I've almost never had to run around the internet looking for drivers. And not having to track down a million different dependancies just to install a driver.
Also, I don't hate MS, I have no reason to. What exactly did they ever do to me? Overcharge me for the OS? No, they charged a price, and it was not above the amount I was willing to pay for it. Security holes? Not seen an OS that didn't have those since I ran DOS 2.11 (I think that the lack of networking might have helped a bit). Horrendous licensing agreements? Not really, so I can't put it on multipul machines, that's fine, I see no reason that I should expect it to be free. Monoploistic practices? In a lot of ways Netscape did themselves in, I gave both a try, I forget version numbers, but I liked IE better at the time. Same reason I now use Mozilla, I like it better.
So far the only reason I have considered switching to Linux was the inital buy in cost. $0 vs $250, nice trade off. Of course there is the learning curve to deal with. The phun of drivers to deal with. The fact that I'm not a programmer, and so don't need to be able, nor am I able, to read/modify the source code. And of couse, there are the ever present man pages, oh boy is that ever one of the worst sets of documentation I have ever seen. I challenge anyone to hand those to a user, that has no programming knowledge, and have that user explain them to you.
Now maybe it was just the distrobution I was trying (RH 7.0), but the attempts I have made at working with Linux have left me less than happy. And it eats up time, which I consider to have value.
Well, often sites offering...completely legal software for download will use popups for their download windows...;)
While I have seen this sort of thing, usually on places such as download.com.com, they are also usually kind enough to provide a link to click on, if for some reason the pop-up fails to start the downloand. Ok, so it requires one more click, but for not having to click 50 billion or so times to close pop-ups, I figure its a good trade off.
Again, not seen much use for pop-ups, especially the kind that happen when first loading or unloading a page.
There's a site-specific whitelist feature? Where? That sounds much easier than repeatedly changing the pref whenever I want to turn on popups...
I have to ask. When would you ever want pop-ups enabled?
I've been running without pop-ups since I discovered Mozilla, both at home and work, and not once have I had a need to have pop-ups turned on. Its made my whole internet experience much better.
I also make use of my HOSTS file to kill most banners on sites I visit. Just find the URL for where the banner image is loaded from, create an entry that points that URL to 127.0.0.1, and that banner becomes defunct. Mind you, you might need to clear your disk cache out, so it doesn't get loaded locally; but, I do that on a regular basis anyhow.
I thought they were represented by Dewey, Chetum and Howe.
While I personally prefer to implement my own firewall, and enjoy the freedom to do more or less what I want, I think it would be better all round if the standard "problem" ports (netbios,http,smtp,dns etc) were blocked by default for all new subscribers to a service, but could be unblocked if the subscriber so requested.
This reminds me of the scam the telephone companies pull. They start off by putting your name, address, and telephone number into a phone book, which is given to all subscribers, including telemarketers.
Then they turn around and sell you the service of not having your number listed in the phone book. You have to pay them, for them to not do anything! And it gets better, the telemarketers still manage to get your name and number, could it be that the phone company is selling them a list of numbers that are unlisted?
Now if you are thinking to yourself, "but they have to filter out the list of unlisted subscribers, that could be difficult." That is pure BS, its as easy as
select * from TblPhoneNumbers where unlisted != True
I just thank God that our government, somehow, had the presence of mind to force the phone companies to give you caller ID block for free. Sure, telemarketers can get it for free, too; but then, its a hell of a lot eaiser to nail a telemarketing company for calling you again, when you asked to be put on thier do not call list. I guess even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Plus, you can do like I do, use a cell phone for everything, have a land line for DSL only. then just ignore the land line. Did you know its illegal for a telemarketer to call a cell phone? Why? Beacuse it would force you to pay for thier advertising, and this is a form of fraud. Next time you get a call from one of them, tell them its a cell phone number, see how quick they hang-up.
To get back to the topic, I don't want to see any sort of port blocking going on at the ISP level. Its just creating another way for the ISP to bilk money out of you. In fact, I'm about to swicth ISP for this exact reason. I intend to run a web/mail server, I figure it'll be a good learning experience. My current ISP (won't name names here, but it rhymes with Verizon.), won't allow servers, plus it would cost a good bit more to get a static IP address. So off I go to another ISP, same price, servers allowed, and they only sell static IP's.
The reason I mentioned it, is that a large part of my job is system building and integration, between 3 and 5 computers a week on average. That's a lot of hard drives going through. Mind you, we try and keep off the bleeding edge of technology, in our industry its a bad idea, but we have enough volume that I think I've seen a good sample size.
Buy Western Digital. I've been using them for several years now, both at home and at work. I can count, on one hand, the number of failed drives I have had to deal with. And most of those were under warranty.
Personally, I view this as a classic example of, you get what you pay for. Sure, WD might be a bit more expensive than other drives, but on the other hand, have you ever had to deal with a customer who just lost a database that will take days to rebuild? Not pretty.
The point is not if Windows is better than Linux or vice versa. The point is are they in competition. That is the point. The answer is yes. Therefore MS was right, and there is no monopoly.
I would agree, MS is not technically a monopoly. They do, however, have a dominant market position, which they have been abusing. While they do have the right to negotiate contracts any way they see fit, they are doing so from a position of having a huge advantage. That I think, is the main thrust of the whole suit against them. Imagine Best Buy, for example, they plan to sell computers, so they enter into talks with MS for an OEM license. MS can basically dictate terms, what is Best Buy going to do? Threaten to go to a different OS, not likely. Consumers want Windows, and BB is trying to put out a line of budget PCs for those consumers, so they either swallow the shit that is fed to them by MS, or are forced to jack up the price of the PC to cover the retail cost of Windows. When you are talking about a $500 PC, tacking on an extra $100 for the OS is a 20% increse in price, not something that they want to do, it'd push them over the price point that they wanted, and put them as more expensive than the competition.
I think that this is less about a true monoploy, than is is about abusing a dominant market position. Using that position to stifle competitors, and using it to break into new markets with a horribly lopsided advantage.
But that's just my take on this mess, I could be wrong.
The fact is - it is fact - you can run without MS on your desktop perfectly fine and do all the core functions and specialized functions that you can do with Windows. You can do it on Apple's stuff, you can do it on Linux stuff, and you can do it *BSD's stuff. And most of it can be done not only cheaper but FOR FREE.
Everything? If you are talking about business software, I'll agree, it can be done. Though I would question how far reaching the ability to play games goes. Sure, there are games that have been ported to Linux, but is it really happening at a pace to keep up with the really avid gamer? Not to mention, that the time required for a port would keep one well behind the curve for the latest games, assuming that a game they want gets ported at all.
As for the free part of Linix, that is a huge advanatage, especially for business desktops. Though I think this is ignoring the costs associated with re-training. Sure, Gnome, KDE, etc. are all very close to windows in function, and in many cases in usage. But don't fool yourself, they are not the same. Moreover, they look and feel different, and that is going to scare non-tech types. In the end, it would probably be worth it, if you are in a position to do so, to switch a company over to Linux, but it would not be a very easy transition to make, and may get killed by managment.
That's a fact. Linux as a collective has everything any individual needs to ditch Windows. Might they need a bit more RAM? Yeah, maybe. Might it be inconveinent? Yes. But this isn't about inconveince. From day one the argument was that MS is a monopoly, that no one else has a chance to suceed in the desktop space.
I think you have hit on one of the biggest problems facing Linux, convenience. You claim that this isn't about inconvience, I belive that you are mistaken. What are computers but a more convenient way of doing things? This is true of most tools humans have created, if not all. We want to be able to do something that we cannot do on our own. So we create a tool to do it. Eventually someone else comes along and improves that tool, and the older version slow fades, often kept around for those few times when the newer tool would be more trouble to setup and use.
Computers are the same thing, they are just a tool. We started off with the old punch-card machines, now we have a PC with a hard-drive. The Operating System is simply the handle for the tool, it allows us to use it. The current iteration of Windows is the most familiar way to use the tool, and most convenient, for a large number of users. Linux has been offered up as a replacement, but few people have bothered to adopt it because it requires far to much effort on thier part to use. They may see that, if they could use it, it would offer an advantage, but, for most mudane tasks, its too much trouble to bother with. People want simple, and easy to use. That is one of the reasons humans use computers, they make many tasks simpler. Sure, Linux offers some advantages, but, for most people, its not enough of one to go through the trouble.
Prince of Persia, now there was a cool game. I loved the sword fights in it. Not only did you have to worry about attacking, but parrying as well. And, it didn't degenerate into a button mashing fest, or jumping around maddly swinging(*cough* Jedi Knight 2 *cough*). Actually, from what I remember, trying to win by button mashing tended to get you killed. You actually had to think your way through the fight.
I do have to give credit where its due. The 3D version of Prince of Persia that came out some time ago did a great job of capturing the feel of the old game, though I was still killed far too many times because of the camera angle.
Speaking of camera angle, am I the only one who finds this to be the biggest problem with 3D games? You effectivly have 2 choices: first person, which lacks good periphieral vision; or 3rd person, which gives pretty good periphieral vision, but then makes lining up a jump a real pain, also, if the controls are based on the camera they will often change on you while you are in mid-air, really screwing the jump.
Also for what its worth, someone above mentioned Thief, I really like the idea, but all of the Zombie levels and the semi-steampunk atmosphere really detracted from that game. Though I would love to see that engine applied to a Ninja-esque game (and for god's sake, put in a story co-op mode, real ninja worked in groups). I would love to play as a ninja that actually concentrates on stealth. (I tried tenchu, nice idea, really bad controls, stupid enemies, and really bad controls. Did I mention that the controls sucked?)
Oh well, guess I'm just ranting about not being able to find a game I like recently. I'll stop.