There goes the argument that games are only pirated because companies insist on draconian DRM.
I think you're confused. I don't know any sensible person that's ever made that argument. I have heard of people making the argument that high prices and lack of availability contribute to the increase of piracy. I've also heard the argument that draconian DRM puts people off buying the game, or causes problems that requires people who have bought the game to then crack it.
What is of interest here is 2 things:
1) How different would these numbers have been if DRM was included? If it's cracked as 0 day warez and you still have similar numbers the company has put money into a protection that did not work. If the number of people who legitimately buy the game is decreased because people were put off that's a further loss.
2) What will the long term numbers look like. Initial uptake of software by people trying it out is one thing. The software is instantly available through illegal channels. How many will then buy legitimate copies? How many will stop using it once it's an old release? (ie. older than a week or 2) How many people will buy it once it's been in the stores for a few weeks?
How common is sports addiction anyway? I've never heard of people staying up until 3am to kick a soccer ball around several times a week or pissing in a water bottle because they couldn't bear to be away from the tennis court for a couple of minutes. MMORPG addicts behaving like that are a dime a dozen; sports addicts, not so much.
That's only because these activities are physically exhaustive. I've certainly heard of people doing nothing but kicking a soccer ball around till they're exhausted and therefore neglecting everything else because they come home exhausted then go out and do it the next day. Hell I've seen sports addiction first hand - I had a cousin who for a while there did nothing but go to the gym, come home and sleep. Fortunately he woke up to himself.
Dorm RAs will try to intervene and get the girl involved in the dorm bake sale next week, but completely ignore the guys in the next room who haven't stopped playing Halo (or showered) in three days.
That's because the dorm RAs aren't trying to get anything out of the guys in the next room. I think you'll find they have ulterior motives. I also think you'll find that if the girl is unattractive they'll be happy to let her keep playing.
So you see you're complaining about the wrong thing. It's a much much worse form of sexism at work here. It's not about social norms or expectations - it's about predation.
Please re-read. The GP complained that Telstra and Optus were the problem and said that being with TPG he got a better deal. I retorted that while Telstra has its problems they've adjusted their pricing to be more competitive.
I am paying AU$50 per month and getting 25GB (10GB peak and 15GB off peak) per month with no excess usage charges ever. If I exceed the 25GB, I get shaped back down to 64kbps for the rest of the month. Only idiots who sign up with Tel$tra BigPond
Actually as much as I hate Telstra I have to tell you that your information is out of date. I'm paying $54/month for 10GB, and contemplating moving to $80 for 25GB/month. Both are slowed to 64kbps after the cap. Neither of them have any of this peak/off peak nonsense attached, and I get many Linux distros for free and without it contributing to the limit at files.bigpond.com.
The down side. Customer support has gotten worse over the years and if I can't tell if the problem is at my end or I get an incompetent tech I could be charged for having cable dropouts etc. fixed. They still only support their own equipment so you're SOL if you are using your own router/firewall. (If you do have a problem you can get around this by using a PC you don't care about and connecting it directly, then wiping it when you're done).
Tell that to any world class scientist, athlete, artist, politician. You name it. Obsessing about things is required if you want to push the boundaries.
Having seen that, I would recommend printing and filing EVERYTHING. Most lawyers change outragous rates for printing anyways, so why not? So, I would say that you should definately take precautions against data loss, the hard copy should be your real backup.
That's only one failure scenario. What would happen if the printer you used happened to have ink/toner that faded after say 5-6 years (long enough to not initially notice)?
The correct solution is:
- Multiple redundant backups. 3 at a minimum, with 2 offsite. (That is aside from your working copy). Use different storage media (even if that's just different brands and sizes of drive). Yes one backup can be print if the data allows that.
- Regularly restore your backups to ensure that they're not failing.
You do know that you can back up to a 3rd party and still maintain sole access to the data, correct? All of our backups are encrypted using a 448bit key that only we have access to. If our backup provider is subpoenaed they can give all my data to whoever they want, it's just a meaningless binary blob.
So you've done multiple in depth reviews of all your encryption hardware and software have you? You're absolutely certain and would stake your life on the fact that no one's fucked up the code and left you with a nice security hole that might one day be discovered. Just for starters bugs can include temp files that aren't encrypted, predictable pseudo random generators, backdoors intentionally added for law enforcement to get at things. You also audit every item of data that you're letting out the door, not once but twice to ensure nothing gets out without encryption? None of your employees have ever been lazy and let things slip?
If you're thinking of answering "Yes, I'd stake my life on it" you don't belong on any forum giving security advice.
- That means charge a very low initial access fee. Say $5-$10 max per month - Don't force customers to pay for 20GB/month if they're not using it - Don't force customers to predict how much they'll be using period then take their money anyway if they don't use it - Do not charge a ridiculous amount beyond the cap. Charge a fixed rate per GB and keep it reasonable
ISPs and phone companies have had it too good for too long oversubscribing and overcharging for people using way under their quota. This move isn't to make things fair - it's to gouge heavy users. I don't pay $10 for my first 5 litres of petrol then $400 for my next 5 litres. One reason is that I could go to the competition. ISPs typically have monopoly, near monopoly or at best duopoly. They are NOT playing fair.
Let's get this straight: "Raise the minimum requirements to require Windows XP Service Pack 3 or higher," with no benefit, and no rationale other than for breaking compatibility for its own sake? If that's the case, I venture to say that Mozilla has seriously lost its way.
What they did by breaking code to switch off "Awesomebar" without requiring extensions already proved they'd lost their way. For me, it's really simple. I'm not upgrading my fucking operating system to support a web browser. That is THE most replacable piece of software I have, apart from possibly simple text editors. They can drop support, stop testing, do whatever they like but I won't be upgrading other software to meet their minimum requirements. Firefox USE to be an awesome browser. Every day I use it a little more begrudgingly due to features not found in other browsers.
If the Kremlin had learned what our prototypes looked like at that point, the russian economy probably would have been much stronger, they never would have embarked on those economic reforms that backfired, and they eventually would have won the cold war.
"A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality " as the #1 result? Now that's what I'd call a really offensive book.
It takes a whole book for a bigot to write "Beat your kid if they even look like they're about to do something homosexual. Meanwhile shut your eyes and pray"???
Imagine there's no countries. It isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion too. Imagine all the people, Living life in peace.
Beautiful words.
Pity they were written by a ill behaved drunken drugged up self indulgent rude prat who studied ancient religious texts with Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Which makes him a fucking hypocrite. People don't want to speak ill of the dead but does that really mean we have to romanticise reality? Imagine if those lyrics were written by someone who lived them.
On my Mac I just changed permissions on the/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate and ~/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate folders to 000, and Google Earth no longer reinstalls the updater or asks me to do so. I never gave GE my password. I'm not sure what the workaround is for Windows.
You're not making a good argument against COBOL here. You're making an excellent argument against programming as a religion. When asked why and he replied that using lots of RAM is abhorrent Joe was showing an emotional response to what should have been a rational logical problem. Joe's not alone. Hell, Einstein threw away his last productive decades because he "believed" that "God does not play dice" and therefore refused to keep current with science that he didn't like.
If Joe had instead analysed the problem he'd have been able to understand why a simple time vs space (pun intended) tradeoff needed to be made.
I was married and monogamous most of my 20's so I don't have a lot of comparison in that age. In my 30's they wanted sex but a lot seemed to be screwed up by their previous relationships. In their 40's they knew what they wanted and went for it. I wonder what the 50's and 60's will be like.
Prediction: They'll be frustrating because you'll increasingly have trouble getting it up.
First: Those books are no longer in print and WotC is not losing a dime if they get copied. Unless, and I'd consider this highly unlikely if anything, they want to roll the printing press for those items again.
Doesn't that mean Google Books now has the rights?;-)
Sorry if that went slightly off-topic, it's just frustrating to see so many product/media providers jump on this bandwagon. Whats next? Some sort of physical DRM for printed copies?
What would that look like? A large built man named Boris coming over to kneecap you if you copy the work?
Making people pay for posts. Making people pay for email. That will stop spam dead in its tracks.
No it won't, and once we introduce it we'll be stuck with it.
Now, I didn't say you'd LIKE what 's next...
You're right, I don't like the idea of killing off the Internet as we know it over a misguided attempt to stop something that can only be limited, not stopped. Sometimes the cure is much much worse than the disease and in that case the cure should be rejected.
Slashdot Mirror
The first rule of Usenet is: you do not talk about Usenet.
I've been using Usenet for years and I'm pretty sure the first rule of Usenet is: Find someone random and abuse them.
The second rule is: Disagree with everything even if it's obviously right.
The third rule is: Cross post everywhere, especially to marginally relevant groups.
The fourth rule is: On-topic is for wimps.
There goes the argument that games are only pirated because companies insist on draconian DRM.
I think you're confused. I don't know any sensible person that's ever made that argument. I have heard of people making the argument that high prices and lack of availability contribute to the increase of piracy. I've also heard the argument that draconian DRM puts people off buying the game, or causes problems that requires people who have bought the game to then crack it.
What is of interest here is 2 things:
1) How different would these numbers have been if DRM was included? If it's cracked as 0 day warez and you still have similar numbers the company has put money into a protection that did not work. If the number of people who legitimately buy the game is decreased because people were put off that's a further loss.
2) What will the long term numbers look like. Initial uptake of software by people trying it out is one thing. The software is instantly available through illegal channels. How many will then buy legitimate copies? How many will stop using it once it's an old release? (ie. older than a week or 2) How many people will buy it once it's been in the stores for a few weeks?
Hardly any exploits at all.
Oh you wanted a USABLE OS? Well you'll need to tell me what it's going to be used for.
How common is sports addiction anyway? I've never heard of people staying up until 3am to kick a soccer ball around several times a week or pissing in a water bottle because they couldn't bear to be away from the tennis court for a couple of minutes. MMORPG addicts behaving like that are a dime a dozen; sports addicts, not so much.
That's only because these activities are physically exhaustive. I've certainly heard of people doing nothing but kicking a soccer ball around till they're exhausted and therefore neglecting everything else because they come home exhausted then go out and do it the next day. Hell I've seen sports addiction first hand - I had a cousin who for a while there did nothing but go to the gym, come home and sleep. Fortunately he woke up to himself.
Dorm RAs will try to intervene and get the girl involved in the dorm bake sale next week, but completely ignore the guys in the next room who haven't stopped playing Halo (or showered) in three days.
That's because the dorm RAs aren't trying to get anything out of the guys in the next room. I think you'll find they have ulterior motives. I also think you'll find that if the girl is unattractive they'll be happy to let her keep playing.
So you see you're complaining about the wrong thing. It's a much much worse form of sexism at work here. It's not about social norms or expectations - it's about predation.
This isn't Telstra, its TPG.
Please re-read. The GP complained that Telstra and Optus were the problem and said that being with TPG he got a better deal. I retorted that while Telstra has its problems they've adjusted their pricing to be more competitive.
I am paying AU$50 per month and getting 25GB (10GB peak and 15GB off peak) per month with no excess usage charges ever. If I exceed the 25GB, I get shaped back down to 64kbps for the rest of the month. Only idiots who sign up with Tel$tra BigPond
Actually as much as I hate Telstra I have to tell you that your information is out of date. I'm paying $54/month for 10GB, and contemplating moving to $80 for 25GB/month. Both are slowed to 64kbps after the cap. Neither of them have any of this peak/off peak nonsense attached, and I get many Linux distros for free and without it contributing to the limit at files.bigpond.com.
The down side. Customer support has gotten worse over the years and if I can't tell if the problem is at my end or I get an incompetent tech I could be charged for having cable dropouts etc. fixed. They still only support their own equipment so you're SOL if you are using your own router/firewall. (If you do have a problem you can get around this by using a PC you don't care about and connecting it directly, then wiping it when you're done).
An obsession about anything is bad.
Tell that to any world class scientist, athlete, artist, politician. You name it. Obsessing about things is required if you want to push the boundaries.
Having seen that, I would recommend printing and filing EVERYTHING. Most lawyers change outragous rates for printing anyways, so why not? So, I would say that you should definately take precautions against data loss, the hard copy should be your real backup.
That's only one failure scenario. What would happen if the printer you used happened to have ink/toner that faded after say 5-6 years (long enough to not initially notice)?
The correct solution is:
- Multiple redundant backups. 3 at a minimum, with 2 offsite. (That is aside from your working copy). Use different storage media (even if that's just different brands and sizes of drive). Yes one backup can be print if the data allows that.
- Regularly restore your backups to ensure that they're not failing.
You do know that you can back up to a 3rd party and still maintain sole access to the data, correct? All of our backups are encrypted using a 448bit key that only we have access to. If our backup provider is subpoenaed they can give all my data to whoever they want, it's just a meaningless binary blob.
So you've done multiple in depth reviews of all your encryption hardware and software have you? You're absolutely certain and would stake your life on the fact that no one's fucked up the code and left you with a nice security hole that might one day be discovered. Just for starters bugs can include temp files that aren't encrypted, predictable pseudo random generators, backdoors intentionally added for law enforcement to get at things. You also audit every item of data that you're letting out the door, not once but twice to ensure nothing gets out without encryption? None of your employees have ever been lazy and let things slip?
If you're thinking of answering "Yes, I'd stake my life on it" you don't belong on any forum giving security advice.
The EASIEST way is to store everything yourself.
- That means charge a very low initial access fee. Say $5-$10 max per month
- Don't force customers to pay for 20GB/month if they're not using it
- Don't force customers to predict how much they'll be using period then take their money anyway if they don't use it
- Do not charge a ridiculous amount beyond the cap. Charge a fixed rate per GB and keep it reasonable
ISPs and phone companies have had it too good for too long oversubscribing and overcharging for people using way under their quota. This move isn't to make things fair - it's to gouge heavy users. I don't pay $10 for my first 5 litres of petrol then $400 for my next 5 litres. One reason is that I could go to the competition. ISPs typically have monopoly, near monopoly or at best duopoly. They are NOT playing fair.
...not in post natal PMS Hells-ville, so I don't think the article quite holds.
If you're reading this honey, just kidding! Love you! Let's go shopping for an eternity ring... ;-)
This modern-day Stonehenge will be scavenged for parts and resources long before 10,000 years. Much like how the original Stonehenge was.
Not if you name it Deep Thought
Let's get this straight: "Raise the minimum requirements to require Windows XP Service Pack 3 or higher," with no benefit, and no rationale other than for breaking compatibility for its own sake? If that's the case, I venture to say that Mozilla has seriously lost its way.
What they did by breaking code to switch off "Awesomebar" without requiring extensions already proved they'd lost their way. For me, it's really simple. I'm not upgrading my fucking operating system to support a web browser. That is THE most replacable piece of software I have, apart from possibly simple text editors. They can drop support, stop testing, do whatever they like but I won't be upgrading other software to meet their minimum requirements. Firefox USE to be an awesome browser. Every day I use it a little more begrudgingly due to features not found in other browsers.
If the Kremlin had learned what our prototypes looked like at that point, the russian economy probably would have been much stronger, they never would have embarked on those economic reforms that backfired, and they eventually would have won the cold war.
I'll say. We were fucking working on OX CARTS.
A classic case of putting the cart before the OX.
"A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality " as the #1 result? Now that's what I'd call a really offensive book.
It takes a whole book for a bigot to write "Beat your kid if they even look like they're about to do something homosexual. Meanwhile shut your eyes and pray"???
Uhm...do you have the contact information for the Ministry of Fairness, Niceness, and Free Ponies at Taxpayer Expense? I would like a free pony.
It was renamed the "Ministry of Silly Walks". Try under that name.
Imagine there's no countries.
It isn't hard to do.
Nothing to kill or die for,
And no religion too.
Imagine all the people,
Living life in peace.
Beautiful words.
Pity they were written by a ill behaved drunken drugged up self indulgent rude prat who studied ancient religious texts with Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Which makes him a fucking hypocrite. People don't want to speak ill of the dead but does that really mean we have to romanticise reality? Imagine if those lyrics were written by someone who lived them.
On my Mac I just changed permissions on the /Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate and ~/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate folders to 000, and Google Earth no longer reinstalls the updater or asks me to do so. I never gave GE my password. I'm not sure what the workaround is for Windows.
1. Install Linux
2. Follow above instructions.
Thanks...
You're not making a good argument against COBOL here. You're making an excellent argument against programming as a religion. When asked why and he replied that using lots of RAM is abhorrent Joe was showing an emotional response to what should have been a rational logical problem. Joe's not alone. Hell, Einstein threw away his last productive decades because he "believed" that "God does not play dice" and therefore refused to keep current with science that he didn't like.
If Joe had instead analysed the problem he'd have been able to understand why a simple time vs space (pun intended) tradeoff needed to be made.
I was married and monogamous most of my 20's so I don't have a lot of comparison in that age. In my 30's they wanted sex but a lot seemed to be screwed up by their previous relationships. In their 40's they knew what they wanted and went for it. I wonder what the 50's and 60's will be like.
Prediction: They'll be frustrating because you'll increasingly have trouble getting it up.
First: Those books are no longer in print and WotC is not losing a dime if they get copied. Unless, and I'd consider this highly unlikely if anything, they want to roll the printing press for those items again.
Doesn't that mean Google Books now has the rights? ;-)
Sorry if that went slightly off-topic, it's just frustrating to see so many product/media providers jump on this bandwagon. Whats next? Some sort of physical DRM for printed copies?
What would that look like? A large built man named Boris coming over to kneecap you if you copy the work?
Making people pay for posts. Making people pay for email. That will stop spam dead in its tracks.
No it won't, and once we introduce it we'll be stuck with it.
Now, I didn't say you'd LIKE what 's next...
You're right, I don't like the idea of killing off the Internet as we know it over a misguided attempt to stop something that can only be limited, not stopped. Sometimes the cure is much much worse than the disease and in that case the cure should be rejected.