Best move is to switch to MacOS (less restrictive licensing, since the hardware essentially is the dongle) or Linux now.
No. The best move is to vote with your dollars by not upgrading, and refusing to take a PC that has Vista loaded. Call them as often as time permits to let them know how dissatisfied you are with what they are doing. Keep XP for as long as it still functions for what you need until Microsoft changes thier license. If they refuse, *then* jump platforms as a last resort.
The *only* way MS will change their ways is if they see a hit to "the bottom line". Unfortunatly I fear that, just as with Wal*Mart (virtually everyone seems to loath them, however, they continue to shop there), the population will just bend over and take it. Hell, if everyone did boycott Vista, MS would probably just claim "piracy!" and go down a road none of us wants to even think about.
Right now Linux and MacOS are not options for much of the computer-owning/using population. Why? Games. Virtually none of the games most commonly played right now function in *either* platform. The ONLY way that will change is for everyone and their sister to call each of the companies and show support. Linux needs help (as far as software installation goes) before companies would even consider it, I'd bet. Just too many things that would need to be cleaned up. Yes, MacOS has an advantage here, but then I have to completely replace a PC I just spent $625 (not counting shipping) upgrading. Not something I find too appealing. Now, if Apple finally got their head out of their ass and offered their OS to the x86 using population, I think the tide would start to turn. I know Apple doesn't want to do this (from what I read) because of "support" issues, however, many of us in Windows land are used to high fees for phone support from MS (and no free support), and we would happily take the same from Apple if our OS experience improved.
Much more I'd like to say, but I can't get all my thoughts straight right now. This should be enough to get some of you something to chew on, though.:)
I installed Vista and longhorn over the weekend to test them out. Well, I should say I tried to install Longhorn...it would get to the end of the install and then crash out every time. Vista being the main subject though, I will stick to that. I spent several hours with it exploring the features and trying out different operations I might do in a typical day. Overall it felt like a recurring nightmare...the nightmare that was Windows ME. Much added bloat with little material gain. Like windows ME, it adds out of the box support for some additional hardware that previous versions didn't. Like Windows ME, it consumes more resources then previous versions (for no appearant reason). Like Windows ME its highly unstable so far (I had Explorer crash countless times doing things as mundane as browsing a network share or checking my e-mail). The one thing it does "better" then Windows ME is that it actually breaks driver support for alot of current hardware (couldn't get the embedded sound working on a motherboard that is only a year old or use my printer). I have trouble imagining how feature-poor the lower editions will be, but the Ultimate edition has little more then XP did. The only good things I can say about it are the included support for iSCSI, addition of a pretty good chess game, and inclusion of a DVD authoring program. Given the pricing of the Ultimate edition, its not at all worth it (buy a 3rd party chess program, iSCSI driver, and DVD authoring software and you will come out ahead financially)
My experiences with Vista are rather different from yours. I like a good portion of how the interface has changed. I don't like how much has changed (re: the control panel, or how they split lots of the configuration options up into spearate windows, cluttering up what was once rather tidy (but could have been improved further)). It's never crashed on me (not even once!), though it did take a few betas before it supported the onboard sound in my HP z2308wm laptop. ATI has yet (to my knowledge) to make their graphics driver support OpenGL, so I have been unable to play City of Heroes/Villains in it.
In my job, I've also been running it on a Dell GX280 (P4 3.6, 1gb RAM, 80gb SATA) with little problems either. Very soon we'll have our Vista Enterprise edition for me to load up on the PC to evaluate how soon we are going to switch (lets just say it's not going to happen at *least* for the coming year).
Oh, by the way...I was running on 2Ghz athlon64 with 1gb of ram, Gamer's video card and SATA hard drive and performance was abysmal. Turning off the Aero features made clicking between file browsing windows a little less painful, but still not very responsive. I didn't see any benefit to the Aero features for the average user anyway. Based on this experience, I am declaring Vista the most skippable Windows version since ME. Hopefully, MSFT will come back and redeem themselves with a truely worthly OS like they did with Win2K.
Either your computer is screwed up in some way, or you used a fairly early beta (and, if that is the case, you really should try a much more "final" version before being so venemous while speaking of the product). I'm sure it has it's problems, but it's not quite *that* bad.
by Pink_Ranger (1024741) Alter Relationship on Thursday November 09, @11:22AM (#16787165)
Will FireFox ever be able browse a SAMBA network?
P.S. I'm new to SAMBA.
This is something I hope NEVER comes to Firefox. It's not needed, not even a little bit. If it *must* come to Firefox, I hope it is in the form of a plugin, so I can keep it OUT of my PC. Windows already has a perfectly good smb share browser built in, as does OSX. In linux, both kde and gnome have more than a few (plus, I'm sure something like linneighborhood would work fine in other DE's)
Imagine if there was a drug that combated leperosy in the same way; it got rid of your symptoms but still allowed you to pass it on. It probably wouldn't seem like such a hot idea to load people up on it and let them walk out of the hospital -- but that's in large part what AIDS drug cocktails do, when they're distributed in an uncontrolled manner or without stringent guidelines and education.
Isn't this *exactly* what the drug companies want (and probably stive for)?! They stand to make untold amounts of money off of drugs that "cure symptoms", but not the infection. Until this situation (and several others) change, I firmly believe we won't have any cures on the magnitude of small pox, etc.
Here's a thought: rather than blaming lawyers for accepting money for litigating cases - which is, after all, how they make a living - how about you exhort litigants, aka "regular folks," to stop suing people?
To get this ball rolling, it'd be awefully helpfull if the damned lawyers would hold back the dollar signs in their eyes when some moron comes waltzing in with a case they'd like filed, then send them on their way. I firmly believe there are plenty of cases (that aren't stupid/frivilous) that these lawyers could be handling without taking those mentioned (and others like them)
Problem with deep freeze is, if you want to prevent people from playing computer games or stuff like that, they can still do it, they just have to keep installing it each time. I remember at one school computer lab Deep Freeze was installed to prevent unauthorized use (including playing games), but the room was dominated by people playing computer games anyway.
Does your school also use a salami sandwich when they need a hammer?
Deepfreze is meant to prevent changes (harmful or otherwise) to the machine, not to prevent things from being installed. If you want that, you need something else.
I have implemented something similar using a very small (4MB) linux partition, where at reboot, it copies a fixed partition back over the primary one. It can also pull the partition from a server if it's been lost / damaged / updated on the server. Out of interest, what does deep freeze offer over that? Serious question, I assume it must offer extra features if so many people are advising it's use.
It has the advantage of not having to copy an entire partition over an old one at every reboot. Any changes are trapped and discarded at each reboot. Far faster, I'd say (though not free, as with your method). I have also noticed no slowdown (other than an extra few seconds booting).
I disagree. In the school I worked, the kids had no problem re-downloading the programs and music every. single. day. I assumed finding and re-downloading the stuff was more fun than listening to the teacher anyway. Plus, most of them started playing flash-games on the game websites as well.
Deep-freeze will keep the OS from being permanently destroyed by student/virus/whatever, but it doesn't make it any less of a distraction in the classroom if it is not further locked down.
You disagree -- That is your opinion. Let me tell you why I believe you are wrong. You use something like deepfreze to lock the PC. Then you have a content filter to block the crap the students are doing online that they should not be. Right tool for the job, and all that.
At one particular school I used to do some work for (before moving to a higher paying job), I set up a linux (Gentoo, in case it matters) server that did Samba, iptables, squid/squidguard, etc. When teachers would catch their students doing things they ought not to be, the web site was written down, passed to me, then blocked. I would sit and look at the access log to see if the students were looking at game sites (of the games.yahoo.com type) and block them. When I got wind of this stupidcensorship.org crap, I joined that mailing list (under multiple email address) and started blocking THOSE. The faculty/administration of that school *loved* that they were in control; not the students and not some company with the blocking database. They loved that the software didn't cost them a dime so they were able to pump more money into better back-end hardware.
They didn't believe in locking the machines down with deepfreze (or didn't want to spend the money -- one of the two), but fortunatly for them with how much I had things locked down, the students really haven't been able to damage the machines (as far as software goes). No, they've resorted to damaging hardware (resulting in suspension/expulsion). That is beyond what any ITS individual can prevent.
One is a deliberate lie, the other is an accidental failure to keep a promise.
Doesn't matter -- A failure is a failure.
If there was *any* question, he should have consulted his staff, or the court, BEFORE he decided.
If he is such a "man of faith" (as he's blabbed about time and again), it should have been against his belief system to torture, hold people without due process, etc, in the first place.
I have no doubt in my mind he has intentionally done everything he is hated for. I think the "stupid look" he portrays is just a cover for someone nearly as insane as Sadam, Hitler, etc. Difference here, I think, is he knows that the American people will yank him back HARD if he gets too crazy all at once, so he's just pushing a little at a time to see how far he can go.
For *that*, he should have been removed (along with *all* of his cronies) long ago.
And you ignored the fact that he has nothing against anti-parent blocking on his site...
What is on his web page and what he believes are two totally different things. I reallyaddress from the circumventor list because of that exchange. He just doesn't understand that parents (and, by extension, the guardians parents entrust their children to during the day) have every right to block content they believe harmful to the children whether you and I like it or not. Of the several emails we exchanged, the topic was specifically about k-12 schools and the children that attend them.
Here, let me post you some snippets that come from him on the circumventer mailing list:
Bennett Haselton Date : April 03, 2006 Also, we have added a new technique to our site for getting around blocking software. With this method, using a CD, you can boot up your computer into Linux instead of Windows, thus bypassing any blocking or monitoring software installed under the Windows system. When you're done, just remove the CD and there will be no traces left on the machine. However, this means the technique will only work for disabling blocking software that is installed on the machine itself; it won't disable Internet censorship that takes place at the network level. (For example, it won't work in most corporate environments, and it certainly won't work for getting around Internet censorship in China or Iran. It *might* work on a library or school computer.)
Bennett Haselton Date :... AddMonday, May 15, 2006 Happy Mother's Day everybody!
Good news: it looks like we've found a way to make the Circumventor sites run faster even when everybody's trying to use them at once. Also, some people were finding that the sites we sent out were getting blocked right away, if for example their school was simply blocking all pages with the word "P**c*fire" on them. We think we've found a way around that, where the writing on the page will still appear the same, but it will slip past the censoring software. (It has to do with JavaScript, if you're curious.)
The following is very telling of his attitude: (You didn't ask, but I told him my own thoughts about it -- I think it's taking unfair advantage of the fact that teens don't have a lot of independence, when the *reason* they don't have a lot of independence is not because of maturity, it's because they're forced to work all day for free. If Mr. Reporter had to work all day for free, then he wouldn't be able to afford his own cell phone either, and his Mom would have to buy him one, and he'd probably be pissed if she put a tracking device in it and said "Well I'm doing this because you're living under my roof, if you want your own phone and your own place then get a job!" "Get a job? Mom I already work 10 hours a day for no pay, that's more than you!" I think it would be really funny to see a 30-year-old having that conversation.)
He thinks that every kid is mature enough to be an adult, even when they are not of the proper age as defined in our laws. Hell, I know some people who *are* of legal age to be considered an adult that still aren't mature enough. My point is that it isn't up to Bennett to decide when someones kids are "mature" enough to be considered an adult. That chore is for the parents to decide.
I could go on and on, however, I've wasted enough time proving my point. I don't care if he stops making circumventor sites -- he needs to leave kids out of his rantings, emails, etc. I really hope some parent catches their kid using his sites to get at things they cannot currently legally access because of federal/state law(s) and decides to take his ass into court.
Actually... for the most part... he's against government institutions blocking sites from a kid... especially when no one really knows what's being blocked... not so much the parents... and I agree... especially since no one really knows what's being blocked... go ahead... get a full list of blocked sites from a CensorWare provider...
Go ahead...
I'm still waiting...
If the parents of children who are attending an institution want to verify what is being blocked, don't you think they ought to, ohhh, I dunno, USE A FUCKING SOFTWARE THEY CAN CONTROL?! Squid/Squidguard is free, relatively easy to setup, and does not require a very powerfull machine.
Of the *5* schools I directly controlled at my previous job, I could have posted a list of every single site that was blocked. Using your arguement is nothing but an excuse for the lazyness of admins/administration of the institutions.
As to the rest of your arguement : Parents are allowed to expose their children to whatever viewpoints they wish -- otherwise, freedom of RELIGION would be kind of useless, neh? If parents are allowed to home school their children (I believe this can be far more damaging as it is often (at least in my area) combined with religious teachings first, school work second), if they can control what they see on TV, why should they not be allowed to decide what their children are exposed to on the internet?
Before you jump down my throat again, I never said I agreed with what many parents do to their children, but it is their right. We can only hope that the kids go on to college where they will have other viewpoints thrust upon them, so they can see what their parents had hidden from them.
Ok, sure, we got the net nanny stuff blocking things it maybe should and maybe shouldn't, and we can have that debate for the 47th time. But do we need the giant screed about whether these people are white supremacists or not? Shouldn't that have been, oh, I dunno, edited out? By someone whose job it is to edit things? Like some kind of an editor? And why is there this weird aside about some Islamic textbook thing wedged in there?
I mean, I don't know what the article-publishing mechanism is. I wouldn't imagine you'd design it as just a button labeled "Publish" and no edit controls, but I don't really see any evidence to the contrary.
What do you expect from Bennett Haselton? This is a guy that is for taking *away* a parents rights to block what their kids see on the internet (and, by extension, those who are charged with the care of the children the parents have taking care of their children while in school/etc). I've posted about this guy before and I'll keep doing so until people see him for who he is.
Yes, in certain situations, proxies (what he's pushing) are a good thing. Advocating their use to minors is going to land him in jail one day (or with huge fines) when some kid does something insanely stupid and it turns out the kid got the idea from the internet that *should* have been censored except he was using one of Bennett's proxies.
If Bennett doesn't like that minors (in this, and *many* other countries) don't have certain rights (including the right to look at whatever content their parents don't want them to see), then he needs to work to get laws enacted to grant said rights -- not circumvent parental/guardian rights of said children.
He's taken the law into his own hands and needs to be slapped down.
Sirius' music selection is much better than XM and all commercial free unlike XM. If I wanted to listen to commercials then I could listen to FM instead of paying for XM. I read about people swithing from XM to Sirius all the time because the music on Sirius is better. Just admit it you are just jealous of Howard and decided to choose XM not because of filth on his filth on Sirius because XM has filth also just for different personality (Opie and Andy).
Let me start out by agreeing with you as far as your seeming dislike for Opie and Anthony (You said Andy, which is not correct).
Now, onto that part of your rant I quoted.
I had XM for over a year. Decided to switch when Howard went to Sirius as every time someone played the show for me, it was funny. I went out and bought a cheap player ($50-ish at Wal*Mart), Called to cancel my XM service (they offered me 2 free months, which I (in hindsight) stupidly turned down). I activated my Sirius receiver and went about my listening. I keep hearing about how "much better Sirius stations are programmed compared to XM), but I couldn't listen to ONE single channel for more than a few songs as, invariably, they'd play some song I hated and I'd have to change (UNLIKE what I have with XM and Flight 26 although Mix 22 was FAR better before Clearchannel fucked it up).
Ok.. So I'm listening to Stern and he makes fun of how XM offered people 2 free months if they call up to quit, saying all sorts of horrible things about that method of customer retention. I chuckle about it and keep listening. After a few days, Stern starts to grow old, and exactly one month from the day I activated, I canceled the service. I've outlined reasons why in another post (poor sound quality on the music channels compared to XM, poorly programmed stations in my opinion, etc). What does Sirius do? Offer me 2 free months!
Now, onto your commercial comment. Every one of the XM controlled music stations (of which there are more than Sirius has) is commercial free (unless you count the "plugs" they give about other music stations they occasionally throw in). I don't have any problems with someone liking Sirius over XM (or vice-versa). It's when people like you start spouting off lies (IE : "XM's music channels are filled with commercials unlike Sirius'!") that I get pissed off. Look in google for the fight between Clearchannel and XM and you'll see what it was all about. Hell, XM even created 5 new channels that are programmed almost identically to the Clearchannel stations in reaction to what Clearchannel did!
Mobile Device support would also be another area they could offer to really expand their coverage (if they aren't already offering this). As with more and more multimedia phones and higher speed wireless (cell-phone wireless) connections it can be seen as a way to offer their service without the hardware investment.
Sirius is already available on Sprint phones (if you pay for an access pack and then pay for access to Sirius). I have the $15 pack (I forget what it's called but it allows me unlimited data usage monthly plus lets me hear Sirius Hits). If I want the rest of the Sirius channels (or whatever Sprint offers -- I couldn't find any info on what channels they offer, specifically), it's another $7 a month (I believe).
Sirius also has a portable radio now (Stiletto 100?), so there is that also..
So why not just use a bigger graphic? Actually Outlook seems to block all graphics by default....so I don't see the problem. Though maybe it doesn't for internal mail.
Or, if they are like any large business (or university, as is my case), it may be pre-configured in their system image to display graphics by default (at least on internal mail).
I work in ITS at TSU and, other than some QoS, I have encountered no censorship/blocking.
If students are so worried (and have admin access to the PC's they use), they could use JAP, or any number of other software(s) that redirect at least http requests through proxies to get around such restrictions.
I don't agree with the message stupidcensorship puts out (aiming it primarially at jr/high schools), but for college settings I see nothing wrong with it, for the stated purposes.
It's when such services are abused in the way Bennet (hope I got that spelled right) is doing that I dissagree. He actually removed me from the mailing list becuase I disagreed with him. Good thing I was (and am) signed up under a handfull of different addresses!
The short version of the story is that he feels minors ought to be allowed to circumvent restrictions placed upon them by the people paying for the internet connection *and* computers they are using. My idea is that 1) They are minors and have limited rights and 2) they are not paying for *any* of the access and should therefore be subject to the restrictions placed.
Both my views don't work for a college setting (where the kids *aren't* minors and their tuition pays for everything.
I would personally trade my current 6mbps/768kbps line for even a 1.5mbit line if it were symmetric. When rsync finds 8 gigs of new non-comrpessible data to upload to my off-site backup, 768k just doesn't cut it.
I agree 100%. People praise Antec, but from my experience they consistantly fall short of their performance and have a comparable lifespan to, say, a $20 no-name PSU.
With your message (and it's positive moderation), and the moderation on my message, I'm glad to know I wasn't alone. I was half expecting a bunch of Antec "fanbois" to come in and mod me into the ground.:)
In my higher than average experience, Antec = bad. I couldn't believe how many of their P/S's (all above 400w) I've had to send back compared to the cheap-oh CoolerMaster 350w supplies we were using. Got to a point where Antec tech support number was being answered by a voicemail (we couldn't get a live person any longer).
When it got to a point where it was taking them *weeks* to get back to me (if they ever did at all), I got fed up and sent an email to the complaint email link they have on their support page (Yes! A complaint link! Only company I've ever seen that *needed* one due to such poor tech support!). In the email I stated my position, that I had a handfull of supplies I was going to dumpster because I could not get anyone to respond to me, and that I'd be reccomending *against* anyone using anything Antec again.
Long story short, someone actually replied fairly quickly, dragged me along for a couple weeks telling me how he'd get me help (he had me fill out an RMA form several times because he claimed there were errors, then refused to take the supplies back because I didn't have a recepit available (it got filed away and sent to storage) even though they were *well* within the manufacturer 3 year from the date of manufactuer instead of date of sale!)..
I've since switched to Enermax or Thermaltake and never looked back. Never had anywhere NEAR the quantity of P/S's to send back and of the FEW I have, it was taken care of right away.
Perhaps you need to upgrade your engine technology?
Perhaps you need to learn how to read? He specifically stated he gets 29mpg and, with a 13.5 gallon tank, went 500 miles. The math is flawed. He was either being an idiot OR (what I prefer to believe) he was mitaken -- twice.
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Best move is to switch to MacOS (less restrictive licensing, since the hardware essentially is the dongle) or Linux now.
:)
No. The best move is to vote with your dollars by not upgrading, and refusing to take a PC that has Vista loaded. Call them as often as time permits to let them know how dissatisfied you are with what they are doing. Keep XP for as long as it still functions for what you need until Microsoft changes thier license. If they refuse, *then* jump platforms as a last resort.
The *only* way MS will change their ways is if they see a hit to "the bottom line". Unfortunatly I fear that, just as with Wal*Mart (virtually everyone seems to loath them, however, they continue to shop there), the population will just bend over and take it. Hell, if everyone did boycott Vista, MS would probably just claim "piracy!" and go down a road none of us wants to even think about.
Right now Linux and MacOS are not options for much of the computer-owning/using population. Why? Games. Virtually none of the games most commonly played right now function in *either* platform. The ONLY way that will change is for everyone and their sister to call each of the companies and show support. Linux needs help (as far as software installation goes) before companies would even consider it, I'd bet. Just too many things that would need to be cleaned up. Yes, MacOS has an advantage here, but then I have to completely replace a PC I just spent $625 (not counting shipping) upgrading. Not something I find too appealing. Now, if Apple finally got their head out of their ass and offered their OS to the x86 using population, I think the tide would start to turn. I know Apple doesn't want to do this (from what I read) because of "support" issues, however, many of us in Windows land are used to high fees for phone support from MS (and no free support), and we would happily take the same from Apple if our OS experience improved.
Much more I'd like to say, but I can't get all my thoughts straight right now. This should be enough to get some of you something to chew on, though.
I installed Vista and longhorn over the weekend to test them out. Well, I should say I tried to install Longhorn...it would get to the end of the install and then crash out every time. Vista being the main subject though, I will stick to that. I spent several hours with it exploring the features and trying out different operations I might do in a typical day. Overall it felt like a recurring nightmare...the nightmare that was Windows ME. Much added bloat with little material gain. Like windows ME, it adds out of the box support for some additional hardware that previous versions didn't. Like Windows ME, it consumes more resources then previous versions (for no appearant reason). Like Windows ME its highly unstable so far (I had Explorer crash countless times doing things as mundane as browsing a network share or checking my e-mail). The one thing it does "better" then Windows ME is that it actually breaks driver support for alot of current hardware (couldn't get the embedded sound working on a motherboard that is only a year old or use my printer). I have trouble imagining how feature-poor the lower editions will be, but the Ultimate edition has little more then XP did. The only good things I can say about it are the included support for iSCSI, addition of a pretty good chess game, and inclusion of a DVD authoring program. Given the pricing of the Ultimate edition, its not at all worth it (buy a 3rd party chess program, iSCSI driver, and DVD authoring software and you will come out ahead financially)
My experiences with Vista are rather different from yours. I like a good portion of how the interface has changed. I don't like how much has changed (re: the control panel, or how they split lots of the configuration options up into spearate windows, cluttering up what was once rather tidy (but could have been improved further)). It's never crashed on me (not even once!), though it did take a few betas before it supported the onboard sound in my HP z2308wm laptop. ATI has yet (to my knowledge) to make their graphics driver support OpenGL, so I have been unable to play City of Heroes/Villains in it.
In my job, I've also been running it on a Dell GX280 (P4 3.6, 1gb RAM, 80gb SATA) with little problems either. Very soon we'll have our Vista Enterprise edition for me to load up on the PC to evaluate how soon we are going to switch (lets just say it's not going to happen at *least* for the coming year).
Oh, by the way...I was running on 2Ghz athlon64 with 1gb of ram, Gamer's video card and SATA hard drive and performance was abysmal. Turning off the Aero features made clicking between file browsing windows a little less painful, but still not very responsive. I didn't see any benefit to the Aero features for the average user anyway. Based on this experience, I am declaring Vista the most skippable Windows version since ME. Hopefully, MSFT will come back and redeem themselves with a truely worthly OS like they did with Win2K.
Either your computer is screwed up in some way, or you used a fairly early beta (and, if that is the case, you really should try a much more "final" version before being so venemous while speaking of the product). I'm sure it has it's problems, but it's not quite *that* bad.
Or, I could just not purchase Vista and not have to worry about it.
Problem solved!
by Pink_Ranger (1024741) Alter Relationship on Thursday November 09, @11:22AM (#16787165)
Will FireFox ever be able browse a SAMBA network?
P.S. I'm new to SAMBA.
This is something I hope NEVER comes to Firefox. It's not needed, not even a little bit. If it *must* come to Firefox, I hope it is in the form of a plugin, so I can keep it OUT of my PC. Windows already has a perfectly good smb share browser built in, as does OSX. In linux, both kde and gnome have more than a few (plus, I'm sure something like linneighborhood would work fine in other DE's)
Imagine if there was a drug that combated leperosy in the same way; it got rid of your symptoms but still allowed you to pass it on. It probably wouldn't seem like such a hot idea to load people up on it and let them walk out of the hospital -- but that's in large part what AIDS drug cocktails do, when they're distributed in an uncontrolled manner or without stringent guidelines and education.
Isn't this *exactly* what the drug companies want (and probably stive for)?! They stand to make untold amounts of money off of drugs that "cure symptoms", but not the infection. Until this situation (and several others) change, I firmly believe we won't have any cures on the magnitude of small pox, etc.
Here's a thought: rather than blaming lawyers for accepting money for litigating cases - which is, after all, how they make a living - how about you exhort litigants, aka "regular folks," to stop suing people?
To get this ball rolling, it'd be awefully helpfull if the damned lawyers would hold back the dollar signs in their eyes when some moron comes waltzing in with a case they'd like filed, then send them on their way. I firmly believe there are plenty of cases (that aren't stupid/frivilous) that these lawyers could be handling without taking those mentioned (and others like them)
Problem with deep freeze is, if you want to prevent people from playing computer games or stuff like that, they can still do it, they just have to keep installing it each time. I remember at one school computer lab Deep Freeze was installed to prevent unauthorized use (including playing games), but the room was dominated by people playing computer games anyway.
Does your school also use a salami sandwich when they need a hammer?
Deepfreze is meant to prevent changes (harmful or otherwise) to the machine, not to prevent things from being installed. If you want that, you need something else.
I have implemented something similar using a very small (4MB) linux partition, where at reboot, it copies a fixed partition back over the primary one. It can also pull the partition from a server if it's been lost / damaged / updated on the server. Out of interest, what does deep freeze offer over that? Serious question, I assume it must offer extra features if so many people are advising it's use.
It has the advantage of not having to copy an entire partition over an old one at every reboot. Any changes are trapped and discarded at each reboot. Far faster, I'd say (though not free, as with your method). I have also noticed no slowdown (other than an extra few seconds booting).
I disagree.
In the school I worked, the kids had no problem re-downloading the programs and music every. single. day. I assumed finding and re-downloading the stuff was more fun than listening to the teacher anyway. Plus, most of them started playing flash-games on the game websites as well.
Deep-freeze will keep the OS from being permanently destroyed by student/virus/whatever, but it doesn't make it any less of a distraction in the classroom if it is not further locked down.
You disagree -- That is your opinion. Let me tell you why I believe you are wrong. You use something like deepfreze to lock the PC. Then you have a content filter to block the crap the students are doing online that they should not be. Right tool for the job, and all that.
At one particular school I used to do some work for (before moving to a higher paying job), I set up a linux (Gentoo, in case it matters) server that did Samba, iptables, squid/squidguard, etc. When teachers would catch their students doing things they ought not to be, the web site was written down, passed to me, then blocked. I would sit and look at the access log to see if the students were looking at game sites (of the games.yahoo.com type) and block them. When I got wind of this stupidcensorship.org crap, I joined that mailing list (under multiple email address) and started blocking THOSE. The faculty/administration of that school *loved* that they were in control; not the students and not some company with the blocking database. They loved that the software didn't cost them a dime so they were able to pump more money into better back-end hardware.
They didn't believe in locking the machines down with deepfreze (or didn't want to spend the money -- one of the two), but fortunatly for them with how much I had things locked down, the students really haven't been able to damage the machines (as far as software goes). No, they've resorted to damaging hardware (resulting in suspension/expulsion). That is beyond what any ITS individual can prevent.
One is a deliberate lie, the other is an accidental failure to keep a promise.
Doesn't matter -- A failure is a failure.
If there was *any* question, he should have consulted his staff, or the court, BEFORE he decided.
If he is such a "man of faith" (as he's blabbed about time and again), it should have been against his belief system to torture, hold people without due process, etc, in the first place.
I have no doubt in my mind he has intentionally done everything he is hated for. I think the "stupid look" he portrays is just a cover for someone nearly as insane as Sadam, Hitler, etc. Difference here, I think, is he knows that the American people will yank him back HARD if he gets too crazy all at once, so he's just pushing a little at a time to see how far he can go.
For *that*, he should have been removed (along with *all* of his cronies) long ago.
And you ignored the fact that he has nothing against anti-parent blocking on his site...
...
What is on his web page and what he believes are two totally different things. I reallyaddress from the circumventor list because of that exchange. He just doesn't understand that parents (and, by extension, the guardians parents entrust their children to during the day) have every right to block content they believe harmful to the children whether you and I like it or not. Of the several emails we exchanged, the topic was specifically about k-12 schools and the children that attend them.
Here, let me post you some snippets that come from him on the circumventer mailing list:
Bennett Haselton
Date : April 03, 2006
Also, we have added a new technique to our site for getting around blocking software. With this method, using a CD, you can boot up your computer into Linux instead of Windows, thus bypassing any blocking or monitoring software installed under the Windows system. When you're done, just remove the CD and there will be no traces left on the machine. However, this means the technique will only work for disabling blocking software that is installed on the machine itself; it won't disable Internet censorship that takes place at the network level. (For example, it won't work in most corporate environments, and it certainly won't work for getting around Internet censorship in China or Iran. It *might* work on a library or school computer.)
Bennett Haselton
Date :
AddMonday, May 15, 2006
Happy Mother's Day everybody!
Good news: it looks like we've found a way to make the Circumventor sites run faster even when everybody's trying to use them at once. Also, some people were finding that the sites we sent out were getting blocked right away, if for example their school was simply blocking all pages with the word "P**c*fire" on them. We think we've found a way around that, where the writing on the page will still appear the same, but it will slip past the censoring software. (It has to do with JavaScript, if you're curious.)
The following is very telling of his attitude:
(You didn't ask, but I told him my own thoughts about it -- I think it's taking unfair advantage of the fact that teens don't have a lot of independence, when the *reason* they don't have a lot of independence is not because of maturity, it's because they're forced to work all day for free. If Mr. Reporter had to work all day for free, then he wouldn't be able to afford his own cell phone either, and his Mom would have to buy him one, and he'd probably be pissed if she put a tracking device in it and said "Well I'm doing this because you're living under my roof, if you want your own phone and your own place then get a job!" "Get a job? Mom I already work 10 hours a day for no pay, that's more than you!" I think it would be really funny to see a 30-year-old having that conversation.)
He thinks that every kid is mature enough to be an adult, even when they are not of the proper age as defined in our laws. Hell, I know some people who *are* of legal age to be considered an adult that still aren't mature enough. My point is that it isn't up to Bennett to decide when someones kids are "mature" enough to be considered an adult. That chore is for the parents to decide.
I could go on and on, however, I've wasted enough time proving my point. I don't care if he stops making circumventor sites -- he needs to leave kids out of his rantings, emails, etc. I really hope some parent catches their kid using his sites to get at things they cannot currently legally access because of federal/state law(s) and decides to take his ass into court.
Actually... for the most part... he's against government institutions blocking sites from a kid... especially when no one really knows what's being blocked... not so much the parents... and I agree... especially since no one really knows what's being blocked... go ahead... get a full list of blocked sites from a CensorWare provider...
Go ahead...
I'm still waiting...
If the parents of children who are attending an institution want to verify what is being blocked, don't you think they ought to, ohhh, I dunno, USE A FUCKING SOFTWARE THEY CAN CONTROL?! Squid/Squidguard is free, relatively easy to setup, and does not require a very powerfull machine.
Of the *5* schools I directly controlled at my previous job, I could have posted a list of every single site that was blocked. Using your arguement is nothing but an excuse for the lazyness of admins/administration of the institutions.
As to the rest of your arguement : Parents are allowed to expose their children to whatever viewpoints they wish -- otherwise, freedom of RELIGION would be kind of useless, neh? If parents are allowed to home school their children (I believe this can be far more damaging as it is often (at least in my area) combined with religious teachings first, school work second), if they can control what they see on TV, why should they not be allowed to decide what their children are exposed to on the internet?
Before you jump down my throat again, I never said I agreed with what many parents do to their children, but it is their right. We can only hope that the kids go on to college where they will have other viewpoints thrust upon them, so they can see what their parents had hidden from them.
Ok, sure, we got the net nanny stuff blocking things it maybe should and maybe shouldn't, and we can have that debate for the 47th time. But do we need the giant screed about whether these people are white supremacists or not? Shouldn't that have been, oh, I dunno, edited out? By someone whose job it is to edit things? Like some kind of an editor? And why is there this weird aside about some Islamic textbook thing wedged in there?
I mean, I don't know what the article-publishing mechanism is. I wouldn't imagine you'd design it as just a button labeled "Publish" and no edit controls, but I don't really see any evidence to the contrary.
What do you expect from Bennett Haselton? This is a guy that is for taking *away* a parents rights to block what their kids see on the internet (and, by extension, those who are charged with the care of the children the parents have taking care of their children while in school/etc). I've posted about this guy before and I'll keep doing so until people see him for who he is.
Yes, in certain situations, proxies (what he's pushing) are a good thing. Advocating their use to minors is going to land him in jail one day (or with huge fines) when some kid does something insanely stupid and it turns out the kid got the idea from the internet that *should* have been censored except he was using one of Bennett's proxies.
If Bennett doesn't like that minors (in this, and *many* other countries) don't have certain rights (including the right to look at whatever content their parents don't want them to see), then he needs to work to get laws enacted to grant said rights -- not circumvent parental/guardian rights of said children.
He's taken the law into his own hands and needs to be slapped down.
Sirius' music selection is much better than XM and all commercial free unlike XM. If I wanted to listen to commercials then I could listen to FM instead of paying for XM. I read about people swithing from XM to Sirius all the time because the music on Sirius is better. Just admit it you are just jealous of Howard and decided to choose XM not because of filth on his filth on Sirius because XM has filth also just for different personality (Opie and Andy).
Let me start out by agreeing with you as far as your seeming dislike for Opie and Anthony (You said Andy, which is not correct).
Now, onto that part of your rant I quoted.
I had XM for over a year. Decided to switch when Howard went to Sirius as every time someone played the show for me, it was funny. I went out and bought a cheap player ($50-ish at Wal*Mart), Called to cancel my XM service (they offered me 2 free months, which I (in hindsight) stupidly turned down). I activated my Sirius receiver and went about my listening. I keep hearing about how "much better Sirius stations are programmed compared to XM), but I couldn't listen to ONE single channel for more than a few songs as, invariably, they'd play some song I hated and I'd have to change (UNLIKE what I have with XM and Flight 26 although Mix 22 was FAR better before Clearchannel fucked it up).
Ok.. So I'm listening to Stern and he makes fun of how XM offered people 2 free months if they call up to quit, saying all sorts of horrible things about that method of customer retention. I chuckle about it and keep listening. After a few days, Stern starts to grow old, and exactly one month from the day I activated, I canceled the service. I've outlined reasons why in another post (poor sound quality on the music channels compared to XM, poorly programmed stations in my opinion, etc). What does Sirius do? Offer me 2 free months!
Now, onto your commercial comment. Every one of the XM controlled music stations (of which there are more than Sirius has) is commercial free (unless you count the "plugs" they give about other music stations they occasionally throw in). I don't have any problems with someone liking Sirius over XM (or vice-versa). It's when people like you start spouting off lies (IE : "XM's music channels are filled with commercials unlike Sirius'!") that I get pissed off. Look in google for the fight between Clearchannel and XM and you'll see what it was all about. Hell, XM even created 5 new channels that are programmed almost identically to the Clearchannel stations in reaction to what Clearchannel did!
Mobile Device support would also be another area they could offer to really expand their coverage (if they aren't already offering this). As with more and more multimedia phones and higher speed wireless (cell-phone wireless) connections it can be seen as a way to offer their service without the hardware investment.
Sirius is already available on Sprint phones (if you pay for an access pack and then pay for access to Sirius). I have the $15 pack (I forget what it's called but it allows me unlimited data usage monthly plus lets me hear Sirius Hits). If I want the rest of the Sirius channels (or whatever Sprint offers -- I couldn't find any info on what channels they offer, specifically), it's another $7 a month (I believe).
Sirius also has a portable radio now (Stiletto 100?), so there is that also..
So why not just use a bigger graphic? Actually Outlook seems to block all graphics by default....so I don't see the problem. Though maybe it doesn't for internal mail.
Or, if they are like any large business (or university, as is my case), it may be pre-configured in their system image to display graphics by default (at least on internal mail).
I'm not sure that buying someone else's product and slapping your name on it is the sort of innovation the original poster had in mind...
Picasa? *cough*Writely*cough* Google Docs? YouTube?
Google.com? Gmail? Google maps? Google Earth? Google News? Google Pages? Google Talk?
I work in ITS at TSU and, other than some QoS, I have encountered no censorship/blocking.
If students are so worried (and have admin access to the PC's they use), they could use JAP, or any number of other software(s) that redirect at least http requests through proxies to get around such restrictions.
I don't agree with the message stupidcensorship puts out (aiming it primarially at jr/high schools), but for college settings I see nothing wrong with it, for the stated purposes.
It's when such services are abused in the way Bennet (hope I got that spelled right) is doing that I dissagree. He actually removed me from the mailing list becuase I disagreed with him. Good thing I was (and am) signed up under a handfull of different addresses!
The short version of the story is that he feels minors ought to be allowed to circumvent restrictions placed upon them by the people paying for the internet connection *and* computers they are using. My idea is that 1) They are minors and have limited rights and 2) they are not paying for *any* of the access and should therefore be subject to the restrictions placed.
Both my views don't work for a college setting (where the kids *aren't* minors and their tuition pays for everything.
Oh sure, when you talk about it *that* way...
I was concentrating on the download speed and had totally missed (guess MY head needs examined!) you were talking about upload speeds. hehehe
I would personally trade my current 6mbps/768kbps line for even a 1.5mbit line if it were symmetric. When rsync finds 8 gigs of new non-comrpessible data to upload to my off-site backup, 768k just doesn't cut it.
:)
1.5mbit is that much better?
I think you need your head examined.
I agree 100%. People praise Antec, but from my experience they consistantly fall short of their performance and have a comparable lifespan to, say, a $20 no-name PSU.
:)
With your message (and it's positive moderation), and the moderation on my message, I'm glad to know I wasn't alone. I was half expecting a bunch of Antec "fanbois" to come in and mod me into the ground.
Antec + Tyan = bad
In my higher than average experience, Antec = bad. I couldn't believe how many of their P/S's (all above 400w) I've had to send back compared to the cheap-oh CoolerMaster 350w supplies we were using. Got to a point where Antec tech support number was being answered by a voicemail (we couldn't get a live person any longer).
When it got to a point where it was taking them *weeks* to get back to me (if they ever did at all), I got fed up and sent an email to the complaint email link they have on their support page (Yes! A complaint link! Only company I've ever seen that *needed* one due to such poor tech support!). In the email I stated my position, that I had a handfull of supplies I was going to dumpster because I could not get anyone to respond to me, and that I'd be reccomending *against* anyone using anything Antec again.
Long story short, someone actually replied fairly quickly, dragged me along for a couple weeks telling me how he'd get me help (he had me fill out an RMA form several times because he claimed there were errors, then refused to take the supplies back because I didn't have a recepit available (it got filed away and sent to storage) even though they were *well* within the manufacturer 3 year from the date of manufactuer instead of date of sale!)..
I've since switched to Enermax or Thermaltake and never looked back. Never had anywhere NEAR the quantity of P/S's to send back and of the FEW I have, it was taken care of right away.
In short, Antec can kiss my ass.
Fuck running, i'm stealing a Hummer H1 with a radio and killing 2 birds with one stone (and anyone who won't move out of my way)!
:)
What happens 6 miles down the road after you run out of fuel?
Perhaps you need to upgrade your engine technology?
Perhaps you need to learn how to read? He specifically stated he gets 29mpg and, with a 13.5 gallon tank, went 500 miles. The math is flawed. He was either being an idiot OR (what I prefer to believe) he was mitaken -- twice.
I meant to say that I get 500 miles.... faulty fingers, or faulty keyboard, your choice
You meant to say 500 miles? Errr. Not only did you say 500 miles in the first place, but stating it twice still doesn't make the math work for you.
500 divided by 13.5 is 37.037~ MPG. I think you meant you get closer to 400 miles on your 13.5 gallon tank (Just like my car does).