I was in the hospital with most of my ribs fractured, a nonfunctional leg, a bloody face, serious head injuries, and a damaged larynx from being strangled. He came very close to simply murdering me right in front of 20 other cops.
And they didn't even let me go to the hospital. They locked me in a holding cell in that condition until the next day when I made bail.
I knew that your answer would simply be that you don't believe my story. People like you are the reason I took a deal rather than risk getting people like you on the jury. People who will ALWAYS believe a cop over their victim. Always. Because you are essentially bigots. You believe that police are superior human beings. The cop believed that as well and to prove that superiority he nearly killed me.
I would pretty much kill any cop on sight if I could get away with it because they are evil. They are pretty much the definition of evil. Their whole lives are about hurting people for no reason at all except that they like it and it makes them feel tough and powerful.
The guy who attacked me even looked like dumb bully with an IQ of like 10. I kid you not. He had that mongoloid look of someone with Down's syndrome. The way he smiled at me in court, just knowing how badly he fucked me and knowing that there was absolutely nothing I could do about it was pretty telling. Honestly, because of how he looked, and the fact that his bullshit story had some obvious and provable fabrications in it, I might have had a 50% chance of winning in a jury trial.
I'm guessing that you are one of those bully types too. Otherwise you wouldn't be so blindly supportive of them. You are obviously no geek. That much is certain.
And one more thing, let me say to you what I said to him, "FUCK YOU." People like you do not deserve to live and it is people like you that have fucked up this country beyond recognition and turned it into a police state.
Well, there are some internet cafes. Not many and they cost 1/4 to 1/2 a month's wages to access, but they do at least exist. Also some people work at places with computers. So they could use those. But home computers? No way. Not unless things have changed very, very dramatically there recently.
So you want to stop free riders, huh? First of all DRM can work, but only in some situations and some element of luck is involved. Not that the purpose of these techniques is not profit maximization. The purpose is simply to reduce or stop free riders.
---The DRM Option--- 1. Code the DRM yourself. Make sure that a cracker at last would require knowledge of assembly language to crack it. Anyone can use a hex editor. At least make sure that your cracker has to be somewhat competent.
2. Don't advertise the software too much. Try to keep it from getting too popular. As soon as a competent cracker sees it and thinks your software seems useful he's going to put your code on his to_disassemble_list and a crack could be released in just a few days.
3. Don't make the software too good or too useful. Ideally it should not do anything better than other software in its category. it should not be a best-in-class sort of thing. If it seems to be getting too popular introduce some subtle but annoying bugs in the next release.
---Bait and Switch--- With this method you introduce the software initially as freeware but not open source. Build a following. Let people get dependent on it. I'd recommend giving it a full year or two so that people basically think of it as free software.
Then go commercial. Give as little warning as possible. Quietly remove old versions from your web site beforehand A good time to do this is just before you fix an annoying bug. If you have to, leave a bug unfixed specifically for this purpose. Even introduce one if you have to. Just make sure to add a new feature when you do so.
At this point introduce the above homemade DRM and try to keep a low profile as noted in the first strategy. The delay between initial release and the implementation of DRM will discourage a large percentage of crackers. It just won't be on their radar anymore since it is old software at this point. Of course if your software has already become too popular then it is still hopeless, but you have to prevent that.
The basic idea behind these strategies is not to try to defeat the crackers. They are way smarter than you are. Just forget it. The idea is to stay below their radar and make your DRM just hard enough to stop the easy search and replace hex editor attacks.
Eventually your software may indeed be discovered by a competent cracker and then the game is over. Go work on some new software. Rinse and repeat.
---divide and conquer--- One tip for staying obscure is to break up your software into many smaller applications. Not only does that make more targets for the crackers for the same functionality, but it makes the software less useful which remember is a good thing. You don't need to get every customer in the world. Just enough to make some money. Don't get greedy or you will certainly fail.
If your software has a menu take a look at the different options and see if you can split them out into different applications.
---keep prices low--- A cracker is less likely to target you if you are only asking $5-$10. I see that this is already your strategy. It is an excellent way to both deter crackers and to deter potential pirates from even bothering to search for a cracked version. Cracking a $1000 application gives way more prestige than cracking a $5 one. Note that this merges quite nicely with the above divide and conquer strategy.
Network coverage? Unless things have changed drastically in the past 7 years or so there are probably only a handful of Cubans in the entire city of Havana that even own a computer of any kind. There are internet cafes. Although not many and they aren't cheap for a Cuban. Which is probably intentional.
Last time I was there actually owning a computer was against the law. Only foreigners were allowed to own one. I think Raul changed that policy though, but an income of $10 per month isn't going to buy you much of a computer. This sneakernet probably uses mostly internet cafes and work computers, of which there are probably not many.
You are correct in your main point. A Cuban would or damn well should be afraid to post something, anything, critical of the government online. And the phones are known to be tapped so you can't even say something critical of the government on the phone. Although I've never personally heard of anyone getting in trouble for that.
the difference between them and you is they are petrified with fear to say a damn thing about their governments
Naw. The Cubans aren't afraid. Not at all. They just don't publish stuff online or anywhere else critical of the government. Other than that they aren't worried about what you seem to think they are worried about. The whole 'don't worry be happy' meme is a lot more popular over there. What they are really worried about is having enough food to eat and other financial issues. Communism doesn't work very well for stuff like that. Well, really for anything other than maybe keeping crime down.
Every corner is a very large exaggeration. In tourist areas there are a large number of street cops, but even there it's often only every 6 - 10 blocks or so. It's not as intimidating as with cops in the US because the Cuban cops are generally not bad guys. They are not just hoping for an excuse to bash your head in with their nightstick, taze you, and then bring you up on charges for assaulting them. As a rule Cuban cops are definitely better human beings than American cops. That doesn't mean I recommend going up and talking to them though. I wouldn't advocate that in any country. But they generally like to leave people alone and just chill until they get off work. Their mind set could not be more different from the cops we are used to here.
I don't think girlintraining's point was invalid. Because the cops here have such a different us vs them gonna-prove-what-abaddas-iam mindset one cop here is a like a 100 over there. Way, way scarier. On paper the cops here have less power, but in reality they can do and will do pretty much whatever they want to you. Even before my police brutality experience here I was way more afraid of American cops than Cuban ones.
I even got into some trouble a couple of times there. Once where I was strip searched and interrogated. They were incredibly nice to me every time. Nice in a way that you just don't get from cops here and I mean ever. They don't treat you like you are their sworn enemy or like you are a non-entity that means less to them than a bug they would scrape off their shoe.
I mean it doesn't matter how much power you have on paper if you are a decent person you're not going to abuse it. Or at least not most of the time.
Cuba isn't perfect, not by a long shot. But they do educate their citizens, and give them health care
You obviously didn't spend much time there. The education is mediocre at best. My girlfriend spent 4 years studying to be a waitress. She wasn't exactly what I would consider a walking encyclopedia. Of course it's difficult when you don't have the money to buy real textbooks. As a general rule I'd say Americans and Europeans and most Asians and the countries in South America where I have spent time are all far better educated then Cubans. Laos is probably comparable though.
As for the Cubans themselves, they are nice on the surface, but once you spend more time there you realize they are not as nice as you thought. A great many of the ones that a tourist would ever meet are only acting nice to get something from you. To them you are a walking, talking ATM machine and they are looking to make a withdrawal. But as long as you don't trust them too much they are laid back and easy to like.
In parts of the US, the life and death is just as bad, because the poor are mostly left to fend for themselves and the state has no interest in looking out for them.
Hmm. It depends what you mean by 'bad'. The problem is that Cuban poor is really poor. I mean, how do you live on $8 a month even with your pathetic ration book and nearly free rent and electricity? It's a very, very tough life. That's why so many are desperate to escape. Desperate in a way which I have never seen anywhere else. It's more than just the poverty, although they are the poorest people I've ever known.
Mind controlling? Life or death? Dude, you've obviously never been to Cuba. Cuba is about as laid back as it gets. And most of the cops are actually relatively nice, normal people just looking for a well paid job as opposed to police in the US who are literally cruising for a bruising, drooling over the idea of their own little slice of torture porn.
It has been a while since I've been there, but I lived there for about a year. Someday I'd very much like to go back. Whenever I return it still feels a bit like home.
Cuba may not be some kind of workers paradise like devout communists want to believe, but it aint that bad. Not as bad as you make it sound. I actually felt a lot freer living there than I do here in the US. We may have more freedom here on paper, but in day to day life Cuba feels freer.
If I could personally blow up an entire police station right now and get away with it I would do so. Put that in your pipe and smoke it you pathetic boot licking, pig lover. The closest you've probably been to a real cop is on your TV set. You don't know shit.
Go do a youtube search for police brutality and see how much of it took place in the US and how much abroad. Watch that 12 year old girl get shot in the head with a taser causing her serious, permanent brain damage just for running away from the fat, donut-eating fuck. He couldn't be bothered to run after her. It's so much easier to just shoot a 12 year old girl in the head. Those are your heroic fucking cops.
As someone who has lived abroad quite a bit including a couple of communist countries, one of which is on the US terrorist support list, let me assure you that there are not many countries with cops as violent and corrupt as our own.
Do you know anybody who's been physically roughed up by the cops? Anybody who required the least bit of hospitalization? Stitches?
Yeah. Me. In addition to getting framed for enough crimes to put me in prison for nearly 10 years later reduced to charges that could have put me in prison for 3-5 years.
I lived in Malaysia as an expat and I *hated* the weather. You don't even get a break from the heat at night.
To those of you who don't understand this Malaysian guy he's saying that 800 USD/month is *not* a cheap price. You can rent a large house in the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur for that kind of money.
Unfortunately the expats in KL have their own little enclaves where the rental prices are like double what everyone else pays, but they get to live apart from the actual Malaysians, which to be fair, are noisy and don't tend to make the best neighbors. So if you are rich it might be better to pay the ripoff expat prices so that you can live in a quieter environment with other expats. I hate the idea of it though, and I couldn't afford $800/month anyway.
Hot peppers? Are you sure the food was Malaysian? I used to live there and there wasn't a lot of spicy food. Unless you have a very low standard for 'spicy'. Great food yes, but spicy not really.
Well if that's what you planned to do and it's working out as well as you imagined, good for you. But personally, I find there's something about starting a new life in some cheap country which is kind of self-abasing.
Self-abasing to move to a 'cheap' country? What country are you from that makes you so superior and high and mighty? Being born in a certain geographical location does not make you any better than people who were born elsewhere.
And money does not define your worth as a person in any meaningful way. Human beings can be so sickening.
Honestly I'd rather live in a country with nice people in it than wherever you live. You wouldn't know where those places are because you've probably never left the country you were born in.
Something tells me you've never been to the US. There are parts of the US that are just as safe as Singapore. Singapore isn't any cleaner and it certainly isn't any more 'advanced' whatever that is supposed to mean in this context.
Given the chance I'd rather live in Singapore, but only because the food that I can actually afford to eat is much better there. I do hate the climate though. It's way too hot even at night.
I am planning to buy a piece of land in a state where they don't even have a building code. There aren't any building, electrical, or plumbing inspectors and you are allowed to do all of that stuff yourself. The only thing you are not allowed to do is your own septic system. Some states are freer than others.
Do people burn trash in their yards in Cambodia the way they do in Laos? I had to leave Laos for that reason. I couldn't stand the smell of burnt plastic anymore.
I also became bored with the food. I couldn't find any reliably good food in Vientiane that I could afford. Having been to Phnom Penh, I know the food situation is a lot better there, but I would still worry about trash burning and air pollution in general.
Have you managed to learn to speak the language? I've heard it's very difficult. Particularly the pronunciation.
None of the above. I've just seen for myself what cops are actually like in the real world, as opposed to how they are portrayed on TV/film. It isn't pretty. Most cops are not good people. They are vicious, angry, sociopath bullies and that is the problem. The job attracts such people and we have no system in place to weed them out. The few honest cops certainly won't do anything about it. So they accumulate until they are the majority and in control.
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How can you use sudo without the account password? Also, what if sudo is not installed?
I was in the hospital with most of my ribs fractured, a nonfunctional leg, a bloody face, serious head injuries, and a damaged larynx from being strangled. He came very close to simply murdering me right in front of 20 other cops.
And they didn't even let me go to the hospital. They locked me in a holding cell in that condition until the next day when I made bail.
I knew that your answer would simply be that you don't believe my story. People like you are the reason I took a deal rather than risk getting people like you on the jury. People who will ALWAYS believe a cop over their victim. Always. Because you are essentially bigots. You believe that police are superior human beings. The cop believed that as well and to prove that superiority he nearly killed me.
I would pretty much kill any cop on sight if I could get away with it because they are evil. They are pretty much the definition of evil. Their whole lives are about hurting people for no reason at all except that they like it and it makes them feel tough and powerful.
The guy who attacked me even looked like dumb bully with an IQ of like 10. I kid you not. He had that mongoloid look of someone with Down's syndrome. The way he smiled at me in court, just knowing how badly he fucked me and knowing that there was absolutely nothing I could do about it was pretty telling. Honestly, because of how he looked, and the fact that his bullshit story had some obvious and provable fabrications in it, I might have had a 50% chance of winning in a jury trial.
I'm guessing that you are one of those bully types too. Otherwise you wouldn't be so blindly supportive of them. You are obviously no geek. That much is certain.
And one more thing, let me say to you what I said to him, "FUCK YOU." People like you do not deserve to live and it is people like you that have fucked up this country beyond recognition and turned it into a police state.
Well, there are some internet cafes. Not many and they cost 1/4 to 1/2 a month's wages to access, but they do at least exist. Also some people work at places with computers. So they could use those. But home computers? No way. Not unless things have changed very, very dramatically there recently.
So you want to stop free riders, huh? First of all DRM can work, but only in some situations and some element of luck is involved. Not that the purpose of these techniques is not profit maximization. The purpose is simply to reduce or stop free riders.
---The DRM Option---
1. Code the DRM yourself. Make sure that a cracker at last would require knowledge of assembly language to crack it. Anyone can use a hex editor. At least make sure that your cracker has to be somewhat competent.
2. Don't advertise the software too much. Try to keep it from getting too popular. As soon as a competent cracker sees it and thinks your software seems useful he's going to put your code on his to_disassemble_list and a crack could be released in just a few days.
3. Don't make the software too good or too useful. Ideally it should not do anything better than other software in its category. it should not be a best-in-class sort of thing. If it seems to be getting too popular introduce some subtle but annoying bugs in the next release.
---Bait and Switch---
With this method you introduce the software initially as freeware but not open source. Build a following. Let people get dependent on it. I'd recommend giving it a full year or two so that people basically think of it as free software.
Then go commercial. Give as little warning as possible. Quietly remove old versions from your web site beforehand A good time to do this is just before you fix an annoying bug. If you have to, leave a bug unfixed specifically for this purpose. Even introduce one if you have to. Just make sure to add a new feature when you do so.
At this point introduce the above homemade DRM and try to keep a low profile as noted in the first strategy. The delay between initial release and the implementation of DRM will discourage a large percentage of crackers. It just won't be on their radar anymore since it is old software at this point. Of course if your software has already become too popular then it is still hopeless, but you have to prevent that.
The basic idea behind these strategies is not to try to defeat the crackers. They are way smarter than you are. Just forget it. The idea is to stay below their radar and make your DRM just hard enough to stop the easy search and replace hex editor attacks.
Eventually your software may indeed be discovered by a competent cracker and then the game is over. Go work on some new software. Rinse and repeat.
---divide and conquer---
One tip for staying obscure is to break up your software into many smaller applications. Not only does that make more targets for the crackers for the same functionality, but it makes the software less useful which remember is a good thing. You don't need to get every customer in the world. Just enough to make some money. Don't get greedy or you will certainly fail.
If your software has a menu take a look at the different options and see if you can split them out into different applications.
---keep prices low---
A cracker is less likely to target you if you are only asking $5-$10. I see that this is already your strategy. It is an excellent way to both deter crackers and to deter potential pirates from even bothering to search for a cracked version. Cracking a $1000 application gives way more prestige than cracking a $5 one. Note that this merges quite nicely with the above divide and conquer strategy.
Did the crackers ever bother to fix the bug?
Yeah, but they may not have the uSD drives in Cuba yet. Tech tends to lag a bit there.
Poverty yes, but what oppression did you notice?
Network coverage? Unless things have changed drastically in the past 7 years or so there are probably only a handful of Cubans in the entire city of Havana that even own a computer of any kind. There are internet cafes. Although not many and they aren't cheap for a Cuban. Which is probably intentional.
Last time I was there actually owning a computer was against the law. Only foreigners were allowed to own one. I think Raul changed that policy though, but an income of $10 per month isn't going to buy you much of a computer. This sneakernet probably uses mostly internet cafes and work computers, of which there are probably not many.
You are correct in your main point. A Cuban would or damn well should be afraid to post something, anything, critical of the government online. And the phones are known to be tapped so you can't even say something critical of the government on the phone. Although I've never personally heard of anyone getting in trouble for that.
the difference between them and you is they are petrified with fear to say a damn thing about their governments
Naw. The Cubans aren't afraid. Not at all. They just don't publish stuff online or anywhere else critical of the government. Other than that they aren't worried about what you seem to think they are worried about. The whole 'don't worry be happy' meme is a lot more popular over there. What they are really worried about is having enough food to eat and other financial issues. Communism doesn't work very well for stuff like that. Well, really for anything other than maybe keeping crime down.
Every corner is a very large exaggeration. In tourist areas there are a large number of street cops, but even there it's often only every 6 - 10 blocks or so. It's not as intimidating as with cops in the US because the Cuban cops are generally not bad guys. They are not just hoping for an excuse to bash your head in with their nightstick, taze you, and then bring you up on charges for assaulting them. As a rule Cuban cops are definitely better human beings than American cops. That doesn't mean I recommend going up and talking to them though. I wouldn't advocate that in any country. But they generally like to leave people alone and just chill until they get off work. Their mind set could not be more different from the cops we are used to here.
I don't think girlintraining's point was invalid. Because the cops here have such a different us vs them gonna-prove-what-abaddas-iam mindset one cop here is a like a 100 over there. Way, way scarier. On paper the cops here have less power, but in reality they can do and will do pretty much whatever they want to you. Even before my police brutality experience here I was way more afraid of American cops than Cuban ones.
I even got into some trouble a couple of times there. Once where I was strip searched and interrogated. They were incredibly nice to me every time. Nice in a way that you just don't get from cops here and I mean ever. They don't treat you like you are their sworn enemy or like you are a non-entity that means less to them than a bug they would scrape off their shoe.
I mean it doesn't matter how much power you have on paper if you are a decent person you're not going to abuse it. Or at least not most of the time.
Cuba isn't perfect, not by a long shot. But they do educate their citizens, and give them health care
You obviously didn't spend much time there. The education is mediocre at best. My girlfriend spent 4 years studying to be a waitress. She wasn't exactly what I would consider a walking encyclopedia. Of course it's difficult when you don't have the money to buy real textbooks. As a general rule I'd say Americans and Europeans and most Asians and the countries in South America where I have spent time are all far better educated then Cubans. Laos is probably comparable though.
As for the Cubans themselves, they are nice on the surface, but once you spend more time there you realize they are not as nice as you thought. A great many of the ones that a tourist would ever meet are only acting nice to get something from you. To them you are a walking, talking ATM machine and they are looking to make a withdrawal. But as long as you don't trust them too much they are laid back and easy to like.
In parts of the US, the life and death is just as bad, because the poor are mostly left to fend for themselves and the state has no interest in looking out for them.
Hmm. It depends what you mean by 'bad'. The problem is that Cuban poor is really poor. I mean, how do you live on $8 a month even with your pathetic ration book and nearly free rent and electricity? It's a very, very tough life. That's why so many are desperate to escape. Desperate in a way which I have never seen anywhere else. It's more than just the poverty, although they are the poorest people I've ever known.
If you break the rules in the US you also go to jail. The solution is just not to break the rules or if you do don't get caught.
Mind controlling? Life or death? Dude, you've obviously never been to Cuba. Cuba is about as laid back as it gets. And most of the cops are actually relatively nice, normal people just looking for a well paid job as opposed to police in the US who are literally cruising for a bruising, drooling over the idea of their own little slice of torture porn.
It has been a while since I've been there, but I lived there for about a year. Someday I'd very much like to go back. Whenever I return it still feels a bit like home.
Cuba may not be some kind of workers paradise like devout communists want to believe, but it aint that bad. Not as bad as you make it sound. I actually felt a lot freer living there than I do here in the US. We may have more freedom here on paper, but in day to day life Cuba feels freer.
If I could personally blow up an entire police station right now and get away with it I would do so. Put that in your pipe and smoke it you pathetic boot licking, pig lover. The closest you've probably been to a real cop is on your TV set. You don't know shit.
Go do a youtube search for police brutality and see how much of it took place in the US and how much abroad. Watch that 12 year old girl get shot in the head with a taser causing her serious, permanent brain damage just for running away from the fat, donut-eating fuck. He couldn't be bothered to run after her. It's so much easier to just shoot a 12 year old girl in the head. Those are your heroic fucking cops.
As someone who has lived abroad quite a bit including a couple of communist countries, one of which is on the US terrorist support list, let me assure you that there are not many countries with cops as violent and corrupt as our own.
Do you know anybody who's been physically roughed up by the cops? Anybody who required the least bit of hospitalization? Stitches?
Yeah. Me. In addition to getting framed for enough crimes to put me in prison for nearly 10 years later reduced to charges that could have put me in prison for 3-5 years.
I lived in Malaysia as an expat and I *hated* the weather. You don't even get a break from the heat at night.
To those of you who don't understand this Malaysian guy he's saying that 800 USD/month is *not* a cheap price. You can rent a large house in the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur for that kind of money.
Unfortunately the expats in KL have their own little enclaves where the rental prices are like double what everyone else pays, but they get to live apart from the actual Malaysians, which to be fair, are noisy and don't tend to make the best neighbors. So if you are rich it might be better to pay the ripoff expat prices so that you can live in a quieter environment with other expats. I hate the idea of it though, and I couldn't afford $800/month anyway.
Hot peppers? Are you sure the food was Malaysian? I used to live there and there wasn't a lot of spicy food. Unless you have a very low standard for 'spicy'. Great food yes, but spicy not really.
What is a qualified person and what skills are in demand?
Well if that's what you planned to do and it's working out as well as you imagined, good for you. But personally, I find there's something about starting a new life in some cheap country which is kind of self-abasing.
Self-abasing to move to a 'cheap' country? What country are you from that makes you so superior and high and mighty? Being born in a certain geographical location does not make you any better than people who were born elsewhere.
And money does not define your worth as a person in any meaningful way. Human beings can be so sickening.
Honestly I'd rather live in a country with nice people in it than wherever you live. You wouldn't know where those places are because you've probably never left the country you were born in.
Something tells me you've never been to the US. There are parts of the US that are just as safe as Singapore. Singapore isn't any cleaner and it certainly isn't any more 'advanced' whatever that is supposed to mean in this context.
Given the chance I'd rather live in Singapore, but only because the food that I can actually afford to eat is much better there. I do hate the climate though. It's way too hot even at night.
I am planning to buy a piece of land in a state where they don't even have a building code. There aren't any building, electrical, or plumbing inspectors and you are allowed to do all of that stuff yourself. The only thing you are not allowed to do is your own septic system. Some states are freer than others.
If that 16k is gross income then I guess that is about what I make and I live in the US. But I don't have a family to support. Just myself.
I'm actually planning to move to Malaysia. I've lived there before, and I like it better than living in the US.
Do people burn trash in their yards in Cambodia the way they do in Laos? I had to leave Laos for that reason. I couldn't stand the smell of burnt plastic anymore.
I also became bored with the food. I couldn't find any reliably good food in Vientiane that I could afford. Having been to Phnom Penh, I know the food situation is a lot better there, but I would still worry about trash burning and air pollution in general.
Have you managed to learn to speak the language? I've heard it's very difficult. Particularly the pronunciation.
None of the above. I've just seen for myself what cops are actually like in the real world, as opposed to how they are portrayed on TV/film. It isn't pretty. Most cops are not good people. They are vicious, angry, sociopath bullies and that is the problem. The job attracts such people and we have no system in place to weed them out. The few honest cops certainly won't do anything about it. So they accumulate until they are the majority and in control.