I sent this in and they rejected it... figures.. I think this site is a scam, where only people who know they writers get posted
You were probably the 2,386th Slashdot reader to submit this story, considering that I first heard about this story via OT posts on other threads demanding that I TURN [MY] TV ON.
Grow up, and get a fucking life.
[This post pre-modded -1 Flamebait for your convenience.]
Ok NOT Trolling;
But I find it oddly convenient that I am not legally able to dupe my DVD collection, and THEN magically they start to break... total boon to the studios and MPAA!
Ok, you're not a troll, but you're not correct, either.
This is indeed a sign of something, but not the fact that there is a conspiracy afoot to make us buy more DVDs or prevent fair use. It is more a sign that quality of manufactured products overall is degrading. Few things last as long as they did before anymore. It's not limited to DVDs. When you live in a disposable society like the US, long term quality is not a priority. There's a reason why many warranties cover only the first 90 days.
You have a point, but at the same time, that's real evidence of deterioration in his microscopic examination of the disk.
I would, however, be interested to see if his discs had the same problem in other players. Recently my wife and I tried to watch a DVD fresh out of the shrink wrap. In our three-year-old Mitsubishi DVD player, the picture starting getting "motion artifacts" after playing for about fifteen minutes. If I stopped the disc and started it again via the scene selection menu, it would run okay for another fifteen and then the same problem. But when we threw the same disc into the Playstation 2, it played perfectly, and other, older discs appear to play fine in the Mitsubishi player. Go figure.
I will openly admit that I did not RTFA, simply because the FA is too F long. I did go to the site and tried to skim the salient points, and I read the historical account (of an event I had never heard of, and I tend to consider myself something of a WW II history buff).
At first glance, this is shaping up to be a case of someone starting from a false premise and building an argument to support it. Several times people have attempted the old "wow this was way too powerful to have been a conventional explosion it must be nuclear" gambit.
I can easily cite an example of another historical event that resulted in a very large conventional explosion that mimicked atomic bomb effects. On December 6, 1917, a French cargo ship carrying a large amount of picric acid, TNT, benzole, and guncotton caught fire and exploded in Halifax harbor. The force of the explosion is estimated to have been in the neighborhood of 3 kilotons. It had all the effects of a atomic blast: fireball, mushroom cloud, shock wave, even a small tidal wave since the explosion was over water, and so on, all but the radiation. However, no one by any conceivable stretch of the imagination can claim that this was an atomic explosion.
In addition, it is my understanding that it took a great deal of time and expense to build first the test device that was exploded in the desert and then the two that were dropped over Japan. That represented the sum total of America's nuclear arsenal at the time. A great deal of care was taken with these devices. It seems very odd to me that there would be some sort of "accident" with a heretofore unknown weapon that America possessed at the time. Atomic weapons just do not simply "go off" unless the bomb were specifically armed, and there would be no reason to keep an armed atomic weapon in the hold of a ship.
As for purposely detonating a device to test its effects on a populated area? Please. I can only stretch my incredulity so far. Yes, the US government has done some terrible things in the past, but it would take a great deal of very compelling evidence to make me believe they would do something that blatant.
Anyone who has read the entire book from beginning to end, feel free to poke holes in my argument. My research into this theory was hampered by the fact that the site did not contain a concise summary of the theory itself. For someone with the time, perhaps this would be a good candidate for applying the Carl Sagan Baloney Detection Kit.
Here's a winning combo for you: 42 inch TV combined with digital cable. Now not only can you have MORE of the same crap (500+ channels), you can get it BIGGER, too.
I think TV sizes are going the same way as cable channels; more is not necessarily better.
EverQuest is a game, a form of entertainment, and a fun way to fill your spare time if you are into any of the things it provides, from RPG/Action/Adventure gaming to online social interaction to powergaming. You can enjoy playing EverQuest in 1hr sessions or 16hr sessions.
You make some excellent points in your post that I think may be lost on some of the people that play EQ obsessively yet complain about it constantly.
Generally someone plays a multiplayer game for a reason, whether it is strictly for entertainment, or for social interaction, or both. If you really like the game and you're playing it for the "right reasons" (i.e. not simply to compete in a venue to achieve the title of the "best" which is essentially meaningless in the real world) then you are not going to whine about the problems that make it a less than perfect experience.
Case and point: Many moons ago, I used to play an online game called PernMUSH, which was based on Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series. The nice thing about the game was that there were no points or levels to attain or any real specific goal. It was pure roleplaying and social interaction, and that filled a particular need for me at the time. I stayed on long enough to attain the title of Benden Weyrleader (without going into a lengthy dissertation of the Pern universe, suffice it to say that, in-character at least, this is a rather high position).
The game had its shortcomings, some of which just came with the game and some with the position (some ugly politics among other leader-type players, a few real dumbass policy decisions from the game wizards, twinks who bitch and moan when their character is not selected to Impress a dragon, long-time players that send me tirades about who was selected to Impress, etc etc), but it didn't matter, because the game was FUN.
And, yes, the game was addictive as well. It was hard to leave when I did, but with an impending marriage and a move, there was simply no way I could devote the time that I needed to make it fun, even if I gave up the position I held. But it was addictive for the "right" reasons, at least in my mind.
I think the author of the original article really needs to reexamine his reasons for staying on the game. If the game really is that psychologically addictive, perhaps some professional help is needed. I recall a few people on PernMUSH that treated the game with the same sort of obsession that were a little scary to be around, even just online let alone in real life.
Nobody can honestly blame the government for being concerned about network security. They recognize a valid threat to a growing part of our country's infrastructure, and geek ethics be damned, they're probably going to want to do something about it.
Okay, now I feel better about posting now that I found someone else sharing a similar view.
At the risk of inviting flames and down-mods, I believe we need to take a moment to see the government's side in all of this and understand where they are coming from. The cries of "police state!" I am hearing do not ring true after reading this article. The reason for this is that I did not see a single mention of the government's intent to regulate what information flows through the network.
Think about it for a moment. What is the government asking? They're asking WiFi networks for some basic level of security, something similar to what you see on most non-wireless networks.
Yes, a setup like this may mean the end of free network access. Well, that's too bad. Face it, folks. There's no free lunch anymore. You want access, you pay for it. It's as simple as that. And any access to the network is going to mean some basic level of security, even if its only requiring a login/account number and a password, which is exactly what you have today in non-WiFi networks.
Now, will this stop terrorism on the net? Unlikely. In this I totally agree that the government's thinking is flawed. But realize also that the government may not be thinking this if people who run the servers that are getting hacked WOULD SECURE THEIR GODDAMN BOXES. With the cutbacks in IT budgets, companies are hiring lower-paid, less qualified staff to run their servers and they're leaving their machines wide open. This is where the problem really needs to be addressed, and the government needs to be made aware of this fact. But knee-jerk reactions like "The government is enacting a police state!" and "This is a government conspiracy to take away our rights!" is just going to get you branded a crank at best and a radical at worst.
If ever there were an opportunity to demonstrate to the Powers That Be the inherent value of OSS/FS, this is it.
I agree with this statement, but this is not the complete answer. OSS systems can be just as insecure as proprietary if people do not set them up correctly. We must be careful not to suggest this as a magic-bullet, cure-all solution. The government must be made to know that there is NO quick-fix solution.
Not that this is a bad idea or anything, but after living in the country, I can tell you the majority of those calls are, in fact, the ISP's/Telco's fault. Most all dial-up boxes are purposely misconfigured by the ISP to ensure they drop the connection at the sound of a pin drop. I've been told so by the person at said ISP who has had an opportunity to view the config of these boxes.
Then I can tell you that either this this a case of one ISP that sucks, or you're listening to the rant of a disgruntled former employee, because this is bullshit.
Much of the discussion on this article seems centered around the fact that customer support sucks for most telcos/ISPs. Well, this may be true for the majority of/. readers who tend to be a lot more computer literate and intelligent, but sad to say this is not true for the rest of the unwashed masses that use the internet.
Most telcos and ISPs are BIG. Their user base is BIG. Therefore, their customer support staff has to be BIG. And the only way to achieve this is hire a bunch of people at low wage for long hours, give them bare minimum training, and stick them on the phones.
And for the most part, it works.
There's a reason why customer service asks dumbass questions like "Is it plugged in?" "Is the power switch on?" "Did you change the settings?" The reason is because most of the calls they get are from equally dumbass people that do these sorts of things. I have several friends that used to work at customer service and who have since moved on to bigger and better things. They could tell you stories about this stuff.
No, ISPs do not purposely screw up your service. They care about their customers, but only to a certain point. The bottom line is, if X% of the customers are happy, that's good enough for them, where X varies from company to company. The remaining 100-X% are seen as one or more of the following:
Cranks who just like to complain
Idiots too stupid to understand any of this stuff and probably won't be buying any more of our products anyway.
Non-windows users whom we don't officially support anyway, so who cares if we lose them.
The other half of the story (which has been remarked on already but bears repeating anyway) is litigation. So long as the customer service staff follow the script to the letter, the collective ass of the company is covered. Anything that deviates from that risks some fool deciding he can make a quick buck by dragging the company through the legal mud.
Want to improve customer service? Start by shooting all the lawyers.
And he was strip searched IN THE SUBWAY STATION? Dude, I hate to break the news, but those weren't cops that were doing the strip searching.
I should point out - as one who was born and raised in NYC - that you could conceivably hold a rip-roaring orgy right in the middle of the subway platform, and its likely that no one would notice. You learn to ignore a lot of strange shit when you take the NYC subway every day.
Which is why I'm VERY glad to live in Colorado now and not have to do it anymore.
Does anyone care about this? Surely anyone who is aware or interested in OSS would download this stuff themselves to get the latest version? Anyone who doesn't know how to do that is probably also incapable of installing these programs.
Did you read the article? Seriously, I'm not trying to troll here. The article states that they took a long, hard look at which apps to include. From the list that they picked, it appears that they chose ones that are easy to install. Remember that this is specifically targeted towards non-OSS users.
Case and point: try installing OpenOffice some time. I did it recently on my older RH 7.1 box after my wife got a brand new RH 8.0 laptop with it pre-installed so we'd have the same software on both machines. Took about 30 seconds to install. The experience was akin to installing a Windows app. If its this easy to install on Linux, I can't imagine it being much harder on Windows.
Naturally, if someone out there has had a negative experience, please correct me on this.
It's really too bad Mozilla won't be included on the CD.
It deserves as much press time and attention as possible.
I thought this at first also, but then I realized that Mozilla still has a little ways to go to be usable for the Windows masses. This is not a troll about Mozilla; I use it myself all the time on my Linux box. But I have spoken to a few people that I had try out Mozilla on Windows, and they all reported little quirks here and there that people like me might ignore, since I'm used to that sort of thing in some OSS products, but for a windows user used to more or less smooth running of their apps, it is unacceptable.
Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but Mozilla's newsgroup reader is atrocious (random hangs, no way to mark all read without clicking on article first, no yEnc decoding, etc etc etc) I just barely tolerate it myself.
Seems to me like there's gonna be a lot of unnecessary downloading of files you'll never use. How about just a floppy with the Program Browser on it, but links to download the file from the internet? Along with a comprehensive description of the program, users would only have to download what they want. And i don't think i'm being harsh in saying that anyone without an internet connection really needs to shape-up!
The reason this is a bad idea is because this is NOT how most Windows apps are shipped. Most Windows apps do not force you to go to a website to download the software, they come on an easy-to-install CD. The idea is to have users believe that OSS apps are just as easy to install and use as Windows apps. You don't want to point people to a URL to download, only to have it change, or to suddenly have what was once a stable production-ready release replaced with the next beta.
Also, recall that some of these apps are going to be GPL, which means they come with the source. Not everyone has broadband, and those source bundles can be HUGE.
Another prediction: Someone named Phil will come up with an even better free UNIX-like OS that he'll call Philix, and RMS will argue that it should be called GNU/Philix.
Oh, that and GNU/* joke variations intended to garner a cheap laugh (like this one) will finally die out.
FYI, almsot all "Grand" lego creations (homegrown and the 'pro' creations at the Legoland parks) use glue in their construction. The blocks themselves just don't provide enough support to hold a large model together.
In some models that's the reason (expecially large structures that are mostly shell with no interior details, such as replications of skyscapers). In other cases, the glue is used so the model will stand up to being moved from place to place, and so that it can withstand the elements or abuse by tourists, depending on where it is set up.
Using glue to hold parts together is not considered to be "cheating" in constructing a model if you're simply gluing them together in the same positions that they would normally go together without the glue.
As an aside, what consistently amazes me about LEGO products these days is quality. The parts are molded to a very high degree of accuracy to insure they will fit together, and the colors used in today's LEGO plastics take a very, very long time to fade. And in all the years that I have been collecting them, I have never had a set with a missing piece. I've had some with extra pieces, but never missing.
The only problem I have with LEGO sets today is that they're damned expensive. It's quality, all right, but you definitely pay for it.
The beauty of it was the flexibility of the Lego blocks. If something wasn't working out or didn't look right, we could tear it down and rebuild it.
Here's an interesting thought: Replace "LEGO blocks" with "open source software" and read the sentence again.
Might be interesting to do a statistical analysis on how many avid LEGO builders/collectors became code hackers and programmers later in life (put me down as one of those)
This is one of those topics where people who are wrong are not going to change.
You're absolutely right. It's horrible how brand names creep into our day-to-day lexicon. I'm with you, I'll have nothing to do with it.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to run some errands. I have to go xerox a few copies of some documents and buy some more tabasco sauce at the supermarket.
... the fact that this guy spent all this time putting this model together from detailed designs or the fact that the first thought that entered my head when I saw it was "Hey, I think I have enough LEGO pieces in the right colors to build that"
This is exactly what the majority of slashdotters have been screaming for. Go after the abusers rather than the technology. It'll be interesting to see what the comments on this thread will be like. Let this hypocrisy begin... now.
Let the correction of misguided statements like this begin... now
Show me the proof. Show me something beyond filenames and IP addresses, which is what both articles appear to be implying is the main source of evidence for billing these people. Filenames alone don't cut it. If I'm missing something else here in these articles, by all means, someone correct me, but I have not seen any definitive statements that anyone looked at the actual digital content.
I am not naive enough to think that NOBODY was pirating copyrighted material. But before you go convicting someone without a trial (which is what this organization is essentially doing by simply billling them). Screenshots of filenames on people's drives constitutes proof? Bullshit.
Here, how about this? I'll create a directory on my drive. Let's call it "/home/stwrtpj/al_qaeda_plans". Now let's copy some files in there from other directories, but lets give these files name like, oh, I don't know "plot_to_kill_george_w", "destroy_america", "smite_the_infidels", aaaaand "plans_to_blow_up_hoover_dam". Now let's take a screenshot of Gnome's file manager proudly displaying those filenames. So does this mean I'm a terrorist? Does this give anyone the right to pursue civil or criminal charges against me? No. "plot_to_kill_george_w" could contain a freaking grocery list for all you know.
So, no, Slashdotters are not going to be hypocrites for the most part. I for one am not. Show me the proof of what they are allegedly doing and I'll be the first to agree that some restitution is in order. Until then, all you have are filenames and supposition.
Anyway, my point is, eye candy is the first and most important rule for game makers these days, and it ought to be the other way around.
Good, I'm not the only one who thinks this is true, at least for games that are designed to be strategy games (arcade-style games are a whole different class of games).
When computer graphics started getting better, game quality when downhill. I actually liked playing games that had lousy graphics but an engaging plot and good gameplay. A perfect example of this was Return to Zork. Horribly rendered movies in that game, but I didn't care. I loved playing the game anyway and wished Infocom had stuck to pure text adventure.
In my view, I can name only two games that I have played that managed to give equal time to eye-candy graphics and game plot and did both extremely well: Myst and Riven. Never seen the feat duplicated. Riven has the extra distinction of being the only non-arcade game that captured my wife's attention and got her hooked on it too. Granted, I have not played many of this genre of games recently (I soured on them when none came up to the standards of Riven), so there may be some that have since come up to those standards, but I don't have the time to play every one of them and find out.
And if you really want to see nostalgia taken to extremes: I miss the old text adventures so much that I'm in the process of designing a Perl module to allow me to write new ones.
Yes, I'm living the past. The past was a lot more fun.
No, Adam, it's not because the young won't stand up for themselves, it's because dopes like "Kr3m3Puff" think that donations to special interest groups and meaningless letters to politicians suffice as "action."
Then offer an alternative. Don't make insulting comments about someone in the guise of an anonymous poster and then offer nothing as a means of an alternate course of action.
Or are you trying to state in a roundabout wait that all is lost and we don't have a prayer of changing things, so why bother?
Please do me a favor: If you're a US citizen, please stay home on the first Tuesday of every November. I can't bear the thought of someone like you helping decide who is in office.
The premise that something will work simply because huge wads of cash have been poured into it is not valid. There are many examples of products or services that people put serious money into goods or services that flopped because people still did not buy it, no matter how much advertising was done that stated you're a dork unless you have this cool thing. Anyone care to buy an Edsel? How about a Betamax? Or maybe you'd like a Sega Dreamcast?
Yes, when you state that there are gullible people in the marketplace, you are correct. But I am slowly seeing the DRM battles become more and more public. It is moving out the geek-only arena and into the public eye. Or in other words: when Granma finds she can't play her new CD on her PC while she's IM'ing her needlepoint club, that's when you start to hear about it.
Also consider the fact that technology is advancing too quickly for these companies to keep up. And before you say it, you cannot use as an argument that these companies control the technology, because history has shown time and time again that all you need is two or three geeks and a garage and you can start a new technology business to compete with the existing companies.
The only real danger is here is not from the businessed but from governments. We have to watch that governments do not try to legislate DRM. Fortunately, several of the more heinous attempts to do this have failed, but too many smaller ones have succeeded for comfort.
Solution for abandonware problem?
on
Software For Ransom
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
A had an interesting thought on this issue: I wonder if something like this would solve the "abandonware" problem.
What I refer to is in the realm of games (or at least this is where a most commonly hear the term used; it could really apply to any older, still useful software). There have been cases where a really neat game that still has play value (or at least nostalgia value) is no longer being produced, but attempts to distribute copies of the game result in lawsuits for copyright infringement from the company that authored the game, even though there is no revenue coming in from these games for them anymore.
If this ransomware (and, yes, it needs a better name) were in place, then after a certain amount of time the source code would be made public and people can enjoy the game again, even enhance it or modernize it, or derive something else from it.
Naturally, this system would have to have a lot of controls in place to prevent abuse. You don't want a company setting it up so you can't get the source before 20 years have passed or something like that. A good way to determine a money/time limit would be to perform some sort of anaylsis on past revenue and compute in what time do you make X% of your revenue on a software product, and the value of X would depend on what safety margin the company wants for itself.
Slashdot Mirror
Which version? The really good one that Harlan actually wrote or the Roddenberry-bastardized version that was actually filmed?
You were probably the 2,386th Slashdot reader to submit this story, considering that I first heard about this story via OT posts on other threads demanding that I TURN [MY] TV ON.
Grow up, and get a fucking life.
[This post pre-modded -1 Flamebait for your convenience.]
Ok, you're not a troll, but you're not correct, either.
This is indeed a sign of something, but not the fact that there is a conspiracy afoot to make us buy more DVDs or prevent fair use. It is more a sign that quality of manufactured products overall is degrading. Few things last as long as they did before anymore. It's not limited to DVDs. When you live in a disposable society like the US, long term quality is not a priority. There's a reason why many warranties cover only the first 90 days.
You have a point, but at the same time, that's real evidence of deterioration in his microscopic examination of the disk.
I would, however, be interested to see if his discs had the same problem in other players. Recently my wife and I tried to watch a DVD fresh out of the shrink wrap. In our three-year-old Mitsubishi DVD player, the picture starting getting "motion artifacts" after playing for about fifteen minutes. If I stopped the disc and started it again via the scene selection menu, it would run okay for another fifteen and then the same problem. But when we threw the same disc into the Playstation 2, it played perfectly, and other, older discs appear to play fine in the Mitsubishi player. Go figure.
... is what anyone should take this theory with.
I will openly admit that I did not RTFA, simply because the FA is too F long. I did go to the site and tried to skim the salient points, and I read the historical account (of an event I had never heard of, and I tend to consider myself something of a WW II history buff).
At first glance, this is shaping up to be a case of someone starting from a false premise and building an argument to support it. Several times people have attempted the old "wow this was way too powerful to have been a conventional explosion it must be nuclear" gambit.
I can easily cite an example of another historical event that resulted in a very large conventional explosion that mimicked atomic bomb effects. On December 6, 1917, a French cargo ship carrying a large amount of picric acid, TNT, benzole, and guncotton caught fire and exploded in Halifax harbor. The force of the explosion is estimated to have been in the neighborhood of 3 kilotons. It had all the effects of a atomic blast: fireball, mushroom cloud, shock wave, even a small tidal wave since the explosion was over water, and so on, all but the radiation. However, no one by any conceivable stretch of the imagination can claim that this was an atomic explosion.
In addition, it is my understanding that it took a great deal of time and expense to build first the test device that was exploded in the desert and then the two that were dropped over Japan. That represented the sum total of America's nuclear arsenal at the time. A great deal of care was taken with these devices. It seems very odd to me that there would be some sort of "accident" with a heretofore unknown weapon that America possessed at the time. Atomic weapons just do not simply "go off" unless the bomb were specifically armed, and there would be no reason to keep an armed atomic weapon in the hold of a ship.
As for purposely detonating a device to test its effects on a populated area? Please. I can only stretch my incredulity so far. Yes, the US government has done some terrible things in the past, but it would take a great deal of very compelling evidence to make me believe they would do something that blatant.
Anyone who has read the entire book from beginning to end, feel free to poke holes in my argument. My research into this theory was hampered by the fact that the site did not contain a concise summary of the theory itself. For someone with the time, perhaps this would be a good candidate for applying the Carl Sagan Baloney Detection Kit.
Here's a winning combo for you: 42 inch TV combined with digital cable. Now not only can you have MORE of the same crap (500+ channels), you can get it BIGGER, too.
I think TV sizes are going the same way as cable channels; more is not necessarily better.
You make some excellent points in your post that I think may be lost on some of the people that play EQ obsessively yet complain about it constantly.
Generally someone plays a multiplayer game for a reason, whether it is strictly for entertainment, or for social interaction, or both. If you really like the game and you're playing it for the "right reasons" (i.e. not simply to compete in a venue to achieve the title of the "best" which is essentially meaningless in the real world) then you are not going to whine about the problems that make it a less than perfect experience.
Case and point: Many moons ago, I used to play an online game called PernMUSH, which was based on Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series. The nice thing about the game was that there were no points or levels to attain or any real specific goal. It was pure roleplaying and social interaction, and that filled a particular need for me at the time. I stayed on long enough to attain the title of Benden Weyrleader (without going into a lengthy dissertation of the Pern universe, suffice it to say that, in-character at least, this is a rather high position).
The game had its shortcomings, some of which just came with the game and some with the position (some ugly politics among other leader-type players, a few real dumbass policy decisions from the game wizards, twinks who bitch and moan when their character is not selected to Impress a dragon, long-time players that send me tirades about who was selected to Impress, etc etc), but it didn't matter, because the game was FUN.
And, yes, the game was addictive as well. It was hard to leave when I did, but with an impending marriage and a move, there was simply no way I could devote the time that I needed to make it fun, even if I gave up the position I held. But it was addictive for the "right" reasons, at least in my mind.
I think the author of the original article really needs to reexamine his reasons for staying on the game. If the game really is that psychologically addictive, perhaps some professional help is needed. I recall a few people on PernMUSH that treated the game with the same sort of obsession that were a little scary to be around, even just online let alone in real life.
Okay, now I feel better about posting now that I found someone else sharing a similar view.
At the risk of inviting flames and down-mods, I believe we need to take a moment to see the government's side in all of this and understand where they are coming from. The cries of "police state!" I am hearing do not ring true after reading this article. The reason for this is that I did not see a single mention of the government's intent to regulate what information flows through the network.
Think about it for a moment. What is the government asking? They're asking WiFi networks for some basic level of security, something similar to what you see on most non-wireless networks.
Yes, a setup like this may mean the end of free network access. Well, that's too bad. Face it, folks. There's no free lunch anymore. You want access, you pay for it. It's as simple as that. And any access to the network is going to mean some basic level of security, even if its only requiring a login/account number and a password, which is exactly what you have today in non-WiFi networks.
Now, will this stop terrorism on the net? Unlikely. In this I totally agree that the government's thinking is flawed. But realize also that the government may not be thinking this if people who run the servers that are getting hacked WOULD SECURE THEIR GODDAMN BOXES. With the cutbacks in IT budgets, companies are hiring lower-paid, less qualified staff to run their servers and they're leaving their machines wide open. This is where the problem really needs to be addressed, and the government needs to be made aware of this fact. But knee-jerk reactions like "The government is enacting a police state!" and "This is a government conspiracy to take away our rights!" is just going to get you branded a crank at best and a radical at worst.
If ever there were an opportunity to demonstrate to the Powers That Be the inherent value of OSS/FS, this is it.
I agree with this statement, but this is not the complete answer. OSS systems can be just as insecure as proprietary if people do not set them up correctly. We must be careful not to suggest this as a magic-bullet, cure-all solution. The government must be made to know that there is NO quick-fix solution.
Then I can tell you that either this this a case of one ISP that sucks, or you're listening to the rant of a disgruntled former employee, because this is bullshit.
Much of the discussion on this article seems centered around the fact that customer support sucks for most telcos/ISPs. Well, this may be true for the majority of /. readers who tend to be a lot more computer literate and intelligent, but sad to say this is not true for the rest of the unwashed masses that use the internet.
Most telcos and ISPs are BIG. Their user base is BIG. Therefore, their customer support staff has to be BIG. And the only way to achieve this is hire a bunch of people at low wage for long hours, give them bare minimum training, and stick them on the phones.
And for the most part, it works.
There's a reason why customer service asks dumbass questions like "Is it plugged in?" "Is the power switch on?" "Did you change the settings?" The reason is because most of the calls they get are from equally dumbass people that do these sorts of things. I have several friends that used to work at customer service and who have since moved on to bigger and better things. They could tell you stories about this stuff.
No, ISPs do not purposely screw up your service. They care about their customers, but only to a certain point. The bottom line is, if X% of the customers are happy, that's good enough for them, where X varies from company to company. The remaining 100-X% are seen as one or more of the following:
The other half of the story (which has been remarked on already but bears repeating anyway) is litigation. So long as the customer service staff follow the script to the letter, the collective ass of the company is covered. Anything that deviates from that risks some fool deciding he can make a quick buck by dragging the company through the legal mud.
Want to improve customer service? Start by shooting all the lawyers.
I should point out - as one who was born and raised in NYC - that you could conceivably hold a rip-roaring orgy right in the middle of the subway platform, and its likely that no one would notice. You learn to ignore a lot of strange shit when you take the NYC subway every day.
Which is why I'm VERY glad to live in Colorado now and not have to do it anymore.
Does anyone care about this? Surely anyone who is aware or interested in OSS would download this stuff themselves to get the latest version? Anyone who doesn't know how to do that is probably also incapable of installing these programs.
Did you read the article? Seriously, I'm not trying to troll here. The article states that they took a long, hard look at which apps to include. From the list that they picked, it appears that they chose ones that are easy to install. Remember that this is specifically targeted towards non-OSS users.
Case and point: try installing OpenOffice some time. I did it recently on my older RH 7.1 box after my wife got a brand new RH 8.0 laptop with it pre-installed so we'd have the same software on both machines. Took about 30 seconds to install. The experience was akin to installing a Windows app. If its this easy to install on Linux, I can't imagine it being much harder on Windows.
Naturally, if someone out there has had a negative experience, please correct me on this.
It's really too bad Mozilla won't be included on the CD.
It deserves as much press time and attention as possible.
I thought this at first also, but then I realized that Mozilla still has a little ways to go to be usable for the Windows masses. This is not a troll about Mozilla; I use it myself all the time on my Linux box. But I have spoken to a few people that I had try out Mozilla on Windows, and they all reported little quirks here and there that people like me might ignore, since I'm used to that sort of thing in some OSS products, but for a windows user used to more or less smooth running of their apps, it is unacceptable.
Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but Mozilla's newsgroup reader is atrocious (random hangs, no way to mark all read without clicking on article first, no yEnc decoding, etc etc etc) I just barely tolerate it myself.
The reason this is a bad idea is because this is NOT how most Windows apps are shipped. Most Windows apps do not force you to go to a website to download the software, they come on an easy-to-install CD. The idea is to have users believe that OSS apps are just as easy to install and use as Windows apps. You don't want to point people to a URL to download, only to have it change, or to suddenly have what was once a stable production-ready release replaced with the next beta.
Also, recall that some of these apps are going to be GPL, which means they come with the source. Not everyone has broadband, and those source bundles can be HUGE.
Another prediction: Someone named Phil will come up with an even better free UNIX-like OS that he'll call Philix, and RMS will argue that it should be called GNU/Philix.
Oh, that and GNU/* joke variations intended to garner a cheap laugh (like this one) will finally die out.
But the "all your base are belong to us" variations will still be going.
In some models that's the reason (expecially large structures that are mostly shell with no interior details, such as replications of skyscapers). In other cases, the glue is used so the model will stand up to being moved from place to place, and so that it can withstand the elements or abuse by tourists, depending on where it is set up.
Using glue to hold parts together is not considered to be "cheating" in constructing a model if you're simply gluing them together in the same positions that they would normally go together without the glue.
As an aside, what consistently amazes me about LEGO products these days is quality. The parts are molded to a very high degree of accuracy to insure they will fit together, and the colors used in today's LEGO plastics take a very, very long time to fade. And in all the years that I have been collecting them, I have never had a set with a missing piece. I've had some with extra pieces, but never missing.
The only problem I have with LEGO sets today is that they're damned expensive. It's quality, all right, but you definitely pay for it.
Here's an interesting thought: Replace "LEGO blocks" with "open source software" and read the sentence again.
Might be interesting to do a statistical analysis on how many avid LEGO builders/collectors became code hackers and programmers later in life (put me down as one of those)
Why bother writing an OS from scratch when there are so many other fine ones out there?
You're absolutely right. It's horrible how brand names creep into our day-to-day lexicon. I'm with you, I'll have nothing to do with it.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to run some errands. I have to go xerox a few copies of some documents and buy some more tabasco sauce at the supermarket.
... the fact that this guy spent all this time putting this model together from detailed designs or the fact that the first thought that entered my head when I saw it was "Hey, I think I have enough LEGO pieces in the right colors to build that"
Let the correction of misguided statements like this begin ... now
Show me the proof. Show me something beyond filenames and IP addresses, which is what both articles appear to be implying is the main source of evidence for billing these people. Filenames alone don't cut it. If I'm missing something else here in these articles, by all means, someone correct me, but I have not seen any definitive statements that anyone looked at the actual digital content.
I am not naive enough to think that NOBODY was pirating copyrighted material. But before you go convicting someone without a trial (which is what this organization is essentially doing by simply billling them). Screenshots of filenames on people's drives constitutes proof? Bullshit.
Here, how about this? I'll create a directory on my drive. Let's call it "/home/stwrtpj/al_qaeda_plans". Now let's copy some files in there from other directories, but lets give these files name like, oh, I don't know "plot_to_kill_george_w", "destroy_america", "smite_the_infidels", aaaaand "plans_to_blow_up_hoover_dam". Now let's take a screenshot of Gnome's file manager proudly displaying those filenames. So does this mean I'm a terrorist? Does this give anyone the right to pursue civil or criminal charges against me? No. "plot_to_kill_george_w" could contain a freaking grocery list for all you know.
So, no, Slashdotters are not going to be hypocrites for the most part. I for one am not. Show me the proof of what they are allegedly doing and I'll be the first to agree that some restitution is in order. Until then, all you have are filenames and supposition.
Good, I'm not the only one who thinks this is true, at least for games that are designed to be strategy games (arcade-style games are a whole different class of games).
When computer graphics started getting better, game quality when downhill. I actually liked playing games that had lousy graphics but an engaging plot and good gameplay. A perfect example of this was Return to Zork. Horribly rendered movies in that game, but I didn't care. I loved playing the game anyway and wished Infocom had stuck to pure text adventure.
In my view, I can name only two games that I have played that managed to give equal time to eye-candy graphics and game plot and did both extremely well: Myst and Riven. Never seen the feat duplicated. Riven has the extra distinction of being the only non-arcade game that captured my wife's attention and got her hooked on it too. Granted, I have not played many of this genre of games recently (I soured on them when none came up to the standards of Riven), so there may be some that have since come up to those standards, but I don't have the time to play every one of them and find out.
And if you really want to see nostalgia taken to extremes: I miss the old text adventures so much that I'm in the process of designing a Perl module to allow me to write new ones.
Yes, I'm living the past. The past was a lot more fun.
Then offer an alternative. Don't make insulting comments about someone in the guise of an anonymous poster and then offer nothing as a means of an alternate course of action.
Or are you trying to state in a roundabout wait that all is lost and we don't have a prayer of changing things, so why bother?
Please do me a favor: If you're a US citizen, please stay home on the first Tuesday of every November. I can't bear the thought of someone like you helping decide who is in office.
The premise that something will work simply because huge wads of cash have been poured into it is not valid. There are many examples of products or services that people put serious money into goods or services that flopped because people still did not buy it, no matter how much advertising was done that stated you're a dork unless you have this cool thing. Anyone care to buy an Edsel? How about a Betamax? Or maybe you'd like a Sega Dreamcast?
Yes, when you state that there are gullible people in the marketplace, you are correct. But I am slowly seeing the DRM battles become more and more public. It is moving out the geek-only arena and into the public eye. Or in other words: when Granma finds she can't play her new CD on her PC while she's IM'ing her needlepoint club, that's when you start to hear about it.
Also consider the fact that technology is advancing too quickly for these companies to keep up. And before you say it, you cannot use as an argument that these companies control the technology, because history has shown time and time again that all you need is two or three geeks and a garage and you can start a new technology business to compete with the existing companies.
The only real danger is here is not from the businessed but from governments. We have to watch that governments do not try to legislate DRM. Fortunately, several of the more heinous attempts to do this have failed, but too many smaller ones have succeeded for comfort.
A had an interesting thought on this issue: I wonder if something like this would solve the "abandonware" problem.
What I refer to is in the realm of games (or at least this is where a most commonly hear the term used; it could really apply to any older, still useful software). There have been cases where a really neat game that still has play value (or at least nostalgia value) is no longer being produced, but attempts to distribute copies of the game result in lawsuits for copyright infringement from the company that authored the game, even though there is no revenue coming in from these games for them anymore.
If this ransomware (and, yes, it needs a better name) were in place, then after a certain amount of time the source code would be made public and people can enjoy the game again, even enhance it or modernize it, or derive something else from it.
Naturally, this system would have to have a lot of controls in place to prevent abuse. You don't want a company setting it up so you can't get the source before 20 years have passed or something like that. A good way to determine a money/time limit would be to perform some sort of anaylsis on past revenue and compute in what time do you make X% of your revenue on a software product, and the value of X would depend on what safety margin the company wants for itself.