Their service is real and works fine. I have an account: greengeek AT spymac DOT com. However, the problem with their service is due to the fact that they were once a very small mac-users forum/service. When Google made their announcement, spymac gained notoriety for having a 1 gig email service up and running already. Their subscriber base jumped from They got/.ed and farked, as well as having articles in several mac sites and I think zdnet or cnet too. Also, most of the services of the site are still very new, some are still in "beta" and are lacking features. They are deserving of pity for the raping of their bandwidth and servers, but they probably should have expected it too.
Someone is sniffing passwords off the network (telnet or http sessions probably) or cracking badly chosen ones, and then using privilage escalation vulnerabilities that have been known and patched for quite a while. However, this kind of thing can work at an academic environment or other large network, since it is often not possible to upgrade the kernel on every single system without proper testing. Still, come things can be done to prevent this kind of attack.
Don't send passwords in plain text on the network, and enforce proper password policies (8 char minimum, numbers, letters and symbols etc).
I agree that the alternatives (especially Linux) to Windows are not always an option for the average user. However, that doesn't mean people don't want to see changes in how their operating system works. Given a good enough reason, people will adapt, or demand adaptation from the OS they are comfortable with.
However, the bigger problem is not with the OS itself, but the users who refuse to keep their systems even moderately secure. My point in my earlier post was not so much that Windows has problems that need to be fixed, but that the average Windows user needs to do one of two things. 1: Learn to be more careful about viruses, and be proactive in maintaining a reasonably secured system. or 2: Demand better security from their OS in the first place, or choose an alternative.
The "prankster" angle is true. Although based on the number of trojans and worms used to create spam relays, it would seem that some of the virus creators out there do intend to be more than a minor nuisance, and would probably be prosecuted if caught. I seem to remember some of the recent spam relay worms were somehow linked to Organized Crime.
The thing that has been getting to me lately is the non-stop barrage of new viruses and worms these past few months. Come on the 19th variant of Netsky? How many is it going to take before people get a clue and protect their computers responsibly, or demand software and operating systems that don't leave the barn doors wide open?
My feeling is that this won't stop until the virus creators actually start causing damage to individual user's computers, not just the bandwidth hogging and (D)DOS variety of the current crop. When getting hit with one of these bugs means that Joe Luser's stuff gets deleted and his system won't let him logon, you can be sure he will raise a ruckus wherever he can. Turning his box into a spam relay or a DDOS zombie doesn't cause nearly as much visible damage to the computer, other than it being a bit slower to use, another condition with which the average computer user has become too comfortable.
The nagging question in my mind isn't "When will this happen?", it's "Why hasn't it happened yet?" Or possibly, "Will it ever happen?" And that last one makes me very sad.
You said it. I've been working as an in-store vendor rep in the networking aisle at CUSA in Norwalk, CT. On the rare occasions when the store employees venture over there (They really only care about big sales. PCs, TVs ipods etc.), half of what they spout out is utter garbage. Heard one of them tell somebody exactly the same thing, except in relation to 802.11b vs 802.11g. On a residential DSL connection, it doesn't make a difference. I try to keep that kind of thing from happening as much as I can.
You forgot step five, as many others have mentioned on here:
Step five: Accept contract from former employer to fix all the mistakes the replacement makes, at 2x original salary.
MS tried something similar, but ended up with a poor execution. It was pretty much a remote display for a desktop that used the XP Pro Remote Desktop function. Due to their insistance that you need a license for each person using a machine, you could only use the tablet display or a regular monitor, but not both at the same time. Also, you couldn't do anything involving video or animation over it because the remote desktop protocol couldn't keep up.
The only way to make something like this work is to use the "server" machine for storage and extra cpu power, but most everything would still have to run locally on the tablet display in order to make it usable for real computing. It wouldn't need a P4, but something strong enough for basic use, geared for power efficiency (Transmeta or VIA chip maybe). It would save power/weight by not having a built-in HD or other drives. Some usb ports and SD/CF slots would cover storage, and the base system could load off of internal flash.
Well, whose going to build it first? It's basically a Network Computer like Sun always envisioned, but portable. Why hasn't it happened yet?
Granted that's mostly for big stores (FYE etc). There aren't very many smaller shops that have reasonable pricing near me. FYE really goes for the jugular with their pricing. $14.99 is a sale price there.
I dont seem to get this, not sure what price CD's are in the States but Im guessing they probably average out at about 10-15 dollars, per album.
At most record stores it tends to be more like $15-$20 when they aren't on sale.
So why pay 99cents per track , when if you want the whole album 12-15 tracks, you could end up paying more for a lossy format audio track that you might accidentally delete(unless you habitually burn CD's)
The whole albums are always $9.99, so an album with more than 10 tracks is cheaper. They also sell pre-paid cards that give you extra free tracks, making it less than $.99 each.
Most of the stuff you can find on Lunchbox or Magnatune are obscure, since they deal with all independent artists. Quality wise, Magnatune wins, since they offer direct ripped.wavs of the stuff they sell. FLAC would save a bit of bandwidth in that case, but it's a start.
Could be nice for various things that currently use a regular microphone, but could beneft from more privacy (people around you can't hear what you are saying) and outside noise reduction (won't pick up noise from your surroundings). If voice rec technology improves a bit, this could be a great way to make a truly useful smartphone. Simple input method that eliminates the need for thumb-cramping "keyboards", would work well in tandem with pen input and handles the phone mic as well.
Could also make for some fun ventriloquist-style gags.
Amazingly, this isn't even as heavy of a dispute as it sounds, according to the article, the entire lawsuit depends on when the "season" starts. MLB has been putting up audio streams of exhibition games in WMA format only, while Real is claiming they have to put up RM streams too. The contract states that they must use RM during the season. Apparently it's time for the courts to break out their dictionaries and grammar books. Does the "season" include the "pre-season," which technically is before, and not part of, the official "season"? Same with playoffs and the World Series?
Even better, Real is desperate to hold on to this contract, since apparently the old contract (which granted exclusivity to Real) was costing them more than it brought in. Maybe they'll finally create a profitable business model? Hey there's a good one, Real posts a profit while streaming a Red Sox World Series victory...
I have the opposite problem. From using Linux on my box for so long, I seem to have built up an "Anti-Windows" static charge. When enough has built up, the next windows machine I go to use will crash as soon as I touch it. All the more reason to avoid it even more.
The average consumer purchasing a cheap $500 Dell or E-machine does not have as great a choice as it seems. Only Walmart has been offering cheap PCs without Windows lately, whereas everything from the low end Compaq/HP, Dell and Gateway machines that are more popular have one and only one OS installed on them.
"Buy a Mac," while it is a good solution for some people, doesn't work as well for those on a budget. Pirating windows is not a legally friendly option, and it wouldn't save Joe Sixpack any money if he's buying a new Dell anyway. As much as I think Linux should become more widespread, I'm not sure if the masses are quite ready for it yet.
The issue is not that Windows costs money, but that there is no choice in the matter for the average user when they buy a new PC.
So far it's only a trial run. They were debating about what service to try, even had machines in the big lab in the library with iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody etc installed so students could test them out. Supopsedly, they were going to pick one and offer some sort of free trial to the students, then if it caught on, the students would have to pay. Since it's a subscription charge for the basic service, I assume it's going to be thrown in with the ResLife charges, which sucks for anyone who doesn't want to use it. I have a feeling no one is going to drop P2P or Windows File Sharing over the network unless the ITS people actively start blocking that stuff.
UR did start capping uploads across the board, except for a few specific things. You can connect to internal campus services just fine, but any connection to something outside of campus is limited to 10KB/s unless the source of the connection is one of the UR servers.
Case in point, when I was home on break, I would ssh into my machine to use it instead of the 6 year old win98 machine my parents have. If I connected directly to my machine, the connection was capped. If I first connected to either the mail or web servers, then forwarded the connection to my machine, I had all the bandwidth I could ask for.
Actually, User-Stupidity-And-Knowledge-Enhancment Patch, V2.0 has been deprecated, in favor of repeated use of Cluestick v2x4. Please update your toolbox accordingly.
I have the older version, the SL-5000D. Great little machine, once you dump the original Sharp supplied rom image anyway. I have both CF and SD cards for it and a wireless card for the CF slot. But unless they are using a top notch chipset for the SD/MMC cards that they can provide a Linux driver for, CF cards will be much faster for IO. Transfering data to CF over network or USB link to my Zaurus has almost no delay, whereas writing to the SD card can't keep up with the transfer speed. Makes putting music on it for plane trips a bit of a pain. The SD card is great for storing programs and personal data on though, since the write speed won't come into play very often, and it alleviates the small built-in RAM size on the 5000D model.
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Their service is real and works fine. I have an account: greengeek AT spymac DOT com. However, the problem with their service is due to the fact that they were once a very small mac-users forum/service. When Google made their announcement, spymac gained notoriety for having a 1 gig email service up and running already. Their subscriber base jumped from They got /.ed and farked, as well as having articles in several mac sites and I think zdnet or cnet too. Also, most of the services of the site are still very new, some are still in "beta" and are lacking features. They are deserving of pity for the raping of their bandwidth and servers, but they probably should have expected it too.
Don't send passwords in plain text on the network, and enforce proper password policies (8 char minimum, numbers, letters and symbols etc).
However, the bigger problem is not with the OS itself, but the users who refuse to keep their systems even moderately secure. My point in my earlier post was not so much that Windows has problems that need to be fixed, but that the average Windows user needs to do one of two things. 1: Learn to be more careful about viruses, and be proactive in maintaining a reasonably secured system. or 2: Demand better security from their OS in the first place, or choose an alternative.
The "prankster" angle is true. Although based on the number of trojans and worms used to create spam relays, it would seem that some of the virus creators out there do intend to be more than a minor nuisance, and would probably be prosecuted if caught. I seem to remember some of the recent spam relay worms were somehow linked to Organized Crime.
My feeling is that this won't stop until the virus creators actually start causing damage to individual user's computers, not just the bandwidth hogging and (D)DOS variety of the current crop. When getting hit with one of these bugs means that Joe Luser's stuff gets deleted and his system won't let him logon, you can be sure he will raise a ruckus wherever he can. Turning his box into a spam relay or a DDOS zombie doesn't cause nearly as much visible damage to the computer, other than it being a bit slower to use, another condition with which the average computer user has become too comfortable.
The nagging question in my mind isn't "When will this happen?", it's "Why hasn't it happened yet?" Or possibly, "Will it ever happen?" And that last one makes me very sad.
You said it. I've been working as an in-store vendor rep in the networking aisle at CUSA in Norwalk, CT. On the rare occasions when the store employees venture over there (They really only care about big sales. PCs, TVs ipods etc.), half of what they spout out is utter garbage. Heard one of them tell somebody exactly the same thing, except in relation to 802.11b vs 802.11g. On a residential DSL connection, it doesn't make a difference. I try to keep that kind of thing from happening as much as I can.
If you don't like QT, try make gconfig, which uses GTK instead of QT. Also, reading the README file is a good way to find this kind of thing out.
You forgot step five, as many others have mentioned on here:
Step five: Accept contract from former employer to fix all the mistakes the replacement makes, at 2x original salary.
Yeah, that's one version of the MS remote display. A few companies made them, but few, if any, people bought into the concept due to the limitations.
The only way to make something like this work is to use the "server" machine for storage and extra cpu power, but most everything would still have to run locally on the tablet display in order to make it usable for real computing. It wouldn't need a P4, but something strong enough for basic use, geared for power efficiency (Transmeta or VIA chip maybe). It would save power/weight by not having a built-in HD or other drives. Some usb ports and SD/CF slots would cover storage, and the base system could load off of internal flash.
Well, whose going to build it first? It's basically a Network Computer like Sun always envisioned, but portable. Why hasn't it happened yet?
Granted that's mostly for big stores (FYE etc). There aren't very many smaller shops that have reasonable pricing near me. FYE really goes for the jugular with their pricing. $14.99 is a sale price there.
Ahh, cool. Haven't been there in a while. When they started it was just MP3 or WAV.
At most record stores it tends to be more like $15-$20 when they aren't on sale.
So why pay 99cents per track , when if you want the whole album 12-15 tracks, you could end up paying more for a lossy format audio track that you might accidentally delete(unless you habitually burn CD's)
The whole albums are always $9.99, so an album with more than 10 tracks is cheaper. They also sell pre-paid cards that give you extra free tracks, making it less than $.99 each.
Most of the stuff you can find on Lunchbox or Magnatune are obscure, since they deal with all independent artists. Quality wise, Magnatune wins, since they offer direct ripped .wavs of the stuff they sell. FLAC would save a bit of bandwidth in that case, but it's a start.
Could also make for some fun ventriloquist-style gags.
Even better, Real is desperate to hold on to this contract, since apparently the old contract (which granted exclusivity to Real) was costing them more than it brought in. Maybe they'll finally create a profitable business model? Hey there's a good one, Real posts a profit while streaming a Red Sox World Series victory...
I have the opposite problem. From using Linux on my box for so long, I seem to have built up an "Anti-Windows" static charge. When enough has built up, the next windows machine I go to use will crash as soon as I touch it. All the more reason to avoid it even more.
No no no. Linux is most certainly "user-friendly." But it's very picky about who its friends are.
"Buy a Mac," while it is a good solution for some people, doesn't work as well for those on a budget. Pirating windows is not a legally friendly option, and it wouldn't save Joe Sixpack any money if he's buying a new Dell anyway. As much as I think Linux should become more widespread, I'm not sure if the masses are quite ready for it yet.
The issue is not that Windows costs money, but that there is no choice in the matter for the average user when they buy a new PC.
So far it's only a trial run. They were debating about what service to try, even had machines in the big lab in the library with iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody etc installed so students could test them out. Supopsedly, they were going to pick one and offer some sort of free trial to the students, then if it caught on, the students would have to pay. Since it's a subscription charge for the basic service, I assume it's going to be thrown in with the ResLife charges, which sucks for anyone who doesn't want to use it. I have a feeling no one is going to drop P2P or Windows File Sharing over the network unless the ITS people actively start blocking that stuff.
Case in point, when I was home on break, I would ssh into my machine to use it instead of the 6 year old win98 machine my parents have. If I connected directly to my machine, the connection was capped. If I first connected to either the mail or web servers, then forwarded the connection to my machine, I had all the bandwidth I could ask for.
--UR student, currently on leave.
Actually, User-Stupidity-And-Knowledge-Enhancment Patch, V2.0 has been deprecated, in favor of repeated use of Cluestick v2x4. Please update your toolbox accordingly.
Maybe this year I won't get one of those phone calls... "How do I make the letters bigger in the Typewriter program again?
Not really, we've already had TV for years.
I have the older version, the SL-5000D. Great little machine, once you dump the original Sharp supplied rom image anyway. I have both CF and SD cards for it and a wireless card for the CF slot. But unless they are using a top notch chipset for the SD/MMC cards that they can provide a Linux driver for, CF cards will be much faster for IO. Transfering data to CF over network or USB link to my Zaurus has almost no delay, whereas writing to the SD card can't keep up with the transfer speed. Makes putting music on it for plane trips a bit of a pain. The SD card is great for storing programs and personal data on though, since the write speed won't come into play very often, and it alleviates the small built-in RAM size on the 5000D model.
I want my Tomeato.