From the article:
Medical schools teach a kind of "best guess" or "average man" method: Ask a patient about his personal and family history, perform a physical examination, then combine the data into a list of possible reasons for the problem (this list is called a differential diagnosis). Treat the patient for the most statistically probable of those reasons and, in case you are wrong, also treat for the most serious possibility. For most patients, the most likely guess is right. But for a significant minority, it turns out to be wrong.
Let's say a computer did the same thing. It's hard to argue that anything else should be done. There are millions of diseases, so it's good to have a computer remember all of them. Unfortunatly for the computer, those diseases all exibit the same few symptoms. Uh oh, the computer now has to decide which disease really is before it or be forced to print out more information than the doctor can read, store or act on as the treatments may be diametrically opposed. The process, if perfect, may diverge because it is both over and underdetermined (imagine that!). Perfect practice is impossible and we should not expect machines to save us, despite the fondest wishes of accountants and insurance agents.
Doctors don't kill patients, disseases kill patients. Doctors do what they can to not harm and provide all aid and comfort. How many people have you comforted today?
Distractions can kill. Doctors will adopt computers as they become more practical, ie non M$ impared, better form factors and I/O, etc, so they can spend their time thinking about medicine NOT a silly program. Until then, expect doctors to rightly refuse to adopt the impractical to achieve the impossible. The results will be greater harm. Are you willing to be responsible for that harm? Are you ready to stand up to the entire medical community and force change on them that they refuse as less than best practice? If not, shut up with that "crimminally irresponsible" bullshit.
Time to swat some BS I see posted above and around. Thank you FortKnox, for modding this nonsense up so that I can jump up and down on it and "The Evil Troll King" too.
Bravery is required to do anything new or different. The person doing the new thing generally has to overcome resistance by promissing the new thing will be better. When things go wrong, and they always do, the brave soul will lose face.
It is agrivating to see so many troll posts, "It's hard cuz WalMart is stoopid." I don't know anyone who would equate intimate knowledge of the workings of any distro with inteligence. Well, I know a few NT users who were convinced that they were clever for understanding such things.
Ah yes, I don't want to forget the evil troll king, who thinks the box would be vandalized just like his poor old 486s running win3.1 were. Nope, real user accounts make that difficult. M$ flaws, designed to remove rights from users, are not present in reasonable OS. Those flaws are still present and that's why the average M$ computer display at places like CompuUSA is little more than a looped advert. It might as well be hooked up to a set top DVD because it does little to demonstrate any of the computer's ability. A real M$ demo, of course, would not be nearly as exciting as it would inevitably end in the famous BSoD.
You do make a point, however. If a manager can't setup demos, then the whole idea of selling Linux in the stores is flawed and will ultimately fail. Do managers at computer retail stores actually set up demos anymore? I imagine the "demo" comes preconfigured, as M$ has decided that managers can't do that for themselves. Your logic then applies to M$ as well.
If a manager can't setup demos, then the whole idea of selling Microsoft Software in the stores is flawed and will ultimately fail.
And probably an even larger number of happier customers who suddenly notice that they have bandwidth again.
What new customers? I tell people that cable is not worth it, and have undone all sorts of silly adverts that way. As long as the cable people continue to suck, I'm going to tell people that they suck and NOT recomend it to anyone. Not many people think an extra $40/month in ISP charges are justified by an ever suckier web experience. "Pirates" want this? Why bother? You can download all the $20 albums you want over a $20/month dial up. Cable modems really only apeal to people that want to run real servers, and the stable ones don't really care about Kazaa. At some point, their customer base is going to contract. They will then go bankrupt and the equipment will be taken over by someone competent.
So they cable fools invite their end faster than ever.
The article was very disturbing and intentionaly so. The lead character was portrayed as a friendless loser living in his mom's house who did horrible things to others in a vain attempt to make friends. It's a clasic loser gets used by bad guys and goes to jail story.
First let's examine some of the extreemist language used. How about arson? "If you like torching houses for fun, you don't gain anything from torching somebody's house," he said. "But that homeowner will certainly suffer a material loss." This was used to justify 3 to 4 year jail terms. "Pirates," must be everyone's favorite. Somehow, I just can't see the techie with a sword or even a " ringleader of an international gang of software pirates that deprived companies of millions of dollars through the illegal distribution of copyrighted software, games and movies." He was delclared worse than "petty criminals and warring gangs". The launguage seems to have worked as he says, "I felt like someone who had just murdered 50 people," Don't forget the criminal code of conduct secretive and vicious even to each other, "warez groups themselves tend to operate in secrecy, relying on encryption technologies, disguised Internet Protocol addresses and invite-only chat channels. And their world is highly structured, with a strict hierarchy and rules." Is that violent and sinister enough a description for a group of people who, horors, copy DVDs?
Did this poor sap really "...have a worldwide impact of at least tens of millions of dollars,
Or is the BSA, which routinely raids public schools to extort millions of dollars a larger threat to society? The NYT cluelessly quotes the BSA for dramatic effect: " The copies "become the raw materials that others use for commercial piracy," said Bob Kruger, president of the Business Software Alliance, an industry group that asserts that software piracy costs $10.1 billion a year in lost sales worldwide." Rat shit, extra coppies of movies are typically seen in the same places that made the "official" versions of popular culture. They come encrypted, just like the "official" ones two. In fact, they are often identical, wonder where they come from? Must be some dude living in his mom's house and all his evil friends.
They are then portrayed as hurting the little folks worst of all,
Vold Solutions, was horrified to discover that DrinkorDie had released a free version of a specialized engineering program that his company sold for $9,500. "That was very scary," Mr. Vold said. "They do not understand the impact of copyright infringement, especially on the smaller companies."
Incredible! Show me an engineering firm that would use unlicensed software and I'll show you a firm that won't buy software! But here is that "pirate" stealing the bread from the mouths of Vold's children. Show me one of the world's five music publishing firms that is NOT making a killing despite killing Napster and seeing their sales fall back to earth. Show me one movie company that has not had it's "best year ever."
OK that's enough picking that thing apart, it's depressing. It bothered me when I read it yesterday, but the more you look at it the dumber it is and the more depressing the stupidity is. People really believe that kind of shit. They absorb it without thinking. I'll bet the author even thought it was true.
The article tells us the bad guys got away and other bad dupes quickly took up the missing "pirate" slack. I'm afraid that the bad guys are the ones did get away, and get richer everytime you turn on the radio, watch a movie, eat the crap food they advertise (that's why we are obese), and the shoddy merchandise that's product placed and subliminally linked to your deepest desires. They are the ones creating an unhealthy need to consume more than we need without ever achieving more than momentary pleasure. The Warez movement is a direct result of a "consumer" society. It's what they really want us to be, slaves to garbage, willing to sacrifice our time and...
I'm just dying at this silly page, where the sure source dopes think people want to steal their "photos and art". Who realy wants to publish pictures of Todd, or the cubes he commands or of their building?!
Have some respect, now, and don't be a pirate for the mighty security firm might come get you. Tee-heee! Oh wait, I'm not a news organization and I don't have their permision to download, or did I because they sent it to me when I requested without asking who I was? Did I violate their silly text telling me that the pictures are " for exclusive use by members of the news media. These items may not be downloaded or reproduced by other individuals or organizations without the express permission of SureSource."? Or did they realy mean that I should, "Please click on the desired image to enlarge & download." Don't forget to check out the purple warehouse here, a DEEEEEEEEEEEP DEVILISH LINK. Please click to enlarge! Please click to Download! Wheeee! Wizards of Web! Untitled Document Creators? What awsome d000ds they are! Function MM_JumpMenu seems to come from Dreamweaver, but I doubt that firm wants to take credit. Note, when making simple static pages use a text editor or something simple like Bluefish. When you want to make complicated Flash stuff, please don't. When you use a big giant flash making editor to design simple static pages, sigh, I give up. It was funny at first but the more I look into it the dumber it gets. I'm embarased for them.
What? M$ QC? Judging the process by the stability of the w2k box I'm forced to use at work, "defects" are ignored, and everyone keeps on keeping on. If you think otherwise, you might have believed that the "uber" patch derived from a month of seminars and group hugs would make Windoze secure.
I can imagine the circus atmosphere when the blame-shifting and the search for the guilty goes into high gear.
Steve Balmer says, "It's not a bug, it's a feature, you just don't know how to use it." Now that's the kind of blame shifting I'm used to!
Who could believe that people who spend their time making a free operating system, utilities, programs and all the trimmings would waste their time flaming people? Yet it's easy to belive that a ruthlessly competitive comercial software entity known for such behavior and proven guilty of anti competitive behavior would waste resources on this as part of their advertising budget.
Who here has not been very patient with many newbies and others filled with irrational M$ BS? It only took two knowledgeable people and many manuals to enlighten me to the point of M$ independence. I've never personally met any kind of "flamer" though I've run into plenty of them online.
Read The Fine Manual, however, is very good advice. I spend plenty of time answering questions and helping but at some point everyone has to help themselves. If they have gotten to that point in their use of general computing devices, they would be up to their eyeballs in useless M$ manuals if that was their OS of choice, so I feel little guilt in pointing them to a good book.
It's true that fusion irradiates its containment. A profesor of mine did calculations on cooling mantles and found that the proposed plant would produce as much high level radioactive waste as the average fision plant over its life. The plant itself would be the waste!
Now as for the 90% energy cut without pain. Ignorance is not strength. Most electric usage is industrial. Try cutting it off and see how fast the entire economy falls on it's ass, and you go hungry! SUV's use NO electricity, execpt in their production. The Japanese are showing us how to reduce that by building vehicles that do not die in five years. All the 3,000 square foot houses in the country don't consume that much more electricity than so many greenhouse condos in the sky. They also produce a much nicer micro climate than the blasted steel, glass and concrete inner city that is the alternative. Paris is well built, Manhatan and the cities on the coast of Yemen Manhatan resembles are not. American suburbs are not so bad, though most need more unified road planning.
There is NO reason to cut back on cheaply produced Nuclear power, and every reason to make more of it. Air conditioning, refidgerators, modern medicine and laundry equipment are all tremendous quality of life enhancers. Nuclear does it without emmisions that are changing the whole planet's heat balance with the sun and stars. We need MORE not LESS. Only those who want to gain power over their neighbors would create an artificial scarcity. The only use for such power is further abuse. Get lost. You will not degrade my standard of living. I will make such improvements available to others.
Do you think you should be able to bring some friends to share your plate to an all you can eat restaurant? Or that you should be able to take home as much leftovers that you can carry?
First, I don't eat gargage like that.
Second, I don't expect people to hang out in my bushes surfing the net where I live. -splunch- That's the sound of your analogy falling on its face. I especially don't think they will hang out in my bushes, to anonymously plan criminal acts. Are you another member of the department of "Abuse and Security"?
I want to share my bandwith with myself, asshole. I'm not a thief.
Cable Companies that Screw Technically Oriented Cusotmers Will Watch Subscriptions Go Down the Drain. Stupid is what Stupid does. I already tell most people that cable modems are not worth the money, that all you need for email and simple web browsing is a dial up modem. These fools think they have a monopoly, but what they really have is a temporary advantage. Technological progress will eventually circumvent these losers and leave them with their obsolete entertainment delivery systems. Cell phones offer a second line to all, right now. Soon wireless networks will play out and deliver beter and freer internet than these stupid cable operators can imagine.
QNaturally, if you are a bit capable with C/C++, you could freely recompile the OSS project and remove the ad splash screen - but how ethical that would be?
A by mblase: Entirely ethical, I should think. You gave me the code and the open-source license to modify it as I see fit, didn't you?
Who said it was ethical to gimp up other people's free code with adverts to begin with?
My wife, who pays all my bills, already has a passport account thanks to hotmail. I'd give her a real mail account on my own computers, but Cox blocks port 25 so I can't run a mail server. She loves comercial crap sites that bomb her with adverts, cookies and other obnoxious junk, and complains enough when one of them won't display something "properly." I can't wait until she can't log into the bank anymore and has to go back to balancing the books by hand.
That's all in the future, however. I'm sure M$ will make the transition to where nothing but IE TX (Total eXtortion). We don't buy much over the web now, so we won't miss much when a few stupid sites decide they don't want our money. Eventually, as Visa put's all it's weight behind this and closes down other competitors it will start to feel painful. Then it will hurt to have the company site say, IE only. Our bank's site is already M$ encumbered, but still works with Netscape 4.7. Soon enough, I'm sure that won't be the case. All M$ has to do is flick a switch in server crap they sell my bank. At that time, our big fat national bank credit card company might use this as an advantage to destroy our local bank and try to get us to direct deposit my pay check to them, as they might not have that switch flipped.
All maner of convinence will be lost, but I will not trust a M$ computer on my network much less let it manipulate my money.
Why upgrade? Why force users to learn a new desktop for no extra benefit? Why junk perfectly good hardware to get more powerful stuff just to run XP? What, in short, is the point?
Why would someone with nine billion dollars work so hard? It's because some people prefer power to comfort. It's not to do the greatest good for the greatest number. It's purely for the sake of power, and only by persuing power for it's own sake can M$ hope to retain it. In the end, it's all the same.
You know how, but you don't know why. It's because:
SLAVERY IS FREEDOM WAR IS PEACE IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
What I (and I am sure many others also) need to move to Linux is an inexspensive and 100% compatible Windows API Layer for Linux, then I could slowly move my clients to Linux.
All the things tying you to win98 and DOS indicate that M$ has yet to provide what you seek. The transition from win3.1 to 95 was evil, but most things worked some better. The transition from 95 to 98 lost more of the 3.1 stuff and the release to 98B was a nightmare. The transition from 98 to ME or any of the other lesser selling junk was an exercise to be avoided. The transition from office 97 to office 2000 was painful. The transition from office 2000 to XP is so bad that I don't want to even mention it. Do you see the trend? It only gets worse.
Quit throwing good money after bad and start moving now. Keep your legacy aps working and start looking for their replacements outside of M$ because you will NOT find them inside without much much more work and effort. Where I work, we have stuff that will only work under DOS/Win3.1. To accomodate it, we keep a couple of old laptops off the network and unmodified. Still, it's only a matter of time before the artificial M$ bit rot eats these things and we can't get parts or the last of our install disks flake out. Have you tried putting DOS on a machine lately? How are those floppies holding up? Mine are dying, don't work with newer hardware and the old stuff won't work forever.
So, how about your own custom software? I was happy when my own software, compiled with Watcom for Win95 transfered over to 98 and NT without many problems. The printing had never worked, due to changed print methods in 95, but that was not too big a deal. I was very careful to NOT use MSFC and keep as close as possible to the lowest level APIs, figuring that they would have to break everything to kill mine. The recent automigration program deleted my work for me when I was moved to w2k just a few months ago. Fortunatly, my job description had changed since I wrote my software and I have not had to use it. I can't tell you if it works on w2k, but I know it won't work in the world of Paladium and other toxic heavy metals from Redmond.
Incidentally, I'm in the first category (Use it responsibly to get faster downloads of the data that you actually want), but I'm beginning to feel like I've been pretty stupid.
Yes, downloading shit that you don't want is stupid. I am outraged by trolls like you who consider getting content you want,"leaching", and throwing BS like "unsutainable" around. Loosers who set up ftp robots to download massive quantities of mass produced junk like Britany Spears, Warez, Movies that can be had at the local video store for $3 piss me off. Why downoad software that you will never freaking use, especially cracked backdoored M$ based crap that will burn you? Cable companies who find themselves taxed by such "hoggs" should be able to figure things out and cut the line. Don't confuse the issue and tell people to set up robots to get things they don't want, simply because others are doing it. That would be stupid and it would flood the world with useless trafic.
What most cable companies are doing is tax everyone in a ruinious attempt to make more money. The only cable service here is through Cox. I don't recomend it to the average user as is costs far too much for what they want to get out of the web and they push windblows. See how it works? Both approaches go to zero.
Unfortunately, in examining logs BEFORE we turned on the filtering, people were doing a great job of acting like children beforehand. Reporting on a days worth of logs on the 'sex' category generated a 150 page (small print) report, covering about 50 employees. These were NOT banner adds and spam mail. After the filter went on, it went to about 20 pages. After a well placed firing for an extreme example, it went down to about 3.
If the program catagorizing your logs was not full of it, your company had serious problems to begin with. Chances are that SmartFilter or some sister program told you just what you wanted to hear. Did you really sample those sites? Did you have another program to verify your employees were really going to those places? Scepticism helps here, because I find it hard to believe that anyplace with 50+ of how_many_hundred_? employees dicking around all day with porn can stay in business for 18 months. The other problem your comany has is you. Your statement, " Most people can get to most the things they want to.." reveals the fact that you don't care if a few can't get what they want or need to do their jobs.
You've got 10,000 employees like I've got half Bill Gates's shares of M$.
This one really cracks me up:
You have to have good, fair policies in place covering Internet usage and trusted individuals with good ethics to see those policies are being followed.
If you trusted them, you would never need a filter, would you? Obviously, you company is filled with people that can't be trusted. It's too bad you don't apply the same scepticism to makers of snake oil. For all that, you still end up combing the logs to improve the filters. Don't you have something better to do? Like provide information services?
My first computer was an XT (that's a clone of the 5151 in the picture). It was still working in 1998 when I replaced it's insides. Indeed, it had a 9600 baud modem, AOL software that worked, Word Perfect, and a hand held greyscale scanner all crammed into it's 640k RAM and 20 MB hard disk. Oh yeah, I'd also added a 3.5" floppy. The piece parts are in my closet, ready for reasembly to amuse the grandchildren 40 years from now. The box now has a 450 MHz AMD k6/2 and runs my DNS and internal ftp server. Works good, lasts a long time.
So cheer up, the more hardware M$ disables the more we have to use. I advertise to clubs I'm in that I will install a free operating system on such computers. Everytime someone posts news of the Microsoft Transmitted Disease of the day, I post the prommise. People hit the server, a 486, a few times a day after that.
You know, my Soyo motherboard already thinks that lilo is a boot sector virus. I can turn off the scan in the bios for now.
If I were dumb enough to put any kind of M$ crap on that system, I might not be able to turn off that particular "security" feature. It's also possible that M$'s auto installed software can make the same mistake and proactivly relieve me of lilo.
I don't really care about listening to music on my PC. I know, I know, it's the best thing since a snake sweet talked Eve, whatever, my CDs are hoplessly difficult to use on set top boxes, blah blah blah. I use my computers for, gasp, calculations, email, browsing, picture manipulation, ftp serving and other little things. Free software has proved itself far far superior to comercial junk. I've only got one M$ box for talking to cameras and scanners. I'm not changing out WMP if I can help it. The first toy I buy that breaks my other software, so that I really can't use any of my other devices on that machine, is a new toy that gets taken back to the store with a loud demand that I have my money back and someone else rebuilds the box.
One of my favorite photo albums comes from some friends of the family. It's fantastically detailed and includes newspaper clippings of major achievments. The best pictures are the informal ones and the details that are fun are NOT the ones the people taking the pictures thought were important. It's fascinating to see houses on Saint Charles Avenue, New Orleans as they were brand new with baby palm trees that are 100 feet tall if still there. Pictures of world war one memorials on Canal street that did not stand the test of time. The children's clothes, adult's clothes, vehicles. Gravel roads in the French Quarter. Trips to resorts in Biloxi that were destroyed by huricanes. What they were able to do with what they had. May Poles, who's ever seen a freaking May pole? I have. It's all worth saving and sharing if you can. Like I said, these people are not even relatives of mine. I treasure all of that album and will scan and share it soon so others can enoy it.
I finished scanning my mother's childhood album a few weeks ago. M$ made it difficult, but that's another post. The tools that worked were Electric Eyes (to liberate corrupt M$ tiffs to png), Gnome Midnight Commander (gmc, to autogenerate thumbnails 100x100), Bluefish (to make a html tabled view page template one day I'll make webmagic do this, but I may still prefer the straight simple html). HTML, thumbnails, larger jpgs and as large as possible PNGs are stored in seperate directories. The html has tables of thumbnails that point to larger jpg's. The user is made aware of the PNGs on the album's first page. All the pictures in the different directories have the same name to minimize confusion. The albums have coppied to CDs and placed on ftp sites to share with anyone who is interested. I'd post a link, but I fear some ass will put a nasty little winbot DoS on me for my trouble.
Packet communications are NOT limited to consumption and dependent on central services for co-ordination. The internet is designed to be redundant and decentralized so that multiple paths exist and some disaster, like a nuclear war, would not be able to knock communications and computing resources out. Just look at how easy it was to disable ALL other forms of communications in New York on 9/11 - that's the weakness of centralization. That's why media consolidation and centralized control end user internet is so evil and stupid. Packets can go by wire, light or radio, the principles are the same.
The BBC article, however, makes this new system look very restrictive. They spew on and on about "Interactive TV", and video on demand. They then go on to say , "That technology has so far been used by eclectic hobbyist and community groups to exchange information and videos between computers.... it threatens to make redundant wireless technologies such as the 802.11b standard." This "ecclectic" bunch would be you and me trying to run away from interactive TV and pay by the minute communications charges. I imagine that BT's "community web" will have the same dependency and restrictions on BT as the current BT. Your "redundant" 802.11b http server will be silenced when it interfeers with Girl Power or some other mass produced shit. USA telcom has made my cynical.
They don't explicitly define the word "servers" and if they did, it would be meaningless because the ToS has a unilateral change clause. A few services are expressly forbiden, ftp, http, mail and dns. The only reason I'm techincally able to offer an ftp server is that AOL's instant messenger uses port 21. Even COX is not so stupid as to block incoming port 21 yet.
It's about control of publishing. AIM is useless for publishing and so allowed. Pictures of my baby girl ride there until the FBI knock down my door and take my computers away for doing so against my service agreement and the will of RIAA / MPAA.
Your ugly comment is short enough to quote entirely:
Debian is "the one true Linux" and it runs just fine on my ibook. Anyone who is in the market for an easy to install and use Unix like system on a Mac will most probably go with OS X. I don't see what the selling point of a "Mac only" distribution is these days. Did I mention I thought Debian was great.
At the risk of sounding like marketdroid, I'll tell you why it makes sense to have a "Mac Only" distro without understanding PowerPCs. The Terra Soft site says, "Terra Soft's integrated PowerPC solutions take advantage of the low power consumption and high performance of the IBM and Motorola PowerPC chips. When the Motorola's AltiVec(TM) unit (Apple's "Velocity Engine(TM)") is engaged --the result may be performance well beyond the CPU's given speed rating."
Now that I've sung the praises of the Yellow Dog Linux Team, I'll furter quell your silly attempt to start a Debian flame war by your mirage post. You might mention WHY Debian is as great as it is. Little things like:
Radically decentralized distribution. Debian mirrors can be found everywhere and the package system assures quality of the packages.
Ease of install and upgrade. The Debian PowerPC istall can be found here. i386 install of Debian is easier than most Linux installs, though it may take longer. The power PC might be a little more difficult, I've never done it. Upgrade by command line "apt-get update" and "apt-get upgrade" is the easiest upgrade I've ever seen.
Trust. The overriding GNU philosopy of Debian makes all of the above possible and garuntees that Debian will remain free and easy.
So Alec, what's a dude like you posting biggoted looking stuff like this for? Despite your earlier NT horror, you look like you might know better. Is there any reason you put Chinese characters on your proported home page? What's all those references to Death about? Do you really own a power book? Have you ever really installed any kind of Linux? Are your still using NT?
Since when did WM's DRM remove the ability to use WinAmp? Just don't buy "secure crap" music.
Look at that EULA again:
These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer.
WinAmp is one of those "other software on your computer" which may be disabled. Duh.
Essentially, this is a backfit of their XP license and DRM technology for the 60% of WinSlaves that are using Win98.
Given that Windows Security is an oxmoron, there's no reason to "upgrade" your computer this way. Outlook, IE or some stupid piece of junk like a plug and play deamon that you never knew listened to the network will eat you anyway.
If you just must have M$ in your house, blind it to the network by NOT installing the network card drivers or pointing it to a bogus gateway IP number. Never use it to surf, read email or anything else that M$ will never do right. I admit that I have such a beast in the corner for talking to cameras and an old scanner. It's legal and I own it. But I'll never ever trust it. Red Hat's dual boot (GRUB) let's me get the information off of it.
Of course, the real problem is that they want to force computer hobbyists, to whom the connection is most useful, to pay big bucks for a "business service."
COX does not alow home servers of any kind for any price. They have a bunch of M$ fueled shit sitting someplace and they want to charge money for a few megs on it. My "business" plan gave me little more than a fixed IP and difficlut to use email address that had the "@" character in the middle of the user name! Port 80 and 25 are still blocked and the TOS still forbids all "servers".
The point of this is that COX thinks that they can become a monopoly publisher. If it was about bandwith they could rely on their upstream caps. If it was about security they would forbid the use of known insecure software like Outlook MSIE and Windows. It's about control and power. The current publishers will do everything they can to prevent the comming communications revolution. Can you imagine only 4 national "internet broadcasters", paying by the minute for long distance calls, and only five big music lables in the future? I can, it's called DRM and COX is part of it.
The Washington Post claims that Bush wants to avoid legislation on this. I'm pissed about that. With the FBI raiding people's houses to enforce bogus service agreements, the government could not be more involved than it is. Oh yeah, there's always Carnivore. The future is evil. Clinton built it in the 90s, no supprise from a man who loved China and bent backward to please Fidel Castro. Bush is milking it now. That's supprising from a party that used to stand for smaller government.
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Let's say a computer did the same thing. It's hard to argue that anything else should be done. There are millions of diseases, so it's good to have a computer remember all of them. Unfortunatly for the computer, those diseases all exibit the same few symptoms. Uh oh, the computer now has to decide which disease really is before it or be forced to print out more information than the doctor can read, store or act on as the treatments may be diametrically opposed. The process, if perfect, may diverge because it is both over and underdetermined (imagine that!). Perfect practice is impossible and we should not expect machines to save us, despite the fondest wishes of accountants and insurance agents.
Doctors don't kill patients, disseases kill patients. Doctors do what they can to not harm and provide all aid and comfort. How many people have you comforted today?
Distractions can kill. Doctors will adopt computers as they become more practical, ie non M$ impared, better form factors and I/O, etc, so they can spend their time thinking about medicine NOT a silly program. Until then, expect doctors to rightly refuse to adopt the impractical to achieve the impossible. The results will be greater harm. Are you willing to be responsible for that harm? Are you ready to stand up to the entire medical community and force change on them that they refuse as less than best practice? If not, shut up with that "crimminally irresponsible" bullshit.
Bravery is required to do anything new or different. The person doing the new thing generally has to overcome resistance by promissing the new thing will be better. When things go wrong, and they always do, the brave soul will lose face.
It is agrivating to see so many troll posts, "It's hard cuz WalMart is stoopid." I don't know anyone who would equate intimate knowledge of the workings of any distro with inteligence. Well, I know a few NT users who were convinced that they were clever for understanding such things.
Ah yes, I don't want to forget the evil troll king, who thinks the box would be vandalized just like his poor old 486s running win3.1 were. Nope, real user accounts make that difficult. M$ flaws, designed to remove rights from users, are not present in reasonable OS. Those flaws are still present and that's why the average M$ computer display at places like CompuUSA is little more than a looped advert. It might as well be hooked up to a set top DVD because it does little to demonstrate any of the computer's ability. A real M$ demo, of course, would not be nearly as exciting as it would inevitably end in the famous BSoD.
You do make a point, however. If a manager can't setup demos, then the whole idea of selling Linux in the stores is flawed and will ultimately fail. Do managers at computer retail stores actually set up demos anymore? I imagine the "demo" comes preconfigured, as M$ has decided that managers can't do that for themselves. Your logic then applies to M$ as well.
If a manager can't setup demos, then the whole idea of selling Microsoft Software in the stores is flawed and will ultimately fail.
Oh wait, Microsoft is failing.
What new customers? I tell people that cable is not worth it, and have undone all sorts of silly adverts that way. As long as the cable people continue to suck, I'm going to tell people that they suck and NOT recomend it to anyone. Not many people think an extra $40/month in ISP charges are justified by an ever suckier web experience. "Pirates" want this? Why bother? You can download all the $20 albums you want over a $20/month dial up. Cable modems really only apeal to people that want to run real servers, and the stable ones don't really care about Kazaa. At some point, their customer base is going to contract. They will then go bankrupt and the equipment will be taken over by someone competent.
So they cable fools invite their end faster than ever.
First let's examine some of the extreemist language used. How about arson? "If you like torching houses for fun, you don't gain anything from torching somebody's house," he said. "But that homeowner will certainly suffer a material loss." This was used to justify 3 to 4 year jail terms. "Pirates," must be everyone's favorite. Somehow, I just can't see the techie with a sword or even a " ringleader of an international gang of software pirates that deprived companies of millions of dollars through the illegal distribution of copyrighted software, games and movies ." He was delclared worse than "petty criminals and warring gangs". The launguage seems to have worked as he says, "I felt like someone who had just murdered 50 people," Don't forget the criminal code of conduct secretive and vicious even to each other, "warez groups themselves tend to operate in secrecy, relying on encryption technologies, disguised Internet Protocol addresses and invite-only chat channels. And their world is highly structured, with a strict hierarchy and rules." Is that violent and sinister enough a description for a group of people who, horors, copy DVDs?
Did this poor sap really "...have a worldwide impact of at least tens of millions of dollars,
Or is the BSA, which routinely raids public schools to extort millions of dollars a larger threat to society? The NYT cluelessly quotes the BSA for dramatic effect: " The copies "become the raw materials that others use for commercial piracy," said Bob Kruger, president of the Business Software Alliance, an industry group that asserts that software piracy costs $10.1 billion a year in lost sales worldwide." Rat shit, extra coppies of movies are typically seen in the same places that made the "official" versions of popular culture. They come encrypted, just like the "official" ones two. In fact, they are often identical, wonder where they come from? Must be some dude living in his mom's house and all his evil friends.
They are then portrayed as hurting the little folks worst of all,
Vold Solutions, was horrified to discover that DrinkorDie had released a free version of a specialized engineering program that his company sold for $9,500. "That was very scary," Mr. Vold said. "They do not understand the impact of copyright infringement, especially on the smaller companies."
Incredible! Show me an engineering firm that would use unlicensed software and I'll show you a firm that won't buy software! But here is that "pirate" stealing the bread from the mouths of Vold's children. Show me one of the world's five music publishing firms that is NOT making a killing despite killing Napster and seeing their sales fall back to earth. Show me one movie company that has not had it's "best year ever."
OK that's enough picking that thing apart, it's depressing. It bothered me when I read it yesterday, but the more you look at it the dumber it is and the more depressing the stupidity is. People really believe that kind of shit. They absorb it without thinking. I'll bet the author even thought it was true.
The article tells us the bad guys got away and other bad dupes quickly took up the missing "pirate" slack. I'm afraid that the bad guys are the ones did get away, and get richer everytime you turn on the radio, watch a movie, eat the crap food they advertise (that's why we are obese), and the shoddy merchandise that's product placed and subliminally linked to your deepest desires. They are the ones creating an unhealthy need to consume more than we need without ever achieving more than momentary pleasure. The Warez movement is a direct result of a "consumer" society. It's what they really want us to be, slaves to garbage, willing to sacrifice our time and ...
I'm going to play with my baby girl now.
Have some respect, now, and don't be a pirate for the mighty security firm might come get you. Tee-heee! Oh wait, I'm not a news organization and I don't have their permision to download, or did I because they sent it to me when I requested without asking who I was? Did I violate their silly text telling me that the pictures are " for exclusive use by members of the news media. These items may not be downloaded or reproduced by other individuals or organizations without the express permission of SureSource."? Or did they realy mean that I should, "Please click on the desired image to enlarge & download." Don't forget to check out the purple warehouse here, a DEEEEEEEEEEEP DEVILISH LINK. Please click to enlarge! Please click to Download! Wheeee! Wizards of Web! Untitled Document Creators? What awsome d000ds they are! Function MM_JumpMenu seems to come from Dreamweaver, but I doubt that firm wants to take credit. Note, when making simple static pages use a text editor or something simple like Bluefish. When you want to make complicated Flash stuff, please don't. When you use a big giant flash making editor to design simple static pages, sigh, I give up. It was funny at first but the more I look into it the dumber it gets. I'm embarased for them.
What? M$ QC? Judging the process by the stability of the w2k box I'm forced to use at work, "defects" are ignored, and everyone keeps on keeping on. If you think otherwise, you might have believed that the "uber" patch derived from a month of seminars and group hugs would make Windoze secure.
I can imagine the circus atmosphere when the blame-shifting and the search for the guilty goes into high gear.
Steve Balmer says, "It's not a bug, it's a feature, you just don't know how to use it." Now that's the kind of blame shifting I'm used to!
Most of them are trolls, as are many of the "newbies" on IRC. You should know as you say, "I have about a dozen impersonators, so keep your eyes open." One Stephen Barktoo can kill many many news sites and IRC channels with a few robots.
Who could believe that people who spend their time making a free operating system, utilities, programs and all the trimmings would waste their time flaming people? Yet it's easy to belive that a ruthlessly competitive comercial software entity known for such behavior and proven guilty of anti competitive behavior would waste resources on this as part of their advertising budget.
Who here has not been very patient with many newbies and others filled with irrational M$ BS? It only took two knowledgeable people and many manuals to enlighten me to the point of M$ independence. I've never personally met any kind of "flamer" though I've run into plenty of them online.
Read The Fine Manual, however, is very good advice. I spend plenty of time answering questions and helping but at some point everyone has to help themselves. If they have gotten to that point in their use of general computing devices, they would be up to their eyeballs in useless M$ manuals if that was their OS of choice, so I feel little guilt in pointing them to a good book.
Now as for the 90% energy cut without pain. Ignorance is not strength. Most electric usage is industrial. Try cutting it off and see how fast the entire economy falls on it's ass, and you go hungry! SUV's use NO electricity, execpt in their production. The Japanese are showing us how to reduce that by building vehicles that do not die in five years. All the 3,000 square foot houses in the country don't consume that much more electricity than so many greenhouse condos in the sky. They also produce a much nicer micro climate than the blasted steel, glass and concrete inner city that is the alternative. Paris is well built, Manhatan and the cities on the coast of Yemen Manhatan resembles are not. American suburbs are not so bad, though most need more unified road planning.
There is NO reason to cut back on cheaply produced Nuclear power, and every reason to make more of it. Air conditioning, refidgerators, modern medicine and laundry equipment are all tremendous quality of life enhancers. Nuclear does it without emmisions that are changing the whole planet's heat balance with the sun and stars. We need MORE not LESS. Only those who want to gain power over their neighbors would create an artificial scarcity. The only use for such power is further abuse. Get lost. You will not degrade my standard of living. I will make such improvements available to others.
First, I don't eat gargage like that.
Second, I don't expect people to hang out in my bushes surfing the net where I live. -splunch- That's the sound of your analogy falling on its face. I especially don't think they will hang out in my bushes, to anonymously plan criminal acts. Are you another member of the department of "Abuse and Security"?
Cable Companies that Screw Technically Oriented Cusotmers Will Watch Subscriptions Go Down the Drain. Stupid is what Stupid does. I already tell most people that cable modems are not worth the money, that all you need for email and simple web browsing is a dial up modem. These fools think they have a monopoly, but what they really have is a temporary advantage. Technological progress will eventually circumvent these losers and leave them with their obsolete entertainment delivery systems. Cell phones offer a second line to all, right now. Soon wireless networks will play out and deliver beter and freer internet than these stupid cable operators can imagine.
A by mblase:
Entirely ethical, I should think. You gave me the code and the open-source license to modify it as I see fit, didn't you?
Who said it was ethical to gimp up other people's free code with adverts to begin with?
Don't you just love logic?
That's all in the future, however. I'm sure M$ will make the transition to where nothing but IE TX (Total eXtortion). We don't buy much over the web now, so we won't miss much when a few stupid sites decide they don't want our money. Eventually, as Visa put's all it's weight behind this and closes down other competitors it will start to feel painful. Then it will hurt to have the company site say, IE only. Our bank's site is already M$ encumbered, but still works with Netscape 4.7. Soon enough, I'm sure that won't be the case. All M$ has to do is flick a switch in server crap they sell my bank. At that time, our big fat national bank credit card company might use this as an advantage to destroy our local bank and try to get us to direct deposit my pay check to them, as they might not have that switch flipped.
All maner of convinence will be lost, but I will not trust a M$ computer on my network much less let it manipulate my money.
Why would someone with nine billion dollars work so hard? It's because some people prefer power to comfort. It's not to do the greatest good for the greatest number. It's purely for the sake of power, and only by persuing power for it's own sake can M$ hope to retain it. In the end, it's all the same.
You know how, but you don't know why. It's because:
SLAVERY IS FREEDOM
WAR IS PEACE
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
All the things tying you to win98 and DOS indicate that M$ has yet to provide what you seek. The transition from win3.1 to 95 was evil, but most things worked some better. The transition from 95 to 98 lost more of the 3.1 stuff and the release to 98B was a nightmare. The transition from 98 to ME or any of the other lesser selling junk was an exercise to be avoided. The transition from office 97 to office 2000 was painful. The transition from office 2000 to XP is so bad that I don't want to even mention it. Do you see the trend? It only gets worse.
Quit throwing good money after bad and start moving now. Keep your legacy aps working and start looking for their replacements outside of M$ because you will NOT find them inside without much much more work and effort. Where I work, we have stuff that will only work under DOS/Win3.1. To accomodate it, we keep a couple of old laptops off the network and unmodified. Still, it's only a matter of time before the artificial M$ bit rot eats these things and we can't get parts or the last of our install disks flake out. Have you tried putting DOS on a machine lately? How are those floppies holding up? Mine are dying, don't work with newer hardware and the old stuff won't work forever.
So, how about your own custom software? I was happy when my own software, compiled with Watcom for Win95 transfered over to 98 and NT without many problems. The printing had never worked, due to changed print methods in 95, but that was not too big a deal. I was very careful to NOT use MSFC and keep as close as possible to the lowest level APIs, figuring that they would have to break everything to kill mine. The recent automigration program deleted my work for me when I was moved to w2k just a few months ago. Fortunatly, my job description had changed since I wrote my software and I have not had to use it. I can't tell you if it works on w2k, but I know it won't work in the world of Paladium and other toxic heavy metals from Redmond.
Yes, downloading shit that you don't want is stupid. I am outraged by trolls like you who consider getting content you want,"leaching", and throwing BS like "unsutainable" around. Loosers who set up ftp robots to download massive quantities of mass produced junk like Britany Spears, Warez, Movies that can be had at the local video store for $3 piss me off. Why downoad software that you will never freaking use, especially cracked backdoored M$ based crap that will burn you? Cable companies who find themselves taxed by such "hoggs" should be able to figure things out and cut the line. Don't confuse the issue and tell people to set up robots to get things they don't want, simply because others are doing it. That would be stupid and it would flood the world with useless trafic.
What most cable companies are doing is tax everyone in a ruinious attempt to make more money. The only cable service here is through Cox. I don't recomend it to the average user as is costs far too much for what they want to get out of the web and they push windblows. See how it works? Both approaches go to zero.
If the program catagorizing your logs was not full of it, your company had serious problems to begin with. Chances are that SmartFilter or some sister program told you just what you wanted to hear. Did you really sample those sites? Did you have another program to verify your employees were really going to those places? Scepticism helps here, because I find it hard to believe that anyplace with 50+ of how_many_hundred_? employees dicking around all day with porn can stay in business for 18 months. The other problem your comany has is you. Your statement, " Most people can get to most the things they want to.." reveals the fact that you don't care if a few can't get what they want or need to do their jobs.
You've got 10,000 employees like I've got half Bill Gates's shares of M$.
This one really cracks me up:
You have to have good, fair policies in place covering Internet usage and trusted individuals with good ethics to see those policies are being followed.
If you trusted them, you would never need a filter, would you? Obviously, you company is filled with people that can't be trusted. It's too bad you don't apply the same scepticism to makers of snake oil. For all that, you still end up combing the logs to improve the filters. Don't you have something better to do? Like provide information services?
IsupposesomeasswillsettheDCMAonmeunlessIrespectyou rcopyright.
So cheer up, the more hardware M$ disables the more we have to use. I advertise to clubs I'm in that I will install a free operating system on such computers. Everytime someone posts news of the Microsoft Transmitted Disease of the day, I post the prommise. People hit the server, a 486, a few times a day after that.
If I were dumb enough to put any kind of M$ crap on that system, I might not be able to turn off that particular "security" feature. It's also possible that M$'s auto installed software can make the same mistake and proactivly relieve me of lilo.
I don't really care about listening to music on my PC. I know, I know, it's the best thing since a snake sweet talked Eve, whatever, my CDs are hoplessly difficult to use on set top boxes, blah blah blah. I use my computers for, gasp, calculations, email, browsing, picture manipulation, ftp serving and other little things. Free software has proved itself far far superior to comercial junk. I've only got one M$ box for talking to cameras and scanners. I'm not changing out WMP if I can help it. The first toy I buy that breaks my other software, so that I really can't use any of my other devices on that machine, is a new toy that gets taken back to the store with a loud demand that I have my money back and someone else rebuilds the box.
I finished scanning my mother's childhood album a few weeks ago. M$ made it difficult, but that's another post. The tools that worked were Electric Eyes (to liberate corrupt M$ tiffs to png), Gnome Midnight Commander (gmc, to autogenerate thumbnails 100x100), Bluefish (to make a html tabled view page template one day I'll make webmagic do this, but I may still prefer the straight simple html). HTML, thumbnails, larger jpgs and as large as possible PNGs are stored in seperate directories. The html has tables of thumbnails that point to larger jpg's. The user is made aware of the PNGs on the album's first page. All the pictures in the different directories have the same name to minimize confusion. The albums have coppied to CDs and placed on ftp sites to share with anyone who is interested. I'd post a link, but I fear some ass will put a nasty little winbot DoS on me for my trouble.
The BBC article, however, makes this new system look very restrictive. They spew on and on about "Interactive TV", and video on demand. They then go on to say , "That technology has so far been used by eclectic hobbyist and community groups to exchange information and videos between computers. ... it threatens to make redundant wireless technologies such as the 802.11b standard." This "ecclectic" bunch would be you and me trying to run away from interactive TV and pay by the minute communications charges. I imagine that BT's "community web" will have the same dependency and restrictions on BT as the current BT. Your "redundant" 802.11b http server will be silenced when it interfeers with Girl Power or some other mass produced shit. USA telcom has made my cynical.
They don't explicitly define the word "servers" and if they did, it would be meaningless because the ToS has a unilateral change clause. A few services are expressly forbiden, ftp, http, mail and dns. The only reason I'm techincally able to offer an ftp server is that AOL's instant messenger uses port 21. Even COX is not so stupid as to block incoming port 21 yet.
It's about control of publishing. AIM is useless for publishing and so allowed. Pictures of my baby girl ride there until the FBI knock down my door and take my computers away for doing so against my service agreement and the will of RIAA / MPAA.
Debian is "the one true Linux" and it runs just fine on my ibook. Anyone who is in the market for an easy to install and use Unix like system on a Mac will most probably go with OS X. I don't see what the selling point of a "Mac only" distribution is these days. Did I mention I thought Debian was great.
At the risk of sounding like marketdroid, I'll tell you why it makes sense to have a "Mac Only" distro without understanding PowerPCs. The Terra Soft site says, "Terra Soft's integrated PowerPC solutions take advantage of the low power consumption and high performance of the IBM and Motorola PowerPC chips. When the Motorola's AltiVec(TM) unit (Apple's "Velocity Engine(TM)") is engaged --the result may be performance well beyond the CPU's given speed rating."
Now that I've sung the praises of the Yellow Dog Linux Team, I'll furter quell your silly attempt to start a Debian flame war by your mirage post. You might mention WHY Debian is as great as it is. Little things like:
Radically decentralized distribution. Debian mirrors can be found everywhere and the package system assures quality of the packages.
Ease of install and upgrade. The Debian PowerPC istall can be found here. i386 install of Debian is easier than most Linux installs, though it may take longer. The power PC might be a little more difficult, I've never done it. Upgrade by command line "apt-get update" and "apt-get upgrade" is the easiest upgrade I've ever seen.
Trust. The overriding GNU philosopy of Debian makes all of the above possible and garuntees that Debian will remain free and easy.
So Alec, what's a dude like you posting biggoted looking stuff like this for? Despite your earlier NT horror, you look like you might know better. Is there any reason you put Chinese characters on your proported home page? What's all those references to Death about? Do you really own a power book? Have you ever really installed any kind of Linux? Are your still using NT?
Look at that EULA again:
These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer.
WinAmp is one of those "other software on your computer" which may be disabled. Duh.
Essentially, this is a backfit of their XP license and DRM technology for the 60% of WinSlaves that are using Win98.
Given that Windows Security is an oxmoron, there's no reason to "upgrade" your computer this way. Outlook, IE or some stupid piece of junk like a plug and play deamon that you never knew listened to the network will eat you anyway.
If you just must have M$ in your house, blind it to the network by NOT installing the network card drivers or pointing it to a bogus gateway IP number. Never use it to surf, read email or anything else that M$ will never do right. I admit that I have such a beast in the corner for talking to cameras and an old scanner. It's legal and I own it. But I'll never ever trust it. Red Hat's dual boot (GRUB) let's me get the information off of it.
COX does not alow home servers of any kind for any price. They have a bunch of M$ fueled shit sitting someplace and they want to charge money for a few megs on it. My "business" plan gave me little more than a fixed IP and difficlut to use email address that had the "@" character in the middle of the user name! Port 80 and 25 are still blocked and the TOS still forbids all "servers".
The point of this is that COX thinks that they can become a monopoly publisher. If it was about bandwith they could rely on their upstream caps. If it was about security they would forbid the use of known insecure software like Outlook MSIE and Windows. It's about control and power. The current publishers will do everything they can to prevent the comming communications revolution. Can you imagine only 4 national "internet broadcasters", paying by the minute for long distance calls, and only five big music lables in the future? I can, it's called DRM and COX is part of it.
The Washington Post claims that Bush wants to avoid legislation on this. I'm pissed about that. With the FBI raiding people's houses to enforce bogus service agreements, the government could not be more involved than it is. Oh yeah, there's always Carnivore. The future is evil. Clinton built it in the 90s, no supprise from a man who loved China and bent backward to please Fidel Castro. Bush is milking it now. That's supprising from a party that used to stand for smaller government.