Historical paranoia's the primary reason. I've had hard drives headcrash suddenly for no apparent reason, and typically I have to rush to get data off of them, and I'm usually lucky. And when I wasn't as lucky one time, RAR helped. I've never had a hard drive just suddenly Quit Working on me before; they've all been Slow, Painful Deaths.
Also, I almost never find the time in the week to do backups. I work for a nonprofit, so My Time Is Semiwillingly Not My Own.:) (We *do* do backups over there, though, so no work data's at risk.)
Oh, and the laptop's an IBM ThinkPad T23. Given the ThinkPad line's reputation (I have friends whose ThinkPads have lasted for half a decade or more), I think it's more likely to become obsolete first.:) (Of course, it's expensive enough that it's the reason why I'm on a budget at the moment...:) ) I do plan on getting one of those Second Hard Drive bay modules with another HD sometime and using it for backup (it's the method my parents use with their Omnibook 6000s, and it's worked quite well for them), but the money I could put towards that is currently earmarked for Other Things.
But this is getting into pretty in-depth detail, and I was hoping to start something at least resembling a general discussion rather than a I Need My Own Slashdot Support Team session.:)
Ha ha. No, I don't touch warez. The first time I almost did (with the Win95 private beta) I was caught by my father (I was raised by geeks, so it's taken a lot to be able to adjust to human society;D ) and got a nice long lesson on that one. Pirating software is bad, 'mkay?
No, I got into RAR because a friend of mine (who was and still is into video game console emulation, especially music, which is where she discovered the format, I presume) used it to distribute her music compositions for a period, and I liked (still like) her music. I was curious as to what this "RAR" thing was, anyhow, got into it and found myself liking it, and so I ended up using it to archive old homework assignments... well, and IRC logs and Civ2 saved games.:D
Non-free, true. Non-Free, though, is a different story. The license for UnRAR's source is pretty restrictive (basically, "you can use this as intended anywhere, but you can't sell it or modify it to create RAR files"). So, unfortunately it doesn't totally work out.
The fact that that much exists does ease my mind about existing archives I've got (which is why I didn't mass-convert them ages ago). It's creating new, future archives that I'm worried about.:)
Y'know, I would've done that a long time ago, but my health care provider doesn't cover ideologuectomies. They claim that it doesn't threaten your physical life, just your social one. The bastards.
Why bother with all the intricacies of a pseudo-fault-tolerant data structure?
I'm on a laptop. I like my laptop. It's a very nice laptop. However, it doesn't exactly support those kind of hardware upgrades, and I am still ultimately on a bit of a budget.
I kind of put forth the question not only out of the hope that a Magical Solution To All My Archival Problems would Mystically Appear (puff of smoke optional but appreciated) but because I want to find something I also feel like I can unreservedly reccomend to non-ideological friends who are looking for, say, something slightly more reliable than ZIP files. I could've mentioned that in the article post, but it was already getting long.:)
Not exactly a new experience for me. The Joe Liberman campaign was spamming me at work for months, until he finally gave up on getting nominated. Rather pissed me off.
(Of course, I do work for my Jewish synagogue, but frankly none of us there were about to vote for the guy anyways.)
...so long as exposure to the video game is not the *first impression* those kids receive.
If that's how kids are initially learning how to make contact with the outside world, then they're almost certainly going to end up the misanthorpic violent psychos Liberman claims to fear. If they've already learned, though, that other people are actually worth something from time to time, then I really don't think these things have quite the impact so many say they do.
Still, his statement was pretty well spoken. He never said anything about forcing them to stop, just that he thought it was a moral imperative for them to do so.
(Oh, and since I don't have any mod points, I just have to give Kudos to whoever mentioned Crazy Taxi. Well argued. *nod*)
802.11g is also accessible through Free Software/Open Source. Hell, Intersil wrote drivers for their Prism GT/Indigo/Duette chipsets on their own and then GPLed them. (See prism54.org for some of the work being done with them.)
1) The provisions of being detained if you're believed to be trying to walk off with copyrighted material has been there already; this bill doesn't change that.
2) This only applies to theaters and retail stores, and appears to have exceptions for government recording for security purposes. (It doesn't mention private industry security, though.)
3) The bill just mentions usage of such a device in the facility; it doesn't mention recording actual copyrighted content (this is the major reason why I'm bothered by it).
4) The bill appears to leave judgement, for the most part, up to the retailers themselves; they're expected to enforce it. (So I doubt demo units are going to be a serious issue, unless there's an overzealous MPAA policeman nearby.)
In short, the only flaws I see are that it covers things it has no business covering (uncopyrighted content) and it doesn't allow for those two common industry practices of demonstration and security cameras. Change those and I think it's OK.
I know that some places already prohibit recordings of any kind anyways, but there's a world of difference between being kicked out of the theater and being arrested. I think being arrested for taking a picture of your kids in the lobby is going a little far. (I'm hoping that theater employees will be relatively sane about such things, though, since enforcement is left to them.)
I haven't read the bill in detail, but given that the summary mentions PDAs and digital cameras, I think current model camera phones would already be affected.
Just for the record - Times Square is in New York, not Ohio.:)
(Well, okay, there is that large screen in the Columbus Arena District which has been known to show little film snippets as part of Nationwide's plan to sponsor more entropy, presumably to raise insurance premiums or something. Or whatever their reason is for putting all that gaudy junk there.)
It'd seem to me that any time you're going to work with a cliched storyline like that, you *have* to have a unique character going through it, because otherwise all you've got is plagarism.
Max Payne and all the movies and other games based off the same premise always struck me as another contender for the title of "the guy's version of a soap opera" - it's not the situation at all, but the characters that drive it. It's not the point that there's some love affair going on, or ass is being kicked, but *who* is involved in that affair, and *who* is kicking ass, and how they're reacting.
(I can just see it now - guys gossiping back and forth on the latest move the Next Favorite Character pulls to avenge his loss - "Oh my god"s and expressions of shock being replaced with "Dude, awesome!" and impressed looks...)
Cute. But technically it wouldn't work, because there's quite a few competitors around here who'd be Quite happy to pick up the slack.;) (WideOpenWest especially comes to mind...)
The way I see it, computer gaming isn't ready for the masses either. Since aftermarket patches are possible, intial releases are frequently of just-barely-playable quality. Drivers for your computer have to be carefully controlled and balanced, or everything will explode. And the system upgrade cycle is much more frequent, and vastly more expensive.
I dunno. It'd be really hard to identify around here, since there's nothing like an actual model to indicate Male or Female. About the only way you could force the issue would be to advertise it everywhere you go, and that's pretty obnoxious (Example: my sig.:D ). The only place I could see it happening would be joining in in any "male-vs-female" type discussions that pop up on one side or the other.
So while there might be people who do that, I don't think it'd be all that common simply because you wouldn't get much out of it.
Oh, it's not going to be over after SCO gets exposed. Because then you can be sure all the folks SCO's been going after are going to go right back after them.
And I'm sure The Revenge Of IBM is going to make headlines around here.
I wonder how much of the idea of acronyms that people think they can pronounce arises partly from overgeneralized usage of this ability of the brain.
It'd be one of the better explanations as to why I see so many disagreements between people as to how to pronounce an acronym or whether to do so at all - different error correction bases, or something.
Slashdot Mirror
Hm. I don't seem to see myself listed, and I contributed a lot to the Dean campaign. *shrug*
I wonder what's up there.
Historical paranoia's the primary reason. I've had hard drives headcrash suddenly for no apparent reason, and typically I have to rush to get data off of them, and I'm usually lucky. And when I wasn't as lucky one time, RAR helped. I've never had a hard drive just suddenly Quit Working on me before; they've all been Slow, Painful Deaths.
:) (We *do* do backups over there, though, so no work data's at risk.)
:) (Of course, it's expensive enough that it's the reason why I'm on a budget at the moment... :) ) I do plan on getting one of those Second Hard Drive bay modules with another HD sometime and using it for backup (it's the method my parents use with their Omnibook 6000s, and it's worked quite well for them), but the money I could put towards that is currently earmarked for Other Things.
:)
Also, I almost never find the time in the week to do backups. I work for a nonprofit, so My Time Is Semiwillingly Not My Own.
Oh, and the laptop's an IBM ThinkPad T23. Given the ThinkPad line's reputation (I have friends whose ThinkPads have lasted for half a decade or more), I think it's more likely to become obsolete first.
But this is getting into pretty in-depth detail, and I was hoping to start something at least resembling a general discussion rather than a I Need My Own Slashdot Support Team session.
Ha ha. No, I don't touch warez. The first time I almost did (with the Win95 private beta) I was caught by my father (I was raised by geeks, so it's taken a lot to be able to adjust to human society ;D ) and got a nice long lesson on that one. Pirating software is bad, 'mkay?
:D
No, I got into RAR because a friend of mine (who was and still is into video game console emulation, especially music, which is where she discovered the format, I presume) used it to distribute her music compositions for a period, and I liked (still like) her music. I was curious as to what this "RAR" thing was, anyhow, got into it and found myself liking it, and so I ended up using it to archive old homework assignments... well, and IRC logs and Civ2 saved games.
Non-free, true. Non-Free, though, is a different story. The license for UnRAR's source is pretty restrictive (basically, "you can use this as intended anywhere, but you can't sell it or modify it to create RAR files"). So, unfortunately it doesn't totally work out.
:)
The fact that that much exists does ease my mind about existing archives I've got (which is why I didn't mass-convert them ages ago). It's creating new, future archives that I'm worried about.
Y'know, I would've done that a long time ago, but my health care provider doesn't cover ideologuectomies. They claim that it doesn't threaten your physical life, just your social one. The bastards.
:D
Why bother with all the intricacies of a pseudo-fault-tolerant data structure?
:)
I'm on a laptop. I like my laptop. It's a very nice laptop. However, it doesn't exactly support those kind of hardware upgrades, and I am still ultimately on a bit of a budget.
I kind of put forth the question not only out of the hope that a Magical Solution To All My Archival Problems would Mystically Appear (puff of smoke optional but appreciated) but because I want to find something I also feel like I can unreservedly reccomend to non-ideological friends who are looking for, say, something slightly more reliable than ZIP files. I could've mentioned that in the article post, but it was already getting long.
Not exactly a new experience for me. The Joe Liberman campaign was spamming me at work for months, until he finally gave up on getting nominated. Rather pissed me off.
(Of course, I do work for my Jewish synagogue, but frankly none of us there were about to vote for the guy anyways.)
...so long as exposure to the video game is not the *first impression* those kids receive.
If that's how kids are initially learning how to make contact with the outside world, then they're almost certainly going to end up the misanthorpic violent psychos Liberman claims to fear. If they've already learned, though, that other people are actually worth something from time to time, then I really don't think these things have quite the impact so many say they do.
Still, his statement was pretty well spoken. He never said anything about forcing them to stop, just that he thought it was a moral imperative for them to do so.
(Oh, and since I don't have any mod points, I just have to give Kudos to whoever mentioned Crazy Taxi. Well argued. *nod*)
802.11g is also accessible through Free Software/Open Source. Hell, Intersil wrote drivers for their Prism GT/Indigo/Duette chipsets on their own and then GPLed them. (See prism54.org for some of the work being done with them.)
Well, you've got to admit that they have a point. That *would* make a very bizarre dessert.
1) The provisions of being detained if you're believed to be trying to walk off with copyrighted material has been there already; this bill doesn't change that.
2) This only applies to theaters and retail stores, and appears to have exceptions for government recording for security purposes. (It doesn't mention private industry security, though.)
3) The bill just mentions usage of such a device in the facility; it doesn't mention recording actual copyrighted content (this is the major reason why I'm bothered by it).
4) The bill appears to leave judgement, for the most part, up to the retailers themselves; they're expected to enforce it. (So I doubt demo units are going to be a serious issue, unless there's an overzealous MPAA policeman nearby.)
In short, the only flaws I see are that it covers things it has no business covering (uncopyrighted content) and it doesn't allow for those two common industry practices of demonstration and security cameras. Change those and I think it's OK.
I know that some places already prohibit recordings of any kind anyways, but there's a world of difference between being kicked out of the theater and being arrested. I think being arrested for taking a picture of your kids in the lobby is going a little far. (I'm hoping that theater employees will be relatively sane about such things, though, since enforcement is left to them.)
Er, no. The bill only allows for movie theaters and retail stores. Sec. 2913.07 (A) (2).
I haven't read the bill in detail, but given that the summary mentions PDAs and digital cameras, I think current model camera phones would already be affected.
Just for the record - Times Square is in New York, not Ohio. :)
(Well, okay, there is that large screen in the Columbus Arena District which has been known to show little film snippets as part of Nationwide's plan to sponsor more entropy, presumably to raise insurance premiums or something. Or whatever their reason is for putting all that gaudy junk there.)
Er, reread the newspost - it already has passed. At this point it just requires Governor Taft's signature.
It only affects those of us in Ohio, though. (Cold comfort for me. At least it doesn't include, say, audio players like my Neuros...)
It'd seem to me that any time you're going to work with a cliched storyline like that, you *have* to have a unique character going through it, because otherwise all you've got is plagarism.
Max Payne and all the movies and other games based off the same premise always struck me as another contender for the title of "the guy's version of a soap opera" - it's not the situation at all, but the characters that drive it. It's not the point that there's some love affair going on, or ass is being kicked, but *who* is involved in that affair, and *who* is kicking ass, and how they're reacting.
(I can just see it now - guys gossiping back and forth on the latest move the Next Favorite Character pulls to avenge his loss - "Oh my god"s and expressions of shock being replaced with "Dude, awesome!" and impressed looks...)
Cute. But technically it wouldn't work, because there's quite a few competitors around here who'd be Quite happy to pick up the slack. ;) (WideOpenWest especially comes to mind...)
Paranoia, probably. The only people who have physical access to your server are a bunch of strangers you've never met.
I was with you until you mentioned XML. How dare you malign *my* religious issues? For shame.
The way I see it, computer gaming isn't ready for the masses either. Since aftermarket patches are possible, intial releases are frequently of just-barely-playable quality. Drivers for your computer have to be carefully controlled and balanced, or everything will explode. And the system upgrade cycle is much more frequent, and vastly more expensive.
I'll stick to consoles, thank you.
I dunno. It'd be really hard to identify around here, since there's nothing like an actual model to indicate Male or Female. About the only way you could force the issue would be to advertise it everywhere you go, and that's pretty obnoxious (Example: my sig. :D ). The only place I could see it happening would be joining in in any "male-vs-female" type discussions that pop up on one side or the other.
So while there might be people who do that, I don't think it'd be all that common simply because you wouldn't get much out of it.
Seems like a really small sample set to me...
Oh, it's not going to be over after SCO gets exposed. Because then you can be sure all the folks SCO's been going after are going to go right back after them.
And I'm sure The Revenge Of IBM is going to make headlines around here.
Unexpected shutdowns? Crashes? You must be mistaken. Linux does not crash. Ever.
Now, what was your name and address again?
I wonder how much of the idea of acronyms that people think they can pronounce arises partly from overgeneralized usage of this ability of the brain.
It'd be one of the better explanations as to why I see so many disagreements between people as to how to pronounce an acronym or whether to do so at all - different error correction bases, or something.