I don't think jail time is warranted for spam offenses, especially several years worth.
We could call them spamers. We could say it's "only" spam. Or we could take a look at what they do and what the consequences are.
If I started clogging down the highways so bad that the traffic slowed down to sub 10 mph, that wouldn't be a mayor offence? If I clogged down the highways so bad new ones had to be built to handle the traffic, that would be ok?
Is taking over infrastructure, ruining it, and passing the cost over to everyone except yourself, simply for filing fraudulent advertising, a "minor"-offence?
Yes. One spam: no biggie. Bit you have to see the problem in actual proportions. Spam is drowning any legitemate communication. Spam costs everyone money except the spammer.
And what he has to offer, problably is fraudlent and illegal in the first place.
Remember, CDs are priced according to the supply and demand curve.
So we are talking about a free market here, where free market-rules apply then?
That might be.
Except that distribution is controlled by a semi-monopoly, so there is no real competition.
And except that when sales drop, it's never ever because the products are shit, but "due to piracy".
And isn't it simply amazing that the recording industry actually knows how much people would be buying, but aren't?
As I see things, they probably go on more or less like this:
"Well, Mr. Senator. We should have sold 200 million billion albums this year. Yes. We know this. This is a fact. You see, we can read minds."
"However, Mr. Senator. We have only sold 195 mllion billion albums. Clearly someone is stealing our product."
"So if you, Mr. Senator, would like to legislate that listening to our valuable crap before buying it is worse than gangrape, torture and murder combined."
"And if you would give us legal permission to do a combined gangrape, torture and murder on anyone we don't think is buying enough CDs, you will see contributions next election as well.
Ok. Forgot Firewall. But I think it get's turned on by default, unless you tell Windows otherwise.
Though be careful with something that has pop-up blocking installed.
Opera can be configured (very easily) to only allow requested popups. Works very well. Have yet to see it fail. And you don't have to use the pop-up blocker at all, if you for some reason fancy pop-ups.
So you have two choices: either reinstall everything from scratch, doing the partition as part of the XP install (a long and painful job overall), or buy Partition Magic for $70.
Yes. But you if they screw up, it's reinstall immidiatly (once) or reinstall later (multiple installs). I know what I'll go for.
Then to do the ghosting, you need to buy another utility. This is at least $100 worth of software
I don't know what the price for Symantec Ghost is, seriously. However I have had the luxery of working in a IT-department, which were using Ghost as their primary installation tool.
Call me a thief, but a 600kb DOS-program used only to recover a broken machine once a year, can be copied without feeling to guilty about yourself.
And if you create a Linux bootdisk I'm pretty sure a quick "dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/ghostbackup/in-case-they-screw-it-up.raw" will do the job just as fine, just without the compression. And diskspace is excess these days.
Yes, you can use Linux tools to maintain a Windows setup. Just remember to keep the Ghost-file on a FAT-partition. That way it can be accessed from more or less any tool and OS.
I kindof feel bad for them but if they don't listen to my suggestions to buy a mac/ use linux (I've offered help) then it's what they get.
Dood, I know this is/. and that we be abunchazealots, but still...
You can run Windows in a secure fashion. First thing: Disblable useless services (like Universal PnP, Remote *anything* and so on). Second: Setup separate user and admin accounts.
If you as a third move install third-party software for netuse (Opera, Mozilla. That kind of stuff), you'll need some pretty clueless people in order to screw the machine over.
The fourth and probably best move you can ever do, is setup a systempartition with only the system and applications (move documentfolders elsewhere), and take a Ghost-snapshot. Then if they somehow manage to screw up, you're recovered in 5 minutes with absolutely no hassle.
That's four simple goddamn things you need to do, and your Windows is bulletproof enough for any standard needs.
What's the problem? No really, what is the problem?
Yes, Linux may be better (for some things), but sometimes stuff like work ++ creates things called software issues, and VMware really is more of a hack than a solution unless you have the extra memory.
-Try to market and sell a OS-less laptop (something that a tremendously small percentage of the population wants)
If the customer is a business of decent size, they might not be interested in the pre-installed OS at all. They might allready have a license deal with Microsoft, and are installing fresh corporate-adapted ghost-images onto all new PCs that gets bought.
Paying for a pre-installed OS you're not gonna use, well... It would seem like a waste of money to me.
And you'd think that most big companies do have some sort of pre-configured OS-setup (usually Windows....) specificly for company-use allready? Or is it just me who have been working for companies doing things in an unusally practical manner?
You have habbits, I have habbits, everyone has habbits. And we all tend to like our habbits, otherwise we would have developed different ones.
Coming from above saying "Your habbital way of working will now cease to exist. This is the new way", ofcourse you will meet rebellion.
People want Windows and MS Office, because they don't understand computers, but have learned how to use these products. They necasserily don't understand any concepts, but they have memorized what they need to get their work done.
Now let's see it from a different point of view. Set up a Linux-desktop. Dead simple, as simple as it gets. You could even (and I realise this might be hard on your consiounce) rename Mozilla to "Internet (Explorer)", OpenOffice, to just "Office", and create a link to "~/Documents" named "My documents" on the desktop.
And that should be the desktop. Nothing more.
Install the KDE XP-theme if necassery. Anything to lower their eyebrows, really. Most users will want, maybe even need, recognisable visuals. That's how far their comprehension goes, and not inch further.
Now, try to explain to the poor user that due to security concerns and the economics of maintaining the old setup, they will have to cope with this.
Simply make them understand that this is not any more difficult than the old setup (cos it shouldn't be), but it may take some time getting used to. Because using a presetup Linux-desktop is not any more (technically speaking) difficult than using a pre-setup Windows desktop.
Any difficulty encoutered at this point is due to old habbits not working on the new setup, and not because it's more difficult.
This at least goes for any basic "office" work. If they can't figure out how to install kazaa and play MP3s at work, well that's not in their jobdescription I would assume. That's not your problem, and you shouldn't accept it as such.
But people don't like their having their habbits interfered with, but that doesn't mean that habbits can't be changed. Just go softly on them.
What karma-whoring? This article is about the ROTK DVD. You didn't provide the link for the 2xDVDr, now did you? Just some crappy DVD-rip. My advice? Get the 2xDVDr instead, just 9 gigs:)
Well... I won't post any links here. You guys are probably clever enough to find it yourself, and I don't feel like helping the MPAA taking it down.
And if any MPAA suit is reading:
I will buy the extended edition when it comes out. Meanwhile I will watch this evil pirate version, which I insist on not paying for.
Rent it? That's unusual for a/.er... I, for one, have downloaded the 2xDVD allready. Probably some "Oscar"-version, but it works nice. Oh, and it requires a pretty handsome connection, or just godly amount of time.
But no way, am I buying the standard version, simply because they're slow on releasing the extended edition.
But as soon as that extended edition hit's the shops... I'm buying, just like I've done with the other LOTR-movies. The extended editions are so worth the money:)
Re:Fdisk /mbr and other documented historical even
on
Real's Reality
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· Score: 1
Never heard of format/mbr before. I did for fun try it on the XP box, comes back as an invalid option.
I checked, you're right. It's been removed in Windows XP. I swear however, that if you fetch a Windows 95/98 (DOS7.0) bootdisk and try it, it works.
Just now, I tried for fun to find the free player, since everyone is nagging about how hard it is to find. I must admit "C'mon, it may be hidden deep, buit it's nothing we can't handle", has always been my thought on this.
If we ever wanted real on our systems, that is, but nevertheless...
I feel I am seriously computer and web-savy. I've found my web trough porn- and warez-circled sites just to find what I was looking for.
Sure, with all those fraudlent sites it's not easy to find actual content, but it is possible.
For real however... I didn't find the "free player". Freakin' impossible. Unless it's put there with a link with 0.1-point writing, I don't believe such a free player exists.
Unless that was what they wanted my VISA-number for, you never know. But seriously, jeez, whadda bunch o' wankers.
When I write software for Linux or for Windows, I try to do the same thing. My Windows software uses the "deprecated" INI files in the executable directory instead of the super-bloated registry
While I think this in essence is a good philosophy, it has it's drawbacks.
First, as witnessed in WinAmp5, a user must run with admin-privelegies to alter the configuration permanently (or update the media-library as in WA5).
Second of all the registry is user-specific. Which is quite a nifty feature. I'm not saying you can't store the INI-files in the user-directory, but I this doesn't seem to be a ordinary custom.
The only "modern" application I can recall that does this, is Microsoft's own Spider-solitaire (or is it FreeCell... hrm).
Fdisk /mbr and other documented historical events
on
Real's Reality
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· Score: 2
Ok. I don't know this for sure, but I got a pretty good gut-feeling, since I can't recall ever hearing about that/mbr option before.
fdisk/mbr is probably as well documented and mentioned (by Microsoft) as format/mbr. Which means none, zip, zero for any average user.
I have been using third-party tools to install standard MBRs for years, not knowing of format/mbr until recently, which supposebly has been around for years.
Try format/? on your favorite dos-prompt. See any/mbr mentioned? See any mentioned in the manuals?
This is, as I started out saying, pure specualtion and gut-feeling, but I bet that fdisk/mbr was also one of these really handy, yet thoroughly undocumented things that seems to exist in every Microsoft product released.
"Free RAM is bad RAM "..... I wonder at what point will Longhorn start to seriously swap.
Good point. Regardless of system memory, free memory or any factor whatsoever, I have yet to see any Windows system where 50% of the kernel isn't paged at all time.
With the huge amonunts of memory available today, I can't see any reason for kernel-paging at all.
My machine is a dual 1800+ MP, and I don't really care WHAT the problem is. I should never, ever have problems scrolling TEXT.
I remeber back in the days of fixed-spec computers. Tandy Color Basic, Commodore 64, Amiga 500... Computers like that had more or less locked specs, which developers would have to keep in mind. Kinda like the gaming consoles these days.
It's amazing how much better the software get's written, when there are absolute constraints which can't be tangled. That goes for back in the old days on FS-computers, and it goes today on the consoles. The developers will actually have to write efficient code.
Totally unlike todays computers, where software authors really doesn't seem to give a shit. "If it doesn't run well, spend anotgher $2-300 on your setup allready". Does my current computer work that much faster than my 66Mhz 486 running Windows 3.11 and Word 6.0? No really, it runs faster, but heck, take into account my current computer specs.
My computer is rigged with a Pentium4 2.4Ghz and 512MB ram. Running the "multi-tasking" OS Windows XP (yes I use it, software issue, say no more), inserting a CD/DVD (not to mention DVD+R) and any opening of (new) files gets lagged 3-6 seconds at least.
Generally anything which involves disk-access will have to wait until Windows has properly detected (and performed an Autorun on, if not disabled) any removable media.
Amazing. Multi-tasking my fscking ass.
And for 486-comparison... If we say my current setupis aprox. 40 times faster. I'll say that a bloat-factor of 10-15 is applicable. That means 40/(10-15) is the actual speed increase.
But that's just me, and this comment is getting way long.
The police aren't the law... WE are the law. We set this government up, and WE have the right to override/revise/replace it.
I fully agree, but most people don't think so. Most people are such a bunch of sheep that they consider things ethicly right or wrong depending on it's legality.
Which is fscked up beyond beilef. People seem to forget that they are officially in charge in a democracy. They have a right to disagree.
Jeez. Doesn't take much be flamebait these days. I'll even bet this one get's modded Offtopic.
C'mon, Outlook is that bad, it's in it's architecture, for crying out loud.
A nice handy GUI and intuitive feel, yes, maybe. But that really doesn't cover up at all for unleashing worms/trojans/viri all over the net every second week.
I know noone using Outlook, I have yet to see viri in my Inbox. It might just be that the people I know simply ain't that stupid, but hey... It might be connected.
This will turn out exactly the way every other bogus "piracy prevention" fiasco has.
But it will probably cost a HELL lot more money, resources and time, than any anti-piracy scheme this world has seen so far.
Not to mention the infinity ways of DOSing such a service allready mentioned in this thread, apart from just actually using it, which should be pretty considarate DOSing itself.
Are they really transferring the burdon onto themselves voluntarely and not the consumer?
Slashdot Mirror
We could call them spamers. We could say it's "only" spam. Or we could take a look at what they do and what the consequences are.
If I started clogging down the highways so bad that the traffic slowed down to sub 10 mph, that wouldn't be a mayor offence? If I clogged down the highways so bad new ones had to be built to handle the traffic, that would be ok?
Is taking over infrastructure, ruining it, and passing the cost over to everyone except yourself, simply for filing fraudulent advertising, a "minor"-offence?
Yes. One spam: no biggie. Bit you have to see the problem in actual proportions. Spam is drowning any legitemate communication. Spam costs everyone money except the spammer.
And what he has to offer, problably is fraudlent and illegal in the first place.
No more no biggie. Give these fucktards hell.
It seems like all should RTFA (which they won't), or take note of parent poster.
I'll just repeat the message to be sure people get it:
So we are talking about a free market here, where free market-rules apply then?
That might be.
Except that distribution is controlled by a semi-monopoly, so there is no real competition.
And except that when sales drop, it's never ever because the products are shit, but "due to piracy".
And isn't it simply amazing that the recording industry actually knows how much people would be buying, but aren't?
As I see things, they probably go on more or less like this:
"Well, Mr. Senator. We should have sold 200 million billion albums this year. Yes. We know this. This is a fact. You see, we can read minds."
"However, Mr. Senator. We have only sold 195 mllion billion albums. Clearly someone is stealing our product."
"So if you, Mr. Senator, would like to legislate that listening to our valuable crap before buying it is worse than gangrape, torture and murder combined."
"And if you would give us legal permission to do a combined gangrape, torture and murder on anyone we don't think is buying enough CDs, you will see contributions next election as well.
Well that is my version anyway....
Er. You would surely mean that you'd only download one file per IP-adress-renewal?
w00t
Ok. Forgot Firewall. But I think it get's turned on by default, unless you tell Windows otherwise.
Opera can be configured (very easily) to only allow requested popups. Works very well. Have yet to see it fail. And you don't have to use the pop-up blocker at all, if you for some reason fancy pop-ups.
Yes. But you if they screw up, it's reinstall immidiatly (once) or reinstall later (multiple installs). I know what I'll go for.
I don't know what the price for Symantec Ghost is, seriously. However I have had the luxery of working in a IT-department, which were using Ghost as their primary installation tool.
Call me a thief, but a 600kb DOS-program used only to recover a broken machine once a year, can be copied without feeling to guilty about yourself.
And if you create a Linux bootdisk I'm pretty sure a quick "dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/ghostbackup/in-case-they-screw-it-up.raw" will do the job just as fine, just without the compression. And diskspace is excess these days.
Yes, you can use Linux tools to maintain a Windows setup. Just remember to keep the Ghost-file on a FAT-partition. That way it can be accessed from more or less any tool and OS.
This has no relevance to parent post whatsoever, but it needs to be said and read.
These new laws, which probably will be passed, may have some nasty DMCA like tendencies, but there are good news as well.
It will outloaw technological measures to prevent free trade (like DVD-zones). It's not all to the record/movie-business.
Even if this law, I must admit, is the lowest I've ever seen the EU crawl for the industry.
Dood, I know this is /. and that we be abunchazealots, but still...
You can run Windows in a secure fashion. First thing: Disblable useless services (like Universal PnP, Remote *anything* and so on). Second: Setup separate user and admin accounts.
If you as a third move install third-party software for netuse (Opera, Mozilla. That kind of stuff), you'll need some pretty clueless people in order to screw the machine over.
The fourth and probably best move you can ever do, is setup a systempartition with only the system and applications (move documentfolders elsewhere), and take a Ghost-snapshot. Then if they somehow manage to screw up, you're recovered in 5 minutes with absolutely no hassle.
That's four simple goddamn things you need to do, and your Windows is bulletproof enough for any standard needs.
What's the problem? No really, what is the problem?
Yes, Linux may be better (for some things), but sometimes stuff like work ++ creates things called software issues, and VMware really is more of a hack than a solution unless you have the extra memory.
I think the disks held much more than 720kb of data, if filesystems were included.
These "720kb" disk held at least 800kb, if not up to 900kb's of data (but I don't remeber exactly) if used on an Amiga.
Somehow however, Amiga entirely forgot that HD-floppy's existed, so when that caught on, it really didn't remain impressive at all anymore....
But with that same system I bet you could have squeezed 1.7MB out of those so called 1.44MB-floppies.
No. It is called "licensing".
And it's good for everyone, without expection, if you really must know.
If the customer is a business of decent size, they might not be interested in the pre-installed OS at all. They might allready have a license deal with Microsoft, and are installing fresh corporate-adapted ghost-images onto all new PCs that gets bought.
Paying for a pre-installed OS you're not gonna use, well... It would seem like a waste of money to me.
And you'd think that most big companies do have some sort of pre-configured OS-setup (usually Windows....) specificly for company-use allready? Or is it just me who have been working for companies doing things in an unusally practical manner?
You have habbits, I have habbits, everyone has habbits. And we all tend to like our habbits, otherwise we would have developed different ones.
Coming from above saying "Your habbital way of working will now cease to exist. This is the new way", ofcourse you will meet rebellion.
People want Windows and MS Office, because they don't understand computers, but have learned how to use these products. They necasserily don't understand any concepts, but they have memorized what they need to get their work done.
Now let's see it from a different point of view. Set up a Linux-desktop. Dead simple, as simple as it gets. You could even (and I realise this might be hard on your consiounce) rename Mozilla to "Internet (Explorer)", OpenOffice, to just "Office", and create a link to "~/Documents" named "My documents" on the desktop.
And that should be the desktop. Nothing more.
Install the KDE XP-theme if necassery. Anything to lower their eyebrows, really. Most users will want, maybe even need, recognisable visuals. That's how far their comprehension goes, and not inch further.
Now, try to explain to the poor user that due to security concerns and the economics of maintaining the old setup, they will have to cope with this.
Simply make them understand that this is not any more difficult than the old setup (cos it shouldn't be), but it may take some time getting used to. Because using a presetup Linux-desktop is not any more (technically speaking) difficult than using a pre-setup Windows desktop. Any difficulty encoutered at this point is due to old habbits not working on the new setup, and not because it's more difficult.
This at least goes for any basic "office" work. If they can't figure out how to install kazaa and play MP3s at work, well that's not in their jobdescription I would assume. That's not your problem, and you shouldn't accept it as such.
But people don't like their having their habbits interfered with, but that doesn't mean that habbits can't be changed. Just go softly on them.
http://www.primussucks.com is another bad example.
It belongs to the band Primus. It is their very primary and real website :)
It might be irony, or maybe they just don't like these guys.
What karma-whoring? This article is about the ROTK DVD. You didn't provide the link for the 2xDVDr, now did you? Just some crappy DVD-rip. My advice? Get the 2xDVDr instead, just 9 gigs :)
Well... I won't post any links here. You guys are probably clever enough to find it yourself, and I don't feel like helping the MPAA taking it down.
And if any MPAA suit is reading:
I will buy the extended edition when it comes out. Meanwhile I will watch this evil pirate version, which I insist on not paying for.
Rent it? That's unusual for a /.er... I, for one, have downloaded the 2xDVD allready. Probably some "Oscar"-version, but it works nice. Oh, and it requires a pretty handsome connection, or just godly amount of time.
But no way, am I buying the standard version, simply because they're slow on releasing the extended edition.
But as soon as that extended edition hit's the shops... I'm buying, just like I've done with the other LOTR-movies. The extended editions are so worth the money :)
I checked, you're right. It's been removed in Windows XP. I swear however, that if you fetch a Windows 95/98 (DOS7.0) bootdisk and try it, it works.
Just now, I tried for fun to find the free player, since everyone is nagging about how hard it is to find. I must admit "C'mon, it may be hidden deep, buit it's nothing we can't handle", has always been my thought on this.
If we ever wanted real on our systems, that is, but nevertheless...
I feel I am seriously computer and web-savy. I've found my web trough porn- and warez-circled sites just to find what I was looking for.
Sure, with all those fraudlent sites it's not easy to find actual content, but it is possible.
For real however... I didn't find the "free player". Freakin' impossible. Unless it's put there with a link with 0.1-point writing, I don't believe such a free player exists.
Unless that was what they wanted my VISA-number for, you never know. But seriously, jeez, whadda bunch o' wankers.
Real: screw goat
While I think this in essence is a good philosophy, it has it's drawbacks.
First, as witnessed in WinAmp5, a user must run with admin-privelegies to alter the configuration permanently (or update the media-library as in WA5).
Second of all the registry is user-specific. Which is quite a nifty feature. I'm not saying you can't store the INI-files in the user-directory, but I this doesn't seem to be a ordinary custom.
The only "modern" application I can recall that does this, is Microsoft's own Spider-solitaire (or is it FreeCell... hrm).
Ok. I don't know this for sure, but I got a pretty good gut-feeling, since I can't recall ever hearing about that /mbr option before.
fdisk /mbr is probably as well documented and mentioned (by Microsoft) as format /mbr. Which means none, zip, zero for any average user.
I have been using third-party tools to install standard MBRs for years, not knowing of format /mbr until recently, which supposebly has been around for years.
Try format /? on your favorite dos-prompt. See any /mbr mentioned? See any mentioned in the manuals?
This is, as I started out saying, pure specualtion and gut-feeling, but I bet that fdisk /mbr was also one of these really handy, yet thoroughly undocumented things that seems to exist in every Microsoft product released.
Good point. Regardless of system memory, free memory or any factor whatsoever, I have yet to see any Windows system where 50% of the kernel isn't paged at all time.
With the huge amonunts of memory available today, I can't see any reason for kernel-paging at all.
Heck, come think about it, my old Amiga multitasked better than Windows XP does.
Natively my Amiga 500 with 1MB ram would react immidatly to application switching and load-scheduling.
Ofcourse with only floppy-disks, the only problem was disk-access (which goes without saying really didn't work well at all).
However my Amiga 1200 with harddisk and virtual memory never, ever had that kind of lagging you see on a well-loaded Windows-computer.
And that is really kinda weird.
I remeber back in the days of fixed-spec computers. Tandy Color Basic, Commodore 64, Amiga 500... Computers like that had more or less locked specs, which developers would have to keep in mind. Kinda like the gaming consoles these days.
It's amazing how much better the software get's written, when there are absolute constraints which can't be tangled. That goes for back in the old days on FS-computers, and it goes today on the consoles. The developers will actually have to write efficient code.
Totally unlike todays computers, where software authors really doesn't seem to give a shit. "If it doesn't run well, spend anotgher $2-300 on your setup allready". Does my current computer work that much faster than my 66Mhz 486 running Windows 3.11 and Word 6.0? No really, it runs faster, but heck, take into account my current computer specs.
My computer is rigged with a Pentium4 2.4Ghz and 512MB ram. Running the "multi-tasking" OS Windows XP (yes I use it, software issue, say no more), inserting a CD/DVD (not to mention DVD+R) and any opening of (new) files gets lagged 3-6 seconds at least.
Generally anything which involves disk-access will have to wait until Windows has properly detected (and performed an Autorun on, if not disabled) any removable media.
Amazing. Multi-tasking my fscking ass.
And for 486-comparison... If we say my current setupis aprox. 40 times faster. I'll say that a bloat-factor of 10-15 is applicable. That means 40/(10-15) is the actual speed increase.
But that's just me, and this comment is getting way long.
I fully agree, but most people don't think so. Most people are such a bunch of sheep that they consider things ethicly right or wrong depending on it's legality.
Which is fscked up beyond beilef. People seem to forget that they are officially in charge in a democracy. They have a right to disagree.
Jeez. Doesn't take much be flamebait these days. I'll even bet this one get's modded Offtopic.
C'mon, Outlook is that bad, it's in it's architecture, for crying out loud.
A nice handy GUI and intuitive feel, yes, maybe. But that really doesn't cover up at all for unleashing worms/trojans/viri all over the net every second week.
I know noone using Outlook, I have yet to see viri in my Inbox. It might just be that the people I know simply ain't that stupid, but hey... It might be connected.
You forgot webbrowser.
But it will probably cost a HELL lot more money, resources and time, than any anti-piracy scheme this world has seen so far.
Not to mention the infinity ways of DOSing such a service allready mentioned in this thread, apart from just actually using it, which should be pretty considarate DOSing itself.
Are they really transferring the burdon onto themselves voluntarely and not the consumer?
I'm confused, this must be a trick.