That CCTV coverage helps us track terrorists and criminal activity in a city (London) that has been hit by these things over a great number of years. If you're not doing anything wrong there is no reason to suspect the state of monitoring your activities via these CCTV.
Sure, if you're a hardcore nerd then installing Debian and trawling across usenet for help when things go wrong is just fine. What about Joe Coffee who just wants to buy the box, get out the cd, install it and have it work. If things go wrong it's great that there is a company he can call for the first 90 days to get him going. Linux needs that support as well as the OSS teams if it is to survive and expand beyond the boundaries of nerds.
Red Hat is a company like any other and it depends on income to stay afloat. That income, unlike Microsoft, is mainly derived from software sales. Microsoft actually makes more money from investment in other companies than through it's software sales (at least that's what a guy at FTSE said).
As a business user I have no problem with the idea of a yearly maintenance contract on my servers. This is actually a big benefit to know the company that provides my OS will be around when I need them and able to support my platform for it's expected lifetime. We charge our clients in the same way to support their servers.
As a home user, it's no so great. I want to pay for the OS once every few years and upgrade incrementally as required - then do a fresh install every 3-4 years.
It seems to me the small home users will be getting the worse deal from it, but then again, you can always download it for nothing and just buy a new copy whenever you feel flush enough and feel they deserve it enough.
Here in the UK, a government crackdown is being run on people just accessing child pornography (a heinous crime indeed, don't get me wrong). However, they have no co-operation whatsoever from the ISPs - the only way they are tracing these people is by getting lists from credit card companies of people who paid money to known child porn sites.
I actually just had to do something like this myself (not download kiddie porn, but track down a user via their IP). I can assure you the ISPs will assist the police, there is even a standard form to fill out to request the logs.
I was planning on upgrading my system when Doom III becomes available to cope with it's hardware spec, and an FX was definitely looking like being the card. The test results are so disappointing tho I might as well opt for an Radeon 9700 Pro and pocket the change. Maybe the NV30 range will be out by then, and maybe they will be better, but honestly it looks like NVidia has clearly lost it's crown. All hail the new leader ATI! (and in next years surprise news Tseng Labs make a comeback and claim the crown of fastest video card).
You realised wrong...in 1vs1 you need to field a diverse army. Some ranged, some infintry, some spells, some air - plenty of anti-air. In 3vs3/2vs2 you are better off each specialising according to race and heroes. Let me guess, during those 2 hours you got 0wn3d bad? Check the link from my previous post to help you get game.
This is so easy to get around. Build some siege weapons and support with some heavy infintry and archers/sorcs. When the heros come out (they have to, siege has greater range than those towers) they get hit by the other teams heros and assorted nasties. Protect the siege and you'll break the defense and be in there within minutes.
Are you sure you didn't accidently buy Warcraft I from the bargain bins by mistake? WCIII has 3d graphics with reasonable poly counts, moving water effects, shadows, and good character design. The hero system introduces a whole new range of complexity to the game, as does creeps. The creeps help to prevent grunt rushes and stop immediate expansion mines. Try playing it a while longer - it took me a while to find the extra depth it provides over earlier warcrafts. It wasn't until I read the very cool FAQ that I started to really get a grip on what they have done.
Maybe, maybe not...when I purchase a game it's because I want to show support for the publisher (financial) and to encourage them to develop more. I have had to use the NOCD hack before for a legit game and that does suck...but it certainly doesn't ruin the game for me. If it doesn't work for you try the following:
Return to store for refund.
Email company and let them know their copy protection stopped you from playing the game and they are losing revenue because of it
I got quite a reasonable response when I emailed about the game that was crapped out on me. If more people did that instead of whining on slashdot then the publishers might pay attention.
Did it feel good humiliating and abusing a store clerk earning minimum wage? Why didn't you take your issue up with the management. Why didn't you enter reasoned discussion with the store rather than venting. Flaming is funny on the net, but less so in person.
Odd, I was able to play both NWN and UT2003 even with the copy protection. Oh wait, maybe it's because I bought a copy from the store rather than downloading it from 31337 w4r3z 517e5. There have been some issues with the disk protection schemes, but these are mostly confined to older versions of CDROM drives.
Just make a ghost of your machine when it's all going well, and then if it goes tits up you can completely restore it. You can do this to either a second hard drive, over the network, or over a paralel cable - or even tape if you have it. Ghost rocks! I also use another product that does my Linux partitions (reiser format). Now to feel nice and safe.
I use 128 bt encryption in terminal server and ssh all the time (admin work) and never notice any CPU drain at all or slowdown. You'd only need a crypto co-pro if you were doing a LOT of SSL work - webserver for instance.
Bitching is user feedback, it's just that it's negative feedback instead of positive. It will help get a product changed, so it can have a positive effect, it's just likely to hurt the programmers feelings and they will get all defensive about their product.
Feedback is important to getting a product spit and polish finished - and I should know, I've been on the receiving end of enough of it.
Fuck no, it's rubbish and I wish it would die a horrible death - particularly version 4.0 of it. FFS people, it's free to upgrade to either Netscape 6.0/Mozilla 6.0 or some other browser that isn't retarded! I have to design websites that work for that browser because 2% of the people visiting our sites (big ones you would have heard of) still use it...sigh. It doubles the amount of effort involved in page layout because it is so utterly broken.
Slashdot Mirror
Hehehe, yeh, I AM also ALREADY ENCRYPTED with the super proprietry, government standard ROT26 algorithm.
That CCTV coverage helps us track terrorists and criminal activity in a city (London) that has been hit by these things over a great number of years. If you're not doing anything wrong there is no reason to suspect the state of monitoring your activities via these CCTV.
But why bother destroying the original. Let's get some cloning machines using this tech churning out thousands of copies of sexy chicks!
Sure, if you're a hardcore nerd then installing Debian and trawling across usenet for help when things go wrong is just fine. What about Joe Coffee who just wants to buy the box, get out the cd, install it and have it work. If things go wrong it's great that there is a company he can call for the first 90 days to get him going. Linux needs that support as well as the OSS teams if it is to survive and expand beyond the boundaries of nerds.
As a business user I have no problem with the idea of a yearly maintenance contract on my servers. This is actually a big benefit to know the company that provides my OS will be around when I need them and able to support my platform for it's expected lifetime. We charge our clients in the same way to support their servers.
As a home user, it's no so great. I want to pay for the OS once every few years and upgrade incrementally as required - then do a fresh install every 3-4 years.
It seems to me the small home users will be getting the worse deal from it, but then again, you can always download it for nothing and just buy a new copy whenever you feel flush enough and feel they deserve it enough.
I actually just had to do something like this myself (not download kiddie porn, but track down a user via their IP). I can assure you the ISPs will assist the police, there is even a standard form to fill out to request the logs.
I was planning on upgrading my system when Doom III becomes available to cope with it's hardware spec, and an FX was definitely looking like being the card. The test results are so disappointing tho I might as well opt for an Radeon 9700 Pro and pocket the change. Maybe the NV30 range will be out by then, and maybe they will be better, but honestly it looks like NVidia has clearly lost it's crown. All hail the new leader ATI! (and in next years surprise news Tseng Labs make a comeback and claim the crown of fastest video card).
http://www.battle.net/war3/basics/
This is so easy to get around. Build some siege weapons and support with some heavy infintry and archers/sorcs. When the heros come out (they have to, siege has greater range than those towers) they get hit by the other teams heros and assorted nasties. Protect the siege and you'll break the defense and be in there within minutes.
They have them already...mass sorcesses and knights, or mass necros and abominations :-)
Err, Blizzard don't charge for Battlenet access. What sort of a business model is that?
http://www.battle.net/war3/basics/
Good point, and yet not modded up? Maybe you need to put some flames in there to get the crowd motivated to spend their mod points.
Return to store for refund.
Email company and let them know their copy protection stopped you from playing the game and they are losing revenue because of it
I got quite a reasonable response when I emailed about the game that was crapped out on me. If more people did that instead of whining on slashdot then the publishers might pay attention.
Did it feel good humiliating and abusing a store clerk earning minimum wage? Why didn't you take your issue up with the management. Why didn't you enter reasoned discussion with the store rather than venting. Flaming is funny on the net, but less so in person.
Odd, I was able to play both NWN and UT2003 even with the copy protection. Oh wait, maybe it's because I bought a copy from the store rather than downloading it from 31337 w4r3z 517e5. There have been some issues with the disk protection schemes, but these are mostly confined to older versions of CDROM drives.
I think you'd have a hard time doing this, since you can't boot NT from a floppy. It's not supported.
What about when I upgrade to a new PC (which I do every 2 years)? My key is locked inside the old PC, along with all my encrypted data.
Just make a ghost of your machine when it's all going well, and then if it goes tits up you can completely restore it. You can do this to either a second hard drive, over the network, or over a paralel cable - or even tape if you have it. Ghost rocks! I also use another product that does my Linux partitions (reiser format). Now to feel nice and safe.
I use 128 bt encryption in terminal server and ssh all the time (admin work) and never notice any CPU drain at all or slowdown. You'd only need a crypto co-pro if you were doing a LOT of SSL work - webserver for instance.
How about a really cool skin of a command line interface where you type arcane commands in to control it. That'd be way cool!
Netscape 3 was the peak for Netscape. It's been all downhill from there.
Feedback is important to getting a product spit and polish finished - and I should know, I've been on the receiving end of enough of it.
Fuck no, it's rubbish and I wish it would die a horrible death - particularly version 4.0 of it. FFS people, it's free to upgrade to either Netscape 6.0/Mozilla 6.0 or some other browser that isn't retarded! I have to design websites that work for that browser because 2% of the people visiting our sites (big ones you would have heard of) still use it...sigh. It doubles the amount of effort involved in page layout because it is so utterly broken.
That little bit of instability is exactly what I expect from my Windows OS, maybe I should add some more expectations now too ;-)