Or DON'T build it!
on
A Mighty Wind
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Let those rich b*stards live under the same environmental restraints we all have to. Let's close down their local oil and coal plants for some emissions problem (I'm sure Greenpeace or some other org will help).
I wonder if wind farms would be more acceptable then... C*cksuckers.
"If your 15 year old daughter is mature enough to not want to see it, then she most likely wont."
Oh really? How would she know BEFORE she opens it with a subject line like, "Hey! Didn't you get my offline?" It's that fuzzy 'most likely' that's not so fuzzy. These bastards will do anything to get ANYONE to see their filth.
Don't get me wrong, I believe in freedom of speech, but with that comes responsibility. Spam addresses shouldn't be forged. Spam subject lines should be explicit. People shouldn't be lied to. That kind of behavior is not tolerated in other forms of media, why should it be with e-spam?
...you people and your "parents should be more responsible" line of reasoning?
It's not that I don't agree that parents need to be more proactive with their children as a whole, but this idea that a parent can control everything their kid does is plain stupid. Where are the tools? After all, parents need help too. What are the options?
1) Filtering software. Zzzzt! Can't get it all - especially with these active pages using Shockwave, Java, and/or Flash to display content. How do you filter that from an anonymous source?
2) Block them from using the Internet altogether. I suppose this works for the Amish, but I suspect this might be a bit extreme for most families.
3) Sit down with your kids every time they are online. Not a bad idea, but at some point, kids get older and do appreciate their privacy online and with their friends. Does that then mean that a 15 year old girl should be subjected to the trashy pop-ups and email? And even when the parents sit there with their kids, one wrong click can take them to pop-up or spam hell.
When was the last time you received SNAIL MAIL 1/4 as offensive as some of the stuff you get through regular email? Why then should this garbage be tolterated? The companies that send this stuff unsolicited should be drawn and quartered. END OF LINE.
I was downing about the same amount of Coke and ended up doing the 24 hr. Halter monitor and everything due to palpitations. At one point I was told that I was a candidate for a PACEMAKER!:O
Luckily, I sought out a second opinion and that doctor mentioned my excessive caffeine intake. Sure enough, within a couple weeks all the symptoms were gone and I was feeling MUCH better.
I still have drinks with caffeine from time to time, but not in the sheer volume I was drinking it before.
A translation of the translation...
on
Today's SCO News
·
· Score: 2, Funny
SCO ist the celebration of the repellant and painful.
...will be dependent on it's ability to scale. It's already proven that it can scale unbelievably well for transferring files - something most Peer to Peer fall down on.
What is increasingly becoming a problem are DDOS attacks and extra traffic killing the trackers. I think in order for Bittorrent to be fully effective it will need to decentralize the tracking system. This could be done by round-robining dedicated trackers to share the load, or even by having the users themselves take part in it.
As it stands now, ever since Slashdot posted links to the favorite BT haunts, they've been slow, or non-functional.
I have a friend who just purchased a karaoke business from someone. With the business came a few hundred older Laserdiscs (yes, the analog ones, mostly Pioneer). We are planning a project to convert these to DVD-R (those LD's are heavy!).
Now it may be true that the videos themselves are cheap, cheezy, and sometimes involve no more than a poolside camera and a couple of babes, BUT... Video is infinately more interesting to look at than CD+G. And there is a certain amount of nostalgia involved.
I wish the original poster luck as this is an arduous process!
I think we all know that there will be better formats in the future. No question about it and the wait won't be long.
The question of format type for software (MPEG 2/4, DiVX, whatever), is a good point, but starting with the most lossless format possible will help maintain maximum quality with any needed conversions later.
Besides, your average MPEG2, even at a medium bitrate, is overkill for old VHS material. We're not talking about anything more than 240 lines of resolution (on a good day), after all.
Ah, but what about the media itself? Well... So what if that DVD-R doesn't store beyond 5-10 years? If the digital transfer process has been done at a point where the VHS is still viable, this won't matter much. A few years after the transfer, go ahead and copy your DVD-R s to your new Blu-Ray discs. You should be able to fit about 10 DVD-Rs each, if I remember correctly.
Then 10 years later transfer ALL of it to Holocube or whatever.
I do video archiving for the school I work for, and this is my stated plan. We use DVD-R because it's cheap, and when properly stored should last until the 'Next Big Thing'.
I would be more worried about VHS analog degradation than digital format obsolesence for one reason: time of transfer. How long will it take to transfer a two hour VHS tape? Yup. 2 hours. How many tapes does this guy have? How long will this take? How long should he wait - this material is DYING in front of him!
How long will it take to copy a DVD? Hmmm. Depends on what year you're talking about doesn't it? 10 years from now, you'll probably be able to copy your entire library of material in mere minutes! You can have copies of the copies; no loss in quality, plenty of redundancy.
That's a very real advantage. With analog there is continual loss (more if the tapes are actually played). the longer you wait to convert the material, the more video will be distorted. With digital, it's already converted and then it's just a factor of time for file copying.
...is true Windows Domain support. And don't give me this bullshit about how users can map drives to the domain every time. I mean, this:
1) User logs into a Windows-based domain.
2) User receives mapped drives at logon. These may include network home directories and other specialized directories.
3) User is accorded rights from the domain.
4) Local machine rights are granted from the domain.
Until this is fixed, it will continue to be an issue for Linux in corporate. Some corporations may choose to replace the Windows Domain at a future date, but for now, with many specialized software bits needing Windows security, this isn't likely.
The only distro that attempts to get this right is Xandros. They have true Windows Domain integration. The other distros could really learn from these guys - unfortunately, their Samba implementation is proprietary.:P
"The converters use RTF as an intermediate format.."
Come again?
"The converters use RTF as an intermediate format.."
Right, that's what I thought you said. So you end up stripping out anything that may have to do with graphics or proper formatting. What the hell kind of 'solution' is this?
"Since you've obviously got this massive hard-on hatefest for Microsoft going..."
It's not a hatefest, it's a protest..ORGs like mine get steamrollered everytime another incompatible format/program/OS comes out of MS. I know why they're doing it and I disagree with it.
There's a reason why Linux is gaining a real foothold and [hint] it doesn't necessarily have to do with it being 'free'. Some of us out there are becoming increasingly disgusted with who we have to buy these products from. MS is doing the job for us right now, but I'm increasingly open to alternatives.
But Asimov always spoke of the future (in his novels) as malleable. For instance, when Hari Seldon (in the novels) appears at certain dates, you hear him say things like, "Well, by all probablility..." and "You *should* be here at..." In other words, he always treated Psychohistory as a fluid art.
He obviously sets this up as a near 'unbreakable' device so that a character like the Mule comes along and destroys it. It made for a good story - forget the science. For more science to your fiction see Arthur C. Clarke.
Re:This is what has made Linux successful,
on
Linus on DRM
·
· Score: 1
That's because ultimately, Linus has faith that the GPL will always win out. As long as there's a 'free' alternative, there will BE alternatives.
Until people started cheating outrageously. When I started seeing spys fly through the air, and heavy weapons guys zooming around like scouts I knew TF had jumped the shark.
I suppose this happens to every game eventually. No game company will be able to support their stuff forever, but for whatever reason, none of the sequels have had that 'feel'. Although I have to admit that I did really enjoy TF on the HL engine, maybe I missed the gritty textures from Quake or the humorous operatic beginning.:)
"When Microsoft includes some feature that you don't need, it's bloatware, but when they factor their product line, it's 'scary'. Make up your mind, dude."
I have 'dude'. It's very simple actually. We use OOo and StarOffice to avoid getting bogged down with various conversion programs. You chant *full* like it's some sort of mantra, but I once again ask, are you including *full* compatibility with versions from South Korea, Japan, and Saudi Arabia? I call you back to my original statement about having international support. We are an international school.
I love how you put that - 'factor their product line'. I'm not saying MS doesn't have the right to include features. Of course they do. What I am saying is that in this instance, it's pretty apparent that MS is creating a special class of corporate user with the XML feature. The fact is, they simply don't want to move away from using proprietary.doc-types.
"My machine isn't *part* of the domain, and I can't *log into* the domain (which is why I have to type the username/password combo), but I can certainly access the resources."
We have three drives map when a user logs in. So... Basically, a student would need to log in THREE times to get to each for each reboot, right? Hmmm.. Good usability there.
Oh, and don't forget about the ISA Server which relies upon domain security and logins. I'm not certain, but I'd bet my students aren't prepared to login EVERY TIME they open a browser window.
"Oops. Microsoft paranoia strikes again!"
Is it that you want so bad to believe MS is perfect and are blind to all else, or are you on their payroll?
I've got a job to do here, and I do it well. I use what tools are appropriate whoever they're from as long as we can afford them. Looking for alternatives isn't somehow being disloyal or paranoid (although given court judgments against MS, perhaps we all should be); it's simply common sense.
This idea of having an upper strata of 'exclusive' software is scary. Let me give you a GREAT example as to why:
Our school (Linden Hall School for Girls in Lititz, PA) has been running a Windows-based domain with a proxy/filtering system based on Proxy Server (now on ISA). Standardizing on the MS product meant that different age profiles can be set up along with different and corresponding access levels. Until Windows XP came out.
The HOME edition of XP doesn't allow you to connect your machine to a domain, after all you're at HOME, right? Well, this fact wasn't clear to me until after the next year new student packet information went out. So all these girls went out and got fantastic brand new computers preloaded with XP Home and couldn't connect to their home directories or use the Internet. The temporary solution for this year was to put XP Home users on a Citrix server and give them a few choice apps to run but they hate it.
The alternative is to have them upgrade to XP Pro and yes, next year I am going to require that our students do not bring XP Home. If they do, we will not be able to offer them connectivity. Strange though, when you think about it. From Windows 9X, to NT, to 2000, the Mac OS, and even Linux can be made to use domain resources. It would of course, take Microsoft to insure incompatibility wouldn't it?
This is a big problem with MS - no flexibility, no recourse, no exceptions. Why should my students be forced to upgrade to a clearly corporate version of this software just to be able to get their shares automatically and use domain resources? We're a non-profit educational facility, not Ernst & Young.
If you don't think this will matter as far as Office versioning goes, you are clearly ill informed. Once it was MS's goal to ensure compatibility with their products, but no longer. They lower the hook, you bite, and then they pull you in for more and more.
You adequately explain the procedure for using XML, but again, why isn't this full functionality just included with every version of the new MS Office by default? No space on the CD? Misstep by marketing?
Hint: LOCK-IN.
Solution: Spam the FTC!
on
FTC vs Spammers
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Hey, here's a thought. If it takes 46,000 users to alert the FTC to spam, perhaps the FTC should be 'opted-in' to a few of the things we're subjected to. Why bother directly complaining? Let the government attempt to sort out their own mailboxes for a while!
Send your spam to *.GOV - heh.
Enlargment, Enhancement, Enforcement
on
FTC vs Spammers
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"This is going to bring spamming on behalf of legitimate businesses to a screeching halt."
Perhaps... But 90% of the shit these guys peddle is hardly legitimate.
Slashdot Mirror
Let those rich b*stards live under the same environmental restraints we all have to. Let's close down their local oil and coal plants for some emissions problem (I'm sure Greenpeace or some other org will help).
I wonder if wind farms would be more acceptable then... C*cksuckers.
"If your 15 year old daughter is mature enough to not want to see it, then she most likely wont."
Oh really? How would she know BEFORE she opens it with a subject line like, "Hey! Didn't you get my offline?" It's that fuzzy 'most likely' that's not so fuzzy. These bastards will do anything to get ANYONE to see their filth.
Don't get me wrong, I believe in freedom of speech, but with that comes responsibility. Spam addresses shouldn't be forged. Spam subject lines should be explicit. People shouldn't be lied to. That kind of behavior is not tolerated in other forms of media, why should it be with e-spam?
I'm sure kids in the "Eastern World" never have these types of issues on the Internet either...
...you people and your "parents should be more responsible" line of reasoning?
It's not that I don't agree that parents need to be more proactive with their children as a whole, but this idea that a parent can control everything their kid does is plain stupid. Where are the tools? After all, parents need help too. What are the options?
1) Filtering software. Zzzzt! Can't get it all - especially with these active pages using Shockwave, Java, and/or Flash to display content. How do you filter that from an anonymous source?
2) Block them from using the Internet altogether. I suppose this works for the Amish, but I suspect this might be a bit extreme for most families.
3) Sit down with your kids every time they are online. Not a bad idea, but at some point, kids get older and do appreciate their privacy online and with their friends. Does that then mean that a 15 year old girl should be subjected to the trashy pop-ups and email? And even when the parents sit there with their kids, one wrong click can take them to pop-up or spam hell.
When was the last time you received SNAIL MAIL 1/4 as offensive as some of the stuff you get through regular email? Why then should this garbage be tolterated? The companies that send this stuff unsolicited should be drawn and quartered. END OF LINE.
I was downing about the same amount of Coke and ended up doing the 24 hr. Halter monitor and everything due to palpitations. At one point I was told that I was a candidate for a PACEMAKER! :O
Luckily, I sought out a second opinion and that doctor mentioned my excessive caffeine intake. Sure enough, within a couple weeks all the symptoms were gone and I was feeling MUCH better.
I still have drinks with caffeine from time to time, but not in the sheer volume I was drinking it before.
SCO ist the celebration of the repellant and painful.
Would you like to touch my monkey?
Now ist the time ver ve dance!
Fuck
You
You choose the order. I hope these people burn. I'd actually dedicate real dollars to see to it in fact.
...will be dependent on it's ability to scale. It's already proven that it can scale unbelievably well for transferring files - something most Peer to Peer fall down on.
What is increasingly becoming a problem are DDOS attacks and extra traffic killing the trackers. I think in order for Bittorrent to be fully effective it will need to decentralize the tracking system. This could be done by round-robining dedicated trackers to share the load, or even by having the users themselves take part in it.
As it stands now, ever since Slashdot posted links to the favorite BT haunts, they've been slow, or non-functional.
You gave me an idea - how about calling it: "AlterNet"? Probably not original, but that's really what this is.
You are right, I heard this before somewhere.
;)
I guess I keep thinking of the way my 4 year old son continually plays his Teletubbies videos into the ground.
I have a friend who just purchased a karaoke business from someone. With the business came a few hundred older Laserdiscs (yes, the analog ones, mostly Pioneer). We are planning a project to convert these to DVD-R (those LD's are heavy!).
Now it may be true that the videos themselves are cheap, cheezy, and sometimes involve no more than a poolside camera and a couple of babes, BUT... Video is infinately more interesting to look at than CD+G. And there is a certain amount of nostalgia involved.
I wish the original poster luck as this is an arduous process!
I think we all know that there will be better formats in the future. No question about it and the wait won't be long.
The question of format type for software (MPEG 2/4, DiVX, whatever), is a good point, but starting with the most lossless format possible will help maintain maximum quality with any needed conversions later.
Besides, your average MPEG2, even at a medium bitrate, is overkill for old VHS material. We're not talking about anything more than 240 lines of resolution (on a good day), after all.
Ah, but what about the media itself? Well... So what if that DVD-R doesn't store beyond 5-10 years? If the digital transfer process has been done at a point where the VHS is still viable, this won't matter much. A few years after the transfer, go ahead and copy your DVD-R
s to your new Blu-Ray discs. You should be able to fit about 10 DVD-Rs each, if I remember correctly.
Then 10 years later transfer ALL of it to Holocube or whatever.
I do video archiving for the school I work for, and this is my stated plan. We use DVD-R because it's cheap, and when properly stored should last until the 'Next Big Thing'.
I would be more worried about VHS analog degradation than digital format obsolesence for one reason: time of transfer. How long will it take to transfer a two hour VHS tape? Yup. 2 hours. How many tapes does this guy have? How long will this take? How long should he wait - this material is DYING in front of him!
How long will it take to copy a DVD? Hmmm. Depends on what year you're talking about doesn't it? 10 years from now, you'll probably be able to copy your entire library of material in mere minutes! You can have copies of the copies; no loss in quality, plenty of redundancy.
That's a very real advantage. With analog there is continual loss (more if the tapes are actually played). the longer you wait to convert the material, the more video will be distorted. With digital, it's already converted and then it's just a factor of time for file copying.
...is true Windows Domain support. And don't give me this bullshit about how users can map drives to the domain every time. I mean, this:
:P
1) User logs into a Windows-based domain.
2) User receives mapped drives at logon. These may include network home directories and other specialized directories.
3) User is accorded rights from the domain.
4) Local machine rights are granted from the domain.
Until this is fixed, it will continue to be an issue for Linux in corporate. Some corporations may choose to replace the Windows Domain at a future date, but for now, with many specialized software bits needing Windows security, this isn't likely.
The only distro that attempts to get this right is Xandros. They have true Windows Domain integration. The other distros could really learn from these guys - unfortunately, their Samba implementation is proprietary.
Yeah,
:P
I can't see this as coming from Rush. There was nothing about Monica or Democrats...
Lindows 3.0 allows you to set up different accounts with a graphical user template.
It's not that the ability to do this isn't there, it's that by default, you run as root.
Incidentally, if you should setup Lindows from scratch, you are given the option to create users in the very beginning if this is such a concern.
Oh please.
Since lawyers have of late been used by huge corporations to take our rights away, it will be refreshing to see it go the other way.
Nothing wrong with rooting for the home team.
"The converters use RTF as an intermediate format.."
.ORGs like mine get steamrollered everytime another incompatible format/program/OS comes out of MS. I know why they're doing it and I disagree with it.
Come again?
"The converters use RTF as an intermediate format.."
Right, that's what I thought you said. So you end up stripping out anything that may have to do with graphics or proper formatting. What the hell kind of 'solution' is this?
"Since you've obviously got this massive hard-on hatefest for Microsoft going..."
It's not a hatefest, it's a protest.
There's a reason why Linux is gaining a real foothold and [hint] it doesn't necessarily have to do with it being 'free'. Some of us out there are becoming increasingly disgusted with who we have to buy these products from. MS is doing the job for us right now, but I'm increasingly open to alternatives.
But Asimov always spoke of the future (in his novels) as malleable. For instance, when Hari Seldon (in the novels) appears at certain dates, you hear him say things like, "Well, by all probablility..." and "You *should* be here at..." In other words, he always treated Psychohistory as a fluid art.
He obviously sets this up as a near 'unbreakable' device so that a character like the Mule comes along and destroys it. It made for a good story - forget the science. For more science to your fiction see Arthur C. Clarke.
That's because ultimately, Linus has faith that the GPL will always win out. As long as there's a 'free' alternative, there will BE alternatives.
Yeah, TF on Quake was GREAT...
:)
Until people started cheating outrageously. When I started seeing spys fly through the air, and heavy weapons guys zooming around like scouts I knew TF had jumped the shark.
I suppose this happens to every game eventually. No game company will be able to support their stuff forever, but for whatever reason, none of the sequels have had that 'feel'. Although I have to admit that I did really enjoy TF on the HL engine, maybe I missed the gritty textures from Quake or the humorous operatic beginning.
I don't think MS will have to go to any lengths to deal with this issue.
.dll versions - even do confirmation online, that sort of thing.
Future versions will be Palladium-based and most probably check
Is this anti-competitive? Dunno. Does it suck? Yup.
"When Microsoft includes some feature that you don't need, it's bloatware, but when they factor their product line, it's 'scary'. Make up your mind, dude."
.doc-types.
I have 'dude'. It's very simple actually. We use OOo and StarOffice to avoid getting bogged down with various conversion programs. You chant *full* like it's some sort of mantra, but I once again ask, are you including *full* compatibility with versions from South Korea, Japan, and Saudi Arabia? I call you back to my original statement about having international support. We are an international school.
I love how you put that - 'factor their product line'. I'm not saying MS doesn't have the right to include features. Of course they do. What I am saying is that in this instance, it's pretty apparent that MS is creating a special class of corporate user with the XML feature. The fact is, they simply don't want to move away from using proprietary
"My machine isn't *part* of the domain, and I can't *log into* the domain (which is why I have to type the username/password combo), but I can certainly access the resources."
We have three drives map when a user logs in. So... Basically, a student would need to log in THREE times to get to each for each reboot, right? Hmmm.. Good usability there.
Oh, and don't forget about the ISA Server which relies upon domain security and logins. I'm not certain, but I'd bet my students aren't prepared to login EVERY TIME they open a browser window.
"Oops. Microsoft paranoia strikes again!"
Is it that you want so bad to believe MS is perfect and are blind to all else, or are you on their payroll?
I've got a job to do here, and I do it well. I use what tools are appropriate whoever they're from as long as we can afford them. Looking for alternatives isn't somehow being disloyal or paranoid (although given court judgments against MS, perhaps we all should be); it's simply common sense.
That's not the point again.
This idea of having an upper strata of 'exclusive' software is scary. Let me give you a GREAT example as to why:
Our school (Linden Hall School for Girls in Lititz, PA) has been running a Windows-based domain with a proxy/filtering system based on Proxy Server (now on ISA). Standardizing on the MS product meant that different age profiles can be set up along with different and corresponding access levels. Until Windows XP came out.
The HOME edition of XP doesn't allow you to connect your machine to a domain, after all you're at HOME, right? Well, this fact wasn't clear to me until after the next year new student packet information went out. So all these girls went out and got fantastic brand new computers preloaded with XP Home and couldn't connect to their home directories or use the Internet. The temporary solution for this year was to put XP Home users on a Citrix server and give them a few choice apps to run but they hate it.
The alternative is to have them upgrade to XP Pro and yes, next year I am going to require that our students do not bring XP Home. If they do, we will not be able to offer them connectivity. Strange though, when you think about it. From Windows 9X, to NT, to 2000, the Mac OS, and even Linux can be made to use domain resources. It would of course, take Microsoft to insure incompatibility wouldn't it?
This is a big problem with MS - no flexibility, no recourse, no exceptions. Why should my students be forced to upgrade to a clearly corporate version of this software just to be able to get their shares automatically and use domain resources? We're a non-profit educational facility, not Ernst & Young.
If you don't think this will matter as far as Office versioning goes, you are clearly ill informed. Once it was MS's goal to ensure compatibility with their products, but no longer. They lower the hook, you bite, and then they pull you in for more and more.
You adequately explain the procedure for using XML, but again, why isn't this full functionality just included with every version of the new MS Office by default? No space on the CD? Misstep by marketing?
Hint: LOCK-IN.
Hey, here's a thought. If it takes 46,000 users to alert the FTC to spam, perhaps the FTC should be 'opted-in' to a few of the things we're subjected to. Why bother directly complaining? Let the government attempt to sort out their own mailboxes for a while!
Send your spam to *.GOV - heh.
"This is going to bring spamming on behalf of legitimate businesses to a screeching halt."
Perhaps... But 90% of the shit these guys peddle is hardly legitimate.