My comcast service went out, and when it came back up I had to re-register it when it forced me to their "sign up and download a 20 meg exe of bullshit to get it going" which made me unplug my linux based router, plug into a windows machine to get it up again.
Once that was done, I noticed they'd pointed me to a DNS server that responded to every request with the same IP- they were bouncing all my requests through one of their servers. This broke a whole lot of shit, as you can imagine. I called to ask about this, and was promptly hung up on when I answered "yes" to "can you load web pages?"
I "fixed" the problem by finding my own DNS servers to use in the meantime, but who knows how long it'll be until they stop DNS requests from traversing out into the real 'net. I am pondering a switch to speakeasy (100 bucks a month for comparable speeds, trying to convince my wife on the its-worth-it-because-they-dont-fuck-with-you angle.)
WTF is up with that? Does anyone know why they're trying to force all my traffic access through a man-in-the-middle like this?
On topic: Comcast costs about $40 more than it should, since this new version of their "service" isn't a real internet connection at all IMO.
Consider all the parents who have a PC for their "business and email", and don't want little timmy installing that iTunes stuff on it so he can download mp3s all day.
Or consider why someone like me, who owns a pretty decent PC capable of playing modern games well, still buys consoles at all. Why would I forego the majesty of Doom 3 on my snazzy Radeon 9800 card, and end up playing it through on the XBox?
Because it's easier and I'd rather just stick a disc into an XBox or PS2 than spend an hour installing and configuring my graphics card and updating drivers and posting on forums when it doesn't work and waiting a month for an update that fixes nothing. (Doom 3 NEVER ran right on my PC, and who gives a fuck if it was ATI, ID's, Activisions or Valves fault... Ran just fine on XBox though, and Doom 3 is one in a litany of headaches that PC-gaming has caused me, I've pretty much abandoned it entirely).
Back closer to the topic..
My kid has an iPod, getting iTunes working for him and teaching him to use it was a bit of a PITA, frankly. On top of that, he's lost the stupid USB cable two or three times. Given the option of "install iTunes and figure out how to use it, then teach him, and let him have unrestricted access to my PC" vs "plug it into the xbox", I'd take the latter any time.
It's not miniscule at all, think of all the university students (who aren't in comp-sci) who do all their assignments in the PC labs. Think of all the folks who use computers at work, yet have none at home.
Think of all the kids who don't have a computer - maybe Mom and Dad do, but they dont have unfettered access.. They have access to the XBox though.
I read an article about a year ago that stated that since XBox Live launched, Comcast's and other high-speed providers subscriber rates went through the roof. Maybe they were all dial-up users with a sudden demand for high-speed, but I'd wager a good portion of them are couch-gamers who don't care about PCs.
My point is, plenty of people just plain don't give a shit about computers, and dont use them voluntarily (outside of work/school). Slashdotters need to get out more.
Why do you assume that you're even in their plans whatsoever?
They're after all the non-geek folks. The folks who dont own a PC or Mac, and will probably never own a PC or Mac.
Those people DO have an XBox 360, and an XBox Live account, and a yearning desire to be every bit as "hip" as all the metrosexuals with their white earbuds. (An iPod is jewelry, not technology, and nobody will ever convince me otherwise... The fad will end.)
BTW, I agree about media player, and also add that iTunes (for PC) is every bit, if not more, bloated and pile-of-shittier (new pronoun, and you read it here first).
Buying tunes through XBox live marketplace, and transferring them from the box to the player would open the door to a huge untapped group of consumers who don't have (or want) a PC, but probably have (or wouldn't mind) a game console.
I would be shocked to find out that this isn't the route MS plans to take, the 360 being your entertainment-hub and all.
The scam is, they advertise for partypoker.NET, an "educational" fun poker site where no money or gambling is involved.
The fact that it happens to look exactly the same (and is operated by the same folks) as partypoker.com is just a coincidence, and if people just happen to go to the wrong site, then that's their fault.
On a side note, slashdot just linked to a poker site and now Taco's going to get it in the ass - business as usual.
Talking about it and linking to it are different things. The guy could have talked about the sites all he wanted, referred to them by name, and so on..
He didn't cross the line until he explicitly linked to one.
High Times doesn't get in any trouble for talking about weed, but if they started running ads for dealers willing to ship to the US... Trouble's afoot. Plenty of sites have been burned for linking to "seed banks" outside the US.
Freedom of speech doesn't imply freedom of action. So sad, too bad.
"Meter maids" are cops too, just put on a specific duty (parking enforcement).
Most departments don't have them, regular beat cops do the same thing.
I write police dispatch and RMS software, and parking citations accout for probably 90% of the data entered on any given day.
This is in the US, though, the term "meter maid" is more commonly british, so maybe across the pond any old dope can walk up and fine you with criminal offenses, I wouldn't know.
The government isn't trying to fill the spot of "lazy parenting". The government is trying (misguided or not) to prevent the zit-faced knob at GameSpot from usurping rules that the parents may have already layed out.
The people who are going to sue under this law will be the parents who are pissed when Timmy comes home with a copy of "GTA4" after they repeatedly denied to buy it for him.
The parents who dont give a shit will continue not giving a shit.
I'm glad to see a move away from set-in-stone standards, and bullshit like mandatory sentencing and "three strikes" laws.
A judges job is to judge. Our job is to keep shitty judges who we feel are incorrect off the benches by not electing them, or those who would appoint them.
It's hard to slip a pornographic mini-game and other hidden content past the MPAA.
The MPAA's system is actually voluntarily followed. Theatre's *could* let 12 year olds into R-rated films, but they dont. Blockbuster *could* sell R-rated movies to kids, but they don't.
Our blockbuster let my kid (13) rent GTA Vice City, but not Predator (the film). He took them both to the counter at the same time.
I have no problem with him viewing/playing either one, but it illustrates the difference. In the publics mind, all video games are "for kids". All cartoons are "for kids" too -- just wait until they find out about yaoi and tentacle porn.
I've found that America, and Americans are all about finding people to blame.
Blame the governor and Jack Thompson all you want, but in the end, the geeks of Louisiana are the ones who dropped the ball here. Did anybody follow through on those calls to "write your legislature, blah blah"? Does anybody ever? Nah, too much like work. But goddamnit they should know how we feel!
A bunch of smelly non-voting hippies with a complete apathy towards government whining about not being represented.
Boo-hoo..
Don't worry, they'll keep making GTA games as long as there's money in it. You'll be able to buy them, too, so long as you aren't a minor.
And they'll probably keep slipping in little porno mini-games to be "edgy" and "push the envelope" and "fuck everything up by making a joke of the ESRB and prompting the government to take notice and usurp it."
My point was that the "gov't employee should be doing X instead of Y", when their job entails both.
Sobriety checks and parking tickets are every much police work as homicide investigations, and signing bills into law (it passed the house, etc) is every much as much a governors job as planning for hurricanes. Actually planning for hurricanes isn't a governors job, per se.
Yeah and police should be worried about the "real criminals" instead of harassing 16 year old kids for drinking beer in the woods!
Why am I getting spam from Linspire?
on
PHP 5.1.0 Released
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
This showed up in my inbox, I have no association with linspire whatsoever. Maybe slashdot sold them my email address? That's the only thing I can think of.
Subject: Save Big for the Holidays
Dress up your computer (and yourself) for the holidays! Get more than 2,000 software programs for your Linspire computer for less than $10 - and save big on merchandise and books during our exclusive holiday offer.
Not everyone plays games, and you can get an S3 card to replace the "tried-and-true" ati or nvidia card that just burnt out for 20 bucks, and they actually do just fine.
Why pay 100 bucks for an ati or nvidia, when you can get comparable performance for 20 or so from S3? Oh, because "joe gamer" is a dipshit who only knows his favorite brand names, and equates that with being a computer expert.
I've seen BIOS' that let you set the delay from power on to when the drives are first accessed/detected, but this is to allow them time to fully spin up.
They spin up as soon as power comes on, plug some drives into a PSU (no PC involved) and turn it on, they spin up instantly. If you have discs in your optical drives, they spin up too.
Slashdot Mirror
If not, what does this mean to me?
For the record, Canadians thinks soccer is boring, and we play real football here too.
We're about 12 hrs behind Australia time, the game hasn't even been aired here yet!
THANKS A HEAP
My comcast service went out, and when it came back up I had to re-register it when it forced me to their "sign up and download a 20 meg exe of bullshit to get it going" which made me unplug my linux based router, plug into a windows machine to get it up again.
Once that was done, I noticed they'd pointed me to a DNS server that responded to every request with the same IP- they were bouncing all my requests through one of their servers. This broke a whole lot of shit, as you can imagine. I called to ask about this, and was promptly hung up on when I answered "yes" to "can you load web pages?"
I "fixed" the problem by finding my own DNS servers to use in the meantime, but who knows how long it'll be until they stop DNS requests from traversing out into the real 'net. I am pondering a switch to speakeasy (100 bucks a month for comparable speeds, trying to convince my wife on the its-worth-it-because-they-dont-fuck-with-you angle.)
WTF is up with that? Does anyone know why they're trying to force all my traffic access through a man-in-the-middle like this?
On topic: Comcast costs about $40 more than it should, since this new version of their "service" isn't a real internet connection at all IMO.
Not as far-fetched as it might seem!
Bono and Bill are buddies.
And they're all so wonderful their farts smell like morning dew on a faerie's wings
Of course you're right, and I'll hang my head in shame.
The new pronoun is, of course, "hte".
Consider all the parents who have a PC for their "business and email", and don't want little timmy installing that iTunes stuff on it so he can download mp3s all day.
Or consider why someone like me, who owns a pretty decent PC capable of playing modern games well, still buys consoles at all. Why would I forego the majesty of Doom 3 on my snazzy Radeon 9800 card, and end up playing it through on the XBox?
Because it's easier and I'd rather just stick a disc into an XBox or PS2 than spend an hour installing and configuring my graphics card and updating drivers and posting on forums when it doesn't work and waiting a month for an update that fixes nothing. (Doom 3 NEVER ran right on my PC, and who gives a fuck if it was ATI, ID's, Activisions or Valves fault... Ran just fine on XBox though, and Doom 3 is one in a litany of headaches that PC-gaming has caused me, I've pretty much abandoned it entirely).
Back closer to the topic..
My kid has an iPod, getting iTunes working for him and teaching him to use it was a bit of a PITA, frankly. On top of that, he's lost the stupid USB cable two or three times. Given the option of "install iTunes and figure out how to use it, then teach him, and let him have unrestricted access to my PC" vs "plug it into the xbox", I'd take the latter any time.
It's not miniscule at all, think of all the university students (who aren't in comp-sci) who do all their assignments in the PC labs. Think of all the folks who use computers at work, yet have none at home.
Think of all the kids who don't have a computer - maybe Mom and Dad do, but they dont have unfettered access.. They have access to the XBox though.
I read an article about a year ago that stated that since XBox Live launched, Comcast's and other high-speed providers subscriber rates went through the roof. Maybe they were all dial-up users with a sudden demand for high-speed, but I'd wager a good portion of them are couch-gamers who don't care about PCs.
My point is, plenty of people just plain don't give a shit about computers, and dont use them voluntarily (outside of work/school). Slashdotters need to get out more.
Why do you assume that you're even in their plans whatsoever?
They're after all the non-geek folks. The folks who dont own a PC or Mac, and will probably never own a PC or Mac.
Those people DO have an XBox 360, and an XBox Live account, and a yearning desire to be every bit as "hip" as all the metrosexuals with their white earbuds. (An iPod is jewelry, not technology, and nobody will ever convince me otherwise... The fad will end.)
BTW, I agree about media player, and also add that iTunes (for PC) is every bit, if not more, bloated and pile-of-shittier (new pronoun, and you read it here first).
Buying tunes through XBox live marketplace, and transferring them from the box to the player would open the door to a huge untapped group of consumers who don't have (or want) a PC, but probably have (or wouldn't mind) a game console.
I would be shocked to find out that this isn't the route MS plans to take, the 360 being your entertainment-hub and all.
No, no..
The scam is, they advertise for partypoker.NET, an "educational" fun poker site where no money or gambling is involved.
The fact that it happens to look exactly the same (and is operated by the same folks) as partypoker.com is just a coincidence, and if people just happen to go to the wrong site, then that's their fault.
On a side note, slashdot just linked to a poker site and now Taco's going to get it in the ass - business as usual.
Talking about it and linking to it are different things. The guy could have talked about the sites all he wanted, referred to them by name, and so on..
He didn't cross the line until he explicitly linked to one.
High Times doesn't get in any trouble for talking about weed, but if they started running ads for dealers willing to ship to the US... Trouble's afoot. Plenty of sites have been burned for linking to "seed banks" outside the US.
Freedom of speech doesn't imply freedom of action. So sad, too bad.
"Meter maids" are cops too, just put on a specific duty (parking enforcement).
Most departments don't have them, regular beat cops do the same thing.
I write police dispatch and RMS software, and parking citations accout for probably 90% of the data entered on any given day.
This is in the US, though, the term "meter maid" is more commonly british, so maybe across the pond any old dope can walk up and fine you with criminal offenses, I wouldn't know.
If you give your 15 year old nephew a hardcore porn DVD, alcohol, or a pack of smokes, who goes to jail?
The answer is either you, or nobody, depending on if the parents are pissed off about it or not.
The government isn't trying to fill the spot of "lazy parenting". The government is trying (misguided or not) to prevent the zit-faced knob at GameSpot from usurping rules that the parents may have already layed out.
The people who are going to sue under this law will be the parents who are pissed when Timmy comes home with a copy of "GTA4" after they repeatedly denied to buy it for him.
The parents who dont give a shit will continue not giving a shit.
Who makes the diecsion on whether or not games fall into this category or not?
A judge. Sheesh, it's almost like slashdot guys dont read the articles before they comment or something!
I'm going back to fark where people think before they talk!
Good.
I'm glad to see a move away from set-in-stone standards, and bullshit like mandatory sentencing and "three strikes" laws.
A judges job is to judge. Our job is to keep shitty judges who we feel are incorrect off the benches by not electing them, or those who would appoint them.
It's hard to slip a pornographic mini-game and other hidden content past the MPAA.
The MPAA's system is actually voluntarily followed. Theatre's *could* let 12 year olds into R-rated films, but they dont. Blockbuster *could* sell R-rated movies to kids, but they don't.
Our blockbuster let my kid (13) rent GTA Vice City, but not Predator (the film). He took them both to the counter at the same time.
I have no problem with him viewing/playing either one, but it illustrates the difference. In the publics mind, all video games are "for kids". All cartoons are "for kids" too -- just wait until they find out about yaoi and tentacle porn.
I've found that America, and Americans are all about finding people to blame.
Blame the governor and Jack Thompson all you want, but in the end, the geeks of Louisiana are the ones who dropped the ball here. Did anybody follow through on those calls to "write your legislature, blah blah"? Does anybody ever? Nah, too much like work. But goddamnit they should know how we feel!
A bunch of smelly non-voting hippies with a complete apathy towards government whining about not being represented.
Boo-hoo..
Don't worry, they'll keep making GTA games as long as there's money in it. You'll be able to buy them, too, so long as you aren't a minor.
And they'll probably keep slipping in little porno mini-games to be "edgy" and "push the envelope" and "fuck everything up by making a joke of the ESRB and prompting the government to take notice and usurp it."
My point was that the "gov't employee should be doing X instead of Y", when their job entails both.
Sobriety checks and parking tickets are every much police work as homicide investigations, and signing bills into law (it passed the house, etc) is every much as much a governors job as planning for hurricanes. Actually planning for hurricanes isn't a governors job, per se.
Yeah and police should be worried about the "real criminals" instead of harassing 16 year old kids for drinking beer in the woods!
This showed up in my inbox, I have no association with linspire whatsoever. Maybe slashdot sold them my email address? That's the only thing I can think of.
Subject: Save Big for the Holidays
Dress up your computer (and yourself) for the holidays!
Get more than 2,000 software programs for your Linspire computer for less than $10 - and save big on merchandise and books during our exclusive holiday offer.
We are located at 9333 Genesee Ave, 3rd floor, San Diego, CA, 92121
Linspire and CNR are trademarks of Linspire, Inc.
All other company and product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
©2005. All rights reserved.
Who takes them seriously? I mean, really, they're a bunch of crackpots.
/. to report on the discovery of time cube - twice.
You'd have to be a complete and total numbnut to lend them any credibility, and report on any of their findings.
You're overcompensating, Zonk, let it go.
I can't wait for
Anyone else remember when "geeks" were smart?
Not everyone plays games, and you can get an S3 card to replace the "tried-and-true" ati or nvidia card that just burnt out for 20 bucks, and they actually do just fine.
Why pay 100 bucks for an ati or nvidia, when you can get comparable performance for 20 or so from S3? Oh, because "joe gamer" is a dipshit who only knows his favorite brand names, and equates that with being a computer expert.
I've seen BIOS' that let you set the delay from power on to when the drives are first accessed/detected, but this is to allow them time to fully spin up.
They spin up as soon as power comes on, plug some drives into a PSU (no PC involved) and turn it on, they spin up instantly. If you have discs in your optical drives, they spin up too.