I also have vista at home. I am currently using it for Spore.
Otherwise I have little to no use for it. It came from Sony with all sorts of crapware on it - lots of crappy Sony software, 30 day trial versions of stuff, irritating pop ups and even links to software purchases pretty much right off the desktop.
I highly recommend "PC Decrapifier" to sort these things out. It's an automated tool and it strips most of this crap in one easy step.
Doesn't change the fact that I fscking hate Vista though. Until I figured out how to switch off UAC it would proudly tell me on boot which of my programs, that I had installed purposefully, had been blocked from running. Thanks!!
"Except the fossil record shows all life 'sprung' into existance (cosmologically speaking) in the Pre-Cambrian era: all the phylum, vertebrates and invertebrates."
Lol.
The precambrian lasted 4 billion years. Life starts around 1.2 billion years ago. Multi-cellular organisms start to appear about 500 million years ago.
yeah, life just ~sprung~ out of nowhere.
"The "Tree of Life" was simply a sketch in "Origin of Species". Flawed though it is, is it better to cling to that, and ignore the proven truths of the Bible? That's no longer ignorant, it's hiding from the truth."
No, what's ignorant is clinging to this nonsense. The so-called "Truths" you cite are useless in terms of historical or scientific accuracy. If we find there was a flood that covered half the earth a hundred million years ago, you'd find some way to make Noah fit the bill.
(Incidentally, the best flood theory I've heard was about a lake giving way and flooding a few towns. This probably was enough to kick-start flood global myths in several religions).
No, what you have is no better than what the astrologers have.
And even IF the bible contains the tiniest shred of historical truth, that still doesn't support the supernatural side of it.
The bible is also a terribly unreliable source - we know it's been rewritten, translated, edited, censored and spun over the past few millenia, and that many of its exotic stories were written decades or centuries after the times in which they were supposed to occur. It's next to worthless.
The bible is an interesting historical artifact in itself, but little more.
In practice though, that's not yet stopped any of the patent trolls from plying their filthy trade. Nor does it force a company allowing licensed distribution of their works to demand punitive damages for perceived previous violation, which was the point the OP was trying to make.
Some of the comments point out that you can't actually use these sites from the UK. Which is another problem. Not only is it hard to get a successful business going, it seems almost impossible to set one up properly (in the spirit of the interwebs) and available to all, because we've woven an enormously complex web of international IP laws, and companies have tied themselves up in exclusive distribution deals where distribution itself is becoming obsolete.
In some ways it doesn't matter. If the case is put against the church and won then (as per previous rulings about them getting into trouble again) Scientology France could be dissolved.
As I said in another post, my geekiness tends to be focused on my various Linux-on-ARM devices, so I do my gaming on consoles. Why would they put it on PS3/xbox titles?
Does it help that I'm a software engineer with a penchant for linux and most of my geek energies go into my ARM and MIPS based linux devices, so that by the time it comes to games I just want to plug in and go?
As I say, I didn't know until I'd already parted with the money....
That Is a bad thing and I would have thought twice about that. I shall definitely find a crack for archival purposes, in case I want to reinstall/play in years to come.
Insert Disk, start DVDDecrypter, hit "Go", burn iso to disk...
Of course DVDDecrypter is not exactly legal these days. Which is a shame, because it strips all that nasty region coding and other crap out of the image as it goes along.
They've done a lot of bad stuff, including infiltrating government agencies to try and purge records about them, resulting in felony convictions for a fair few.
"Maybe if they're exposed to anti-CoS messages enough, it'll start to crack through the brainwashing, and they'll free themselves."
The people doing this are the people running the scam, not the people who've fallen for it. They already know it's nonsense, but they need to perpetuate it for the cash.
There's the fact that they have managed to get some state and national backing for their joke of a rehab scheme. Which, by the way, they claim is the most successful rehab scheme on the planet (without providing figures or evidence), whereas in fact its techniques basically involve a lot of the same psychological breakdown and cod science as scientology itself. This is sick, IMHO.
There's a lot of other stuff.
This is NOT about freedom of religion, or who believes what. This is about a dangerous organisation that have comitted felonies to try and wipe their record from government agencies and generally display a lack of respect for laws and lives, and yet is still in many coutries treated as a tax-exempt, legitimate religion.
Believe what the fuck you like, but you can't support the continued existance of the church of scientology.
Youtube ought to have at least taken a look at the claims before just shutting everything down, surely?
Especially when the claims were coming in in such huge volumes. I don't like this, no organisation should just be able to get stuff it doesn't like removed from public fora by just claiming stuff and having a player as big as youtube just roll over and take it.
Yes, DMCA takedown notices are supposedly sworn, under penalty of perjury, to be from a person/organisation with a good claim to owning the copyright.
Where this gets tricky is proving they were used to quash criticism and not in good faith. IE if they say "we thought we owned it and had a good claim", that may be enough to get them out of it. Depending on how blatant they were, of course.
I think what this event (or lack of) will end up proving is that recovery using anything other than standard (i.e. plug in, read and analyse raw data) recovery techniques is something that's both expensive and rare.
You're probably ok with a single overwrite, unless you get fingered for something really really big.
Slashdot Mirror
I also have vista at home. I am currently using it for Spore.
Otherwise I have little to no use for it. It came from Sony with all sorts of crapware on it - lots of crappy Sony software, 30 day trial versions of stuff, irritating pop ups and even links to software purchases pretty much right off the desktop.
I highly recommend "PC Decrapifier" to sort these things out. It's an automated tool and it strips most of this crap in one easy step.
Doesn't change the fact that I fscking hate Vista though. Until I figured out how to switch off UAC it would proudly tell me on boot which of my programs, that I had installed purposefully, had been blocked from running. Thanks!!
And it's still slow and annoying.
"Except the fossil record shows all life 'sprung' into existance (cosmologically speaking) in the Pre-Cambrian era: all the phylum, vertebrates and invertebrates."
Lol.
The precambrian lasted 4 billion years. Life starts around 1.2 billion years ago. Multi-cellular organisms start to appear about 500 million years ago.
yeah, life just ~sprung~ out of nowhere.
"The "Tree of Life" was simply a sketch in "Origin of Species". Flawed though it is, is it better to cling to that, and ignore the proven truths of the Bible? That's no longer ignorant, it's hiding from the truth."
No, what's ignorant is clinging to this nonsense. The so-called "Truths" you cite are useless in terms of historical or scientific accuracy. If we find there was a flood that covered half the earth a hundred million years ago, you'd find some way to make Noah fit the bill.
(Incidentally, the best flood theory I've heard was about a lake giving way and flooding a few towns. This probably was enough to kick-start flood global myths in several religions).
No, what you have is no better than what the astrologers have.
And even IF the bible contains the tiniest shred of historical truth, that still doesn't support the supernatural side of it.
The bible is also a terribly unreliable source - we know it's been rewritten, translated, edited, censored and spun over the past few millenia, and that many of its exotic stories were written decades or centuries after the times in which they were supposed to occur. It's next to worthless.
The bible is an interesting historical artifact in itself, but little more.
But then I'm a geek and have set up a random-futurama-quote autoresponder for when I get *that* bored.
In practice though, that's not yet stopped any of the patent trolls from plying their filthy trade. Nor does it force a company allowing licensed distribution of their works to demand punitive damages for perceived previous violation, which was the point the OP was trying to make.
Yes, it's american.
Some of the comments point out that you can't actually use these sites from the UK. Which is another problem. Not only is it hard to get a successful business going, it seems almost impossible to set one up properly (in the spirit of the interwebs) and available to all, because we've woven an enormously complex web of international IP laws, and companies have tied themselves up in exclusive distribution deals where distribution itself is becoming obsolete.
Err, no, it is you that is wrong.
Whilst this may apply to trademarks, it certainly does not apply to copyrights or patents.
Executive summary - So-so
Mid-management summary - overhyped, enjoyable, but not really ground-breaking.
Lol, who gives a crap about the faith? They can believe what they want, it's the bullying, censorship and child maltreatment that gets me.
In some ways it doesn't matter. If the case is put against the church and won then (as per previous rulings about them getting into trouble again) Scientology France could be dissolved.
Probably not, so I'll cut my losses, get pissed off at SecuROM and EA and go back to my consoles.
Eh no, what you said is not really an analogy of the situation.
Ferrari! Vista! WTF?
I'm only running it on there because wine didn't work. Before I bought spore I hadn't booted it for months.
it's more like "If I wanna drive on this one road, for some reason I have to put a spike on my steering wheel. It's not like I go there often".
In fact it's not even that bad, because if vista gets screwed, I'll just wipe it and do without.
Err, I'm a console gamer, not a windows gamer.
As I said in another post, my geekiness tends to be focused on my various Linux-on-ARM devices, so I do my gaming on consoles. Why would they put it on PS3/xbox titles?
> That sentence is inconsistent.
Really?
Does it help that I'm a software engineer with a penchant for linux and most of my geek energies go into my ARM and MIPS based linux devices, so that by the time it comes to games I just want to plug in and go?
Would someone explain to me why my previous post should be considered flamebait?
it#s not that I'm sore, I'm kinda mystified.
As I say, I didn't know until I'd already parted with the money....
That Is a bad thing and I would have thought twice about that. I shall definitely find a crack for archival purposes, in case I want to reinstall/play in years to come.
Also - FLAMEBAIT??!?!? What?
and I'm a geek, a gamer (though mostly console) and a slashdot reader. The general public are screwed!
Spore is ace, and frankly if it wants to shaft my vista installation it's welcome to it. It's the only thing I use vista for.
In my experience, most of the folk complaining are without religion themselves, not s bunch of "my religion is better than your religion" types.
The CoS is just a sick organisation.
Insert Disk, start DVDDecrypter, hit "Go", burn iso to disk...
Of course DVDDecrypter is not exactly legal these days. Which is a shame, because it strips all that nasty region coding and other crap out of the image as it goes along.
Take a look here
They've done a lot of bad stuff, including infiltrating government agencies to try and purge records about them, resulting in felony convictions for a fair few.
"Maybe if they're exposed to anti-CoS messages enough, it'll start to crack through the brainwashing, and they'll free themselves."
The people doing this are the people running the scam, not the people who've fallen for it. They already know it's nonsense, but they need to perpetuate it for the cash.
Ooh, let's see...
There's the fact they separate their adherents from their families and then extract money from them.
There's the whole forced labour, separation from family and cruel punishment of children in their care thing (particularly look up Jenna Miscavige-Hill, neice of the current head of the CoS)
Umm, there's the fact that people have died in their care whilst being locked up and denied medical care
There's the fact that they have managed to get some state and national backing for their joke of a rehab scheme. Which, by the way, they claim is the most successful rehab scheme on the planet (without providing figures or evidence), whereas in fact its techniques basically involve a lot of the same psychological breakdown and cod science as scientology itself. This is sick, IMHO.
There's a lot of other stuff.
This is NOT about freedom of religion, or who believes what. This is about a dangerous organisation that have comitted felonies to try and wipe their record from government agencies and generally display a lack of respect for laws and lives, and yet is still in many coutries treated as a tax-exempt, legitimate religion.
Believe what the fuck you like, but you can't support the continued existance of the church of scientology.
Yet another reason that the DMCA is a terrible set of laws and should be stricken from the books then.
But why should they have to?
Youtube ought to have at least taken a look at the claims before just shutting everything down, surely?
Especially when the claims were coming in in such huge volumes. I don't like this, no organisation should just be able to get stuff it doesn't like removed from public fora by just claiming stuff and having a player as big as youtube just roll over and take it.
Yes, DMCA takedown notices are supposedly sworn, under penalty of perjury, to be from a person/organisation with a good claim to owning the copyright.
Where this gets tricky is proving they were used to quash criticism and not in good faith. IE if they say "we thought we owned it and had a good claim", that may be enough to get them out of it. Depending on how blatant they were, of course.
I think what this event (or lack of) will end up proving is that recovery using anything other than standard (i.e. plug in, read and analyse raw data) recovery techniques is something that's both expensive and rare.
You're probably ok with a single overwrite, unless you get fingered for something really really big.