"So Microsoft should, what, remove the feature because geeky people (defined as: people who already know how to disable UAC) want to do all kinds of geeky, potentially insecure, stuff?
Throw the average user to the wolves! Cater only to the uber-geeks!" That's the philosophy they should use?
Did I say that? Don;t be an arse.
I would have liked a way, any way at all, to tell windows to allow that IFO driver. It could have been an advanced option in windows defender or the se4curity centre, not accessible from the systray or wherever. I would have liked a way to do that *without* disabling all the protection that UAC supposedly provides.
Instead I get a choice, disable it or live with it disabling stuff I installed specifically. BAD DESIGN.
"There's no reason Vista should be "slow as crap" on that machine. Maybe you've just broken something by installing low-level crap."
1. Always was slow. Tried removing and stopping pretty much everything going, it's just awful.
2. If one filesystem driver (the only low-level crap I installed) that runs just fine on XP, driving a data disk that has no system, program or swap files on it, can slow down the entire OS then that is a badly made OS. End of story.
Look, I don't hate vista, it's an adequate if slow system, but it has some annoying and enduring flaws and is a disk-space hog. vista is why I finally swapped to linux full time.
I wouldn't like to guess at the motivations and drives in play here, BUT-
I work in a team that is roughly one third female. Of the guys I know well enough to know what they do after hours, most of them go home and play with computers, whether it's gaming, tinkering with linux, web design, FOSS components, private projects, whatever. Of the women I know to the same extent none of them do that.
The team is made up of very competent Software Engineers.
I really think that the skew in FOSS contributors is not that surprising. Yes, I know, anecdotes and data, but it's my experience. If women genuinely feel that they are suffering from sexist attitudes or behaviour then sure, it needs to be looked at and stamped out. But taking the raw gender imbalance as evidence is just crap.
It's like the studies that the UK government put out on the gender pay gap. Look a little closer and you'll find they compare female part-time workers to male full-time workers and don't take into account the difference in hours worked. Bullshit.
"And if UAC is throwing up multiple alerts for one task, you're tinkering with the guts of the OS. Stop doing that."
Ah, so installing that IFO for ext2 is supposed to give me an alert and a helpful message to say my administrator (I tell you if I ever find that guy...) has prevented it from loading...
UAC was badly implemented and not controllable enough. That might be good for your average computer illiterate who doesn't know what an IFO is, let alone want to use one, but for me it was a real annoyance.
And yeah, the UI is dog slow on a machine on which linux absolutely flies. Still. Core2Duo, Nvidia 8400GS, slow as crap.
SSH tunnel into home, with Firefox pointed at a dynamic port forward to use as a SOCKS server. Then go into about:config and activate the setting for DNS lookups through proxy.
Voila, now all work can see is you transferring encrypted data to and from home. They may think you're into industrial espionage, but they'll never be able to tell you were visiting/.
That's a bit strong. Some of the consoles make very good media centres. They have all the right connections and look good in the living room, unlike most "media" pcs. They're also cheaper.
I'd go for the PS3 though. Blu-Ray, much quieter than the Xbox, has a browser (and as a result can do BBC iPlayer) and is much more compatible with things like mediatomb when you want to share media from other machines.
He and others written a useful, complex and (hopefully) well implemented set of software components through much in the way of blood, seat and tears.
So of course he's not going to agree that what he did was either a waste of time or evil. I'm not exactly sure which side of this debate I fall on. Doesn't affect me too much as a C programmer...
Ignore the millions of units of PSPs, PS3s, cameras, tvs and everything else, they're doomed!
I love this site for this stuff. It's almost as if geeks believe in the legendary "informed consumer" who will act (en-masse in fact) to deny profit to companies that abuse him or her for their own ends. Unfortunately, we don't live in that world. Sony will continue to do just fine, and the people with technical/ethical problems with what they are doing will be swept under in a wave of apathy and "Oooh, shiny".
You really bought a backup PS3 just so you could keep playing PS2 games?
How often do you even care about playing a PS2 game? I know since I got current-gen systems I've barely ever looked back. I think I played StarWars Battlefront once. Besides which, emulation is coming along well in the form of PCSX2. I find it almost unbelievable you would bother to spend all that money on a redundant PS3, or a whole new set of PSPs.
Hell, by the time your current lot start to break noticeably (and by that I mean more than one goes, because do you really need all 5 at the same time?) someone will likely have cracked the Go anyway.
Piracy is rampant and easy on the PSP at present, but not everyone does it.
I use hacked firmware on my PSP, sure, because I rip my games to MemStick. I hate having to carry the UMDs around, loading times improve and the battery life is better. I also have a genesis emulator on their and some ROMS of games I used to own as a kid. That may or may not be considered piracy I guess.
But I still pay for games and will continue to do so. I will also crack the Go if I ever get one because you can bet your ass that there won't be a mechanism to resell games you've bought, plus I would feel the moral right to transfer my current UMD based games.
They'll do your domain's mail, for free, and give you around 8GB of space. Up to 50 mailboxes too.
I don't want to sound like I'm shilling for them, bus as someone whose mailserver-under-the-bed stopped being an option due to moving around too much, I think it's awfuully good of them to do that. Plus there's smtp/imap access.
"Oh come on! I know that Slashdotters will probably be more likely to some homebrew stuff than not, but acting as if all those Modchips and Card-Readers that are sold are so that people can spend their time trying homebrew apps and only play previously purchased games is delusion beyond belief."
I know nothing of modchips or card readers, so I'll take your word for it. I assume when you talk about card readers you're talking about the DS? I don't have a DS. I use the homebrew channel on the Wii to play Quake and Tyrian and do some other stuff the Wii usually won't let you do. I didn't even know you coul duse the homebrew software to play pirated games.
This is solely about Piracy.
What, Nintendo's actions or the Wii homebrew scene?
It's not even about the region-lock. It's an attempt to slow down the piracy that is eroding markets.
Well it's a total failure then, because it doesn't sound like it's done anything.
Umm, it's far, far cheaper and I already have one set up under the tv.
I don't want to go spending more money when I already have something with a tv output, an optical drive and wireless networking. It doesn't do it better. It does it at the same time as being a wii and for no more money.
I know that doesn't stop him using other lawyers to sue people, but I would think it probably says a lot about the validity of said facebook postings if he *was* struck off for being a serial asshat.
It's not just that either - I go on holiday to various places around the planet. Sometimes I go into a music or games shop whilst I'm there and buy one or two things to take home.
Why should I not be able to play them when I get home?
And yes, some games (the original Katamari Damacy, for instance) are not released in some markets and as a result are hard to get hold of, even if you've soft-modded the console to play other regions.
It often seems to me that the benefits of a global economy are reaped by companies by employing labour and sourcing materials where they like, but they try their damnedest to stop consumers doing the same.
Slashdot Mirror
"("who reads the license?")"
Anyone who wants to distribute software, particularly if they're doing it for money, that's who.
Otherwise they're no better than the guy selling ripped-off DVDs at the local market.
"So Microsoft should, what, remove the feature because geeky people (defined as: people who already know how to disable UAC) want to do all kinds of geeky, potentially insecure, stuff?
Throw the average user to the wolves! Cater only to the uber-geeks!" That's the philosophy they should use?
Did I say that? Don;t be an arse.
I would have liked a way, any way at all, to tell windows to allow that IFO driver. It could have been an advanced option in windows defender or the se4curity centre, not accessible from the systray or wherever. I would have liked a way to do that *without* disabling all the protection that UAC supposedly provides.
Instead I get a choice, disable it or live with it disabling stuff I installed specifically. BAD DESIGN.
"There's no reason Vista should be "slow as crap" on that machine. Maybe you've just broken something by installing low-level crap."
1. Always was slow. Tried removing and stopping pretty much everything going, it's just awful.
2. If one filesystem driver (the only low-level crap I installed) that runs just fine on XP, driving a data disk that has no system, program or swap files on it, can slow down the entire OS then that is a badly made OS. End of story.
Look, I don't hate vista, it's an adequate if slow system, but it has some annoying and enduring flaws and is a disk-space hog. vista is why I finally swapped to linux full time.
I wouldn't like to guess at the motivations and drives in play here, BUT-
I work in a team that is roughly one third female. Of the guys I know well enough to know what they do after hours, most of them go home and play with computers, whether it's gaming, tinkering with linux, web design, FOSS components, private projects, whatever. Of the women I know to the same extent none of them do that.
The team is made up of very competent Software Engineers.
I really think that the skew in FOSS contributors is not that surprising. Yes, I know, anecdotes and data, but it's my experience. If women genuinely feel that they are suffering from sexist attitudes or behaviour then sure, it needs to be looked at and stamped out. But taking the raw gender imbalance as evidence is just crap.
It's like the studies that the UK government put out on the gender pay gap. Look a little closer and you'll find they compare female part-time workers to male full-time workers and don't take into account the difference in hours worked. Bullshit.
+1 Red Dwarf I think you'll find...
"And if UAC is throwing up multiple alerts for one task, you're tinkering with the guts of the OS. Stop doing that."
Ah, so installing that IFO for ext2 is supposed to give me an alert and a helpful message to say my administrator (I tell you if I ever find that guy...) has prevented it from loading...
UAC was badly implemented and not controllable enough. That might be good for your average computer illiterate who doesn't know what an IFO is, let alone want to use one, but for me it was a real annoyance.
And yeah, the UI is dog slow on a machine on which linux absolutely flies. Still. Core2Duo, Nvidia 8400GS, slow as crap.
Why not do what I do?
SSH tunnel into home, with Firefox pointed at a dynamic port forward to use as a SOCKS server. Then go into about:config and activate the setting for DNS lookups through proxy.
Voila, now all work can see is you transferring encrypted data to and from home. They may think you're into industrial espionage, but they'll never be able to tell you were visiting /.
... surely with its unlimited processing power on demand the cloud will solve this problem?
It's obvious, we just need to move MMOs into the cloud where everything just works because the usual rules don't apply.
That's a bit strong. Some of the consoles make very good media centres. They have all the right connections and look good in the living room, unlike most "media" pcs. They're also cheaper.
I'd go for the PS3 though. Blu-Ray, much quieter than the Xbox, has a browser (and as a result can do BBC iPlayer) and is much more compatible with things like mediatomb when you want to share media from other machines.
It's also a console, if you're into that!
Yeah they are.
I love their stuff. Sleek, light and powerful laptops, fantastic looking consumer electronics. Never had a problem with any of it myself.
The fact that sony music screwed up with the rootkit debacle is a shame, but as a linux user I don't really care.
Atheist movement? ROFL.
FAIL.
Are you a sociopath?
Because that's what it sounds like. I can blame people for acting like shit regardless of the law.
He and others written a useful, complex and (hopefully) well implemented set of software components through much in the way of blood, seat and tears.
So of course he's not going to agree that what he did was either a waste of time or evil. I'm not exactly sure which side of this debate I fall on. Doesn't affect me too much as a C programmer...
Yes, doomed I tell you!
Ignore the millions of units of PSPs, PS3s, cameras, tvs and everything else, they're doomed!
I love this site for this stuff. It's almost as if geeks believe in the legendary "informed consumer" who will act (en-masse in fact) to deny profit to companies that abuse him or her for their own ends. Unfortunately, we don't live in that world. Sony will continue to do just fine, and the people with technical/ethical problems with what they are doing will be swept under in a wave of apathy and "Oooh, shiny".
You sound... uh... odd.
You really bought a backup PS3 just so you could keep playing PS2 games?
How often do you even care about playing a PS2 game?
I know since I got current-gen systems I've barely ever looked back. I think I played StarWars Battlefront once. Besides which, emulation is coming along well in the form of PCSX2. I find it almost unbelievable you would bother to spend all that money on a redundant PS3, or a whole new set of PSPs.
Hell, by the time your current lot start to break noticeably (and by that I mean more than one goes, because do you really need all 5 at the same time?) someone will likely have cracked the Go anyway.
Nonsense.
Piracy is rampant and easy on the PSP at present, but not everyone does it.
I use hacked firmware on my PSP, sure, because I rip my games to MemStick. I hate having to carry the UMDs around, loading times improve and the battery life is better. I also have a genesis emulator on their and some ROMS of games I used to own as a kid. That may or may not be considered piracy I guess.
But I still pay for games and will continue to do so. I will also crack the Go if I ever get one because you can bet your ass that there won't be a mechanism to resell games you've bought, plus I would feel the moral right to transfer my current UMD based games.
Heilein does nothing but try to cram his social and political views down the reader's throat. They're naive and simplistic views at that.
"If you are on a shell session on a server, you should NEVER be root-- that's what sudo is for."
Why?
Did you just come to bitch about something you personally disagree with or do you actually have a reason for this?
Google Apps for domains....
They'll do your domain's mail, for free, and give you around 8GB of space. Up to 50 mailboxes too.
I don't want to sound like I'm shilling for them, bus as someone whose mailserver-under-the-bed stopped being an option due to moving around too much, I think it's awfuully good of them to do that. Plus there's smtp/imap access.
Why does a disabled root login prevent you from rescuing?
Just log in as you and do "sudo su". Voila, a root shell.
"Oh come on! I know that Slashdotters will probably be more likely to some homebrew stuff than not, but acting as if all those Modchips and Card-Readers that are sold are so that people can spend their time trying homebrew apps and only play previously purchased games is delusion beyond belief."
I know nothing of modchips or card readers, so I'll take your word for it. I assume when you talk about card readers you're talking about the DS? I don't have a DS. I use the homebrew channel on the Wii to play Quake and Tyrian and do some other stuff the Wii usually won't let you do. I didn't even know you coul duse the homebrew software to play pirated games.
This is solely about Piracy.
What, Nintendo's actions or the Wii homebrew scene?
It's not even about the region-lock. It's an attempt to slow down the piracy that is eroding markets.
Well it's a total failure then, because it doesn't sound like it's done anything.
Umm, it's far, far cheaper and I already have one set up under the tv.
I don't want to go spending more money when I already have something with a tv output, an optical drive and wireless networking. It doesn't do it better. It does it at the same time as being a wii and for no more money.
Because I just use the homebrew channel for quake and media playing.
I know that doesn't stop him using other lawyers to sue people, but I would think it probably says a lot about the validity of said facebook postings if he *was* struck off for being a serial asshat.
It's not just that either - I go on holiday to various places around the planet. Sometimes I go into a music or games shop whilst I'm there and buy one or two things to take home.
Why should I not be able to play them when I get home?
And yes, some games (the original Katamari Damacy, for instance) are not released in some markets and as a result are hard to get hold of, even if you've soft-modded the console to play other regions.
It often seems to me that the benefits of a global economy are reaped by companies by employing labour and sourcing materials where they like, but they try their damnedest to stop consumers doing the same.
I'd love to see that one tested in court...