This "solution" (banning a whole ISP/country) surely seems like cutting one's nose off to spite one's face. You don't see Best Buy closing its doors because one in every hundred people walking in off the street are there to shoplift. I know that's not a perfect analogy, but c'mon, we're bombing a country to stop a few (defined as over EFnet's apparently limit of 25 and fewer than what you'd need to make that ratio 3 of every 4 visiting Norwegian being abusive work for you) noisemakers.
I was stunned when I read the real technical reason why abusers can't just be banned -- twenty five bans per channel is all you get? Something needs to change on the technical side, then, not on the "whiny lamers who complain that they can't get onto channel #xyz because a few people from their domain/country pissed us off once" side.
I completely recognize the challenges faced by the average IRC channel. IRC is, by design, a public interface, so keeping out someone who's determined to get in is difficult. I understand that banning thousands or tens of thousands of users/IPs/whatevers can be cumbersome for the humans involved and painful for the machines who have to parse the lists whenever someone wants in, but please, 25 bans and you're done?
Why can't the EFnet IRC daemons automatically ban just the IP address where massive floods come from (massive meaning more than a few hundred lines -- you shouldn't be punished for accidentally pasting the output from "select * from user;" apart from the brutal tongue lashings from your fellowes:)? Or even a subnet? More importantly, even if nothing else could be changed about EFnet's software, why oh why can't people be "whitelisted" back in?
This kind of thing probably wouldn't annoy people so much if they'd at least get a response from a channel operator or an explanation from the server itself. To simply ignore someone from a specific domain, specifically inquiring (in a polite fashion) about gaining access to your channel, is rude and infuriating. I know, for every ten "polite inquiries" you receive, nine of them are probably from l33t skript kiddi3z trying to smooch their way back in to make your life hell, but such is the way of the IRC channel operator's life.
I've dealt with my share of nuisances, but then again I've never run into a cap on the number of bans I can apply either (admittedly, I don't use EFnet, so it could just be a difference in IRC daemon software or something). It's a bitch, but that's what I get for donning the cap of a channel op.
I don't mean to insult or offend, here; I'm just seriously trying to offer insight into why people get so damned angry about stuff like this. I probably wouldn't get too irritated if I were suddenly banned as the result of a mass-ban. I'd probably try to get in contact with somebody who might be able/willing to help, engage them in conversation if they're willing to talk, and go away if they're not. I know it's hard for both sides -- hell, I bet the abusive ones are annoyed too (*grin*) -- but the whole IRC thing would probably work a bit more smoothly if people weren't always so eager to switch into Complete and Utter Bastard(tm) mode.
Some good points here, but there's some problems, too.
Yes, there's a wealth of MP3s, DivX movies, and drugs available in this country. Now movies & music aren't (yet) at the point where mere possession is a crime, but we're heading that way quickly. But to answer your question, if the RIAA and MPAA have their way, yes, I honestly expect the "DMCA police" to bust down every door and scan every disk to ensure compliance. Don't be too quick to scoff -- this kind of thing has happened before, but to avoid "automatically losing" due to Godwin's Law I'm not going to mention who last did things like that.:)
I know there's tons of non-DRM hardware out there right now. The problem is the hardware coming down the pipe -- DRM is fast making inroads, and soon there'll be too much momentum to stop it. Yes, non-DRM platforms still exist today, but old hardware doesn't always last forever, nor does it remain the most desirable equipment. Think of it this way -- if your only solution for ripping CDs to MP3 in five years is to fire up your "old" P4/2.5GHz machine with Debian 3.0 because the current P6 8GHz machines won't boot any non-DRM-compliant operating system (buh-bye, Linux:() and the DRM-compliant ones only want to rip to WMA or.RIAA format (hey, it's The Future(tm):), you're not going to be too happy.
I know current generation DRM-compliant systems aren't ironboxes -- this first run from Intel, for instance, will run "non-trusted" stuff. But what happens when Microsoft's monstrous clout finally gets John Q. Public transitioned to the "trusted" platform and finally convinces the CPU makers to switch their DRM stuff from "optional" to "required"? Are we all going to break the law and reverse-engineer the CPUs and chipsets so our dirty alternatives OSes can run on them? Hurrah, now we're all criminals.
The DMCA does indeed apply to others in this world apart from those stuck in the US. Witness Dmitry Sklyarov, who was arrested and prosecuted for a DMCA violation pretty damned quickly after he arrived here to demonstrate something he wrote in Russia under instruction from his employer. His application didn't violate any Russian law, and he's a Russian citizen. But he was hauled away in American handcuffs anyway. The DMCA can be essentially twisted 'round to affect anyone the RIAA or MPAA want it to, and that's the dangerous part.
The US is, despite the current grumblings in the Middle East, still the world's only remaining superpower. Other countries are already bowing to US pressure to adopt international cyberterrorism laws, and once that foot's in the door, the US will never leave -- we'll be dictating electronic policy to our neighbors until we either stop it ourselves or someone flies a few more planes into our buildings.
Your prediction that the "only" way to stop p2p being infeasible isn't quite accurate. There's a possibility you haven't considered: suppose corporate lobbyists for these media monsters actually manage to push a law through the system and get it passed that eliminates our right to use encryption at all.
Right now dialup and broadband connections are almost always open and free (as in what you can do with them, not what they cost:). You can open any port on a remote system (except for boneheaded ISPs like Earthlink who block port 25 except to their mail server) from any local port and do whatever you want with it.
What happens when ISPs switch those connections to the firewall model -- one where only "approved" uses are permitted and only known "safe" ports are open. Sure, we geeks will always find ways around it, but John Q. Public sure won't. That right there will kill p2p. And if an ISP only has a few ports to monitor, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to spot and terminate tunnels and block access to proxies.
Right now, with current law, yes, the media companies' struggle against p2p sharing is a losing battle. The problem is the RIAA and MPAA lobbyists are working long and hard to change our country's laws.
The MPAA and RIAA will surely die the painful dinosaur death they're earning by causing this much trouble, but they'll make it painful for the rest of us as they go down. Not that the deep pockets will become any more shallow from the loss -- the people driving these two organizations' wrongdoings will just find something else to ruin.
It hasn't affected your downloading warez and mp3's yet. That's an important distinction to note. Remember, the RIAA and MPAA have both openly stated they fully intend to begin poisoning peer-to-peer networks with bogus files to deter people downloading content and go after individuals (that is, not corporations or groups -- but single itty bitty people like you and I) sharing their music.
Of course they haven't started invoking the DMCA in all the evil nasty ways everyone here is predicting. It's too soon. It makes far more sense for this law to stay on the books for years, fall into obscurity, then suddenly reappear with big nasty pointy teeth to bite every music and movie sharing human right in the ass.
That "dark ages" you describe is close and getting closer; the world's most prevalent computing platform (Windows, sad as that may be) is already chock full of "Digital Rights Management" functionality to limit what consumers can do with their music and videos. CPU manufacturers are already building copy-protection schems straight into their hardware right now; the next generation of CPUs will cheerfully obey the MPAA and RIAA's wishes, refusing to run binaries that aren't blessed by someone with deeper pockets than we have.
Someone recently said it perfectly, that this "Trusted Computing" initiative isn't quite how it sounds -- Microsoft are pitching it to sound like we (consumers) can "trust" their operating system. In reality, it's an initiative to make a platform that the MPAA and RIAA can trust -- they can trust that it will only let us do precisely what they grant permission for us to do with the content we pay for, and nothing more. Do you honestly believe "compress to an unencrypted, open format with decompressors and players available for free on all platforms," "compress and transmit to my friends on AIM," and "store for future playback without the original media and license file" are going to be on that list?
Getting back on subject (today's conditions), note that students have been thrown out of dormitories (and sometimes ejected from school entirely) for sharing music, companies (namely Napster) have been sued out of existence not for sharing music, but for enabling others to do the same, and ISPs are being forced to spy on their customers' activities just to avoid lawsuits and criminal prosecution under that lovely law that supposedly hasn't affected you.
Remember: the DMCA created brand new crimes out of thin air. I can literally write "this string is encrypted", forbid you from decoding it without buying a license from me, and if you point out I've ROT26'd it, you've just violated the law. If an RIAA minion catches you handing a CD-R with a copy of a new album on it to a friend, you can be thrown in jail for copying and distributing the material, and your friend can be thrown in jail for receiving it. The DMCA is being invoked more and more every day. I imagine you might be pretty surprised if the cops break your door down to confiscate that evil, crime-breaking computer of yours that's sharing your favorite Pink Floyd tunes, and to haul you to jail for it. You can literally spend more time in jail for a criminal violation of the DMCA than you can for certain violent crimes.
But you're right. I'm just being pessimistic. The DMCA doesn't affect us. Not one bit.
Re:Beat-matching in kiosks; DVD format-shifting
on
Burn A Song For 99 Cents
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· Score: 3, Informative
I've yet to see a DVD fully take advantage of the features available with DVD, though.
Hehehe, you must not watch much DVD pornography, then:) It's been said time and again -- porn always seems to drive technology. Lots of adult DVDs these days have multiple camera angles. Sometimes they do a crap job (i.e. to keep one "angle" you have to switch angles around as each stream has edits in them where they switch to different cameras), but sometimes they do pretty well with it.
I don't know if I'd want a pornography director to bother with multilingual audio and subtitling, though. Pornography with 5.1 audio? "Man, oh, man, it sounds like she's right there in your living room, er, moaning and stuff!"
I guess that's my point -- you don't know for certain that this thing will be insecure. How do you know he doesn't intend to just use the AIM interface as a gateway to a jailed or chroot'ed ironbox shell? Yeah, there's plenty of risk for compromise here, but this isn't much different than the various free sites you can telnet/SSH to without any kind of verification at all.
I'd like someone on Slashdot to post their ideas so I can ridicule them.
For instance, I can post replies to these Ask Slashdot articles with references to random commands like wtf(6) without explaining how they could help me.
Lucky for me, someone on Slashdot understands things like lart(1M) and luser(8), and is going to make me look those up myself.
Hehehehe! Okay, okay, I promised I'd stop, but these are just rolling out like cars off an assembly line.
"Hi. I don't have a single useful contribution to make to aid in finding the answers you seek, so I'm going to ridicule your question for being so obviously stupid/risky/dumb/corny/not cool enough.
"My object in this is to shoot down any idea I haven't thought of myself because I'm emotionally insecure, and can't possibly think how any idea I haven't conceived myself could ever be useful.
"Yes, I will probably be able to provide several examples of how your idea will completely and utterly fail. I think it'd be funny to see you try this anyway despite my dire warnings -- it's impossible that you have any practical uses for this in mind that I haven't thought of and shot down.
"Thanks for your help Slashdot, I expect to find at least two more Ask Slashdots tomorrow when I check the front page again. Now my life has meaning."
Man, oh man, is my karma going to be shot to hell for this one:) S'okay. I couldn't resist.
On-topic: Yeah, it's probably not secure. Yeah, it could be goofy or foolish. But *gasp* it might just be a toy on a non-important machine. Or it might have a real practical use you don't have the imagination to realize. Or the guy may want to do it "just because he can."
I use Debian's installer approximately once per machine, for approximately twenty to sixty minutes of its operational runtime depending on its network connection. It installs the platform, and is never seen again. From then on, the machine runs Debian. Life becomes good.:)
I can forgive Debian's installer for being painful and outdated, since there are several versions of it available for download to support features that aren't available out of the box, and because it installs the single most reliable and best-performing Linux distribution in the world.
Red Hat 8.0 may be easier to install, but try compiling PHP 4.2.x with the compiler suite it ships with. Then try getting a 2.96.x series GCC installed on the box without just building it from scratch.
Yup, gimme my painful installer. It took all of twenty minutes to learn (simple is good, right?:) and it gives me a wonderful system that just works. Keep your shiny installers and bunk distros until they can produce a working system, not just an "oooh, purdy, it booted into Linux!" install.
Oh, and those who complain that apt is only a good package manager when you know the name of the package you're after obviously haven't ever tried apt-cache search.
You bring up good points, but let me interject my own view on them:
1) I can't afford a huge home theater either, but if I'm going to fork over eight bucks for a movie experience, it's going to be at an IMAX theater. These days prying eight dollars out of my hands for anything is difficult, and Hollywood sure as hell hasn't come up with anything that'll do it. Combine the fact that IMAX theaters are built to a very nice spec with the fact that they don't allow food or drink and will happily kick someone out for making noise (babies included), you can almost forgive that there's only one or two new IMAX films released each year:)
2) I don't blame theaters for ticket prices. I blame them for the outrageous prices they charge on food, and their near-gestapo-like efforts to stop people bringing in their own stuff. A family of four could easily blow $50 on one movie these days ($32 on tickets, $8 on popcorn if they share it, and easily $10 on drinks). That's just not worth it.
I wrote about this topic a few months ago and stumbled upon a very important point, completely by accident: I'm not concerned about the movie theater's profits, and neither should anyone else but the movie theater.
I guess I'm a bad little consumer these days -- I seek the lowest prices, don't do business with companies that wrong me or that have done things I don't ethically agree with, and don't let arguments like "well how are we gonna make any money off this?" affect my buying decisions anymore. Anybody who's heard that line from a car dealer knows just how incredulous they can be.
How could a movie theater convince me to come back? I dunno, anymore. I don't give a rat's arse about the latest Star Wars or Hobbit movies, and honestly nothing else coming out in the next year (or from the past year) looks even remotely appealing. Maybe they should go back to screening pornography:) Cut the ticket prices in half, slash the food prices to something even approaching reasonable, and I might consider it.
But that producer did get one thing right -- I enjoy watching movies at home much more than I do in a crowded theater full of dolts, knowing my money has just lined several other people's pockets. When $15 buys me a movie I can watch over and over again at home (or anywhere there's a DVD player), blowing $12 or more per person per viewing at the theater just isn't that appealing. Screw the old model; it doesn't work anymore.
Woah there:) Nobody bashed the folks with bad eyesight:)
Hell, even with 20/20 vision I keep things in a fairly large font size on a 21" monitor. I *hate* trying to read small text. You're exactly right in that it's horrible in these gigantic menus with dozens of items in them.
Thankfully there are things that can be done to fix this in most applications. Mozilla, for instance, respects your user preferences set in the GNOME control panel. Its minimum font size feature is good for web pages whose designers thought "it looks great on my 21 incher, so it must look good even on those cheap 15 inchers!".
You're also exactly right that this is a step in the right direction. It's a beta release -- these guys were undoubtedly just curious to see if it would even work at all. Now that it's proven to be functional, folks can start focusing on the usability issues. Bigger icons for people (like you) with poorer eyesight than "average", different levels of "complexity" for different users (four or eight directions for novices, maybe sixteen directions for foolish persons;), and tweaks for what options live where, and how "deep" in the pie they're positioned.
Who shoved Mozilla's so-called greatness down your throat? You saw the article's introductory text, so why did you pursue it if you've already got your favorite browser hardcoded into your brain?
The quick answer is "yes." If you happen to either get lucky and land on one (or two, or three:) of these kinds of engagements, or if you work hard at finding them and/or have someone who can refer you into such engagements, you can quite suddenly find yourself sitting at home in your underwear (ick:) hacking away at code for a project across the country, or being a sysadmin for a box in the next state (of course you need an RPC or someone local to flip the switch when hardware breaks;), or even working on a webhosting company's helpdesk by remote.
The good news here is the webhosting business especially, but other more traditional businesses like ISPs and other IT-heavy companies are on the rebound; those who've survived the dot-com bubble bursting by being frugal and not running up debts are now snatching up super-cheap, sometimes not even used equipment and real estate to get their own plans underway.
Take the average webhosting company. Any company of even decent intelligence recognizes early on that a big majority of their helpdesk tickets are software related. Usually they're newbie questions or "reset my password" requests or other things that are quick to fix, and require no in-person presence. You stick a skeleton crew at the data center to push reset buttons and swap out bad hardware, and pay your helpdesk techs to work from home. It's cheaper for you, more convenient for them, and far better for the customers.
The same can be done for software development and some forms of sysadmin work. While of course you can't write code simultaneously for two or three different companies (unless they're all asking for exactly the same thing:), you can work two or three helpdesks simultaneously. The impressions I've gotten from those I've spoken to about this tactic is that they don't even consider it unethical to be working for two or more companies at the same time (i.e. you work 9am-5pm for two webhosting companies at the same time, splitting your time between the tickets of the two companies) as long as the work still gets done. On a helpdesk, there's going to be downtime. For companies who pay by the ticket instead of the hour, it's even more economical; you get paid when you work. By working for more than one at a time, you're getting more work.
Back on subject a bit more, it is entirely possible to make (very) good money working from home if you can get into a comfortable position. The reason it can be tough to get into is that with a work-from-home position, you tend to be fairly far away from your employer. S/he can't meet you face to face for an interview; IRC/ICQ/AIM/whatever and phone calls are all you get (gone are the days of "sure! We'll fly you out for an interview!" unless you're disgustingly lucky:). Having a friend who knows the boss-to-be vouch for you is a big help. It's always better to get your resume into someone's hands by having someone else who's trusted turn it in for consideration.
The other challenge of course is dealing with teammates. Since you're not physically present for staff meetings, you may not even get to participate in them at all (hurrah!:). You can't see body language or moods; all you've got is the text (and perhaps the voice if you call in). If you're high adaptable to your teammates' work habits and methods, you'll be fine. If you have to do things your way, though, and they don't happen to match what the in-person workers are used to, you'll lose every time.
I lost my job last Friday (the 19th). I started my new one today (the 29th). Instead of working in an office run by stuffy ex-bankers turned overnight know-it-all techies, now I'm working for fellow geeks my own age at a very comfortable wage, in my own home, doing the odd jobs they throw at me. I can work as many or as few hours as I want (I want a lot of hours;), it pays the bills, and I'm doing what I enjoy. You'd be amazed how fast even ten hours a day goes by when you're at home, at your own workstation, your spouse and pets nearby, and plenty of stuff to do on breaks. And when you want lunch, you just walk to your kitchen to get it:)
Anyways, go for it! Look into the smaller webhosting providers -- the ones who are proud of their data centers because they had to work hard to get them, the ones who have just a few employees -- they tend to need general-purpose people to work equal parts sysadmin, programmer, and helpdesk tech. The pay ranges from modest to good, and if you work hard, you'll be in a very pleasant position for advancement when the company really takes off.
Well then, I guess we'd better just shut down Ask Slashdot, since no question of late can pass muster with you.
Better that people keep questions to themselves, and just conform, than to dare ask what others in their peer group think or feel about something.
You're completely right; you should never ask which notebooks run your alternative OS of choice -- better to just keep the economy churning along by buying whichever one looks the coolest and hoping its equipment works with your stuff. Don't ask or even wonder how to conduct your geeky self with a significant other -- if you don't "just know," your relationship is doomed anyway. Never solicit opinions about pets that are pleasant to be around yet are easy to maintain -- that should be painfully obvious! Just buy a [insert your favorite pet here and argue with anyone who disagrees]!
Really, fuck off. It's clear you're remarkably tired, or just intolerant of anyone musing aloud about topics you think you've mastered yourself. Have you got a perfect pet, a perfect laptop, a perfect relationship with your SO, and a perfect stock of beverages in your refrigerator/cooler/vending machine/drink dispenser of choice? (For the clueless, that's rhetorical; I'm sure I'll get responses to this question anyway:)
I'm getting sick of every single fucking Ask Slashdot question having more replies of "Dur, this is a stoopid question!" and "What are j00, some kind of moron?" rather than an actual exchange of information.
Maybe people don't want to google for random sites that might have real or bogus information. Maybe people don't want to write to that tightwad wench Ann Landers for a dose of conservative drivel. Maybe people don't want to read a magazine sponsored by the same companies they're supposed to be objectively reviewing to figure out which car to buy.
Gasp -- Maybe people just want to hear what others in their peer group have to say about different topics.
Then again, looking at your response, maybe people will just get sick of folks like you and stop feeding trolls like I'm doing now;)
As I've always said about "offensive" television and radio shows, magazine and newspaper articles, books, and web sites, articles, and posts, if it offends you, quit reading it, and move on to the next topic. There's plenty of kinder, gentler content on Slashdot or even Disney's site if these mind-bending questions twist your soul into painful shapes.
$8.95 per month. No caps. No throttling. No limit on number of simultaneous connections. Seems to have pretty damned good retention, and I've managed speeds up to 500k/sec from their servers.
$ time apt-get -f -y install ogle-gui ogle-mmx ...
Setting up libdvdread2 (0.9.2-0.1)...
Setting up ogle-mmx (0.8.2-11)...
Setting up ogle-gui (0.8.2-8)...
real 0m7.130s
user 0m3.950s
sys 0m0.790s
Almost eight seconds! You're right, this is such a pain in the ass. Let's not forget the raw misery of getting a DeCSS-like thing working (as instructed by the previous step):
$ time/usr/share/doc/ogle-mmx/examples/install-css. sh ...
real 0m2.779s
user 0m1.370s
sys 0m0.360s
Damn. I've just sacrificed almost ten seconds of my life just to get a working DVD player on my Linux box!
You know, the saddest part is I'll never get those seconds back.
[sarcasm mode off] Right, now while you're wasting your time pirating a competent Windows-based DVD player, I'll just be enjoying my movies, full-screen, with subtitles and multiple camera angles & audio selections. Have fun.
Heh. If Penthouse paid TiVo to make my TiVo record pr0n all night, I'd be pleased as punch to discover boobies on my TiVo the next day. Sure beats DirecTV's rate of between $8 and $10 per pay-per-view (and you can't subscribe to any of those channels -- you have to pay per 4-hour block... blech).
This isn't as painful as Slashdot's made it out to be. It only records it if 1) you don't have the recorder set to record something else at the same time this comes on, 2) you're not watching live TV (it asks permission to switch if you are). It doesn't take up any space allocated for your recordings. In all honesty, this thing's going out of its way to avoid getting in yours.
I'll leave alone for now the issue of why your children would be "damaged" if they saw a pair of breasts or heard "fuck" or "shit" from your TV. It's not like the little bastards don't see and hear more in that mean old world around them when they leave the sanctuary that is your home.
(I say "your" figuratively; I know you didn't directly infer that your children have witness Penthouse pr0n on your TiVo)
This is a tough one. VMware Workstation seems better suited for quick "oh shit, I need Windows for something" tasks and for running "productivity" applications (games certainly don't qualify;).
The problem is that VMware doesn't even try to expose any kind of 3D (or, really, any kind of hardware-accelerated DirectX-style stuff); you get a fast 2D video adapter (passed through to X), a decent sound card (passed through to your sound driver, if any), and USB passthrough (I can use a scanner in a VM running Windows XP that Linux itself doesn't have a driver for -- how whacked is that?:), but that's it.
For anything that requires even moderately good performance in 2D, you're not going to find it in VMware. And forget about 3D stuff (I know you mentioned just Civ III, but hey, others might read my rantings too:).
As others have suggested, WineX is your best in-Linux bet. Otherwise, fire up parted, shrink down your Linux partition(s) a bit, reserve a bit of slack space for Windows, make a GRUB boot disk, install Windows 95/98/ME/2k/XP/whatever on that new partition, then use the boot disk to unscrew your original boot loader:)
I shun Microsoft products, too, but when it comes to playing Imperium Galactica II or Homeworld or Unreal Tournament, or, really, anything else, it's time for a reboot into the smallish Windows partition. *sigh*. At least I'll never buy an Xbox, eh?:)
Yup. Fuck those employees. Squeeze them dry. Make them squeal. They deserve nothing more than the crumbs we graciously allow them to have. How dare they desire time to themselves when there's critical, pressing company business to be done? Get legal on the phone -- we need to sue these employees back into submission before they organize!
Hey, let's also sue the tobacco companies for causing cancer:)
/me ducks
Sorry, Tranvisor, I'm in full agreement with the letter and the spirit of your post. Just had to point out that sadly, our government is leaning towards that very position -- we punish the toolmakers for the bad things that come from them instead of punishing those who use the tools for bad things.
I don't think I'd mind this very much if paying extra for bandwidth meant they'd lift that damned 128kbit/sec uplink cap.
But as it stands now, they're raising prices for some users but not providing anything extra.
Would you just sit there and take if your credit card company suddenly jacked your rates from 9.9% to 21.98%? Remember, you'd only actually pay that if you used any of your credit:)
If you think "this won't affect me", think again. It might not show up on next month's bill if you're a "low bandwidth" user, but once the cable providers realize people will actually pay higher rates based on usage, you can bet we'll start seeing much more restrictive "limits" that make it nearly trivial to trigger more billable transfers.
Besides, what happened to that "Unlimited Broadband Internet Access!!!" thing these companies advertised? Unlimited usage, one low monthly fee, right? Heh. Guess that's out the window. Isn't there some law(s) about this kind of stuff (something about "bait and switch")?
Just because it's something you wouldn't consider fun to research, design, build, and finally ride, doesn't mean others wouldn't. I'd love something like this.
The bragging rights alone make this endeavour worth the effort:)
I fired off a clear, concise message (no, not just "telemarketing suX0rs, d00d!":) to the FTC. Hopefully they'll actually read it, and maybe even listen to some of the suggestions.
Telemarketing is one of the biggest annoyances of the modern age; its sibling Mr. Spam is about the only thing worse I can think of.
I know, I know, "but it provides jobs for lots of people!" Sure it does. It provides jobs people hate themselves for doing. It provides low paying jobs. There's plenty of other work out there. We don't need telemarketing.
The scariest part about telemarketing to me is that it's still around. It's only still being done because some (sizable) group of fucking morons actually buys stuff from telemarketers. Telemarketing has a non-zero success rate. Probably single-digit percentages, but still non-zero. It's reached (and passed) that break-even point where it makes more money than it costs.
The fastest way to be rid of telemarketing is to say "no" every fucking time. Even if you're on your way out the door to buy a time share, if you get a call trying to sell one, offer to fax a copy of your middle finger instead. Even if you donate to charities often, don't donate to those who solicit over the phone (or, at least, don't donate to them when they call you).
Bugging the FTC about this feels good, relieves stress, and lets us blow off steam, but we need to get some other things done to make a sizable dent in telemarketing's armor.
Actually the FTC itself can help with some of it. Like the linked site above points out, it'd be great if telemarketers were actually forced to transmit accurate, valid caller ID data. I turned off my caller ID over a year ago because not many people call us, and telemarketers always show up as "OUT OF AREA" or "BLOCKED". What the hell good is that little six dollar-per-month gem?
The killer was when the phone company here (Qwest) unveiled this magical new product. For only thirteen bucks per month, they'll magically block all telemarketing calls for you. They'll never even ring your phone. How convenient; they sell me a product to identify telemarketers and other undesirables so I don't have to answer my phone when I don't want to. Then they sell "block your caller ID data from appearing on phones you call!" services to telemarketers so they can sneak right past the service they're selling me. Then they turn back around and try to sell me another service to block the calls I can't screen myself because they've disabled my ability to screen them?!?!
What's next? Phone companies letting telemarketing companies buy or lease a change in "classification," so even their telemarketing blocking service doesn't work anymore?
Screw that. Where the FTC can help is to put a stop to that little scam. Sell me phone service, and tell me who's calling. Nothing else. Don't let telemarketers block caller ID. Only allow private individuals, at residential locations, block it. Why should some big faceless corporation care anyway if some yahoo in Georgia knows that Wesayso(tm) Corporation just tried to sell him a George Foreman Nose Hair Curler?
Whining to the FTC will help, but won't solve all our problems. We have to stop saying "sure! I'll take a fifty year subscription to Cat Boogers magazine for just five hundred easy payments of a thousand bucks each!" We have to (gently:) coach others not to do so, and (even more gently) get on them if they do it anyway.
If we make telemarketing less effective, or more expensive than it's worth, it'll go away and die the natural death it so richly deserves.
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I was stunned when I read the real technical reason why abusers can't just be banned -- twenty five bans per channel is all you get? Something needs to change on the technical side, then, not on the "whiny lamers who complain that they can't get onto channel #xyz because a few people from their domain/country pissed us off once" side.
I completely recognize the challenges faced by the average IRC channel. IRC is, by design, a public interface, so keeping out someone who's determined to get in is difficult. I understand that banning thousands or tens of thousands of users/IPs/whatevers can be cumbersome for the humans involved and painful for the machines who have to parse the lists whenever someone wants in, but please, 25 bans and you're done?
Why can't the EFnet IRC daemons automatically ban just the IP address where massive floods come from (massive meaning more than a few hundred lines -- you shouldn't be punished for accidentally pasting the output from "select * from user;" apart from the brutal tongue lashings from your fellowes :)? Or even a subnet? More importantly, even if nothing else could be changed about EFnet's software, why oh why can't people be "whitelisted" back in?
This kind of thing probably wouldn't annoy people so much if they'd at least get a response from a channel operator or an explanation from the server itself. To simply ignore someone from a specific domain, specifically inquiring (in a polite fashion) about gaining access to your channel, is rude and infuriating. I know, for every ten "polite inquiries" you receive, nine of them are probably from l33t skript kiddi3z trying to smooch their way back in to make your life hell, but such is the way of the IRC channel operator's life.
I've dealt with my share of nuisances, but then again I've never run into a cap on the number of bans I can apply either (admittedly, I don't use EFnet, so it could just be a difference in IRC daemon software or something). It's a bitch, but that's what I get for donning the cap of a channel op.
I don't mean to insult or offend, here; I'm just seriously trying to offer insight into why people get so damned angry about stuff like this. I probably wouldn't get too irritated if I were suddenly banned as the result of a mass-ban. I'd probably try to get in contact with somebody who might be able/willing to help, engage them in conversation if they're willing to talk, and go away if they're not. I know it's hard for both sides -- hell, I bet the abusive ones are annoyed too (*grin*) -- but the whole IRC thing would probably work a bit more smoothly if people weren't always so eager to switch into Complete and Utter Bastard(tm) mode.
Some good points here, but there's some problems, too.
Yes, there's a wealth of MP3s, DivX movies, and drugs available in this country. Now movies & music aren't (yet) at the point where mere possession is a crime, but we're heading that way quickly. But to answer your question, if the RIAA and MPAA have their way, yes, I honestly expect the "DMCA police" to bust down every door and scan every disk to ensure compliance. Don't be too quick to scoff -- this kind of thing has happened before, but to avoid "automatically losing" due to Godwin's Law I'm not going to mention who last did things like that. :)
I know there's tons of non-DRM hardware out there right now. The problem is the hardware coming down the pipe -- DRM is fast making inroads, and soon there'll be too much momentum to stop it. Yes, non-DRM platforms still exist today, but old hardware doesn't always last forever, nor does it remain the most desirable equipment. Think of it this way -- if your only solution for ripping CDs to MP3 in five years is to fire up your "old" P4/2.5GHz machine with Debian 3.0 because the current P6 8GHz machines won't boot any non-DRM-compliant operating system (buh-bye, Linux :() and the DRM-compliant ones only want to rip to WMA or .RIAA format (hey, it's The Future(tm) :), you're not going to be too happy.
I know current generation DRM-compliant systems aren't ironboxes -- this first run from Intel, for instance, will run "non-trusted" stuff. But what happens when Microsoft's monstrous clout finally gets John Q. Public transitioned to the "trusted" platform and finally convinces the CPU makers to switch their DRM stuff from "optional" to "required"? Are we all going to break the law and reverse-engineer the CPUs and chipsets so our dirty alternatives OSes can run on them? Hurrah, now we're all criminals.
The DMCA does indeed apply to others in this world apart from those stuck in the US. Witness Dmitry Sklyarov, who was arrested and prosecuted for a DMCA violation pretty damned quickly after he arrived here to demonstrate something he wrote in Russia under instruction from his employer. His application didn't violate any Russian law, and he's a Russian citizen. But he was hauled away in American handcuffs anyway. The DMCA can be essentially twisted 'round to affect anyone the RIAA or MPAA want it to, and that's the dangerous part.
The US is, despite the current grumblings in the Middle East, still the world's only remaining superpower. Other countries are already bowing to US pressure to adopt international cyberterrorism laws, and once that foot's in the door, the US will never leave -- we'll be dictating electronic policy to our neighbors until we either stop it ourselves or someone flies a few more planes into our buildings.
Your prediction that the "only" way to stop p2p being infeasible isn't quite accurate. There's a possibility you haven't considered: suppose corporate lobbyists for these media monsters actually manage to push a law through the system and get it passed that eliminates our right to use encryption at all.
Right now dialup and broadband connections are almost always open and free (as in what you can do with them, not what they cost :). You can open any port on a remote system (except for boneheaded ISPs like Earthlink who block port 25 except to their mail server) from any local port and do whatever you want with it.
What happens when ISPs switch those connections to the firewall model -- one where only "approved" uses are permitted and only known "safe" ports are open. Sure, we geeks will always find ways around it, but John Q. Public sure won't. That right there will kill p2p. And if an ISP only has a few ports to monitor, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to spot and terminate tunnels and block access to proxies.
Right now, with current law, yes, the media companies' struggle against p2p sharing is a losing battle. The problem is the RIAA and MPAA lobbyists are working long and hard to change our country's laws.
The MPAA and RIAA will surely die the painful dinosaur death they're earning by causing this much trouble, but they'll make it painful for the rest of us as they go down. Not that the deep pockets will become any more shallow from the loss -- the people driving these two organizations' wrongdoings will just find something else to ruin.
It hasn't affected your downloading warez and mp3's yet. That's an important distinction to note. Remember, the RIAA and MPAA have both openly stated they fully intend to begin poisoning peer-to-peer networks with bogus files to deter people downloading content and go after individuals (that is, not corporations or groups -- but single itty bitty people like you and I) sharing their music.
Of course they haven't started invoking the DMCA in all the evil nasty ways everyone here is predicting. It's too soon. It makes far more sense for this law to stay on the books for years, fall into obscurity, then suddenly reappear with big nasty pointy teeth to bite every music and movie sharing human right in the ass.
That "dark ages" you describe is close and getting closer; the world's most prevalent computing platform (Windows, sad as that may be) is already chock full of "Digital Rights Management" functionality to limit what consumers can do with their music and videos. CPU manufacturers are already building copy-protection schems straight into their hardware right now; the next generation of CPUs will cheerfully obey the MPAA and RIAA's wishes, refusing to run binaries that aren't blessed by someone with deeper pockets than we have.
Someone recently said it perfectly, that this "Trusted Computing" initiative isn't quite how it sounds -- Microsoft are pitching it to sound like we (consumers) can "trust" their operating system. In reality, it's an initiative to make a platform that the MPAA and RIAA can trust -- they can trust that it will only let us do precisely what they grant permission for us to do with the content we pay for, and nothing more. Do you honestly believe "compress to an unencrypted, open format with decompressors and players available for free on all platforms," "compress and transmit to my friends on AIM," and "store for future playback without the original media and license file" are going to be on that list?
Getting back on subject (today's conditions), note that students have been thrown out of dormitories (and sometimes ejected from school entirely) for sharing music, companies (namely Napster) have been sued out of existence not for sharing music, but for enabling others to do the same, and ISPs are being forced to spy on their customers' activities just to avoid lawsuits and criminal prosecution under that lovely law that supposedly hasn't affected you.
Remember: the DMCA created brand new crimes out of thin air. I can literally write "this string is encrypted", forbid you from decoding it without buying a license from me, and if you point out I've ROT26'd it, you've just violated the law. If an RIAA minion catches you handing a CD-R with a copy of a new album on it to a friend, you can be thrown in jail for copying and distributing the material, and your friend can be thrown in jail for receiving it. The DMCA is being invoked more and more every day. I imagine you might be pretty surprised if the cops break your door down to confiscate that evil, crime-breaking computer of yours that's sharing your favorite Pink Floyd tunes, and to haul you to jail for it. You can literally spend more time in jail for a criminal violation of the DMCA than you can for certain violent crimes.
But you're right. I'm just being pessimistic. The DMCA doesn't affect us. Not one bit.
Hehehe, you must not watch much DVD pornography, then :) It's been said time and again -- porn always seems to drive technology. Lots of adult DVDs these days have multiple camera angles. Sometimes they do a crap job (i.e. to keep one "angle" you have to switch angles around as each stream has edits in them where they switch to different cameras), but sometimes they do pretty well with it.
I don't know if I'd want a pornography director to bother with multilingual audio and subtitling, though. Pornography with 5.1 audio? "Man, oh, man, it sounds like she's right there in your living room, er, moaning and stuff!"
I guess that's my point -- you don't know for certain that this thing will be insecure. How do you know he doesn't intend to just use the AIM interface as a gateway to a jailed or chroot'ed ironbox shell? Yeah, there's plenty of risk for compromise here, but this isn't much different than the various free sites you can telnet/SSH to without any kind of verification at all.
I'd like someone on Slashdot to post their ideas so I can ridicule them.
For instance, I can post replies to these Ask Slashdot articles with references to random commands like wtf(6) without explaining how they could help me.
Lucky for me, someone on Slashdot understands things like lart(1M) and luser(8), and is going to make me look those up myself.
Hehehehe! Okay, okay, I promised I'd stop, but these are just rolling out like cars off an assembly line.
"Hi. I don't have a single useful contribution to make to aid in finding the answers you seek, so I'm going to ridicule your question for being so obviously stupid/risky/dumb/corny/not cool enough.
"My object in this is to shoot down any idea I haven't thought of myself because I'm emotionally insecure, and can't possibly think how any idea I haven't conceived myself could ever be useful.
"Yes, I will probably be able to provide several examples of how your idea will completely and utterly fail. I think it'd be funny to see you try this anyway despite my dire warnings -- it's impossible that you have any practical uses for this in mind that I haven't thought of and shot down.
"Thanks for your help Slashdot, I expect to find at least two more Ask Slashdots tomorrow when I check the front page again. Now my life has meaning."
Man, oh man, is my karma going to be shot to hell for this one :) S'okay. I couldn't resist.
On-topic: Yeah, it's probably not secure. Yeah, it could be goofy or foolish. But *gasp* it might just be a toy on a non-important machine. Or it might have a real practical use you don't have the imagination to realize. Or the guy may want to do it "just because he can."
I use Debian's installer approximately once per machine, for approximately twenty to sixty minutes of its operational runtime depending on its network connection. It installs the platform, and is never seen again. From then on, the machine runs Debian. Life becomes good. :)
I can forgive Debian's installer for being painful and outdated, since there are several versions of it available for download to support features that aren't available out of the box, and because it installs the single most reliable and best-performing Linux distribution in the world.
Red Hat 8.0 may be easier to install, but try compiling PHP 4.2.x with the compiler suite it ships with. Then try getting a 2.96.x series GCC installed on the box without just building it from scratch.
Yup, gimme my painful installer. It took all of twenty minutes to learn (simple is good, right? :) and it gives me a wonderful system that just works. Keep your shiny installers and bunk distros until they can produce a working system, not just an "oooh, purdy, it booted into Linux!" install.
Oh, and those who complain that apt is only a good package manager when you know the name of the package you're after obviously haven't ever tried apt-cache search.
You bring up good points, but let me interject my own view on them:
1) I can't afford a huge home theater either, but if I'm going to fork over eight bucks for a movie experience, it's going to be at an IMAX theater. These days prying eight dollars out of my hands for anything is difficult, and Hollywood sure as hell hasn't come up with anything that'll do it. Combine the fact that IMAX theaters are built to a very nice spec with the fact that they don't allow food or drink and will happily kick someone out for making noise (babies included), you can almost forgive that there's only one or two new IMAX films released each year :)
2) I don't blame theaters for ticket prices. I blame them for the outrageous prices they charge on food, and their near-gestapo-like efforts to stop people bringing in their own stuff. A family of four could easily blow $50 on one movie these days ($32 on tickets, $8 on popcorn if they share it, and easily $10 on drinks). That's just not worth it.
I wrote about this topic a few months ago and stumbled upon a very important point, completely by accident: I'm not concerned about the movie theater's profits, and neither should anyone else but the movie theater.
I guess I'm a bad little consumer these days -- I seek the lowest prices, don't do business with companies that wrong me or that have done things I don't ethically agree with, and don't let arguments like "well how are we gonna make any money off this?" affect my buying decisions anymore. Anybody who's heard that line from a car dealer knows just how incredulous they can be.
How could a movie theater convince me to come back? I dunno, anymore. I don't give a rat's arse about the latest Star Wars or Hobbit movies, and honestly nothing else coming out in the next year (or from the past year) looks even remotely appealing. Maybe they should go back to screening pornography :) Cut the ticket prices in half, slash the food prices to something even approaching reasonable, and I might consider it.
But that producer did get one thing right -- I enjoy watching movies at home much more than I do in a crowded theater full of dolts, knowing my money has just lined several other people's pockets. When $15 buys me a movie I can watch over and over again at home (or anywhere there's a DVD player), blowing $12 or more per person per viewing at the theater just isn't that appealing. Screw the old model; it doesn't work anymore.
Hell, even with 20/20 vision I keep things in a fairly large font size on a 21" monitor. I *hate* trying to read small text. You're exactly right in that it's horrible in these gigantic menus with dozens of items in them.
Thankfully there are things that can be done to fix this in most applications. Mozilla, for instance, respects your user preferences set in the GNOME control panel. Its minimum font size feature is good for web pages whose designers thought "it looks great on my 21 incher, so it must look good even on those cheap 15 inchers!".
You're also exactly right that this is a step in the right direction. It's a beta release -- these guys were undoubtedly just curious to see if it would even work at all. Now that it's proven to be functional, folks can start focusing on the usability issues. Bigger icons for people (like you) with poorer eyesight than "average", different levels of "complexity" for different users (four or eight directions for novices, maybe sixteen directions for foolish persons ;), and tweaks for what options live where, and how "deep" in the pie they're positioned.
Who shoved Mozilla's so-called greatness down your throat? You saw the article's introductory text, so why did you pursue it if you've already got your favorite browser hardcoded into your brain?
The quick answer is "yes." If you happen to either get lucky and land on one (or two, or three :) of these kinds of engagements, or if you work hard at finding them and/or have someone who can refer you into such engagements, you can quite suddenly find yourself sitting at home in your underwear (ick :) hacking away at code for a project across the country, or being a sysadmin for a box in the next state (of course you need an RPC or someone local to flip the switch when hardware breaks ;), or even working on a webhosting company's helpdesk by remote.
The good news here is the webhosting business especially, but other more traditional businesses like ISPs and other IT-heavy companies are on the rebound; those who've survived the dot-com bubble bursting by being frugal and not running up debts are now snatching up super-cheap, sometimes not even used equipment and real estate to get their own plans underway.
Take the average webhosting company. Any company of even decent intelligence recognizes early on that a big majority of their helpdesk tickets are software related. Usually they're newbie questions or "reset my password" requests or other things that are quick to fix, and require no in-person presence. You stick a skeleton crew at the data center to push reset buttons and swap out bad hardware, and pay your helpdesk techs to work from home. It's cheaper for you, more convenient for them, and far better for the customers.
The same can be done for software development and some forms of sysadmin work. While of course you can't write code simultaneously for two or three different companies (unless they're all asking for exactly the same thing :), you can work two or three helpdesks simultaneously. The impressions I've gotten from those I've spoken to about this tactic is that they don't even consider it unethical to be working for two or more companies at the same time (i.e. you work 9am-5pm for two webhosting companies at the same time, splitting your time between the tickets of the two companies) as long as the work still gets done. On a helpdesk, there's going to be downtime. For companies who pay by the ticket instead of the hour, it's even more economical; you get paid when you work. By working for more than one at a time, you're getting more work.
Back on subject a bit more, it is entirely possible to make (very) good money working from home if you can get into a comfortable position. The reason it can be tough to get into is that with a work-from-home position, you tend to be fairly far away from your employer. S/he can't meet you face to face for an interview; IRC/ICQ/AIM/whatever and phone calls are all you get (gone are the days of "sure! We'll fly you out for an interview!" unless you're disgustingly lucky :). Having a friend who knows the boss-to-be vouch for you is a big help. It's always better to get your resume into someone's hands by having someone else who's trusted turn it in for consideration.
The other challenge of course is dealing with teammates. Since you're not physically present for staff meetings, you may not even get to participate in them at all (hurrah! :). You can't see body language or moods; all you've got is the text (and perhaps the voice if you call in). If you're high adaptable to your teammates' work habits and methods, you'll be fine. If you have to do things your way, though, and they don't happen to match what the in-person workers are used to, you'll lose every time.
I lost my job last Friday (the 19th). I started my new one today (the 29th). Instead of working in an office run by stuffy ex-bankers turned overnight know-it-all techies, now I'm working for fellow geeks my own age at a very comfortable wage, in my own home, doing the odd jobs they throw at me. I can work as many or as few hours as I want (I want a lot of hours ;), it pays the bills, and I'm doing what I enjoy. You'd be amazed how fast even ten hours a day goes by when you're at home, at your own workstation, your spouse and pets nearby, and plenty of stuff to do on breaks. And when you want lunch, you just walk to your kitchen to get it :)
Anyways, go for it! Look into the smaller webhosting providers -- the ones who are proud of their data centers because they had to work hard to get them, the ones who have just a few employees -- they tend to need general-purpose people to work equal parts sysadmin, programmer, and helpdesk tech. The pay ranges from modest to good, and if you work hard, you'll be in a very pleasant position for advancement when the company really takes off.
Good luck!
You big goofball, the poster obviously was referring to this nifty ancient decrepit monstrosity that failed miserably.
Hehehe, by the way, I actually do have a few titles on VideoDisc. Need to find a player though :)
Better that people keep questions to themselves, and just conform, than to dare ask what others in their peer group think or feel about something.
You're completely right; you should never ask which notebooks run your alternative OS of choice -- better to just keep the economy churning along by buying whichever one looks the coolest and hoping its equipment works with your stuff. Don't ask or even wonder how to conduct your geeky self with a significant other -- if you don't "just know," your relationship is doomed anyway. Never solicit opinions about pets that are pleasant to be around yet are easy to maintain -- that should be painfully obvious! Just buy a [insert your favorite pet here and argue with anyone who disagrees]!
Really, fuck off. It's clear you're remarkably tired, or just intolerant of anyone musing aloud about topics you think you've mastered yourself. Have you got a perfect pet, a perfect laptop, a perfect relationship with your SO, and a perfect stock of beverages in your refrigerator/cooler/vending machine/drink dispenser of choice? (For the clueless, that's rhetorical; I'm sure I'll get responses to this question anyway :)
I'm getting sick of every single fucking Ask Slashdot question having more replies of "Dur, this is a stoopid question!" and "What are j00, some kind of moron?" rather than an actual exchange of information.
Maybe people don't want to google for random sites that might have real or bogus information. Maybe people don't want to write to that tightwad wench Ann Landers for a dose of conservative drivel. Maybe people don't want to read a magazine sponsored by the same companies they're supposed to be objectively reviewing to figure out which car to buy.
Gasp -- Maybe people just want to hear what others in their peer group have to say about different topics.
Then again, looking at your response, maybe people will just get sick of folks like you and stop feeding trolls like I'm doing now ;)
As I've always said about "offensive" television and radio shows, magazine and newspaper articles, books, and web sites, articles, and posts, if it offends you, quit reading it, and move on to the next topic. There's plenty of kinder, gentler content on Slashdot or even Disney's site if these mind-bending questions twist your soul into painful shapes.
Gosh, you're right. Why bother ever asking one's peers? They're all just trolls anyway, right?
$8.95 per month. No caps. No throttling. No limit on number of simultaneous connections. Seems to have pretty damned good retention, and I've managed speeds up to 500k/sec from their servers.
Setting up libdvdread2 (0.9.2-0.1)
Setting up ogle-mmx (0.8.2-11)
Setting up ogle-gui (0.8.2-8)
real 0m7.130s
user 0m3.950s
sys 0m0.790s
Almost eight seconds! You're right, this is such a pain in the ass. Let's not forget the raw misery of getting a DeCSS-like thing working (as instructed by the previous step):
$ timereal 0m2.779s
user 0m1.370s
sys 0m0.360s
Damn. I've just sacrificed almost ten seconds of my life just to get a working DVD player on my Linux box!
You know, the saddest part is I'll never get those seconds back.
[sarcasm mode off] Right, now while you're wasting your time pirating a competent Windows-based DVD player, I'll just be enjoying my movies, full-screen, with subtitles and multiple camera angles & audio selections. Have fun.
This isn't as painful as Slashdot's made it out to be. It only records it if 1) you don't have the recorder set to record something else at the same time this comes on, 2) you're not watching live TV (it asks permission to switch if you are). It doesn't take up any space allocated for your recordings. In all honesty, this thing's going out of its way to avoid getting in yours.
I'll leave alone for now the issue of why your children would be "damaged" if they saw a pair of breasts or heard "fuck" or "shit" from your TV. It's not like the little bastards don't see and hear more in that mean old world around them when they leave the sanctuary that is your home.
(I say "your" figuratively; I know you didn't directly infer that your children have witness Penthouse pr0n on your TiVo)
This is a tough one. VMware Workstation seems better suited for quick "oh shit, I need Windows for something" tasks and for running "productivity" applications (games certainly don't qualify ;).
The problem is that VMware doesn't even try to expose any kind of 3D (or, really, any kind of hardware-accelerated DirectX-style stuff); you get a fast 2D video adapter (passed through to X), a decent sound card (passed through to your sound driver, if any), and USB passthrough (I can use a scanner in a VM running Windows XP that Linux itself doesn't have a driver for -- how whacked is that? :), but that's it.
For anything that requires even moderately good performance in 2D, you're not going to find it in VMware. And forget about 3D stuff (I know you mentioned just Civ III, but hey, others might read my rantings too :).
As others have suggested, WineX is your best in-Linux bet. Otherwise, fire up parted, shrink down your Linux partition(s) a bit, reserve a bit of slack space for Windows, make a GRUB boot disk, install Windows 95/98/ME/2k/XP/whatever on that new partition, then use the boot disk to unscrew your original boot loader :)
I shun Microsoft products, too, but when it comes to playing Imperium Galactica II or Homeworld or Unreal Tournament, or, really, anything else, it's time for a reboot into the smallish Windows partition. *sigh*. At least I'll never buy an Xbox, eh? :)
</sarcasm>
Sorry, Tranvisor, I'm in full agreement with the letter and the spirit of your post. Just had to point out that sadly, our government is leaning towards that very position -- we punish the toolmakers for the bad things that come from them instead of punishing those who use the tools for bad things.
Dammit, now I'm depressed.
Oh well. There's always modems, or giving up on this big fat Internet thing altogether :)
Hear hear!
I don't think I'd mind this very much if paying extra for bandwidth meant they'd lift that damned 128kbit/sec uplink cap.
But as it stands now, they're raising prices for some users but not providing anything extra.
Would you just sit there and take if your credit card company suddenly jacked your rates from 9.9% to 21.98%? Remember, you'd only actually pay that if you used any of your credit :)
If you think "this won't affect me", think again. It might not show up on next month's bill if you're a "low bandwidth" user, but once the cable providers realize people will actually pay higher rates based on usage, you can bet we'll start seeing much more restrictive "limits" that make it nearly trivial to trigger more billable transfers.
Besides, what happened to that "Unlimited Broadband Internet Access!!!" thing these companies advertised? Unlimited usage, one low monthly fee, right? Heh. Guess that's out the window. Isn't there some law(s) about this kind of stuff (something about "bait and switch")?
Maybe because it's ... what's the word ... "fun"?
Just because it's something you wouldn't consider fun to research, design, build, and finally ride, doesn't mean others wouldn't. I'd love something like this.
The bragging rights alone make this endeavour worth the effort :)
I fired off a clear, concise message (no, not just "telemarketing suX0rs, d00d!" :) to the FTC. Hopefully they'll actually read it, and maybe even listen to some of the suggestions.
Telemarketing is one of the biggest annoyances of the modern age; its sibling Mr. Spam is about the only thing worse I can think of.
I know, I know, "but it provides jobs for lots of people!" Sure it does. It provides jobs people hate themselves for doing. It provides low paying jobs. There's plenty of other work out there. We don't need telemarketing.
The scariest part about telemarketing to me is that it's still around. It's only still being done because some (sizable) group of fucking morons actually buys stuff from telemarketers. Telemarketing has a non-zero success rate. Probably single-digit percentages, but still non-zero. It's reached (and passed) that break-even point where it makes more money than it costs.
The fastest way to be rid of telemarketing is to say "no" every fucking time. Even if you're on your way out the door to buy a time share, if you get a call trying to sell one, offer to fax a copy of your middle finger instead. Even if you donate to charities often, don't donate to those who solicit over the phone (or, at least, don't donate to them when they call you).
Bugging the FTC about this feels good, relieves stress, and lets us blow off steam, but we need to get some other things done to make a sizable dent in telemarketing's armor.
Actually the FTC itself can help with some of it. Like the linked site above points out, it'd be great if telemarketers were actually forced to transmit accurate, valid caller ID data. I turned off my caller ID over a year ago because not many people call us, and telemarketers always show up as "OUT OF AREA" or "BLOCKED". What the hell good is that little six dollar-per-month gem?
The killer was when the phone company here (Qwest) unveiled this magical new product. For only thirteen bucks per month, they'll magically block all telemarketing calls for you. They'll never even ring your phone. How convenient; they sell me a product to identify telemarketers and other undesirables so I don't have to answer my phone when I don't want to. Then they sell "block your caller ID data from appearing on phones you call!" services to telemarketers so they can sneak right past the service they're selling me. Then they turn back around and try to sell me another service to block the calls I can't screen myself because they've disabled my ability to screen them?!?!
What's next? Phone companies letting telemarketing companies buy or lease a change in "classification," so even their telemarketing blocking service doesn't work anymore?
Screw that. Where the FTC can help is to put a stop to that little scam. Sell me phone service, and tell me who's calling. Nothing else. Don't let telemarketers block caller ID. Only allow private individuals, at residential locations, block it. Why should some big faceless corporation care anyway if some yahoo in Georgia knows that Wesayso(tm) Corporation just tried to sell him a George Foreman Nose Hair Curler?
Whining to the FTC will help, but won't solve all our problems. We have to stop saying "sure! I'll take a fifty year subscription to Cat Boogers magazine for just five hundred easy payments of a thousand bucks each!" We have to (gently :) coach others not to do so, and (even more gently) get on them if they do it anyway.
If we make telemarketing less effective, or more expensive than it's worth, it'll go away and die the natural death it so richly deserves.