You've just described, more or less accurately, the way AOL and Compuserve used to work.
So why not let Verisign, AOL, BT Openwoe and friends run their own little privatised network, while leaving the sane and sensible rest of us to have ours?
I'm not saying that kids should have no internet access at all, any more than I would say they should have no access to TV, radio, books &c. What I'm saying is that parents should be responsible for supervising their kids online, just as they would be responsible for looking after their kids in a public place.
But if people aren't prepared to keep an eye on their kids online, then they have two choices: pay for someone else to do it {how hard can it be to set up a family-friendly ISP for instance?} or do without it altogether.
With the way the want to ban everything that might corrupt the young and impressionable, the ultra-conservatives are as bad IMHO as the greens wanting to ban everything that might pollute the environment. They wouldn't be satisfied with the whole internet becoming family-friendly - there would be some other issue to bang the drum over.
Well, considering that my e-mail address has.UK in it, it's a safe bet I'm from the UK. If someone wants to take a perfectly innocuous word meaning "a slim combustible paper cylinder containing shredded tobacco for inhalation", and apply a totally different meaning to it, that's none of my business.
Incidentally, "fag" for cigarette is actually a back-form; "fag" as a verb means to wear out. "Fag-ends" in a naval context were the frayed ends of ropes, which would be cut off and swept overboard before an Admiralty inspection; over time, a "fag-end" came also to mean a cigarette butt by simple association. So obvously the thing that a "fag-end" is the end of, must logically be called a "fag".
In Britain {and Australia}, the US terms "fag" or "fagot" would be replaced by "poof" or "poofter". So the name of Eric Cartman's favourite snack is actually quite offensive over here..... you don't hear us complaining though, do you, so who does that say is better at dealing with stuff:-p
or something similar before your <HTML> line ought to do it. Of course, you have to supply pages explaining why users of lame OSes are not welcome.
More subtly, you could arrange things so that Windows users get the same files, but their bandwidth is restricted.
Of course, if you really want to have some fun, you can always recompile Apache so it identifies as Microsoft IIS, and set your httpd-conf so pages with an.asp extension are interpreted as PHP. I know of one ISP who actually did this for a client..... even going so far as to rewrite the client's supplied ASP / MS SQL server pages into PHP / MySQL..... I don't think the customer ever found out, as they went out of business, but it was nothing to do with the improvements to the web site!
Well, first of all, 60% is an arithmetical majority. By your own figures, for every two child porn collectors who go on to harm children, there are three who don't. Anyway, if they have abused a child, which already is illegal, then why can't you just go and arrest them for that?
Motives? Morbid curiosity, I guess. Having participated in the raising of a family, I already know what a naked child looks like. Maybe some people haven't. Or, maybe they just know when to stop. Not everyone who sees advertisements for fast cars is a bad driver. Not everyone who sees advertisements for cigarettes is a chainsmoker. Not everyone who sees advertisements for alcohol is a drunk. So why should it be any different with sexual images? At the end of the day, if these people really have to get their rocks off, it's less bad that they do so into a box of Kleenex than into a child.
And as much as I don't like the idea of it being any kid of mine in the pictures, I also don't like the idea that mere possession of images - or anything else for that matter - constitutes a crime. That way lies Thoughtcrime. Looking at a picture does not harm the person depicted there, however much we might like to pretend the contrary is true. As much damage as is ever going to be done {and that may well be none if the picture is a freehand drawing from someone's imagination or a computer-generated image, rather than an actual photograph} already has been done when the image is made.
But, in a dumbed-down world where everything has been reduced to simple issues of Goodies v. Baddies, some Universal Scapegoat is required to ameliorate the state of denial in which people inevitably find themselves. I.E. somebody to whom you can comfortably feel morally superior no matter what little crime you may have committed. {Sure, I did 38 in a 30 zone the other day; but at least I'm not a nonce. I put the odd aly can in landfill but at least I'm not a nonce. Get the picture?}
I'd be in favour of making it an offence to allow a minor unsupervised access to the Internet. We didn't have such things when I was a kid. It didn't do me any harm. Of course, alongside that would have to be making it an offence to deny adults access to "objectionable" content.
There are many districts in many cities where all sorts of stuff goes on that you wouldn't want young kids being around. Solution? Don't let your kids go there, at least, not on their own.
We live in an adult world. The Internet is an adult invention. Nobody ever intended it to be suitable for children. Deal with it. For crying out loud! You can't watch certain films till you're 12 or 15; you can't buy fags or have sex till you're 16; you can't drink booze, bet on sporting events or watch other people having sex till you're 18. Anybody complaining about adults smoking, drinking, gambling, having sex and watching certain kinds of films is rightly denounced. What's to complain about? Sooner or later you'll be old enough.
An anonymising proxy can be written in about one screenful of PHP code. If you have a broadband connection at home, deploy such a service, and encourage others to do likewise, so eventually there will just be too many of them for anyone to block them all. The only downside is, you may have to pay for an SSL certificate:-( Depends if or not you can persuade your company's browser to accept the default "Snake Oil" certificate.
Then again, if you have broadband at home, why do you need to be surfing at work?
ErrorDocuments can in fact be CGI. So you could do something like this;
#!/usr/bin/bash
echo "Content-type: text/plain\n\n"
echo "Your script has gone 'Les Roberts vers le haut', as they say in Paris."
echo "Below is whatever it uttered with its last dying gasp:"
echo "--------------------"
tail -n50/var/log/httpd/error.log
You may have to fiddle with paths and permissions and things to get this to work; but when it does work, it works a charm. Just plant this in your cgi-bin directory, set up.htaccess to point to it as an errordocument 500, and set the path in the script to correspond with your actual error.log file {it's at least a distribution-by-distribution variable}. Chmod the logfile to 644 so it is world-readable, and edit your log rotate script so it sets these permissions every time it rotates the logs.
WARNING: I don't know why the log wasn't made world-readable from day one, but Someone Might Have Had A Good Reason That I Missed. Be sure you aren't logging sensitive stuff, I suppose.....
I wrote a message board thingy in Perl which starred out the words "fuck", "cunt" and "wank", replacing them with "f**k", "c**t" and "w**k" respectively. My rationale behind this was that there are plenty of other words in the English language that can be used to express one's feelings, and beside which it was still reasonably obvious what the person meant. After all, it was running on my equipment, anyone using it was a guest in my home; and, if they really wanted to use those words, they could always download and edit the source code and build their own message board. And yes, it was smart enough that you could still write about a town on Humberside {Scunthorpe} and/or a type of rotary engine {Wankel engine} with impunity.
In a later version {using SQL instead of text files} the starring-out was done at display time, according to user preferences. So you could be as potty-mouthed as you liked, but other people had the option to block it.
By the way, I have heard that Scunthorpe council themselves had serious problems with Internet filtering software altering the name of their town.
You mean spammer don't pay for their 'net connection?
Or electricity?
Or their computer equipment?
Etc?
No, a lot of them don't pay for such things. They infect vulnerable broadband-equipped home PCs with worms that propagate spam. This not only saves the spammers bandwidth, it also makes it harder to trace the source of the spam.
I use Linux at home, but am currently stuck with Windows 98SE at work due mainly to driver-related issues {we have some esoteric telephones with USB interfaces for auto-dialling. I'm on another project now, but will soon be back to researching how to get Linux to talk to them, basically by analysing USB traffic, attempting to replicate commands and seeing what happens. Highly scientific stuff}.
What I miss most of all when I'm using Windows, is multiple desktops. It's so handy to be able to click and have a fresh desktop. The nearest thing in 98SE is an icon which minimises all open windows. Maybe XP supports multiple desktops; I don't know. It wouldn't work with our hardware/software setup even if we were prepared to pay for it. We do not have as many MS Office licences as we have PCs, but I have installed OpenOffice.org on several machines and it's fine for all practical purposes. There is one Linux machine for use by the non-techies; the only issue with it is manual dialling on the phone. Sometimes the Windows machines' auto-dialling breaks too. As this is done using closed source software, we can't just fix it. Once we figure out the phone driver thing, of course, we'll have it fixed for good.
My laptop is mine, so it runs Linux, but I have used it at work. All I have to do is start gFTP - which reminds me a bit of a few old Amiga programmes {Sid and DirOpus were the ones I used, but there were others} - and I can edit files on the remote server using Kate. Of course, I still have spare desktops to use for Konsole {think a tabbed XTerm}, Konqueror / Mozilla and other stuff.
By the way, if anyone ever really insists on a.doc attachment, you can always use KOffice to create an.rtf and then change the extension to.doc. Word will open it just fine. For added effect, you might want to infest it with a Windows-only virus:-)
If SunnComm really believed that their ridiculous system worked, then they are to be pitied. MediaMax as described in the original paper is about as effective at preventing copying as a chalk line on the floor is at preventing break-ins. A Linux or old Mac user would never even know about the "protection" - the disc would play fine in their machine, and they probably would just rightly guess that the Windows / MacOSX files were irrelevant. But, my guess is that SunnComm knew that their MediaMax rated somewhere between ineffective and laughable on the scale, but were intending to make money on it nonetheless. That probably would constitute fraud {selling somebody something which you know or suspect doesn't work certainly sounds like fraud to me}.
A professional counterfeiter will not think twice about making an analogue copy. They don't particularly care about a little quality loss, and beside, they can afford decent equipment to minimise the effects. The really determined file sharers will always find a way of getting the music onto the networks in a digital form, whether by analogue means if necessary or by digital means if not.
And once the "protection" has been defeated, even by only just one person, it is ruined forever. Every penny that anyone ever spent on it has become wasted, as surely as if they had flushed a bunch of pound notes down the toilet.
Now, can anyone say how the price you pay for a CD gets distributed amongst the various players? How much goes to the performer? The writer of the song, if not the same person? How much goes in some fatcat's pocket? And how much is spent on flawed "copy protection" schemes that blatantly do not work and never will?
Perhaps it would be better to give corporations the minor inconvenience of forbidding them from deploying snoopware, than to risk someone's privacy being compromised in the non-workplace world? If bosses want to snoop on their employees, maybe they could employ someone to walk around in person watching them. Or they could try promoting a culture where people feel they are trusted.
Still, on an OS with privilege separation and hardware abstraction, installing snoopware can only be done by a deliberate act. And if the machine is properly set up only to allow root access from the console, so much the better.
Why can't I just plug my car's engine into my house?
Assuming that you can get a suitably-rated alternator {230V single phase, self-exciting, 10kVA or thereabouts for a whole house; 2kVA if you don't plan on running anything that gets hot for a living}, can successfully couple it to the engine and can maintain an accurate 3000rpm {50 cycles/sec * 60 sec/min = 3000rpm} and have room for a big DPCO switch between the meter and the consumer unit {for switching over}, there is precious little stopping you.
However, I suspect your maths may be out. My little portable generator is rated 650VA and runs for 6h30' at full load on a full tank of fuel {4L}. At 75p a litre, a tank costs 3.00, plus a few pence extra for oil {it's a two-stroke engine}. Let's assume a resistive load, i.e. unity power factor {if I want to run a big motor or something, I can always wire a massive capacitor across it}. One tank gives 0.65 * 6.5 = 4.225 kWh for 3.00, which puts the cost per unit at 71p. Checking on my electricity meter, a unit costs 6.5p at peak time. So in my case, home-made electricity is >10x the cost of the commercially-available alternative. {But OTOH, it gets in places that Powergen can't}.
A car engine is four-stroke, and no doubt a bigger alternator would be more efficient. But I doubt it would be more than ten times as efficient as my little machine. Even allowing for cheaper petrol in the US {what does a litre of unleaded cost you?}, it's unlikely to work out cheaper in practice.
And, if you have anything which is dependent on frequency {synchronous motors; clocks / time switches; certain kinds of lighting ballast} it will misbehave. Your generator will speed up and slow down in response to varying load conditions. {So does the power company's; but the change in power demand is so small compared to the overall capacity that the change in speed is barely noticed. If necessary, they will adjust the speed deliberately during a quiet period so as to get back to an average of 4320000 cycles per day. You can count on the mains turning over 50 times a second nearly as reliably as you can count on light travelling 299792458m. in the same period.}
Society has been dependent upon technology ever since someone discovered that if you bashed two pieces of rock together, you got (a) sharp edges that could be used to kill an animal bigger than yourself and (b) flying hot bits that would set fire to dry grass. When someone who otherwise would have died was saved thanks to the use of either a stone weapon or fire {perhaps by avoiding starvation, or even winning a fight against an animal that otherwise would have killed them; perhaps by avoiding food poisoning by cooking some meat; perhaps by avoiding hypothermia}, that was the moment we began to become dependent upon technology. And when a group of people sat down to cook over a fire what they had killed that day with their axes and spears, the dependency was as good as complete.
Q. What's better than free software?
A. Cheaper-than-free software that you actually get paid to use!
How about if someone with money to invest in a project, paid broadband users to run the project's own custom Linux distribution which would incorporate their project's client software? The client would run from a non-privileged account in user space, and the inherent features of Linux itself should provide sufficient protection for all but the most terminally stupid users. Obviously, payment to users would be contingent on return of results.
I think this would be permitted by the GPL, but I don't quite know who might want to use it {apart from spammers, but the Community would never prostitute themselves like that}.
Samba does not matter. It is based on the flawed SMB protocol. I'm not running it at all anymore on my home intranet, and I noticed a real speed improvement the second I took my finger off the return key after typing/etc/init.d/samba stop. Now I just use NFS for sharing files, LPRNG for sharing printers, HTTP and FTP for sharing stuff with the outside world.
Of course, what you could do, is just get your girlfriend to dump you for no reason whatsoever, and then you won't have anyone to go to the cinema with. While it's true that you could go on your own, everybody else in the place will be with somebody else, and there might just as well be a massive great neon sign hovering above your head reading SAD LONELY GIT. All those people around you, and yet you will feel more alone than you have ever felt in your life; because every last one of them knows how vastly superior they are to you because they have each other and you have no-one.
At least when you go out to the corner shop to rent a vid, you can pretend you won't be the only one watching it. You can even pick up a packet of tampons along with your film food {NB go strictly by the calendar; if you don't buy them at exactly four week intervals then your game will be rumbled} to make it look as though you still have a girlfriend. And you'll have had plenty of time to listen to opinions about the movie so you'll know in advance if or not it was any good. Just watch out for the sad git who spoils it by revealing the plot twist {he probably is used to watching films on his own, BTW}.
You missed the point. Nothing any film studio could invent would ever compare to what exists within the imagination of a kid listening to the wireless and unconstrained by the preconceptions of others. This same kid has now become a cynical old fart who has seen so many crap movies, I end up just sort of automatically assuming every movie is going to be crap.
It's hardly fair to people who make good films, and you do point out some excellent examples to suitably humble me. But can you really blame me for having that attitude and not blame the people who shaped that attitude?
Anyway, it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness; so I intend to try to sort out my jaded condition by popping down to HMV at the next opportunity and availing myself of some DVDs that don't suck. The HHGG movie might be good, after all, and I don't suppose there's a lot I can do about it anyway.
For as long as there have been such things as could be called instruments, people have been making music.
The idea that people won't make music if they don't get paid for it is absurd. In my home town of Derby, you can stand in the market place on any night of the week, walk in any direction and before you have gone a mile you will find a pub with live music {either that, or you'll fall in the River Derwent}. These people are doing it for beer money, but you can tell they're loving every minute of it. I have no reason to suppose Derby is particularly special {apart from a plentiful and diverse supply of real ale, thanks to being just up the A38 from Burton on Trent} so the situation should be similar in many if not most cities.
Without big money, there won't be things like Pop Idol XVIII, there won't be boy bands, girl bands, soap opera stars turning into pop stars and whatever. Nobody will mourn their passing - well, maybe the fatcats, but they are not necessary. What there will be is what there has always been - raw talent and real passion. People will be playing music for the sheer love of it rather than for the money, and that's an important distinction. Anything done for love is just better than the equivalent thing done for money. If you're not getting paid for it, you are not going to carry on with something unless your heart is really in it. If you are getting paid, you're more likely to do half a job just so you can get the pay cheque at the end. That is how money taints and corrupts.
Exactly. But that's my whole argument. Running closed source software is just plain suicidal. Don't do it, kids! You can live without closed source. If you want to share your files with others, run Apache!
I had always heard Episode IV referred to just as "Star Wars" until last year when the movie was shown on analogue terrestrial TV with the longer title.
It's possible that the film was always just called "Star Wars" on this side of the pond. Cf. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's vs. Sorcerer's Stone. Also James Bond Licence to Kill was originally supposed to be called Licence Revoked {IMHO that title made more sense, but IANATFPSWDIK?}.
Don't get me wrong, I hope the movie is great. It's just that it would be so easy to ruin everything by placing too much reliance on special effects at the expense of the plot and characters. Look at Mission to Mars for an example of what I mean - it really should have been a good film, but the makers managed to cock it up with a storyline that just plain didn't make sense.
Slashdot Mirror
I know what you mean. IPV6 just might prove to be the saviour of us all. Now I just need to find an ISP that supports it .....
That's quite interesting.
You've just described, more or less accurately, the way AOL and Compuserve used to work.
So why not let Verisign, AOL, BT Openwoe and friends run their own little privatised network, while leaving the sane and sensible rest of us to have ours?
I'm not saying that kids should have no internet access at all, any more than I would say they should have no access to TV, radio, books &c. What I'm saying is that parents should be responsible for supervising their kids online, just as they would be responsible for looking after their kids in a public place.
But if people aren't prepared to keep an eye on their kids online, then they have two choices: pay for someone else to do it {how hard can it be to set up a family-friendly ISP for instance?} or do without it altogether.
With the way the want to ban everything that might corrupt the young and impressionable, the ultra-conservatives are as bad IMHO as the greens wanting to ban everything that might pollute the environment. They wouldn't be satisfied with the whole internet becoming family-friendly - there would be some other issue to bang the drum over.
Well, considering that my e-mail address has .UK in it, it's a safe bet I'm from the UK. If someone wants to take a perfectly innocuous word meaning "a slim combustible paper cylinder containing shredded tobacco for inhalation", and apply a totally different meaning to it, that's none of my business.
..... you don't hear us complaining though, do you, so who does that say is better at dealing with stuff :-p
Incidentally, "fag" for cigarette is actually a back-form; "fag" as a verb means to wear out. "Fag-ends" in a naval context were the frayed ends of ropes, which would be cut off and swept overboard before an Admiralty inspection; over time, a "fag-end" came also to mean a cigarette butt by simple association. So obvously the thing that a "fag-end" is the end of, must logically be called a "fag".
In Britain {and Australia}, the US terms "fag" or "fagot" would be replaced by "poof" or "poofter". So the name of Eric Cartman's favourite snack is actually quite offensive over here
More subtly, you could arrange things so that Windows users get the same files, but their bandwidth is restricted.
Of course, if you really want to have some fun, you can always recompile Apache so it identifies as Microsoft IIS, and set your httpd-conf so pages with an
Well, first of all, 60% is an arithmetical majority. By your own figures, for every two child porn collectors who go on to harm children, there are three who don't. Anyway, if they have abused a child, which already is illegal, then why can't you just go and arrest them for that?
Motives? Morbid curiosity, I guess. Having participated in the raising of a family, I already know what a naked child looks like. Maybe some people haven't. Or, maybe they just know when to stop. Not everyone who sees advertisements for fast cars is a bad driver. Not everyone who sees advertisements for cigarettes is a chainsmoker. Not everyone who sees advertisements for alcohol is a drunk. So why should it be any different with sexual images? At the end of the day, if these people really have to get their rocks off, it's less bad that they do so into a box of Kleenex than into a child.
And as much as I don't like the idea of it being any kid of mine in the pictures, I also don't like the idea that mere possession of images - or anything else for that matter - constitutes a crime. That way lies Thoughtcrime. Looking at a picture does not harm the person depicted there, however much we might like to pretend the contrary is true. As much damage as is ever going to be done {and that may well be none if the picture is a freehand drawing from someone's imagination or a computer-generated image, rather than an actual photograph} already has been done when the image is made.
But, in a dumbed-down world where everything has been reduced to simple issues of Goodies v. Baddies, some Universal Scapegoat is required to ameliorate the state of denial in which people inevitably find themselves. I.E. somebody to whom you can comfortably feel morally superior no matter what little crime you may have committed. {Sure, I did 38 in a 30 zone the other day; but at least I'm not a nonce. I put the odd aly can in landfill but at least I'm not a nonce. Get the picture?}
I'd be in favour of making it an offence to allow a minor unsupervised access to the Internet. We didn't have such things when I was a kid. It didn't do me any harm. Of course, alongside that would have to be making it an offence to deny adults access to "objectionable" content.
There are many districts in many cities where all sorts of stuff goes on that you wouldn't want young kids being around. Solution? Don't let your kids go there, at least, not on their own.
We live in an adult world. The Internet is an adult invention. Nobody ever intended it to be suitable for children. Deal with it. For crying out loud! You can't watch certain films till you're 12 or 15; you can't buy fags or have sex till you're 16; you can't drink booze, bet on sporting events or watch other people having sex till you're 18. Anybody complaining about adults smoking, drinking, gambling, having sex and watching certain kinds of films is rightly denounced. What's to complain about? Sooner or later you'll be old enough.
An anonymising proxy can be written in about one screenful of PHP code. If you have a broadband connection at home, deploy such a service, and encourage others to do likewise, so eventually there will just be too many of them for anyone to block them all. The only downside is, you may have to pay for an SSL certificate :-( Depends if or not you can persuade your company's browser to accept the default "Snake Oil" certificate.
Then again, if you have broadband at home, why do you need to be surfing at work?
WARNING: I don't know why the log wasn't made world-readable from day one, but Someone Might Have Had A Good Reason That I Missed. Be sure you aren't logging sensitive stuff, I suppose
I wrote a message board thingy in Perl which starred out the words "fuck", "cunt" and "wank", replacing them with "f**k", "c**t" and "w**k" respectively. My rationale behind this was that there are plenty of other words in the English language that can be used to express one's feelings, and beside which it was still reasonably obvious what the person meant. After all, it was running on my equipment, anyone using it was a guest in my home; and, if they really wanted to use those words, they could always download and edit the source code and build their own message board. And yes, it was smart enough that you could still write about a town on Humberside {Scunthorpe} and/or a type of rotary engine {Wankel engine} with impunity.
In a later version {using SQL instead of text files} the starring-out was done at display time, according to user preferences. So you could be as potty-mouthed as you liked, but other people had the option to block it.
By the way, I have heard that Scunthorpe council themselves had serious problems with Internet filtering software altering the name of their town.
..... to use this encrypted, cross-platform P2P file sharing software instead!
I use Linux at home, but am currently stuck with Windows 98SE at work due mainly to driver-related issues {we have some esoteric telephones with USB interfaces for auto-dialling. I'm on another project now, but will soon be back to researching how to get Linux to talk to them, basically by analysing USB traffic, attempting to replicate commands and seeing what happens. Highly scientific stuff}.
.doc attachment, you can always use KOffice to create an .rtf and then change the extension to .doc. Word will open it just fine. For added effect, you might want to infest it with a Windows-only virus :-)
What I miss most of all when I'm using Windows, is multiple desktops. It's so handy to be able to click and have a fresh desktop. The nearest thing in 98SE is an icon which minimises all open windows. Maybe XP supports multiple desktops; I don't know. It wouldn't work with our hardware/software setup even if we were prepared to pay for it. We do not have as many MS Office licences as we have PCs, but I have installed OpenOffice.org on several machines and it's fine for all practical purposes. There is one Linux machine for use by the non-techies; the only issue with it is manual dialling on the phone. Sometimes the Windows machines' auto-dialling breaks too. As this is done using closed source software, we can't just fix it. Once we figure out the phone driver thing, of course, we'll have it fixed for good.
My laptop is mine, so it runs Linux, but I have used it at work. All I have to do is start gFTP - which reminds me a bit of a few old Amiga programmes {Sid and DirOpus were the ones I used, but there were others} - and I can edit files on the remote server using Kate. Of course, I still have spare desktops to use for Konsole {think a tabbed XTerm}, Konqueror / Mozilla and other stuff.
By the way, if anyone ever really insists on a
If SunnComm really believed that their ridiculous system worked, then they are to be pitied. MediaMax as described in the original paper is about as effective at preventing copying as a chalk line on the floor is at preventing break-ins. A Linux or old Mac user would never even know about the "protection" - the disc would play fine in their machine, and they probably would just rightly guess that the Windows / MacOSX files were irrelevant. But, my guess is that SunnComm knew that their MediaMax rated somewhere between ineffective and laughable on the scale, but were intending to make money on it nonetheless. That probably would constitute fraud {selling somebody something which you know or suspect doesn't work certainly sounds like fraud to me}.
A professional counterfeiter will not think twice about making an analogue copy. They don't particularly care about a little quality loss, and beside, they can afford decent equipment to minimise the effects. The really determined file sharers will always find a way of getting the music onto the networks in a digital form, whether by analogue means if necessary or by digital means if not.
And once the "protection" has been defeated, even by only just one person, it is ruined forever. Every penny that anyone ever spent on it has become wasted, as surely as if they had flushed a bunch of pound notes down the toilet.
Now, can anyone say how the price you pay for a CD gets distributed amongst the various players? How much goes to the performer? The writer of the song, if not the same person? How much goes in some fatcat's pocket? And how much is spent on flawed "copy protection" schemes that blatantly do not work and never will?
Perhaps it would be better to give corporations the minor inconvenience of forbidding them from deploying snoopware, than to risk someone's privacy being compromised in the non-workplace world? If bosses want to snoop on their employees, maybe they could employ someone to walk around in person watching them. Or they could try promoting a culture where people feel they are trusted.
Still, on an OS with privilege separation and hardware abstraction, installing snoopware can only be done by a deliberate act. And if the machine is properly set up only to allow root access from the console, so much the better.
However, I suspect your maths may be out. My little portable generator is rated 650VA and runs for 6h30' at full load on a full tank of fuel {4L}. At 75p a litre, a tank costs 3.00, plus a few pence extra for oil {it's a two-stroke engine}. Let's assume a resistive load, i.e. unity power factor {if I want to run a big motor or something, I can always wire a massive capacitor across it}. One tank gives 0.65 * 6.5 = 4.225 kWh for 3.00, which puts the cost per unit at 71p. Checking on my electricity meter, a unit costs 6.5p at peak time. So in my case, home-made electricity is >10x the cost of the commercially-available alternative. {But OTOH, it gets in places that Powergen can't}.
A car engine is four-stroke, and no doubt a bigger alternator would be more efficient. But I doubt it would be more than ten times as efficient as my little machine. Even allowing for cheaper petrol in the US {what does a litre of unleaded cost you?}, it's unlikely to work out cheaper in practice.
And, if you have anything which is dependent on frequency {synchronous motors; clocks / time switches; certain kinds of lighting ballast} it will misbehave. Your generator will speed up and slow down in response to varying load conditions. {So does the power company's; but the change in power demand is so small compared to the overall capacity that the change in speed is barely noticed. If necessary, they will adjust the speed deliberately during a quiet period so as to get back to an average of 4320000 cycles per day. You can count on the mains turning over 50 times a second nearly as reliably as you can count on light travelling 299792458m. in the same period.}
Society has been dependent upon technology ever since someone discovered that if you bashed two pieces of rock together, you got (a) sharp edges that could be used to kill an animal bigger than yourself and (b) flying hot bits that would set fire to dry grass. When someone who otherwise would have died was saved thanks to the use of either a stone weapon or fire {perhaps by avoiding starvation, or even winning a fight against an animal that otherwise would have killed them; perhaps by avoiding food poisoning by cooking some meat; perhaps by avoiding hypothermia}, that was the moment we began to become dependent upon technology. And when a group of people sat down to cook over a fire what they had killed that day with their axes and spears, the dependency was as good as complete.
Q. What's better than free software?
A. Cheaper-than-free software that you actually get paid to use!
How about if someone with money to invest in a project, paid broadband users to run the project's own custom Linux distribution which would incorporate their project's client software? The client would run from a non-privileged account in user space, and the inherent features of Linux itself should provide sufficient protection for all but the most terminally stupid users. Obviously, payment to users would be contingent on return of results.
I think this would be permitted by the GPL, but I don't quite know who might want to use it {apart from spammers, but the Community would never prostitute themselves like that}.
2 boxes per room at least, actually.
And my mother had been using KDE for eight hours before she even noticed it wasn't Windows.
Samba does not matter. It is based on the flawed SMB protocol. I'm not running it at all anymore on my home intranet, and I noticed a real speed improvement the second I took my finger off the return key after typing /etc/init.d/samba stop. Now I just use NFS for sharing files, LPRNG for sharing printers, HTTP and FTP for sharing stuff with the outside world.
Who needs proprietary standards anyway?
Of course, what you could do, is just get your girlfriend to dump you for no reason whatsoever, and then you won't have anyone to go to the cinema with. While it's true that you could go on your own, everybody else in the place will be with somebody else, and there might just as well be a massive great neon sign hovering above your head reading SAD LONELY GIT. All those people around you, and yet you will feel more alone than you have ever felt in your life; because every last one of them knows how vastly superior they are to you because they have each other and you have no-one.
At least when you go out to the corner shop to rent a vid, you can pretend you won't be the only one watching it. You can even pick up a packet of tampons along with your film food {NB go strictly by the calendar; if you don't buy them at exactly four week intervals then your game will be rumbled} to make it look as though you still have a girlfriend. And you'll have had plenty of time to listen to opinions about the movie so you'll know in advance if or not it was any good. Just watch out for the sad git who spoils it by revealing the plot twist {he probably is used to watching films on his own, BTW}.
You missed the point. Nothing any film studio could invent would ever compare to what exists within the imagination of a kid listening to the wireless and unconstrained by the preconceptions of others. This same kid has now become a cynical old fart who has seen so many crap movies, I end up just sort of automatically assuming every movie is going to be crap.
It's hardly fair to people who make good films, and you do point out some excellent examples to suitably humble me. But can you really blame me for having that attitude and not blame the people who shaped that attitude?
Anyway, it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness; so I intend to try to sort out my jaded condition by popping down to HMV at the next opportunity and availing myself of some DVDs that don't suck. The HHGG movie might be good, after all, and I don't suppose there's a lot I can do about it anyway.
Bollocks. You are talking out of your arse.
For as long as there have been such things as could be called instruments, people have been making music.
The idea that people won't make music if they don't get paid for it is absurd. In my home town of Derby, you can stand in the market place on any night of the week, walk in any direction and before you have gone a mile you will find a pub with live music {either that, or you'll fall in the River Derwent}. These people are doing it for beer money, but you can tell they're loving every minute of it. I have no reason to suppose Derby is particularly special {apart from a plentiful and diverse supply of real ale, thanks to being just up the A38 from Burton on Trent} so the situation should be similar in many if not most cities.
Without big money, there won't be things like Pop Idol XVIII, there won't be boy bands, girl bands, soap opera stars turning into pop stars and whatever. Nobody will mourn their passing - well, maybe the fatcats, but they are not necessary. What there will be is what there has always been - raw talent and real passion. People will be playing music for the sheer love of it rather than for the money, and that's an important distinction. Anything done for love is just better than the equivalent thing done for money. If you're not getting paid for it, you are not going to carry on with something unless your heart is really in it. If you are getting paid, you're more likely to do half a job just so you can get the pay cheque at the end. That is how money taints and corrupts.
Exactly. But that's my whole argument. Running closed source software is just plain suicidal. Don't do it, kids! You can live without closed source. If you want to share your files with others, run Apache!
I had always heard Episode IV referred to just as "Star Wars" until last year when the movie was shown on analogue terrestrial TV with the longer title.
It's possible that the film was always just called "Star Wars" on this side of the pond. Cf. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's vs. Sorcerer's Stone. Also James Bond Licence to Kill was originally supposed to be called Licence Revoked {IMHO that title made more sense, but IANATFPSWDIK?}.
Don't get me wrong, I hope the movie is great. It's just that it would be so easy to ruin everything by placing too much reliance on special effects at the expense of the plot and characters. Look at Mission to Mars for an example of what I mean - it really should have been a good film, but the makers managed to cock it up with a storyline that just plain didn't make sense.