Actually, let's say it's not rot13, but rather, rot128 -- that is, every byte xor'd against 0x80. (I think, I'm a little fuzzy on binary and hex now.) That should make it nice and universal, symmetric, and something easy enough for everyone to know.
For safety's sake, the following should be done on an encrypted partition, and you should still shred the files afterwards.
Go take your favorite movie (DVD is easy, but high def if you can), rip it -- doesn't matter much how, raw bits would be especially insulting, but re-encode if you like. Take your shiny new DVD rip, add a note saying "Enjoy! And if anyone from the MPAA is reading, HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR DMCA NOW, YOU CUNTS? IT'S ILLEGAL TO READ THIS, I'LL SEE YOU IN COURT!!"
Zip/rar it all up, so it's one file, to make it simple, and run that one file through rot0x80. Save the shiny new crypted file on your hard drive somewhere, maybe give it a.rot13 extension -- so you're not really revealing your key, but everyone knows what you mean -- and distribute it via P2P.
Now, if everyone takes equal care when playing the movie -- and I imagine we could add rot0x80 support to mplayer/vlc, if you only did it on the media file itself -- then while I am not a laywer, I don't see how they could legally get any kind of conviction against you. Simply don't put the "key" in the players, and require the person to input it every time they play -- then, you can claim you didn't know (since the file was legal to redistribute, just not legal to open), and if they accuse you of piracy, you can immediately turn it around and accuse them of DMCA violations.
Not really an original idea, mind you. I can't point to the person who first used it to encrypt The Number, thus making it illegal for the MPAA to stop its spread. But the point here is, legally, I don't see a way out of this unless they subpeona (which is why all the disk encryption), and you can get around that easily enough -- simply use a temporary partition/filesystem, and throw away the key when you're done with that particular disc. In fact, leave the machine on and generate a random number, so you can truthfully say that you never did know the key, meaning they have absolutely no evidence you did something wrong, except the glaringly obvious bit that they're not allowed to use.
First, Java still doesn't have 64-bit applet support. I can run just about everything except browser plugins in a 64-bit Java.
Second, you don't need a 32-bit chroot. There are at least two alternatives. One: 32-bit browser with multilib. In Gentoo, you just emerge firefox-bin -- haven't tried in Ubuntu, because I like method two: nspluginwrapper. 32-bit plugin, 64-bit browser.
I don't hate the idea of this done right, but to me, this done right would either involve re-inventing the entire Internet (rather than patching things together), or simply using existing standards: Embedded mpeg for video (playable with Windows Media Player, QuickTime, mplayer, whatever, all of which come standard everywhere), SVG for vector graphics, and JavaScript for the logic. If you don't like HTML+SVG, you could use Gecko/XUL, although I'll hate you because it won't work in Konqueror/Safari or Opera. (Firefox is getting bloated now -- remember when it was the answer to Mozilla's bloat?)
Or YouTube could simply deliver a big "Fuck You" to both of them, and build a server farm on Sealand. Or we could all start self-publishing video again, rather than having Google take care of our bandwidth for us.
$1200 is exactly what they told me, over the phone, believe it or not, although I believe that is the cap for this particular model (Powerbook 17"). And yes, I am, some 3 year AppleCare plan.
And maybe it was because I told them I had dropped it -- nevermind that I dropped it a year before any symptoms showed up. So the warranty doesn't cover it -- they'll fix it, but it'll cost $1200.
So I told them nevermind, send it back, and they did, nothing fixed. So I'm stuck either soldering it myself, paying someone else to do it, or turning this into a MythFrontend box. Or throwing it away.
Doesn't sound at all like my problem -- my screen is completely black. The backlight is dead -- given just the right lighting conditions, I can sort of see where a window is on the screen. And it does not work, at all.
However, cheap soldering jobs sounds exactly right, given that it happened as I was tipping the screen slightly back -- not beyond the confines of its hinge, of course.
The problem is, compared to other manufacturers, it's a pretty strict policy. All they determined was that there was physical damage, therefore they won't repair it -- and furthermore, they don't do any kind of partial repairs. Another manufacturer might have actually considered that the failure might not have been related to the damage (given that I dropped it A FULL YEAR before there were any symptoms of this problem), and might have been willing to fix just the screen (ignoring the dents in the case, etc).
About the same thing happened to my Powerbook, and it still hasn't been fixed. Apple refuses to fix it, because it was dropped about a year ago, and if there is any physical damage at all (so much as a dent), the warranty is void. Since they will only do complete and total repairs, it would cost $1200 to fix.
So, my question: Does this also happen with Powerbooks? And if so, is it something I could easily fix by cracking it open and soldering something? Any step by step instructions on how to do so?
reducing supply only increases demand, as anyone that has had Econ 101 should know
And as anyone who made it out of Econ 101 should know, there's more to the story. For example: Reduce supply of oil, and you increase demand, until it's no longer sustainable. At a certain point, more and more people simply stop using oil, because it's too expensive. Eventually, even the price might settle back, as either new sources of oil are found, or more and more things move to alternative forms of energy.
So, if they were to severely crack down on kiddie pr0n, pedophiles would probably move to lolicon or away from it altogether. And there are almost certainly fewer suppliers than users, so it should be easier to crack down on the suppliers.
has stopping the supply of drugs or prostitutes ever worked?
You assume that the goal is to eliminate drugs or prostitutes forever. I don't think that's possible. As for whether it worked, I'd say, with that particular dealer or prostitute or kid pornographer, it did.
If the kids knew what they were doing and voluntarily did it, I wouldn't have a problem, but creating or viewing film of a child forced to have sex is wrong in so many ways.
I would argue that the truly offensive act here is rape, then, not child pornography. Of course, the law requires informed consent for it not to be rape... but then, there was a really interesting Law & Order about a 25-year-old girl (roughly) with the mind of a five-year-old (retarded), and they concluded that her statement of "It made me feel pretty" meant that she liked it, and thus, it was legal consent.
That was a bit disturbing to me. At what point is it really consent? What level of understanding is required? Certainly, there's nothing magical about the "age of consent"...
Even if they voluntarily commit themselves, most insurance companies cut them off at one month per year, even if they need help for longer (and at rates around $2000 a day it's a tough out-of-pocket expense).
So talk to them yourself. As far as suicide goes, by the way, it usually doesn't matter what you say, as long as you're there.
I understand that actual, "professional help" is expensive. What always amazes me is hearing that either people had no idea, or that they knew someone needed help, but did nothing.
I can fully see family or friends not knowing, as well - my sister-in-law is two-faced - always smiling and happy when she visits us and always smiles and happiness around her husband and kid while secretly she's looking around the room for something to kill herself with.
Someone was not connecting with her. The smile was fake, would have fooled me, too, but I don't know her.
None of us knew when she attempted the first time - even her husband didn't have a clue until he saw blood running out from under the bathroom door.
As far as I'm concerned, any failed suicide attempt is a "cry for help". If you're really trying, there are so many easy ways to kill yourself. Rig a hanging, shoot yourself in the head, take a kitchen knife and stab yourself in the throat, hard (lean on it, point towards you)... My friend's brother locked himself in a warehouse (I think), hung himself from a stepladder, rigged it so that it snapped his neck right away -- probably nice and clean, no pain. Because really, if they are still alive, they weren't really trying.
So, after that first attempt, you know the smiles are fake, and now you can do something about it. What that is depends on the person, but there's definitely something.
As the idiom goes, hindsight is 20-20.
My intent here is not to judge what anyone could have done, or make them wrong for it. I just want to wake people up to what you can do, now, to prevent this from happening again.
In fact, most gamers do very badly at the range, as they've got ingrained misconceptions that have to be unraveled.
I don't doubt it. My point is not that I would be skilled, but rather, that I'd sort of know what to do -- I'd know how to sight it, maybe even lead/compensate a bit, and I'd probably at least get the first shot right. If anything, I imagine paintball is as close as it gets without actually having a real gun.
Real blood has a smell.
Probably the first significant difference; most of the rest has already been covered at some point. Also, consider that with levels like "knee-deep in the dead", I'd imagine gamers could be much more prone to want to bridge that gap, whether or not they actually intend to harm actual people. Kind of like owning a gun, even if you never intend to shoot another person -- the mentality of it being there for your protection.
There is a level of detachment in vicarious media, no matter how "realistic" it may be
I'd argue that at least some of that can and will carry over into real life. As in, I could shoot someone in the head, watch them go splat, and it could be several seconds before the smell hits me and has whatever effect it would (not claiming I know how I'd react).
And if I were planning to inflict real violence, I would use videogames, paintball, laser tag, super soakers, and real shooting ranges to prepare -- or I'd go military.
I've played Operation, so in the basic sense, I know how to perform sugery.
Great analogy, if you believe that shooting a gun is as delicate and precise an activity as surgery. (Hint: It's far easier to hurt someone than to heal them.)
If she was online, and if I was sufficiently motivated, I'd setup ssh. In fact, I just did this for a friend, tried to fix his sound problems. (Didn't get anywhere until he actually rebooted; "Hibernate" had killed sound for exactly one program, somehow.)
However, it all depends how much I'm being paid. Eventually, I break out the jargon/techie trump card. That is, I deliberately go for the most jargon-y way to explain something: "Ma'am, X should not have crashed, and we'll have to sort through some 20 kilobytes of logs to find out what happened, or if you even have X installed in the first place. Maybe you're just missing an init script..." By now, I'm ready to play the trump card: "It will take several hours, something like 8 or 10 hours, to fix this over the phone, and maybe 10 minutes if you bring it in."
Or, for the "I AM logged in" bit, it could go like this: "Ma'am, do you know what a command prompt is? Do you know what SMTP is?" After enough 'no's, you're ready: "I probably know more about Linux and email than you ever will, so please just take my word for it. You are not in your email, you are logged into your system on a commandline. Now, I need you to do exactly as I say..."
As for not wanting to pay you, the simplest way to deal with that is, somewhere in the first 10 minutes, figure that it will take awhile to solve, and explain that you'll be charging her, one way or the other, and it will take you much less time if she can bring it in.
I'm also not entirely sure that she'd be better off on Windows, that depends entirely on the install disc she had. But if she's as stubbornly ignorant with Windows as you're saying she was with Linux, it will probably only be better for her if she gets lucky -- I can understand you not wanting to deal with her anymore, just saying I'm not sure you did her a favor. Best option would be for someone nearby to come along and fix it for her, especially considering she should never have to reinstall. Second best option: Tell her to get a Mac.
aren't n00bs by any means, but still find Linux to be fairly daunting in some respects.....my own preferred flavor is Gentoo
If you find it daunting, it's not Linux, it's Gentoo. I loved Gentoo for a long time, but I got sick of fixing obscure compile-time errors, and am now happy on a customized Kubuntu. I always have the option of compiling from scratch, but it's no longer required, which eliminates a good 80% of my Linux problems right there.
And by the way, this is not new. This driver, maybe -- and I do not mean to diminish this man's accomplishment, cheers all around. But the point is, Linux lives and breathes guys and efforts like this. My experience has been, on Windows, as time goes by, things pop in and out of working the way I want, and it's hard to tell if it's getting better or worse, especially with Vista. On Linux, as time goes by, things that I took for granted as being hard just suddenly click -- I'd assumed wireless would require editing config files and gaining a deep understanding of Ubuntu's/etc/networking directory, particularly what magic to put in "interfaces" and what additional stuff to install. Now, there's a system-tray app on Kubuntu that behaves almost exactly the way the wireless menu did on OS X.
In other words, Windows is up and down, OS X is generally easier and easier (though it may be harder if you don't want to do things Apple's way), and Linux just gets better in every way, all the time. Everyone's got their own threshold of usability, but I'd say, start using it as soon as your own threshold is reached -- that way, anything that still annoys you may be fixed with a free update. Microsoft may or may not fix my Windows annoyances, but I imagine it will be neither free nor automatic.
Your Window Manager crashed, that thing that makes all the pretty, and easy to use stuff, and put you back at the command prompt...
No, that's what you tell my college roommate, who wants to learn the system to where he doesn't have to call me to learn to do stuff on his shiny new Kubuntu laptop.
To the newbie, you say, "That's not your email, and I am the tech, so you will believe me because I say so." And if they continue to argue, you walk out the door -- ignorance I can deal with, arrogant ignorance I have no patience for.
That settled, you then say, "The simplest way to fix this is to hit ctrl+alt+del." Which, as you should know, should cause a shutdown/reboot. Since the window manager crashing is probably an isolated incident, we can probably assume that after the reboot, the window manager will come up -- and it's easier than talking them through logging in and restarting xdm (or is it gdm, or kdm, or...?)
But seriously, X crashing entirely on newbie-class hardware? Should NOT happen, these days. If it does, you have a bigger problem on your hands -- somewhat akin to Windows bluescreen+reeboot in a loop, something which should clue the newbie in to the fact that this computer is severely b0rked, and they should turn it over to their techie friends and pray.
First, I want to establish something: I am not in favor of censorship in this area, ever. In fact, I'm not in favor of pretty much any kind of censorship, even kiddie pr0n -- go after the psycho who made it, not the pervert with a stack of DVDs.
No matter what the effect of a piece of information, it is the effect that should be policed, not the information. In other words, if violent video games cause people to be violent, then police those people, not the violent games themselves. A game can't make you violent unless you let it.
With that out of the way...
Videogames have not made me more violent, measured in acts of violence. I'm actually not that aggressive. But violent games, anime, and movies probably have given me more of a capacity for violence.
For example: I am completely desensitized to the games I play: Counter-Strike: Source, Quake 3, etc. CS:S, for example: I can shoot a fairly realistic-looking human in the face, watch them crumple to the ground, blood splattered on the wall behind them, and feel nothing at all. I can do this all day -- in general, games, especially multiplayer ones, do not give me any kind of adrenaline rush.
I've also been to the arcade, so in a basic sense (Time Crisis 2, House of the Dead), I know how to pick up a gun, aim, and fire.
I do occasionally listen to the news, and oddly, I felt worse for certain characters who die in certain movies (Serenity, spoiler alert, etc) than I did when I heard about the Virginia shooting. I'm talking purely on a feeling level here -- the movie almost brought me to tears, but the news simply made me go "meh" or "wtf". Intellectually, I understand that one is real and the other isn't, but I think I would have to know the kids who died to be able to mourn for them.
Still, I can't say that it's fundamentally changed me. If I was the kind of person who would solve problems by punching someone, well, I now know how to point and shoot, and clean up after. But I'm not that kind of person -- sure, it does occur to me that it might be easier if I could just spray an Uzi across the room, but I choose not to.
So it comes back to, guns don't kill, people do. The videogames and guns may have enabled that student, but they weren't the root cause. Certainly, we could react by tightening gun laws, or tightening security at schools, but we should also be trying to create a world where, given the choice, people won't choose to kill each other. On an individual level, especially -- were that kid's parents there for him? Anyone in his dorm?
Stupidly idealistic, I know. But it's a start, I hope.
Everybody knows to put *doubleclick* in every blacklist/adblock list.
Because they are annoying and intrusive. Google's text ads don't bother me at all, but it seems they are considering flash/video ads.
Ever since the <blink> tag, I'm annoyed by any ad on the page that moves. If you can deliver your message with some text, or even a static image, I don't mind -- I can automatically skip over it without too much irritation, or I might even catch something interesting. But as soon as it animates, it forceably draws my attention, which is annoying as hell. When something draws my attention that way, I block it. Even if that means I have to give up cable in favor of BitTorrent and movie rentals.
The system deliberately creates a number of sectors on the DVD with corrupted data that cause DVD copying software to produce errors. Normal DVD players never read these sectors since they follow a set of instructions encoded on the disc telling them to skip them. Less sophisticated DVD playing programs do not follow these instructions and instead try to read every sector on the disk sequentially, including the bad ones. Slysoft's AnyDVD, Fengtao's DVDFab Decrypter, RipIt4Me + DVD Decrypter + FixVTS + DVD Shrink, MacTheRipper (freeware), along with VLC media player[1] and MPlayer/MEncoder (for Linux) are usually able to overcome ARccOS protection.
Which really, really makes me wonder exactly what players it was intended to kill...
I think I've seen these before, incidentally. But it seems that the whole point is to fuck up their disks exactly enough that they won't play on certain players (God knows which ones, if mplayer can play it), but not enough that they won't play on real players. Thus, it's based not at all on actual standards (like CSS), and entirely on existing DVD players.
They could be calling it an "update" meaning an actual removal, as a marketspeak word. Or it could really be an update, basically figuring out exactly how the cheap DVD players play discs, and making these DVDs playable in that, but still a PITA for something like dd.
That's actually the sanest response so far, thanks.
"Look down" -- perhaps a poor choice of words. More like "frustrated by". Was replying to someone who used those words, wanting to know why people seemed to "look down" on Windows/IE users. I'm actually usually helpful and respectful, but I'm explaining a bit more why people can be frustrated to the point of saying "RTFM", and where some of the hate comes from.
I mean, I dual-boot Windows, and I do buy some games that I know will never be ported, and will never work under Wine. So, I'm also part of the problem. I do hope that I'm also part of the solution, though -- I do pay for Cedega.
A monotone beep would really piss me off. Just make sure it's not quite elevator music, and don't EVER interrupt the hold music with a voice unless it's a real human being. Only exception would be if something actually changed at that very moment.
Actually, we could both be happy:
"You are now on hold. At any time while on hold you can choose from the following options: Press 1 to listen to some music. Press 2 to turn off all sound. Press 3 to hear our top ten common issues and troubleshooting tips. Press 9 to repeat this menu."
If you wanted to make sure the line was still working, you could press 2 to disable sound, then press 9 every now and then to listen to the menu again.
Oh, and by the way: Once I do make it through to their support, I usually manage to get someone reasonably intelligent to talk to, or at least get it down to simple, boolean questions that any idiot can answer. For example:
Me: I just switched over from a Linksys router to a Linux box, and I can't get a DHCP address. I did release it from the Linksys router, and all the lights are still on. Can you reset our DHCP lease at your end? (Had this problem with this ISP before.) Tech: What's wrong? Me: (simplifying) Well, I'm not connecting, and I've checked, and it's because I can't get anything from DHCP. Tech: Have you set it to autoconnect? Me: Yeah, that's what DHCP means. (You'd think that my knowing the letters DHCP would have helped her guess that much.) Tech: Have you done start->run->ipconfig... (I see this as where she starts to respect that I know what I'm doing.) Me: No, it's a Linux box. Got no Start, got no Run, but I've tried the Linux equivalent (ifdown/ifup)... We can run through your script if it makes you feel better, but it would be faster if you can just reset it on your end. Tech:...No, it doesn't look like I have the rights needed to do that. Me: Alright, thanks.
Now, I should have gotten her name and supervisor, and told them about this call, because that's actually one of the FASTEST calls I've ever been on.
Oh well, may as well give it another try... I pop the linksys box back in, tell it to release _again_, and this time, it works.
Actually, Sharp support has been the only place I've had to do really stupid things like reinstall Windows on a laptop just to prove that my random hard drive issues were not because of Linux. Can't really blame them for that, but damn, it was annoying. Can't these people ship livecds to check your hardware?
But I think this should really be the model for level 1 tech support faced with someone who knows what they're doing at the other end.
Linux has had a grand total of three viruses that I'm aware of in over ten years. And Linux runs plenty of servers, so don't you think someone would have written at least a few successful ones?
I think you underestimate the security of a well-designed system. Most of the problems Windows users have with viruses are not so much because Windows is popular, but because it's insecure. More recently, Windows has started to approach the security that Linux and OS X have had for some time now, meaning that it is possible to run on Windows without anti-virus, and never be 0wned, if you know what you're doing.
However, Linux, at least, reverses the situation: It's certainly possible to get 0wned, but only if you know what you're doing. It's kind of like that old joke: "This virus works on the honor system. Please forward this email to everyone on your contact list, and delete all the files on your hard drive."
Here's how a Linux virus would have to work these days: "In order to see HOT CHICKS NAKED DOING SOMETHING IN ALL CAPS, please download virus.bin, mark the file as executable, sudo to root, enter your password, and finally, run the script."
or about your bleeding heart story of unsupported standards.
Not only is that inflammatory as hell, it's also simply untrue. People don't like to lose their documents for no reason. Open standards help with that.
In 100 years, what files will still be readable? I doubt Word95 will, not with the version of Word that's around then. But OpenDocument will.
Still, I'll reply to this as if you weren't trolling.
But despite either of these things, the real people to blame are site developers: it is more than possible to create a site compatible with all current major market-share browsers, so not doing so really is incompetence.
Or laziness. But keep in mind, it is much harder than it needs to be to create a cross-platform site. For one thing, you have to actually buy IE. Compare that to actually supported standards, like, oh, text -- I can hammer out a.txt file on any modern machine, set the fileformat to DOS, and it'll open on Windows.
Perhaps "directly responsible" is the wrong word, but I can definitely say that you're part of the problem.
How have they got there? Normally, it's user stupidity
This may be true now, but not always. At the very least, we aren't making it easy -- we can say "don't open attachments", but then, of course that's how they'll send photos to each other, even we will tell them to do that. We can say "only open formats you recognize", and they'll then open.doc.vbs files, or they'll open Word docs with macro viruses.
And then there's the browser. Vista is finally at least making this difficult, but there have been years during which IE and Windows were vulnerable to spyware and worms, respectively. Just try throwing an unpatched XP online, even today, without at least its built-in firewall...
And yet, you can eliminate anti-virus fairly easily, by training users. Or you can put them on a system which is hostile to viruses. The simple way of installing software on Linux is via package managers, and a virus generally can't get in through a package manager. It takes quite a few more steps to do this, a few of which are being added to Windows (UAC is a direct rip-off of sudo).
But no, virus scanners do not need to exist, and likely won't be needed even on Windows if UAC is at all successful.
the reality is that users do not care.
The same is true in a lot of places. For example: You probably drive a car. You probably do not care that by doing so, you're slowly destroying the Earth. And no, you shouldn't have to, but it still makes you an asshole, if you have any alternative at all.
Microsoft leads users because that's what they want.
No, Microsoft leads because they've bullied themselves into the monopoly/default position, and as you said, users don't care.
So which is it? Do users not care, or do they want Microsoft? You seem to be contradicting yourself here.
The average person doesn't give two shits about what browser they use
Again, that's because of default choices, not because they actually don't care. If they listen to me about security, they won't use IE -- and I do often clean spyware from their computers, and the threat of no future service from me does tend to make them either start learning to clean spyware themselves, or use Firefox.
Another reason: Tabbed browsing. IE 7 only recently added this, but IE 7 is XP or Vista only, so people on 2K are stuck with Firefox or Opera. Firefox is nice here because of IETab. And if you think people don't care about this, you might talk to my mother -- over 50, financial advisor. Uses Firefox almost exclusively, and IETab for the few places that don't work under Firefox now.
Another possible reason: One keystroke to clear private data.
I agree, it is unacceptable that it should be that hard. Ubuntu's sound works fine for me, out of the box, and I'm not sure if it would on that system.
However, the question was not whether Linux is ready, but why we look down on you. You care more about convenience than (it would seem) anything else, and in so doing, you are contributing to something which does affect me. It's kind of like littering -- you can't be bothered to carry your trash to a can somewhere, so you just throw it on the sidewalk, which spoils the view for the rest of us, and depending on how bad it is, could ultimately be damaging the environment.
Maybe someday, our sidewalks will be able to simply automatically absorb trash and recycle it. Maybe someday, Linux will manage to support everything, out of the box, no tinkering. Until then, meet us halfway.
Oh, and Windows doesn't work out of the box for me, either. I have nVidia RAID. I need to have a floppy drive available or burn a custom Windows install CD. Some versions of Linux, though (Gentoo) just detect this, out of the box. So, only way you EVER get "out of the box" is a preinstall. So, pester Dell to hurry up with their Linux plans.
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Actually, let's say it's not rot13, but rather, rot128 -- that is, every byte xor'd against 0x80. (I think, I'm a little fuzzy on binary and hex now.) That should make it nice and universal, symmetric, and something easy enough for everyone to know.
.rot13 extension -- so you're not really revealing your key, but everyone knows what you mean -- and distribute it via P2P.
For safety's sake, the following should be done on an encrypted partition, and you should still shred the files afterwards.
Go take your favorite movie (DVD is easy, but high def if you can), rip it -- doesn't matter much how, raw bits would be especially insulting, but re-encode if you like. Take your shiny new DVD rip, add a note saying "Enjoy! And if anyone from the MPAA is reading, HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR DMCA NOW, YOU CUNTS? IT'S ILLEGAL TO READ THIS, I'LL SEE YOU IN COURT!!"
Zip/rar it all up, so it's one file, to make it simple, and run that one file through rot0x80. Save the shiny new crypted file on your hard drive somewhere, maybe give it a
Now, if everyone takes equal care when playing the movie -- and I imagine we could add rot0x80 support to mplayer/vlc, if you only did it on the media file itself -- then while I am not a laywer, I don't see how they could legally get any kind of conviction against you. Simply don't put the "key" in the players, and require the person to input it every time they play -- then, you can claim you didn't know (since the file was legal to redistribute, just not legal to open), and if they accuse you of piracy, you can immediately turn it around and accuse them of DMCA violations.
Not really an original idea, mind you. I can't point to the person who first used it to encrypt The Number, thus making it illegal for the MPAA to stop its spread. But the point here is, legally, I don't see a way out of this unless they subpeona (which is why all the disk encryption), and you can get around that easily enough -- simply use a temporary partition/filesystem, and throw away the key when you're done with that particular disc. In fact, leave the machine on and generate a random number, so you can truthfully say that you never did know the key, meaning they have absolutely no evidence you did something wrong, except the glaringly obvious bit that they're not allowed to use.
First, Java still doesn't have 64-bit applet support. I can run just about everything except browser plugins in a 64-bit Java.
Second, you don't need a 32-bit chroot. There are at least two alternatives. One: 32-bit browser with multilib. In Gentoo, you just emerge firefox-bin -- haven't tried in Ubuntu, because I like method two: nspluginwrapper. 32-bit plugin, 64-bit browser.
I don't hate the idea of this done right, but to me, this done right would either involve re-inventing the entire Internet (rather than patching things together), or simply using existing standards: Embedded mpeg for video (playable with Windows Media Player, QuickTime, mplayer, whatever, all of which come standard everywhere), SVG for vector graphics, and JavaScript for the logic. If you don't like HTML+SVG, you could use Gecko/XUL, although I'll hate you because it won't work in Konqueror/Safari or Opera. (Firefox is getting bloated now -- remember when it was the answer to Mozilla's bloat?)
This just seems ugly, hackish, and unoriginal.
Or YouTube could simply deliver a big "Fuck You" to both of them, and build a server farm on Sealand. Or we could all start self-publishing video again, rather than having Google take care of our bandwidth for us.
$1200 is exactly what they told me, over the phone, believe it or not, although I believe that is the cap for this particular model (Powerbook 17"). And yes, I am, some 3 year AppleCare plan.
And maybe it was because I told them I had dropped it -- nevermind that I dropped it a year before any symptoms showed up. So the warranty doesn't cover it -- they'll fix it, but it'll cost $1200.
So I told them nevermind, send it back, and they did, nothing fixed. So I'm stuck either soldering it myself, paying someone else to do it, or turning this into a MythFrontend box. Or throwing it away.
Doesn't sound at all like my problem -- my screen is completely black. The backlight is dead -- given just the right lighting conditions, I can sort of see where a window is on the screen. And it does not work, at all.
However, cheap soldering jobs sounds exactly right, given that it happened as I was tipping the screen slightly back -- not beyond the confines of its hinge, of course.
The problem is, compared to other manufacturers, it's a pretty strict policy. All they determined was that there was physical damage, therefore they won't repair it -- and furthermore, they don't do any kind of partial repairs. Another manufacturer might have actually considered that the failure might not have been related to the damage (given that I dropped it A FULL YEAR before there were any symptoms of this problem), and might have been willing to fix just the screen (ignoring the dents in the case, etc).
He's written an amendment to the NDA. We'll see sometime tomorrow if they're willing to accept it.
About the same thing happened to my Powerbook, and it still hasn't been fixed. Apple refuses to fix it, because it was dropped about a year ago, and if there is any physical damage at all (so much as a dent), the warranty is void. Since they will only do complete and total repairs, it would cost $1200 to fix.
So, my question: Does this also happen with Powerbooks? And if so, is it something I could easily fix by cracking it open and soldering something? Any step by step instructions on how to do so?
From that link:
Oh really? So why are they so terrified of it? (Maybe because it's more likely high-quality DVD rips?)
And as anyone who made it out of Econ 101 should know, there's more to the story. For example: Reduce supply of oil, and you increase demand, until it's no longer sustainable. At a certain point, more and more people simply stop using oil, because it's too expensive. Eventually, even the price might settle back, as either new sources of oil are found, or more and more things move to alternative forms of energy.
So, if they were to severely crack down on kiddie pr0n, pedophiles would probably move to lolicon or away from it altogether. And there are almost certainly fewer suppliers than users, so it should be easier to crack down on the suppliers.
You assume that the goal is to eliminate drugs or prostitutes forever. I don't think that's possible. As for whether it worked, I'd say, with that particular dealer or prostitute or kid pornographer, it did.
I would argue that the truly offensive act here is rape, then, not child pornography. Of course, the law requires informed consent for it not to be rape... but then, there was a really interesting Law & Order about a 25-year-old girl (roughly) with the mind of a five-year-old (retarded), and they concluded that her statement of "It made me feel pretty" meant that she liked it, and thus, it was legal consent.
That was a bit disturbing to me. At what point is it really consent? What level of understanding is required? Certainly, there's nothing magical about the "age of consent"...
So talk to them yourself. As far as suicide goes, by the way, it usually doesn't matter what you say, as long as you're there.
I understand that actual, "professional help" is expensive. What always amazes me is hearing that either people had no idea, or that they knew someone needed help, but did nothing.
Someone was not connecting with her. The smile was fake, would have fooled me, too, but I don't know her.
As far as I'm concerned, any failed suicide attempt is a "cry for help". If you're really trying, there are so many easy ways to kill yourself. Rig a hanging, shoot yourself in the head, take a kitchen knife and stab yourself in the throat, hard (lean on it, point towards you)... My friend's brother locked himself in a warehouse (I think), hung himself from a stepladder, rigged it so that it snapped his neck right away -- probably nice and clean, no pain. Because really, if they are still alive, they weren't really trying.
So, after that first attempt, you know the smiles are fake, and now you can do something about it. What that is depends on the person, but there's definitely something.
My intent here is not to judge what anyone could have done, or make them wrong for it. I just want to wake people up to what you can do, now, to prevent this from happening again.
More than once in the same conversation, and you're not doing it right. I can write you a script, if you like :P
I think you actually can download Windows from Microsoft now, anyway, or at least, Vista enhancements.
I don't doubt it. My point is not that I would be skilled, but rather, that I'd sort of know what to do -- I'd know how to sight it, maybe even lead/compensate a bit, and I'd probably at least get the first shot right. If anything, I imagine paintball is as close as it gets without actually having a real gun.
Probably the first significant difference; most of the rest has already been covered at some point. Also, consider that with levels like "knee-deep in the dead", I'd imagine gamers could be much more prone to want to bridge that gap, whether or not they actually intend to harm actual people. Kind of like owning a gun, even if you never intend to shoot another person -- the mentality of it being there for your protection.
I'd argue that at least some of that can and will carry over into real life. As in, I could shoot someone in the head, watch them go splat, and it could be several seconds before the smell hits me and has whatever effect it would (not claiming I know how I'd react).
And if I were planning to inflict real violence, I would use videogames, paintball, laser tag, super soakers, and real shooting ranges to prepare -- or I'd go military.
Great analogy, if you believe that shooting a gun is as delicate and precise an activity as surgery. (Hint: It's far easier to hurt someone than to heal them.)
If she was online, and if I was sufficiently motivated, I'd setup ssh. In fact, I just did this for a friend, tried to fix his sound problems. (Didn't get anywhere until he actually rebooted; "Hibernate" had killed sound for exactly one program, somehow.)
However, it all depends how much I'm being paid. Eventually, I break out the jargon/techie trump card. That is, I deliberately go for the most jargon-y way to explain something: "Ma'am, X should not have crashed, and we'll have to sort through some 20 kilobytes of logs to find out what happened, or if you even have X installed in the first place. Maybe you're just missing an init script..." By now, I'm ready to play the trump card: "It will take several hours, something like 8 or 10 hours, to fix this over the phone, and maybe 10 minutes if you bring it in."
Or, for the "I AM logged in" bit, it could go like this: "Ma'am, do you know what a command prompt is? Do you know what SMTP is?" After enough 'no's, you're ready: "I probably know more about Linux and email than you ever will, so please just take my word for it. You are not in your email, you are logged into your system on a commandline. Now, I need you to do exactly as I say..."
As for not wanting to pay you, the simplest way to deal with that is, somewhere in the first 10 minutes, figure that it will take awhile to solve, and explain that you'll be charging her, one way or the other, and it will take you much less time if she can bring it in.
I'm also not entirely sure that she'd be better off on Windows, that depends entirely on the install disc she had. But if she's as stubbornly ignorant with Windows as you're saying she was with Linux, it will probably only be better for her if she gets lucky -- I can understand you not wanting to deal with her anymore, just saying I'm not sure you did her a favor. Best option would be for someone nearby to come along and fix it for her, especially considering she should never have to reinstall. Second best option: Tell her to get a Mac.
If you find it daunting, it's not Linux, it's Gentoo. I loved Gentoo for a long time, but I got sick of fixing obscure compile-time errors, and am now happy on a customized Kubuntu. I always have the option of compiling from scratch, but it's no longer required, which eliminates a good 80% of my Linux problems right there.
And by the way, this is not new. This driver, maybe -- and I do not mean to diminish this man's accomplishment, cheers all around. But the point is, Linux lives and breathes guys and efforts like this. My experience has been, on Windows, as time goes by, things pop in and out of working the way I want, and it's hard to tell if it's getting better or worse, especially with Vista. On Linux, as time goes by, things that I took for granted as being hard just suddenly click -- I'd assumed wireless would require editing config files and gaining a deep understanding of Ubuntu's /etc/networking directory, particularly what magic to put in "interfaces" and what additional stuff to install. Now, there's a system-tray app on Kubuntu that behaves almost exactly the way the wireless menu did on OS X.
In other words, Windows is up and down, OS X is generally easier and easier (though it may be harder if you don't want to do things Apple's way), and Linux just gets better in every way, all the time. Everyone's got their own threshold of usability, but I'd say, start using it as soon as your own threshold is reached -- that way, anything that still annoys you may be fixed with a free update. Microsoft may or may not fix my Windows annoyances, but I imagine it will be neither free nor automatic.
No, that's what you tell my college roommate, who wants to learn the system to where he doesn't have to call me to learn to do stuff on his shiny new Kubuntu laptop.
To the newbie, you say, "That's not your email, and I am the tech, so you will believe me because I say so." And if they continue to argue, you walk out the door -- ignorance I can deal with, arrogant ignorance I have no patience for.
That settled, you then say, "The simplest way to fix this is to hit ctrl+alt+del." Which, as you should know, should cause a shutdown/reboot. Since the window manager crashing is probably an isolated incident, we can probably assume that after the reboot, the window manager will come up -- and it's easier than talking them through logging in and restarting xdm (or is it gdm, or kdm, or...?)
But seriously, X crashing entirely on newbie-class hardware? Should NOT happen, these days. If it does, you have a bigger problem on your hands -- somewhat akin to Windows bluescreen+reeboot in a loop, something which should clue the newbie in to the fact that this computer is severely b0rked, and they should turn it over to their techie friends and pray.
First, I want to establish something: I am not in favor of censorship in this area, ever. In fact, I'm not in favor of pretty much any kind of censorship, even kiddie pr0n -- go after the psycho who made it, not the pervert with a stack of DVDs.
No matter what the effect of a piece of information, it is the effect that should be policed, not the information. In other words, if violent video games cause people to be violent, then police those people, not the violent games themselves. A game can't make you violent unless you let it.
With that out of the way...
Videogames have not made me more violent, measured in acts of violence. I'm actually not that aggressive. But violent games, anime, and movies probably have given me more of a capacity for violence.
For example: I am completely desensitized to the games I play: Counter-Strike: Source, Quake 3, etc. CS:S, for example: I can shoot a fairly realistic-looking human in the face, watch them crumple to the ground, blood splattered on the wall behind them, and feel nothing at all. I can do this all day -- in general, games, especially multiplayer ones, do not give me any kind of adrenaline rush.
I've also been to the arcade, so in a basic sense (Time Crisis 2, House of the Dead), I know how to pick up a gun, aim, and fire.
I do occasionally listen to the news, and oddly, I felt worse for certain characters who die in certain movies (Serenity, spoiler alert, etc) than I did when I heard about the Virginia shooting. I'm talking purely on a feeling level here -- the movie almost brought me to tears, but the news simply made me go "meh" or "wtf". Intellectually, I understand that one is real and the other isn't, but I think I would have to know the kids who died to be able to mourn for them.
Still, I can't say that it's fundamentally changed me. If I was the kind of person who would solve problems by punching someone, well, I now know how to point and shoot, and clean up after. But I'm not that kind of person -- sure, it does occur to me that it might be easier if I could just spray an Uzi across the room, but I choose not to.
So it comes back to, guns don't kill, people do. The videogames and guns may have enabled that student, but they weren't the root cause. Certainly, we could react by tightening gun laws, or tightening security at schools, but we should also be trying to create a world where, given the choice, people won't choose to kill each other. On an individual level, especially -- were that kid's parents there for him? Anyone in his dorm?
Stupidly idealistic, I know. But it's a start, I hope.
Because they are annoying and intrusive. Google's text ads don't bother me at all, but it seems they are considering flash/video ads.
Ever since the <blink> tag, I'm annoyed by any ad on the page that moves. If you can deliver your message with some text, or even a static image, I don't mind -- I can automatically skip over it without too much irritation, or I might even catch something interesting. But as soon as it animates, it forceably draws my attention, which is annoying as hell. When something draws my attention that way, I block it. Even if that means I have to give up cable in favor of BitTorrent and movie rentals.
Now if only we could all be so bold when it comes to Microsoft?
Look at the way their DRM currently works:
Which really, really makes me wonder exactly what players it was intended to kill...
I think I've seen these before, incidentally. But it seems that the whole point is to fuck up their disks exactly enough that they won't play on certain players (God knows which ones, if mplayer can play it), but not enough that they won't play on real players. Thus, it's based not at all on actual standards (like CSS), and entirely on existing DVD players.
They could be calling it an "update" meaning an actual removal, as a marketspeak word. Or it could really be an update, basically figuring out exactly how the cheap DVD players play discs, and making these DVDs playable in that, but still a PITA for something like dd.
That's actually the sanest response so far, thanks.
"Look down" -- perhaps a poor choice of words. More like "frustrated by". Was replying to someone who used those words, wanting to know why people seemed to "look down" on Windows/IE users. I'm actually usually helpful and respectful, but I'm explaining a bit more why people can be frustrated to the point of saying "RTFM", and where some of the hate comes from.
I mean, I dual-boot Windows, and I do buy some games that I know will never be ported, and will never work under Wine. So, I'm also part of the problem. I do hope that I'm also part of the solution, though -- I do pay for Cedega.
A monotone beep would really piss me off. Just make sure it's not quite elevator music, and don't EVER interrupt the hold music with a voice unless it's a real human being. Only exception would be if something actually changed at that very moment.
...No, it doesn't look like I have the rights needed to do that.
Actually, we could both be happy:
"You are now on hold. At any time while on hold you can choose from the following options:
Press 1 to listen to some music.
Press 2 to turn off all sound.
Press 3 to hear our top ten common issues and troubleshooting tips.
Press 9 to repeat this menu."
If you wanted to make sure the line was still working, you could press 2 to disable sound, then press 9 every now and then to listen to the menu again.
Oh, and by the way: Once I do make it through to their support, I usually manage to get someone reasonably intelligent to talk to, or at least get it down to simple, boolean questions that any idiot can answer. For example:
Me: I just switched over from a Linksys router to a Linux box, and I can't get a DHCP address. I did release it from the Linksys router, and all the lights are still on. Can you reset our DHCP lease at your end? (Had this problem with this ISP before.)
Tech: What's wrong?
Me: (simplifying) Well, I'm not connecting, and I've checked, and it's because I can't get anything from DHCP.
Tech: Have you set it to autoconnect?
Me: Yeah, that's what DHCP means. (You'd think that my knowing the letters DHCP would have helped her guess that much.)
Tech: Have you done start->run->ipconfig... (I see this as where she starts to respect that I know what I'm doing.)
Me: No, it's a Linux box. Got no Start, got no Run, but I've tried the Linux equivalent (ifdown/ifup)... We can run through your script if it makes you feel better, but it would be faster if you can just reset it on your end.
Tech:
Me: Alright, thanks.
Now, I should have gotten her name and supervisor, and told them about this call, because that's actually one of the FASTEST calls I've ever been on.
Oh well, may as well give it another try... I pop the linksys box back in, tell it to release _again_, and this time, it works.
Actually, Sharp support has been the only place I've had to do really stupid things like reinstall Windows on a laptop just to prove that my random hard drive issues were not because of Linux. Can't really blame them for that, but damn, it was annoying. Can't these people ship livecds to check your hardware?
But I think this should really be the model for level 1 tech support faced with someone who knows what they're doing at the other end.
Linux has had a grand total of three viruses that I'm aware of in over ten years. And Linux runs plenty of servers, so don't you think someone would have written at least a few successful ones?
I think you underestimate the security of a well-designed system. Most of the problems Windows users have with viruses are not so much because Windows is popular, but because it's insecure. More recently, Windows has started to approach the security that Linux and OS X have had for some time now, meaning that it is possible to run on Windows without anti-virus, and never be 0wned, if you know what you're doing.
However, Linux, at least, reverses the situation: It's certainly possible to get 0wned, but only if you know what you're doing. It's kind of like that old joke: "This virus works on the honor system. Please forward this email to everyone on your contact list, and delete all the files on your hard drive."
Here's how a Linux virus would have to work these days: "In order to see HOT CHICKS NAKED DOING SOMETHING IN ALL CAPS, please download virus.bin, mark the file as executable, sudo to root, enter your password, and finally, run the script."
You're trolling here:
Not only is that inflammatory as hell, it's also simply untrue. People don't like to lose their documents for no reason. Open standards help with that.
In 100 years, what files will still be readable? I doubt Word95 will, not with the version of Word that's around then. But OpenDocument will.
Still, I'll reply to this as if you weren't trolling.
Or laziness. But keep in mind, it is much harder than it needs to be to create a cross-platform site. For one thing, you have to actually buy IE. Compare that to actually supported standards, like, oh, text -- I can hammer out a .txt file on any modern machine, set the fileformat to DOS, and it'll open on Windows.
Perhaps "directly responsible" is the wrong word, but I can definitely say that you're part of the problem.
This may be true now, but not always. At the very least, we aren't making it easy -- we can say "don't open attachments", but then, of course that's how they'll send photos to each other, even we will tell them to do that. We can say "only open formats you recognize", and they'll then open .doc.vbs files, or they'll open Word docs with macro viruses.
And then there's the browser. Vista is finally at least making this difficult, but there have been years during which IE and Windows were vulnerable to spyware and worms, respectively. Just try throwing an unpatched XP online, even today, without at least its built-in firewall...
And yet, you can eliminate anti-virus fairly easily, by training users. Or you can put them on a system which is hostile to viruses. The simple way of installing software on Linux is via package managers, and a virus generally can't get in through a package manager. It takes quite a few more steps to do this, a few of which are being added to Windows (UAC is a direct rip-off of sudo).
But no, virus scanners do not need to exist, and likely won't be needed even on Windows if UAC is at all successful.
The same is true in a lot of places. For example: You probably drive a car. You probably do not care that by doing so, you're slowly destroying the Earth. And no, you shouldn't have to, but it still makes you an asshole, if you have any alternative at all.
No, Microsoft leads because they've bullied themselves into the monopoly/default position, and as you said, users don't care.
So which is it? Do users not care, or do they want Microsoft? You seem to be contradicting yourself here.
Again, that's because of default choices, not because they actually don't care. If they listen to me about security, they won't use IE -- and I do often clean spyware from their computers, and the threat of no future service from me does tend to make them either start learning to clean spyware themselves, or use Firefox.
Another reason: Tabbed browsing. IE 7 only recently added this, but IE 7 is XP or Vista only, so people on 2K are stuck with Firefox or Opera. Firefox is nice here because of IETab. And if you think people don't care about this, you might talk to my mother -- over 50, financial advisor. Uses Firefox almost exclusively, and IETab for the few places that don't work under Firefox now.
Another possible reason: One keystroke to clear private data.
So, how many times do you actually setup sound?
I agree, it is unacceptable that it should be that hard. Ubuntu's sound works fine for me, out of the box, and I'm not sure if it would on that system.
However, the question was not whether Linux is ready, but why we look down on you. You care more about convenience than (it would seem) anything else, and in so doing, you are contributing to something which does affect me. It's kind of like littering -- you can't be bothered to carry your trash to a can somewhere, so you just throw it on the sidewalk, which spoils the view for the rest of us, and depending on how bad it is, could ultimately be damaging the environment.
Maybe someday, our sidewalks will be able to simply automatically absorb trash and recycle it. Maybe someday, Linux will manage to support everything, out of the box, no tinkering. Until then, meet us halfway.
Oh, and Windows doesn't work out of the box for me, either. I have nVidia RAID. I need to have a floppy drive available or burn a custom Windows install CD. Some versions of Linux, though (Gentoo) just detect this, out of the box. So, only way you EVER get "out of the box" is a preinstall. So, pester Dell to hurry up with their Linux plans.