> But it seemed like there were two implementations of DCC. > The "right" way, which most Unix-based IRC clients did, > and the "backwards" way, which Mirc did. I never seemed > to have any problems with DCC sends when using a > Unix-based IRC client but it always seemed like I would > have to stand on my head and chant voodoo chants when > trying to use Mirc.
Yeah, I've noticed the same problems... IMHO, the mIRC people screwed up big time when they decided to replace their old DCC system with a new one. Whenever I try to receive a file from a *nix or other 'standard' client now, more times than not, the remote end reads a successful send while my end (the mIRC end) reads an incomplete file and quits because they aren't handshaking properly. Switch to my other computer with an older mIRC with the older DCC system in it and they work flawlessly.
I simply don't understand why they felt the need to fix something that wasn't broken to begin with and ended up with something broken. I never had problems with failed DCC's not timing out under the old system. Under the new one? A failed resume will sit there on my screen for hours and hours and maybe timing out. If someone sends me a DCC using the IP of 127.0.0.1, or another reserved local IP that my LAN uses internally? THEY NEVER EVER TIME OUT! On top of that, the old DCC system wasn't succeptible to that DCC exploit that the new DCC system was. Don't get me started on the larger DCC windows either. The old ones I was able to keep so small they never blocked anything on the screen, the new ones are huge and UGLY!/me sighs...
Why is it whenever any author updates their programs to make it better, I end up losing the things about it I liked most... like being able to set priority levels for programs in Win311 right in the PIF file for example.
This ends Smoovious' Rant-of-the-Day...
-- Smoovious
Re:Available on MS platforms?
on
Usenet Audio
·
· Score: 1
Ya know how sometimes you hear people say wrong things over and over and over and over and over and over until you just can't take it anymore and explode about it?
This is one of those times...
STOP CALLING THE NEWSGROUPS USENET! THE NEWSGROUPS __ARE__ __NOT__ USENET!!!
>>But nobody using Windows reads usenet. > >Not true! Some helpful groups: > >comp.microsoft.bsod >rec.windows.uni nstall
^^ These 2 groups are _not_ UseNet groups, they are AltNet groups. ^^
>microsoft.useless.posts.on.dotnet
^^ Also not a UseNet group, it is a local Micro$oft group leaked out to the public. ^^
Then you have:
k12.* -- K12Net groups clari.* -- ClariNet groups mi.* -- regional Michigan groups ca.* -- regional California groups agfa.* -- local Agfa Compugraphic groups
and the list goes on and on...
They aren't UseNet... they are Network News, or simply, The Newsgroups...
You know how annoying it is to hear lamers keep calling the internet 'The Web' as if that is all that it is? Do you people realize that by calling the newsgroups 'UseNet' you are being the same exact ignorant kind of lamers the webbies are?
If you mean alt.* groups, call them by the name they are, AltNet... alt.* groups have nothing at all to do with UseNet...
(now ends my periodic tirade when I just can't take it anymore.:) ) (but seriously, lets get our act together huh? Call the groups what they really are)
> Which isn't to say we'd necessarily use that power... > Americans are getting better and better at forgetting > that *we* get to choose our government, so *we* are > responsible for what they do. People seem perfectly > happy to vote however the money tells them to and then > whine because it works better for the money when that > happens, without understanding their own role in the saga.
Damned straight. What the hell are candidates taking money from corporations and organizations anyways? They should be BARRED from giving to candidates, if for no other reason than THEY CAN'T VOTE! If you're in a union, your money is supporting candidates you don't necessarily support and there is something very wrong in that, for just one example.
Topping that off, it annoys me to no end whenever I hear about someone not wanting to waste their vote by voting for someone who won't win.
Rediculous.
If you think candidate Rufus will represent your interests best, yet you voted for candidate John because you thought he would win, YOU JUST WASTED YOUR VOTE!
Voting isn't about voting for who's going to win, we got race tracks and sports betting for that. Voting is about saying who you think is going to be the best person for the job, and any time you don't vote for the person you think is best, you just wasted your vote. It is the only time you have to directly express your choice, and when you don't, you wasted your vote. It doesn't matter if your choice wins or loses, voting isn't about that. Voting is about expressing your wants and wishes.
On top of that, time and time again, the dems and reps aren't the only choices in town. They've been around too long, we need new blood, new ideas, and while we're getting new faces, they're the same tired old views, with people more loyal to their parties than they are to their constituents. They only represent 2 points of view, and more and more often, neither of those views represent mine. There are at least 3 sides to every issue, yet these two parties only try to make you believe there are only black and white viewpoints for everything.
I'm done voting for either one. I mostly vote for independents. (Oh, how I would LOVE to see an indie as president)
So lets get rid of the parties as well... after all, they may call themselves Democrats or Republicans, but once they're elected, they aren't the Republican President, nor the Democratic Senator, nor the Republican Represenative, they are The US President, or The US Senator, or The US Represenative.
Lets make all the candidates run as independents... make those people who vote for the whole party with one box on the ballot actually think about their choices for a change...
Ok... I think I'm done now... I feel much better now...
>Seems like they set a pretty good precedent for >'selective free speech' as in the 'Do-Not-Call List.'
Not quite the same thing there... the Do-Not-Call list addresses a particular type of action.
You have the right to say whatever you want, express whatever idea you like. You do not have the right to force someone else to listen to it, or force a medium to broadcast your views.
The Do-Not-Call list addresses the latter. Just because I have a phone does not make it ok for someone to invade my personal space repeatedly, harassingly, to tout off the selling points of whatever product they want to sell, in the same way that I do not have a right to just barge in your front door, unannounced, uninvited, to sit on your couch next to you throwing a sales pitch at you.
I feel the same way about my email box. When I don't want to be subjected to advertising, I shut off the TV and stay in the house. I shouldn't also have to disconnect my phone or close my email box also. Those are services I myself pay for. Nobody else has the right to decide how I use those services.
Every week I (used to) get no less than 20 telemarketing calls on two phone lines (no exaggeration), most wanting me to switch my long distance carrier or local phone provider. Compare that with the 3 or 4 genuine calls I get. I'm ready to go back to having my lines set up outgoing calls only and use a beeper. This is outrageous.
Every week I get no less than 100 spam emails on one address (which has tripled that number recently), most are duplicates of what I was spammed before, none with identical addys, even the imbedded links are different yet the content is the same. Again, not counting the 7 vgaplanets games I'm in, and the mailing lists I actually requested to be on, only 3 or 4 mails each week are genuine. If I don't connect to my email server over the weekend, I lose posts because my mail quota has already been reached, thanks to spam.
So as far as freedom of speech goes, as far as I'm concerned, corporations and organizations have no such right. The bill of rights is not for organizations, it is for people. Citizens. "We The People"... not "We The Capitalist Machines"...
No organization's 'rights' should trump the individual's rights. Organizations do not vote, people do. Organizations have no standing to influence public policy, the people do. Our electorate do not represent organizations. They represent their constituents. Those constituents aren't organizations, they're people.
When was the last time you asked your company who it voted for in an election?
Hmmm... ok, I didn't intent to rant, but ok, I'm ranting... so I'll quit now...
>They are not rated for 40 years at 100% activity -- don't >you think there's a reason for a one to three year warranty?
Absolutely... they make shoddy equipment that isn't made to last a long time... its called planned obselesence(sp?)...
Companies have figured out that making cheap shoddy equipment that people have to replace every few years makes more business sense with repeated sales and more income off of those sales, than to make excellent equipment that is reliable over the long haul. Paying $100 for a cheap printer every few years brings in more income than paying $350 for a good printer that will last 20 years...
All of my older equipment has out-lasted comparable equipment that has been made much more recently...
Cheap cheap cheap!
That's why they have such weak warranties... they could make reliable equipment if they wanted to, they just don't have any financial incentive to do so.
(disclosure: I used to work for a company that manufactured and sold personal computing equipment.)
Q: Why can't we just put a needle above the poles?
A: because objects directly above the poles don't orbit, they would just stay motionless above the planet, so as soon as the thrust was removed to keep them there, they would just plummet back to earth.
Q: Why do we have to have it around the equator?
A: because that is the only place you'll have a geostationary orbit. Place a satellite, say, 10-degrees north or south of the equator at a geo altitude and the satellite will oscillate between +10 and -10 degrees of the equator.
Q: Why don't we build it on the moon first?
A: because the materials and expertise are here, and the whole point of the elevator is to slash the costs of getting materials off the surface of the earth in the first place. We need an efficient means of doing that first before we can think of building them on the other rocks in our system. The plus side is we don't have to waste so much space/weight on propellant to get a rocket up to speed to escape gravity and into orbital velocity. Instead, we would just climb up mechanically, which with photo-electric power, would use fewer resources than chemical propellant. Once up in geosynchronous orbit, the materials brought up can hang there near the elevator as more pieces are brought up, eventually assembling the pieces into a larget vehicle, better suited to long-range missions to say, mars and beyond.
Q: We couldn't use it for salvaging the space junk, they are just plain moving too fast.
A: yes and no... we would only really need small automated vehicles which could clamp onto the pieces of junk, and using maneuvering thrusters, adjust the orbits higher or lower, as well as trajectory, until they are at the level of the end of the elevator. Once at that point, the relative speeds aren't much different (although objects in a retrograde orbit might be a problem). For that matter, vehicles assembled in space wouldn't need much more than thrusters, and perhaps a small engine for larger accellerations to get from place to place, since escaping earth's gravity isn't an issue anymore.
Q: What about 9/11 and terrorist attacks?
A: keep hiding under your bed you @#$&$#!@ coward.
Q: Wouldn't the pull of the ascending vehicle pull the counterweight down into a lower orbit, making the elevator useless?
A: It depends on how heavy the vehicle/payload is, as well as the counterweight. Only an idiot would try to ascend with more weight than the counterweight can handle (The Darwin Awards has a perfect example of this effect, about a guy working on his radio tower, sorry no URL handy). If there is more force on the counterweight trying to fling it away, than there is by the payload pulling it down, then the counterweight will stay in place......
which brings me to one point that I'm not so sure about...
It always seemed to me that you would need a very good/reliable anchoring point for something like this, and having a floating base in the water just doesn't seem to be it... get too much payload too high on the cable, and it would add to the pull the counterweight is exerting, and you could very well yank the base out of the water and into space if the accident was catastrophic.
Suppose you have a payload that is pretty much right at the limit of what the counterweight can support. It approaches geo-point, but isn't braking fast enough, and passes geo-point. At that point, the forces switch from trying to pull the payload back down to the ground, to trying to push it further away. Eventually, it slams into the counterweight, which may or may not hold. Problem is, you now have (for an extreme example) twice as much weight on the end on the cable, exerting twice as much vertical force on the base. Add to that the inertia of the payload hitting the counterweight would "jerk" the cable upwards.
You would need a great deal of weight at the base for it to be a suitable anchor, yet you need the base to float at the same
> There ought to be either a comp.sys.microsoft or perhaps > a new sub-hierarchy comp.vendor.microsoft.*. Instead, you > get all this top-level microsoft.* nonsense. And then, of > course, every 'me too' sheep of a vendor follows suit, so > there's now borland.*, symantec.*....ugh. You're computer > or computer software vendors, you belong in the comp.* > hierarchy, not at the top level.
I have to disagree with you here, and it has more to do with terminology than anything.
If the UseNet people wanted a micosoft sub-heirarchy within the UseNet groups, they can do so all on their own, microsoft is under no obligation to be forced to keep a presence within the UseNet groups.
Microsoft at one point has maintained their own NNTP server, and they had the MicrosoftNet groups on them. These groups have since leaked out to other servers, and are carried far beyond their own servers. They are entitled to have a top-level heirarchy since this is their own NetNews network.
For 20 years I have been bugged by people who just don't understand what UseNet really is.
Remember back when people would call any copy machine a Xerox machine, even if it wasn't made by Xerox? I seem to recall Xerox even sued a few competitors to get them to stop doing that, over a trademark violation or something...
The same is happening with Network News. UseNet is not the term for Network News, just a portion of it.
Several networks share the NetNews environment. Some examples with their top-level names:
-- AltNet (alt) (also used to be known as the anarchy network) -- ClariNet (clari) (a commercial service, only member servers are allowed to distribute them) -- FidoNet (fido) (mirrors of forums carried by the old FidoNet BBS networks) -- GnuNet (gnu) -- K12Net (k12) (education related, groups for each grade level and then some, for educators) -- UseNet (comp, misc, news, rec, sci, soc, talk) (also called the 'big seven' after the great renaming, I think even more names exist now)
net.* groups also existed, mainly for administrators to use and communicate with each other.
In addition there are regional networks:
-- Japan (japan) -- Australia (aus) -- Jerusalem (jerusalem) -- MichNet (mi) (a regional heirarchy for Michigan, other states also had their own set) -- USNet (us) (United States)
On top of these, there are other heirarchies run by companies for their clients.
-- Agfa Compugraphic (agfa) -- Colorado University (cu) (individual courses have their own groups as well) -- Microsoft (microsoft) -- Netscape/The Mozilla project (netscape) -- The Linux project (linux)
and yet even more individual limited-interest heirarchies exist.
Anyone can start their own top-level newsgroup network if they want. You need to make arrangements with your peers to carry your groups as well if you want those groups to propogate outside of your own NNTP server.
Microsoft doesn't have to be shoved into the UseNet newsgroups if they don't want to. They have their own NetNews groups already, as they are entitled to do, as any other company is, and as you are as well.
The don't 'belong' in the UseNet heirarchy, any more than the UseNet groups belong in AltNet or ClariNet. They are their own individal heirarchy, seperate and just as entitled to participate in the NetNews system as any of the other heirarchies.
And please... PLEASE... stop calling all of the news servers as a whole, UseNet servers.
Many of those servers don't carry a single UseNet group.
They are NetNews servers... as in NNTP... Network News Transfer Protocol...
-- Smoov
ps> For those who like to accuse people who defend Microsoft as being a MicroSerf, for the record, I personally hate Microsoft.
> Hey, there's an idea - why don't they just go metric with IP addresses? > Rather than just go up to 255.255.255.255, try 999.999.999.999. Problem > solved!
Cuz computers aren't metric, they are in powers of 2.
Much more logical to expand the existing IP structure from 8-bit like it is now to 16-bit, which would allow addys up to 65535.65535.65535.65535... tho I don't see any real need to expand port numbers from 16-bit to 32-bit, which would allow port numbers up to 4294967295... except for perhaps a mega-server, but I don't know of anyone who had a problem being limited to 65535 simultaneous connections...
IPv6 will probably be needed soon enough, but I can't help but wonder why just going from 8-bit to 16-bit wasn't good enough... 4-position 16-bit IPs would give us 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 unique IPs to use... assuming a planetary population of 1 quadrillion, for example, that would give each person 18,446 IPs each...
> funny how nobody complains about apple bundling safari with > the mac os, yet when microsoft bundles IE with Windows, > everyone gets their panties in a bunch...
They don't compare at all tho.
Apple manufactures their own equipment as well as their software. Microsoft only develops software. Apple is perfectly within its rights to bundle whatever they want to in their proprietary OS, to run on their proprietary equipment, as they are in business to sell a complete system. Microsoft does not have this defense.
Additionally, it is the way the packages are bundled that is at issue. I have never, ever, heard anyone make a single complaint about being unable to swap browsers or other packages in Apple's OS, so I can only assume that this isn't an issue with their OS. Microsoft on the other hand, bundles IE so tightly with its OS it is very difficult to replace IE at all.
As an example, I am using 98se... I have every place I can think of marked to use Netscape as my default browser. When I click on an html shortcut, it does indeed bring up Netscape. I never, ever, use IE, except for when Kazaa or some other program uses it by default for rendering its own screens. Yet, even tho Netscape is marked as my default, clicking on a link within mIRC, with its 'automatic browser detection' now, instead of being able to specify which browser it should open, always, without exception, brings up IE. mIRC has taken away the ability for me to choose my browser. A 'feature' which ticks me off to no end. So, somewhere within Windows, IE is still marked as a default browser, even tho I have Netscape selected everywhere I can find a setting for it.
This is the objection we have to IE being bundled with Windows... since I have never heard anyone make this complaint about Apple's bundling their browser with their OS, I can only assume that this headache doesn't exist in the Apple OS.
(and I think these discussion threads would be taken more seriously if we didn't allow Anonymous Coward posts anymore. I even have them modded down and some still filter through. Ah well.)
> Logical flaw: if the price (actual or perceived) of P2P > goes over about $1/song then it becomes cheaper to buy > the music through legal channels.
but that isn't a very logical assumption... personally, I'd be willing to pay $2 or $3 for a single song that I liked... maybe even $5 for one if I liked it enough...
Price going over $1/song isn't really the main thing... going through legal channels, you would likely be paying $18/song-that-you-want because the rest of the CD is just filler music that sucks.
I have a LOT of CD's that I only play a single track on... if I liked the whole CD (Dark Side of the Moon comes to mind) then $18-$20 wouldn't bother me at all...
But this isn't the age of 8-tracks anymore, when the whole album had to be good. Companies all too often pad a hit song with crap they wouldn't otherwise release. After all, they make more money spreading out hit songs over 10 CD's than releasing a single good CD with 10 hits on it.
Just saying over $1/song would be too expensive, just isn't realistic, since it isn't the actual cost of the CD's that is what most people complain about... but it is the amount of good music you are getting for your $18 that is the issue.
hmm... $5 for a single song I like... $18 for a CD with 10 songs, of which I only like 1 of them...
seems like that $5 is still the better alternative...
Well... blocking files like.zip and.tar and other archive files aren't quite the danger you make them out to be, themselves not being carriers... the worst that could happen opening up one of those files is to launch the archive program to check out what's inside, but merely opening those files won't infect you...
As far as.exe files go however, those should be blocked. At the very least, you should have to confirm whether or not to allow that file to come through.
If one needs to send an exe file to someone else, it should be packaged in a zip or other archive if for no other reason than to prevent the program from running accidentally.
I'm not so suspicious of exe files sent to me inside archives. I can toss the archive around, open it and close it at will and not worry about an accidental infection before I can get around to scanning the contents for virii. An exe file, however, all it takes is a little keybounce on a mouse button at the wrong moment, and its too late.
BAT, VBS, EXE, COM files are all executables and should be treated with suspicion... ZIP, ZOO, LHA, TAR, CAB, RAR files are all archive files and, by themselves, aren't dangerous... it is the files contained within that may or may not be dangerous, but you don't have to worry about them as much, since being within an archive, the risk of accidental execution just isn't there.
The differences are in how the files are treated... for example, a GIF, JPG, BMP, WAV or AVI file isn't dangerous... even if someone imbedded a virus code within those files, those types are never executed so any virus code within is inert. At most, the program reading those files will report an error in the file. The same goes with ZIP, LHA, ZOO, CAB and RAR files.
>... but the 'alien eats a live mouse' scene is still pretty vivid in my mind.
I'm sure there were a couple different scenes along those lines, but the one I remember vividly wasn't a mouse, but a guinea pig...... I also remember some rather vulgar comments with my friends about her being able to detach her jaw like that, but I won't elaborate on that...
> 1: But not smaller than the JPEG. Lossless compression > cannot compete with JPEG's lossy compression, and JPEG > is still the format of choice for photographic images. > For everything else you can and should use PNG.
I'd agree with most of that... except... if all you're interested in is keeping your photos on a CD, by all means, convert directly to jpg. For most people, they don't work with the images past this point.
If, however, you manipulate images a lot, you should try to keep your images in a lossless scheme as much as possible, converting only the final product to jpg.
To illustrate the point, our local community television station frequently uses full-screen images in a slide-show when they aren't broadcasting shows. Many of these are re-used, listing the week's schedule for one.
During a couple bored periods, I left the TV on the station while someone was in the office editing the image, typing in the new schedule. They always load up the previous image, try to color-match the existing background color, which is never exact, since you know how well jpg handles solid-color backgrounds.
They do this over and over, and after a while, the photo part of the slide gets duller and duller, and after only a few edits, the whole slide just looks awful.
The #1 problem with doing this is whoever is handling the slide-show programming, is always using jpg over and over again.
I've been in many arguments with clueless people who are adamant that you don't lose detail with jpg's and they frankly don't know what they're talking about.
If you are one of the clueless, I'd like you to try an experiment.
Take a black/white photograph... run it through the fax machine on it's copy setting on photo resolution. Take the copy, run it through again... take the 2nd copy, run it through again... keep doing it... doesn't take long for it to look like crap right?
Every time you load a jpg, edit it, and then save it back into a jpg, you are basically doing the same thing, shaving the palette down bit by bit. If you do it long enough, eventually you'll just end up with a jpg with a palette of only a handful of colors.
If any of you are familiar with Perfect Vision Graphics wallpapers, I have managed to hang on to a few I picked up when they were originally released in GIF form. Now, the only ones I find are being passed around in jpg, and they look awful. These walls were optimized for 256 colors already, and looked crisp and clear. The jpg's make them look rough.
Ok, This turned into a rant.:) Sorry about that, but I think most of this is still informative.
> I don't think we are ever going to see a situation where > high street companies are delivering 'bare' machines to > the customer - the average man in the street does not > want to have to install an OS of any flavour onto a > machine - he wants to plug it in, turn it on and for it to work.
The 'average man in the street' wouldn't have to worry about that so much if retailers had the freedom to ask what OS the customer would like the computer to come with.
Say I want to buy two computers from a retailer. One with Windows for the rest of the family, and one with Linux for me to tinker with. I can't do that. Just try to find someplace to buy one without being forced to buy Windows regardless of if you want it or not. If the retailer is allowed to pre-install Windows, their agreements with M$ don't allow them to offer any other OS pre-installed, and if the retailer isn't allowed to pre-install, it isn't allowed to sell Windows at all.
The last time I bought a whole computer at once, I wanted a clean system. I couldn't find one.
I didn't want Windows, yet I had no choice but to pay for it since they wouldn't sell me a computer without it, for contractural reasons. Oh sure, the salesperson tried the 'but Windows comes with the system free' crap, but we all know better. If it was free, Bill wouldn't be as rich as he is right now. They just include the OS price in the whole system price.
I would LOVE to be able to choose which OS comes on the computer, in the same way I can choose what video/sound/memory/storage/networking I want with it.
> I'll be honest, all the "scary GUI changes" Microsoft > has made over the years has never phased me once.
Yeah, but you aren't the average user... too many people out there get spooked when they get a 'type in your name' menu up...
Student: What do I do now? Me: um... type in your name? Student: Oh!
I would love to have a choice of GUI's tho... maybe even the option of designing my own look to the menu bar and buttons and the like... maybe someday (crosses fingers)...
>...and even if all that happens, there's a good chance that it'll be superceded by one of the > many federal anti-spam laws now being considered... several of which may be weaker than the > California state law.
It doesn't work that way... even if a hypothetical federal anti-spam law was passed, which was in fact weaker than your state or local laws, it would be the more restrictive law that takes effect.
For example... say the Fed law for drunk driving required a blood-alcohol of 0.10 to be legally drunk, and a local law said 0.08, it would be the local law that would take precedence. Say, further, that your state, later on, passed its own law, making the limit 0.07, then it would be the state law that would take precedence.
Local laws always take precedence over state laws, and state laws always take precedence over federal laws, so long as the more localized region's law is more restrictive or has tougher penalties./me tosses a couple pennies to the center of the floor.
> So stop dropping yourself to their level, and speak the truth.
Stooping to their level? yeah... sure...
I have been speaking the truth. Perhaps it doesn't go along with your truth, so be it...
Feel free to continue calling me names if you wish. If who disagrees with your point of view is a troll in your eyes, then I suppose, to make you happy, I'm a troll.
But... when you get down to it... and keep in mind I do not, nor have not used NT and the subsequent variants of that system, the Windows products I have used, experimented with, torn apart, put back together... don't know shit about access control. Being single-user systems, they just weren't bothered with... although, IMHO, they should have been.
Car analogies just get you nowhere, and really, it didn't compare well in the slightest.
> You're either a troll or amazingly ignorant. Go and learn about what you mock - those who dont understand their enemies can never hope to beat them.
I'm hardly a troll... and I've been using computers since before Windows even existed, so I'm certainly not ignorant.
I know very well what I mock, and also know that the vast majority of people using windows are not using NT or its variants, but plain old single-user Windows, who's access control is laughable at best.
I also know enough to know that your average user won't even bother with fiddling with access controls, as they want the 'push one button to do what I want' type of interface.
One of my old employers was like that. It took a lot of fighting to get him to even do regular backups, much less get him to stop turning off his computer without shutting down first.
Maybe someday Microsoft will start making quality their number one priority. Until then, I will continue to mock them as they so rightly deserve.
Another thing I would like to see with Apple's service, is that it not limit itself to just albums that are currently in circulation right now...
There is a huge source of additional potential revenue, making available, cuts that are no longer in circulation. Albums that were released pre-CD era for one, that is just impossible to replace the way things are now.
For example, quite some time ago I picked up a tape, "Live at the Playboy Jazz Festival"... I had this tape for about a month before it was ripped off or lost, I don't know which. When I bought it, it was the only one the store had on the shelf, and I have found it impossible to find and replace ever since. Even searching on Kazaa, IRC servers, and other sources of music, have been a total waste of time.
I don't care about most of the songs on the album, but the 3 in particular I want so badly to replace, are from Grover Washington Jr... they had 3 songs in a row (one of them being 'Swept Away', and I believe one of the others was 'Limelight'), recorded continuously in one cut, that I would be willing to pay serious money to replace. I have checked out the other recordings of these songs on Grover's other CD's, but they all pale in comparison... you just can't get the energy from a studio recording, that you can get from a live recording...
It shouldn't be too difficult. I'm sure many digital or high-quality analog recordings still exist in some company's archives somewhere, as they are always re-releasing songs on greatest hits or oldies albums, remastered. Since the costs of electronically distributing these out-of-circulation cuts would be as negligible as the current cuts (not counting cleaning up the older recordings), and you wouldn't have to make the investment of making more CD's and distributing them, this should be feasable.
(and if anyone has the cuts I've been looking for for so long, please, lemme know? I've just about given up replacing them.)
Along these lines of our civil liberties, the heavy handed way our government (US) is trying hard to regulate our own personal behaviors, and the fact that I am royally pissed off at what I consider an injustice, I offer my own recent experience in this WoD.
I am presently on probation for simple posession of marijuana, and simple posession of paraphenalia (my dugout/one-hitter).
Late last year, I was waiting in my car for a friend to come out and give her a lift home. We had planned just a quiet evening, hanging out the rest of the night watching movies. We both smoke.
Along comes a police officer, who decides he doesn't like the way I'm parked, and comes up to check me out.
Skipping over the details of how this progressed, he ended up finding my dugout in my backpack in the car. It was confiscated, and since I was cooperative I was given a citation and sent on my way.
In court, I was put on a year's probation. Part of the terms of the probation, which is non-negotiable, is my drivers license is automatically suspended for no less than 90 days, allowing me a restricted after 30 days... I was also required to attend a drug abuse workshop, which I also had to pay $350 for, on top of my ~$2000 fines and court costs, on top of the $240 I had to pay for probation costs.
I was labelled as a drug addict. It doesn't matter if you smoke a pound a day, or a joint a year, this is automatic too. I'm no more a drug addict than someone who picks up a 6-pak each weekend to watch the game is an alcoholic, but the courts don't allow for this distinction.
Up until the job I had at that time I had been stuck in low paying dead end jobs barely able to support myself. Finally I got into a job I loved, and thoroughly enjoyed. I was a taxi driver. I was finally making a decent living, got myself out of debt, with money left over to actually save something, or even invest later on.
I have since lost my taxi license. It was automatically revoked when my drivers license was suspended. The court costs, probation costs, abuse workshop, have eaten up all of what I had saved and I find myself right back in debt again, and with our current economy, I have been unemployed ever since.
I am all for decriminalization.
There are many who argue that decriminalization will mean people will smoke while driving or be high at work and the like. This is not true. These things are already happening, and would remain illegal even with decriminalization. 'DUI' doesn't go away just because the substance is legal.
Now, all I have to look forward to is more dead-end jobs, and in this current economy, I don't even have that to look forward to right now. The way things look now, my life is in fact over. Last year started out with the feeling things were finally changing for the better for me and I had everything to look forward to. Now, thanks to the courts, and I do blame the court system for this, I have lost everything. The offense, did not deserve this kind of outcome.
My point is, that my 'punishment' went way beyond what I would think is reasonable for the offense comitted. I wasn't driving when I was checked out. I wasn't under the influence, and the officer's report made note of that. Had I been driving under the influence, then suspending my license and revoking my taxi license would have been reasonable and proper. If you're driving while impaired, you deserve to lose your license.
I've always believed in the concept, that in a so called free society, that you should have the right to do anything at all that you wish, so long as it doesn't interfere with the rights of your neighbor. Those of you familiar with the Childe Cycle of sci fi books might recognize that from the Dorsai! race.
I wasn't endangering a soul. My smoking affected no-one but myself. I have been careful for 18 years to smoke responsibly, and contrary to what many would have you believe, it is possible to smoke responsibly. Never smoke before work, never drive after smoking, etc.
This sounds *well* sucky, and goes on to fulfil a pet hate of mine which is that episodes will no longer be 'stand-alone'. Which is a pity.
Woah... a pity? Are you serious?
The best episodes in the entire ST franchise have been ones where they took the time over several episodes to tell the story properly.
I get so sick of watching what is starting out to be a good story, only near the end of the episode getting the feeling that the story teller, upon reaching somewhere in the middle of the tale, decides to skip to the end.
Oh, and it was mentioned in a few places about how ship captains in Kirk's time were of a different breed, and that in 'modern' SF days they most likely would have been kicked out of the service. If I remember right, the term used was swashbuckling.
So then, why does Enterprise feel like the same breed of people that TNG, DS9, and VOY are?
Where is the 'swashbuckling'? Where is the boldness has been refered too back in Kirk's day?
Granted, this is a pre-Kirk era, but still, you would expect much of the same, well, recklessness you would have found in TOS...
Oh... and lets put the femmes back into skirts again.:)
I've been computing for around 20 years now, and have bought many printers over the years. Most lasted only a couple years. One even broke down after only a week, around 50 pages printed. I won't mention the name, but it begins with LEXMARK. The store offered to replace it, but I instead chose to just get a refund. If a printer breaks down before its had a chance to shed its static from the styrofoam packaging, I don't want it. My better printers were the older HP's, I have an old laser printer, that doesn't always feed properly, but it still gives a great printout.
I had an older Epson dot matrix printer that lasted 9 years before it gave out.
My most reliable printer?
The very first one I bought, that I still use today for the bulk of my printing. It looks like crap, the case is all yellowed, lots of cat hair inside it and in the vent holes, scratches all over the place, but it remains my workhorse.
It broke down a few years ago. The print head kept skipping. The fix? A tiny dab of dry grease on the bar the print head runs on. No problems ever since.
This workhorse was a Tandy DMP-130a.
By far, the best money I ever spent on a printer.
-- Smoov
Slashdot Mirror
> But it seemed like there were two implementations of DCC.
/me sighs...
> The "right" way, which most Unix-based IRC clients did,
> and the "backwards" way, which Mirc did. I never seemed
> to have any problems with DCC sends when using a
> Unix-based IRC client but it always seemed like I would
> have to stand on my head and chant voodoo chants when
> trying to use Mirc.
Yeah, I've noticed the same problems... IMHO, the mIRC people screwed up big time when they decided to replace their old DCC system with a new one. Whenever I try to receive a file from a *nix or other 'standard' client now, more times than not, the remote end reads a successful send while my end (the mIRC end) reads an incomplete file and quits because they aren't handshaking properly. Switch to my other computer with an older mIRC with the older DCC system in it and they work flawlessly.
I simply don't understand why they felt the need to fix something that wasn't broken to begin with and ended up with something broken. I never had problems with failed DCC's not timing out under the old system. Under the new one? A failed resume will sit there on my screen for hours and hours and maybe timing out. If someone sends me a DCC using the IP of 127.0.0.1, or another reserved local IP that my LAN uses internally? THEY NEVER EVER TIME OUT! On top of that, the old DCC system wasn't succeptible to that DCC exploit that the new DCC system was. Don't get me started on the larger DCC windows either. The old ones I was able to keep so small they never blocked anything on the screen, the new ones are huge and UGLY!
Why is it whenever any author updates their programs to make it better, I end up losing the things about it I liked most... like being able to set priority levels for programs in Win311 right in the PIF file for example.
This ends Smoovious' Rant-of-the-Day...
-- Smoovious
Ya know how sometimes you hear people say wrong things over and over and over and over and over and over until you just can't take it anymore and explode about it?
i nstall
p iece.of.shit.just.do.i t.damn.you
:) )
This is one of those times...
STOP CALLING THE NEWSGROUPS USENET! THE NEWSGROUPS __ARE__ __NOT__ USENET!!!
>>But nobody using Windows reads usenet.
>
>Not true! Some helpful groups:
>
>comp.microsoft.bsod
>rec.windows.un
^^ These 2 groups are UseNet groups. ^^
>alt.windows.0wn3d
>alt.windows.no.you.stupid.
^^ These 2 groups are _not_ UseNet groups, they are AltNet groups. ^^
>microsoft.useless.posts.on.dotnet
^^ Also not a UseNet group, it is a local Micro$oft group leaked out to the public. ^^
Then you have:
k12.* -- K12Net groups
clari.* -- ClariNet groups
mi.* -- regional Michigan groups
ca.* -- regional California groups
agfa.* -- local Agfa Compugraphic groups
and the list goes on and on...
They aren't UseNet... they are Network News, or simply, The Newsgroups...
You know how annoying it is to hear lamers keep calling the internet 'The Web' as if
that is all that it is? Do you people realize that by calling the newsgroups 'UseNet'
you are being the same exact ignorant kind of lamers the webbies are?
If you mean alt.* groups, call them by the name they are, AltNet... alt.* groups
have nothing at all to do with UseNet...
(now ends my periodic tirade when I just can't take it anymore.
(but seriously, lets get our act together huh? Call the groups what
they really are)
-- Smoovious, netizen for over 20 years.
> Which isn't to say we'd necessarily use that power...
> Americans are getting better and better at forgetting
> that *we* get to choose our government, so *we* are
> responsible for what they do. People seem perfectly
> happy to vote however the money tells them to and then
> whine because it works better for the money when that
> happens, without understanding their own role in the saga.
Damned straight. What the hell are candidates taking money from corporations and organizations anyways? They should be BARRED from giving to candidates, if for no other reason than THEY CAN'T VOTE! If you're in a union, your money is supporting candidates you don't necessarily support and there is something very wrong in that, for just one example.
Topping that off, it annoys me to no end whenever I hear about someone not wanting to waste their vote by voting for someone who won't win.
Rediculous.
If you think candidate Rufus will represent your interests best, yet you voted for candidate John because you thought he would win, YOU JUST WASTED YOUR VOTE!
Voting isn't about voting for who's going to win, we got race tracks and sports betting for that. Voting is about saying who you think is going to be the best person for the job, and any time you don't vote for the person you think is best, you just wasted your vote. It is the only time you have to directly express your choice, and when you don't, you wasted your vote. It doesn't matter if your choice wins or loses, voting isn't about that. Voting is about expressing your wants and wishes.
On top of that, time and time again, the dems and reps aren't the only choices in town. They've been around too long, we need new blood, new ideas, and while we're getting new faces, they're the same tired old views, with people more loyal to their parties than they are to their constituents. They only represent 2 points of view, and more and more often, neither of those views represent mine. There are at least 3 sides to every issue, yet these two parties only try to make you believe there are only black and white viewpoints for everything.
I'm done voting for either one. I mostly vote for independents. (Oh, how I would LOVE to see an indie as president)
So lets get rid of the parties as well... after all, they may call themselves Democrats or Republicans, but once they're elected, they aren't the Republican President, nor the Democratic Senator, nor the Republican Represenative, they are The US President, or The US Senator, or The US Represenative.
Lets make all the candidates run as independents... make those people who vote for the whole party with one box on the ballot actually think about their choices for a change...
Ok... I think I'm done now... I feel much better now...
Anybody got a cigarette?
-- Smoovious
I was so pissed at VeriSign during their first SiteFinder hijacking that I lost what
little trust I had for their integrity...
So pissed that I dug into all of my browsers and other programs and ripped out all
of the VeriSign-referenced certificates out of them.
After all, you should only accept certificates from a signer you trust... and I don't
trust them anymore.
Perhaps more people should make their certificates useless too...
-- Smoovious
>Seems like they set a pretty good precedent for
>'selective free speech' as in the 'Do-Not-Call List.'
Not quite the same thing there... the Do-Not-Call list addresses a particular type of action.
You have the right to say whatever you want, express whatever idea you like. You do not have
the right to force someone else to listen to it, or force a medium to broadcast your views.
The Do-Not-Call list addresses the latter. Just because I have a phone does not make it ok for
someone to invade my personal space repeatedly, harassingly, to tout off the selling points of
whatever product they want to sell, in the same way that I do not have a right to just barge
in your front door, unannounced, uninvited, to sit on your couch next to you throwing a sales
pitch at you.
I feel the same way about my email box. When I don't want to be subjected to advertising, I
shut off the TV and stay in the house. I shouldn't also have to disconnect my phone or close
my email box also. Those are services I myself pay for. Nobody else has the right to decide
how I use those services.
Every week I (used to) get no less than 20 telemarketing calls on two phone lines (no
exaggeration), most wanting me to switch my long distance carrier or local phone provider.
Compare that with the 3 or 4 genuine calls I get. I'm ready to go back to having my lines
set up outgoing calls only and use a beeper. This is outrageous.
Every week I get no less than 100 spam emails on one address (which has tripled that number
recently), most are duplicates of what I was spammed before, none with identical addys, even
the imbedded links are different yet the content is the same. Again, not counting the 7
vgaplanets games I'm in, and the mailing lists I actually requested to be on, only 3 or 4
mails each week are genuine. If I don't connect to my email server over the weekend, I lose
posts because my mail quota has already been reached, thanks to spam.
So as far as freedom of speech goes, as far as I'm concerned, corporations and organizations
have no such right. The bill of rights is not for organizations, it is for people. Citizens.
"We The People"... not "We The Capitalist Machines"...
No organization's 'rights' should trump the individual's rights. Organizations do not vote,
people do. Organizations have no standing to influence public policy, the people do.
Our electorate do not represent organizations. They represent their constituents. Those
constituents aren't organizations, they're people.
When was the last time you asked your company who it voted for in an election?
Hmmm... ok, I didn't intent to rant, but ok, I'm ranting... so I'll quit now...
-- Smoov
(slightly pissed off)
>They are not rated for 40 years at 100% activity -- don't
>you think there's a reason for a one to three year warranty?
Absolutely... they make shoddy equipment that isn't made to last a long time...
its called planned obselesence(sp?)...
Companies have figured out that making cheap shoddy equipment that people have to
replace every few years makes more business sense with repeated sales and more
income off of those sales, than to make excellent equipment that is reliable over
the long haul. Paying $100 for a cheap printer every few years brings in more
income than paying $350 for a good printer that will last 20 years...
All of my older equipment has out-lasted comparable equipment that has been made
much more recently...
Cheap cheap cheap!
That's why they have such weak warranties... they could make reliable equipment if
they wanted to, they just don't have any financial incentive to do so.
(disclosure: I used to work for a company that manufactured and sold personal
computing equipment.)
-- Smoov
Q: Why can't we just put a needle above the poles?
...
A: because objects directly above the poles don't orbit, they would just stay motionless above
the planet, so as soon as the thrust was removed to keep them there, they would just plummet
back to earth.
Q: Why do we have to have it around the equator?
A: because that is the only place you'll have a geostationary orbit. Place a satellite, say, 10-degrees north or south of the equator at a geo altitude and the satellite will oscillate
between +10 and -10 degrees of the equator.
Q: Why don't we build it on the moon first?
A: because the materials and expertise are here, and the whole point of the elevator is to slash the costs of getting materials off the surface of the earth in the first place. We need an efficient means of doing that first before we can think of building them on the other rocks in our system. The plus side is we don't have to waste so much space/weight on propellant to get a rocket up to speed to escape gravity and into orbital velocity. Instead, we would just climb up mechanically, which with photo-electric power, would use fewer resources than chemical propellant. Once up in geosynchronous orbit, the materials brought up can hang there near the elevator as more pieces are brought up, eventually assembling the pieces into a larget vehicle, better suited to long-range missions to say, mars and beyond.
Q: We couldn't use it for salvaging the space junk, they are just plain moving too fast.
A: yes and no... we would only really need small automated vehicles which could clamp onto the pieces of junk, and using maneuvering thrusters, adjust the orbits higher or lower, as well as trajectory, until they are at the level of the end of the elevator. Once at that point, the relative speeds aren't much different (although objects in a retrograde orbit might be a problem).
For that matter, vehicles assembled in space wouldn't need much more than thrusters, and perhaps a small engine for larger accellerations to get from place to place, since escaping earth's gravity isn't an issue anymore.
Q: What about 9/11 and terrorist attacks?
A: keep hiding under your bed you @#$&$#!@ coward.
Q: Wouldn't the pull of the ascending vehicle pull the counterweight down into a lower orbit, making the elevator useless?
A: It depends on how heavy the vehicle/payload is, as well as the counterweight. Only an idiot would try to ascend with more weight than the counterweight can handle (The Darwin Awards has a perfect example of this effect, about a guy working on his radio tower, sorry no URL handy). If there is more force on the counterweight trying to fling it away, than there is by the payload pulling it down, then the counterweight will stay in place...
which brings me to one point that I'm not so sure about...
It always seemed to me that you would need a very good/reliable anchoring point for something like this, and having a floating base in the water just doesn't seem to be it... get too much payload
too high on the cable, and it would add to the pull the counterweight is exerting, and you could very well yank the base out of the water and into space if the accident was catastrophic.
Suppose you have a payload that is pretty much right at the limit of what the counterweight can support. It approaches geo-point, but isn't braking fast enough, and passes geo-point. At that point, the forces switch from trying to pull the payload back down to the ground, to trying to push it further away. Eventually, it slams into the counterweight, which may or may not hold. Problem is, you now have (for an extreme example) twice as much weight on the end on the cable, exerting twice as much vertical force on the base. Add to that the inertia of the payload hitting the counterweight would "jerk" the cable upwards.
You would need a great deal of weight at the base for it to be a suitable anchor, yet you need the
base to float at the same
> There ought to be either a comp.sys.microsoft or perhaps
> a new sub-hierarchy comp.vendor.microsoft.*. Instead, you
> get all this top-level microsoft.* nonsense. And then, of
> course, every 'me too' sheep of a vendor follows suit, so
> there's now borland.*, symantec.*....ugh. You're computer
> or computer software vendors, you belong in the comp.*
> hierarchy, not at the top level.
I have to disagree with you here, and it has more to do with terminology than anything.
If the UseNet people wanted a micosoft sub-heirarchy within the UseNet groups, they can do so all on their own, microsoft is under no obligation to be forced to keep a presence within the UseNet groups.
Microsoft at one point has maintained their own NNTP server, and they had the MicrosoftNet groups on them. These groups have since leaked out to other servers, and are carried far beyond their own servers. They are entitled to have a top-level heirarchy since this is their own NetNews network.
For 20 years I have been bugged by people who just don't understand what UseNet really is.
Remember back when people would call any copy machine a Xerox machine, even if it wasn't made by Xerox? I seem to recall Xerox even sued a few competitors to get them to stop doing that, over a trademark violation or something...
The same is happening with Network News. UseNet is not the term for Network News, just a portion of it.
Several networks share the NetNews environment. Some examples with their top-level names:
-- AltNet (alt) (also used to be known as the anarchy network)
-- ClariNet (clari) (a commercial service, only member servers are allowed to distribute them)
-- FidoNet (fido) (mirrors of forums carried by the old FidoNet BBS networks)
-- GnuNet (gnu)
-- K12Net (k12) (education related, groups for each grade level and then some, for educators)
-- UseNet (comp, misc, news, rec, sci, soc, talk) (also called the 'big seven' after the great renaming, I think even more names exist now)
net.* groups also existed, mainly for administrators to use and communicate with each other.
In addition there are regional networks:
-- Japan (japan)
-- Australia (aus)
-- Jerusalem (jerusalem)
-- MichNet (mi) (a regional heirarchy for Michigan, other states also had their own set)
-- USNet (us) (United States)
On top of these, there are other heirarchies run by companies for their clients.
-- Agfa Compugraphic (agfa)
-- Colorado University (cu) (individual courses have their own groups as well)
-- Microsoft (microsoft)
-- Netscape/The Mozilla project (netscape)
-- The Linux project (linux)
and yet even more individual limited-interest heirarchies exist.
Anyone can start their own top-level newsgroup network if they want. You need to make arrangements with your peers to carry your groups as well if you want those groups to propogate outside of your own NNTP server.
Microsoft doesn't have to be shoved into the UseNet newsgroups if they don't want to. They have their own NetNews groups already, as they are entitled to do, as any other company is, and as you are as well.
The don't 'belong' in the UseNet heirarchy, any more than the UseNet groups belong in AltNet or ClariNet. They are their own individal heirarchy, seperate and just as entitled to participate in the NetNews system as any of the other heirarchies.
And please... PLEASE... stop calling all of the news servers as a whole, UseNet servers.
Many of those servers don't carry a single UseNet group.
They are NetNews servers... as in NNTP... Network News Transfer Protocol...
-- Smoov
ps> For those who like to accuse people who defend Microsoft as being a MicroSerf, for the record, I personally hate Microsoft.
> Hey, there's an idea - why don't they just go metric with IP addresses?
> Rather than just go up to 255.255.255.255, try 999.999.999.999. Problem
> solved!
Cuz computers aren't metric, they are in powers of 2.
Much more logical to expand the existing IP structure from 8-bit like it is now to
16-bit, which would allow addys up to 65535.65535.65535.65535... tho I don't see any
real need to expand port numbers from 16-bit to 32-bit, which would allow port numbers
up to 4294967295... except for perhaps a mega-server, but I don't know of anyone who had
a problem being limited to 65535 simultaneous connections...
IPv6 will probably be needed soon enough, but I can't help but wonder why just going
from 8-bit to 16-bit wasn't good enough... 4-position 16-bit IPs would give us
18,446,744,073,709,551,616 unique IPs to use... assuming a planetary population of
1 quadrillion, for example, that would give each person 18,446 IPs each...
> funny how nobody complains about apple bundling safari with
> the mac os, yet when microsoft bundles IE with Windows,
> everyone gets their panties in a bunch...
They don't compare at all tho.
Apple manufactures their own equipment as well as their software. Microsoft only develops software. Apple is perfectly within its rights to bundle whatever they want to in their proprietary OS, to run on their proprietary equipment, as they are in business to sell a complete system. Microsoft does not have this defense.
Additionally, it is the way the packages are bundled that is at issue. I have never, ever, heard anyone make a single complaint about being unable to swap browsers or other packages in Apple's OS, so I can only assume that this isn't an issue with their OS. Microsoft on the other hand, bundles IE so tightly with its OS it is very difficult to replace IE at all.
As an example, I am using 98se... I have every place I can think of marked to use Netscape as my default browser. When I click on an html shortcut, it does indeed bring up Netscape. I never, ever, use IE, except for when Kazaa or some other program uses it by default for rendering its own screens. Yet, even tho Netscape is marked as my default, clicking on a link within mIRC, with its 'automatic browser detection' now, instead of being able to specify which browser it should open, always, without exception, brings up IE. mIRC has taken away the ability for me to choose my browser. A 'feature' which ticks me off to no end. So, somewhere within Windows, IE is still marked as a default browser, even tho I have Netscape selected everywhere I can find a setting for it.
This is the objection we have to IE being bundled with Windows... since I have never heard anyone make this complaint about Apple's bundling their browser with their OS, I can only assume that this headache doesn't exist in the Apple OS.
(and I think these discussion threads would be taken more seriously if we didn't allow Anonymous Coward posts anymore. I even have them modded down and some still filter through. Ah well.)
> Logical flaw: if the price (actual or perceived) of P2P
> goes over about $1/song then it becomes cheaper to buy
> the music through legal channels.
but that isn't a very logical assumption... personally, I'd be willing to pay $2 or $3 for a single song that I liked... maybe even $5 for one if I liked it enough...
Price going over $1/song isn't really the main thing... going through legal channels, you would likely be paying $18/song-that-you-want because the rest of the CD is just filler music that sucks.
I have a LOT of CD's that I only play a single track on... if I liked the whole CD (Dark Side of the Moon comes to mind) then $18-$20 wouldn't bother me at all...
But this isn't the age of 8-tracks anymore, when the whole album had to be good. Companies all too often pad a hit song with crap they wouldn't otherwise release. After all, they make more money spreading out hit songs over 10 CD's than releasing a single good CD with 10 hits on it.
Just saying over $1/song would be too expensive, just isn't realistic, since it isn't the actual cost of the CD's that is what most people complain about... but it is the amount of good music you are getting for your $18 that is the issue.
hmm... $5 for a single song I like... $18 for a CD with 10 songs, of which I only like 1 of them...
seems like that $5 is still the better alternative...
-- Smoov
Well... blocking files like .zip and .tar and other archive files aren't quite the danger you make them out to be, themselves not being carriers... the worst that could happen opening up one of those files is to launch the archive program to check out what's inside, but merely opening those files won't infect you...
.exe files go however, those should be blocked. At the very least, you should have to confirm whether or not to allow that file to come through.
As far as
If one needs to send an exe file to someone else, it should be packaged in a zip or other archive if for no other reason than to prevent the program from running accidentally.
I'm not so suspicious of exe files sent to me inside archives. I can toss the archive around, open it and close it at will and not worry about an accidental infection before I can get around to scanning the contents for virii. An exe file, however, all it takes is a little keybounce on a mouse button at the wrong moment, and its too late.
BAT, VBS, EXE, COM files are all executables and should be treated with suspicion...
ZIP, ZOO, LHA, TAR, CAB, RAR files are all archive files and, by themselves, aren't dangerous... it is the files contained within that may or may not be dangerous, but you don't have to worry about them as much, since being within an archive, the risk of accidental execution just isn't there.
The differences are in how the files are treated... for example, a GIF, JPG, BMP, WAV or AVI file isn't dangerous... even if someone imbedded a virus code within those files, those types are never executed so any virus code within is inert. At most, the program reading those files will report an error in the file. The same goes with ZIP, LHA, ZOO, CAB and RAR files.
> ... but the 'alien eats a live mouse' scene is still pretty vivid in my mind.
... I also remember some rather vulgar comments with my friends about her being ...
I'm sure there were a couple different scenes along those lines, but the one
I remember vividly wasn't a mouse, but a guinea pig...
able to detach her jaw like that, but I won't elaborate on that
> 1: But not smaller than the JPEG. Lossless compression
:) Sorry about that, but I think most of this is still informative.
> cannot compete with JPEG's lossy compression, and JPEG
> is still the format of choice for photographic images.
> For everything else you can and should use PNG.
I'd agree with most of that... except... if all you're interested in is keeping your photos on a CD, by all means, convert directly to jpg. For most people, they don't work with the images past this point.
If, however, you manipulate images a lot, you should try to keep your images in a lossless scheme as much as possible, converting only the final product to jpg.
To illustrate the point, our local community television station frequently uses full-screen images in a slide-show when they aren't broadcasting shows. Many of these are re-used, listing the week's schedule for one.
During a couple bored periods, I left the TV on the station while someone was in the office editing the image, typing in the new schedule. They always load up the previous image, try to color-match the existing background color, which is never exact, since you know how well jpg handles solid-color backgrounds.
They do this over and over, and after a while, the photo part of the slide gets duller and duller, and after only a few edits, the whole slide just looks awful.
The #1 problem with doing this is whoever is handling the slide-show programming, is always using jpg over and over again.
I've been in many arguments with clueless people who are adamant that you don't lose detail with jpg's and they frankly don't know what they're talking about.
If you are one of the clueless, I'd like you to try an experiment.
Take a black/white photograph... run it through the fax machine on it's copy setting on photo resolution. Take the copy, run it through again... take the 2nd copy, run it through again... keep doing it... doesn't take long for it to look like crap right?
Every time you load a jpg, edit it, and then save it back into a jpg, you are basically doing the same thing, shaving the palette down bit by bit. If you do it long enough, eventually you'll just end up with a jpg with a palette of only a handful of colors.
If any of you are familiar with Perfect Vision Graphics wallpapers, I have managed to hang on to a few I picked up when they were originally released in GIF form. Now, the only ones I find are being passed around in jpg, and they look awful. These walls were optimized for 256 colors already, and looked crisp and clear. The jpg's make them look rough.
Ok, This turned into a rant.
> I don't think we are ever going to see a situation where
> high street companies are delivering 'bare' machines to
> the customer - the average man in the street does not
> want to have to install an OS of any flavour onto a
> machine - he wants to plug it in, turn it on and for it to work.
The 'average man in the street' wouldn't have to worry about that so much if retailers had the freedom to ask what OS the customer would like the computer to come with.
Say I want to buy two computers from a retailer. One with Windows for the rest of the family, and one with Linux for me to tinker with. I can't do that. Just try to find someplace to buy one without being forced to buy Windows regardless of if you want it or not. If the retailer is allowed to pre-install Windows, their agreements with M$ don't allow them to offer any other OS pre-installed, and if the retailer isn't allowed to pre-install, it isn't allowed to sell Windows at all.
The last time I bought a whole computer at once, I wanted a clean system. I couldn't find one.
I didn't want Windows, yet I had no choice but to pay for it since they wouldn't sell me a computer without it, for contractural reasons. Oh sure, the salesperson tried the 'but Windows comes with the system free' crap, but we all know better. If it was free, Bill wouldn't be as rich as he is right now. They just include the OS price in the whole system price.
I would LOVE to be able to choose which OS comes on the computer, in the same way I can choose what video/sound/memory/storage/networking I want with it.
> I'll be honest, all the "scary GUI changes" Microsoft
> has made over the years has never phased me once.
Yeah, but you aren't the average user... too many people out there get spooked when they get a 'type in your name' menu up...
Student: What do I do now?
Me: um... type in your name?
Student: Oh!
I would love to have a choice of GUI's tho... maybe even the option of designing my own look to the menu bar and buttons and the like... maybe someday (crosses fingers)...
> ...and even if all that happens, there's a good chance that it'll be superceded by one of the
/me tosses a couple pennies to the center of the floor.
> many federal anti-spam laws now being considered... several of which may be weaker than the
> California state law.
It doesn't work that way... even if a hypothetical federal anti-spam law was passed, which was in fact weaker than your state or local laws, it would be the more restrictive law that takes effect.
For example... say the Fed law for drunk driving required a blood-alcohol of 0.10 to be legally drunk, and a local law said 0.08, it would be the local law that would take precedence. Say, further, that your state, later on, passed its own law, making the limit 0.07, then it would be the state law that would take precedence.
Local laws always take precedence over state laws, and state laws always take precedence over federal laws, so long as the more localized region's law is more restrictive or has tougher penalties.
> So stop dropping yourself to their level, and speak the truth.
Stooping to their level? yeah... sure...
I have been speaking the truth. Perhaps it doesn't go along with your truth, so be it...
Feel free to continue calling me names if you wish. If who disagrees with your point of view is a troll in your eyes, then I suppose, to make you happy, I'm a troll.
But... when you get down to it... and keep in mind I do not, nor have not used NT and the subsequent variants of that system, the Windows products I have used, experimented with, torn apart, put back together... don't know shit about access control. Being single-user systems, they just weren't bothered with... although, IMHO, they should have been.
Car analogies just get you nowhere, and really, it didn't compare well in the slightest.
-- Smoov
> You're either a troll or amazingly ignorant. Go and learn about what you mock - those who dont understand their enemies can never hope to beat them.
I'm hardly a troll... and I've been using computers since before Windows even existed, so I'm certainly not ignorant.
I know very well what I mock, and also know that the vast majority of people using windows are not using NT or its variants, but plain old single-user Windows, who's access control is laughable at best.
I also know enough to know that your average user won't even bother with fiddling with access controls, as they want the 'push one button to do what I want' type of interface.
One of my old employers was like that. It took a lot of fighting to get him to even do regular backups, much less get him to stop turning off his computer without shutting down first.
Maybe someday Microsoft will start making quality their number one priority. Until then, I will continue to mock them as they so rightly deserve.
Thanks, radish, that's the funniest thing I've read all week, I'm still chuckling and its 20 minutes since I read your post...
I even had my roommates come over to look, they all got a good laugh too...
Keep up the sarcasm!
-- I'm not ignoring you, I'm prioritizing you.
Another thing I would like to see with Apple's service, is that it not limit itself to just albums that are currently in circulation right now...
There is a huge source of additional potential revenue, making available, cuts that are no longer in circulation. Albums that were released pre-CD era for one, that is just impossible to replace the way things are now.
For example, quite some time ago I picked up a tape, "Live at the Playboy Jazz Festival"... I had this tape for about a month before it was ripped off or lost, I don't know which. When I bought it, it was the only one the store had on the shelf, and I have found it impossible to find and replace ever since. Even searching on Kazaa, IRC servers, and other sources of music, have been a total waste of time.
I don't care about most of the songs on the album, but the 3 in particular I want so badly to replace, are from Grover Washington Jr... they had 3 songs in a row (one of them being 'Swept Away', and I believe one of the others was 'Limelight'), recorded continuously in one cut, that I would be willing to pay serious money to replace. I have checked out the other recordings of these songs on Grover's other CD's, but they all pale in comparison... you just can't get the energy from a studio recording, that you can get from a live recording...
It shouldn't be too difficult. I'm sure many digital or high-quality analog recordings still exist in some company's archives somewhere, as they are always re-releasing songs on greatest hits or oldies albums, remastered. Since the costs of electronically distributing these out-of-circulation cuts would be as negligible as the current cuts (not counting cleaning up the older recordings), and you wouldn't have to make the investment of making more CD's and distributing them, this should be feasable.
(and if anyone has the cuts I've been looking for for so long, please, lemme know? I've just about given up replacing them.)
Along these lines of our civil liberties, the heavy handed way our government (US) is trying hard to regulate our own personal behaviors, and the fact that I am royally pissed off at what I consider an injustice, I offer my own recent experience in this WoD.
I am presently on probation for simple posession of marijuana, and simple posession of paraphenalia (my dugout/one-hitter).
Late last year, I was waiting in my car for a friend to come out and give her a lift home. We had planned just a quiet evening, hanging out the rest of the night watching movies. We both smoke.
Along comes a police officer, who decides he doesn't like the way I'm parked, and comes up to check me out.
Skipping over the details of how this progressed, he ended up finding my dugout in my backpack in the car. It was confiscated, and since I was cooperative I was given a citation and sent on my way.
In court, I was put on a year's probation. Part of the terms of the probation, which is non-negotiable, is my drivers license is automatically suspended for no less than 90 days, allowing me a restricted after 30 days... I was also required to attend a drug abuse workshop, which I also had to pay $350 for, on top of my ~$2000 fines and court costs, on top of the $240 I had to pay for probation costs.
I was labelled as a drug addict. It doesn't matter if you smoke a pound a day, or a joint a year, this is automatic too. I'm no more a drug addict than someone who picks up a 6-pak each weekend to watch the game is an alcoholic, but the courts don't allow for this distinction.
Up until the job I had at that time I had been stuck in low paying dead end jobs barely able to support myself. Finally I got into a job I loved, and thoroughly enjoyed. I was a taxi driver. I was finally making a decent living, got myself out of debt, with money left over to actually save something, or even invest later on.
I have since lost my taxi license. It was automatically revoked when my drivers license was suspended. The court costs, probation costs, abuse workshop, have eaten up all of what I had saved and I find myself right back in debt again, and with our current economy, I have been unemployed ever since.
I am all for decriminalization.
There are many who argue that decriminalization will mean people will smoke while driving or be high at work and the like. This is not true. These things are already happening, and would remain illegal even with decriminalization. 'DUI' doesn't go away just because the substance is legal.
Now, all I have to look forward to is more dead-end jobs, and in this current economy, I don't even have that to look forward to right now. The way things look now, my life is in fact over. Last year started out with the feeling things were finally changing for the better for me and I had everything to look forward to. Now, thanks to the courts, and I do blame the court system for this, I have lost everything. The offense, did not deserve this kind of outcome.
My point is, that my 'punishment' went way beyond what I would think is reasonable for the offense comitted. I wasn't driving when I was checked out. I wasn't under the influence, and the officer's report made note of that. Had I been driving under the influence, then suspending my license and revoking my taxi license would have been reasonable and proper. If you're driving while impaired, you deserve to lose your license.
I've always believed in the concept, that in a so called free society, that you should have the right to do anything at all that you wish, so long as it doesn't interfere with the rights of your neighbor. Those of you familiar with the Childe Cycle of sci fi books might recognize that from the Dorsai! race.
I wasn't endangering a soul. My smoking affected no-one but myself. I have been careful for 18 years to smoke responsibly, and contrary to what many would have you believe, it is possible to smoke responsibly. Never smoke before work, never drive after smoking, etc.
This sounds *well* sucky, and goes on to fulfil a pet hate of mine which is that episodes will no longer be 'stand-alone'. Which is a pity.
:)
Woah... a pity? Are you serious?
The best episodes in the entire ST franchise have been ones where they took the time over several episodes to tell the story properly.
I get so sick of watching what is starting out to be a good story, only near the end of the episode getting the feeling that the story teller, upon reaching somewhere in the middle of the tale, decides to skip to the end.
Oh, and it was mentioned in a few places about how ship captains in Kirk's time were of a different breed, and that in 'modern' SF days they most likely would have been kicked out of the service. If I remember right, the term used was swashbuckling.
So then, why does Enterprise feel like the same breed of people that TNG, DS9, and VOY are?
Where is the 'swashbuckling'? Where is the boldness has been refered too back in Kirk's day?
Granted, this is a pre-Kirk era, but still, you would expect much of the same, well, recklessness you would have found in TOS...
Oh... and lets put the femmes back into skirts again.
-- Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum, cogito
I've been computing for around 20 years now, and have bought many printers over the years. Most lasted only a couple years. One even broke down after only a week, around 50 pages printed. I won't mention the name, but it begins with LEXMARK. The store offered to replace it, but I instead chose to just get a refund. If a printer breaks down before its had a chance to shed its static from the styrofoam packaging, I don't want it. My better printers were the older HP's, I have an old laser printer, that doesn't always feed properly, but it still gives a great printout. I had an older Epson dot matrix printer that lasted 9 years before it gave out. My most reliable printer? The very first one I bought, that I still use today for the bulk of my printing. It looks like crap, the case is all yellowed, lots of cat hair inside it and in the vent holes, scratches all over the place, but it remains my workhorse. It broke down a few years ago. The print head kept skipping. The fix? A tiny dab of dry grease on the bar the print head runs on. No problems ever since. This workhorse was a Tandy DMP-130a. By far, the best money I ever spent on a printer. -- Smoov