It kinda boils down to "SCO announces/declares war on Open Source", or "SCO challenges Open Source's existence" or something; literally: "SCO announces struggle for existence to Open Source".
I still rely on a personal firewall to stealth ports 135 and 445, but there is an awful lot of unneccessary stuff one can easily shut down, especially when not on a LAN... Telnet, SSDP Discovery Service & Universal PnP Device Host, Server & Computer Browser & anything NetBIOS-related, anything with "remote" in it except for Remote Access Connection Manager, Alerter & Messenger, etcetera. For starters see
-- briefly explains each service rather than just telling you what to turn off next. It's pretty lenient, though. Maybe you should set everything to "manual", try to do your usual things, and reactivate services as needed.
Also interesting:
XP from A-Z (fairly detailed, though not on services)
While I liked neither Turbo Pascal nor that weird cheapo-VM learn-Assembler-safely environment (or whatever the heck else it was) much, school did wean me off BASIC (which of course directly translated to "spaghetti code" at the time). With no money for books, no (public) internet and no way to access BBSes it was the only way that could have happened. That, I think, was a good thing, if somewhat frustrating because sprites and sound effects weren't on the syllabus.
These days, they probably teach Visual Basic.
That was on a "Gymnasium" (the type of German school that'll get you into uni). Now that the "other", more vocationally oriented types of school have computer classes as well, I suppose the main goal is to introduce students to the applications they'll be using to "earn" a "living". My mom's school has some sort of contract with Intel and MS that provides them with Excel, Powerpoint and Word and MS DTP and Imaging suites that are so clumsy I would rather go back to typewriters and cutting and pasting on the photocopier. So it's not like it really matters if it helps students learn anything or improves their "logic" or if they are interested in computers or programming in any way, it's about their future lives as office dwellers which is, uh, useful.
Maybe it does alleviate the "I don't understand computers" mindset, maybe it does help them obtain "basic computer skills", maybe actually more than the very narrow spectrum of bubblesort to binary tree stuff we covered and subsequently forgot about because we had no idea what it was good for, but "our" comp classes seemed to be aimed at people who really wanted to know something about computers. So we never composed a single spreadsheet and didn't use any "apps" whatsoever, besides the compiler, but anyone who took those classes probably didn't do so to learn anything "economically" useful.
Okay, so all of that was redundant, obvious and boring but I just got out of bed.
I've also had trouble with CD burning (Nero) when not administrator.
I don't know if that's still an issue, but you could run the Nero "BurnRights" tool to create a user group with, well, burn rights. http://www.nero.com/en/631940824944968.html
I cannot understand why MS leaves these directories writeable (by default) version after version after version.
Hm. Are they? I don't know about XP Home, but I'm on a freshly-installed XP Pro here and members of the "users" group do not have write access to %windir% or %programfiles% unless someone explicitly granted them that right. They mustn't even peek into another user's %userprofile%. Same with W2K I'd guess.
Then again new accounts (including the user created during installation) are administrators by default.
I'm not particularly surprised that players generally stick to their genetic sex -- assuming most people aren't transgendered and want to keep that aspect of themselves even when trying out a fantasy persona -- but why on earth he "got a lot of heat" for wondering about the reasons for that behaviour is unclear to me. I thought putting on new guises and/or doing stuff you couldn't do otherwise was the (or one) point of role-playing, genderism (...for lack of a better word) be damned.
(Parent post:) An avatar is a choice in representation. An avatar isn't your person, just a picture of your person. You don't like somebody photoshopping tits on your picture and circulating it, right? So why would you that to yourself?
It's never even remotely occured to me to picture some guy's female avatar as a crudely photoshop-breasted version of himself, for the same reasons that I wouldn't think of him as wearing chain mail or cybernetic implants or whatever else it is they do in games these days. It is after all either just a fucking game, or the person behind the mask actually has good reasons to role-play whatever they're role-playing, either way what does it matter what they have between their legs?
(But yeah, I gave up trying to process the rest of the article pretty soon)
That's bizarre that anybody would do that in this day & age. Maybe we're missing something.
Well, considering the desolate state of some newsgroups that's understandable; considering, on the other hand, the state of e-mail spam or privacy, I prefer not to leave a bot-readable address.
What are those? I've never heard of them.
The "On 23 Jul 2001 at 10:39:21 -0700, plover@plugh.org wrote in message (...)" stuff. Apparently, it's bad form to cite the subject line or the newsgroup or other too obvious things. Methinks they're taking the whole "we're mature, responsible internet users" thing a little too far, but I've only been on the internet for 6 or 7 or so years so what do I know.
Regarding the real name obsession, the de.* netiquette is a little more lenient with newsgroups dealing with "sensitive" topics though. And I for one have less trouble telling three fanciful nicknames apart than three Johns, Lindas or Daves.
My ISP attempts to block usenet posts with invalid e-mail addresses. Fortunately, you can still spam-scramble the pre-@ part all you want.
However, some of the more elitist parts of (German) usenet seem to despise not only top-posting and HTML but even easily human-parsable scrambled addresses, overly eloquent attribution lines, and incomplete or nick-names, unless the subject of the newsgroup itself warrants anonymity.
It sure keeps me out. (Maybe that's the point.)
I'd feel I'd be wasting my time if there wasn't much to share on a mental level. Not that physical attraction is bad or something, or that it precludes intelligence (or whatever other not-so-physical qualities). Still, I always found stupidity rather un-stimulating, in an intellectual as well as a romantic and even erotic sense.
Or maybe I'm just not as physical as most others are. Yup. I also like to deny (or refuse to believe) male/female are different species and making first contact a.k.a. getting laid is somehow badge-of-honour-worthy or something to redeem yourself from your shameful nerdiness with.
Never mind. Didn't have much to do with your post, I guess. I'm probably taking this way too seriously.
Yah. I'd sure like to...amplify my body (if it's in an aesthetically appealing way). But seeing how everything will likely be based on 'testure'/experimentation, I'll probably end up as the last surviving specimen of Homo Sapiens Technophobiensis or something. Can't anyone tell me how to boycott the modern world without getting offline?
"Trinity" is also the name of a synthesizer, as are "Morpheus", "303" and "101" (apart from being a "1984" reference). Seems like whatever your mind's occupied with, that's what you'll find in such "symbols".
Slashdot Mirror
It kinda boils down to "SCO announces/declares war on Open Source", or "SCO challenges Open Source's existence" or something; literally: "SCO announces struggle for existence to Open Source".
No need for parentheses, the Windows user/group manager is really called "lusermgr.msc".
Windows XP Services
-- briefly explains each service rather than just telling you what to turn off next. It's pretty lenient, though. Maybe you should set everything to "manual", try to do your usual things, and reactivate services as needed.
Also interesting:
XP from A-Z (fairly detailed, though not on services)
Well.
While I liked neither Turbo Pascal nor that weird cheapo-VM learn-Assembler-safely environment (or whatever the heck else it was) much, school did wean me off BASIC (which of course directly translated to "spaghetti code" at the time). With no money for books, no (public) internet and no way to access BBSes it was the only way that could have happened. That, I think, was a good thing, if somewhat frustrating because sprites and sound effects weren't on the syllabus.
These days, they probably teach Visual Basic.
That was on a "Gymnasium" (the type of German school that'll get you into uni). Now that the "other", more vocationally oriented types of school have computer classes as well, I suppose the main goal is to introduce students to the applications they'll be using to "earn" a "living". My mom's school has some sort of contract with Intel and MS that provides them with Excel, Powerpoint and Word and MS DTP and Imaging suites that are so clumsy I would rather go back to typewriters and cutting and pasting on the photocopier. So it's not like it really matters if it helps students learn anything or improves their "logic" or if they are interested in computers or programming in any way, it's about their future lives as office dwellers which is, uh, useful.
Maybe it does alleviate the "I don't understand computers" mindset, maybe it does help them obtain "basic computer skills", maybe actually more than the very narrow spectrum of bubblesort to binary tree stuff we covered and subsequently forgot about because we had no idea what it was good for, but "our" comp classes seemed to be aimed at people who really wanted to know something about computers. So we never composed a single spreadsheet and didn't use any "apps" whatsoever, besides the compiler, but anyone who took those classes probably didn't do so to learn anything "economically" useful.
Okay, so all of that was redundant, obvious and boring but I just got out of bed.
I don't know if that's still an issue, but you could run the Nero "BurnRights" tool to create a user group with, well, burn rights. http://www.nero.com/en/631940824944968.html
Hm. Are they? I don't know about XP Home, but I'm on a freshly-installed XP Pro here and members of the "users" group do not have write access to %windir% or %programfiles% unless someone explicitly granted them that right. They mustn't even peek into another user's %userprofile%. Same with W2K I'd guess.
Then again new accounts (including the user created during installation) are administrators by default.
The next person to say that gets to fix my Linux installation. (Don't worry. Kidding.)
(Parent post:) An avatar is a choice in representation. An avatar isn't your person, just a picture of your person. You don't like somebody photoshopping tits on your picture and circulating it, right? So why would you that to yourself?
It's never even remotely occured to me to picture some guy's female avatar as a crudely photoshop-breasted version of himself, for the same reasons that I wouldn't think of him as wearing chain mail or cybernetic implants or whatever else it is they do in games these days. It is after all either just a fucking game, or the person behind the mask actually has good reasons to role-play whatever they're role-playing, either way what does it matter what they have between their legs? (But yeah, I gave up trying to process the rest of the article pretty soon)
Well, considering the desolate state of some newsgroups that's understandable; considering, on the other hand, the state of e-mail spam or privacy, I prefer not to leave a bot-readable address.
What are those? I've never heard of them.
The "On 23 Jul 2001 at 10:39:21 -0700, plover@plugh.org wrote in message (...)" stuff. Apparently, it's bad form to cite the subject line or the newsgroup or other too obvious things. Methinks they're taking the whole "we're mature, responsible internet users" thing a little too far, but I've only been on the internet for 6 or 7 or so years so what do I know.
Regarding the real name obsession, the de.* netiquette is a little more lenient with newsgroups dealing with "sensitive" topics though. And I for one have less trouble telling three fanciful nicknames apart than three Johns, Lindas or Daves.
My ISP attempts to block usenet posts with invalid e-mail addresses. Fortunately, you can still spam-scramble the pre-@ part all you want. However, some of the more elitist parts of (German) usenet seem to despise not only top-posting and HTML but even easily human-parsable scrambled addresses, overly eloquent attribution lines, and incomplete or nick-names, unless the subject of the newsgroup itself warrants anonymity. It sure keeps me out. (Maybe that's the point.)
Z-Code, along with TADS and a couple other formats, is still used by enthusiasts today via the Inform compiler.
Check out some of the five-star games at Baf's Guide to the Interactive Fiction Archive if you're curious! A few of these are at least as good as Infocom's best efforts.
Heh. Yeah. It's been ten years or so that I last wanted to. (Ask my shrinks for the reasons. ...Actually, please don't.)
I'd feel I'd be wasting my time if there wasn't much to share on a mental level. Not that physical attraction is bad or something, or that it precludes intelligence (or whatever other not-so-physical qualities). Still, I always found stupidity rather un-stimulating, in an intellectual as well as a romantic and even erotic sense.
Or maybe I'm just not as physical as most others are. Yup. I also like to deny (or refuse to believe) male/female are different species and making first contact a.k.a. getting laid is somehow badge-of-honour-worthy or something to redeem yourself from your shameful nerdiness with.
Never mind. Didn't have much to do with your post, I guess. I'm probably taking this way too seriously.
Yah. I'd sure like to ...amplify my body (if it's in an aesthetically appealing way). But seeing how everything will likely be based on 'testure'/experimentation, I'll probably end up as the last surviving specimen of Homo Sapiens Technophobiensis or something. Can't anyone tell me how to boycott the modern world without getting offline?
"Trinity" is also the name of a synthesizer, as are "Morpheus", "303" and "101" (apart from being a "1984" reference). Seems like whatever your mind's occupied with, that's what you'll find in such "symbols".