I walk around with a phone, not in an armoured purse, not with 4 bodyguards around me but no.. *drumroll* just in my jeans pocket.
If I, for some alcoholic reason, bump phone-first into something less soft than say a baby's bottom, Id like the screen to survive, please.
And don't come to me about protective cases, this design is flawed from the beginning, and I don't want to have to peel of 4 layers if 'skin' before I can answer the phone or use more than 2% of the device's functions. Thanks.
I'm sure this will cause fighting but I'm at the treshold of installing a new system with linux. And my question is: what's the best distribution to use for a production server? Im part of a tiny company so this is small scale of course..
As I see it there are 3 distributions eligible here:
- Debian - I've used this before in multiple servers, I like the dpkg system, though even the 'testing' distro set is a bit dated.
- SUSE - New distro out (9.1 I think?) and I've heard that this one is a contender, though I know little about it. There are some issues with hmm XFS or JFS I think.
- Gentoo - we're migrating away from freeBSD which was just not up to date and functional enough for our needs, so the portage system sounds an interesting option.
You're right, and indeed I said 'unix' not 'linux'. The whole thing that is both the strenght and the weakness of the 'alternative to windows' is its very nature, the design Philosophy. Open Source most notably. The problem is, everyone has the right and the possibility to make their custom version of an application or even core structure, tweaked to their needs, and this is a Marketing disaster.
Open Source fights itself
If I promote Linux I would have no time to promote OpenBSD, even though in principle I have no reason to dislike openBSD, Im just more familiar with Linux.
The key thing that makes these systems competition to Windows is the way they are designed. Open the source completely thereby both creating a greater likelyhood of dumb mistakes being caught but on the flipside removing the whole 'security by obscurity' concept.
One thing Id like to re-emphasize is that there is Too Much Preaching to the Choir in our circles. I know why I like Linux (etc), Slashdot likes Linux but there are plenty of ignorant (not necessarily because of stupidity) middle-management types that need to be convinced by less formal and more 'shouty' methods.
Linux has far too few scantily clad ladies at the booths in conventions, and too many people who look like Andrew Tanenbaum
Checked though, Sharon with a Hitler moustache and a broken link. Though is it that inflammatory? It looks like a protest sign from a demonstrator.
That's what you get for posting quickly..
on
More From Tanenbaum
·
· Score: 1
Obviously I meant "Not that Tanenbaum isn't entitled to have his say.." up there.
We should set up better Open Source Marketing
on
More From Tanenbaum
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Trying not to troll here, but this document is not that news-worthy, is it? I mean -obviously- the whole Ken Brown thing is one big Microsoft Marketing Ploy (tm). If a manager 'falls for' (lets assume the Ken Brown book is purely Microsoft Marketing driven) the arguments of the book, he's probably not of the sort to go look for Andrew Tanenbaum's site. These people are the ones that fall for dicy logic (in this case, the "Argumentam ad Verecundiam", or argument from authority, fake or no, the institute sounds interesting)
On the same note, I doubt that very many in the 'Slashdot-like' internet community need extra convincing to believe that the book is Microsoft-driven, not fact-driven.
Therefore the only effect Tanenbaum (and Slashdot) gets from this document is self-defence and mutual knob-polishery. Not that Tanenbaum is entitled to have his say and defend his honor, but there you go.
What the Slashdot/unix/GNU/whatever community really should consider is how they can truely counter the 'lets convince the stupid masses' policy of Microsoft. (yeah I know I sound elitist, thats because I am..)
Seriously though, the more manager types that don't fall for Microsoft Marketing the better, IMHO. But how? I don't think slashdotting works, but perhaps we should set up a more Market-driven avocacy site for open source. Get The Facts! There are plenty of people out there who would have fun with doing some effective marketing here, and could do more for the community than program another random number generator;)
One of the things that strikes me most about Microsoft Marketing is that whatever Article (negative or no) I read online about Microsoft, 8 out of 10 times I see a big blinking Microsoft ad! I can't help but be impressed by that, even if I don't like it.
Just out of curiosity, why wouldn't one go for ext2 on root filing systems? Typically a root FS isnt that large anyway, I think I can live with a fsck for a few minutes.
All the extra overhead that journalled filing systems bring don't seem to be worth a little speedier error recovery..
Useful hints in another direction.. GPRS, webcams
on
Camera Phone Tips
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The author speaks of sending pictures through MMS, which is a VERY expensive service. With GPRS-enabled phones and ditto network, its quite likely you can 'email' your pictures to wherever you wish, at a fraction of the price of sending the picture in an MMS. (usually.. here in NL the imode prices art insane).
Also, with GPRS you can actually turn a few phones into a webcam. (yes seriously). How?
1/ get a phone running on Symbian OS (Nokia 3650, 6600, 7650 for example) and a GPRS provider so your phone can come 'online'
2/ get the 'RemoteS60' software (which is, as the name implies, a remote desktop controller)
3/ connect to the remote desktop with your PC and on your PC, run a program like 'luminosity softcam' that makes a webcam out of a screen area on your desktop.
presto.
Incidentally RemoteS60 now also comes with a 'webcam' feature but its not as useful as this.
Other than that the only tip I can give you is LIGHTING LIGHTING LIGHTING.. crappy mobile cams dont work in darker spots.
Phones I know to have decent camera's are again the nokia's, the Nec 400i and Panasonic S341i
Am I way off in lala-land if I humbly suggest that perhaps an application-dependent swap strategy should be implemented?
Perhaps Im describing a 'per application/library swappiness setting'
So people can specify things like:
-I want the webbrowsers main components to live in main memory forever, or at least only swapped out if a starting app really really needs it
-I want 'tar' and any of its data to have less (not 0, less) priority.
-This app I only run occasionally still has personal priority for me
-This game (on linux? eh..) has number one priority and is allowed to choose its own swapping desires..
I'm sure you're right, however my friend never touched itunes, nor does he have an ipod, so I doubt he ever turned off a warning before sync. It was configured like that per default.
Btw, Troll? Im the first one to give useful links to alternate software and get modded down? Sigh.
Crippled songs and DRM aren't my cup of tea. Obviously that isn't the only thing that iTunes does. Its main purpose as far as I could discern is to 'conveniently manage music'. As well as providing an iPod management interface.
However I hate management software. Especially USERFRIENDLY management software that 'knows what I want'. What I want is to copy music to my iPod, and listen to it. I for example didn't want my friend's itunes (mac) to sync his music database (4 songs) with my ipod (1800+ songs) i.e. delete all my songs.
Look, dont get me wrong, Im not a fan of copy protection. In fact, whenever I buy a PC game and notice that there is no copyprotection on there I get 'warm fuzzies' for the company that made it. Seriously, its a big plus for me. I applaud 'maturity' in this.
But given that the recording industry thinks it needs to copyprotect, then this way is a LOT better than those !@# systems that actually damage the audio and produce a disc that you cant (legally, and logically) call a Compact Disk.
Case in point:
- a CD with one of the previous copyprotection schemes on it is the equivalent of a CD scratched to the utmost limit. One tiny extra scratch (never drop it, you hear!) and those CDs would become either unplayable or audibly damaged. Every damage protection system the CD standard was originally designed with is defeated, even with an undamaged CD.
- Said CD will only be playable by the graces of good built-in error protection. And even then the result is an approximation of the 'original' audio.
- The CD wont play in 'finnicky' players. PC-player based devices (like mp3cd players), car stereos etc...
At least with this system you dont get something intrinsically damaged.
As far as I know the only type of media not wildly pirated (yes I have seen it happen) are the traditional paper media, like comics and regular books. With books I realise OCR'ing it would be the only viable option to spread it, and this is quite work-intensive, but scanning a comic is quite trivial.. any thoughts on why it isn't happening?
And if you found out a pirate 'honestly' believes in the rationale he/she will buy something if he truely considers it 'something worth having' (even if he already read it), and applies this principle to your works would you have a problem with this person?
- MODERATION. This is the key thing. Same as with the slashdot effect, you can't blame a 'posse' for sending on URL's for whichever reasons and effectively 'attacking' the site in question. Legit non-spam sites can't really prosecute I don't think, but it's wrong, so we need dependable humans to check each and every link, and/or make a (slashdot type) moderation thing that will review and moderate up real spam links to 'Engage, mr. Sulu' level.
- EASE OF USE. It needs to be easy to install
- LEGAL ISSUES. If you use a 'distributed client' I think it shouldn't send stuff to/dev/null since then it has no defendable purpose other than 'DDoS' which can cause badly informed people to think it's evil per definition and sue. On the other hand if you call it 'advertisement collection tool', make it cache say a day worth of.. and make a sparse system to actually view what's been collected..(like a local cache browser) Also I don't think spammers can 'sue' us since they sent the email to us (keyword is 'unsollicited') which makes the mail and its contents our property.
The primary problem really is how to get a dependable, defendable list of attack candidates without actually hiring 10 people to sort through all the spam each day. (unless someone rich cares to donate to the cause?:) )
The sad part of all this is that the RIAA seem to be working with a simple concept: "How to make more money for themselves".
And they are thereby perpetuating the vicious circle that is going on here. What happens is this:
1/ RIAA sees profits go down (heaven forbid they acknowledge that their products are discretionary buys, which are are always the first to decrease when the economy is in decline, like right now)
2/ RIAA does something (new) that gets them profit. Like raise CD prices. Or sue a few poor sods for $mucho (incidentally.. has any single artist EVER seen any of the money the RIAA made off this campaign so far?)
3/ People can't afford the music they want to listen to and look for other means.
And the consumer isnt the party that can break this cycle. Like the human will to live is pretty much ingrained, so is the determination to listen to music. I know for certain that if CD's would be (say) $10 or less (which is VERY viable given how much the entire CD process costs) I would buy a whole lot more of them.
Anyway to get a bit more on topic, I don't get this guy's scheme, he says we do the right thing i.e. pay for listening to music, how is it that we're infuriating the RIAA by paying them again?
Actually the Dreamcast 'mods' were from that point on unnecessary. Software piracy groups could just make their own boot loader and produce CD images that would boot on a clean dreamcast, period.
So no hacks, no copying fonts, no hdd swap or 007 savegame load, nothing needed to play the pirated game, ever.
Im sure this is redundant but I think I fully read this slashdot article and I didnt see this asked..
Hackers and linux afficionados are usually pretty quick on the uptake, did anyone already try this?
Ah but you have missed the -main- point which is why would people choose to upgrade NOW instead of the moment basically a new generation of games comes out where you really really need the last few % of speed your money can afford.
And Im sure YOUR purchase was justified, and indeed some people (esp. people who have no video card at all) will have good reasons not to wait.
Kinda reminiscent of the AMD vs Intel battle. AMD cpu's also manage to keep up with Intel (mostly)while intel throws a lot higher spec at things like dye, Mhz, onboard cache etc.
1/ Both cards can display current games at 2 quajillion fps, the winner beating the loser by 3fps
2/ The economy of well, the world, is in the dumps
3/ Quite a few cool and very demanding games (Doom3, Halflife) will come out Soon(tm) but Definately Not Yet(tm). (Personally I wouldnt be surprised if it would be @ christmas time
4/ At X-mas time (or whenever these demanding games start to come out) newer, faster cards will be out, and/or these cards will be cheaper.
5/ At X-mas time people will actually have some money set aside to buy rad new videocards for.. eh.. their girlfriends.
.. was (now its legislated a bit) that subscribing to SMS services like getting a SMS when your stock options change, when a new sex message has been generated for you (yes you can subscribe to that here) or when a new news headline happens, is that registring for it is easy enough. Just send "sex on" to number 6969, however turning these services off again was near-impossible. Unless you are creative enough to figure out that turning it off needed "no more sex please" to 9696
Oh and every message they send you is $1.50 a piece.
Anyway I can't really say I have ever received SMS spam, and I've had a GSM for 5+ years now. But just as with email spam, I have been conscious about not listing my number in phonebooks and not putting it into any casual 'please fill out this info' forms. I suggest you do the same:)
Actually according to This Slashdot Article pointing to This Slate Article making a sequel should be (but isnt, as far as corporations are concerned) legal..
Actually there IS something wrong with this.
Making a CD 'Copy Protected' this way is essentially the equivalent of digitally 'scratching' some or all areas of the CD -right- up to the point that another light scratch will make most CD players start to skip. Computers and computer-like devices will start to choke earlier (which is the point, I suppose) but 'real' audio players can't read the audio properly either and GUESS (often not exactly correctly) what the audio should be. This definately causes audible differences between the source recording and what will come out of your CD player. (high-frequency nuances will be the first to go since CD players do the audio equivalent of 'smoothing' or 'blurring')
And, as said, CD's have always been advertised as being (somewhat) scratch resistant, the media that will last a lifetime! Won't you be surprised when you leave your CD out-of-the-box on the table once and pick it up carelessly.
How Ironic that after a year the copy you nabbed off this week's napster clone and burned to CD could sound a lot better than an 'original'.
Anyway, copy protection clearly violates a few Dutch laws that state (essentially) that buying something is entering into a contract with fair expectations. Non-technical minded people do not expect a CD to be mutilated and not damage resistant when they buy them. Since that is what record companies do not tell you. I hope that a lot of people will take legal action here.
Most of those sites sport a large amount of banners, popups, unders, required free-ish logins (spam email lists anyone?)..
Using interesting 'sorta-copyrighted data' to lure people into your spider web of other *cough* services can generate revenue.
Although I don't think most sites can make an actual profit from this I can understand the rationale a little. What if (say) Lycos suddenly sports a ga-huge lyrics database? People will applaud them for that great service...
Slashdot Mirror
I always get so puzzled when people create a phone with a touchscreen (read: FRAGILE) and not make it clamshell design.
like the Motorola MPX
I walk around with a phone, not in an armoured purse, not with 4 bodyguards around me but no.. *drumroll* just in my jeans pocket.
If I, for some alcoholic reason, bump phone-first into something less soft than say a baby's bottom, Id like the screen to survive, please.
And don't come to me about protective cases, this design is flawed from the beginning, and I don't want to have to peel of 4 layers if 'skin' before I can answer the phone or use more than 2% of the device's functions. Thanks.
It weighs 500pounds and smelled of elderberries?
I'm sure this will cause fighting but I'm at the treshold of installing a new system with linux. And my question is: what's the best distribution to use for a production server? Im part of a tiny company so this is small scale of course..
As I see it there are 3 distributions eligible here:
- Debian - I've used this before in multiple servers, I like the dpkg system, though even the 'testing' distro set is a bit dated.
- SUSE - New distro out (9.1 I think?) and I've heard that this one is a contender, though I know little about it. There are some issues with hmm XFS or JFS I think.
- Gentoo - we're migrating away from freeBSD which was just not up to date and functional enough for our needs, so the portage system sounds an interesting option.
You're right, and indeed I said 'unix' not 'linux'. The whole thing that is both the strenght and the weakness of the 'alternative to windows' is its very nature, the design Philosophy. Open Source most notably. The problem is, everyone has the right and the possibility to make their custom version of an application or even core structure, tweaked to their needs, and this is a Marketing disaster.
Open Source fights itself
If I promote Linux I would have no time to promote OpenBSD, even though in principle I have no reason to dislike openBSD, Im just more familiar with Linux.
The key thing that makes these systems competition to Windows is the way they are designed. Open the source completely thereby both creating a greater likelyhood of dumb mistakes being caught but on the flipside removing the whole 'security by obscurity' concept.
One thing Id like to re-emphasize is that there is Too Much Preaching to the Choir in our circles. I know why I like Linux (etc), Slashdot likes Linux but there are plenty of ignorant (not necessarily because of stupidity) middle-management types that need to be convinced by less formal and more 'shouty' methods.
Linux has far too few scantily clad ladies at the booths in conventions, and too many people who look like Andrew Tanenbaum
The URL is Here i.e. without the space.
Checked though, Sharon with a Hitler moustache and a broken link. Though is it that inflammatory? It looks like a protest sign from a demonstrator.
Obviously I meant "Not that Tanenbaum isn't entitled to have his say.." up there.
On the same note, I doubt that very many in the 'Slashdot-like' internet community need extra convincing to believe that the book is Microsoft-driven, not fact-driven.
Therefore the only effect Tanenbaum (and Slashdot) gets from this document is self-defence and mutual knob-polishery. Not that Tanenbaum is entitled to have his say and defend his honor, but there you go.
What the Slashdot/unix/GNU/whatever community really should consider is how they can truely counter the 'lets convince the stupid masses' policy of Microsoft. (yeah I know I sound elitist, thats because I am..)
Seriously though, the more manager types that don't fall for Microsoft Marketing the better, IMHO. But how? I don't think slashdotting works, but perhaps we should set up a more Market-driven avocacy site for open source. Get The Facts! There are plenty of people out there who would have fun with doing some effective marketing here, and could do more for the community than program another random number generator ;)
One of the things that strikes me most about Microsoft Marketing is that whatever Article (negative or no) I read online about Microsoft, 8 out of 10 times I see a big blinking Microsoft ad! I can't help but be impressed by that, even if I don't like it.
Just out of curiosity, why wouldn't one go for ext2 on root filing systems? Typically a root FS isnt that large anyway, I think I can live with a fsck for a few minutes.
All the extra overhead that journalled filing systems bring don't seem to be worth a little speedier error recovery..
The author speaks of sending pictures through MMS, which is a VERY expensive service. With GPRS-enabled phones and ditto network, its quite likely you can 'email' your pictures to wherever you wish, at a fraction of the price of sending the picture in an MMS. (usually.. here in NL the imode prices art insane).
Also, with GPRS you can actually turn a few phones into a webcam. (yes seriously). How?
1/ get a phone running on Symbian OS (Nokia 3650, 6600, 7650 for example) and a GPRS provider so your phone can come 'online'
2/ get the 'RemoteS60' software (which is, as the name implies, a remote desktop controller)
3/ connect to the remote desktop with your PC and on your PC, run a program like 'luminosity softcam' that makes a webcam out of a screen area on your desktop.
presto.
Incidentally RemoteS60 now also comes with a 'webcam' feature but its not as useful as this.
Other than that the only tip I can give you is LIGHTING LIGHTING LIGHTING.. crappy mobile cams dont work in darker spots.
Phones I know to have decent camera's are again the nokia's, the Nec 400i and Panasonic S341i
Am I way off in lala-land if I humbly suggest that perhaps an application-dependent swap strategy should be implemented?
Perhaps Im describing a 'per application/library swappiness setting'
So people can specify things like:
-I want the webbrowsers main components to live in main memory forever, or at least only swapped out if a starting app really really needs it
-I want 'tar' and any of its data to have less (not 0, less) priority.
-This app I only run occasionally still has personal priority for me
-This game (on linux? eh..) has number one priority and is allowed to choose its own swapping desires..
I'm sure you're right, however my friend never touched itunes, nor does he have an ipod, so I doubt he ever turned off a warning before sync. It was configured like that per default.
Btw, Troll? Im the first one to give useful links to alternate software and get modded down? Sigh.
Crippled songs and DRM aren't my cup of tea. Obviously that isn't the only thing that iTunes does. Its main purpose as far as I could discern is to 'conveniently manage music'. As well as providing an iPod management interface.
However I hate management software. Especially USERFRIENDLY management software that 'knows what I want'. What I want is to copy music to my iPod, and listen to it. I for example didn't want my friend's itunes (mac) to sync his music database (4 songs) with my ipod (1800+ songs) i.e. delete all my songs.
If you just want to send music to your iPod, use:
ephpod (latest version 2.73), freeware, supports AAC/MP4
Sveta Portable Audio, shareware, encodes AAC/MP4 as well, $19
Plus, both now have features that do not render the music files on your ipod inaccessible(hidden dir and renamed) in normal firewire harddisk mode.
Look, dont get me wrong, Im not a fan of copy protection. In fact, whenever I buy a PC game and notice that there is no copyprotection on there I get 'warm fuzzies' for the company that made it. Seriously, its a big plus for me. I applaud 'maturity' in this.
But given that the recording industry thinks it needs to copyprotect, then this way is a LOT better than those !@# systems that actually damage the audio and produce a disc that you cant (legally, and logically) call a Compact Disk.
Case in point:
- a CD with one of the previous copyprotection schemes on it is the equivalent of a CD scratched to the utmost limit. One tiny extra scratch (never drop it, you hear!) and those CDs would become either unplayable or audibly damaged. Every damage protection system the CD standard was originally designed with is defeated, even with an undamaged CD.
- Said CD will only be playable by the graces of good built-in error protection. And even then the result is an approximation of the 'original' audio.
- The CD wont play in 'finnicky' players. PC-player based devices (like mp3cd players), car stereos etc...
At least with this system you dont get something intrinsically damaged.
Neil,
As far as I know the only type of media not wildly pirated (yes I have seen it happen) are the traditional paper media, like comics and regular books. With books I realise OCR'ing it would be the only viable option to spread it, and this is quite work-intensive, but scanning a comic is quite trivial.. any thoughts on why it isn't happening?
And if you found out a pirate 'honestly' believes in the rationale he/she will buy something if he truely considers it 'something worth having' (even if he already read it), and applies this principle to your works would you have a problem with this person?
Let's see here..
/dev/null since then it has no defendable purpose other than 'DDoS' which can cause badly informed people to think it's evil per definition and sue. On the other hand if you call it 'advertisement collection tool', make it cache say a day worth of.. and make a sparse system to actually view what's been collected..(like a local cache browser)
:) )
- MODERATION. This is the key thing. Same as with the slashdot effect, you can't blame a 'posse' for sending on URL's for whichever reasons and effectively 'attacking' the site in question. Legit non-spam sites can't really prosecute I don't think, but it's wrong, so we need dependable humans to check each and every link, and/or make a (slashdot type) moderation thing that will review and moderate up real spam links to 'Engage, mr. Sulu' level.
- EASE OF USE. It needs to be easy to install
- LEGAL ISSUES. If you use a 'distributed client' I think it shouldn't send stuff to
Also I don't think spammers can 'sue' us since they sent the email to us (keyword is 'unsollicited') which makes the mail and its contents our property.
The primary problem really is how to get a dependable, defendable list of attack candidates without actually hiring 10 people to sort through all the spam each day. (unless someone rich cares to donate to the cause?
The sad part of all this is that the RIAA seem to be working with a simple concept: "How to make more money for themselves".
And they are thereby perpetuating the vicious circle that is going on here. What happens is this:
1/ RIAA sees profits go down (heaven forbid they acknowledge that their products are discretionary buys, which are are always the first to decrease when the economy is in decline, like right now)
2/ RIAA does something (new) that gets them profit. Like raise CD prices. Or sue a few poor sods for $mucho (incidentally.. has any single artist EVER seen any of the money the RIAA made off this campaign so far?)
3/ People can't afford the music they want to listen to and look for other means.
And the consumer isnt the party that can break this cycle. Like the human will to live is pretty much ingrained, so is the determination to listen to music. I know for certain that if CD's would be (say) $10 or less (which is VERY viable given how much the entire CD process costs) I would buy a whole lot more of them.
Anyway to get a bit more on topic, I don't get this guy's scheme, he says we do the right thing i.e. pay for listening to music, how is it that we're infuriating the RIAA by paying them again?
Actually the Dreamcast 'mods' were from that point on unnecessary. Software piracy groups could just make their own boot loader and produce CD images that would boot on a clean dreamcast, period.
So no hacks, no copying fonts, no hdd swap or 007 savegame load, nothing needed to play the pirated game, ever.
Im sure this is redundant but I think I fully read this slashdot article and I didnt see this asked.. Hackers and linux afficionados are usually pretty quick on the uptake, did anyone already try this?
Ah but you have missed the -main- point which is why would people choose to upgrade NOW instead of the moment basically a new generation of games comes out where you really really need the last few % of speed your money can afford.
And Im sure YOUR purchase was justified, and indeed some people (esp. people who have no video card at all) will have good reasons not to wait.
Kinda reminiscent of the AMD vs Intel battle. AMD cpu's also manage to keep up with Intel (mostly)while intel throws a lot higher spec at things like dye, Mhz, onboard cache etc.
Let's see now.
:)
1/ Both cards can display current games at 2 quajillion fps, the winner beating the loser by 3fps
2/ The economy of well, the world, is in the dumps
3/ Quite a few cool and very demanding games (Doom3, Halflife) will come out Soon(tm) but Definately Not Yet(tm). (Personally I wouldnt be surprised if it would be @ christmas time
4/ At X-mas time (or whenever these demanding games start to come out) newer, faster cards will be out, and/or these cards will be cheaper.
5/ At X-mas time people will actually have some money set aside to buy rad new videocards for.. eh.. their girlfriends.
So who would buy this?
(No, I haven't actually -read- the article
.. was (now its legislated a bit) that subscribing to SMS services like getting a SMS when your stock options change, when a new sex message has been generated for you (yes you can subscribe to that here) or when a new news headline happens, is that registring for it is easy enough. Just send "sex on" to number 6969, however turning these services off again was near-impossible. Unless you are creative enough to figure out that turning it off needed "no more sex please" to 9696
:)
Oh and every message they send you is $1.50 a piece.
Anyway I can't really say I have ever received SMS spam, and I've had a GSM for 5+ years now. But just as with email spam, I have been conscious about not listing my number in phonebooks and not putting it into any casual 'please fill out this info' forms. I suggest you do the same
Actually according to This Slashdot Article pointing to This Slate Article making a sequel should be (but isnt, as far as corporations are concerned) legal..
Actually there IS something wrong with this. Making a CD 'Copy Protected' this way is essentially the equivalent of digitally 'scratching' some or all areas of the CD -right- up to the point that another light scratch will make most CD players start to skip. Computers and computer-like devices will start to choke earlier (which is the point, I suppose) but 'real' audio players can't read the audio properly either and GUESS (often not exactly correctly) what the audio should be. This definately causes audible differences between the source recording and what will come out of your CD player. (high-frequency nuances will be the first to go since CD players do the audio equivalent of 'smoothing' or 'blurring') And, as said, CD's have always been advertised as being (somewhat) scratch resistant, the media that will last a lifetime! Won't you be surprised when you leave your CD out-of-the-box on the table once and pick it up carelessly. How Ironic that after a year the copy you nabbed off this week's napster clone and burned to CD could sound a lot better than an 'original'. Anyway, copy protection clearly violates a few Dutch laws that state (essentially) that buying something is entering into a contract with fair expectations. Non-technical minded people do not expect a CD to be mutilated and not damage resistant when they buy them. Since that is what record companies do not tell you. I hope that a lot of people will take legal action here.
Most of those sites sport a large amount of banners, popups, unders, required free-ish logins (spam email lists anyone?).. Using interesting 'sorta-copyrighted data' to lure people into your spider web of other *cough* services can generate revenue. Although I don't think most sites can make an actual profit from this I can understand the rationale a little. What if (say) Lycos suddenly sports a ga-huge lyrics database? People will applaud them for that great service...