Starting shortly after 12/16 when the bill was signed the amount of spam I received on an older account roughly doubled. I wasn't too surprised, figured a few spammers were desperately trying to send out as much spam as possible before 1/1.
Well, after 1/1 the amount of spam I receive on that account went up again. Right now it's about triple the amount before 12/16, and quickly pushing on four times it. I'm also seeing more efforts at E-mail guessing (sending E-mails to every possible combination of account names at a given host). These are pretty obvious when they show up on an account that's never been used, and has never (and still isn't) listed anywhere on the Internet (or otherwise).
From where I'm sitting, looks like the spammers are having a field day, and the only thing that's changed is the problem got worse. Thanks congress, remind me to vote against all incumbents next election.
Thanks for the support AC, nice to know not everyone ignores the big picture.:)
Some fresh-from-college intern who's working in like, the HR department; should he/she feel the public outrage and anger of Enron?
Or better (and more likely I'd suspect) that same intern is new and gets handed a box of papers and told to shred them. Being a lowly intern would you look through them and say "Hey, this is evidence, I can't do this!" or just start feeding the papers through the shredder while trying not to fall asleep? I suspect most everyone in that situation would just do what they were told and not even think about questioning, after all, why would someone tell you to do something illegal?
I don't know of the seriousness of kidney stones (other than they hurt pretty damn bad), so I'm not going to comment.
Saying a kidney stone hurts pretty damn bad is like saying a sink hole that swallowed a house is a pothole. Many people who have them pass out from the pain in fact. So trust me, it's a major medical condition, and it's chronic, it's not going anywhere. Besides that though, the fact is I'm likely to have around 6 ER visits this year as well. With each costing well over $1000 in billed charges, what I pay for a health insurance premium looks like a bargain. Not to mention I save about $500 a month on my prescriptions alone, which is more than my premium in a month. It's certainly not something I can do without. (Although I fervently wish the premium was cheaper until I can find work in my field that pays decent again.)
That's your fault for taking a bad loan leaving you in this situation. Many people take the bus or hitchhike/bike to work if they live in a rural area. Lesson is that you should not buy what you can't afford. You control where you live, and thus your commute length. Insurance woes are also your poor planning. Just because you can afford a vehicle's price tag doesn't mean you can afford the vehicle (see also, expensive to upkeep).
You know, jumping in, criticizing and making assumptions when you know nothing about the situation isn't a good idea. I bought it used, and had to as my last car (a 1994 Geo Metro that I also bought used) was on its last legs. Quite honestly, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get the damn thing to the car lot, the alternator on it died again on the way there, the 4th one in a row to do so. It also had about 170,000 miles on it. At the time I had a job in my field (IT) that paid well ($46k a year). The car was certainly NOT unaffordable at the time I purchased it. Of coruse 6 months later I lost my job thanks to the economy. There was no real warning, the only signs something was coming happened a month before I lost it.
I know I'll definitely pass on advice from you when you think hitchiking (which can quite literally get you killed) is a valid alternative to keeping a car. And for the record, I do live in a rural area (not like all farms and all, but rural by big city standards). There is no bus service, there's about one whole taxi service in the whole county (And using a taxi each day to and from would likely cost more than the car payment + insurance each month). Biking to work is a bit out of the question because of the distance. Since I'm living with my folks to cut costs down, moving closer is not an option. And, quite frankly, neither is doing without a car.
No, but you can get food for damn cheap. A Tontino's pizza costs all of $1.50 , which is a pretty good price for a meal. There is a difference between not eating and not being able to go out to restraunts or shoping at World Foods/Central Market (probably a bit of an exaggeration, but I think the point is clear)
Totino's pizzas are $.98 here, I eat them quite regularly. I also buy huge bags of fish sticks for $5 that I get about 6-7 meals out of. To give them some taste, I buy a bottle of generic barbecue sauce (at $.77). One bottle lasts for about 2 bags. I also eat peanut butter sandwiches, I forget the cost of the peanut butter, but I'm sure we can all agree it's cheap unless you try to get a gourmet brand (which I don't). For bread, I but Wal-mart's store brand for a total $.50 a loaf. In addition I'll make a goulash-type dish. For that I need ground beef (I buy huge family packs to save on the per-pound price, bag them up and freeze them), then elbow macaroni ($.99 a box for generic, one box per meal made) and tomato soup ($.89 a can for generic, one per meal) along with some seasoning. (I buy that generic too.). Now, seeing as I can barely afford to keep myself fed eating that cheaply, do you see any room to cut back? Quite frankly I don't, unless I went to all
Define fucking "underpaid". Most fucking IT people I know make > $10/hour, and they fucking bitch relentlessly about how they live paycheck to paycheck. Guess what, pal? At $10/hour, they're making MORE MONEY than a good majority of the citizens in this country. NO FUCKING SHIT. I used to be there, making minimum wage, living in a shit-hole, eating ramen and rice. But you know what? If it came to that or being a fucking coward because my Employer was an unethical piece of shit and I knew it, I'll be back to ramen. YOU choose your lifestyle. When you realize that a stupid movie called "Fight Club" was right on several points (you are not what you own, you are not your string-bean couch, you are not what's in y our wallet) and learn to live on LESS (and you'll find you appreciate those things even more), then you don't have to worry about living "paycheck to paycheck" because you've reduced your living expenses considerably. Do you really need that $400 SUV out in the driveway? Do you really need that 1600 sq ft house with the 1 acre yard? No, you don't.
Do I need that health insurance under Cobra that's costing me $400+ a month? Can I afford to lose it since I have recurrent kidney stone disease and average 6+ ER visits a year? Can I afford to lose the used Toyota Camry with nearly 100,000 miles on it I bought used and have 3 more years on the loan? Can I afford to lose the car insurance that has to be full coverage until said loan is paid off? Can I afford to stop eating?
Get real. I'm trying to fathom how you didn't get modded down as a troll. You pathetic attempt to claim working for a company like SCO means you must be making so much you have useless luxuries that you're unwilling to get rid of so you can leave and then hunt for another job is baseless at best, trolling at worst. Maybe they do make $10+ an hour, but what if the cost of living where SCO is phsyically based is 10 times higher than where you live? Then that $10 an hour is worthless, and they're probrably just scrapping by to pay for their necessities.
Imagine this stupid scenario: You find out your company is doing business selling 12 year old little boys and girls into the sex trade. You need your paycheck. Are you such a fucking coward that you'll stay, just so you can keep earning a paycheck? What's that? You don't care? Fuck you. You're a fucking coward.
Totally pathetic comparison, but in this you're the coward, since you'd just leave. I'd alert the authorities, make sure the business didn't know, and cooperate with them to help them get the evidence they needed to take them down. That's pretty heroic. Running away with your tail between your legs and leaving the problem behind is the worst kind of cowardice. What, you don't care enough to try to stop the crime? You just don't want to be associated? To quote your unelequont prose "Fuck you." If you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
And since your snide comparison brought the issue up, how do you, or any of us, know that some of those current SCO employees aren't inside moles gathering info for the FBI, the SEC, or hell, even IBM, Redhat or Novell? We don't. Unless you're them, you'll never know the truth for sure, so get off your high hobby horse and take some Prozac, sounds like you need it.
Insightful ? Rubbish! The poster's just another keyboard monkey diving in with an irrelevant and meaningless point of view. Yeah go ahead, mod this as a troll, I have spare Karma gushing out of my arse.
You find the fact that those of us in the OSS movement are having to defend ourselves from false claims while SCO hides behind the legal system and makes a total mockery of everything in the constitution rubbish? Sheeze, how sad. Personally I do think you're just trolling in this case, forget your meds this morning or something?
Just because you don't agree with something doesn't make it rubbish. And yeah, you have karma "gushing out your arse", but you're abusing it too. Using your karma bonus modifer on what you posted was just stupid. You'll notice I'm not using mine in my reply, I actually respect the karma system on here.
Before I start I should say I absolutely condemn the DDoS against SCO, if there really is one happening.
I find it quite sad that our community has to loudly distance itself from supposed DDoS attacks and such against SCO while SCO makes a total mockery of the legal system and justice in general with their current campaign. For those who may not have noticed some earlier posts, discussion on Groklaw has brought up the possibility that this isn't a DDoS, but either just idiotic network admins on SCO's part, or perhaps even an intentional takedown to *cough* allow for a nice bit of publicity on their part. Whatever the true case is (and I'm not advocating any as the real one, I'll leave that for others to decide), SCO has certainly scored some nice negative publicity towards the OSS crowd, even if the DDoS is real and the attackers have nothing to do with OSS.
IIRC there was an earlier supposed DDoS against SCO's servers that turned out to be that the servers were just down.
In any case, it's nice to see the/. crowd (as always) advocating fair play and not using vigilante justice. Too bad SCO doesn't seem to believe in the fair play bit.
Having someone big and respected like the NWS using Linux and announcing it publically should help Linux's respectability quotient in the US a lot. I'm glad to see this happening, both because it increases Linux's usage out there, and because it'll save us money (IIRC, the NWS is taxpayer funded), and probably lead to more accurate forecasts. It seems every time the computers they use get faster/more powerful, the forecasts get better.:)
You are right, in retrospect I can see how that comment could be percieved as a troll, however don't be swayed into any ideological thinking with regards to Sun. Sun does what is best for Sun, damn the consequences.
No worries there, I definitely know that. I'm not a huge Sun fan. (I think Java is 99% crap, at least for online apps, it always crashes something on me.) But I think their current push may have nice benefits for Linux and OSS in general, whether that's Sun's intentions or not. (And it's probably not.:)
Did you catch the article where Sun's trying to convince Wal-mart to go with Java Desktop for their rumored Wal-mart branded PCs to come out next year? While I'd prefer to see something besides Sun's product on them, that'd be a lovely slap in the face to Microsoft. I wonder how Billy boy would react.:)
As opposed to consoles, where there can still be huge bugs get through and you can't patch them?
When it happens, yeah it sucks, but not nearly as many games end up released on consoles with show-stopped bugs mainly because of the extra testing the console maker puts them through.
With the ones that are generally real stinkers (the last Lara Croft anyone?) the news gets out pretty quick, and they don't sell as well.
In a perfect world, games would be released working 99% right. Patches would only be needed to fix those weird problems that occur with strange hardware configs noone would think to test, or they'd add features/content. Right now there's way too much of a "get it out by Christmas, who cares if it actually works!" mentality with many companies.:(
Seriously, other than supporting SCO, what kind of commitment have you seen from Sun with regards to Linux?
Obviously you labeled yourself the troll with this simple statement. Sun's not done anything to support SCO. I do believe they offered indemification to their linux customers, but that wasn't to support SCO, it was to reassure their customers.
If you've missed all the stories (and several on/.) about Sun's new Java Desktop offering that runs on Linux, and their push that includes Linux on the desktop with Open Office (IIRC, might be the other) included for about $100 a seat, including support, then you're apparently blind.
Maybe IBM, Redhat and SuSE have done more for Linux so far, but Sun's new offerings with their full support backing will help convince businesses to accept Linux as serious alternative to MS products. That alone is a HUGE boost to Linux in all shapes, forms and fashions.
You may already know about it, but try Rhapsody for PS1 if you haven't. It's by the same Japanese company (and interestingly enough, the same US company localized it), Nippon Ichi. It's very wacky and fun. Only game I know of where wearing a huge teddy-bear like contest figures greatly in the story.:) Unfortunately the even funnier sequel (Little Princess) didn't make it over to the US. Knowledge of Japanese is a definite must to understanding it too. I was fortunate enough to have a friend translate for me as I played it.:)
The problem with PCs is that there are too many combinations and hence harder to test. Everything might be fine on the test system but when you change the video card, the fog effect all of a sudden is messed up (because some old cards do it differently). Or the sound effects are lagging because some sound cards implement echoing differently. And so on.
I won't contest this, and in fact these type of bugs don't terribly bother me. I realize that the only way all these things will show up is when the code gets into the hands of enough people.:)
What I was referring too, and should have made clearer, are the show-stopper bugs that occur on all system configurations and should never have made it out of development. This probably isn't the finest example out there (since we all know it went through development hell), but you couldn't even finish Daikatana as it was released. That's just pathetic. Those are the type of things that pushed me away from PC games for good.
Are we at a point where the gaming masses have become so retarded as to ensure that only copycat FPS, RTS and sports games ever get produced? Plots, characters, atmosphere, it's all gone, but who gives a shit. As long as we can all get 90 fps in Doom3 and relive our favorite Monday Night Football moments, the industry'll be alright.
The truly sad part is the rabid fanboys of FPSs who obsess over frame rates and ever tiny detail are a great minority of gamers. It's very interesting to look at the top sales charts for any given month. Generally 1-3 of the top 20 will be FPS games, the rest aren't. In fact, games with little hardcore gamer appeal consistently take up top spots. (The Sims & their 100 expansion packs for instance.) Many game companies (this means you Interplay) apparently can't see the truth out there and shoot for the hardcore audience. The problem is the real money is in pleasing the general audience.
Before I'm skewered for that statement, let me point out that you don't have to dumb down a game to make it appealing to both hard core and casual gamers. A game with a great engrossing story, decent graphics (they don't have to be the world's best) and a serious fun value (something a lot of games forget about) will please nearly everyone. Sure the frame-rate crowd will complain about the lack of quantum texturing or some such crap, but most people will be happy with it and it'll sale really well.
The other unfortunate thing is game companies (again, this means you Interplay) that seem to think PC Gaming is dead, when nothing could be further from the truth. Right now PCs are capable of better graphics than any of the current consoles, and the next crop of consoles is at best a year off (if rumors of Nintendo announcing a new console at E3 next year are true). Hell, now's the perfect time to push PC gaming since current consoles are towards the end of their life cycle.
That being said though, I've ended up a console gamer because of the lack of quality control in PC games. (aka the ship it then patch it approach.) I got sick of finding out I'd have to download huge patches to make a game playable, or need to update to fix a horrid glitch and invalidate my save games in the process. No thanks, I'll stick to consoles till game publishers figure out that consumers want a game that works out of the box. Yes I know that not all console games are perfect, but the extra testing they go through from the console maker as well as from the company making them help out a lot.
I just worry that with the next generation of consoles all likely coming with hard drives and built-in Internet connectivity that publishers will move the ship then patch mentality over to consoles too. If that happens, I'm afraid video gaming as a whole will suffer in ways that'll be pitiful, and potentially non-recoverable from.
They...they weren't really working of Fallout 3 were they? Because... if they were... and it's...it's 'shelved'... I think I might just... must find tall building... bridge... industrial dough mixer... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Go for the dough mixer, and leave a suicide note. It'll get more press coverage that way.;) Maybe it'll shame Interplay into changing their minds.
Perhaps Interplay simply doesn't percieve a value in role-playing games like Fallout and Baldurs Gate and the likes on the consoles of the future. Games with writing are to be frowned upon in console-land, as you can't read text quite as nicely on a TV set. This falls nicely into my growing theory that consoles are causing the end of the brain era of gaming, and sending us back into pac-man twitch land.
Not all companies are going this route. While I must admit I really enjoyed games like Final Fantasy X and Xenosaga that were almost completely voice acted (and voice acted well, not with the company's janitors and secretaries), games like Disgaea have a mixture, but the story's primarily given to you through text. It is interesting to note that the company who made Disgaea is from Japan though, perhaps they still believe gamers are smart enough to know how to read.
All it states in the quote is that Interplay has cut the BIS team. The rest of the quote is nothing but bashing Interplay
It's there in the bashing, apparently Interplay has decided the future is Console only, and is getting out of the PC game biz, at least as far as Black Isle Studio games are concerned.
Well, let me correct that. Everyone in the world but in the United States. Why is it that the US companies and organizations (starting with the ^$!* Universities!) are the only ones blind to the potential of FOSS (and the interaction between FOSS and a RAIS (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Students) hacking on it!), or at least to the fact that Microsoft will give them a discount if they at least look at the competition?
I think a lot of it has had to do with lack of support contracts or big company backing. That, of course, has changed with Sun's new offering. I believe we'll start hearing about US companies and organizations looking much more seriously at Linux now, but they'll probably get it from Sun. The federal government will probably be the longest holdout in the US I'm afraid, although I can't quantify why I feel that way.
It's easy to say "don't open obvious spam at all" and "never open an attachment" and "never click on a URL in an email."
Personally, my middle-aged brain only functions at about a four-nines reliability level, meaning that if I deal with thirty pieces of email a day, about once a year I'll accidentally do something STUPID.
While I suspect you're being a tad tounge-in-cheek here, the fact is most people who know what to look for and try to be cautious don't have problems with viruses/worms. Even for an age-addled mind, certain things set off alarm bells (and Free Porn HERE!!! is certainly a 5-alarmer) and you pay more attention before you act on it. Hey, I screw up from time to time and send incomplete E-mails etc too.
You can also train at least some people what to watch for. My Mother uses E-mail quite a bit, and I'm probably her only security-conscious E-mail acquaintance. Still, I've taught her what to watch for, and armed her with a great client (The Bat! which default to high security), and she does great. In fact there's been at least 2 occasions so far where she did get a virus E-mail, and she asked me about it to be sure, but she had already come to the conclusion that it was bad.
The real problem isn't occasionally goof ups, it's the people out there that seem to be so stupid that if you put up a sign at a busy intersection saying "Free Porn, just jump in front of a moving car!" the death toll would be astronomical that day. I've seen people that have clicked on things that no one in the right (or hell, even wrong) mind could _NOT_ know was a virus, but yeah they clicked it, and then wonder why everything's broken.
There are plenty of other special interest groups working on that too. Software/method patents, copyrights, DRM/Paladium/Longhorn, and the looming H.R.3261 will all work together to ensure that the internet becomes nothing more than the consumer equivelent of an interactive-television commercial.
I don't think this will happen, because it's been tried before (to some extent) and failed miserably. Remember "push technology"? Remember how it was the next big thing (tm) that everyone was going on about?
For those that don't remember, push technology was meant to turn your web browser into something non-interactive. (Ok, that wasn't the official idea, but it was the outcome.) You'd subscribe to a site, or a channel (now you know where those channels in IE come from), and you'd get great new content pushed to your desktop! Why Microsoft thought this was so great, that they changed Windows to allow you to have an "active desktop". You could have a webpage for your desktop, and it'd push nifty new stuff to you all day long!
Only one problem, no one wanted it. Very few people used it, most spent their time fighting Win98 to get rid of the damn active desktop crap and decrying any attempt to push anything down their throats. I did a survey for PC World (or PC Magazine) online where I even got quoted in their article about the results, they used me as the sum up, where I said "If I wanted junk shoved down my throat, I'd just watch TV." And that's exactly what push technology was aiming for. It bombed out bigtime.
People don't get on the Internet to have crap shoved down their throats, they get that from TV all the time, they want something different. And if the media companies want to try and change the Internet to be that way, they'll find that suddenly no one wants their offerings on it. Eventually they'll have to realize that the basic problem is their content is crap, but I doubt it'll be anytime soon.
And as far as destroying the Internet? I'm afraid that spammers are doing more to destroy it than any bills/etc. can. When E-mail works, even your average joe computer user will raise holy cain if the government tries to change things to where they can't use it how they like anymore. If spammers run off all the average joes, then there goes our last chance of getting our elected representatives attention away from the special interests.
... this is what their records and statistics may claim. And as we all know the RIAA is a bastion of honesty, forthrightness and righteousness.
Surely the rise in sales couldn't have been due to the economy (at least supposedly) recovering now could it? Just like all those drops in sales the last few years couldn't have been due to the economy being in the dumps! Gotta be those dirty pirates, and reforming pirates doing it all. Why the US economy is only there for shits and giggles. (At least if you believe the RIAA.)
The one thing I came to like the most when I visited Japan on vacation a few years ago was the train service. Not having a car truly didn't feel like a loss when you could easily hop on a train and be where you wanted faster than you could drive there. (Especially in Tokyo.)
I just wish the US would invest in more passenger trains. They don't have to be super fast (like the one in this article), but imagine how much fuel/electricity we could save if we could all easily commute by train. And hey, you can always sleep on the train on the way to work, something you can't do while driving. (Or rather, something you shouldn't do, I'm sure someone's tried it.)
Bet those passengers were scared out of their pants. With it flying that fast, I'd be...if the thing derailed, you'd be really screwed.
I've ridden some of the current shinkasens, and you really don't notice. It's a very smooth ride, and you feel very safe. The best I can compare it to is flying on an airplane, only quieter and smoother.
I used to be a sysadmin for an Electrical and Computer Engineering dept. at a large university a few years back. I found that students used IM a lot, and that a large amount of the time they were using it to collaborate with friends who were home, or in another lab etc. So there is some truth to this.
That being said though, the main problem I had with IM was the security problems with service-provided clients (AIM, ICQ, Etc.) and the problems with multi-user windows environments and user privacy for the universal clients (Trillian, etc.). We ended up having to officially ban IM because of these issues. To be honest, the biggest concern was the privacy issues. We found quickly that most of the IM clients wouldn't behave properly for a non-privledged domain user. (Ironically, MSN flat out wouldn't work at all unless you had admin privledges.) We could get Trillian to work under all user accounts, but we ended up with a problem where Trillian would default to keeping its log files locally, not in the user's profile. To make it worse, those files were readable by all, and locking them down broke Trillian. Being a University, we couldn't risk the privacy issues, and it was becoming too much of a headache to spend more time on it. We had much more pressing matters to take care of. Oh yes, on our linux machines I never blocked the universal clients, as I didn't have the problems with them. I just left it as an easter egg for observant users.:)
If the big IM players would get their acts together and standardize, and stop blocking universal clients, we might finally get some good, secure, and multi-user workable clients. Then we can find out how useful IM really is or isn't. Untll then, it'll probably stay marginalized.
Isn't teaching people how to defend themselves using free open source software better than talking about the best way to start up a posse?
With just IPTables and SpamCop configured properly most of these security problems disappear.
The problem is most people don't want to deal with OSS if that means using Linux. They want to be able to use most of the software that they can find in most stores, share it with friends, etc. As much as I like Linux, I use Windows XP on my main system because I prefer a lot of windows-based tools to linux-based ones. (And this includes free/shareware, not just commercial software.)
Before someone says it, WINE isn't the answer, not yet anyway. I'm an expert user, and I have troubles with getting things to work under WINE, or at least things I _want_, not just things that will. This is the deal-breaker for your average joes, they won't deal with it.
Besides, OSS software can be harder to secure right if you don't know what you're doing fully. I think the best approach all around is to hold companies responsible for glaring defeciences. If you have a bug/security hole found every once in a while it's one thing. When you have them found weekly, if not daily, and you have a closed-source product, then there's really no excuse for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, after 1/1 the amount of spam I receive on that account went up again. Right now it's about triple the amount before 12/16, and quickly pushing on four times it. I'm also seeing more efforts at E-mail guessing (sending E-mails to every possible combination of account names at a given host). These are pretty obvious when they show up on an account that's never been used, and has never (and still isn't) listed anywhere on the Internet (or otherwise).
From where I'm sitting, looks like the spammers are having a field day, and the only thing that's changed is the problem got worse. Thanks congress, remind me to vote against all incumbents next election.
- Some fresh-from-college intern who's working in like, the HR department; should he/she feel the public outrage and anger of Enron?
Or better (and more likely I'd suspect) that same intern is new and gets handed a box of papers and told to shred them. Being a lowly intern would you look through them and say "Hey, this is evidence, I can't do this!" or just start feeding the papers through the shredder while trying not to fall asleep? I suspect most everyone in that situation would just do what they were told and not even think about questioning, after all, why would someone tell you to do something illegal?Saying a kidney stone hurts pretty damn bad is like saying a sink hole that swallowed a house is a pothole. Many people who have them pass out from the pain in fact. So trust me, it's a major medical condition, and it's chronic, it's not going anywhere. Besides that though, the fact is I'm likely to have around 6 ER visits this year as well. With each costing well over $1000 in billed charges, what I pay for a health insurance premium looks like a bargain. Not to mention I save about $500 a month on my prescriptions alone, which is more than my premium in a month. It's certainly not something I can do without. (Although I fervently wish the premium was cheaper until I can find work in my field that pays decent again.)
You know, jumping in, criticizing and making assumptions when you know nothing about the situation isn't a good idea. I bought it used, and had to as my last car (a 1994 Geo Metro that I also bought used) was on its last legs. Quite honestly, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get the damn thing to the car lot, the alternator on it died again on the way there, the 4th one in a row to do so. It also had about 170,000 miles on it. At the time I had a job in my field (IT) that paid well ($46k a year). The car was certainly NOT unaffordable at the time I purchased it. Of coruse 6 months later I lost my job thanks to the economy. There was no real warning, the only signs something was coming happened a month before I lost it.
I know I'll definitely pass on advice from you when you think hitchiking (which can quite literally get you killed) is a valid alternative to keeping a car. And for the record, I do live in a rural area (not like all farms and all, but rural by big city standards). There is no bus service, there's about one whole taxi service in the whole county (And using a taxi each day to and from would likely cost more than the car payment + insurance each month). Biking to work is a bit out of the question because of the distance. Since I'm living with my folks to cut costs down, moving closer is not an option. And, quite frankly, neither is doing without a car.
Totino's pizzas are $.98 here, I eat them quite regularly. I also buy huge bags of fish sticks for $5 that I get about 6-7 meals out of. To give them some taste, I buy a bottle of generic barbecue sauce (at $.77). One bottle lasts for about 2 bags. I also eat peanut butter sandwiches, I forget the cost of the peanut butter, but I'm sure we can all agree it's cheap unless you try to get a gourmet brand (which I don't). For bread, I but Wal-mart's store brand for a total $.50 a loaf. In addition I'll make a goulash-type dish. For that I need ground beef (I buy huge family packs to save on the per-pound price, bag them up and freeze them), then elbow macaroni ($.99 a box for generic, one box per meal made) and tomato soup ($.89 a can for generic, one per meal) along with some seasoning. (I buy that generic too.). Now, seeing as I can barely afford to keep myself fed eating that cheaply, do you see any room to cut back? Quite frankly I don't, unless I went to all
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Define fucking "underpaid". Most fucking IT people I know make > $10/hour, and they fucking bitch relentlessly about how they live paycheck to paycheck. Guess what, pal? At $10/hour, they're making MORE MONEY than a good majority of the citizens in this country. NO FUCKING SHIT. I used to be there, making minimum wage, living in a shit-hole, eating ramen and rice. But you know what? If it came to that or being a fucking coward because my Employer was an unethical piece of shit and I knew it, I'll be back to ramen. YOU choose your lifestyle. When you realize that a stupid movie called "Fight Club" was right on several points (you are not what you own, you are not your string-bean couch, you are not what's in y our wallet) and learn to live on LESS (and you'll find you appreciate those things even more), then you don't have to worry about living "paycheck to paycheck" because you've reduced your living expenses considerably. Do you really need that $400 SUV out in the driveway? Do you really need that 1600 sq ft house with the 1 acre yard? No, you don't.
Do I need that health insurance under Cobra that's costing me $400+ a month? Can I afford to lose it since I have recurrent kidney stone disease and average 6+ ER visits a year? Can I afford to lose the used Toyota Camry with nearly 100,000 miles on it I bought used and have 3 more years on the loan? Can I afford to lose the car insurance that has to be full coverage until said loan is paid off? Can I afford to stop eating?Get real. I'm trying to fathom how you didn't get modded down as a troll. You pathetic attempt to claim working for a company like SCO means you must be making so much you have useless luxuries that you're unwilling to get rid of so you can leave and then hunt for another job is baseless at best, trolling at worst. Maybe they do make $10+ an hour, but what if the cost of living where SCO is phsyically based is 10 times higher than where you live? Then that $10 an hour is worthless, and they're probrably just scrapping by to pay for their necessities.
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Imagine this stupid scenario: You find out your company is doing business selling 12 year old little boys and girls into the sex trade. You need your paycheck. Are you such a fucking coward that you'll stay, just so you can keep earning a paycheck? What's that? You don't care? Fuck you. You're a fucking coward.
Totally pathetic comparison, but in this you're the coward, since you'd just leave. I'd alert the authorities, make sure the business didn't know, and cooperate with them to help them get the evidence they needed to take them down. That's pretty heroic. Running away with your tail between your legs and leaving the problem behind is the worst kind of cowardice. What, you don't care enough to try to stop the crime? You just don't want to be associated? To quote your unelequont prose "Fuck you." If you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem.And since your snide comparison brought the issue up, how do you, or any of us, know that some of those current SCO employees aren't inside moles gathering info for the FBI, the SEC, or hell, even IBM, Redhat or Novell? We don't. Unless you're them, you'll never know the truth for sure, so get off your high hobby horse and take some Prozac, sounds like you need it.
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Insightful ? Rubbish! The poster's just another keyboard monkey diving in with an irrelevant and meaningless point of view. Yeah go ahead, mod this as a troll, I have spare Karma gushing out of my arse.
You find the fact that those of us in the OSS movement are having to defend ourselves from false claims while SCO hides behind the legal system and makes a total mockery of everything in the constitution rubbish? Sheeze, how sad. Personally I do think you're just trolling in this case, forget your meds this morning or something?Just because you don't agree with something doesn't make it rubbish. And yeah, you have karma "gushing out your arse", but you're abusing it too. Using your karma bonus modifer on what you posted was just stupid. You'll notice I'm not using mine in my reply, I actually respect the karma system on here.
I find it quite sad that our community has to loudly distance itself from supposed DDoS attacks and such against SCO while SCO makes a total mockery of the legal system and justice in general with their current campaign. For those who may not have noticed some earlier posts, discussion on Groklaw has brought up the possibility that this isn't a DDoS, but either just idiotic network admins on SCO's part, or perhaps even an intentional takedown to *cough* allow for a nice bit of publicity on their part. Whatever the true case is (and I'm not advocating any as the real one, I'll leave that for others to decide), SCO has certainly scored some nice negative publicity towards the OSS crowd, even if the DDoS is real and the attackers have nothing to do with OSS.
IIRC there was an earlier supposed DDoS against SCO's servers that turned out to be that the servers were just down.
In any case, it's nice to see the /. crowd (as always) advocating fair play and not using vigilante justice. Too bad SCO doesn't seem to believe in the fair play bit.
Having someone big and respected like the NWS using Linux and announcing it publically should help Linux's respectability quotient in the US a lot. I'm glad to see this happening, both because it increases Linux's usage out there, and because it'll save us money (IIRC, the NWS is taxpayer funded), and probably lead to more accurate forecasts. It seems every time the computers they use get faster/more powerful, the forecasts get better. :)
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You are right, in retrospect I can see how that comment could be percieved as a troll, however don't be swayed into any ideological thinking with regards to Sun. Sun does what is best for Sun, damn the consequences.
No worries there, I definitely know that. I'm not a huge Sun fan. (I think Java is 99% crap, at least for online apps, it always crashes something on me.) But I think their current push may have nice benefits for Linux and OSS in general, whether that's Sun's intentions or not. (And it's probably not.Did you catch the article where Sun's trying to convince Wal-mart to go with Java Desktop for their rumored Wal-mart branded PCs to come out next year? While I'd prefer to see something besides Sun's product on them, that'd be a lovely slap in the face to Microsoft. I wonder how Billy boy would react. :)
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I've heard good things about Rhapsody. I'm definitely in favor of any game where you can attack people with giant stacks of pancakes!
:P
And it's grand fun too.-
I have a friend who was working on a Marjoly Cookie costume...
Now that's kind of scary....-
As opposed to consoles, where there can still be huge bugs get through and you can't patch them?
When it happens, yeah it sucks, but not nearly as many games end up released on consoles with show-stopped bugs mainly because of the extra testing the console maker puts them through.With the ones that are generally real stinkers (the last Lara Croft anyone?) the news gets out pretty quick, and they don't sell as well.
In a perfect world, games would be released working 99% right. Patches would only be needed to fix those weird problems that occur with strange hardware configs noone would think to test, or they'd add features/content. Right now there's way too much of a "get it out by Christmas, who cares if it actually works!" mentality with many companies. :(
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Seriously, other than supporting SCO, what kind of commitment have you seen from Sun with regards to Linux?
Obviously you labeled yourself the troll with this simple statement. Sun's not done anything to support SCO. I do believe they offered indemification to their linux customers, but that wasn't to support SCO, it was to reassure their customers.If you've missed all the stories (and several on /.) about Sun's new Java Desktop offering that runs on Linux, and their push that includes Linux on the desktop with Open Office (IIRC, might be the other) included for about $100 a seat, including support, then you're apparently blind.
Maybe IBM, Redhat and SuSE have done more for Linux so far, but Sun's new offerings with their full support backing will help convince businesses to accept Linux as serious alternative to MS products. That alone is a HUGE boost to Linux in all shapes, forms and fashions.
You may already know about it, but try Rhapsody for PS1 if you haven't. It's by the same Japanese company (and interestingly enough, the same US company localized it), Nippon Ichi. It's very wacky and fun. Only game I know of where wearing a huge teddy-bear like contest figures greatly in the story. :) Unfortunately the even funnier sequel (Little Princess) didn't make it over to the US. Knowledge of Japanese is a definite must to understanding it too. I was fortunate enough to have a friend translate for me as I played it. :)
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The problem with PCs is that there are too many combinations and hence harder to test. Everything might be fine on the test system but when you change the video card, the fog effect all of a sudden is messed up (because some old cards do it differently). Or the sound effects are lagging because some sound cards implement echoing differently. And so on.
I won't contest this, and in fact these type of bugs don't terribly bother me. I realize that the only way all these things will show up is when the code gets into the hands of enough people.What I was referring too, and should have made clearer, are the show-stopper bugs that occur on all system configurations and should never have made it out of development. This probably isn't the finest example out there (since we all know it went through development hell), but you couldn't even finish Daikatana as it was released. That's just pathetic. Those are the type of things that pushed me away from PC games for good.
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Are we at a point where the gaming masses have become so retarded as to ensure that only copycat FPS, RTS and sports games ever get produced? Plots, characters, atmosphere, it's all gone, but who gives a shit. As long as we can all get 90 fps in Doom3 and relive our favorite Monday Night Football moments, the industry'll be alright.
The truly sad part is the rabid fanboys of FPSs who obsess over frame rates and ever tiny detail are a great minority of gamers. It's very interesting to look at the top sales charts for any given month. Generally 1-3 of the top 20 will be FPS games, the rest aren't. In fact, games with little hardcore gamer appeal consistently take up top spots. (The Sims & their 100 expansion packs for instance.) Many game companies (this means you Interplay) apparently can't see the truth out there and shoot for the hardcore audience. The problem is the real money is in pleasing the general audience.Before I'm skewered for that statement, let me point out that you don't have to dumb down a game to make it appealing to both hard core and casual gamers. A game with a great engrossing story, decent graphics (they don't have to be the world's best) and a serious fun value (something a lot of games forget about) will please nearly everyone. Sure the frame-rate crowd will complain about the lack of quantum texturing or some such crap, but most people will be happy with it and it'll sale really well.
The other unfortunate thing is game companies (again, this means you Interplay) that seem to think PC Gaming is dead, when nothing could be further from the truth. Right now PCs are capable of better graphics than any of the current consoles, and the next crop of consoles is at best a year off (if rumors of Nintendo announcing a new console at E3 next year are true). Hell, now's the perfect time to push PC gaming since current consoles are towards the end of their life cycle.
That being said though, I've ended up a console gamer because of the lack of quality control in PC games. (aka the ship it then patch it approach.) I got sick of finding out I'd have to download huge patches to make a game playable, or need to update to fix a horrid glitch and invalidate my save games in the process. No thanks, I'll stick to consoles till game publishers figure out that consumers want a game that works out of the box. Yes I know that not all console games are perfect, but the extra testing they go through from the console maker as well as from the company making them help out a lot.
I just worry that with the next generation of consoles all likely coming with hard drives and built-in Internet connectivity that publishers will move the ship then patch mentality over to consoles too. If that happens, I'm afraid video gaming as a whole will suffer in ways that'll be pitiful, and potentially non-recoverable from.
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They...they weren't really working of Fallout 3 were they? Because... if they were... and it's...it's 'shelved'... I think I might just... must find tall building... bridge... industrial dough mixer... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Go for the dough mixer, and leave a suicide note. It'll get more press coverage that way.-
Perhaps Interplay simply doesn't percieve a value in role-playing games like Fallout and Baldurs Gate and the likes on the consoles of the future. Games with writing are to be frowned upon in console-land, as you can't read text quite as nicely on a TV set. This falls nicely into my growing theory that consoles are causing the end of the brain era of gaming, and sending us back into pac-man twitch land.
Not all companies are going this route. While I must admit I really enjoyed games like Final Fantasy X and Xenosaga that were almost completely voice acted (and voice acted well, not with the company's janitors and secretaries), games like Disgaea have a mixture, but the story's primarily given to you through text. It is interesting to note that the company who made Disgaea is from Japan though, perhaps they still believe gamers are smart enough to know how to read.-
All it states in the quote is that Interplay has cut the BIS team. The rest of the quote is nothing but bashing Interplay
It's there in the bashing, apparently Interplay has decided the future is Console only, and is getting out of the PC game biz, at least as far as Black Isle Studio games are concerned.-
Well, let me correct that. Everyone in the world but in the United States. Why is it that the US companies and organizations (starting with the ^$!* Universities!) are the only ones blind to the potential of FOSS (and the interaction between FOSS and a RAIS (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Students) hacking on it!), or at least to the fact that Microsoft will give them a discount if they at least look at the competition?
I think a lot of it has had to do with lack of support contracts or big company backing. That, of course, has changed with Sun's new offering. I believe we'll start hearing about US companies and organizations looking much more seriously at Linux now, but they'll probably get it from Sun. The federal government will probably be the longest holdout in the US I'm afraid, although I can't quantify why I feel that way.-
It's easy to say "don't open obvious spam at all" and "never open an attachment" and "never click on a URL in an email."
Personally, my middle-aged brain only functions at about a four-nines reliability level, meaning that if I deal with thirty pieces of email a day, about once a year I'll accidentally do something STUPID.
While I suspect you're being a tad tounge-in-cheek here, the fact is most people who know what to look for and try to be cautious don't have problems with viruses/worms. Even for an age-addled mind, certain things set off alarm bells (and Free Porn HERE!!! is certainly a 5-alarmer) and you pay more attention before you act on it. Hey, I screw up from time to time and send incomplete E-mails etc too.You can also train at least some people what to watch for. My Mother uses E-mail quite a bit, and I'm probably her only security-conscious E-mail acquaintance. Still, I've taught her what to watch for, and armed her with a great client (The Bat! which default to high security), and she does great. In fact there's been at least 2 occasions so far where she did get a virus E-mail, and she asked me about it to be sure, but she had already come to the conclusion that it was bad.
The real problem isn't occasionally goof ups, it's the people out there that seem to be so stupid that if you put up a sign at a busy intersection saying "Free Porn, just jump in front of a moving car!" the death toll would be astronomical that day. I've seen people that have clicked on things that no one in the right (or hell, even wrong) mind could _NOT_ know was a virus, but yeah they clicked it, and then wonder why everything's broken.
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There are plenty of other special interest groups working on that too. Software/method patents, copyrights, DRM/Paladium/Longhorn, and the looming H.R.3261 will all work together to ensure that the internet becomes nothing more than the consumer equivelent of an interactive-television commercial.
I don't think this will happen, because it's been tried before (to some extent) and failed miserably. Remember "push technology"? Remember how it was the next big thing (tm) that everyone was going on about?For those that don't remember, push technology was meant to turn your web browser into something non-interactive. (Ok, that wasn't the official idea, but it was the outcome.) You'd subscribe to a site, or a channel (now you know where those channels in IE come from), and you'd get great new content pushed to your desktop! Why Microsoft thought this was so great, that they changed Windows to allow you to have an "active desktop". You could have a webpage for your desktop, and it'd push nifty new stuff to you all day long!
Only one problem, no one wanted it. Very few people used it, most spent their time fighting Win98 to get rid of the damn active desktop crap and decrying any attempt to push anything down their throats. I did a survey for PC World (or PC Magazine) online where I even got quoted in their article about the results, they used me as the sum up, where I said "If I wanted junk shoved down my throat, I'd just watch TV." And that's exactly what push technology was aiming for. It bombed out bigtime.
People don't get on the Internet to have crap shoved down their throats, they get that from TV all the time, they want something different. And if the media companies want to try and change the Internet to be that way, they'll find that suddenly no one wants their offerings on it. Eventually they'll have to realize that the basic problem is their content is crap, but I doubt it'll be anytime soon.
And as far as destroying the Internet? I'm afraid that spammers are doing more to destroy it than any bills/etc. can. When E-mail works, even your average joe computer user will raise holy cain if the government tries to change things to where they can't use it how they like anymore. If spammers run off all the average joes, then there goes our last chance of getting our elected representatives attention away from the special interests.
... this is what their records and statistics may claim. And as we all know the RIAA is a bastion of honesty, forthrightness and righteousness.
Surely the rise in sales couldn't have been due to the economy (at least supposedly) recovering now could it? Just like all those drops in sales the last few years couldn't have been due to the economy being in the dumps! Gotta be those dirty pirates, and reforming pirates doing it all. Why the US economy is only there for shits and giggles. (At least if you believe the RIAA.)I just wish the US would invest in more passenger trains. They don't have to be super fast (like the one in this article), but imagine how much fuel/electricity we could save if we could all easily commute by train. And hey, you can always sleep on the train on the way to work, something you can't do while driving. (Or rather, something you shouldn't do, I'm sure someone's tried it.)
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Bet those passengers were scared out of their pants. With it flying that fast, I'd be...if the thing derailed, you'd be really screwed.
I've ridden some of the current shinkasens, and you really don't notice. It's a very smooth ride, and you feel very safe. The best I can compare it to is flying on an airplane, only quieter and smoother.That being said though, the main problem I had with IM was the security problems with service-provided clients (AIM, ICQ, Etc.) and the problems with multi-user windows environments and user privacy for the universal clients (Trillian, etc.). We ended up having to officially ban IM because of these issues. To be honest, the biggest concern was the privacy issues. We found quickly that most of the IM clients wouldn't behave properly for a non-privledged domain user. (Ironically, MSN flat out wouldn't work at all unless you had admin privledges.) We could get Trillian to work under all user accounts, but we ended up with a problem where Trillian would default to keeping its log files locally, not in the user's profile. To make it worse, those files were readable by all, and locking them down broke Trillian. Being a University, we couldn't risk the privacy issues, and it was becoming too much of a headache to spend more time on it. We had much more pressing matters to take care of. Oh yes, on our linux machines I never blocked the universal clients, as I didn't have the problems with them. I just left it as an easter egg for observant users. :)
If the big IM players would get their acts together and standardize, and stop blocking universal clients, we might finally get some good, secure, and multi-user workable clients. Then we can find out how useful IM really is or isn't. Untll then, it'll probably stay marginalized.
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Isn't teaching people how to defend themselves using free open source software better than talking about the best way to start up a posse?
With just IPTables and SpamCop configured properly most of these security problems disappear.
The problem is most people don't want to deal with OSS if that means using Linux. They want to be able to use most of the software that they can find in most stores, share it with friends, etc. As much as I like Linux, I use Windows XP on my main system because I prefer a lot of windows-based tools to linux-based ones. (And this includes free/shareware, not just commercial software.)Before someone says it, WINE isn't the answer, not yet anyway. I'm an expert user, and I have troubles with getting things to work under WINE, or at least things I _want_, not just things that will. This is the deal-breaker for your average joes, they won't deal with it.
Besides, OSS software can be harder to secure right if you don't know what you're doing fully. I think the best approach all around is to hold companies responsible for glaring defeciences. If you have a bug/security hole found every once in a while it's one thing. When you have them found weekly, if not daily, and you have a closed-source product, then there's really no excuse for it.