Obviously Sun is going to price OO "support only" much less than what SO costs with support.
Essentially, Sun knows these products are almost identical, OO is everywhere, and they could make some easy money and push SO by supporting OO in the office. Smart move if it works.
Re:Oh Well, there not the first, there not the las
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Kazaa-lite Shut Down
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· Score: 2, Informative
>Even though IMAP is not Exchange's native language
Mail severs don't really have native languages. Exchange supports protocols just like any other mail server. POP3, IMAP, and MAPI.
I use tbird with Exchange and have no problems with IMAP nor with IMAP over SSL (which Exchange supports too). I just generated a non-authorized SSL cert and off I went.
A couple problems/issues:
Tbird does not support NTLM authentication, so if you're using IMAP or POP your password will be sent as plain-text unless you use SSL.
Microsoft really half-asses IMAP. If I open my contact folder and open a contact, I get a blank email. Same with notes. It doesn't seem like it would be much trouble to just deliver the ascii format of those contacts and notes in the body of the email.
That said, the changes in.4 are much welcomed and tb has been my prefered email client for a few months now.
I would still like to see something other than "Catching up with Microsoft" in the future. How about integrating with gpg and having an easy to use GUI to encrypt messages. Currently, you have to get gpg, install enigmail, and pray. A built-in encryption module could really help push encryption onto the masses.
Or even an installer for win32. (there's an unofficial installer btw)
Here in Chicago, Comcast is a whopping $59 dollars per month. That's right, sixty dollars for no-server allowed broadband. They currently have a 4 month promotion for 29 dollars, but it goes back to 60 soon enough. Broadband cable used to be 39.99 until Comcast raised the prices and decided to punish everyone who didn't buy their video service. No thanks, I've got a directivo.
The meat of the article is the SBC and BellSouth are going sub-30 for broadband, which is pretty damn good. I thought broadband in the US would remain stagnant for quite a while until someone found a cheaper way to sell this stuff. I've already seen people jump onto SBC and away from Comcast and the people I work with have no problem paying almost that much for AOL dial-up. I've also seen people drop broadband because its so pricey here, even though they would easily pay 30 bucks a month for it, but 50-60 is asking too much.
Here's to "dsl-lite" for non-power users currently being ripped off on dial-up and sub-30 dollar DSL for everyone else.
> A tax break is not a break after years of tax increases, it's an adjustment back to a more sane level.
Interpret it as you like: Both cost money, plain and simple.
>We have not stopped being "at war" for nearly the last 50 years.
How many 87 billion+ checks were written in that course? Its one thing to be at a cold war, developing nuclear weapons that were going to be developed anyway, and another to maintain a exensive occupation. Not to mention the daily bodybags that are killing morale for a war that failed to deliver the goods: WMD, AlQaeda conspiracies, etc. At least the Russians were a threat.
>Suddenly the lack of free health care and SS is a problem.
That's besides the point, but funny how universal healthcare for Iraq is seen as smart policy and "socialism" here.
>but don't whine about the 60% income tax.
European taxes are perhaps 10% more than US taxes and that includes healthcare and higher education. We also spend more money on healthcare per capita than any other nation. The universal healthcare people have an argument, saying "move to Europe" is a frank and rude dismissal. There are real arguments against universal healthcare, but I'm afraid you don't know what they are.
>This current conflict looks nothing like Vietnam
Agreed, its more like Palestine, which is even worse. We can't just up and leave like we did in Vietnam, we have to work (and pay) for this until everything is stable.
I noticed you ignored the biggest economic indicator: how much in the red we are. We can only borrow so much before we look and become discredited in front of international lenders. This means that if you want a moon mission you'll have to get, as you call it, less "sane" taxes.
If you have a Latitude or an Optiplex you get a much better support experience because these are their high-end business models. Most of my Dell (well when they didnt ship my phone call out to india) support is pretty good because we have a business account and all the fun extended warranty stuff that forces them to kiss our ass.
The home user (Inspiron owners, etc) get the bottom of the barrel support designed to make you jump through every hoop to save money on replacement parts and to deal with the clueless. When I call from work I just say "Yeah this CDROM died, can I get one tomorrow" and we do some chit-chat while he fills in the fields on his computer screen. The next day the drive is here. Trust me, that's not the residential experience at all.
Also, once passphrases become the norm you can put the dictionary away and replace it with a much smaller file full of famous quotes and phrases.
There's nothing wrong with an old fashioned 8 character password, as long as its changed regularly. Making it longer hurts brute force, but brute force is the exception, not the rule. Common passwords are tried first, or in this case common phrases.
The best of both worlds is non-dictionary passwords. The longer you force it the more "to be or not to be" you'll get. Crackers are just waiting for the passphrase revolution.
As Microsoft is quick to tell us: the OS and the browser are the same. They're integrated.
Dell supports Microsoft's OS and thus its browser. All these spyware apps attach to IE and cause huge problems. I had one person hand me a laptop chock full of spyware constantly changing the homepage (one program would change it and another would change it again) while in the background there were more than a few processes trying to download more spyware and another installing more.
Needless to say IE didnt work at all, it was just stuck on some orbitz page and the thing was more or less locked-up, but I did manage to get ad-aware to run.
Most of my friend's PCs problems can be traced to spyware they dont even know about because of how official ActiveX boxes look and the tons of legalese involved.
Dell would rather recommend a full-reinstall than ask the person "This may remove software you've installed" and be off the hook, legally. Instead Joe and Jane Dell owner will lose their baby photos and everything else they didn't backup after being told to reinstall from the rescue CD.
I think Dell has the obligation to be honest with their customers. If the tech believes its spyware he should tell them what it is and how to remove it - if they want.
More generically we need some kind of media campaign or some way to inform people about spyware, perhaps every company giving away free software without spyware should have an obligatory like to Ad Aware or Spybot during the install process.
Check out some of the support forums in the PC world. A significant number of serious problems are fixed simply with Ad Aware or Spybot.
Oh well, Dell gets a negative mark for not being honest with their customers. Tell the family to buy a Mac this year.
I have a DirecTivo and am part of the 'bad people' who will help destroy annoying commercials. As a solution, please just sell me the channels/shows I want to watch. Why am I paying for fundie nutcases like Trinity broadcasting when all I watch is 6 different channels?
This "one-size-fits-all" method of lots of channels for a large amount of money per month is failing, not just commercials.
I'd rather pay a 20-40 dollar bill that lets me "subscribe" to 20 or so shows with the ability to view *anything* for the first 10 or so minutes (or maybe x amount of episodes). In other words I can channel surf all I want and purchase the stuff I really like. The purchased items would be just like my "Season Pass" items.
Arguably, this dynamic will force networks to produce decent content instead of filler and better ways to squeeze in an extra half-commercial here and there.
TV will have to go through 'napsterization,' the genie is simply out of the bottle. A smart cable or satellite company can lead the way and make lots of money, especially targeting the "Cable is too expensive" crowd who just want Comedy Central and 2 or 3 other channels.
The networks won't like it, but its going to be either this or DRM forced commercial watching.
>no one is preventing you from going to see a movie that is NC-17 rated.
Yes they are, if you are under-17 it is no admittance. That's exactly the problem here, these aren't just content descriptors they are implemented as censorship either by theater management or by state law.
Thats good to hear. You might be interested in Marshall Brains (the guy who made howstuffworks.com) "A Teenager's Guide to the Real World." Lots of practical advice in there, but its been criticized for not portraying sexuality realistically. Might be worth checking out:
http://bygpub.com/books/tg2rw/
From the webpage:
Helps teenagers to answer fundamental questions that everyone has about life and the world, such as: Why do people of the opposite sex seem to hate me? Why does society seem to have so many laws, rules and restrictions? Why do adults seem so concerned about money, taxes, prices, etc.? What is the difference between "right" and "wrong"? Why does the world seem so unfair? What are the rules to the game of life? And hundreds more...
Although, living in the middle of an information revolution may make books like these somwhat old-fashioned compared to the power of google or alltheweb.
>"Teens" technically means anyone between 13 and 19. They're NOT the same emotionally, mentally or in experience.
Which more or less backs up my points: an arbiratry number is more or less useless, the real solution is realistic content ratings and parents making the decisions as to what their kids can see, not theaters or the local state legislature. Yes, that means unsupervised kids doing things parents might not like - but not only is that happening already its arguable that without exposure to outside influence one can't properly mature. This really reminds me of the weirdo fundie homeschool kids I've met, or the kids of parents with strong ideologies or strong religious identities.
>Because the vast majority of alcohol related driving injuries and fatalities involve "teens". Many can't handle the responsibility.
This is largely tangential to the argument. You could also say drivers in general don't mature until about 21 or so and cars should be banned from those under 21.
Also, your "numbers" are wrong. Teens account for about 10% of fatalities. Which has fallen sharply since the early eighties due, most likely, to MADD awareness programs and safer cars.
Which brings me to my last point: I was a teen once (pushing 30 now) so I find it hard to believe the "they just aren't mature enough" argument. If anything, responsible exposure to adulthood like safe-sex programs, condom availability, etc lower the risks of things teens are already doing as opposed to sticking your head in the ground and pretending the status quo is for the best.
To make this problem even worse, the conservative mentalities that go for censorship are the same ones that are against the teaching of safe-sex and other things that could benefit teens. If they are all immature its because we've made them so with our assumptions and prudish attitudes, but as time and time again has shown the teen years are the ones when one decides that Mom and Dad, society, etc might be wrong and its time to explore for real solutions. Might as well save them the effort and give them the straight dope as opposed to more knee-jerk efforts to shelter them.
> Well, honestly, I wouldn't want 8 year olds playing GTA or Manhunt anyways
Yes, best to let the state or the store raise your kids instead of making an effort at parenting. At least you have someone to sue in case something goes wrong.
Sounds *exactly* like the hypnotic/subconscious suggestion effect that has been measured from activities as varied as watching TV, Church, listening to a politician speak, reading a book, watching a movie, etc.
TV helps put its watchers into an "alpha state." Rousing and effective ministers have mastered timing that helps deliver their messages in an effective and convincing way way (see also: faith healers), politicans know exactly which emotional strings to pull, commercials are complex messages sometimes crafted by teams of psychologists for maximium efficiency (see McDonalds), books can aspire thoughts of rage/revolution/subversion, etc.
I'm all for "Your conscious might be unfairly altered by taking part of this event" stickers anywhere this may happen. Something tells me, no church, network, or politican would agree to these terms. Videogames on the other hand are the lazy parent's scapegoat and make for good re-election soundbites, just like "tough on crime" and the "war on drugs" does now. We can probably add "war on terrorism" with the passing of the PATRIOT ACT and the Iraq war for the lazy voter.
Just because there isn't op-ed pieces in your hometown paper against movie ratings doesn't mean there aren't thousands, if not millions who see them as a ridiculous way to rate movie content and the implementation of these ratings through law or theater policy is absurd.
You must be especially sheltered and puritanical to an extreme to believe that teens shoudn't be able to see NC-17 movies (R movies are more or less unenforced). Really now, there's nothing in there they don't know (or are doing). The American collective hang-up with sex and our apathy to fix these ratings is really embarassing. Mainstream movies in Europe and Asia have more T&A than our NC-17 movies.
Worse, filmmakers can't even make a realistic sex scene without the dreaded NC-17 kiss-of-death promise from the moralists at the censorship board, thus less realism and a damaged national cinema.
The US's ideas of age limits is largely irrational and based on special interests (big religion, etc). 18 year olds can't buy alcohol yet pay taxes, work, and can get drafted to die in a war. Under 21s can't even enter a bar, thus banning them from their own local music scene until they turn 21. Sexually active teens get arrested for having sex with consenting teens, etc.
The list goes on and many are shocked by how out of touch the US is. Don't assume the mainstream media's inablility to address these issues equals agreement.
If you're happy with your IMs being sniffed left and right, feel free to use Gaim et al. My friends and I have migrated to Trillian as our main IM because it does all the major IM protocols, is feature rich, and lets us encrypt our IMs. Sure, its vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks then again so is ssh, ssl, etc but it sure beats plain-text.
Gaim is feature poor and the developers refuse to interoperate with Trillian's secure protocol. The secure Gaim spin-off doesn't want to play with Trillian either, they want their own gpg-based system.
Regardless, Trillian is excellent for Win32 users. Its a shame there hasn't been a Linux port of it yet.
> Do you actually beleive the world (or all republicans) are that one-sided?
They do vote on the party line and those who don't get powerful threats from above. Let's not be that naive, its a two-party system, parties vote on agreed agendas. The GOP deserves to be called on its actions. Your Senator may be a great guy, but if he keeps voting in the Bush agenda then he is one-sided.
>A simple public awareness campaign should put an end to the madness.
I don't know about that. On one had we have Congress saying because of the internet and piracy we have to protect the monied interests. On the other hand we have Powell's FCC saying because of the internet and its ability to give anyone a voice, radio station, etc we should let the monopolies alone to do whatever they want.
Which message do we claim is the correct one, because it looks like both equal the same outcome: leave the monopolies up to their dirty tricks and dare not speak of reform or expanding fair-use to empower small business (in this case small labels).
Now is the time, GOP congress and President? An especially "pro-business" well pro-big-business with deep-pockets administration in an anything goes legislative spree is the *perfect* time to peel away some fair use rights. It would be foolish if they didn't try, not that I condone this.
Whatever your political persuasion, its fairly obvious that legislative reform should have happened a long time ago and the current congress and executive branch are pulling every dirty trick they can.
I choose to believe that there is no meaning of life, there is no fundamental right or wrong, love is only a biochemical reaction in the brain and that consciousness does not survive beyond death. Nothing I see or hear tells me anything else, so it would be irrational to think otherwise.
You're so close to be a materialist, except the question "meaning of life" might be loaded but its clear that spreading ones genes before one dies is pretty much it.
As for fundamental right and wrong, humans are well equiped (through the invisible hand of evolution) to understand when they've been cheated or victimized. This behavior is seen in most social mammals. No biggie.
Emotions are chemicals? Yep, does that make them any less 'real' or significant?
Death is certainly the end, as all attempts to prove otherwise have failed miserably.
Caveat: Neuros ogg playback is still in beta. They are working with the people from Xiph I believe, so if anyone can do it right, they should be able to.
I did just buy one, mainly because the 20 gig model is only $199 and I wanted something that could transmit to FM and record. Its not pretty or small, but its feature rich and cheap compared to other hard drive based players. I believe they're trying to clear out their inventory as they've been working on a new model or may be going out of busines, bought up, etc. I remember the 20 gig model retailing at $300 or so not too long ago.
Re:it still isnt gonna go mainstream
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Linux in 2004?
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· Score: 1
Gnome comes off as very polished, its a shame there's so much mindshare involved into KDE. Frankly , I think when people have to deal with KDE they get a little nervous. The default is ugly, it feels tacked on, lots of thing tend to not work, etc.
I think it'll take corporate backing to really push Linux into the desktop and the community probably won't be happy writing tons of GUIs for everything that can easily be done on the command line because Joe-Sixpack doesnt or can't learn all those arcane commands just to do some office stuff.
I'm looking at Red Hat 9 or Fedora to gain some popularity on the desktop level. RH9 is very polished and the default install is very user friendly. (ignoring the recent expiration of their up2date ssl cert - whoops!)
Why do this indeed? The DRM on iTunes generated mp4s is very liberal. CD burns, copies, etc. Perhaps this and the long line of cracks to follow will force the industry to adopt a DRM-less format like MP3 (which plays on everything) or OggVorbis (which plays on PCs and 2 or 3 devices).
DRM-light may make the lawyers happy, but in the real world its next to nothing. I've already turned my AACs into MP3s because I don't feel like making iTunes my "one stop store/player/library!" Nor do I want to buy a cheesy little iPod when I have a kick-ass feaure-rich Neuros which plays OggVorbis.
All the RIAA has to do is keep filling the P2P networks with fake files, badly encoded files, and tracksthat only last 1 or 2 minutes as promotion items. This will help put people on the fence onto the 'buy music online' bandwagon that is rolling into town.
Let album sharing be amongst friends, face to face. You avoid getting caught by the copyright police and by buying music online you're paying artists and hopefully building a bridge to a better and more efficient distribution mode. Perhaps one that allows all that great local, indie, and undiscovered stuff to float to the top instead of what the marketers want to shove down our throad this month.
Slashdot Mirror
Because Star Office costs money while OO is a free download.
SO: Retail MSRP $75.95
OO: Download here.
Obviously Sun is going to price OO "support only" much less than what SO costs with support.
Essentially, Sun knows these products are almost identical, OO is everywhere, and they could make some easy money and push SO by supporting OO in the office. Smart move if it works.
Bittorrent is centralized for P2P.
Shareaza 1.9 is out. It supports 4 protocols.
>Even though IMAP is not Exchange's native language
.4 are much welcomed and tb has been my prefered email client for a few months now.
Mail severs don't really have native languages. Exchange supports protocols just like any other mail server. POP3, IMAP, and MAPI.
I use tbird with Exchange and have no problems with IMAP nor with IMAP over SSL (which Exchange supports too). I just generated a non-authorized SSL cert and off I went.
A couple problems/issues:
Tbird does not support NTLM authentication, so if you're using IMAP or POP your password will be sent as plain-text unless you use SSL.
Microsoft really half-asses IMAP. If I open my contact folder and open a contact, I get a blank email. Same with notes. It doesn't seem like it would be much trouble to just deliver the ascii format of those contacts and notes in the body of the email.
That said, the changes in
I would still like to see something other than "Catching up with Microsoft" in the future. How about integrating with gpg and having an easy to use GUI to encrypt messages. Currently, you have to get gpg, install enigmail, and pray. A built-in encryption module could really help push encryption onto the masses.
Or even an installer for win32. (there's an unofficial installer btw)
Here in Chicago, Comcast is a whopping $59 dollars per month. That's right, sixty dollars for no-server allowed broadband. They currently have a 4 month promotion for 29 dollars, but it goes back to 60 soon enough. Broadband cable used to be 39.99 until Comcast raised the prices and decided to punish everyone who didn't buy their video service. No thanks, I've got a directivo.
The meat of the article is the SBC and BellSouth are going sub-30 for broadband, which is pretty damn good. I thought broadband in the US would remain stagnant for quite a while until someone found a cheaper way to sell this stuff. I've already seen people jump onto SBC and away from Comcast and the people I work with have no problem paying almost that much for AOL dial-up. I've also seen people drop broadband because its so pricey here, even though they would easily pay 30 bucks a month for it, but 50-60 is asking too much.
Here's to "dsl-lite" for non-power users currently being ripped off on dial-up and sub-30 dollar DSL for everyone else.
> A tax break is not a break after years of tax increases, it's an adjustment back to a more sane level.
Interpret it as you like: Both cost money, plain and simple.
>We have not stopped being "at war" for nearly the last 50 years.
How many 87 billion+ checks were written in that course? Its one thing to be at a cold war, developing nuclear weapons that were going to be developed anyway, and another to maintain a exensive occupation. Not to mention the daily bodybags that are killing morale for a war that failed to deliver the goods: WMD, AlQaeda conspiracies, etc. At least the Russians were a threat.
>Suddenly the lack of free health care and SS is a problem.
That's besides the point, but funny how universal healthcare for Iraq is seen as smart policy and "socialism" here.
>but don't whine about the 60% income tax.
European taxes are perhaps 10% more than US taxes and that includes healthcare and higher education. We also spend more money on healthcare per capita than any other nation. The universal healthcare people have an argument, saying "move to Europe" is a frank and rude dismissal. There are real arguments against universal healthcare, but I'm afraid you don't know what they are.
>This current conflict looks nothing like Vietnam
Agreed, its more like Palestine, which is even worse. We can't just up and leave like we did in Vietnam, we have to work (and pay) for this until everything is stable.
I noticed you ignored the biggest economic indicator: how much in the red we are. We can only borrow so much before we look and become discredited in front of international lenders. This means that if you want a moon mission you'll have to get, as you call it, less "sane" taxes.
Here's how Dell support works:
If you have a Latitude or an Optiplex you get a much better support experience because these are their high-end business models. Most of my Dell (well when they didnt ship my phone call out to india) support is pretty good because we have a business account and all the fun extended warranty stuff that forces them to kiss our ass.
The home user (Inspiron owners, etc) get the bottom of the barrel support designed to make you jump through every hoop to save money on replacement parts and to deal with the clueless. When I call from work I just say "Yeah this CDROM died, can I get one tomorrow" and we do some chit-chat while he fills in the fields on his computer screen. The next day the drive is here. Trust me, that's not the residential experience at all.
Also, once passphrases become the norm you can put the dictionary away and replace it with a much smaller file full of famous quotes and phrases.
There's nothing wrong with an old fashioned 8 character password, as long as its changed regularly. Making it longer hurts brute force, but brute force is the exception, not the rule. Common passwords are tried first, or in this case common phrases.
The best of both worlds is non-dictionary passwords. The longer you force it the more "to be or not to be" you'll get. Crackers are just waiting for the passphrase revolution.
As Microsoft is quick to tell us: the OS and the browser are the same. They're integrated.
Dell supports Microsoft's OS and thus its browser. All these spyware apps attach to IE and cause huge problems. I had one person hand me a laptop chock full of spyware constantly changing the homepage (one program would change it and another would change it again) while in the background there were more than a few processes trying to download more spyware and another installing more.
Needless to say IE didnt work at all, it was just stuck on some orbitz page and the thing was more or less locked-up, but I did manage to get ad-aware to run.
Most of my friend's PCs problems can be traced to spyware they dont even know about because of how official ActiveX boxes look and the tons of legalese involved.
Dell would rather recommend a full-reinstall than ask the person "This may remove software you've installed" and be off the hook, legally. Instead Joe and Jane Dell owner will lose their baby photos and everything else they didn't backup after being told to reinstall from the rescue CD.
I think Dell has the obligation to be honest with their customers. If the tech believes its spyware he should tell them what it is and how to remove it - if they want.
More generically we need some kind of media campaign or some way to inform people about spyware, perhaps every company giving away free software without spyware should have an obligatory like to Ad Aware or Spybot during the install process.
Check out some of the support forums in the PC world. A significant number of serious problems are fixed simply with Ad Aware or Spybot.
Oh well, Dell gets a negative mark for not being honest with their customers. Tell the family to buy a Mac this year.
> The US fights lots of wars, so the benefits of destroying the system would probably extend far beyond one particular war.
Not against other nuclear club nations. Think about it. Something tells the "future benefits" would be null in a post-nuke USA and EU.
I have a DirecTivo and am part of the 'bad people' who will help destroy annoying commercials. As a solution, please just sell me the channels/shows I want to watch. Why am I paying for fundie nutcases like Trinity broadcasting when all I watch is 6 different channels?
This "one-size-fits-all" method of lots of channels for a large amount of money per month is failing, not just commercials.
I'd rather pay a 20-40 dollar bill that lets me "subscribe" to 20 or so shows with the ability to view *anything* for the first 10 or so minutes (or maybe x amount of episodes). In other words I can channel surf all I want and purchase the stuff I really like. The purchased items would be just like my "Season Pass" items.
Arguably, this dynamic will force networks to produce decent content instead of filler and better ways to squeeze in an extra half-commercial here and there.
TV will have to go through 'napsterization,' the genie is simply out of the bottle. A smart cable or satellite company can lead the way and make lots of money, especially targeting the "Cable is too expensive" crowd who just want Comedy Central and 2 or 3 other channels.
The networks won't like it, but its going to be either this or DRM forced commercial watching.
>no one is preventing you from going to see a movie that is NC-17 rated.
Yes they are, if you are under-17 it is no admittance. That's exactly the problem here, these aren't just content descriptors they are implemented as censorship either by theater management or by state law.
http://bygpub.com/books/tg2rw/
From the webpage:Although, living in the middle of an information revolution may make books like these somwhat old-fashioned compared to the power of google or alltheweb.
>"Teens" technically means anyone between 13 and 19. They're NOT the same emotionally, mentally or in experience.
Which more or less backs up my points: an arbiratry number is more or less useless, the real solution is realistic content ratings and parents making the decisions as to what their kids can see, not theaters or the local state legislature. Yes, that means unsupervised kids doing things parents might not like - but not only is that happening already its arguable that without exposure to outside influence one can't properly mature. This really reminds me of the weirdo fundie homeschool kids I've met, or the kids of parents with strong ideologies or strong religious identities.
>Because the vast majority of alcohol related driving injuries and fatalities involve "teens". Many can't handle the responsibility.
This is largely tangential to the argument. You could also say drivers in general don't mature until about 21 or so and cars should be banned from those under 21.
Also, your "numbers" are wrong. Teens account for about 10% of fatalities. Which has fallen sharply since the early eighties due, most likely, to MADD awareness programs and safer cars.
Which brings me to my last point: I was a teen once (pushing 30 now) so I find it hard to believe the "they just aren't mature enough" argument. If anything, responsible exposure to adulthood like safe-sex programs, condom availability, etc lower the risks of things teens are already doing as opposed to sticking your head in the ground and pretending the status quo is for the best.
To make this problem even worse, the conservative mentalities that go for censorship are the same ones that are against the teaching of safe-sex and other things that could benefit teens. If they are all immature its because we've made them so with our assumptions and prudish attitudes, but as time and time again has shown the teen years are the ones when one decides that Mom and Dad, society, etc might be wrong and its time to explore for real solutions. Might as well save them the effort and give them the straight dope as opposed to more knee-jerk efforts to shelter them.
> Well, honestly, I wouldn't want 8 year olds playing GTA or Manhunt anyways
Yes, best to let the state or the store raise your kids instead of making an effort at parenting. At least you have someone to sue in case something goes wrong.
> The affect only lasts an hour though.
Sounds *exactly* like the hypnotic/subconscious suggestion effect that has been measured from activities as varied as watching TV, Church, listening to a politician speak, reading a book, watching a movie, etc.
TV helps put its watchers into an "alpha state." Rousing and effective ministers have mastered timing that helps deliver their messages in an effective and convincing way way (see also: faith healers), politicans know exactly which emotional strings to pull, commercials are complex messages sometimes crafted by teams of psychologists for maximium efficiency (see McDonalds), books can aspire thoughts of rage/revolution/subversion, etc.
I'm all for "Your conscious might be unfairly altered by taking part of this event" stickers anywhere this may happen. Something tells me, no church, network, or politican would agree to these terms. Videogames on the other hand are the lazy parent's scapegoat and make for good re-election soundbites, just like "tough on crime" and the "war on drugs" does now. We can probably add "war on terrorism" with the passing of the PATRIOT ACT and the Iraq war for the lazy voter.
Just because there isn't op-ed pieces in your hometown paper against movie ratings doesn't mean there aren't thousands, if not millions who see them as a ridiculous way to rate movie content and the implementation of these ratings through law or theater policy is absurd.
You must be especially sheltered and puritanical to an extreme to believe that teens shoudn't be able to see NC-17 movies (R movies are more or less unenforced). Really now, there's nothing in there they don't know (or are doing). The American collective hang-up with sex and our apathy to fix these ratings is really embarassing. Mainstream movies in Europe and Asia have more T&A than our NC-17 movies.
Worse, filmmakers can't even make a realistic sex scene without the dreaded NC-17 kiss-of-death promise from the moralists at the censorship board, thus less realism and a damaged national cinema.
The US's ideas of age limits is largely irrational and based on special interests (big religion, etc). 18 year olds can't buy alcohol yet pay taxes, work, and can get drafted to die in a war. Under 21s can't even enter a bar, thus banning them from their own local music scene until they turn 21. Sexually active teens get arrested for having sex with consenting teens, etc.
The list goes on and many are shocked by how out of touch the US is. Don't assume the mainstream media's inablility to address these issues equals agreement.
If you're happy with your IMs being sniffed left and right, feel free to use Gaim et al. My friends and I have migrated to Trillian as our main IM because it does all the major IM protocols, is feature rich, and lets us encrypt our IMs. Sure, its vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks then again so is ssh, ssl, etc but it sure beats plain-text.
Gaim is feature poor and the developers refuse to interoperate with Trillian's secure protocol. The secure Gaim spin-off doesn't want to play with Trillian either, they want their own gpg-based system.
Regardless, Trillian is excellent for Win32 users. Its a shame there hasn't been a Linux port of it yet.
> Do you actually beleive the world (or all republicans) are that one-sided?
They do vote on the party line and those who don't get powerful threats from above. Let's not be that naive, its a two-party system, parties vote on agreed agendas. The GOP deserves to be called on its actions. Your Senator may be a great guy, but if he keeps voting in the Bush agenda then he is one-sided.
Calling em like one sees em.
Who's writing the laws and calling the shots right now? The minority party? I don't think so.
>A simple public awareness campaign should put an end to the madness.
I don't know about that. On one had we have Congress saying because of the internet and piracy we have to protect the monied interests. On the other hand we have Powell's FCC saying because of the internet and its ability to give anyone a voice, radio station, etc we should let the monopolies alone to do whatever they want.
Which message do we claim is the correct one, because it looks like both equal the same outcome: leave the monopolies up to their dirty tricks and dare not speak of reform or expanding fair-use to empower small business (in this case small labels).
Now is the time, GOP congress and President? An especially "pro-business" well pro-big-business with deep-pockets administration in an anything goes legislative spree is the *perfect* time to peel away some fair use rights. It would be foolish if they didn't try, not that I condone this.
Look at the success of Patriot Act II, just attach it to a spending bill and it passes while we were all sleeping. No debate, no nothing. The RIAA knows this is a good thing, for them.
Whatever your political persuasion, its fairly obvious that legislative reform should have happened a long time ago and the current congress and executive branch are pulling every dirty trick they can.
Greg Palast chronicles a lot of the abuses we don't hear about in his book The Best Democracy Money can Buy. Worth checking out if you want to know how stuff like this happens and why non-monied interests have little say in the affairs of government.
You're so close to be a materialist, except the question "meaning of life" might be loaded but its clear that spreading ones genes before one dies is pretty much it.
As for fundamental right and wrong, humans are well equiped (through the invisible hand of evolution) to understand when they've been cheated or victimized. This behavior is seen in most social mammals. No biggie.
Emotions are chemicals? Yep, does that make them any less 'real' or significant?
Death is certainly the end, as all attempts to prove otherwise have failed miserably.
Caveat: Neuros ogg playback is still in beta. They are working with the people from Xiph I believe, so if anyone can do it right, they should be able to.
I did just buy one, mainly because the 20 gig model is only $199 and I wanted something that could transmit to FM and record. Its not pretty or small, but its feature rich and cheap compared to other hard drive based players. I believe they're trying to clear out their inventory as they've been working on a new model or may be going out of busines, bought up, etc. I remember the 20 gig model retailing at $300 or so not too long ago.
Gnome comes off as very polished, its a shame there's so much mindshare involved into KDE. Frankly , I think when people have to deal with KDE they get a little nervous. The default is ugly, it feels tacked on, lots of thing tend to not work, etc.
I think it'll take corporate backing to really push Linux into the desktop and the community probably won't be happy writing tons of GUIs for everything that can easily be done on the command line because Joe-Sixpack doesnt or can't learn all those arcane commands just to do some office stuff.
I'm looking at Red Hat 9 or Fedora to gain some popularity on the desktop level. RH9 is very polished and the default install is very user friendly. (ignoring the recent expiration of their up2date ssl cert - whoops!)
Why do this indeed? The DRM on iTunes generated mp4s is very liberal. CD burns, copies, etc. Perhaps this and the long line of cracks to follow will force the industry to adopt a DRM-less format like MP3 (which plays on everything) or OggVorbis (which plays on PCs and 2 or 3 devices).
DRM-light may make the lawyers happy, but in the real world its next to nothing. I've already turned my AACs into MP3s because I don't feel like making iTunes my "one stop store/player/library!" Nor do I want to buy a cheesy little iPod when I have a kick-ass feaure-rich Neuros which plays OggVorbis.
All the RIAA has to do is keep filling the P2P networks with fake files, badly encoded files, and tracksthat only last 1 or 2 minutes as promotion items. This will help put people on the fence onto the 'buy music online' bandwagon that is rolling into town.
Let album sharing be amongst friends, face to face. You avoid getting caught by the copyright police and by buying music online you're paying artists and hopefully building a bridge to a better and more efficient distribution mode. Perhaps one that allows all that great local, indie, and undiscovered stuff to float to the top instead of what the marketers want to shove down our throad this month.