Sure, I agree with all of you, Han should be shooting first, it's more "in character" with him, and makes him coming in to save the day at the end that much more important (If he's always a good guy, why is it such a shock - sometimes there are shades of grey George!)
OTOH, we should be pointing out what a tremendous slap in the face to all those that worked so hard on the original movies (that made George into what he is today) it is to refuse to release the original versions on DVD. By refusing to release the original, unedited editons on a format that preserves them for generations instead of decades because they (paraphrased quote)"aren't the movies the way I wanted to make them, but wasn't able to because the technology didn't exist," George is saying that the incredible achievements of ILM on those orginal versions is worthless. He forgets the fact that those movies changed the way all movies were made from that point on. He dismisses the hard work of his cast, crew, and effects workers on the original cuts as weak, and unfinished products - nevermind the fact that those unfinished, weak versions made him a millionaire many times over, defined a genre, created groudbreaking visuals, and broke box office records that stood for years to come. Think about it, when "A New Hope" came out it cost roughly $2.00 a ticket, and it wasn't until Tim Burton's "Batman" came out at an average ticket price of more than twice that for the box office returns record "A New Hope" held was broken.
George's attitude shows through in more than his words, his actions speak louder than he ever could, he hates the fan base. He ignores our request to be able to relive a cherished moment in our upbringing in order to feed his own ego. Why do we put up with him anymore. Listen to your fans George, they put you in that ranch, and while we won't be taking you out of it, I miss being able to look up to you. Stop ignoring our requests, and quit stoking your own ego. Stop spitting on those that made you who you are.
Galvin said that the continued opposition stems from "an ideological belief by a narrow section of the technological community who don't believe you should innovate the core infrastructure of the Internet.
SELLING CLICK-THRU ADVERTISING IS NOT MY DEFINITION OF INNOVATION!!!!
No, rather it the domain (no pun intented) of hacks like netster, and dotster, and geocities link farmers.
Developing applications that run through the end-users web browser are innovations. Making the web a useful tool for more than virtual billboards is innovation. These are the things that are damaged by Verisign's quick money grab. I say that ICAAN find another company to run the.com and.net TLDs - one that is non-profit. Since verisign bought Net. Sol. it's been downhill all the way everyday.
WTF? I seem to remember tons of users complaining, as in the vast majority of them that knew what was going on. I'm a user, it was controversial to me!
It was controversial to the courts! It broke tons of in place software. It got them sued.... what part of all that isn't negative?
INSERT PERSONAL TEXT GREETING ETC HERE - I usually do something like this after the first question or two, once I know how much they "know."
Dear {NAME},
I was glad to help you with the computer problems the other day, and don't mind helping in the future, but I get tons of questions from people who assume, that because I work with computers, I know all about everything that can ever happen to them, and can fix them with little information. This simply isn't the case, there can literally be millions of problems cause by millions of things, and tracking down the cause can be darn near impossible. I understand that not everyone shares my love for the little buggers though, and don't mind helping you out at all when you need it because {INSERT SUPERFLUOUS COMPLIMENT HERE, IE: "cause you're my mom", or "cause you look great in tight jeans when you bend over", or "you rarely overcharge for kinky sex" or all of the above - YOU KNOW SUIT IT TO THE PERSON}.
Keep this tips in mind when your using your computer, and especially if you run into a problem.
If you get an error message while using your computer, please take the time to read it, if it doesn't make sense to you, write it down so that I can help you with it when you call. If you tell me "My computer gave me an error message." and when I ask what the message was you reply with "Oh, I don't know, I just clicked 'OK' and called you." I won't be able to help you if you do that - not because I am being mean or cruel, rather, I can't find the answer if I don't know what the question is, but I certainly will try, and usually fail. Just like when you take your car to the mechanic because of that pinging noise, if it doesn't happen when he's there, he'll have a hard time fixing it - but unlike the mechanic, those error messages can really help me out in tracking down a problem, and if you see one, you can keep it until you talk to me.
When you are on the Internet, {REMIND THEM IF THEY HAVE CABLE/DSL/ETC. THEY ARE ALWAYS ON THE NET} TRUST NO ONE! If something pops up that looks like it needs your OK to do something - find out what you are doing before giving it that OK. Many times, spyware companies will use this technique to trick you into installing their products and cause you headaches down the road. When you visit that web site and it asks you if you want to install and run "X" software from "X" manufacturer - You should find out a little about "X" software and "X" manufacturer before you say yes. The only software I would trust for this type of install are Macromedia's Flash and Shockwave player, Microsoft's Windows Update, and Apple's Quicktime. All of which can be accessed by going to the companies official site and downloading them from there. If you are at any other site and see that kind of request, err on the side of caution and don't install it. Besides, I installed all the current versions of those when I worked on your computer last. {MAY NEED TO DROP THAT LAST SENTANCE - MAY ALSO APPLY TO THE NEXT POINT AS WELL SINCE I ADD THIS TO THE SYSTEMS I WORK ON}
Install the google toolbar (which can be found at http://toolbar.google.com) if you're going to be using IE. It blocks pop-ups and provides the only search tool you will ever need, completely spyware free if you don't turn on advanced features during the install. Again see item 1 READ THE PAGE - DON'T JUST CLICK NEXT! Most problems in the computer world are cause by blindly doing things without reading the plain english explanations right in front of you.
If you have a major problem, like the system won't boot, check the following in order. Is it plugged in - I know it sounds like I'm talking down to you, but I'm not the simplest things trip up even the best of us. If it's plugged into surge suppressor (IT SHOULD BE!) is the surge suppressor turned on. Is your monitor on, since most hibernate automatically people forget that they have their own power button sometimes. Is there a floppy disc
Actually, I should expound up on that a bit - sorry if I didn't think of this first. Most of those people will read an e-mail from a friend/family member, but a dialog box or pop-up is assumed to be full of techno-jargon like:
INSERT TOUNGE FIRMLY IN CHEEK
"Are you sure you want to delete this file? - YES NO" You know stuff only techies could possibly fathom the meaning of. REMOVE TOUNGE
That's why the tips for users are helpful, and I stick to my guns, if they don't know the error etc. I don't try to guess, unless its obvious, but once I get it through their thick thick skulls to do these simple things, they usually can answer my questions about the problem and be helped over the phone with much less headache for all concerned.
Damn cut and paste thing - maybe I'm a "L"User I hate typing long comments into a text field - thought I grabbed the whole thing - whoops - 10. was the good old ANTI-VIRUS, SPY-BOT, ADAWARE UPDATE, PATCH thing, but we all know that here.
Being free tech support to tons of friends/family, I have learned a few very helpful tips to those of us that take the time to share our knowledge of (I hate to admit this) fairly simple to learn tasks. I know this is pretty Windows specific, but come on so is this class of tech support.
Pass these along to those that ask you to bail them out each time they have to figure out what a right click is.
Don't call me if you get an error message if you didn't take the time to read it. I can't help you if you tell me "My computer gave me an error message." and when I ask what the message was you reply with "Oh, I don't know, I just clicked 'OK' and called you." I won't help you if you do that - not because I am being mean or cruel, rather, I simply wasn't gifted with ESP.
Those three letter file extensions aren't jargon, they are names. Just like anything else in the world, they are ways to identify something. Don't be scared of them, you can learn that PDF's are viewed with Acrobat Reader, MP3's are music files, TXT is a text file, etc. This isn't hard to learn, and the ones you, the non-techy will be dealing with, are few. You don't get mad when I ask you the difference over your mouse and keyboard, why should you feel frightened when I ask you the type of file you recieved in an e-mail from your cousin Martha.
TRUST NO ONE! If something pops up that looks like it needs your OK to do something - find out what you are doing before giving it that OK. When you visit that web site and it asks you if you want to install and run "X" software from "X" manufacturer - maybe you should find out a little about "X" software and "X" manufacturer before you say "Sure, spyware me!" - SEE ITEM NUMBER ONE! 99% of computer problems, viruses, and spyware would end if people would take a whopping 20-30 seconds and read the DIALOG boxes that they see. Further, do you really think that someone that sent you an E-mail to help you get a "thR33 !nch B.1.g.G.3.r P3.n1.$" is really going to read your e-mail that isn't an order, much less go along with your request?
Install the google toolbar if you're going to be using IE. It blocks pop-ups and provides the only search tool you will ever need, spyware free if you don't turn on advanced features during the install. Again see item 1 READ THE PAGE - DON'T JUST CLICK NEXT!
If the system won't boot, check the following in order. Is it plugged in, if in surge suppressor is the surge suppressor turned on. Is your monitor on, since most hibernate automatically people forget that they have their own power button sometimes. Is there a floppy disc in the floppy drive. If it boots, but won't load the OS, is there some helpful information from the BIOS right in front of you, like "Hard Drive Failed" - again this stuff isn't hard to figure out, it's plain english, and it helps those of us that will be attempting to fix it to prepare for the fix.
90%+ of computer problems are software related, by that I mean this, programs you have added to your useless OS as it came out of the box. I don't know how many times I have spent forever trying to find a fix to a problem only to then hear "Oh, yeah, I had this new game I bought a wal-mart for $3.00 and I installed it yesterday, right before the computer started crashing - but that's a game not software" or some such. Keep in mind what you did recently with your PC before the problem cropped up, sometimes those things can be the cause of your trouble.
Learn what the interface stuff is called - three simple items you need to know:
#1 Start Menu (That menu you use to start things)
#2 Task Bar (that bar that has the names of the programs you're running on it)
#3 System Tray (All those little icons by the clock)
There you go, now you know enough that I can probably walk you through fixing 99% of your problems over the phone, or preventing them all together!
After reading the story "Linux cyber-battle turns nasty" by Stephen Evans today, I was shocked to see yet another respected media outlet so easily duped by reading the headlines, instead of investigating the facts of the story.
As you know the story regards the fastest spreading Internet worm in history, myDoom.a and its variants. A common misconception is that this virus's purpose is to create a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS)against SCO's web servers. While this is partially true, anyone who takes as much as 5 minutes to research the virus, will find that it is a mean, nasty wolf in less mean, less nasty wolf's clothing.
Let's do that little 5 minutes of research for you here Mr. Evans, since you couldn't be bothered to do so. First off, let's visit http://symantec.com. Symantec is the maker of Norton Anti-virus software, and my personal choice in anti-virus protection. I'll save you the clicking on the links and provide you with a direct link to my source here:
Now, let's see exactly what the myDoom virus does. This will take the vast amount of research time and effort of reading three paragraphs and one short sentence before jumping to conclusions.
QUOTE FROM SYMANTEC:
W32.Mydoom.A@mm (also known as W32.Novarg.A) is a mass-mailing worm that arrives as an attachment with the file extension.bat,.cmd,.exe,.pif,.scr, or.zip.
When a computer is infected, the worm sets up a backdoor into the system by opening TCP ports 3127 through 3198, which can potentially allow an attacker to connect to the computer and use it as a proxy to gain access to its network resources.
In addition, the backdoor can download and execute arbitrary files.
There is a 25% chance that a computer infected by the worm will perform a Denial of Service (DoS) on February 1, 2004 starting at 16:09:18 UTC, which is also the same as 08:09:18 PST, based on the machine's local system date/time. If the worm does start the DoS attack, it will not mass mail itself. It also has a trigger date to stop spreading/DoS-attacking on February 12, 2004. While the worm will stop on February 12, 2004, the backdoor component will continue to function after this date.
- END QUOTE
Ok, first off, let's see what the real purpose is here, since you seem convinced that the purpose is to attack SCO. One in four infected machines will participate in a DDoS attack on SCO, and those that are infected and set to participate, will in fact cease spreading the virus to other computers (probably in an attempt to appear uninfected as anti-virus programs are updated.) But, that means that 75% of the infected machines will have a whole different purpose to their infection. One, to spread as far and as fast as possible, and Two, to make the machine what is commonly called a "zombie box" for the worm writers true intentions down the road. Both the 75% that do not participate in the DDoS and the 25% that do will be in the same boat after February 12, 2004. They will cease spreading, and attacking, yet will remain active "zombie boxes" for other uses.
Ok, let's give you some background, since obviously you don't, like me, deal with computer security and worms/viruses on a daily basis. The vast majority of computer worms in the past year or so have had the primary purpose not of destroying data, not of being destructive, but in spreading and creating a vast network of "zombie boxes" for the purpose of launching more and more unsolicited commercial e-mail, commonly known as SPAM. For an example, look at the rapidly spreading sobig and its variants.
Ref: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-1020963.html?tag=nl
Something these worms/viruses have had in common is the fact that they
Part of the definition of spyware is the difficulty in removing it - plus google goes out of their way to let you know what the "advanced features" does for their page rank system and anonymous usage stats.
But should you want to delete it, it's a matter of uninstalling it from add/rem progs... and there isn't a nasty little DLL left behind that reinstalls it on each boot up.
Yeah, maybe the Pharm. companies would have a lot more cash if they didn't spend millions of dollars advertising on national TV and radio to promote products that are only available by 'script.
They can't be cost effective, and not everyone in the population needs to know about them - nexium... your damn purple pill commercials on the radio that say nothing about what the product does, but for some reason every man woman and child on the planet needs to see their doctor immediatly to ask about the PURPLE PILL.. I'm looking in your direction... you too Valtrex... I swear you make me want to live with genital herpes with those commercials, you make the lifestyle so exciting and inviting.. and who knew you could bag that many hot chicks with an STD!
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Ben Franklin
Little inconvience? I think not.
Slashdot Mirror
"One of these things is not like the others... one of these things doesn't belong... one of these things......."
Sure, I agree with all of you, Han should be shooting first, it's more "in character" with him, and makes him coming in to save the day at the end that much more important (If he's always a good guy, why is it such a shock - sometimes there are shades of grey George!)
OTOH, we should be pointing out what a tremendous slap in the face to all those that worked so hard on the original movies (that made George into what he is today) it is to refuse to release the original versions on DVD. By refusing to release the original, unedited editons on a format that preserves them for generations instead of decades because they (paraphrased quote)"aren't the movies the way I wanted to make them, but wasn't able to because the technology didn't exist," George is saying that the incredible achievements of ILM on those orginal versions is worthless. He forgets the fact that those movies changed the way all movies were made from that point on. He dismisses the hard work of his cast, crew, and effects workers on the original cuts as weak, and unfinished products - nevermind the fact that those unfinished, weak versions made him a millionaire many times over, defined a genre, created groudbreaking visuals, and broke box office records that stood for years to come. Think about it, when "A New Hope" came out it cost roughly $2.00 a ticket, and it wasn't until Tim Burton's "Batman" came out at an average ticket price of more than twice that for the box office returns record "A New Hope" held was broken.
George's attitude shows through in more than his words, his actions speak louder than he ever could, he hates the fan base. He ignores our request to be able to relive a cherished moment in our upbringing in order to feed his own ego. Why do we put up with him anymore. Listen to your fans George, they put you in that ranch, and while we won't be taking you out of it, I miss being able to look up to you. Stop ignoring our requests, and quit stoking your own ego. Stop spitting on those that made you who you are.
Save the Original Trilogy - Sign the petition
Galvin said that the continued opposition stems from "an ideological belief by a narrow section of the technological community who don't believe you should innovate the core infrastructure of the Internet.
SELLING CLICK-THRU ADVERTISING IS NOT MY DEFINITION OF INNOVATION!!!!
No, rather it the domain (no pun intented) of hacks like netster, and dotster, and geocities link farmers.
Developing applications that run through the end-users web browser are innovations. Making the web a useful tool for more than virtual billboards is innovation. These are the things that are damaged by Verisign's quick money grab. I say that ICAAN find another company to run the .com and .net TLDs - one that is non-profit. Since verisign bought Net. Sol. it's been downhill all the way everyday.
WTF? I seem to remember tons of users complaining, as in the vast majority of them that knew what was going on. I'm a user, it was controversial to me!
It was controversial to the courts! It broke tons of in place software. It got them sued.... what part of all that isn't negative?
Yes, and you can feel free to edit it as needed - creative commons... enjoy.
But then again, I send lots of lengthy e-mails to friends and family. They are used to me being verbose.
as reqested...
INSERT PERSONAL TEXT GREETING ETC HERE - I usually do something like this after the first question or two, once I know how much they "know."
Dear {NAME}, I was glad to help you with the computer problems the other day, and don't mind helping in the future, but I get tons of questions from people who assume, that because I work with computers, I know all about everything that can ever happen to them, and can fix them with little information. This simply isn't the case, there can literally be millions of problems cause by millions of things, and tracking down the cause can be darn near impossible. I understand that not everyone shares my love for the little buggers though, and don't mind helping you out at all when you need it because {INSERT SUPERFLUOUS COMPLIMENT HERE, IE: "cause you're my mom", or "cause you look great in tight jeans when you bend over", or "you rarely overcharge for kinky sex" or all of the above - YOU KNOW SUIT IT TO THE PERSON}.
Keep this tips in mind when your using your computer, and especially if you run into a problem.
Actually, I should expound up on that a bit - sorry if I didn't think of this first. Most of those people will read an e-mail from a friend/family member, but a dialog box or pop-up is assumed to be full of techno-jargon like:
INSERT TOUNGE FIRMLY IN CHEEK
"Are you sure you want to delete this file? - YES NO" You know stuff only techies could possibly fathom the meaning of.
REMOVE TOUNGE
That's why the tips for users are helpful, and I stick to my guns, if they don't know the error etc. I don't try to guess, unless its obvious, but once I get it through their thick thick skulls to do these simple things, they usually can answer my questions about the problem and be helped over the phone with much less headache for all concerned.
I e-mail a nicer version to those that call often on me - that was the purpose of sharing this here.
Damn cut and paste thing - maybe I'm a "L"User I hate typing long comments into a text field - thought I grabbed the whole thing - whoops - 10. was the good old ANTI-VIRUS, SPY-BOT, ADAWARE UPDATE, PATCH thing, but we all know that here.
Thanks - I goofed
Being free tech support to tons of friends/family, I have learned a few very helpful tips to those of us that take the time to share our knowledge of (I hate to admit this) fairly simple to learn tasks. I know this is pretty Windows specific, but come on so is this class of tech support.
Pass these along to those that ask you to bail them out each time they have to figure out what a right click is.
There you go, now you know enough that I can probably walk you through fixing 99% of your problems over the phone, or preventing them all together!
OMG - even better off topic joke than my off topic joke... a vicious circle!
Here's my little salvo I fired off this morning:
/data/w32.mydoom.a@mm.html
.bat, .cmd, .exe, .pif, .scr, or .zip.
After reading the story "Linux cyber-battle turns nasty" by Stephen Evans today, I was shocked to see yet another respected media outlet so easily duped by reading the headlines, instead of investigating the facts of the story.
As you know the story regards the fastest spreading Internet worm in history, myDoom.a and its variants. A common misconception is that this virus's purpose is to create a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS)against SCO's web servers. While this is partially true, anyone who takes as much as 5 minutes to research the virus, will find that it is a mean, nasty wolf in less mean, less nasty wolf's clothing.
Let's do that little 5 minutes of research for you here Mr. Evans, since you couldn't be bothered to do so. First off, let's visit http://symantec.com. Symantec is the maker of Norton Anti-virus software, and my personal choice in anti-virus protection. I'll save you the clicking on the links and provide you with a direct link to my source here:
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc
Now, let's see exactly what the myDoom virus does. This will take the vast amount of research time and effort of reading three paragraphs and one short sentence before jumping to conclusions.
QUOTE FROM SYMANTEC:
W32.Mydoom.A@mm (also known as W32.Novarg.A) is a mass-mailing worm that arrives as an attachment with the file extension
When a computer is infected, the worm sets up a backdoor into the system by opening TCP ports 3127 through 3198, which can potentially allow an attacker to connect to the computer and use it as a proxy to gain access to its network resources.
In addition, the backdoor can download and execute arbitrary files.
There is a 25% chance that a computer infected by the worm will perform a Denial of Service (DoS) on February 1, 2004 starting at 16:09:18 UTC, which is also the same as 08:09:18 PST, based on the machine's local system date/time. If the worm does start the DoS attack, it will not mass mail itself. It also has a trigger date to stop spreading/DoS-attacking on February 12, 2004. While the worm will stop on February 12, 2004, the backdoor component will continue to function after this date. - END QUOTE
Ok, first off, let's see what the real purpose is here, since you seem convinced that the purpose is to attack SCO. One in four infected machines will participate in a DDoS attack on SCO, and those that are infected and set to participate, will in fact cease spreading the virus to other computers (probably in an attempt to appear uninfected as anti-virus programs are updated.) But, that means that 75% of the infected machines will have a whole different purpose to their infection. One, to spread as far and as fast as possible, and Two, to make the machine what is commonly called a "zombie box" for the worm writers true intentions down the road. Both the 75% that do not participate in the DDoS and the 25% that do will be in the same boat after February 12, 2004. They will cease spreading, and attacking, yet will remain active "zombie boxes" for other uses.
Ok, let's give you some background, since obviously you don't, like me, deal with computer security and worms/viruses on a daily basis. The vast majority of computer worms in the past year or so have had the primary purpose not of destroying data, not of being destructive, but in spreading and creating a vast network of "zombie boxes" for the purpose of launching more and more unsolicited commercial e-mail, commonly known as SPAM. For an example, look at the rapidly spreading sobig and its variants.
Ref: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-1020963.html?tag=nl
Something these worms/viruses have had in common is the fact that they
Like a bridge over troubled..... oh nevermind!
Part of the definition of spyware is the difficulty in removing it - plus google goes out of their way to let you know what the "advanced features" does for their page rank system and anonymous usage stats.
But should you want to delete it, it's a matter of uninstalling it from add/rem progs... and there isn't a nasty little DLL left behind that reinstalls it on each boot up.
Yeah, maybe the Pharm. companies would have a lot more cash if they didn't spend millions of dollars advertising on national TV and radio to promote products that are only available by 'script. They can't be cost effective, and not everyone in the population needs to know about them - nexium... your damn purple pill commercials on the radio that say nothing about what the product does, but for some reason every man woman and child on the planet needs to see their doctor immediatly to ask about the PURPLE PILL.. I'm looking in your direction... you too Valtrex... I swear you make me want to live with genital herpes with those commercials, you make the lifestyle so exciting and inviting.. and who knew you could bag that many hot chicks with an STD!
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Ben Franklin Little inconvience? I think not.