Grab one of the 3rd party utilities and put it on your iPod in HD mode. There are some that don't even need an installer, they can run FROM the iPod. Now you can copy stuff back off the iPod all you like.
In truth, I have owned 3 different HD based digital music players....none of them ipods. Does this make me a bad person?
Yes.:-)
DRM sucks. I would much rather buy a laptop hard drive that just happens to play mp3's. Rather than a digital music player with DRM that just happens to have a hard drive.
In principle, I agree. In practice, the iPod is the least annoying DRM out there, and the best MP3 player, hands down. You can just load regular MP3 files into it if you don't want to use ITMS. 99% of the stuff on my iPod is just MP3 tunes. The rest is my growing collection of audiobooks from Audible.com. They require some basic DRM (it's easy to crack if you want MP3, etc. though) and iPod supports it out of the box. I could break the encryption and use a regular MP3 player, but most normal MP3 players aren't real great for audiobooks, and this is easier.
And you CAN copy the tunes back out of it. Just not with the iTunes program. It's a stupid restriction, but it's easy to bypass. Enable HD mode and copy a small standalone app to it. Then you can copy stuff off the iPod anywhere you have a sync cable and a computer that can run the app.
My iPod needed to be formatted and have the main OS installed on it when I bought it. That seems to be the norm, so I would assume it would be something like a gift cert. It would be pretty worthless to pay extra for U2 music pre-loaded just to have iTunes blast it on first sync.
Not to mention those that will want to use it on Windows have to put a FAT32 format on it anyway. If it came pre-loaded and formatted for Mac, it's useless to Windows users. That is, unless Apple has gotten over thier NIH syndrome and is going to load them with FAT32 since Mac users can read that format as well.
Maybe a cupon code to get your free download? Even over dialup an album or two in AAC isn't going to take that long to download.
IMO, total deregulation would cause more problems than it solves in telecom. The best plan I've seen has the government splitting the telcos into 2 parts. Part 1 has the physical plant: wires, switches, fiber, etc.. Part 2 has the services: POTS, VOIP, TCP/IP, Video, Audio, whatever.
The catch is that there would have to be regulation in place to ensure fair play. Not much, a simple equal pricing requirement would do fine to start. If a copper pair costs $5/mo for one company, it has to cost $5/mo to ALL companies. Another would be that there will be no mergeing of the 2 types, period. There would also be a strict no monopoly rule. If someone else wants to come in and run wires, or provide services, they can.
This would force competition on the service side, driving the physical side to improve and upgrade infrastructure in order to meet demand. If they can put in a fiber run that can do 1TB/s and get rid of 500 copper T1s to save a bunch of money, why wouldn't they? And if the existing company decided not to? Well, another one could come along to run that fiber and steal some customers.
We do the same thing here. I wrote a simple app server that spawns off the required apps on a thread to save the JVM overhead. I don't have any performance problems under this setup.
You obviously haven't used some of Java's more powerfull APIs. Take a look at java.lang.reflect.* sometime. You CAN put classes into data structures (other classes with the Class class), you can call arbitrary methods on objects (Class.getMethod()).
So you could do something like this:
public Class CommandHandlers { public command_Help() { // show the help here... } public command_Save() { // save here... }
This is really basic, but you get the idea. Some of your other complaints are annoying, but not as big a deal as you seem to think. I have wanted autoboxing about twice, I don't use things like Integer much. I just use the primitives. I have wanted generics for quite some time, avoiding the need to typecast (and to get compile-time checking) when using collections, but that's a minor thing, and is coming in the next version (along with autoboxing/unboxing).
Helper functions have to be part of a class. So what? Make a Utilities.java if you want and call them from there. You have to put them all in a.c file anyway, so it's not THAT big of a difference. You don't even have to instantiate the object if you declare the methods static.
I don't find the class library nearly so complex as you seem to. I think it's eaiser to work with than standard C++ or MFC. Sure, clib is a simpler, but it's also less capable.
Most of the complaints I see about Java boil down to "but it's DIFFERENT". So what? Every language is different. They all have strong and weak points. If I could have Java's code with C's memory usage, I'd be so very happy.;)
With a console, a new game is PNP. I don't have to check that my hardware is up to the task, update drivers, worry about DLL hell, etc.. I pop the disc in, and hit the power button. I'm playing in under 1 minute. There are only a couple things I think consoles need to improve on in this regard.
1) Make the discs more durable. Kids play these things, they should be kid-friendly. Think MiniDisc.
2) Even better, make an option to install the game onto a hard drive. Even if I have to buy the HD seperately. Prefferably using a standard USB2/FireWire HD so I can upgrade and such. Games installed to HD could be locked to the console running it. It's crackable, but so are game discs. It would limit the casual copiers, and nothing stops the big boys anyway.
I think you're not getting it. Yeah, there is a LOT of "piracy" going on in the PC game crowd. However, there are valid reasons for most of the comments you posted.
Cracking to run under WINE and such. How is this stealing thier game? If I bought it, I own it. You even use this line of reasoning later stating that I should take responsibility for MY PROPERTY. So, *IF* I bought the game, cracking it so that I can run under emulation is perfectly legal. Well, in any reasonable version of copyright law it is anyway, DMCA is a POS and should be repealed. In any case, it's not theft, I *PAID FOR THE GAME*. Yeah, they don't support Linux, all that means is that I can't call them and bitch if it doesn't work in WINE.
Broken or lost CDs. Well, we the techo elite are always telling people to make backups. Again, this is simply taking responsibility for our stuff that we *PAID* for. I do this with all my CDs, for example. I don't allow originals to leave the house. I make copies for the car and such. As long as I don't give those copies to anyone else, I'm not stealing anything. Publishers can't have it both ways. Either it's mine and I can do as I please, or it's a LICENSED product. Meaning that I don't own it, but I DO own a right to USE it. If I have such a right, and they make backups impossible, I think it is thier responsibility to provide replacement media. Providing, of course, I can prove I purchased a license. Perhaps a good use for those registration cards? I don't expect ongoing support for the software, but maintaining a few CDs for people that are legit and bought your stuff should be a reasonable thing to ask.
Personally, I have, in the past copied some games. I've bought quite a few as well. Usually, I'll try it out at a friends place, maybe make a copy, and if I find I play it, I go buy a copy. I did this with Quake 3. I never got real into FPS games, so I wouldn't have tried it otherwise. Does that make me evil somehow? Maybe, that's a personal call. I DID buy it though, so I personally think I'm fine.
Interestingly, that was the last PC game I purchased. They are all the same now, just with better graphics. I'm not interested in buying a $200 card so I can play the new games. Not to mention driver issues, DLL hell, Windows in general, and getting it all to work right. I've moved most of my gaming to console these days. I can't backup my GameCube discs, which does worry me a little, but I don't have kids or animals, so it's not a big worry. I do wish they would make the games safer from scratches or offer replacement media though. Yeah, I'll pay shipping. I'll even return my scratched original with a credit card guarantee if they will cross-ship for me. I think the best soultion to disc damage is to put them in a cart of some kind, like MiniDisc. I have game carts and MiniDiscs from ~1990 that still work fine, and haven't been treated well at all.
Call Microsoft? XP-SP2 is a free CD in the mail... I would think they might offer something like that for the other OSes. Or find a friend with broadband and a CD burner to make you a disc. I've heard there is a site with ISOs for all the updates to a particular date. That will take care of 90% of your problems. From there, you can use Windows Update to patch up without too much trouble, even over a modem.
You might also consider asking the IT guys at work for one. Most of the time, IT people are willing to help out. Many larger companies have MSDN subscriptions, so the CD is allready available to them. IIRC, there are no copy restrictions on the SP discs.
DNS?? What support do you feel is missing? I've never wanted for anything more than to be able to connect to a name as well as an IP. I can connect to named machines just fine...
Network interface support could use some help. But it's not that big a deal. I recently ran into an issue with this for an FTP app I wrote. I simply added a config option to specify which interface (by IP address) to use as "localhost" for things like the PORT command and binding sockets to. Not so different from how I've seen it done in Linux with C or C++ apps. Works perfectly.
Not to say Java is perfect, but it works well for what we do around here. Mostly server side DB backed apps. We also have a few client apps being written in Java that show no major performance issues.
Firearms are used every day to subjugate, murder, and maim.
Firearms are also used every day to prevent such things. You just don't see it in the press, it's not good "news" unless somebody dies. Simply brandishing a firearm will get most criminals to walk away. They don't want to get shot any more than you or I do.
Morals mean nothing in this case. Your morals are different than mine. My moral code permits the use of deadly force against an armed attacker. If yours doesn't, that's your business.
Firearms are tools. By themselves, they are no more dangerous than a rock. They just sit there. The motivation of the person wielding the firearm is the key point. I wield firearms daily, I have never used one against a person. I hope to never be faced with a situation that would require it. So, for me, they are tools of defence that happen to be lethal to those who would attack myself or my family. Some people are so well trained that thier bodies can be considered a lethal weapon. Are they "immoral" in your view for learning or using those skills if they are attacked?
Really? Tell me that when your attacker is using lethal weaponry against you. It need not be a gun, knives and baseball bats work equally well against an unarmed victim.
If you just hang up, they will call, and call, and call.... They will be like the energizer bunny. My wife finally figgured this out first hand. She had some place calling over and over, daily most of the time. She recognized the number, and just hung up or didn't answer. They kept calling. Finally, she handed the phone to me and I used the magic words, "Put me on your do not call list.". No more calls.
If you want to really get rid of them, and not be bothered anymore, you have to tell them to put you on their internal do not call list. Otherwise, you'll just get more calls you have to hang up on. I would rather not be bothered.
I find I get most of my hits from the spamhaus list, followed by dsbl. In scanning my logs, I have not ever found a false positive from those, nor have I been contacted by anyone complaining about my blocks (they can use yahoo or something if they want to). 90% of them appear to be broadband connected machines, probably virus infested.
Yeah, yeah. I'm blocking China and Korea. I don't know anyone there, so I put them in as an experiment. I get probably 10 blocks a day from them. Not enough to really care either way, but that's 10 fewer spams for my other filters to process.
As I said in my other post, this works for me. If it sucks for you, I don't want to hear about it.;)
I don't claim to have done any scientific studies on the subject, but I have tried a number of different anti-spam soultions over the past few years. In my experience, the best soultion is a multi-pronged approach that takes advantage of the strong points of a few setups.
If you want to talk about the results from a single filter in my current arsenal, I would give DSPAM the highest marks. I found it to catch more spams than a trained and customized SpamAssassin with no false positives. It's also very fast, unlike SA. My current setup is as follows...
1) RBLs via Postfix. I probably block 80% of inbound spam this way. I choose my RBLs carefully to limit false positives.
2) DSPAM. I typically get better than 99% of the ones that slip through the RBLs with DSPAM.
3) A complex procmail.rc that uses some statistical rules and a few simple checks, such as "is the mail addressed to me". I also use procmail to sort my mailing list messages into IMAP boxes and it includes a simple whitelist.
4) Spamassassin. This doesn't run much anymore, but I keep it around anyway as a last resort checker. If a mail makes it through all the above, SA gets a shot at it.
I tried using SA as my only post RBL filter for a couple months, but it wasn't getting the job done. I then added the procmail script, but still wasn't happy. Putting DSPAM in front of it all seems to work best for me. I now find that I only have a few spams per month make it past DSPAM (they sort into seperate boxes so I can track their performance) and I haven't seen a false positive in quite some time, over a month anyway. I've only been using DSPAM for a few months.
What works for me may be crap for you. Try a few things till you find something that works for you and use that. If you're trying statistical filters, keep in mind that it takes a while to train them. I found I got better than 90% with DSPAM after a small corpus feed and about a week of training.
Apparently, you're not familiar with Utah politics.
The only way Hatch is getting out of office is if he decides to retire. The people here are so brainwashed by his campaigns that nobody stands a chance against him. First off, he's been in there forever, so tells us that gives him an advantage to get more for Utah. Which is probably true, from what I've heard about Congress. Secondly, he's Republican, so he's pretty much a shoe-in. He could go on national TV and burn the flag and the original copy of the Constitution and probably still get elected here. *sigh* It's sad, really.
Yes, I live in his district, no I didn't vote for him, EVER. Yes, I have written him countless times and gotten the same form-letter back talking about how great copyright is and that he has to stop the evil pirates. (AArrghhh!!)
No, I won't be voting for him this year. I typically vote Libertarian these days. Not to mention, I pretty much agree with your assessment and feelings about him. I'll write myself in before I vote for that a$$hole, and I don't want the job!
This post will probably get lost in the chatter in this thread. But I feel compelled to try anyway.
The fact of the matter is, we haven't had a true "Free Market" in the USA for nearly a century. IMO, I'm fine with allowing for outsourcing in the name of free markets, so long as we make the market free again. That means, no more subsidies/bailouts/protectionism for ANY industries. If a "Free Market" is good for the economy and it's okay to send IT/IS/Programming jobs overseas, I say it's fine for everyone else too.
That means:
No more airline bailouts. No more railroad bailouts. No more S&L bailouts. No more farming subsidies. No more unions dictating wages/conditions/whatever with the force of law. No more requirement that tradesmen do the apprentice thing. No more tarrifs protecting steel/auto/sugar/whatever industries. No more perpetual copyrights.
No more laws protecting ANY industry or ANY business model, WITH NO EXCEPTIONS.
Do that, and I'll have no trouble whatsoever with offshoring. In the current "market", I don't think it's unreasonable for people to complain when thier jobs get sent overseas. They look around and fully half of the people they see work in protected industries. Equal protection and all that....
Being libertarian-minded, I would actually preffer going back to a free market. I doubt it will happen in my lifetime though. Too many people with too much money are fighting tooth and nail to make sure that doesn't happen.
I typically vote for the Libertarians. They are closest to my views. If you don't like them, there's always the Green, Communist, Nazi, Natural Law, or even write-in people you think would do a better job. Most of the above would have to be write-in as they are too small for ballot access. There are options that are basicly "None of the Above" that still allow you to be counted.
I live in Utah, home of the asshat, uhh, I mean Orin Hatch. I have never voted for him. The majority here seem to vote straight Republican, so he keeps getting elected. So, for me, voting for anything not Republican is pretty much a "None of the Above" vote. Since I hate Democrats views more than I hate Republicans views, I'm forced to a third party. But that's not so bad, around here the Democrats probably only have a little more support than the Libertarians.;)
How about the Great Salt Lake? It's not as huge as it used to be, but it's still quite large. It seems about useless for anything else to me, and I live 10 miles from it. I can't imagine this alge would smell worse than the dead brine shrimp.;)
Actually, since VOIP requires broadband, telcos are in a position to profit from this. That is, if they would remove thier heads from various orifices. The simple fact is, POTS is on the way out. I, and many people I know, don't even have a POTS line. I use cellular for my phone needs, and wireless broadband. I WOULD use DSL, if I could have gotten it. I would love a decent upstream, but I can't get DSL. Too far from the CO, on fiber, blah, blah, blah. I live in the capital city (Salt Lake City), about 5 minutes from the city center. Of course, I can't get cable TV either (the cableco won't connect the lines). I can only imagine what a pain it is for those further away.
The future is high speed digital links, aka "Broadband". With a decent link, you can pipe all sorts of crap over it. Look at the cable companies. You get 100+ channels, broadband internet, and telephone over a single coax cable. The telcos COULD do the same thing, if they wanted to. The technology exists, but they refuse to deploy it. They COULD put everyone within range of the DSL system with the existing infrastructure using mini-DSLAMs and/or various DLC based DSL equipment.
Oh, and they will make some money anyway in the brave new VOIP world. Telcos own most of the backbone internet links! More IP traffic = more money for them!
IMO, telcos and cablecos should be regulated as they are a government created monopoly with some eminent domain powers. They have to put cables in the ground, that should involve some regulation to keep them from tearing up the whole place or putting everything above ground because it's cheaper. VOIP providers like Vonage do none of these things, therefore should not be subject to the same types of regulation.
There are 1st gen Priuses on the road well over 100K on the battery. The 8yr/100K figure is the WARRANTY. What's the powertrain warranty on that VW? You don't mention the model or year, but I hear the Jetta comes in TDI.
http://www.vw.com/warranty/index.htm?car=jetta Hmmm.... 5yr/60K. Of course, the Prius warranty above is for the hybrid electric parts, the Prius non-electric drivetrain warranty is the same as the Jetta. How, exactly, is this a higher TCO?
There are 04 Priuses on the road getting 55-60 MPG (average). It's all in driving style and terrian. As for the batteries, what's so nasty about them? They are NiMH, one of the least toxic battery types available. The materials are somewhat valuable so they will likely be recycled. The Prius uses somewhat small batteries as well, the size is compared to 6 loaves of bread, not like the EV lead-acid packs that can fill up the bed of a truck and contain large amounts of lead. The battery in your VW is probably more toxic than the Prius HV battery.
Slashdot Mirror
Grab one of the 3rd party utilities and put it on your iPod in HD mode. There are some that don't even need an installer, they can run FROM the iPod. Now you can copy stuff back off the iPod all you like.
Yes. :-)
DRM sucks. I would much rather buy a laptop hard drive that just happens to play mp3's. Rather than a digital music player with DRM that just happens to have a hard drive.
In principle, I agree. In practice, the iPod is the least annoying DRM out there, and the best MP3 player, hands down. You can just load regular MP3 files into it if you don't want to use ITMS. 99% of the stuff on my iPod is just MP3 tunes. The rest is my growing collection of audiobooks from Audible.com. They require some basic DRM (it's easy to crack if you want MP3, etc. though) and iPod supports it out of the box. I could break the encryption and use a regular MP3 player, but most normal MP3 players aren't real great for audiobooks, and this is easier.
And you CAN copy the tunes back out of it. Just not with the iTunes program. It's a stupid restriction, but it's easy to bypass. Enable HD mode and copy a small standalone app to it. Then you can copy stuff off the iPod anywhere you have a sync cable and a computer that can run the app.
My iPod needed to be formatted and have the main OS installed on it when I bought it. That seems to be the norm, so I would assume it would be something like a gift cert. It would be pretty worthless to pay extra for U2 music pre-loaded just to have iTunes blast it on first sync.
Not to mention those that will want to use it on Windows have to put a FAT32 format on it anyway. If it came pre-loaded and formatted for Mac, it's useless to Windows users. That is, unless Apple has gotten over thier NIH syndrome and is going to load them with FAT32 since Mac users can read that format as well.
Maybe a cupon code to get your free download? Even over dialup an album or two in AAC isn't going to take that long to download.
You're reading it wrong. It's 2.95 CENTS per minute. So $0.0295/min ...
Pretty reasonable..
I'd settle for being able to define it. ;)
IMO, total deregulation would cause more problems than it solves in telecom. The best plan I've seen has the government splitting the telcos into 2 parts. Part 1 has the physical plant: wires, switches, fiber, etc.. Part 2 has the services: POTS, VOIP, TCP/IP, Video, Audio, whatever.
The catch is that there would have to be regulation in place to ensure fair play. Not much, a simple equal pricing requirement would do fine to start. If a copper pair costs $5/mo for one company, it has to cost $5/mo to ALL companies. Another would be that there will be no mergeing of the 2 types, period. There would also be a strict no monopoly rule. If someone else wants to come in and run wires, or provide services, they can.
This would force competition on the service side, driving the physical side to improve and upgrade infrastructure in order to meet demand. If they can put in a fiber run that can do 1TB/s and get rid of 500 copper T1s to save a bunch of money, why wouldn't they? And if the existing company decided not to? Well, another one could come along to run that fiber and steal some customers.
We do the same thing here. I wrote a simple app server that spawns off the required apps on a thread to save the JVM overhead. I don't have any performance problems under this setup.
You obviously haven't used some of Java's more powerfull APIs. Take a look at java.lang.reflect.* sometime. You CAN put classes into data structures (other classes with the Class class), you can call arbitrary methods on objects (Class.getMethod()).
// show the help here...
// save here...
.c file anyway, so it's not THAT big of a difference. You don't even have to instantiate the object if you declare the methods static.
;)
So you could do something like this:
public Class CommandHandlers
{
public command_Help()
{
}
public command_Save()
{
}
public void command_Exit()
{
System.exit();
}
public void doCommand(String command)
{
getClass().getMethod("command_" + command).invoke(this, null);
}
}
This is really basic, but you get the idea. Some of your other complaints are annoying, but not as big a deal as you seem to think. I have wanted autoboxing about twice, I don't use things like Integer much. I just use the primitives. I have wanted generics for quite some time, avoiding the need to typecast (and to get compile-time checking) when using collections, but that's a minor thing, and is coming in the next version (along with autoboxing/unboxing).
Helper functions have to be part of a class. So what? Make a Utilities.java if you want and call them from there. You have to put them all in a
I don't find the class library nearly so complex as you seem to. I think it's eaiser to work with than standard C++ or MFC. Sure, clib is a simpler, but it's also less capable.
Most of the complaints I see about Java boil down to "but it's DIFFERENT". So what? Every language is different. They all have strong and weak points. If I could have Java's code with C's memory usage, I'd be so very happy.
With a console, a new game is PNP. I don't have to check that my hardware is up to the task, update drivers, worry about DLL hell, etc.. I pop the disc in, and hit the power button. I'm playing in under 1 minute. There are only a couple things I think consoles need to improve on in this regard.
1) Make the discs more durable. Kids play these things, they should be kid-friendly. Think MiniDisc.
2) Even better, make an option to install the game onto a hard drive. Even if I have to buy the HD seperately. Prefferably using a standard USB2/FireWire HD so I can upgrade and such. Games installed to HD could be locked to the console running it. It's crackable, but so are game discs. It would limit the casual copiers, and nothing stops the big boys anyway.
I think you're not getting it. Yeah, there is a LOT of "piracy" going on in the PC game crowd. However, there are valid reasons for most of the comments you posted.
Cracking to run under WINE and such. How is this stealing thier game? If I bought it, I own it. You even use this line of reasoning later stating that I should take responsibility for MY PROPERTY. So, *IF* I bought the game, cracking it so that I can run under emulation is perfectly legal. Well, in any reasonable version of copyright law it is anyway, DMCA is a POS and should be repealed. In any case, it's not theft, I *PAID FOR THE GAME*. Yeah, they don't support Linux, all that means is that I can't call them and bitch if it doesn't work in WINE.
Broken or lost CDs. Well, we the techo elite are always telling people to make backups. Again, this is simply taking responsibility for our stuff that we *PAID* for. I do this with all my CDs, for example. I don't allow originals to leave the house. I make copies for the car and such. As long as I don't give those copies to anyone else, I'm not stealing anything. Publishers can't have it both ways. Either it's mine and I can do as I please, or it's a LICENSED product. Meaning that I don't own it, but I DO own a right to USE it. If I have such a right, and they make backups impossible, I think it is thier responsibility to provide replacement media. Providing, of course, I can prove I purchased a license. Perhaps a good use for those registration cards? I don't expect ongoing support for the software, but maintaining a few CDs for people that are legit and bought your stuff should be a reasonable thing to ask.
Personally, I have, in the past copied some games. I've bought quite a few as well. Usually, I'll try it out at a friends place, maybe make a copy, and if I find I play it, I go buy a copy. I did this with Quake 3. I never got real into FPS games, so I wouldn't have tried it otherwise. Does that make me evil somehow? Maybe, that's a personal call. I DID buy it though, so I personally think I'm fine.
Interestingly, that was the last PC game I purchased. They are all the same now, just with better graphics. I'm not interested in buying a $200 card so I can play the new games. Not to mention driver issues, DLL hell, Windows in general, and getting it all to work right. I've moved most of my gaming to console these days. I can't backup my GameCube discs, which does worry me a little, but I don't have kids or animals, so it's not a big worry. I do wish they would make the games safer from scratches or offer replacement media though. Yeah, I'll pay shipping. I'll even return my scratched original with a credit card guarantee if they will cross-ship for me. I think the best soultion to disc damage is to put them in a cart of some kind, like MiniDisc. I have game carts and MiniDiscs from ~1990 that still work fine, and haven't been treated well at all.
I don't think I'm so unreasonable.
Call Microsoft? XP-SP2 is a free CD in the mail... I would think they might offer something like that for the other OSes. Or find a friend with broadband and a CD burner to make you a disc. I've heard there is a site with ISOs for all the updates to a particular date. That will take care of 90% of your problems. From there, you can use Windows Update to patch up without too much trouble, even over a modem.
You might also consider asking the IT guys at work for one. Most of the time, IT people are willing to help out. Many larger companies have MSDN subscriptions, so the CD is allready available to them. IIRC, there are no copy restrictions on the SP discs.
DNS?? What support do you feel is missing? I've never wanted for anything more than to be able to connect to a name as well as an IP. I can connect to named machines just fine...
Network interface support could use some help. But it's not that big a deal. I recently ran into an issue with this for an FTP app I wrote. I simply added a config option to specify which interface (by IP address) to use as "localhost" for things like the PORT command and binding sockets to. Not so different from how I've seen it done in Linux with C or C++ apps. Works perfectly.
Not to say Java is perfect, but it works well for what we do around here. Mostly server side DB backed apps. We also have a few client apps being written in Java that show no major performance issues.
Firearms are also used every day to prevent such things. You just don't see it in the press, it's not good "news" unless somebody dies. Simply brandishing a firearm will get most criminals to walk away. They don't want to get shot any more than you or I do.
Morals mean nothing in this case. Your morals are different than mine. My moral code permits the use of deadly force against an armed attacker. If yours doesn't, that's your business.
Firearms are tools. By themselves, they are no more dangerous than a rock. They just sit there. The motivation of the person wielding the firearm is the key point. I wield firearms daily, I have never used one against a person. I hope to never be faced with a situation that would require it. So, for me, they are tools of defence that happen to be lethal to those who would attack myself or my family. Some people are so well trained that thier bodies can be considered a lethal weapon. Are they "immoral" in your view for learning or using those skills if they are attacked?
Really? Tell me that when your attacker is using lethal weaponry against you. It need not be a gun, knives and baseball bats work equally well against an unarmed victim.
If you just hang up, they will call, and call, and call.... They will be like the energizer bunny. My wife finally figgured this out first hand. She had some place calling over and over, daily most of the time. She recognized the number, and just hung up or didn't answer. They kept calling. Finally, she handed the phone to me and I used the magic words, "Put me on your do not call list.". No more calls.
If you want to really get rid of them, and not be bothered anymore, you have to tell them to put you on their internal do not call list. Otherwise, you'll just get more calls you have to hang up on. I would rather not be bothered.
sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org,l ays.ordb.org,n t.orgl .net,
;)
blackholes.easynet.nl,
re
list.dsbl.org,
ipwhois.rfc-ignora
cn.rbl.cluecentral.net,
kr.rbl.cluecentra
I find I get most of my hits from the spamhaus list, followed by dsbl. In scanning my logs, I have not ever found a false positive from those, nor have I been contacted by anyone complaining about my blocks (they can use yahoo or something if they want to). 90% of them appear to be broadband connected machines, probably virus infested.
Yeah, yeah. I'm blocking China and Korea. I don't know anyone there, so I put them in as an experiment. I get probably 10 blocks a day from them. Not enough to really care either way, but that's 10 fewer spams for my other filters to process.
As I said in my other post, this works for me. If it sucks for you, I don't want to hear about it.
I don't claim to have done any scientific studies on the subject, but I have tried a number of different anti-spam soultions over the past few years. In my experience, the best soultion is a multi-pronged approach that takes advantage of the strong points of a few setups.
If you want to talk about the results from a single filter in my current arsenal, I would give DSPAM the highest marks. I found it to catch more spams than a trained and customized SpamAssassin with no false positives. It's also very fast, unlike SA. My current setup is as follows...
1) RBLs via Postfix. I probably block 80% of inbound spam this way. I choose my RBLs carefully to limit false positives.
2) DSPAM. I typically get better than 99% of the ones that slip through the RBLs with DSPAM.
3) A complex procmail.rc that uses some statistical rules and a few simple checks, such as "is the mail addressed to me". I also use procmail to sort my mailing list messages into IMAP boxes and it includes a simple whitelist.
4) Spamassassin. This doesn't run much anymore, but I keep it around anyway as a last resort checker. If a mail makes it through all the above, SA gets a shot at it.
I tried using SA as my only post RBL filter for a couple months, but it wasn't getting the job done. I then added the procmail script, but still wasn't happy. Putting DSPAM in front of it all seems to work best for me. I now find that I only have a few spams per month make it past DSPAM (they sort into seperate boxes so I can track their performance) and I haven't seen a false positive in quite some time, over a month anyway. I've only been using DSPAM for a few months.
What works for me may be crap for you. Try a few things till you find something that works for you and use that. If you're trying statistical filters, keep in mind that it takes a while to train them. I found I got better than 90% with DSPAM after a small corpus feed and about a week of training.
Apparently, you're not familiar with Utah politics.
The only way Hatch is getting out of office is if he decides to retire. The people here are so brainwashed by his campaigns that nobody stands a chance against him. First off, he's been in there forever, so tells us that gives him an advantage to get more for Utah. Which is probably true, from what I've heard about Congress. Secondly, he's Republican, so he's pretty much a shoe-in. He could go on national TV and burn the flag and the original copy of the Constitution and probably still get elected here. *sigh* It's sad, really.
Yes, I live in his district, no I didn't vote for him, EVER. Yes, I have written him countless times and gotten the same form-letter back talking about how great copyright is and that he has to stop the evil pirates. (AArrghhh!!)
No, I won't be voting for him this year. I typically vote Libertarian these days. Not to mention, I pretty much agree with your assessment and feelings about him. I'll write myself in before I vote for that a$$hole, and I don't want the job!
This post will probably get lost in the chatter in this thread. But I feel compelled to try anyway.
The fact of the matter is, we haven't had a true "Free Market" in the USA for nearly a century. IMO, I'm fine with allowing for outsourcing in the name of free markets, so long as we make the market free again. That means, no more subsidies/bailouts/protectionism for ANY industries. If a "Free Market" is good for the economy and it's okay to send IT/IS/Programming jobs overseas, I say it's fine for everyone else too.
That means:
No more airline bailouts.
No more railroad bailouts.
No more S&L bailouts.
No more farming subsidies.
No more unions dictating wages/conditions/whatever with the force of law.
No more requirement that tradesmen do the apprentice thing.
No more tarrifs protecting steel/auto/sugar/whatever industries.
No more perpetual copyrights.
No more laws protecting ANY industry or ANY business model, WITH NO EXCEPTIONS.
Do that, and I'll have no trouble whatsoever with offshoring. In the current "market", I don't think it's unreasonable for people to complain when thier jobs get sent overseas. They look around and fully half of the people they see work in protected industries. Equal protection and all that....
Being libertarian-minded, I would actually preffer going back to a free market. I doubt it will happen in my lifetime though. Too many people with too much money are fighting tooth and nail to make sure that doesn't happen.
I wouldn't say never....
My minidisc recorder from a few years back has a port like that. It's input, not output, but it works quite well. Either line-in or optical in.
Nope, I preffer those too. Probably just inertia. I have noticed that some new apps don't support them though.
I typically vote for the Libertarians. They are closest to my views. If you don't like them, there's always the Green, Communist, Nazi, Natural Law, or even write-in people you think would do a better job. Most of the above would have to be write-in as they are too small for ballot access. There are options that are basicly "None of the Above" that still allow you to be counted.
;)
I live in Utah, home of the asshat, uhh, I mean Orin Hatch. I have never voted for him. The majority here seem to vote straight Republican, so he keeps getting elected. So, for me, voting for anything not Republican is pretty much a "None of the Above" vote. Since I hate Democrats views more than I hate Republicans views, I'm forced to a third party. But that's not so bad, around here the Democrats probably only have a little more support than the Libertarians.
How about the Great Salt Lake? It's not as huge as it used to be, but it's still quite large. It seems about useless for anything else to me, and I live 10 miles from it. I can't imagine this alge would smell worse than the dead brine shrimp. ;)
Actually, since VOIP requires broadband, telcos are in a position to profit from this. That is, if they would remove thier heads from various orifices. The simple fact is, POTS is on the way out. I, and many people I know, don't even have a POTS line. I use cellular for my phone needs, and wireless broadband. I WOULD use DSL, if I could have gotten it. I would love a decent upstream, but I can't get DSL. Too far from the CO, on fiber, blah, blah, blah. I live in the capital city (Salt Lake City), about 5 minutes from the city center. Of course, I can't get cable TV either (the cableco won't connect the lines). I can only imagine what a pain it is for those further away.
The future is high speed digital links, aka "Broadband". With a decent link, you can pipe all sorts of crap over it. Look at the cable companies. You get 100+ channels, broadband internet, and telephone over a single coax cable. The telcos COULD do the same thing, if they wanted to. The technology exists, but they refuse to deploy it. They COULD put everyone within range of the DSL system with the existing infrastructure using mini-DSLAMs and/or various DLC based DSL equipment.
Oh, and they will make some money anyway in the brave new VOIP world. Telcos own most of the backbone internet links! More IP traffic = more money for them!
IMO, telcos and cablecos should be regulated as they are a government created monopoly with some eminent domain powers. They have to put cables in the ground, that should involve some regulation to keep them from tearing up the whole place or putting everything above ground because it's cheaper. VOIP providers like Vonage do none of these things, therefore should not be subject to the same types of regulation.
There are 1st gen Priuses on the road well over 100K on the battery. The 8yr/100K figure is the WARRANTY. What's the powertrain warranty on that VW? You don't mention the model or year, but I hear the Jetta comes in TDI.
http://www.vw.com/warranty/index.htm?car=jetta
Hmmm.... 5yr/60K. Of course, the Prius warranty above is for the hybrid electric parts, the Prius non-electric drivetrain warranty is the same as the Jetta. How, exactly, is this a higher TCO?
There are 04 Priuses on the road getting 55-60 MPG (average). It's all in driving style and terrian. As for the batteries, what's so nasty about them? They are NiMH, one of the least toxic battery types available. The materials are somewhat valuable so they will likely be recycled. The Prius uses somewhat small batteries as well, the size is compared to 6 loaves of bread, not like the EV lead-acid packs that can fill up the bed of a truck and contain large amounts of lead. The battery in your VW is probably more toxic than the Prius HV battery.