When MySQL was sold to Sun, the lead devs probably thought it was great... they made a few bucks and they probbaly rationalized away the fact that they were giving free software to a bad corporation and it would eventually hurt their users and the entire free software community. Sun probably buttered them up and said it would never happen...here have a few more million to take your mind off it. NOW look at the situation: the main guys quit Sun due to "conflict of opinion" and started a fork of MySQL to bring it back to the community, and then Sun, the company who said not to worry, gets bought out by a company that has absolutely no interest in making MySQL competitive with their own DB2. How much are we willing to bet that MySQL sees no major new development from now on (if they buy Sun that is)? The recently 'forked' version has been set back, and it may take years to get to the point in development that it *could* have been if it had remained free.
Note to lead devs: thanks for dropping the community in the shit. Hope you enjoy your millions.
yeah thats my reason too: apt-get works so much better when you start adding lots of extra repositories, and has a lot less dependency breakage than RH. I used CentOS as a server for a while and got a bit put off by the "if you add repository X then you cannot add repository Y or it might conflict" messages.
Besides that, Debian was more in tune with my ideals of being free, whereas RedHat is a naughty corporation, and even if they distribute free software, it is still a naughty corporation.
I use imap from Google Gmail and regret it immensely. 10 yrs mail on servers that hold it forever. not paranoid, but "I have nothing to hide" and "why would they want to see what I wrote" arguments are completely empty: You cannot foresee what future trends and policies will do to your privacy. imap on thunderbird still concerns me, because you get weird issues (cannot send mail to linux kernel mailing list for 3 days then it works again) and I have not tested dropping my account, creating a new profile and dropping in all my mail folders from the gmail imap account (yes I store the mails permenantly on my disc, not just on gmail). gmail has the best web interface going, and I love web mail... cannot live without it, but setting up a mail server at home with own domain is too much admin for me and I loose the pretty interface.
me too. rtorrent is great with screen and ssh, but I had forgotten about the watch folder, so I was connecting via VNC to download the torrent file then starting rtorrent manually, and I didn't know you could schedule a throttle, so I will be looking into that...thanks a lot for the tip!
totally agree with this comment. How much revenue do they think will come from Diablo 1/starcraft at this stage?
They can generate more interest in the franchise by open sourcing it and breathing new life into these old games. I havent played Diablo 1 or 2 in years, but as i've now moved over to Linux, I could imagine installing them again and playing a bit more, especially if someone where to modify the game a bit to change stuff like run speed in the original or fix the gold dropping issue or create new weapons.
No, SETI isn't worth it. I can think of hundreds of other things that are worth more in terms of CPU time and human research than SETI, amongst them, cures for cancer, Alzheimers, Parkinsons, AIDS....the list goes on. If we had 'nothing else that needed doing', then fine, do SETI.
In the past, say 5 or 6 years ago, it may have been true that although you could be tested for Alzheimers (why is this news now by the way? You've been able to get tested for at least 5-6 years!), People were... discouraged... from doing so, with the argument: "would you want to know, when there is nothing you can do about it?".
This is no longer true, as there is now medicine available that can hinder the disease in a big way, if not outright, if you catch it early enough. I do not know what age limit this is applicable from.
I would definitely get tested if I thought I was susceptible, as it may not neccessarily be Alzheimers, and if it is, you can start treatment now.
By the way, there is nothing wrong with mental or physical exercise, but to posit that it can hinder Alzheimers or other dementia is not at all proven and probably in all liklihood doesn't make much difference to whether you get dementia or not. I know a guy who worked as a fighter pilot for many years then became heavily involved with union work in the last decades before his retirement, but his intensely demanding jobs didn't stop him from getting a life threatening dementia.
Exactly...Only unstable people would act out their violent fantasies based on these games. Rational people would not take it further than the thought. Should we ban all violent video games based on the fact that the odd few people might commit acts of violence? In that case we should ban mostly everything that can be construed as violent. Think only happy thoughts, so the thought police don't catch you!
Anyone noticed that guns are not banned despite being the most obvious choice of weapon for unstable people wanting to commit acts of violence? Didn't think so. Not that there is an especially strong witch hunt against video games...it's just that the people behind the witch hunts are small minded people trying to find a scapegoat.
This all sounds like egoism and idle day dreaming to me. What evidence is there to support the statement that "the universe needs us to know itself"? Do we know it is conscious? As for whether we need to move into space, as has already been vocally expressed previously in the media, most famously by Stephen Hawking, well that would be the easy way out wouldn't it? Until we fix the issues we have with overcrowding, famine, poverty, widespread disease not to mention pollution...[the list is long], on this planet, then we cannot reasonably expect to move into space without committing the same errors there, on other planets or in the void. Besides, we will have already ruined our planet by the time we can move the general population into space, unless of course the rich all get to pay 20 million to get sent and the rest of us draw straws! so instead of focusing solely on that, we should put much more focus onto saving our planet first.
Actually, scrub that last bit, I think this is a good idea!! We could make the rich spend 20 million to get relocated into space, and make sure that this was mostly targetted at the first world countries. We'd get rid of a lot of self-interested people this way!
OP obviously running Windows. Linux install takes about 1hr unassisted and I get most software I need in the distro. As its Debian variety, I run a single apt-get install after that for all the software I need which takes maybe 10 minutes more.
As Linux comes with very sensible defaults for application settings, I *rarely* have to configure anything. For those odd apps that do need configuring, I do it on first use. On reinstall, I have separate partitions for/home and/var which dont get wiped so all my configs are all there when I reinstall the box.
Been using Linux for 2 yrs and love that I never have to do an 8hr reinstall for winxp anymore.
Well, I am a native brit and moved to Sweden 7 years ago, so i'm not unaccustomed to relocating to other countries and learning other languages, but as we've now got a young child, I believe it would be very selfish of me to want to relocate my family again. As for the region, Malmö, part of the greater region called Öresundsregion (includes Copenhagen, Denmark) is one of three major locations in Sweden (the other 2 being Gothenburg and Stockholm). There ain't much choice in minor relocations...it would have to be an upheavel.
Im an Oracle DBA who has worked in tech support for 13 years, last 4 of which has been Oracle related. I do not have a CS degree and have considered it, but my concern is that if I do take a CS degree, this will not automagically make all the interesting jobs appear in front of me! I work in Malmö, Sweden and most IT jobs in this area are consultancy jobs, which in this day and age has little relation to traditional 'consultancy' jobs but tend to be more of an IT techie/coder type job role, more often than not at a small startup company, and startups are a dime a dozen. They sell a product and the 'consultant' codes or supports it. I have no idea where I could get a 'decent' IT job in Malmö that doesn't involve being a code monkey for a services company. Only place I can think of is working for an acedemic institution.
Taking a Maths/CS degree may open up many more exciting areas but if the jobs don't exist in your geagraphical location, then there is a lot more to consider when choosing a degree. Of course, I am aware that you only look at job ads that are relevant to your area of expertise, but you still usually get a good feel for which industries are available in a given city.
What gets me is that no one has yet sued major PC manufacturers for the anti-competitive behaviour of only supplying MS Windows with new PCs. To me, this is the biggest obstacle to Linux Desktop penetration. With all the anti-competetive stuff flying about, it's a bit strange that Dell, HP....yeah, in fact 99% of PC manufacturers, get away with this!?
...and you know what, I just re-read your post and something struck me as strange...If the data is so sensitive, why is it being shared on the torrent network? What is so sensitive that you absolutely must get it anonymously, but that at the same time, is freely available to all others? Wouldn't other methods of sharing be better in this instance?
Or, lets say you are a political dissident, or live in a country with a totalitarian regime and need access to public data (assuming it's not copyrighted material, which has nothing to do with this scenario) in a way that doesn't alert the authorities to the fact that *you* are downloading it: Why would you use bittorrent? Why not use FTP instead, as it is more than likely that the content is not only available via torrent. Then you would not have to burden the Tor network at all.
Well, I thought I did say in the other part of my comment that using Tor for anonymity to the tracker will hide your IP from the tracker only and that other peers will still see your IP. I also mentioned that you can do this without hurting the Tor network and finally that Tor can also be used to hide IP between peers but that this hurts the Tor network.
I have thought about this problem and I am aware of the consequences of not covering my IP with Tor when transfering between peers. Your scenario is correct, in that the RIAA/MPAA can setup a peer and gather IPs of all and sundry, but do you really think that they would bother? Going after a tracker is like gold dust for them because it's one highly visible server containing records of all connections. Going after several million peers using the method you describe is a gargantuan task and would require massive resources on their part. I agree it's not secure, but the possibility of getting caught is greatly reduced.
You are, by the way, incorrect in that they know who I am simply because they know my IP and the time I was logged in. I suppose that if you live in the US, where ISPs regularly bend over for MPAA requests for information, then you would be correct, but not all countries ISPs fall over at their feet: There are still several layers of defense between them and me.
Just to clarify (as this post makes me seem like a heavy downloader of copyrighted material), I do not condone downloading music/films illegaly. It is wrong no matter how you look at it, although I have done this on--literally--one or two occasions (nobody is perfect). For more info about the the whole copyright issue, I suggest reading Lawrence Lessigs excellent e-book, Free Content http://free-culture.org/freecontent/. Of course, there are grey areas:) Specifically, TV shows that never get released on DVD, and despite being copyrighted are not for sale elsewhere. Long live TV torrents!
Don't feel down about the responses...Tor can be used for torrenting, as long as you only use Tor to cover the traffic to the tracker! You get the torrent info from the tracker via Tor, but the actual data transfer from other peers does not go through Tor. You can easily set it up this way in Azureus but im not sure how to do this in other clients. Read the FAQ on using Tor on Azureus website, as it goes into it in a lot more detail. This way, if MPAA gets hold of the tracker server, they don't have records of your IP, but an FBI agent sharing out Da Vinci Code to you can clearly see who he is sharing to:) Of course, you could use Tor on the data transfer as well, but as the reply mentioned, it's not very nice to the other Tor users.
yeah, I agree...i'm not a script wizz, but on Windows, I used command line 7-zip for tarring/gzipping several directory structures, then used gpg to encrypt and a free file splitter *if* ig got over 4.5GB. Then I used Nero to burn it (as you almost always get Nero or Easy DVD creator with a new DVD drive).
I use 16x DVDs on a 16x drive - but I needed to check compatibility first so that the drive did actually write at 16x on that media.
I dont have an external HDD but I want one, as its more convenient for recovery, but you still need CD/DVD for off-site as it's easier to put a DVD in the bank safe than it is a hard drive.
Now on Linux I use tar to do the tar.gz and pipe it through to gpg same as I did on Windows with 7-zip. Burn it all with Gnomebaker, but it would probably be quicker to make the ISO's first at the shell.
Yeah, it takes time to write the scripts but once it's done it's just a case of running the script then burning the file. I don't see the need for GUI programs as they usually complicate things and you have to click through several dialogues to get going. At the shell it's just running one command.
"There is a similar case with Oracle. The default minimal install takes 800MB _RAM_ for a single instance, experienced DBAs claim you can go down as low as 300MB. MySQL is functional in 32MB, and shines in 64MB -- more memory is needed only if the dataset is big"
Well, this is blatantly incorrect. a new instance of Oracle 9ir2 takes up as much memory as you allocate to it. If you choose "percentage of available physical memory" and you have 512MB and set it to 50% then the instance will take roughly 256MB. You can set the SGA manually to whatever you want, but performance wont be that great depending on usage!
My dev. instance on XP Pro is 68Mb and I have several schemas that have datatfiles with 5GB in them - dataset size does not affect instance size, in Oracle at least, but I suppose that the poster may mean something else when referring to 'dataset'. I take it to mean 'the size of the data stored in the datafiles'. I know nothing about MySQL but would find it very strange if memory size was affected by dataset size...how much memory do you need then if the dataset is 1000TB?
I should have added in my post, that although i am by no means an expert on the matter, I felt that this was such an important issue and that I should try to find out more about it. Lawrence Lessigs e-book: http://www.free-culture.cc/freeculture.pdf was the best reference I have read and gives a very good overview of the issues at stake. Everyone, and certainly everyone in IT, should read it to be able to accurately inform people not in IT about the real issues.
--finite9
I read 20 or so comments on this story and not one of you has understood the meaning of cc. It's not about DRM, it's not about open source, and comparing it to either is plain wrong. It's not even about Microsoft!
Creative Commons is an add-on to copyright law, sort of.
Copyright law is draconian and does not cater to modern technology. Copyright law is an all or nothing affair. Creative Commons addresses this oversight by adding on clauses to basic copyright law, letting a content creator decide which license best suits their needs, by opening up the rights to third parties who may want to use the original work as the basis of their own, for example.
As this has nothing to do with patents or standard software licenses, why wouldn't Microsoft be willing to include it? It neither harms them nor aids them. It's for the benefit of content creators.
The reason for an add-on in word is that cc is a 3 part license, one of which is a piece of code so computers can detect the license. If you dont have the add-on, you can't tag the document.
Read my lips: there is no conspiracy!
--finite9
Im not really up-to-date with all this 360 stuff, but dont the pictures on flickr contain japanese text? They are quite fuzzy pics, but it is definitely not english text in the lower half. Why would the Xbox US version of the console/game display yexy in japanese?? Are these fake screenies?
--
Finite9
Ok, so many people think that certs are just bits of paper and that there worth is dubious. I disagree, because many of those negative arguments are based on very subjective experiences and a general cynacism of the IT test industry, and as true as those examples may be, they do not apply to the actual theoretical advantage ot IT tests.
If you look at IT tests objectively then the following point becomes apparent:
- Reading course material/attending a course and then doing the required study to be able to pass a test *does* impart knowledge. You cannot deny the fact that you learn enough, and manage to retain it in long-term memory well enough, to pass the test.
Yes, Test centres and IT firms make money out of you. Yes, some people who have never worked in the industry can manage to pass the tests and they are not as experienced as non-certified veterans, but if I interviewed a candidate who had several years job experience *and* a certificate, then i'd take that candidate over one who had the same level of experience and no certificate.
If a college grad gets an IT cert, he has no experience, but he has been trained and if they landed a job doing just that subject, they would quickly gain the experience--assuming they are not morons. You'll always get morons who have the skills to get certified but are completely useless at the job, but that may be down to many other factors, and not just their skill set.
What i'm saying is that you can't judge certification based on subjective examples of bad employees/college students who have become certified. Certification is a good means of showing that in addition to your experience, you have managed to display a certain standard of knowledge. Compare it to the national education system..."Yeah, I went to school and studied for some years but I didn't do the exams, but man, i've got sooo much experience". It doesn't hold any water does it? You go to school to pass exams to show that you have reached a certain standard. I'm not saying that tests are the last word. There'll always be people out there with no certs who are absolute experts, but that doesn't mean to say that there aren't also those sysadmins etc out there who are pretty good at a few areas of being a sysadmin, but have no expertise in other essential areas. If a newbie took a "sysadmin" test (yes, I know it's a bit general), where the newbie was trained in all areas and managed to pass a test that displayed he had remembered that knowledge then considering all other things being equal, he would be a strong contender to the 'experienced' sysadmin.
Thanks for the reply! I've tried some weird stuff over the last few years--from having ultra-sound treatment, which worked pretty well actually, as long as you keep it up, to having a special massage called the Bowen technique, where there is very little massage, but the long term effect can be quite effective. I've never tried imagery, but I have like 10 different stretching techniques that I'm supposed to do every few hours--yeah--you can imagine how often I actually do them when it's a tough schedule at work.
But at the end of the day, they're all techniques to relieve a problem, but it's not fixing the actual problem of using a standard keyboard/mouse combo. A solution would be to stop using a standard keyboard/mouse combo and to start using alternative input devices.
I have RSI--I don't have Carpal tunnel syndrome--they are completely different ailments. I have been using a keyboard since I was 7 and now i'm 31. Over the last five years, working in IT support and later as a DB programmer, I developed RSI, and it has nothing to do with my wrists! Using a Dvorak keyboard, qwerty keyboard or any other conventional/'natural' keyboard does not help/relieve real RSI. Real RSI, I suspect, is down to holding your arms and you're upper body in the 'locked' position needed for keyboard typing, and is also made worse by the small finger movements needed to type on any keyboard. This has led to my upper neck muscles, shoulder muscles, inside upper arm muscles and inside lower arm muscles especially, becoming extremely taught and fatigued all the time. After a day at work where it's been stressful and i've done a lot of fast typing, I can really feel the taughtness, and it doesn't disappear after massaging--I can sit in the sofa doing nothing but relaxing and still feel uncomfortable in my arms, especially around the inner muscles of the elbow. The only relief I now get is by *not* using a keyboard or mouse. It has been suggested by my physio that I switch industries, but almost all jobs require computer use these days. Having been unemployed for a 3 month stint, and hardly using the PC during that time, did not help! My RSI re-appeared again when I found a new job.
To be honest, I think most of the solutions on the market are a crock. I cannot see how they will help, because you still need to place the thing on the desk in front of you, and you're fingers still need to punch the keys, whatever layout they have. The only good solution seems to be a split keyboard where both sections can be placed to either side of a chair at an angled position so that the arms and shoulders are as relaxed as possible, and don't need to 'stretch' to the desk. Then, to minimise finger strain (which causes the much greater strain in the forearm muscles near the underside of the elbow), it would be good to have a key layout that minimises movement espeically when SHIFTing or CTRLing, like maybe having a standard layout, but with the shift/ctrl and ALT keys central to the layout, like in the thumb position for example.
I have tried everything suggested by my physio, like having arms at 90 degree angles, sitting straight and close to the keyboard, but for some people like myself, there is a natural tendency to strain when working, which is probably why some people get RSI and others, having worked the same number of years, don't get it.
By the way, if anyone knows of such a keyboard, *please* link to it!! And until we get to the point of plugging ourselves in and using thought to control the PC, I will have to live with RSI.
If it's a 15 minute job, I don't charge anything. If it's a 2 day, re-install everything job, then I charge either 2 crates of beer or one bottle of single malt. Everybody's happy!
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When MySQL was sold to Sun, the lead devs probably thought it was great... they made a few bucks and they probbaly rationalized away the fact that they were giving free software to a bad corporation and it would eventually hurt their users and the entire free software community. Sun probably buttered them up and said it would never happen...here have a few more million to take your mind off it. NOW look at the situation: the main guys quit Sun due to "conflict of opinion" and started a fork of MySQL to bring it back to the community, and then Sun, the company who said not to worry, gets bought out by a company that has absolutely no interest in making MySQL competitive with their own DB2. How much are we willing to bet that MySQL sees no major new development from now on (if they buy Sun that is)? The recently 'forked' version has been set back, and it may take years to get to the point in development that it *could* have been if it had remained free. Note to lead devs: thanks for dropping the community in the shit. Hope you enjoy your millions.
yeah thats my reason too: apt-get works so much better when you start adding lots of extra repositories, and has a lot less dependency breakage than RH. I used CentOS as a server for a while and got a bit put off by the "if you add repository X then you cannot add repository Y or it might conflict" messages.
Besides that, Debian was more in tune with my ideals of being free, whereas RedHat is a naughty corporation, and even if they distribute free software, it is still a naughty corporation.
I use imap from Google Gmail and regret it immensely. 10 yrs mail on servers that hold it forever. not paranoid, but "I have nothing to hide" and "why would they want to see what I wrote" arguments are completely empty: You cannot foresee what future trends and policies will do to your privacy. imap on thunderbird still concerns me, because you get weird issues (cannot send mail to linux kernel mailing list for 3 days then it works again) and I have not tested dropping my account, creating a new profile and dropping in all my mail folders from the gmail imap account (yes I store the mails permenantly on my disc, not just on gmail). gmail has the best web interface going, and I love web mail... cannot live without it, but setting up a mail server at home with own domain is too much admin for me and I loose the pretty interface.
me too. rtorrent is great with screen and ssh, but I had forgotten about the watch folder, so I was connecting via VNC to download the torrent file then starting rtorrent manually, and I didn't know you could schedule a throttle, so I will be looking into that...thanks a lot for the tip!
totally agree with this comment. How much revenue do they think will come from Diablo 1/starcraft at this stage? They can generate more interest in the franchise by open sourcing it and breathing new life into these old games. I havent played Diablo 1 or 2 in years, but as i've now moved over to Linux, I could imagine installing them again and playing a bit more, especially if someone where to modify the game a bit to change stuff like run speed in the original or fix the gold dropping issue or create new weapons.
No, SETI isn't worth it. I can think of hundreds of other things that are worth more in terms of CPU time and human research than SETI, amongst them, cures for cancer, Alzheimers, Parkinsons, AIDS....the list goes on. If we had 'nothing else that needed doing', then fine, do SETI.
In the past, say 5 or 6 years ago, it may have been true that although you could be tested for Alzheimers (why is this news now by the way? You've been able to get tested for at least 5-6 years!), People were ... discouraged ... from doing so, with the argument: "would you want to know, when there is nothing you can do about it?".
This is no longer true, as there is now medicine available that can hinder the disease in a big way, if not outright, if you catch it early enough. I do not know what age limit this is applicable from.
I would definitely get tested if I thought I was susceptible, as it may not neccessarily be Alzheimers, and if it is, you can start treatment now.
By the way, there is nothing wrong with mental or physical exercise, but to posit that it can hinder Alzheimers or other dementia is not at all proven and probably in all liklihood doesn't make much difference to whether you get dementia or not. I know a guy who worked as a fighter pilot for many years then became heavily involved with union work in the last decades before his retirement, but his intensely demanding jobs didn't stop him from getting a life threatening dementia.
Exactly...Only unstable people would act out their violent fantasies based on these games. Rational people would not take it further than the thought. Should we ban all violent video games based on the fact that the odd few people might commit acts of violence? In that case we should ban mostly everything that can be construed as violent. Think only happy thoughts, so the thought police don't catch you!
Anyone noticed that guns are not banned despite being the most obvious choice of weapon for unstable people wanting to commit acts of violence? Didn't think so. Not that there is an especially strong witch hunt against video games...it's just that the people behind the witch hunts are small minded people trying to find a scapegoat.
This all sounds like egoism and idle day dreaming to me. What evidence is there to support the statement that "the universe needs us to know itself"? Do we know it is conscious? As for whether we need to move into space, as has already been vocally expressed previously in the media, most famously by Stephen Hawking, well that would be the easy way out wouldn't it? Until we fix the issues we have with overcrowding, famine, poverty, widespread disease not to mention pollution...[the list is long], on this planet, then we cannot reasonably expect to move into space without committing the same errors there, on other planets or in the void. Besides, we will have already ruined our planet by the time we can move the general population into space, unless of course the rich all get to pay 20 million to get sent and the rest of us draw straws! so instead of focusing solely on that, we should put much more focus onto saving our planet first. Actually, scrub that last bit, I think this is a good idea!! We could make the rich spend 20 million to get relocated into space, and make sure that this was mostly targetted at the first world countries. We'd get rid of a lot of self-interested people this way!
OP obviously running Windows. Linux install takes about 1hr unassisted and I get most software I need in the distro. As its Debian variety, I run a single apt-get install after that for all the software I need which takes maybe 10 minutes more. As Linux comes with very sensible defaults for application settings, I *rarely* have to configure anything. For those odd apps that do need configuring, I do it on first use. On reinstall, I have separate partitions for /home and /var which dont get wiped so all my configs are all there when I reinstall the box.
Been using Linux for 2 yrs and love that I never have to do an 8hr reinstall for winxp anymore.
Well, I am a native brit and moved to Sweden 7 years ago, so i'm not unaccustomed to relocating to other countries and learning other languages, but as we've now got a young child, I believe it would be very selfish of me to want to relocate my family again. As for the region, Malmö, part of the greater region called Öresundsregion (includes Copenhagen, Denmark) is one of three major locations in Sweden (the other 2 being Gothenburg and Stockholm). There ain't much choice in minor relocations...it would have to be an upheavel.
Im an Oracle DBA who has worked in tech support for 13 years, last 4 of which has been Oracle related. I do not have a CS degree and have considered it, but my concern is that if I do take a CS degree, this will not automagically make all the interesting jobs appear in front of me! I work in Malmö, Sweden and most IT jobs in this area are consultancy jobs, which in this day and age has little relation to traditional 'consultancy' jobs but tend to be more of an IT techie/coder type job role, more often than not at a small startup company, and startups are a dime a dozen. They sell a product and the 'consultant' codes or supports it. I have no idea where I could get a 'decent' IT job in Malmö that doesn't involve being a code monkey for a services company. Only place I can think of is working for an acedemic institution.
Taking a Maths/CS degree may open up many more exciting areas but if the jobs don't exist in your geagraphical location, then there is a lot more to consider when choosing a degree. Of course, I am aware that you only look at job ads that are relevant to your area of expertise, but you still usually get a good feel for which industries are available in a given city.
What gets me is that no one has yet sued major PC manufacturers for the anti-competitive behaviour of only supplying MS Windows with new PCs. To me, this is the biggest obstacle to Linux Desktop penetration. With all the anti-competetive stuff flying about, it's a bit strange that Dell, HP....yeah, in fact 99% of PC manufacturers, get away with this!?
...and you know what, I just re-read your post and something struck me as strange...If the data is so sensitive, why is it being shared on the torrent network? What is so sensitive that you absolutely must get it anonymously, but that at the same time, is freely available to all others? Wouldn't other methods of sharing be better in this instance?
Or, lets say you are a political dissident, or live in a country with a totalitarian regime and need access to public data (assuming it's not copyrighted material, which has nothing to do with this scenario) in a way that doesn't alert the authorities to the fact that *you* are downloading it: Why would you use bittorrent? Why not use FTP instead, as it is more than likely that the content is not only available via torrent. Then you would not have to burden the Tor network at all.
Well, I thought I did say in the other part of my comment that using Tor for anonymity to the tracker will hide your IP from the tracker only and that other peers will still see your IP. I also mentioned that you can do this without hurting the Tor network and finally that Tor can also be used to hide IP between peers but that this hurts the Tor network.
:) Specifically, TV shows that never get released on DVD, and despite being copyrighted are not for sale elsewhere. Long live TV torrents!
I have thought about this problem and I am aware of the consequences of not covering my IP with Tor when transfering between peers. Your scenario is correct, in that the RIAA/MPAA can setup a peer and gather IPs of all and sundry, but do you really think that they would bother? Going after a tracker is like gold dust for them because it's one highly visible server containing records of all connections. Going after several million peers using the method you describe is a gargantuan task and would require massive resources on their part. I agree it's not secure, but the possibility of getting caught is greatly reduced.
You are, by the way, incorrect in that they know who I am simply because they know my IP and the time I was logged in. I suppose that if you live in the US, where ISPs regularly bend over for MPAA requests for information, then you would be correct, but not all countries ISPs fall over at their feet: There are still several layers of defense between them and me.
Just to clarify (as this post makes me seem like a heavy downloader of copyrighted material), I do not condone downloading music/films illegaly. It is wrong no matter how you look at it, although I have done this on--literally--one or two occasions (nobody is perfect). For more info about the the whole copyright issue, I suggest reading Lawrence Lessigs excellent e-book, Free Content http://free-culture.org/freecontent/. Of course, there are grey areas
Don't feel down about the responses...Tor can be used for torrenting, as long as you only use Tor to cover the traffic to the tracker! You get the torrent info from the tracker via Tor, but the actual data transfer from other peers does not go through Tor. You can easily set it up this way in Azureus but im not sure how to do this in other clients. Read the FAQ on using Tor on Azureus website, as it goes into it in a lot more detail. This way, if MPAA gets hold of the tracker server, they don't have records of your IP, but an FBI agent sharing out Da Vinci Code to you can clearly see who he is sharing to :) Of course, you could use Tor on the data transfer as well, but as the reply mentioned, it's not very nice to the other Tor users.
yeah, I agree...i'm not a script wizz, but on Windows, I used command line 7-zip for tarring/gzipping several directory structures, then used gpg to encrypt and a free file splitter *if* ig got over 4.5GB. Then I used Nero to burn it (as you almost always get Nero or Easy DVD creator with a new DVD drive).
I use 16x DVDs on a 16x drive - but I needed to check compatibility first so that the drive did actually write at 16x on that media.
I dont have an external HDD but I want one, as its more convenient for recovery, but you still need CD/DVD for off-site as it's easier to put a DVD in the bank safe than it is a hard drive.
Now on Linux I use tar to do the tar.gz and pipe it through to gpg same as I did on Windows with 7-zip. Burn it all with Gnomebaker, but it would probably be quicker to make the ISO's first at the shell.
Yeah, it takes time to write the scripts but once it's done it's just a case of running the script then burning the file. I don't see the need for GUI programs as they usually complicate things and you have to click through several dialogues to get going. At the shell it's just running one command.
"There is a similar case with Oracle. The default minimal install takes 800MB _RAM_ for a single instance, experienced DBAs claim you can go down as low as 300MB. MySQL is functional in 32MB, and shines in 64MB -- more memory is needed only if the dataset is big"
Well, this is blatantly incorrect. a new instance of Oracle 9ir2 takes up as much memory as you allocate to it. If you choose "percentage of available physical memory" and you have 512MB and set it to 50% then the instance will take roughly 256MB. You can set the SGA manually to whatever you want, but performance wont be that great depending on usage!
My dev. instance on XP Pro is 68Mb and I have several schemas that have datatfiles with 5GB in them - dataset size does not affect instance size, in Oracle at least, but I suppose that the poster may mean something else when referring to 'dataset'. I take it to mean 'the size of the data stored in the datafiles'. I know nothing about MySQL but would find it very strange if memory size was affected by dataset size...how much memory do you need then if the dataset is 1000TB?
I should have added in my post, that although i am by no means an expert on the matter, I felt that this was such an important issue and that I should try to find out more about it. Lawrence Lessigs e-book: http://www.free-culture.cc/freeculture.pdf was the best reference I have read and gives a very good overview of the issues at stake. Everyone, and certainly everyone in IT, should read it to be able to accurately inform people not in IT about the real issues.
--finite9
I read 20 or so comments on this story and not one of you has understood the meaning of cc. It's not about DRM, it's not about open source, and comparing it to either is plain wrong. It's not even about Microsoft! Creative Commons is an add-on to copyright law, sort of. Copyright law is draconian and does not cater to modern technology. Copyright law is an all or nothing affair. Creative Commons addresses this oversight by adding on clauses to basic copyright law, letting a content creator decide which license best suits their needs, by opening up the rights to third parties who may want to use the original work as the basis of their own, for example. As this has nothing to do with patents or standard software licenses, why wouldn't Microsoft be willing to include it? It neither harms them nor aids them. It's for the benefit of content creators. The reason for an add-on in word is that cc is a 3 part license, one of which is a piece of code so computers can detect the license. If you dont have the add-on, you can't tag the document. Read my lips: there is no conspiracy! --finite9
Im not really up-to-date with all this 360 stuff, but dont the pictures on flickr contain japanese text? They are quite fuzzy pics, but it is definitely not english text in the lower half. Why would the Xbox US version of the console/game display yexy in japanese?? Are these fake screenies? -- Finite9
Ok, so many people think that certs are just bits of paper and that there worth is dubious. I disagree, because many of those negative arguments are based on very subjective experiences and a general cynacism of the IT test industry, and as true as those examples may be, they do not apply to the actual theoretical advantage ot IT tests. If you look at IT tests objectively then the following point becomes apparent: - Reading course material/attending a course and then doing the required study to be able to pass a test *does* impart knowledge. You cannot deny the fact that you learn enough, and manage to retain it in long-term memory well enough, to pass the test. Yes, Test centres and IT firms make money out of you. Yes, some people who have never worked in the industry can manage to pass the tests and they are not as experienced as non-certified veterans, but if I interviewed a candidate who had several years job experience *and* a certificate, then i'd take that candidate over one who had the same level of experience and no certificate. If a college grad gets an IT cert, he has no experience, but he has been trained and if they landed a job doing just that subject, they would quickly gain the experience--assuming they are not morons. You'll always get morons who have the skills to get certified but are completely useless at the job, but that may be down to many other factors, and not just their skill set. What i'm saying is that you can't judge certification based on subjective examples of bad employees/college students who have become certified. Certification is a good means of showing that in addition to your experience, you have managed to display a certain standard of knowledge. Compare it to the national education system..."Yeah, I went to school and studied for some years but I didn't do the exams, but man, i've got sooo much experience". It doesn't hold any water does it? You go to school to pass exams to show that you have reached a certain standard. I'm not saying that tests are the last word. There'll always be people out there with no certs who are absolute experts, but that doesn't mean to say that there aren't also those sysadmins etc out there who are pretty good at a few areas of being a sysadmin, but have no expertise in other essential areas. If a newbie took a "sysadmin" test (yes, I know it's a bit general), where the newbie was trained in all areas and managed to pass a test that displayed he had remembered that knowledge then considering all other things being equal, he would be a strong contender to the 'experienced' sysadmin.
Thanks for the reply! I've tried some weird stuff over the last few years--from having ultra-sound treatment, which worked pretty well actually, as long as you keep it up, to having a special massage called the Bowen technique, where there is very little massage, but the long term effect can be quite effective. I've never tried imagery, but I have like 10 different stretching techniques that I'm supposed to do every few hours--yeah--you can imagine how often I actually do them when it's a tough schedule at work.
But at the end of the day, they're all techniques to relieve a problem, but it's not fixing the actual problem of using a standard keyboard/mouse combo. A solution would be to stop using a standard keyboard/mouse combo and to start using alternative input devices.
I have RSI--I don't have Carpal tunnel syndrome--they are completely different ailments. I have been using a keyboard since I was 7 and now i'm 31. Over the last five years, working in IT support and later as a DB programmer, I developed RSI, and it has nothing to do with my wrists! Using a Dvorak keyboard, qwerty keyboard or any other conventional/'natural' keyboard does not help/relieve real RSI. Real RSI, I suspect, is down to holding your arms and you're upper body in the 'locked' position needed for keyboard typing, and is also made worse by the small finger movements needed to type on any keyboard. This has led to my upper neck muscles, shoulder muscles, inside upper arm muscles and inside lower arm muscles especially, becoming extremely taught and fatigued all the time. After a day at work where it's been stressful and i've done a lot of fast typing, I can really feel the taughtness, and it doesn't disappear after massaging--I can sit in the sofa doing nothing but relaxing and still feel uncomfortable in my arms, especially around the inner muscles of the elbow. The only relief I now get is by *not* using a keyboard or mouse. It has been suggested by my physio that I switch industries, but almost all jobs require computer use these days. Having been unemployed for a 3 month stint, and hardly using the PC during that time, did not help! My RSI re-appeared again when I found a new job. To be honest, I think most of the solutions on the market are a crock. I cannot see how they will help, because you still need to place the thing on the desk in front of you, and you're fingers still need to punch the keys, whatever layout they have. The only good solution seems to be a split keyboard where both sections can be placed to either side of a chair at an angled position so that the arms and shoulders are as relaxed as possible, and don't need to 'stretch' to the desk. Then, to minimise finger strain (which causes the much greater strain in the forearm muscles near the underside of the elbow), it would be good to have a key layout that minimises movement espeically when SHIFTing or CTRLing, like maybe having a standard layout, but with the shift/ctrl and ALT keys central to the layout, like in the thumb position for example. I have tried everything suggested by my physio, like having arms at 90 degree angles, sitting straight and close to the keyboard, but for some people like myself, there is a natural tendency to strain when working, which is probably why some people get RSI and others, having worked the same number of years, don't get it. By the way, if anyone knows of such a keyboard, *please* link to it!! And until we get to the point of plugging ourselves in and using thought to control the PC, I will have to live with RSI.
If it's a 15 minute job, I don't charge anything. If it's a 2 day, re-install everything job, then I charge either 2 crates of beer or one bottle of single malt. Everybody's happy!