First of all, do you have any url to well documented benchmarks that show that those commercial firewalls are faster? My experience, specifically with OpenBSD and pf is the exact opposite from what you say, but annecdotal evidence doesn't mean that much.
I do know it is an often made claim by commercial vendors, but none could actually provide such data that was verifiable.
With regards to support and OSS, go talk to IBM, they are damn good at support, and willing to support almost anything you care to run if they have the knowledge. You will be hard pressed to find any other IT company with a better equiped support staff and a good chance of still being there a century from now.
Then, you said:
> There are poor quality commercial projects too, but I know that a Cisco or Netscreen firewall is good, it's been proven. I can cite thousands of big, critical networks that use them. I do not know that of the OpenBSD firewall. It does not have the legacy.
With all respect, the fact that many use something does not make it good, in fact, in technology often the less good solution becomes the most popular contrary to what you'd think.
I know huge networks that make use of FreeBSD and Linux for their infrastructure, I know a 100k+ employees multinational that uses OpenBSD on x86 hardware for some extremely demanding mailserver/firewall setups that were only implementable with a lot bigger and extremely expensive custom hardware from commercial firewall vendors.
When mega corporation X uses something that has no direct promotional value, they are not that interested in telling the world they are using it. The vendor may.. but will they know in case of OSS software?
> Sorry, your wrong. The Constitution doesn't grant these rights, it protects them because they are "inalienable"
Both the parent, and my original grantparent are talking about soem specific rights (like voting) which are granted to US citizens only, and both recognize that in general the constitution merely confirms and protects rights, not grants them.
> While I agree with you that these people should be taken to court, I think (and this is just my own opinion) it should be oversaw by an international body since it is more of an international type of event. An enemy combatant vs. a domestic murder, even though committing the same crimes have two different scopes of jurisdiction
I'd agree.. but seeing how the USA doesn't seem to be willing to either recognize the body that seems most suitable for that or setup a viable alternative, it seems the US legal system will have to deal with this. (just trying to be soemwhat practical, we can't have those peopel wait till there is an international solution, most will be old men (and women) by that time if still alive at all)
> Let's not re-write all of US history. "All Men are Created Equal," unless you were a slave, not a land owner or ofcourse a woman.
Quite true, but at least partially solved nowadays (entirely according to others)
Much of it was solved due to it being wrong, and had more to do with how society worked then with what the constitution says. I'd argue that in part it was possible to do something about those situations exactly because of what the constitution says.
The idea of 'free men' has come a long way since the foundation of the USA, and while I'd on one side argue that in law, the USA has diverted quite a bit from what the constitution seems to aim at, in society it seems it got a lot closer (at least untill relatively recently)
While for as far as I can see you are right with regards to the constitution, I also think that basic human rights exist without the need for the constitution of the USA, that it recognizes them is a nice plus when you live there.
When you believe to be 'the good guys', it makes a lot of sense to apply hem regardless of whom you are dealing with and where. If you don't you are soon being looked at as ridiculous I'm afraid.
What I find even more disturbing is that while there are decent ways to temporarely suspend parts of the constitution in times of war, those are not being used, instead, the constitution is circumvented.
THere are 2 issues wth your reasoning (don't know if it was meant to be cynical and just repeating how some people in government seem to think..)
1. The constitution and bill of rights may define some rights for US citizens, but are based on the idea that many such rights are not given by that bill or the constitution but confirmed. Those rights exist due to being human, not because the constitution or bull of rights grants them. Due process is one of those.
2. The USA is a party to the international declaration of human rights. Due process is a part of that as well, and sicne this is an international treaty, it should be considered 'law ' accourding to the USA constitution.
So, it does not matter at all if he was a foreigner or not.
The fact that your government seems to argue along the lines that you presented however is the exact reason why I am not visiting the USA, and haven't visited it ever since that government started with this kind of talk.
Hmm, after re-reading, I think there are some other parts of your post that demand a reply..
> So what is the cutoff? How many Flash animations does it take to lose the moral high ground? And why are you more entitled to consumer eyeballs than someone who has more ads than you?
I am not entitled to any eyeballs, just as you are not entitled to get anything for free. You are still arguing without even trying to realize that maybe not all advertisement is flash animations out there. You are still looking for the extreme without even trying to see if there would be less extreme options, you also failed to read my previous post it seems (eventho you do manage to quote it)
Lets try again: YOU AS CUSTOMER DECIDE WHAT IS ACCEPTABLE
Now, how difficult was that? Moral highground is irrelevant, and definitely does not depend on flash anuimations or such.
How difficult is it to reread it and get it into your head that I am talkign about NON FLASH, NON ANIMATED, simple text and possibly graphical ads? Nop popups, NO ANIMATIONS, I REPEAT, NO ANIMATIONS (clear now? or do I have to repeat it a few more times??)
> Sorry if I am beign somewhat cynical here and there, but really, ifd you don't like the medium, stop using it instead of tryign to deprive others from their income with your freeloading.
> Again, you're thinking that you control the delivery of your content like a magazine or newspaper does. You don't.
And where exactly did I say that? I am arguing that advertising is a valid way to pay for content, not that I am delivering anythign in a way anywhere similar to whatever other media (it may be similar or not, that is really not relevant for the discussion)
> The consumer recieves every piece of data you try to send them at their discretion, and you know it. So don't be so surprised when you find out that they only accept the bits they like.
And as consumer you just shouldn't be surprised when I either go around that or don't want to give you the content if you refuse to 'pay'. If you don't care for the content then that is all fine, I won't force you to look at it, nor to pay for it. I do demand however that if you acess some of my content, that you pay for it. If you don't, you won't get the content from me. Fair deal I'd say.
If you do not like it, fine with me, just stay away and don't wine that you do't get the content. If you want it however, you'll have to put up with my conditions for getting it.
Repeating your point again and again doesn't make it more or less true really.
Let me just conclude that you have an extremely limited definition of the word license, it is really a lot more then the (possibly invalid)EULAs you get with most software, and in many cases it is implicit. So far it looks like EULAs are actually more valid then you seem to believe also.
As long as your right to use certain software for example is linked directly to having legitimate access to a legitimate copy, that copy provides you the 'right to use', and as a result comes with an implicit license. This is no different for audio cds and such.
> Unfortunately, your argument sounds an awful lot like RIAA-style whining. You are not entitled to profits from an outdated business model. If you find you cannot make money with website advertising because everyone is blocking ads, perhaps you should think about other ways of generate revenue instead of just throwing up your hands and saying, "People suck; they won't give me money."
No.
What I am arguing is that when everyone blocks ads, they won't get this content anymore. It is the users choice if they find that ok or not. Just to make the point, the discussion we are having here rigth now is (partially?) being payed for by banner ads.
I don't see it as a right to make money in the way I want, I do see however that some of the content I desire won't be there if it is not being payed for in one way or another.
> No, you bought a specific copy. Copyright ensuresthat someone is responsible to pay the copyright holder for you to be able to get that copy, but once you do get that copy use is not restricted. Just like copyright law does not restrict reading a book.
Now... I guess we can argue about the exact definition of the word 'use'....
To me, being able to use a bit of music in a sound mix that I am making for my own exclusive enjoyment is definitely USE, it is handled by fair use also (hey, that includes the word use... why would it do that?)
To you it obviously means exclusively being able to listen to the music.
I'd also like to bring into the discussion the thing called DMCA which quite limits certain uses of copyrighted works.
Unless someone distributed it to you, you have no possibility to use a copyrighted work to begin with, so your use depends first of all on someone elses right to distribute, and may very well be limited as a result of that.
In the end it is upto the courts to decide on this, and if they do ever, you will find that the 'reasonable expectation' that people are supposed to have will be an important argument. I do hope that ends up a lot more in the direction of how you believe copyright should work (because I do definitely agree with you on that it should be interpreted in such a way) but for now every indication is that it is not how the law works.
Which is why I do block popups and flash... but not normal banner ads and such. If a site is too annoying with them, I'll just go somewhere else... if the alternative is there.
At any rate, what you do is fine with me, all I hoped to do is point at why it is there to begin with, and at that most sites are not abusing it at all while some definitely are.
One result that I don't really like of this is that general ad blocking (instead of selective blocking of annoying ads) just results in advertisign companies thinking up more annoying and difficult to deal with advertisements. Selective blockign on the other hand promotes use of non annoying types of advertisement whiel discouraging overly annoying ones.
> The supreme court has upheld the doctrine of original sale for media: hence you can sell your used cd's, games, dvd's, books. This was decided for cd's when RIAA tried this crap, and the precedent holds. Same principal as a used bookstore really--that also is copyrighted material.
That is not really related to this. You can own limited rights to soemthign, and then sell those to someone else. All the supreme court has said there is that in case of CDs you are indeed allowed to do that.
> You can sell these things because you own them. Just because a EULA says something doesn't mean it has any legal force what-so-fucking-ever.
Yes, you have bought certain rights and can resell those.
They come with that physical object called a CD.
It may be interesting to note that if such a limited right didn't come with the CD, that you'd have no right to play its contents. Silly? sure, but read the law carefully.
> Part of the erosion of our rights under the copyright system isn't so much an erosion of rights in fact,
Uh, going from what? 14 years to what it is now? nah, not erosion of the rights of the public there at all.
> but a much more dangerous erosion of our knowledge of what we can and can't do. It is ever so much easier to circumbscribe rights people don't beleive they have. Please stop spouting nonsense like this: your credulity is making things worse.
Please stop trying to ignore some of the rather serious problems the copyright system has by overly simplifying it in the hope that the average person might understand it (not that that is bad in itself, but the simplification makes you ignore some very nasty details really)
> A "trojan" is not called so because it purports to be something that it's not to gain entry, as the Trojan Horse did. There are inumerable viruses that pretend to be something else, they aren't trojans. A "trojan" is called so because of what it does once inside... it let's the attackers in. A "trojan" is a computer program that, once inside, allows access (almost always via the network) to intruders
Uh, for all I care that is called a trojan with a backdoor as payload. It is about the tactic, not about what the tactic is used for.
ANd rreally, there have been enough trojans out there that did nothing of the sort because they existed in times before most computers were connected to any kind of network. They were programs that posed as being a usefull program while in fact they were destructive. Those have always been called, and are still called trojans. There is no remote intruder involved or even possible there.
> With every large-scale technology one can find an enormously fatal accident caused by its usage, and declare that, no matter how small the odds are, the danger is unacceptable. Taking such approach means one is ideologically opposed to the technology in question.
Whatever you want to call it. TO me it means I fidn the consequences too big, no matter the risk level.
You have by far the best situation by looking for technology of which the risk of going wrong is higher, but the consequences are within what we can manage.
> Why are you picking gas plants? We have coal plants, which emmit sulphur (which is filtered out, but needs to be stored afterwards) and radioactive elements and provide the incentive for coal mining, which is heavily damaging the environment.
Because where I loive we have gas plants and it is a very good alternative, lots cleaner, and without the absurd risk of nuclear energy?
Why don't you try thinking outside the box for a bit instead of fixing yourself on 2 known alternatives?
> But none of them makes economical sense. And don't tell me you want to put windmills everywhere and call it 'clean'. I call it 'scary'.
Solar energy? wind energy? energy from the tidal movement of water? energy from the 'normal' flow of water?
All of those have consequences, but before calling them scary I'd suggest you actually come up with what scares you about those (if it is somethign else then that your fosterchild nuclear energy might not be used afterall)
Last I checked, being a journalist is considered a real job for example. Often those people don't just work on thin air.
> I'm dead serious.
So am I.
It would be a really good idea to look a tiny little bit beyond your extremely black/white and closed of world and see that not every site that uses advertising is annying you with flash, popups and such, most in fact are not.
It woudl also be a really good idea to stop telling peopel how to live their life, and instead just don't use their services if you don't like it.
> There are enough people out there who want to put content on the net as a hobby that I really don't see the point in trying to make a career of it. Take gaming, for example. If I want to find out whether a new game's any good or not, I don't go to Gamespy or IGN to read their reviewers' bought-and-paid-for sponsored crap, I look for real reviews by real gamers - people who play games in their spare time, and write about them in their spare time, people with lives outside gaming, people like me who are liable to see the game in the same way I do.
So I bet you do not, and did not ever read any magazines, newspapers and the like, never watch any TV etc, unless it is ad free or you can block the ads? They just might be biassed you know..
What makes this sad is that every publisher can get payed to write a positive review, some will accept it, some won't. That is not dependent on advertisement alone really, so you can go read that nice advertisement free website, and the report cans till be payed for.
Also, I maintain about a dozen websites as hobby. Do you have any idea what that costs? No, without some form of sponsorship I simply cannot afford doing it.
You of course are so lucky that you have infinite money at hand, most peopel are not (surprise eh?)
> And, by and large, their sites are not full of ads.
Using advertisement to keep our pages payed for doesn't mean havign to have them 'full of ads'. Just in case you never noticed, Slashdot uses ads as well, nicely stuck to the top of the page (no, not talkign about what looks like payed for atricles, that is soemthign else, and not acceptable)
> Software's the same. Why am I going to pay for Opera, or have Opera with ads, when I can get Firefox for free? Am I "cheating" Opera by using Firefox, then?
Your choice, and thats fine with me (incidentely, I use both)
What I would suggest however is that instead of using an adblocker, you simply do not ever visit sites that use advertisement if you have such an issue with it.
Now, there is a huge difference in my view at least between sites that use a relatively discrete level of advertising, and sites that try to bombard me with ads, popups and the like, just in case you don't get this, I am talkign about normal advertisement, bnot 100000s of flash animations, popups, popunders and what not, so please don't even start answering saying how you hate those, we all do. Just foxus on normal, non intrusive, advertising that doesn't overwelm the content (hence your gamespy example is invalid already, they suck)
It is always easy to find extreme examples to try to make a point, but it is a lot more convincing and helpfull to make the arguiment based on the normal not so extreme situation.
Sorry if I am beign somewhat cynical here and there, but really, ifd you don't like the medium, stop using it instead of tryign to deprive others from their income with your freeloading.
Loading levels can be a mostly dequential read operation in many cases. Modern CD players have a high enough transfer rate to make that quite fast. THe 'slowness' of CD comes mostly from having to seek, and that is alot more relevant for accessing random data.
Of course you'd want to be able to swap to disk also in case you run out of memory..
Slashdot Mirror
A few questions and remarks.
First of all, do you have any url to well documented benchmarks that show that those commercial firewalls are faster? My experience, specifically with OpenBSD and pf is the exact opposite from what you say, but annecdotal evidence doesn't mean that much.
I do know it is an often made claim by commercial vendors, but none could actually provide such data that was verifiable.
With regards to support and OSS, go talk to IBM, they are damn good at support, and willing to support almost anything you care to run if they have the knowledge. You will be hard pressed to find any other IT company with a better equiped support staff and a good chance of still being there a century from now.
Then, you said:
> There are poor quality commercial projects too, but I know that a Cisco or Netscreen firewall is good, it's been proven. I can cite thousands of big, critical networks that use them. I do not know that of the OpenBSD firewall. It does not have the legacy.
With all respect, the fact that many use something does not make it good, in fact, in technology often the less good solution becomes the most popular contrary to what you'd think.
I know huge networks that make use of FreeBSD and Linux for their infrastructure, I know a 100k+ employees multinational that uses OpenBSD on x86 hardware for some extremely demanding mailserver/firewall setups that were only implementable with a lot bigger and extremely expensive custom hardware from commercial firewall vendors.
When mega corporation X uses something that has no direct promotional value, they are not that interested in telling the world they are using it. The vendor may.. but will they know in case of OSS software?
Been there, done that.. its a fun environment... but only for a while ;)
We seem to agree ;P
> Sorry, your wrong. The Constitution doesn't grant these rights, it protects them because they are "inalienable"
Both the parent, and my original grantparent are talking about soem specific rights (like voting) which are granted to US citizens only, and both recognize that in general the constitution merely confirms and protects rights, not grants them.
> While I agree with you that these people should be taken to court, I think (and this is just my own opinion) it should be oversaw by an international body since it is more of an international type of event. An enemy combatant vs. a domestic murder, even though committing the same crimes have two different scopes of jurisdiction
I'd agree.. but seeing how the USA doesn't seem to be willing to either recognize the body that seems most suitable for that or setup a viable alternative, it seems the US legal system will have to deal with this. (just trying to be soemwhat practical, we can't have those peopel wait till there is an international solution, most will be old men (and women) by that time if still alive at all)
> Let's not re-write all of US history. "All Men are Created Equal," unless you were a slave, not a land owner or ofcourse a woman.
Quite true, but at least partially solved nowadays (entirely according to others)
Much of it was solved due to it being wrong, and had more to do with how society worked then with what the constitution says. I'd argue that in part it was possible to do something about those situations exactly because of what the constitution says.
The idea of 'free men' has come a long way since the foundation of the USA, and while I'd on one side argue that in law, the USA has diverted quite a bit from what the constitution seems to aim at, in society it seems it got a lot closer (at least untill relatively recently)
While for as far as I can see you are right with regards to the constitution, I also think that basic human rights exist without the need for the constitution of the USA, that it recognizes them is a nice plus when you live there.
When you believe to be 'the good guys', it makes a lot of sense to apply hem regardless of whom you are dealing with and where. If you don't you are soon being looked at as ridiculous I'm afraid.
What I find even more disturbing is that while there are decent ways to temporarely suspend parts of the constitution in times of war, those are not being used, instead, the constitution is circumvented.
THere are 2 issues wth your reasoning (don't know if it was meant to be cynical and just repeating how some people in government seem to think..)
1. The constitution and bill of rights may define some rights for US citizens, but are based on the idea that many such rights are not given by that bill or the constitution but confirmed. Those rights exist due to being human, not because the constitution or bull of rights grants them. Due process is one of those.
2. The USA is a party to the international declaration of human rights. Due process is a part of that as well, and sicne this is an international treaty, it should be considered 'law ' accourding to the USA constitution.
So, it does not matter at all if he was a foreigner or not.
The fact that your government seems to argue along the lines that you presented however is the exact reason why I am not visiting the USA, and haven't visited it ever since that government started with this kind of talk.
SO tell me.. was this homeland security thingy setup for catching ordinary criminals or terrorists?
If there is somethign wrong with mr. Kennedy, then he should be arrested and brought to justice instead of bothering him when travelling.
But heh, any excuse to hinder democrats should be valid because it helps those currently in power it seems.
Hmm, after re-reading, I think there are some other parts of your post that demand a reply..
> So what is the cutoff? How many Flash animations does it take to lose the moral high ground? And why are you more entitled to consumer eyeballs than someone who has more ads than you?
I am not entitled to any eyeballs, just as you are not entitled to get anything for free. You are still arguing without even trying to realize that maybe not all advertisement is flash animations out there. You are still looking for the extreme without even trying to see if there would be less extreme options, you also failed to read my previous post it seems (eventho you do manage to quote it)
Lets try again: YOU AS CUSTOMER DECIDE WHAT IS ACCEPTABLE
Now, how difficult was that? Moral highground is irrelevant, and definitely does not depend on flash anuimations or such.
How difficult is it to reread it and get it into your head that I am talkign about NON FLASH, NON ANIMATED, simple text and possibly graphical ads? Nop popups, NO ANIMATIONS, I REPEAT, NO ANIMATIONS (clear now? or do I have to repeat it a few more times??)
> Sorry if I am beign somewhat cynical here and there, but really, ifd you don't like the medium, stop using it instead of tryign to deprive others from their income with your freeloading.
> Again, you're thinking that you control the delivery of your content like a magazine or newspaper does. You don't.
And where exactly did I say that? I am arguing that advertising is a valid way to pay for content, not that I am delivering anythign in a way anywhere similar to whatever other media (it may be similar or not, that is really not relevant for the discussion)
> The consumer recieves every piece of data you try to send them at their discretion, and you know it. So don't be so surprised when you find out that they only accept the bits they like.
And as consumer you just shouldn't be surprised when I either go around that or don't want to give you the content if you refuse to 'pay'. If you don't care for the content then that is all fine, I won't force you to look at it, nor to pay for it. I do demand however that if you acess some of my content, that you pay for it. If you don't, you won't get the content from me. Fair deal I'd say.
If you do not like it, fine with me, just stay away and don't wine that you do't get the content.
If you want it however, you'll have to put up with my conditions for getting it.
Repeating your point again and again doesn't make it more or less true really.
Let me just conclude that you have an extremely limited definition of the word license, it is really a lot more then the (possibly invalid)EULAs you get with most software, and in many cases it is implicit. So far it looks like EULAs are actually more valid then you seem to believe also.
As long as your right to use certain software for example is linked directly to having legitimate access to a legitimate copy, that copy provides you the 'right to use', and as a result comes with an implicit license. This is no different for audio cds and such.
My pleasure :)
;)
I use it in 'normal' browsers as well btw.. after discovering it, the normal look of slashdot kinda drives me nuts
> Would you believe Utah? That's right, I am just down the road from SCO headquarters.
*comfort*
> Only if you can make a living doing it.
Yes.
> Unfortunately, your argument sounds an awful lot like RIAA-style whining. You are not entitled to profits from an outdated business model. If you find you cannot make money with website advertising because everyone is blocking ads, perhaps you should think about other ways of generate revenue instead of just throwing up your hands and saying, "People suck; they won't give me money."
No.
What I am arguing is that when everyone blocks ads, they won't get this content anymore. It is the users choice if they find that ok or not. Just to make the point, the discussion we are having here rigth now is (partially?) being payed for by banner ads.
I don't see it as a right to make money in the way I want, I do see however that some of the content I desire won't be there if it is not being payed for in one way or another.
You are turning that upside down in my opinion.
> No, you bought a specific copy. Copyright ensuresthat someone is responsible to pay the copyright holder for you to be able to get that copy, but once you do get that copy use is not restricted. Just like copyright law does not restrict reading a book.
Now... I guess we can argue about the exact definition of the word 'use'....
To me, being able to use a bit of music in a sound mix that I am making for my own exclusive enjoyment is definitely USE, it is handled by fair use also (hey, that includes the word use... why would it do that?)
To you it obviously means exclusively being able to listen to the music.
I'd also like to bring into the discussion the thing called DMCA which quite limits certain uses of copyrighted works.
Unless someone distributed it to you, you have no possibility to use a copyrighted work to begin with, so your use depends first of all on someone elses right to distribute, and may very well be limited as a result of that.
In the end it is upto the courts to decide on this, and if they do ever, you will find that the 'reasonable expectation' that people are supposed to have will be an important argument. I do hope that ends up a lot more in the direction of how you believe copyright should work (because I do definitely agree with you on that it should be interpreted in such a way) but for now every indication is that it is not how the law works.
Hehehehe.
Which is why I do block popups and flash... but not normal banner ads and such. If a site is too annoying with them, I'll just go somewhere else... if the alternative is there.
At any rate, what you do is fine with me, all I hoped to do is point at why it is there to begin with, and at that most sites are not abusing it at all while some definitely are.
One result that I don't really like of this is that general ad blocking (instead of selective blocking of annoying ads) just results in advertisign companies thinking up more annoying and difficult to deal with advertisements. Selective blockign on the other hand promotes use of non annoying types of advertisement whiel discouraging overly annoying ones.
> I never understood why mp was such a big deal.
It depends on the use (besides it being a bit of marketing)
If you are making pictures for a picture cd or use on a webpage or such, then a vga or slightly better resolution will definitely do.
Printing it on standard size photopaper however will often show the individual pixels quite clearly.
2mp will not have that problem and allows for slight maginfication on print without such issues as well.
At any rate, jpeg compression is often more damaging for picture quality then resolution when it comes to digital cameras.
Ok, no problem then :) I can be a bit sensitive as well at times..
> The supreme court has upheld the doctrine of original sale for media: hence you can sell your used cd's, games, dvd's, books. This was decided for cd's when RIAA tried this crap, and the precedent holds. Same principal as a used bookstore really--that also is copyrighted material.
That is not really related to this. You can own limited rights to soemthign, and then sell those to someone else. All the supreme court has said there is that in case of CDs you are indeed allowed to do that.
> You can sell these things because you own them.
Just because a EULA says something doesn't mean it has any legal force what-so-fucking-ever.
Yes, you have bought certain rights and can resell those.
They come with that physical object called a CD.
It may be interesting to note that if such a limited right didn't come with the CD, that you'd have no right to play its contents. Silly? sure, but read the law carefully.
> Part of the erosion of our rights under the copyright system isn't so much an erosion of rights in fact,
Uh, going from what? 14 years to what it is now? nah, not erosion of the rights of the public there at all.
> but a much more dangerous erosion of our knowledge of what we can and can't do. It is ever so much easier to circumbscribe rights people don't beleive they have. Please stop spouting nonsense like this: your credulity is making things worse.
Please stop trying to ignore some of the rather serious problems the copyright system has by overly simplifying it in the hope that the average person might understand it (not that that is bad in itself, but the simplification makes you ignore some very nasty details really)
> OK, here is a google link to the report.
Thanks.
> Anything else you need spoon-fed to you?
No, but I'd love to spoon feed you some 'normal behavior' and 'politeness'. You seem to need them a bit.
> A "trojan" is not called so because it purports to be something that it's not to gain entry, as the Trojan Horse did. There are inumerable viruses that pretend to be something else, they aren't trojans. A "trojan" is called so because of what it does once inside... it let's the attackers in. A "trojan" is a computer program that, once inside, allows access (almost always via the network) to intruders
Uh, for all I care that is called a trojan with a backdoor as payload. It is about the tactic, not about what the tactic is used for.
ANd rreally, there have been enough trojans out there that did nothing of the sort because they existed in times before most computers were connected to any kind of network. They were programs that posed as being a usefull program while in fact they were destructive. Those have always been called, and are still called trojans. There is no remote intruder involved or even possible there.
> With every large-scale technology one can find an enormously fatal accident caused by its usage, and declare that, no matter how small the odds are, the danger is unacceptable. Taking such approach means one is ideologically opposed to the technology in question.
Whatever you want to call it. TO me it means I fidn the consequences too big, no matter the risk level.
You have by far the best situation by looking for technology of which the risk of going wrong is higher, but the consequences are within what we can manage.
> Why are you picking gas plants? We have coal plants, which emmit sulphur (which is filtered out, but needs to be stored afterwards) and radioactive elements and provide the incentive for coal mining, which is heavily damaging the environment.
Because where I loive we have gas plants and it is a very good alternative, lots cleaner, and without the absurd risk of nuclear energy?
Why don't you try thinking outside the box for a bit instead of fixing yourself on 2 known alternatives?
> But none of them makes economical sense. And don't tell me you want to put windmills everywhere and call it 'clean'. I call it 'scary'.
Solar energy? wind energy? energy from the tidal movement of water? energy from the 'normal' flow of water?
All of those have consequences, but before calling them scary I'd suggest you actually come up with what scares you about those (if it is somethign else then that your fosterchild nuclear energy might not be used afterall)
You may not like it, nor do I. It is simply the way it is, go complain to your government and publishers instead of slashdot if you don't agree.
> Maybe they should try getting a real job, then.
Last I checked, being a journalist is considered a real job for example. Often those people don't just work on thin air.
> I'm dead serious.
So am I.
It would be a really good idea to look a tiny little bit beyond your extremely black/white and closed of world and see that not every site that uses advertising is annying you with flash, popups and such, most in fact are not.
It woudl also be a really good idea to stop telling peopel how to live their life, and instead just don't use their services if you don't like it.
> There are enough people out there who want to put content on the net as a hobby that I really don't see the point in trying to make a career of it. Take gaming, for example. If I want to find out whether a new game's any good or not, I don't go to Gamespy or IGN to read their reviewers' bought-and-paid-for sponsored crap, I look for real reviews by real gamers - people who play games in their spare time, and write about them in their spare time, people with lives outside gaming, people like me who are liable to see the game in the same way I do.
So I bet you do not, and did not ever read any magazines, newspapers and the like, never watch any TV etc, unless it is ad free or you can block the ads? They just might be biassed you know..
What makes this sad is that every publisher can get payed to write a positive review, some will accept it, some won't. That is not dependent on advertisement alone really, so you can go read that nice advertisement free website, and the report cans till be payed for.
Also, I maintain about a dozen websites as hobby. Do you have any idea what that costs? No, without some form of sponsorship I simply cannot afford doing it.
You of course are so lucky that you have infinite money at hand, most peopel are not (surprise eh?)
> And, by and large, their sites are not full of ads.
Using advertisement to keep our pages payed for doesn't mean havign to have them 'full of ads'. Just in case you never noticed, Slashdot uses ads as well, nicely stuck to the top of the page (no, not talkign about what looks like payed for atricles, that is soemthign else, and not acceptable)
> Software's the same. Why am I going to pay for Opera, or have Opera with ads, when I can get Firefox for free? Am I "cheating" Opera by using Firefox, then?
Your choice, and thats fine with me (incidentely, I use both)
What I would suggest however is that instead of using an adblocker, you simply do not ever visit sites that use advertisement if you have such an issue with it.
Now, there is a huge difference in my view at least between sites that use a relatively discrete level of advertising, and sites that try to bombard me with ads, popups and the like, just in case you don't get this, I am talkign about normal advertisement, bnot 100000s of flash animations, popups, popunders and what not, so please don't even start answering saying how you hate those, we all do. Just foxus on normal, non intrusive, advertising that doesn't overwelm the content (hence your gamespy example is invalid already, they suck)
It is always easy to find extreme examples to try to make a point, but it is a lot more convincing and helpfull to make the arguiment based on the normal not so extreme situation.
Sorry if I am beign somewhat cynical here and there, but really, ifd you don't like the medium, stop using it instead of tryign to deprive others from their income with your freeloading.
Loading levels can be a mostly dequential read operation in many cases. Modern CD players have a high enough transfer rate to make that quite fast. THe 'slowness' of CD comes mostly from having to seek, and that is alot more relevant for accessing random data.
Of course you'd want to be able to swap to disk also in case you run out of memory..