Negative: - worse performance - you may forget the password (it has happened before.) - has to be mounted manually (or at least type in password each time you need access to the data.) - it's painful to backup - it's painful to do a proper file systems check - if the discs are somehow taken by the authorities you might have to give up your password (or be sentenced for whatever they think you have on the discs.) - discs are only secure if they are not mounted.
There are a few negative sides, but usually they make up for the positive, i.e. if you really need the security then of course this is the way to go. Also remember to secure the other aspects of the machine, like physical access (including fire/theft), software protection (anti malware and virus) and network protection (firewalls, etc.)
Nobody likes DRM, but I don't think the general consumer thinks about DRM when deciding whether or not to buy a movie or not. Price is essential, DVDs are still cheaper and cheaper yet is downloading stuff directly off the Internet.
For the hardcore home-theather-entertainment dudes, quality is everything and they will buy the expencive discs.
There are two kinds of games that I usually buy, games that I find on Steam (because I can download them directly (access) and play them within hours) and MMORPG (which has an attached monthly subscription.) If more developers would put their games on to Steam there would probably be less Piracy, or at least that is how things work out for me.
(atm. I don't have any pirated games on my PC, but there are several titles I would have bought if I could have found them on steam.)
I don't really think it needs an explanation or anything, I simply use Linux because it is better. Whether the mainstream uses it or not is not something I care much about as long as it has the development rate and user base it has now.
I don't know who came up with this, but it is good to see that Bush at least got one thing right before he left office. I wish other official departments/etc. would follow suit. I feel that the old argument that it's not easy to read text off a screen is non-valid beause today, we do read a lot of text on the screen as a fact, and getting there is just a matter of getting used to it.
It would have been better if they had found out it was 4,567 years ago, or at least it would have been easier to remember, though, not entirely correct.
No, seriously. My orginazation has about 12000 users, some of them have backups, some don't most of them doesn't seem to care and as they are students it's hard to force something upon them. But, what I would like, is a solution where the students can point to a folder on the disc and say, each time the machine reboots or once a day or something take backup of that folder and I don't want to know anything about it or get any pop-ups. And there would of course have to be a server they can access through a web-browser where they can retrieve their data when (not if!) something goes wrong.
Does anyone know about such a system, preferably a GNU licensed one?
on the other side there is a lot more and better series that were recently canceled (bsg only gets one more season, whimp, cry) -- anyway, a 'feelgood' post nucklear drama where people are sitting at a caffee drinking cappuchino a few weeks after the bombs have fallen is probably not what the audience expects. Though I must say that it wastly improves towards the end of the season. Could it be that CBS canceled the show based on the reception it got at the begining, because to be honest, it did really suck then.
It is normal human perception of reality which makes us believe that everything that goes up, must come down. Still, with proper adaptive leadership I don't see why google should be around for the next (insert huge number here) years. Most companies downfall seems to be happening because their leaders can't adjust fast enough to the current market, just look at the American motor industry. Still, I don't see why we shouldn't need to search for things in the future, so the market will be there. And as is claimed, google has a lot of brainpower and even if a few of them leaves the company, it's not going to be the downfall of the company.
I don't know how big this problem is, but I feel that once you set down the path of banning things that "we don't like" then that list could grow long. How about companys that sell documents that look like university diplomas? To me it seems that they both would fall into the same category.
As I see it there are lots of competition, and whether the source is open or not doesn't really matter. It is easy to see open source software as something closed software would leach of off and steal code, but I really think it is more about stealing features. Like first opera comes with tabs, then mozilla then microsoft internet exploder comes with tabs. It's not about stealing code, but ideas. And it happens all the time. Just look at the MMORPG scene where everyone steals features from eachother (WoW and EQ2 is basically the same game, except EQ2 has real graphics.) So, the competition seems to be about who can steal the most features from the other or invent new features faster than the competitor.
I read (somewhere) yesterday that directx 10 is also coming to XP. Looking at this article one could wonder if this is another indication that Vista isn't what everyone wants.
They can hire all the tech-guru-security-experts they want, they still won't me smarter than the collective curiosity of the rest of the world. As such, any implementation of DRM in on a wide scale is futile!
And the result, well, take itunes for example, where the customers has the choise of either paying for a bad product or go otherwhere and fetch a better one for free...
I would rather pay $15USD to play an MMORPG without commercials, than paying nothing and have to watch commercials. To be blunt, I've had enough, I've just changed my email address after having the same email address for 7 years, why? Well, because of spam, 60-70 messages a day. And I don't view commercial banners different.
Anarchy Online has been running a free version with commercials ingame for over a year and they seem to be doing nicely. The advantage of free games with commercials is that people can play them who otherwise would not afford it, also you can try it out without paying.
To put commercials into a game that you are paying for is just wrong, or atleast there should be an option to pay a bit more to get rid of the commercial. The money has to come from somewhere, I admit, but to put commercials on something you are paying for already is like milking the same cow twice.
Dear MMPAA. It is time for you to sit down and chill a bit (grab a beer or something.) - you should know by now that stopping people from copying digital information is a futile effort. I know this is your job, and I know that you are working very hard on this, but it is not an effort that's going to lead to any regime where pirated movies does not exist. Just ask the guys working against music and software piracy.
So, while you sit there contemplating on the situation and what you do, you should ask yourself. Why is it that people are pirating movies? Let me give you two answers; well, the most obvious one, to save money. What can you do about this? Lower the price of theater tickts and DVDs? - Well, I don't know for anyone else, but I don't think my reason would be money.
Next one, the big one, availability, this is a major issue. You've become a lot better at distributing movies fast, atleast the movies that brings in a lot of money. But there are still people who prefer to watch their movies at home, and there are places that doesn't get the move at their theater until months after it has been shown and talked about elsewhere in the world.
Personally I think that if you provided an online service without your silly DRM, one which people could download your movies themselves and pay for it, people would. I know atleast I would. You have implemented means to stop people from doing this, like DVD zones, movies being released at different times in different parts of the world and you're releaseing the dvds a lot later than the theaters has shown the flick.
So, what I am suggesting is that you stop chasing kids downloading your materials off the net. You should still go after the profit makers, nobody likes them anyway, but above all, if you want to stop piracy, you gotta beat the pirates in terms of availability and quality of service.
You can transfer my consultant fee to my paypal account now.
That is, if the barges were solar powered. Imagine a huge fleet of solar powered barges assembling up there in arctica, from space it would look like a huge insect roaming the planet.
I think there are several ways this can be achived by microsoft really, without spending all that money on commercials that everyone loathes anyway. I think that what I would do if I were in change would be to buy up a tiny company, give them the windows source code, then have the tiny company release a windows compatible OS, that way everyone who loathes microsoft would buy their OS from that company. And since it's a tiny company, they wouldn't have to worry that much about doing everythings right, just like microsoft. The tiny man who loathes microsoft would be satisfied and companies would still be able to pump money into the huge corporation, microsoft.
Another way would be just to change the name to nanosoft, since nano is smaller than micro.
Yet another way is just to change the name to something completely different. Then wait 2 weeks for the general public to forget about it all. And then continue releasing bad software.
I think I've heard of this idea before (putting office applications onto web) but it never took off back then probably because the speed of browsers/internet couldn't provide the quality most people wanted.
The idea is good though, imagine being able to sit at home, work or school working on the same documents at the same loctaion without having to worry about usb drives and moving datas.
I think I would be careful about storing sensitive or private data onto it as I really see this becoming a prime target for crackers.
It is very easy, when you live in your own OS world, to reach out your hand and point at all the other OSes and say, 'they are bad!", and I'm not saying that people hasn't tried that other OS they are pointing at. I'm saying that they've dug themselves into a religious trench holding their position in fear of discovering something new or to have let go of their hate for the other, different things.
Yes, I've made the very same mistake. I held onto my precious Amiga until early 1995, only to find out that I've lost years of Intel PC experience by looking the other way. I also was a poor student back then too, so I wasn't likely to buy myself a new computer. But I think the OS love/hate wars are very much the same as the old Amiga/PC discussions.
My personal experience has lead me to atleast try and stay away from the religious discussion, they never lead to anything constructive. I have both Windows and Linux PCs at home, and I use them all with erhm.. almost equal passion and love.
When the OS you are using meet your needs in terms of quality and functionality, and you're satisfied with that. Then why go to the step of switching platform? If Mr. X at accounting has a PC that does the job for him, then why should he go to the bothering step of switching?
Getting a bit side tracked here, well, Microsoft and Windows. I think the problem is, a lot of people are confusing the OS with the company. The way Microsoft has been conducting business is appaling. Whether people wanna respect and give some love to their OS, or not, well.. I don't care.
I switched to Dvorak in,.. hmm.. 1998, I think. Anyway, I find switching between those two quite cumbersome. What I usually do is that I type on a keyboard where the visual keys on the keyboard are setup in the ordinary Qwerty manner, but my keys are mapped Dvorak. This enables me to type fast without looking at the keys, when the computer is setup to type Dvorak. It is, however, impossible for me to look at the keys while I type, if I do, I start typing Qwerty (which is bad with a Dvorak setup) Another interresting this is that I really can't say where most of the key are. I have to type them. Kinda like when people have to dial a phone number to remember it.
The problems I've encountered by going over to Dvorak is, by far, insignificant compared to not changing:
- Entering the BIOS can be a problem, leaving the keys Qwerty gives you the ability to search-find-press the keys. For me this is slow, but adequate for rare BIOS changes. - None of the Qwerty people can use your keyboard. - If you change jobs, or enter a more restricted environment, you may be forced to type Qwerty.
It took me about 2-3 weeks to fully convert to Dvorak, after 1-1.5 week I was just as quick with Dvorak as Qwerty before I changed.
Dvorak has enabled me to type a bit faster, but the real advantage with Dvorak is that you move your finger's less, causing less stress on your fingers.
Another thing, if you are going to change, make sure you do it the proper way. Start by covering your keys (you don't want to sit there staring at the keyboard,) don't cheat and make sure you are using the right fingers for the right keys. I had a few "shortcuts" when I used Qwerty, those I managed to get rid of when I converted.
And... you'll definitely not want to turn back once you've chosen the path of the Dvorak.
I think that the Linux community has to draw a line and say that enough is enough. And I think we have to sue SCO over this issue. If not, then our problems with SCO will escalate and in the end hurt Linux. This incident in New Zealand only proves this.
Slashdot Mirror
Positive:
- added security
Negative:
- worse performance
- you may forget the password (it has happened before.)
- has to be mounted manually (or at least type in password each time you need access to the data.)
- it's painful to backup
- it's painful to do a proper file systems check
- if the discs are somehow taken by the authorities you might have to give up your password (or be sentenced for whatever they think you have on the discs.)
- discs are only secure if they are not mounted.
There are a few negative sides, but usually they make up for the positive, i.e. if you really need the security then of course this is the way to go. Also remember to secure the other aspects of the machine, like physical access (including fire/theft), software protection (anti malware and virus) and network protection (firewalls, etc.)
Nobody likes DRM, but I don't think the general consumer thinks about DRM when deciding whether or not to buy a movie or not. Price is essential, DVDs are still cheaper and cheaper yet is downloading stuff directly off the Internet.
For the hardcore home-theather-entertainment dudes, quality is everything and they will buy the expencive discs.
There are two kinds of games that I usually buy, games that I find on Steam (because I can download them directly (access) and play them within hours) and MMORPG (which has an attached monthly subscription.) If more developers would put their games on to Steam there would probably be less Piracy, or at least that is how things work out for me.
(atm. I don't have any pirated games on my PC, but there are several titles I would have bought if I could have found them on steam.)
I don't really think it needs an explanation or anything, I simply use Linux because it is better. Whether the mainstream uses it or not is not something I care much about as long as it has the development rate and user base it has now.
I don't know who came up with this, but it is good to see that Bush at least got one thing right before he left office. I wish other official departments/etc. would follow suit. I feel that the old argument that it's not easy to read text off a screen is non-valid beause today, we do read a lot of text on the screen as a fact, and getting there is just a matter of getting used to it.
It would have been better if they had found out it was 4,567 years ago, or at least it would have been easier to remember, though, not entirely correct.
No, seriously. My orginazation has about 12000 users, some of them have backups, some don't most of them doesn't seem to care and as they are students it's hard to force something upon them. But, what I would like, is a solution where the students can point to a folder on the disc and say, each time the machine reboots or once a day or something take backup of that folder and I don't want to know anything about it or get any pop-ups. And there would of course have to be a server they can access through a web-browser where they can retrieve their data when (not if!) something goes wrong.
Does anyone know about such a system, preferably a GNU licensed one?
Where are the top secret documents about the assassination of Kennedy? I wanna read them!
on the other side there is a lot more and better series that were recently canceled (bsg only gets one more season, whimp, cry) -- anyway, a 'feelgood' post nucklear drama where people are sitting at a caffee drinking cappuchino a few weeks after the bombs have fallen is probably not what the audience expects. Though I must say that it wastly improves towards the end of the season. Could it be that CBS canceled the show based on the reception it got at the begining, because to be honest, it did really suck then.
It is normal human perception of reality which makes us believe that everything that goes up, must come down. Still, with proper adaptive leadership I don't see why google should be around for the next (insert huge number here) years. Most companies downfall seems to be happening because their leaders can't adjust fast enough to the current market, just look at the American motor industry. Still, I don't see why we shouldn't need to search for things in the future, so the market will be there. And as is claimed, google has a lot of brainpower and even if a few of them leaves the company, it's not going to be the downfall of the company.
I don't know how big this problem is, but I feel that once you set down the path of banning things that "we don't like" then that list could grow long. How about companys that sell documents that look like university diplomas? To me it seems that they both would fall into the same category.
As I see it there are lots of competition, and whether the source is open or not doesn't really matter. It is easy to see open source software as something closed software would leach of off and steal code, but I really think it is more about stealing features. Like first opera comes with tabs, then mozilla then microsoft internet exploder comes with tabs. It's not about stealing code, but ideas. And it happens all the time. Just look at the MMORPG scene where everyone steals features from eachother (WoW and EQ2 is basically the same game, except EQ2 has real graphics.) So, the competition seems to be about who can steal the most features from the other or invent new features faster than the competitor.
I read (somewhere) yesterday that directx 10 is also coming to XP. Looking at this article one could wonder if this is another indication that Vista isn't what everyone wants.
Soo... Basically they haven't learned anything?
They can hire all the tech-guru-security-experts they want, they still won't me smarter than the collective curiosity of the rest of the world. As such, any implementation of DRM in on a wide scale is futile!
And the result, well, take itunes for example, where the customers has the choise of either paying for a bad product or go otherwhere and fetch a better one for free...
I'll second that! And I don't even know what the Blackberry is doing on the list, it's not even for sale here in Europe.
The US is a bulley in this world divided. I really can't believe Russia caved in to their demands.
I would rather pay $15USD to play an MMORPG without commercials, than paying nothing and have to watch commercials. To be blunt, I've had enough, I've just changed my email address after having the same email address for 7 years, why? Well, because of spam, 60-70 messages a day. And I don't view commercial banners different.
Anarchy Online has been running a free version with commercials ingame for over a year and they seem to be doing nicely. The advantage of free games with commercials is that people can play them who otherwise would not afford it, also you can try it out without paying.
To put commercials into a game that you are paying for is just wrong, or atleast there should be an option to pay a bit more to get rid of the commercial. The money has to come from somewhere, I admit, but to put commercials on something you are paying for already is like milking the same cow twice.
Dear MMPAA. It is time for you to sit down and chill a bit (grab a beer or something.) - you should know by now that stopping people from copying digital information is a futile effort. I know this is your job, and I know that you are working very hard on this, but it is not an effort that's going to lead to any regime where pirated movies does not exist. Just ask the guys working against music and software piracy.
So, while you sit there contemplating on the situation and what you do, you should ask yourself. Why is it that people are pirating movies? Let me give you two answers; well, the most obvious one, to save money. What can you do about this? Lower the price of theater tickts and DVDs? - Well, I don't know for anyone else, but I don't think my reason would be money.
Next one, the big one, availability, this is a major issue. You've become a lot better at distributing movies fast, atleast the movies that brings in a lot of money. But there are still people who prefer to watch their movies at home, and there are places that doesn't get the move at their theater until months after it has been shown and talked about elsewhere in the world.
Personally I think that if you provided an online service without your silly DRM, one which people could download your movies themselves and pay for it, people would. I know atleast I would. You have implemented means to stop people from doing this, like DVD zones, movies being released at different times in different parts of the world and you're releaseing the dvds a lot later than the theaters has shown the flick.
So, what I am suggesting is that you stop chasing kids downloading your materials off the net. You should still go after the profit makers, nobody likes them anyway, but above all, if you want to stop piracy, you gotta beat the pirates in terms of availability and quality of service.
You can transfer my consultant fee to my paypal account now.
That is, if the barges were solar powered. Imagine a huge fleet of solar powered barges assembling up there in arctica, from space it would look like a huge insect roaming the planet.
I think there are several ways this can be achived by microsoft really, without spending all that money on commercials that everyone loathes anyway. I think that what I would do if I were in change would be to buy up a tiny company, give them the windows source code, then have the tiny company release a windows compatible OS, that way everyone who loathes microsoft would buy their OS from that company. And since it's a tiny company, they wouldn't have to worry that much about doing everythings right, just like microsoft. The tiny man who loathes microsoft would be satisfied and companies would still be able to pump money into the huge corporation, microsoft.
Another way would be just to change the name to nanosoft, since nano is smaller than micro.
Yet another way is just to change the name to something completely different. Then wait 2 weeks for the general public to forget about it all. And then continue releasing bad software.
I think I've heard of this idea before (putting office applications onto web) but it never took off back then probably because the speed of browsers/internet couldn't provide the quality most people wanted.
The idea is good though, imagine being able to sit at home, work or school working on the same documents at the same loctaion without having to worry about usb drives and moving datas.
I think I would be careful about storing sensitive or private data onto it as I really see this becoming a prime target for crackers.
It is very easy, when you live in your own OS world, to reach out your hand and point at all the other OSes and say, 'they are bad!", and I'm not saying that people hasn't tried that other OS they are pointing at. I'm saying that they've dug themselves into a religious trench holding their position in fear of discovering something new or to have let go of their hate for the other, different things.
Yes, I've made the very same mistake. I held onto my precious Amiga until early 1995, only to find out that I've lost years of Intel PC experience by looking the other way. I also was a poor student back then too, so I wasn't likely to buy myself a new computer. But I think the OS love/hate wars are very much the same as the old Amiga/PC discussions.
My personal experience has lead me to atleast try and stay away from the religious discussion, they never lead to anything constructive. I have both Windows and Linux PCs at home, and I use them all with erhm.. almost equal passion and love.
When the OS you are using meet your needs in terms of quality and functionality, and you're satisfied with that. Then why go to the step of switching platform? If Mr. X at accounting has a PC that does the job for him, then why should he go to the bothering step of switching?
Getting a bit side tracked here, well, Microsoft and Windows. I think the problem is, a lot of people are confusing the OS with the company. The way Microsoft has been conducting business is appaling. Whether people wanna respect and give some love to their OS, or not, well.. I don't care.
I switched to Dvorak in,.. hmm.. 1998, I think. Anyway, I find switching between those two quite cumbersome. What I usually do is that I type on a keyboard where the visual keys on the keyboard are setup in the ordinary Qwerty manner, but my keys are mapped Dvorak. This enables me to type fast without looking at the keys, when the computer is setup to type Dvorak. It is, however, impossible for me to look at the keys while I type, if I do, I start typing Qwerty (which is bad with a Dvorak setup) Another interresting this is that I really can't say where most of the key are. I have to type them. Kinda like when people have to dial a phone number to remember it.
The problems I've encountered by going over to Dvorak is, by far, insignificant compared to not changing:
- Entering the BIOS can be a problem, leaving the keys Qwerty gives you the ability to search-find-press the keys. For me this is slow, but adequate for rare BIOS changes.
- None of the Qwerty people can use your keyboard.
- If you change jobs, or enter a more restricted environment, you may be forced to type Qwerty.
It took me about 2-3 weeks to fully convert to Dvorak, after 1-1.5 week I was just as quick with Dvorak as Qwerty before I changed.
Dvorak has enabled me to type a bit faster, but the real advantage with Dvorak is that you move your finger's less, causing less stress on your fingers.
Another thing, if you are going to change, make sure you do it the proper way. Start by covering your keys (you don't want to sit there staring at the keyboard,) don't cheat and make sure you are using the right fingers for the right keys. I had a few "shortcuts" when I used Qwerty, those I managed to get rid of when I converted.
And... you'll definitely not want to turn back once you've chosen the path of the Dvorak.
I think that the Linux community has to draw a line and say that enough is enough. And I think we have to sue SCO over this issue. If not, then our problems with SCO will escalate and in the end hurt Linux. This incident in New Zealand only proves this.
My old ZX-81 uses the same technology to receive
input. I wonder how it compares?
I'd definitely have to have a Dvorak version of
it (not that appearance ever matters.)