This may help some companies get an idea of what all activities going on in their network, but I doubt anyone will ever stop the activity going on as described. For companies, the biggest deterrent will remain getting fired if someone is using work computers to do P2P or IM. If the company policy is clear, and people are aware of it, the company really only has that (and a series of graduated warnings) to use as a club. Blocking ports, trying to shape protocols, trying lockouts etc are, IMHO, a waste of time. A workaround will always come. Better to have a clear policy and enforce it than buying fancy-ass software or spending 50 bucks for a book on what any good IT manager knows already.
Out in the world of ISP's (which is different than in companies), the same situation exists. Try to block P2P, or bittorrent, and someone will find a way around the security. They could kick people off their service driving them to another ISP, but that's about it. This book doesn't really sound like it applies to that situation really.
What you need is a proviso in the law to kill these nuisance law suits from organizations. Can't the court in the US make the RIAA pay all her legal costs if they find their case unfounded. In Britain, if a case is decided "wholly without merit", the person (entity) who brought the case is made to pay the legal fees of those they brought the case against.
Yes, the ID folk are getting money, from the same people who sent Oral Roberts money back in the 80's when he said god threatened to kill him if he didn't come up with eight million bucks. Or was it 10?
Did they ever pick up the perp? I've been watching america's most wanted, but it would seem they never picked up the case. My neighbour looks kind of shifty.
That's a load of BS perpetuated by right wing interests. You can pay if you want for faster treatment. I live in Manitoba so I know you can. Doctors get paid privately all the time, there are private clinics in Canada and private doctors. If you don't like that, you can even leave the country and get cheap plastic in India, expensive treatments of all kinds in the US or join Don Ho in Thailand for stem cell treatments. What a doctor can't do is bill a patient directly for services that are covered under medicare. Those bills the doctor has to charge to medicare according to their fee schedules. The prime minister even attends to a private clinic.
As for wait times in the public system, try to comparing them to the wait times the uninsured have in free community hospitals in the US as opposed to the best private hospitals. Canadian wait times are not bad, and if you have an emergency need, you get seen right away.
Either you have a free country or you don't. I don't want a tyranny of the intelligentsia anymore than I want a tyranny of the fundamentalists. I may not agree with them on many subjects, but the religious have a right to practice their religion or the entire raison d'etre of Canada and the United States (and many other countries) is a sham. The cynical may believe it is a sham anyway, but I refuse to join them.
If you go back and look at my previous posts on this subject, you'll no I'm no fan of ID. Teach it to kids in Sunday school, but not in biology class. Now granted evolution and a lot of the bio-sciences have been on the run in the US over the past while, the only reason this award was granted was to bolster the bio-science community by the other scientists saying "Good on You!".
There is nothing wrong with that, in fact if you have a weak team in a sports league, the other teams in terms of PR will say good things about that team and try to get the fans out. ID got a boot from the courts this week, but I don't think anyone thinks that will kill the issue. The sides are still on the field and the thinking people have to say "go team!".
Yes, dammit, I'm quibbling. Actually it was a suggestion. As well, freshmeat is devoted to open source (which is great as a repository for that). Other sites cover things, but a central update site for both open source and other software as well could be handy.
If people like this stuff on the front page, fine, but usually the first 50 comments about such things are whines, and not fine ones either.
I appreciate the info about the update, but it's not really worthy of a story posting. I am sure a bunch of games and other software had additions today too.
This is useful info though. Perhaps Slashdot could make a software update page for things like this rather than posting them on the main page. It would also avoid the inevitable dumbass comments that spring up when these things happen.
Let me see, no Linux on Xbox, that's been done, no more p2p, p2p use exploding still, 500 forms of copy protection on CD's and DVD's broken, MS windows activation broken, etc, etc
Another thing to challenge and have broken.
Sooner or later somebody is going to wake up, charge a fair price, allow fair use, and make a profit without alienating their customers
On the other hand, how long did Rip Van Winkle sleep?
The reason it is pointed out that this upgrade is free is that nVidia charges for its Pure Video codec packs. nVidia does not charge for normal driver upgrades. Frankly, I agree with the article, if you shell out for one of nVidia's high end cards, this should be given as a free pack-in. It is just gouging otherwise.
That said, the ATI cards are generally more versatile out of the box (in my opinion) than nVidia, which tends to make pure gaming cards.
Others have stated the problem with the HD strategy. Most people don't have them. Yes, for the most part HD look far superior to SD (except for upconverted old shows which suffer). Until you can buy a 42 inch HD set for about 500 bucks, penetration is going to be low compared to SD.
If you look at the life of these consoles (about five years), I suspect HD is not going to be much of a factor in this generation. Nintendo may not have been that dumb in not deploying HD this generation. The games have to look good in SD, and so far the xbox 360's don't. I am sure publishers will work around that in time. Next generation, I would say HD will be a must.
The next gen consoles are about getting the console gamer to the on-line money trough through a drm locked down metered revenue stream.
Really, a lot of the ooo's and ah's with the consoles have more to do with their on-line abilities, supposedly better graphics (jury is in lockdown) and such that PC gamers have used for ages. The difference is that they can get the console gamers (which outnumber PC gamers) to fork over a lot more in on-line fees than PC players will tolerate. Plus, a lot of console gamers don't even know where to begin when it comes to modding their consoles to bypass their schemes.
The PC also has more options when it comes to free gaming on-line. A lot suck, but a lot are very good. Yes, the graphics on the new consoles will be better once the developers get the hang of programming for them, but gameplay is another matter.
Frankly, the new consoles have a bigger upside for the manufacturer's as a vehicle for metered gaming than they do for the gamer in terms of better games.
While we who eat and breathe web stuff are not as likely to be taken in by the tactics pricegrabber and their ilk use to pump their paying customers and favourites products, this is apt to help them in terms of dealing with not so savvy folk cruising the net for their shopping. It's been shown that many people can't tell the difference between "real" reviews of products and bogus articles that are really nothing more than the web equivalent of infomercials. The reality is now the web is crowded with many people who have no concept of what they are doing out there and who literally believe much of what is written. This plays perfectly to that crowd. There's a reason spam goes on, and that is there is an awful lot of people out there who really seem to believe you can get a new Honda for forwarding e-mail. You go figure it out.
One of the most frustrating things is users who do what you ask, and then promptly do a bunch of things immediately afterwards that you don't ask. You try going step-by-step with them, and meanwhile they are opening menus and clicking away at things they don't understand, because somehow hearing your voice tell them what to do gives them all the control of a runaway horse.
No, unfortunately I am not new here, I am just tired of seeing what should be intelligent discussion being sidetracked and hijacked into discussions more suited to the pages of the national enquirer (which frankly is more entertaining). I think if I were to define a fundamentalist of any stripe it would be "one who wants to bring back the dark ages".
They are just testing the device, and it is being done in conjunction with other jurisdictions (some in the states). Government agencies do this kind of thing all the time. Not unusual. I doubt it will ever be deployed widescale for a lot of the reasons others have pointed out.
Do not turn this into a religious fracas. There has been far too much of this nonsense and frankly all it does is make everyone sound like a bunch of hillbillies.
Slashdot Mirror
This may help some companies get an idea of what all activities going on in their network, but I doubt anyone will ever stop the activity going on as described. For companies, the biggest deterrent will remain getting fired if someone is using work computers to do P2P or IM. If the company policy is clear, and people are aware of it, the company really only has that (and a series of graduated warnings) to use as a club. Blocking ports, trying to shape protocols, trying lockouts etc are, IMHO, a waste of time. A workaround will always come. Better to have a clear policy and enforce it than buying fancy-ass software or spending 50 bucks for a book on what any good IT manager knows already.
Out in the world of ISP's (which is different than in companies), the same situation exists. Try to block P2P, or bittorrent, and someone will find a way around the security. They could kick people off their service driving them to another ISP, but that's about it. This book doesn't really sound like it applies to that situation really.
What you need is a proviso in the law to kill these nuisance law suits from organizations. Can't the court in the US make the RIAA pay all her legal costs if they find their case unfounded. In Britain, if a case is decided "wholly without merit", the person (entity) who brought the case is made to pay the legal fees of those they brought the case against.
Okay, you got me there.
The marker said Bush family plot.
Yes, the ID folk are getting money, from the same people who sent Oral Roberts money back in the 80's when he said god threatened to kill him if he didn't come up with eight million bucks. Or was it 10?
Did they ever pick up the perp? I've been watching america's most wanted, but it would seem they never picked up the case. My neighbour looks kind of shifty.
That's a load of BS perpetuated by right wing interests. You can pay if you want for faster treatment. I live in Manitoba so I know you can. Doctors get paid privately all the time, there are private clinics in Canada and private doctors. If you don't like that, you can even leave the country and get cheap plastic in India, expensive treatments of all kinds in the US or join Don Ho in Thailand for stem cell treatments. What a doctor can't do is bill a patient directly for services that are covered under medicare. Those bills the doctor has to charge to medicare according to their fee schedules. The prime minister even attends to a private clinic.
As for wait times in the public system, try to comparing them to the wait times the uninsured have in free community hospitals in the US as opposed to the best private hospitals. Canadian wait times are not bad, and if you have an emergency need, you get seen right away.
Either you have a free country or you don't. I don't want a tyranny of the intelligentsia anymore than I want a tyranny of the fundamentalists. I may not agree with them on many subjects, but the religious have a right to practice their religion or the entire raison d'etre of Canada and the United States (and many other countries) is a sham. The cynical may believe it is a sham anyway, but I refuse to join them.
If you go back and look at my previous posts on this subject, you'll no I'm no fan of ID. Teach it to kids in Sunday school, but not in biology class. Now granted evolution and a lot of the bio-sciences have been on the run in the US over the past while, the only reason this award was granted was to bolster the bio-science community by the other scientists saying "Good on You!".
There is nothing wrong with that, in fact if you have a weak team in a sports league, the other teams in terms of PR will say good things about that team and try to get the fans out. ID got a boot from the courts this week, but I don't think anyone thinks that will kill the issue. The sides are still on the field and the thinking people have to say "go team!".
Yes, dammit, I'm quibbling. Actually it was a suggestion. As well, freshmeat is devoted to open source (which is great as a repository for that). Other sites cover things, but a central update site for both open source and other software as well could be handy.
If people like this stuff on the front page, fine, but usually the first 50 comments about such things are whines, and not fine ones either.
I appreciate the info about the update, but it's not really worthy of a story posting. I am sure a bunch of games and other software had additions today too.
This is useful info though. Perhaps Slashdot could make a software update page for things like this rather than posting them on the main page. It would also avoid the inevitable dumbass comments that spring up when these things happen.
Let me see, no Linux on Xbox, that's been done, no more p2p, p2p use exploding still, 500 forms of copy protection on CD's and DVD's broken, MS windows activation broken, etc, etc
Another thing to challenge and have broken.
Sooner or later somebody is going to wake up, charge a fair price, allow fair use, and make a profit without alienating their customers
On the other hand, how long did Rip Van Winkle sleep?
The reason it is pointed out that this upgrade is free is that nVidia charges for its Pure Video codec packs. nVidia does not charge for normal driver upgrades. Frankly, I agree with the article, if you shell out for one of nVidia's high end cards, this should be given as a free pack-in. It is just gouging otherwise.
That said, the ATI cards are generally more versatile out of the box (in my opinion) than nVidia, which tends to make pure gaming cards.
Others have stated the problem with the HD strategy. Most people don't have them. Yes, for the most part HD look far superior to SD (except for upconverted old shows which suffer). Until you can buy a 42 inch HD set for about 500 bucks, penetration is going to be low compared to SD.
If you look at the life of these consoles (about five years), I suspect HD is not going to be much of a factor in this generation. Nintendo may not have been that dumb in not deploying HD this generation. The games have to look good in SD, and so far the xbox 360's don't. I am sure publishers will work around that in time. Next generation, I would say HD will be a must.
The wireless for the DS is free, no word on the revolution's wireless scheme
The next gen consoles are about getting the console gamer to the on-line money trough through a drm locked down metered revenue stream.
Really, a lot of the ooo's and ah's with the consoles have more to do with their on-line abilities, supposedly better graphics (jury is in lockdown) and such that PC gamers have used for ages. The difference is that they can get the console gamers (which outnumber PC gamers) to fork over a lot more in on-line fees than PC players will tolerate. Plus, a lot of console gamers don't even know where to begin when it comes to modding their consoles to bypass their schemes.
The PC also has more options when it comes to free gaming on-line. A lot suck, but a lot are very good. Yes, the graphics on the new consoles will be better once the developers get the hang of programming for them, but gameplay is another matter.
Frankly, the new consoles have a bigger upside for the manufacturer's as a vehicle for metered gaming than they do for the gamer in terms of better games.
While we who eat and breathe web stuff are not as likely to be taken in by the tactics pricegrabber and their ilk use to pump their paying customers and favourites products, this is apt to help them in terms of dealing with not so savvy folk cruising the net for their shopping. It's been shown that many people can't tell the difference between "real" reviews of products and bogus articles that are really nothing more than the web equivalent of infomercials. The reality is now the web is crowded with many people who have no concept of what they are doing out there and who literally believe much of what is written. This plays perfectly to that crowd. There's a reason spam goes on, and that is there is an awful lot of people out there who really seem to believe you can get a new Honda for forwarding e-mail. You go figure it out.
If only it were so easy...
Then there are the people who use the same word (and usually the incorrect word) for 10 things and et upset when you don't understand them.
One of the most frustrating things is users who do what you ask, and then promptly do a bunch of things immediately afterwards that you don't ask. You try going step-by-step with them, and meanwhile they are opening menus and clicking away at things they don't understand, because somehow hearing your voice tell them what to do gives them all the control of a runaway horse.
Terrific, with my consumption maybe I can sell caffeine credits!
At the very least the people who bet my blood through my donations will be safe.
No, unfortunately I am not new here, I am just tired of seeing what should be intelligent discussion being sidetracked and hijacked into discussions more suited to the pages of the national enquirer (which frankly is more entertaining). I think if I were to define a fundamentalist of any stripe it would be "one who wants to bring back the dark ages".
It doesn't matter, the discussion still turned into the battle of the hillbillies.
They are just testing the device, and it is being done in conjunction with other jurisdictions (some in the states). Government agencies do this kind of thing all the time. Not unusual. I doubt it will ever be deployed widescale for a lot of the reasons others have pointed out.
Do not turn this into a religious fracas. There has been far too much of this nonsense and frankly all it does is make everyone sound like a bunch of hillbillies.
The proposed prohibition is specifically against open source software that allows you to defeat drm, not open source software in general.
Still a bad trend in any event
I've just googled for mp3's of his songs and hit them no problem. I guess dropping him a line wouldn't hurt.