Not Microsoft nor Apple specifically (even if Apple did lobby our MPs). Much more our local RIAA/MPAA, and the BSA too. But trust me, the French Govermnment is already Hellish-enough so they can make an evil law all by themselves. They're pretty used to it:)
Not only they will reveal the names and everything, but the law allows the actual and non-oriented spying of the users. They will try to catch as many people as possible, as a deterrent to file sharing. I don't think our ISPs will make their life easy though, as many don't want to be part of this grand evil scheme. Our judges are against this law too, and will give the minimal fines to filesharers who don't profit by reselling. The whole thing doesn't seem really applicable anyway. It's such a mess, an evil mess, but such a mess that only a few poor students or kids will get caught and will pay the hard price for our Government's stupidity/fascism. And the legalization of P2P was voted by the Parliament at Christmas, but our Government used underhand tactics to cancel it. To sum up, it is unapplicable, and there are many different views, so I hope/guess/think it will be abolished next year.
*grabs another beer*. I'll take some time here to reply to myself and try to be clear about why the article is uninformed and give some more thoughts on the DADVSI law ("Droits d'Auteurs et Droits Voisins dans la Société de l'Information", roughly "Copyrights in Information Society"; we call it the DAVDSI code;)).
The EUCD, European Copyright Directive, is the European implementation of the '96 WIPO treaty (asked by the US because they couldn't pass the DMCA without alienating the EFF & co). So they went to the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation) and got what they (= RIAA/MPAA/BSA/<insert your favourite bitch here>) wanted. Then they passed the DMCA in the US and were happy (and obviously, the average/.'er wasn't).
The problem is, European Union countries signed the treaty too (as they are WIPO members, and that the copyright works in a way that if you want that other countries enforce YOUR copyrights, you'd better enforce them. One could see the process as some kind of blackmail..). So the European Union creates the EUCD, but keeps it vague so the transcriptions in the member states law's mileage may vary (often referred as "TTITMSLMMV"). For example, the Belgians have a fairly good EUCD-based law. I guess the Swedish will certainly soon have a correct EUCD-based law as the Pirate Party seems to have a large success and public attention.
We have an horrible EUCD-based law. The so-called "Culture" minister, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, has been outrightly lying during the whole process of amending the law (the Parliament stage). He declared numerous time how the law was F/OSS friendly, and that interoperability was a key point of the law (that's what the article says, too). Both were already very weak in the law (which is insecure, as it's badly written and has many inconsistencies). They are now completely gone. Some amendments were proposed by our local RIAA/MPAA (SNEP, SACEM, etc) while others by private companies (Vivendi); one of them was called the Vivendi amendment (DRMs made all-powerful) even in the Parliament by MPs! It was adopted. There are no exceptions: not for accessibility (blind people can't get the text of a DRM'd e-Boook), not for research (it's illegal even in universities to study DRM security and circumvention), not for backup, etc.
Is it the Constitutionnal Council's fault? Nope, certainly not. It is definitely the rapporteur's (who is a bastard MP from Hell) and the Government's fault. They abused democracy the whole time. The debates were streamed online so lot of people (including me) got to watch how they didn't listen to the opposition, didn't care, and plainly lied. The Council's role is only to rule if the law is conform to the constitution or not (and if the procedure was following the rules, and the Government took great care of abusing the system while respecting the rules). Yet, pretty much everyone considers the law as a failure, may them be artists (who don't want to see their fans go to jail), software programmers, researchers, librarians (who want to backup DVDs), and the general public. Pretty much everyone, except our local RIAA and MPAA. Great.
If you were thinking coming to France because of the GPON, you should reconsider. But whatever happens next (whether the law will be applied or not, it's still not decided), it won't last long... or so I hope.
My bad:). I overread "eliminated" in the process of answering too fast. And it was iPod or Apple, they "can't fine"; I should have taken some more time to "preview", oh well. I'm trying to forget this law with alcohol, please forgive me:)
OK, I'm used to it now. It never was "iTunes Law" for starters (ie, it was not focalizing on iTunes, iPod or iPod at all), but well... I'm trying to reply fast enough so the average Slashdot reader will know this article is full of shit, just like the whole law. The fines aren't reduced, they just say you can fine someone for "stealing" someone's work, so it's back just as before assimilated as counterfeiting (3 years of jail, 300kEUR of fines max). They also removed each and every exception to DRM circumventing (no interoperability exception, and that's bad for F/OSS here in France -- yeah, VLC is a french video player and they are pretty pissed). This law (badly transcribed from the EUCD european directive, which is itself the European DMCA) is actually worse than the DMCA. The good news is the Government is pretty fucked up too (they wanted to fine downloaders while avoiding to alienate the 10M french downloaders), and that it's actually such an authoritatian law that it won't last long (the next year, we'll have a new President and Government and if they want to win the elections, they'll have to promise to remove this piece of shit). This Government is so fucked up and corrupted anyway, nobody here is surprised.
"Stable" is a reference to the packages. Debian stable means you won't get 20 new packages or packages updates every week (and that's optimistic, on testing or unstable, you get that much on a daily basis). You only get security updates. It has nothing to do with software stability, except that the process makes the software in Debian stable.. well very stable! For example, Ubuntu is Debian testing made stable: they get a snapshot of Debian testing every 6 monthes, they fix some of the bugs (critical, hindering normal usage), and then they freeze it (the only updates are security updates, just like with Debian Stable; to be fair, Ubuntu's work isn't that simple, the main part of their work is to make the distribution the way they want with a top-down approach, ie they want some feature or something to look different and they do it). The difference is that Ubuntu's stability process is very weak compared to Debian's, but certainly good enough for most desktop users. That's what "stable" means in the "Debian Stable" sense (that's the same meaning in a "stable" API, ie an API that won't change anytime soon), and it's needed on production systems (you don't want daily updates that can break everything). Great for desktops, mandatory for servers. Debian Sid (to be Etch) is primarily meant for Debian developers.
How is it interesting that they're winning? They're winning only because of the massive misinformation of the general public, and the incompetence of IT services (I happen to agree with this post earlier; IT services from different companies should cooperate and recruit developers who could juste code what they need as Free Software -- F/OSS is also about mutual interest, it'd be cheaper for them to solve their problems that way than buying new proprietary software or renewing their software licenses). I'm sick of people criticizing so-called "Open Source" software (just to be clear, since I've sometimes been accused here on/. of being rude:P, I'm not talking about you of course) because it doesn't fit their needs while they don't do/pay developers to code or ajust existing code so that in the end it does fit their needs; btw we need a well-referenced website (or maybe it already exists) where companies and collectivities can find their common needs so they can afford developers for serious projects (not a bounty site to get code done, but a website where you can find a partner in the first place).
So you can compare "winning" either with a global percentage of XP vs GNU/Linux, or with the current trends (which, imho, are more favorable to GNU/Linux, since more and more people switch). Don't forget (counting out Macs and UNIX) that we come from a 100% Windows desktop world. Yet, I'm confident Free Software will win in the end (unless the other camp lobbies for evil anti-F/OSS laws).
I'm incredibly curious to see how long it will last.
I don't know either how long it will be till then, I just think it will happen in the next 15 years (not taking too much risks;)).
What's forcing you to code using/linking/derivating GPL'ed libraries and programs? You're free to ignore all the GPL code out there. Weren't it for the GPL, all this free code wouldn't even exist. So quit trolling: proprietary softwares kill innovation, they have killed it for the last 25 years. Soon, full FOSS stacks will catch up with proprietary equivalents and finally, it'll be easier for 3rd parties to innovate. At least that's how I see the big picture. I don't wanna elaborate with an AC, but I'm sure you or some/.er will have a different opinion:)
After all, we aren't smarter-than-thou elitists at Slashdot, are we?
Yes we are!:) And proud of it. I understand there was some irony in your comment, but it makes me think of something else.
Something I hate on Digg is how in each thread of discussion someone feels obliged to explain everything (and how lame stories like "a super set of icons", "learning to program", etc. are posted). And why that?
The cost of joining Digg is null. You join, you digg, you reply. That's how 14 years old are now ruling Digg (while it was originally populated with slashdotters and other tech-oriented websites readers). That's Digg so-called "democracy" (except, in democracy, one is supposed [only supposed] to be mature before voting, that's why there's a minimal age, which unfortunately cannot be implemented on Digg; something great would be "you can choose up to 20 domains of expertise, can change only one every two weeks or month, and you can vote only on stories regarding your level of expertise". Plus some incentive to only have one (1) account).
Joining Slashdot is free, but there's a cost when you join: you're eaten alive by grammar and spelling nazis if you don't post correctly, you're eaten alive by an "expert" if you say something technically wrong, you receive negative mod points and get ignored, etc. That's why there are so many accounts and so few posters. And that's how Slashdot has been able to remain readable. I was no newbie when I first start reading Slashdot, but not being a newbie I already knew that you have to understand the subculture and the community first before participating (the same goes for IRC). So I actually registered and became myself a slashdotter years later. Most Diggers are newbies. That's why Digg is good for fresh news and lame for comments, while Slashdot is good for comments (but lame for fresh news). Because we're smarter-than-thou elitists.
And if you auto-identify in your perform, do something like :/identify *pass* which is a server-side macro for "PRIVMSG NickServ@<services-fakeserver-hostname>:password".
The IRC protocol allows to send messages to Nick@server (means "send a message to 'Nick' if and only if he's on 'server'"), so you can do the same with services. Then if the Nickserv nickname is hijacked, it won't matter, because the services "fake server" cannot be hijacked without knowledge of hub configuration (C/N lines) and if ever it happens, IRC admins/opers will notice (that's not something you can't miss).
So either choose the macro (/identify) or the whole command. Or identify manually:)
I don't care if the subscriptions went up, the game became dull, and yeah, there was no technical 'obligation' to leave Fel but the game lost its taste (ie: *unexpectedness*, like running into PK's when you don't want to, or being a PK when others don't want you to. I loved it, and *I* often fell victims to PKs as a n00b too...) . I will never understand people who played pre-UO:R and prefer post-UO:R; people who didn't play before UO:R couldn't even start to imagine how different the game was at the time. It was simply extraordinary and visionary. I'll admit that the Great/Dark Lords era with tank archer mages was a bit too harsh for many players (PKs everywhere), but the post-medit patch pre-fencing patch (basically: early '99 to early 2000) was a damn good year to play on UO (even if I think there should have been an alternative to PK stat loss which sucked). And Siege Perilous never interested me, the ruleset (even if no Trammel) and the harder raising of skills (stupid, imho) are lame.
UO was destroyed by UO:Renaissance in 2000. Age of Shadows was the "coup de grace", but the whole Felucca/Trammel thing was a shame. This game has lost everything.
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of MMORPG players' voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.... (if you know how EA destroyed Ultima Online, you know we already cried out in terror)
I already had this discussion here on/.:) I am myself (and maybe you are) a free software developer; and even if/I/ code and/I/ release this code, I'm greatful for RMS and I think his contribution is a cause of mine. The GPL and GNU itself are incredible incentives to release code as free. RMS evangelism and speeches were and still are prevalent in the free software community, and more generally to all programmers and computer scientists, imho.
(note: I am not saying BG offered money, I am saying BG is seen as someone, who can bring monetary advantages to a country.)
Yeah, but RMS has brought more money into the country than Bill Gates; Bill Gates drives french money out of the country, while RMS gave Free Software (with all the business and *SAVINGs* [yeah, savings aren't producing money, but it's still money] AND *SOFTWARE INDEPENDANCE*). There are *many many* French software vendors dedicated to Free Software now and they're a huge actor in the french IT/CS landscape. Prime Minister's De Villepin supposedly all for free software ("logiciel libre"), but he really means open source, even if he can't understand (and doesn't care) the difference.
Anyway, the whole governement is hellish so nobody should be surprised.
If you're asking such a question, you first have to learn to learn. Seriously, I'm sure of all *nix users here on/. (and elsewhere), 90% never asked "How to [...]". They just Googled it and learned by themselves, because it's simply interesting. I don't understand why people "Ask Slashdot" while they won't even read the previous ones; because, this has been asked 1000 times, may it be "learning UNIX" or "learning to program". That's the same, you can't *know* UNIX/*nix if you don't know how to program -- and the answer's always the same: learn to learn, do it, and RTFM.
RTFM isn't an insult, it's something that we all do; saying RTFM isn't rude, it's a service given to you; RTFM is our way to say: look by yourself, because once it becomes a reflex, you'll do whatever you want, a lot faster.
So now, what fine manual should you read to have some *nix skills? Well, TCPL seems to be a requisite, installing a GNU/Linux distro and using it (it means, ditching Windows completely, no dual boot), then some book on UNIX programming (because the POSIX/*nix system calls API shows you how UNIX is designed, and what IS actually UNIX), and then, if you're only interested in doing some techie stuff, just install and configure the most popular daemons (postfix, apache2, etc). If you start by this last step, you won't actually understand how it *works*, and it will be done in no time (since it's really easy), but you won't have learned much.
Once again, learn to learn by yourself. Don't rely on courses. The only CS interesting courses I have ever been to are software design or theorical CS (I'm a CS master student). The rest ("UNIX", programming, networking, etc) I already knew [because I had learned to learn;)] or could have learned by myself (or it was just not interesting to me, like some lower level/electronics stuff).
What will this do to the playing field for US companies and citizens in the global perspective of the internet?
Unfortunetaly, it won't affect only Americans, it will affect everyone using the american networks through peering, ie, all servers hosted in the US. And it will give bad ideas to foreign telcos as well. Just like the DMCA became the EUCD in Europe, the Net Neutrality Bill (as in, the bill going against net neutrality) will certainly be "ported" to European right (and surely in some other countries as Australia or New Zealand and later in Asia). We should prepare now and even try to get a true "net neutrality" bill passed as an European directive first. However, it's harder for us poor citizen to lobby as effectively as telcos and majors. Hail to globalization.
Yeah good point. I had forgotten how it was under Windows: not really about best computing design, but about best profit system:). Making shortcuts owned by SYSTEM in the default install, using the security model against the user... why didn't I think of that! Debian must have removed the seeds of corruption from my mind;).
So the new Vista security model is: run as a normal user, but install software as admin, which creates desktop and start menu shortcuts owned by System so you can't remove them unless you're allowed to privilege escalation, and even then, you'll see frightening messages to prevent you from actually removing the shortcut. And we know how proprietary software always play fair and populate the start menu and the desktop reasonnably... Damn, only imagining it makes me mad.
On a side note, I have switched a non-techie (at all, total newbie and he doesn't give a shit about computers & all, he just wants to write stuff, browse the web, use IM and watch movies/listen to music) friend from XP to Ubuntu (5.10) last weak (he couldn't upgrade anymore because of the Genuine Advantage:)) and I've completly wiped his Windows (no dual boot). He's more than happy with it, everything works fine. Now, with all the PCs Vista won't run on, and all the crap Vista will *securely* install on your system, I'm eager to see if and when GNU/Linux will gain a broader public and how things will turn out.
Yeah you may be right, in that the "Admin" and "SYSTEM" account seem not only different in names, but in level of permissions too. So "Admin" isn't really root, SYSTEM seems to be (but you can't log as SYSTEM).
With UNIX, there is never any authentification asked to root (but asking for confirmation is never useless;)), because everything root asks is holy;). Yet, if the "Admin" account has to go through these 6 stages of confirmation to remove a shortcut, then there is a UI problem:). The first confirmations should be enough. And if that's a user account, then there's definitely a security problem.
Regardless to privilege escalation, the file on YOUR desktop shouldn't belong to anyone else than YOU in the first place. And really, people need to get used to only log as a regular user.
Slashdot Mirror
Not Microsoft nor Apple specifically (even if Apple did lobby our MPs). Much more our local RIAA/MPAA, and the BSA too. But trust me, the French Govermnment is already Hellish-enough so they can make an evil law all by themselves. They're pretty used to it :)
Not only they will reveal the names and everything, but the law allows the actual and non-oriented spying of the users. They will try to catch as many people as possible, as a deterrent to file sharing. I don't think our ISPs will make their life easy though, as many don't want to be part of this grand evil scheme. Our judges are against this law too, and will give the minimal fines to filesharers who don't profit by reselling. The whole thing doesn't seem really applicable anyway. It's such a mess, an evil mess, but such a mess that only a few poor students or kids will get caught and will pay the hard price for our Government's stupidity/fascism. And the legalization of P2P was voted by the Parliament at Christmas, but our Government used underhand tactics to cancel it. To sum up, it is unapplicable, and there are many different views, so I hope/guess/think it will be abolished next year.
*grabs another beer*. I'll take some time here to reply to myself and try to be clear about why the article is uninformed and give some more thoughts on the DADVSI law ("Droits d'Auteurs et Droits Voisins dans la Société de l'Information", roughly "Copyrights in Information Society"; we call it the DAVDSI code ;)).
/.'er wasn't).
The EUCD, European Copyright Directive, is the European implementation of the '96 WIPO treaty (asked by the US because they couldn't pass the DMCA without alienating the EFF & co). So they went to the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation) and got what they (= RIAA/MPAA/BSA/<insert your favourite bitch here>) wanted. Then they passed the DMCA in the US and were happy (and obviously, the average
The problem is, European Union countries signed the treaty too (as they are WIPO members, and that the copyright works in a way that if you want that other countries enforce YOUR copyrights, you'd better enforce them. One could see the process as some kind of blackmail..). So the European Union creates the EUCD, but keeps it vague so the transcriptions in the member states law's mileage may vary (often referred as "TTITMSLMMV"). For example, the Belgians have a fairly good EUCD-based law. I guess the Swedish will certainly soon have a correct EUCD-based law as the Pirate Party seems to have a large success and public attention.
We have an horrible EUCD-based law. The so-called "Culture" minister, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, has been outrightly lying during the whole process of amending the law (the Parliament stage). He declared numerous time how the law was F/OSS friendly, and that interoperability was a key point of the law (that's what the article says, too). Both were already very weak in the law (which is insecure, as it's badly written and has many inconsistencies). They are now completely gone. Some amendments were proposed by our local RIAA/MPAA (SNEP, SACEM, etc) while others by private companies (Vivendi); one of them was called the Vivendi amendment (DRMs made all-powerful) even in the Parliament by MPs! It was adopted. There are no exceptions: not for accessibility (blind people can't get the text of a DRM'd e-Boook), not for research (it's illegal even in universities to study DRM security and circumvention), not for backup, etc.
Is it the Constitutionnal Council's fault? Nope, certainly not. It is definitely the rapporteur's (who is a bastard MP from Hell) and the Government's fault. They abused democracy the whole time. The debates were streamed online so lot of people (including me) got to watch how they didn't listen to the opposition, didn't care, and plainly lied. The Council's role is only to rule if the law is conform to the constitution or not (and if the procedure was following the rules, and the Government took great care of abusing the system while respecting the rules). Yet, pretty much everyone considers the law as a failure, may them be artists (who don't want to see their fans go to jail), software programmers, researchers, librarians (who want to backup DVDs), and the general public. Pretty much everyone, except our local RIAA and MPAA. Great.
If you were thinking coming to France because of the GPON, you should reconsider. But whatever happens next (whether the law will be applied or not, it's still not decided), it won't last long... or so I hope.
My bad :). I overread "eliminated" in the process of answering too fast. And it was iPod or Apple, they "can't fine"; I should have taken some more time to "preview", oh well. I'm trying to forget this law with alcohol, please forgive me :)
OK, I'm used to it now. It never was "iTunes Law" for starters (ie, it was not focalizing on iTunes, iPod or iPod at all), but well... I'm trying to reply fast enough so the average Slashdot reader will know this article is full of shit, just like the whole law. The fines aren't reduced, they just say you can fine someone for "stealing" someone's work, so it's back just as before assimilated as counterfeiting (3 years of jail, 300kEUR of fines max). They also removed each and every exception to DRM circumventing (no interoperability exception, and that's bad for F/OSS here in France -- yeah, VLC is a french video player and they are pretty pissed). This law (badly transcribed from the EUCD european directive, which is itself the European DMCA) is actually worse than the DMCA. The good news is the Government is pretty fucked up too (they wanted to fine downloaders while avoiding to alienate the 10M french downloaders), and that it's actually such an authoritatian law that it won't last long (the next year, we'll have a new President and Government and if they want to win the elections, they'll have to promise to remove this piece of shit). This Government is so fucked up and corrupted anyway, nobody here is surprised.
"Stable" is a reference to the packages. Debian stable means you won't get 20 new packages or packages updates every week (and that's optimistic, on testing or unstable, you get that much on a daily basis). You only get security updates. It has nothing to do with software stability, except that the process makes the software in Debian stable .. well very stable! For example, Ubuntu is Debian testing made stable: they get a snapshot of Debian testing every 6 monthes, they fix some of the bugs (critical, hindering normal usage), and then they freeze it (the only updates are security updates, just like with Debian Stable; to be fair, Ubuntu's work isn't that simple, the main part of their work is to make the distribution the way they want with a top-down approach, ie they want some feature or something to look different and they do it). The difference is that Ubuntu's stability process is very weak compared to Debian's, but certainly good enough for most desktop users. That's what "stable" means in the "Debian Stable" sense (that's the same meaning in a "stable" API, ie an API that won't change anytime soon), and it's needed on production systems (you don't want daily updates that can break everything). Great for desktops, mandatory for servers. Debian Sid (to be Etch) is primarily meant for Debian developers.
So you can compare "winning" either with a global percentage of XP vs GNU/Linux, or with the current trends (which, imho, are more favorable to GNU/Linux, since more and more people switch). Don't forget (counting out Macs and UNIX) that we come from a 100% Windows desktop world. Yet, I'm confident Free Software will win in the end (unless the other camp lobbies for evil anti-F/OSS laws).
I don't know either how long it will be till then, I just think it will happen in the next 15 years (not taking too much risks
Mhh, the random link above is unfortunately more representative of the YouTube community, but this or that link seem more appropriate :)
Amen!!!
What's forcing you to code using/linking/derivating GPL'ed libraries and programs? You're free to ignore all the GPL code out there. Weren't it for the GPL, all this free code wouldn't even exist. So quit trolling: proprietary softwares kill innovation, they have killed it for the last 25 years. Soon, full FOSS stacks will catch up with proprietary equivalents and finally, it'll be easier for 3rd parties to innovate. At least that's how I see the big picture. I don't wanna elaborate with an AC, but I'm sure you or some /.er will have a different opinion :)
Yeah, then the IRCd is made so it forwards the password field to the IRC services, using the method described above.
Something I hate on Digg is how in each thread of discussion someone feels obliged to explain everything (and how lame stories like "a super set of icons", "learning to program", etc. are posted). And why that?
The cost of joining Digg is null. You join, you digg, you reply. That's how 14 years old are now ruling Digg (while it was originally populated with slashdotters and other tech-oriented websites readers). That's Digg so-called "democracy" (except, in democracy, one is supposed [only supposed] to be mature before voting, that's why there's a minimal age, which unfortunately cannot be implemented on Digg; something great would be "you can choose up to 20 domains of expertise, can change only one every two weeks or month, and you can vote only on stories regarding your level of expertise". Plus some incentive to only have one (1) account).
Joining Slashdot is free, but there's a cost when you join: you're eaten alive by grammar and spelling nazis if you don't post correctly, you're eaten alive by an "expert" if you say something technically wrong, you receive negative mod points and get ignored, etc. That's why there are so many accounts and so few posters. And that's how Slashdot has been able to remain readable. I was no newbie when I first start reading Slashdot, but not being a newbie I already knew that you have to understand the subculture and the community first before participating (the same goes for IRC). So I actually registered and became myself a slashdotter years later. Most Diggers are newbies. That's why Digg is good for fresh news and lame for comments, while Slashdot is good for comments (but lame for fresh news). Because we're smarter-than-thou elitists.
The IRC protocol allows to send messages to Nick@server (means "send a message to 'Nick' if and only if he's on 'server'"), so you can do the same with services. Then if the Nickserv nickname is hijacked, it won't matter, because the services "fake server" cannot be hijacked without knowledge of hub configuration (C/N lines) and if ever it happens, IRC admins/opers will notice (that's not something you can't miss).
So either choose the macro (/identify) or the whole command. Or identify manually
Just smoke a joint before your exam. Works for me :)
I don't care if the subscriptions went up, the game became dull, and yeah, there was no technical 'obligation' to leave Fel but the game lost its taste (ie: *unexpectedness*, like running into PK's when you don't want to, or being a PK when others don't want you to. I loved it, and *I* often fell victims to PKs as a n00b too...) . I will never understand people who played pre-UO:R and prefer post-UO:R; people who didn't play before UO:R couldn't even start to imagine how different the game was at the time. It was simply extraordinary and visionary. I'll admit that the Great/Dark Lords era with tank archer mages was a bit too harsh for many players (PKs everywhere), but the post-medit patch pre-fencing patch (basically: early '99 to early 2000) was a damn good year to play on UO (even if I think there should have been an alternative to PK stat loss which sucked). And Siege Perilous never interested me, the ruleset (even if no Trammel) and the harder raising of skills (stupid, imho) are lame.
UO was destroyed by UO:Renaissance in 2000. Age of Shadows was the "coup de grace", but the whole Felucca/Trammel thing was a shame. This game has lost everything.
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of MMORPG players' voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. ... (if you know how EA destroyed Ultima Online, you know we already cried out in terror)
I already had this discussion here on /. :) I am myself (and maybe you are) a free software developer; and even if /I/ code and /I/ release this code, I'm greatful for RMS and I think his contribution is a cause of mine. The GPL and GNU itself are incredible incentives to release code as free. RMS evangelism and speeches were and still are prevalent in the free software community, and more generally to all programmers and computer scientists, imho.
He created and popularized the movement, and the GPL *is* unvaluable. It's a clever idea and nobody can say it would exist anyway without RMS.
Anyway, the whole governement is hellish so nobody should be surprised.
If you're asking such a question, you first have to learn to learn. Seriously, I'm sure of all *nix users here on /. (and elsewhere), 90% never asked "How to [...]". They just Googled it and learned by themselves, because it's simply interesting. I don't understand why people "Ask Slashdot" while they won't even read the previous ones; because, this has been asked 1000 times, may it be "learning UNIX" or "learning to program". That's the same, you can't *know* UNIX/*nix if you don't know how to program -- and the answer's always the same: learn to learn, do it, and RTFM.
;)] or could have learned by myself (or it was just not interesting to me, like some lower level/electronics stuff).
RTFM isn't an insult, it's something that we all do; saying RTFM isn't rude, it's a service given to you; RTFM is our way to say: look by yourself, because once it becomes a reflex, you'll do whatever you want, a lot faster.
So now, what fine manual should you read to have some *nix skills? Well, TCPL seems to be a requisite, installing a GNU/Linux distro and using it (it means, ditching Windows completely, no dual boot), then some book on UNIX programming (because the POSIX/*nix system calls API shows you how UNIX is designed, and what IS actually UNIX), and then, if you're only interested in doing some techie stuff, just install and configure the most popular daemons (postfix, apache2, etc). If you start by this last step, you won't actually understand how it *works*, and it will be done in no time (since it's really easy), but you won't have learned much.
Once again, learn to learn by yourself. Don't rely on courses. The only CS interesting courses I have ever been to are software design or theorical CS (I'm a CS master student). The rest ("UNIX", programming, networking, etc) I already knew [because I had learned to learn
Yeah good point. I had forgotten how it was under Windows: not really about best computing design, but about best profit system :). Making shortcuts owned by SYSTEM in the default install, using the security model against the user... why didn't I think of that! Debian must have removed the seeds of corruption from my mind ;).
:)) and I've completly wiped his Windows (no dual boot). He's more than happy with it, everything works fine. Now, with all the PCs Vista won't run on, and all the crap Vista will *securely* install on your system, I'm eager to see if and when GNU/Linux will gain a broader public and how things will turn out.
So the new Vista security model is: run as a normal user, but install software as admin, which creates desktop and start menu shortcuts owned by System so you can't remove them unless you're allowed to privilege escalation, and even then, you'll see frightening messages to prevent you from actually removing the shortcut. And we know how proprietary software always play fair and populate the start menu and the desktop reasonnably... Damn, only imagining it makes me mad.
On a side note, I have switched a non-techie (at all, total newbie and he doesn't give a shit about computers & all, he just wants to write stuff, browse the web, use IM and watch movies/listen to music) friend from XP to Ubuntu (5.10) last weak (he couldn't upgrade anymore because of the Genuine Advantage
Yeah you may be right, in that the "Admin" and "SYSTEM" account seem not only different in names, but in level of permissions too. So "Admin" isn't really root, SYSTEM seems to be (but you can't log as SYSTEM).
;)), because everything root asks is holy ;). Yet, if the "Admin" account has to go through these 6 stages of confirmation to remove a shortcut, then there is a UI problem :). The first confirmations should be enough. And if that's a user account, then there's definitely a security problem.
With UNIX, there is never any authentification asked to root (but asking for confirmation is never useless
Regardless to privilege escalation, the file on YOUR desktop shouldn't belong to anyone else than YOU in the first place. And really, people need to get used to only log as a regular user.