>I find it shocking that Windows users just accept that as part of the cost of doing business.
My home PC is primarily for entertainment (games). If you want to play games on your PC, it means you have to run Windows. I understand some of the emulators are getting pretty good for Linux these days, but I'm skeptical about it 1) working and 2) not taking a performance hit.
If all I did was surf the web and read email I'd be all over Linux.
Look, my Windows machines auto-update themselves, and I have AVG running, which also updates itself. I have a firewall downstream of my modem and upstream of every other machine on the network.
What else can I do?
My wife is constantly playing and downloading games from the internet. No doubt she is polluting machines on our network.
Basically my approach to security on my home machines is I wipe them and rebuild them every 6 months or so, in case there is some hidden malware on there that has turned my machine into a zombie.
What I would really like is a "smart firewall" I could buy and put in place of my current firewall. This device would monitor all network traffic going in and out of my house, and it would stop the bad things from going through. It could even be a service whereby the device is managed by some security firm and I pay them to protect my network through this device.
>Creative works are very similar. If what you said is true, then the majority of people >would never pay top-dollar for first-run movies and first-edition books. They would >just "move on" to the much cheaper 2nd run theaters, or wait for the DVDs to hit the >$4 bin at wal-mart, or buy the remaindered books at places like The Dollar Store.
Or...they might download them for free off the internet.
CNN/used/ to charge for video content. I believe they called it "ipass" or something like that. But I believe they stopped that some months ago. Now there are advertisements played before most video spots.
I'm sure the reason why they changed their policy is because no one was paying for the content. I know whenever I saw a teaser on CNN but couldn't watch the video I just googled it and watched the story on some free site.
You responded to the wrong part of my post I guess.
When I said, "Why would anyone bother paying for the content when they can just get it out of the public domain? I wouldn't."
I was not saying that all public domain content was equal.
The grandparent suggested that content producers should produce content on contract, and then release it into the public domain.
My statement was speaking to why would anyone bother signing up for the contract to pay for the content when they could just wait until it was released into the public domain. If everyone knows the content is going to be available for free eventually, why pay in advance? Oh, I'm sure there will be some fanatics willing to be the first to get the content, but 1) it will likely show up on P2P sites shortly anyway and 2) it will be released legitimately into the public domain anyway.
You are basically asking content producers to give away content in the hopes that people will pay for future content.
My personal experience is that people tend to suck up all the free content and when that is cut off, they move on to the next free content somewhere else.
Look at it like this: What would happen if CNN started charging for access to their content tomorrow. Hey, it's CNN, right? Biggest name in the news-content creation business. You think people are going to queue up to pay for future CNN content since it was so good in the past? Hell no. They are going to move on down the road to some other free news service.
Why would anyone bother paying for the content when they can just get it out of the public domain? I wouldn't.
>What do you do when you've managed to grab a a wolf by there ears?
Should killed them to start with. That is certainly the moral that I would take away from the story if I was in charge - next time, don't bother taking prisoners.
I went and created a facebook account. Of course, I used a fake name, because I'm interested in/minimizing/ my online privacy exposure, not increasing it.
But then once I've logged in, what am I supposed to do with it? "Find Friends"? All of the people that I need to talk to I talk to in person.
I suppose I could go look up people who were in my high school, but I didn't have any friends in high school so there's not much point there. There's no one I went to college with that I want to keep up with that I don't already keep up with. My coworkers I work with every day so I don't need a web page to talk to them. Morever, none of the companies I've ever worked for even show up.
I just really don't understand what I'm supposed to DO with Facebook.
I guess the biggest thing is I just don't have any friends I need to find, and the one or two I am aren't there.
How plentiful is Uranium for nuclear power? Will we find ourselves in the same dire straits tomorrow seeking vanishing uranium deposits? What is the situation?
Who do you think just went out and bought up all those $200 Linux PCs? Do you think it was "joe-sixpack"? I doubt it. They were probably all bought out by people who are already pro-Linux.
Do you know what is going to happen to Joe Sixpack who doesn't know Linux from Vista? He's going to go buy one of these $200 "PCs" for his kid for Christmas because it's cheap. He's going to then buy a few software titles off the shelf while he's at it, so the kid has something to play with on Christmas morning. But the applications he buys will probably be for Vista, because he doesn't know the difference. Come Christmas morning he's going to have a rude awakening that the software he bought won't work with his Linux PC. He's going to go back to Walmart and discover, rather rudely, what "Vista" and "Linux" is, and then he's going to find out that 99% of the software on Walmart's shelf is for Windows and won't work on the computer he bought.
And then the computer is going to find itself sitting on the shelf at the returns counter.
>However, with maille, it's basically impossible to tell from a drawing or carving if >maille is butted or riveted. The fact that there are so many examples of riveted maille >could be attributed largely to its cost since it would have been used by the very rich who don't do most of the actual fighting.
This debate has been put to bed years ago, my friend. It is the generally unanimous opinion of all experts in the field that maille armour intended for actual battle use was almost always riveted.
I don't want to come across as a braggart here but I have researched this heavily for nearly 10 years, and I have lectured on the subject internationally, as well as appearing on television. None of this makes one an expert, of course, but I can assure you, having discussed this topic in depth with professional arms and armour experts around the world of much higher abilities than my own amateur efforts, for all practical purposes, all maille was riveted, or alternating rows of riveted and solid links. The only exception to this has been parade armour. This conclusion is what all current research and surviving items support.
Concerning the tightness of the weaves: I have handled a pair of maille braise (essentially underwear) in the reserve collection of the Royal Armouries that was woven so tightly you could not poke the point of a pencil through it. It was riveted.
If you are interested in pursuing the subject of armour in more detail there is an awesome bulletin board, www.armourarchive.org. If you are interested in maille in particular, perhaps one of the most knowledgeable in the field today is Mr. Erik D. Schmid. His web page is here: http://webpages.charter.net/erikdschmid/
...in which corn is force-fed to farm-raised ducks...
If you have to force the animal to engage in the activity, they probably don't want to be doing it.
I guess the biggest problem is I/don't/ have many friends I want to keep track of.
I went and made myself an account. Right off the bat, like you said, they want you to use your real name. I'm looking to/decrease/ my privacy exposure on the internet, not increase it, so I used a fake name.
But once I had an account set up, I didn't see much to do with it. All of the people in my life that I want to keep track of I talk to on a regular basis. The rest if I haven't talked to them in months or years I figure I don't really need to know what's going on in their lives. I have enough information to process every day without adding the minutia of long forgotten acquaintances to the burden. I did type in a couple names of old long-lost friends but nothing turned up.
I keep hearing that the point of these "social websites" is to "make friends". Myself, I make my friends in person, and I have a steady group of friends that I keep in touch with at least once a month. I don't feel any need to have more "friends" in the form of digital pen pals. I do frequent a couple of internet BBSes and I guess you could say I feel I have enough digital pen pal friends from those forums.
So I poked around for about 5 minutes and was bored. I guess it's not for me. I get the feeling that maybe somehow I'm socially handicapped. Frankly, if you're not in my immediate social circle, I don't really/care/ what's going on in your life, what movies you might like, what web funny you have run across, what web games you play or any of the other trivia going on in your life. I didn't have any friends in high school so I'm not interested in looking up old classmates. I was a non-traditional college student (working full time while taking classes) so I don't have any college buddies to look up, either.
I don't think the problem was with the rips, because I could play the resulting.VOB files without any problems. It was transcoding that caused problems.
I use Slysoft's ripper to rip out the VOBs, and their Clone DVD Mobile to convert them to.AVI files.
I tried using DVD Decrypter to rip the VOBs, but Clone DVD Mobile did not want to process them on the first and only DVD I tried. I was annoyed, but I bought their ripping software, too. Now everything works great.
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>I find it shocking that Windows users just accept that as part of the cost of doing business.
My home PC is primarily for entertainment (games). If you want to play games on your PC, it means you have to run Windows. I understand some of the emulators are getting pretty good for Linux these days, but I'm skeptical about it 1) working and 2) not taking a performance hit.
If all I did was surf the web and read email I'd be all over Linux.
Look, my Windows machines auto-update themselves, and I have AVG running, which also updates itself. I have a firewall downstream of my modem and upstream of every other machine on the network.
What else can I do?
My wife is constantly playing and downloading games from the internet. No doubt she is polluting machines on our network.
Basically my approach to security on my home machines is I wipe them and rebuild them every 6 months or so, in case there is some hidden malware on there that has turned my machine into a zombie.
What I would really like is a "smart firewall" I could buy and put in place of my current firewall. This device would monitor all network traffic going in and out of my house, and it would stop the bad things from going through. It could even be a service whereby the device is managed by some security firm and I pay them to protect my network through this device.
>Creative works are very similar. If what you said is true, then the majority of people
>would never pay top-dollar for first-run movies and first-edition books. They would
>just "move on" to the much cheaper 2nd run theaters, or wait for the DVDs to hit the
>$4 bin at wal-mart, or buy the remaindered books at places like The Dollar Store.
Or...they might download them for free off the internet.
Oh wait, that's exactly what they are doing...
CNN /used/ to charge for video content. I believe they called it "ipass" or something like that. But I believe they stopped that some months ago. Now there are advertisements played before most video spots.
I'm sure the reason why they changed their policy is because no one was paying for the content. I know whenever I saw a teaser on CNN but couldn't watch the video I just googled it and watched the story on some free site.
You responded to the wrong part of my post I guess.
When I said, "Why would anyone bother paying for the content when they can just get it out of the public domain? I wouldn't."
I was not saying that all public domain content was equal.
The grandparent suggested that content producers should produce content on contract, and then release it into the public domain.
My statement was speaking to why would anyone bother signing up for the contract to pay for the content when they could just wait until it was released into the public domain. If everyone knows the content is going to be available for free eventually, why pay in advance? Oh, I'm sure there will be some fanatics willing to be the first to get the content, but 1) it will likely show up on P2P sites shortly anyway and 2) it will be released legitimately into the public domain anyway.
This is just insane.
You are basically asking content producers to give away content in the hopes that people will pay for future content.
My personal experience is that people tend to suck up all the free content and when that is cut off, they move on to the next free content somewhere else.
Look at it like this: What would happen if CNN started charging for access to their content tomorrow. Hey, it's CNN, right? Biggest name in the news-content creation business. You think people are going to queue up to pay for future CNN content since it was so good in the past? Hell no. They are going to move on down the road to some other free news service.
Why would anyone bother paying for the content when they can just get it out of the public domain? I wouldn't.
>What do you do when you've managed to grab a a wolf by there ears?
Should killed them to start with. That is certainly the moral that I would take away from the story if I was in charge - next time, don't bother taking prisoners.
I always smirk when I see the statement, "The real reason the music industry is dying is because of the crap they have been putting out."
Right. It so crappy that people are tripping over themselves to rip it, publish it, and download it, by the millions upon millions.
The reason the music industry is dying is because THE PRODUCT IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR FREE. Period.
I went and created a facebook account. Of course, I used a fake name, because I'm interested in /minimizing/ my online privacy exposure, not increasing it.
But then once I've logged in, what am I supposed to do with it? "Find Friends"? All of the people that I need to talk to I talk to in person.
I suppose I could go look up people who were in my high school, but I didn't have any friends in high school so there's not much point there. There's no one I went to college with that I want to keep up with that I don't already keep up with. My coworkers I work with every day so I don't need a web page to talk to them. Morever, none of the companies I've ever worked for even show up.
I just really don't understand what I'm supposed to DO with Facebook.
I guess the biggest thing is I just don't have any friends I need to find, and the one or two I am aren't there.
How plentiful is Uranium for nuclear power? Will we find ourselves in the same dire straits tomorrow seeking vanishing uranium deposits? What is the situation?
Who do you think just went out and bought up all those $200 Linux PCs? Do you think it was "joe-sixpack"? I doubt it. They were probably all bought out by people who are already pro-Linux.
Do you know what is going to happen to Joe Sixpack who doesn't know Linux from Vista? He's going to go buy one of these $200 "PCs" for his kid for Christmas because it's cheap. He's going to then buy a few software titles off the shelf while he's at it, so the kid has something to play with on Christmas morning. But the applications he buys will probably be for Vista, because he doesn't know the difference. Come Christmas morning he's going to have a rude awakening that the software he bought won't work with his Linux PC. He's going to go back to Walmart and discover, rather rudely, what "Vista" and "Linux" is, and then he's going to find out that 99% of the software on Walmart's shelf is for Windows and won't work on the computer he bought.
And then the computer is going to find itself sitting on the shelf at the returns counter.
>However, with maille, it's basically impossible to tell from a drawing or carving if
>maille is butted or riveted. The fact that there are so many examples of riveted maille
>could be attributed largely to its cost since it would have been used by the very rich who don't do most of the actual fighting.
This debate has been put to bed years ago, my friend. It is the generally unanimous opinion of all experts in the field that maille armour intended for actual battle use was almost always riveted.
I don't want to come across as a braggart here but I have researched this heavily for nearly 10 years, and I have lectured on the subject internationally, as well as appearing on television. None of this makes one an expert, of course, but I can assure you, having discussed this topic in depth with professional arms and armour experts around the world of much higher abilities than my own amateur efforts, for all practical purposes, all maille was riveted, or alternating rows of riveted and solid links. The only exception to this has been parade armour. This conclusion is what all current research and surviving items support.
Concerning the tightness of the weaves: I have handled a pair of maille braise (essentially underwear) in the reserve collection of the Royal Armouries that was woven so tightly you could not poke the point of a pencil through it. It was riveted.
If you are interested in pursuing the subject of armour in more detail there is an awesome bulletin board, www.armourarchive.org. If you are interested in maille in particular, perhaps one of the most knowledgeable in the field today is Mr. Erik D. Schmid. His web page is here: http://webpages.charter.net/erikdschmid/
Steve
Here is my web site: www.forth-armoury.com
Not to toot my own horn too loudly, but I basically "invented" the commercial process for replicating wedge-riveted maille.
...line.
It seems by your logic, since the animals are being "forced" to do anything at all, then anything at all goes.
It must be nice to rationalize cruelty so easily.
It was poor of me to pick a vegetarian URL for describing Foie Gras.
I eat meat, and I'm all for the raising and slaughter of animals for eating. Thanks for the excellent post.
LOOK - I am not pro-PETA nor am I a vegetarian. It happened to be the first link on Google about the reality of Foie Gras that I came across.
Don't like the PETA/VEG opinion on it, Google for yourself!!!!
...The whole "FORCE" feeding thing.
/supposed/ to store fat. Oh, they are treated much better than chickens.
Oh, it's natural. Oh, their livers are
Except we have to cram food down their mouths in the name of making them taste yummy.
I'm all for eating animals. I'm not for force feeding them to make them taste better.
>The geese willingly go to get themselves stuffed with food (google)...
Yeah, that's why they call it FORCE-feeding, I'm sure.
...in which corn is force-fed to farm-raised ducks... If you have to force the animal to engage in the activity, they probably don't want to be doing it.
>It is a peculiar thing that we think it's OK to eat animals.
I have no problem with eating animals. I do have a problem with torturing them in order to make them more yummy.
The veg site was just the first one that caught my eye from a Google search.
Don't like the veg site? (I'm not a vegetarian, either) Google for yourself.
http://www.goveg.com/feat/foie/
What a despicable thing to do to an animal just to make it tastier to eat.
I guess the biggest problem is I /don't/ have many friends I want to keep track of.
/decrease/ my privacy exposure on the internet, not increase it, so I used a fake name.
/care/ what's going on in your life, what movies you might like, what web funny you have run across, what web games you play or any of the other trivia going on in your life. I didn't have any friends in high school so I'm not interested in looking up old classmates. I was a non-traditional college student (working full time while taking classes) so I don't have any college buddies to look up, either.
I went and made myself an account. Right off the bat, like you said, they want you to use your real name. I'm looking to
But once I had an account set up, I didn't see much to do with it. All of the people in my life that I want to keep track of I talk to on a regular basis. The rest if I haven't talked to them in months or years I figure I don't really need to know what's going on in their lives. I have enough information to process every day without adding the minutia of long forgotten acquaintances to the burden. I did type in a couple names of old long-lost friends but nothing turned up.
I keep hearing that the point of these "social websites" is to "make friends". Myself, I make my friends in person, and I have a steady group of friends that I keep in touch with at least once a month. I don't feel any need to have more "friends" in the form of digital pen pals. I do frequent a couple of internet BBSes and I guess you could say I feel I have enough digital pen pal friends from those forums.
So I poked around for about 5 minutes and was bored. I guess it's not for me. I get the feeling that maybe somehow I'm socially handicapped. Frankly, if you're not in my immediate social circle, I don't really
>FWIW your problems were with the rips.
.VOB files without any problems. It was transcoding that caused problems.
I don't think the problem was with the rips, because I could play the resulting
I use Slysoft's ripper to rip out the VOBs, and their Clone DVD Mobile to convert them to .AVI files.
I tried using DVD Decrypter to rip the VOBs, but Clone DVD Mobile did not want to process them on the first and only DVD I tried. I was annoyed, but I bought their ripping software, too. Now everything works great.