Well that's remarkably deceptive. I knew that there were multiple versions being offered at different price-points, but that's quite well hidden until you get to the store.:(
...since the price has apparently dropped from $1500+ to "only" $462, according to Lebedev's website. And as a $600 iPhone owner, I thought Apple was bad. I suppose at that price I could almost give it serious consideration, but I think I'll wait it out for v2.0.
It really is a bad sign when a nut-job religious group is able to get people out protesting against them on the streets when there's so much other stuff going on that's much more worthy of hand-drawn signage. I really don't know what to make of it - are they that scary/powerful/insane enough of a group, or do we just have our priorities that far out of whack?
The idea of word-of-mouth advertising doesn't mean much to you, does it? If some geek uses a great online personal ads service, they're a lot more likely to recommend it to their geek friends. Let's also not forget that with a better "hit ratio" if you will, you can charge more for listings since they tend to be more effective.
While I agree that a lot of FOSS tools aren't that great (extending well beyond IDEs), I have to say that Visual Studio 2005 is probably the worst development tool I've ever used. Now in fairness I tend to prefer the old-school approaches, but I find its drag-and-drop nature to often be rather flaky, its live preview mode (for web development) to somehow render more unreliably and inconsistently than IE6, and its speed often rivaling that of frozen molasses traveling uphill.
I'm sure it's at least in part the fault of the code I'm working with, but that just can't be helped. Even still, just getting the list of files from a folder taking minutes is insane - and I'm on a C2D machine with 4GB of RAM. Unfortunately, there's no Coda for Windows and the drag-and-drop server controls we use are by-hand-only outside of VS and Dreamweaver.
That's true of any software where you have to authenticate. However, most installations on OS X (the "drag the icon into/Applications ones) don't require authentication since they don't have to make any major file changes. I'm rather weary about software from an untrusted publisher that asks for authentication, which is really the whole point behind not running as root. It could just as easily hit Linux installs of any flavor.
I think the best defense on the part of all OS writers would be to make it so you can't make changes to certain specific areas of the low-level system without having to authenticate twice - once for your standard/System changes, and a second with an explicit warning that network-related (or whatever) changes are to be made for file changes in/wherver/these/settings/are. But then you're hitting the Vista UAC problem where you ask people to authenticate so often that it starts being ignored.
At the end of the day, the best defense is just being suspect of any program that asks for authentication. Those areas of the file-system require root-level access for a reason.
The problem with that is that they'll either have had to enable WAN router control panel access (unlikely if they weren't bright enough to change the default password) or you have to physically hit their network - even if just wardriving. I'm sure you'd be intelligent enough to clear out the router logs, but if someone else manages to get the machines themselves on the network infected with a DNS server attack, that's going to override your own.
Well you can set the DNS server to use within the OS - the machine just uses the first DNS server it knows about (local first, then router-level, then to your ISP, etc). Presumably, you just get some funky malware that makes the appropriate system changes.
I don't see why they wouldn't go for a poisoned HOSTS file. It's also been done in the past, and would be much harder to spot since so relative few people would think to look there if problems arise. Of course, the disadvantage of that approach is that the person running the hack doesn't (really) get to update your HOSTS file at any point in time, where they can point a poisoned DNS server to another bad site or add in more.
That's more impractical than Microsoft's approach of adding (yet another) meta-tag to have IE8 to render pages correctly.
Other than cutting off connectivity entirely for kids, the only almost-foolproof approach would be to put content filtering at the password-protected router level. Like other nannying software, it could run a combination of pulling in a list of blacklisted pages/sites/domains and content analysis-based filtering. Then - more importantly - lock the modem and router in a box so they can't go for the classic approach of physically bypassing the filter.
No method is sure to work, but an opt-in filter approach is sure to fail.
The cell phone is much worse. The passenger can see danger and not only shut the fuck up at an appropriate time, but point it out to you. Not so much for someone on the other side of some spectrum.
Well technically, you do pay a fee for the electricity used while you ate your meal, but it's bundled into the cost of the meal. Considering how much a cable line and a WiFi router for customer use would cost businesses, I'd be willing to pay an extra cent for my meal if it translated to 'free' WiFi access.
What's really intriguing here is that the ISPs took sides against their customers. I'm not sure about in the UK, but I'd assume they have some sort of Common Carrier equivalent that already gets them out of being liable for what their customers do. Assuming this is the case, how on earth is it in their best interest to get their customers sued?
Used? No. Sold? I don't see why not. Would people continue to have a use for that software? Not a chance.
The obvious flaw in your argument is that software becomes deprecated over time. Music, movies, and other entertainment IP doesn't. It may fall out of interest, but it's not replaced by the latest and greatest (per se). The real translation is whether software should automatically become freeware after X years, like movies and music effectively would - or, rather, open-source. But then again, not really - software is generally licensed, where movies and music aren't really. I know, I know. But when I buy my copy of a CD or a DVD, it's a fully working copy. If I download a copy of most software, I still need to provide it with a license for it to fully function.
Unless the representatives found out about it in an illegal way (read: non-admissible in court), they are fully within their rights to sue.
But that's really what we're testing here. People here can make all the righteous "information wants to be free!!!" claims that they want, but we all know that reproducing copyrighted material without permission is illegal. Let's ignore the hairy argument about uploading versus downloading here, since you do both in a P2P network (and if you're going to make the "I was leeching only" argument, I'll come back at you with a claim of theft from the P2P networks). Of course, we all know that the real damage is done by the initial uploader rather than the people downloading from that person, but now I'm heading towards contradicting myself so I'll allow you a chance to re-read my previous point.
In any case, IP theft is a rather hazy area as compared to physical theft, since it really brings in the distribution, usage of what was reproduced, and all sorts of other complications into the equation. How is downloading a CD different than ripping off a photo from iStockPhoto and using it as your desktop background, since it's personal use only? IANAL, so I can only make moral judgements.
Back on topic though - we're contesting the legality of the information. The RIAA may be an organization comprised entirely of lawyers, but that doesn't make them a court system (and certainly not the NSA). If they want to get information via subpoena, there's a process they must follow. We've known since the start of this campaign that they always stick to grey areas when going through this process so that they can best attempt to prevent the user whose data is being subpoenaed to try fighting back prior to the data being released. ISP privacy laws, and all that. The question is not whether it's a valid lawsuit - it is - but rather whether the information of the person being sued was obtained in a completely legal and legitimate way (whether the evidence holds up in court is another matter entirely).
Yeah. I'll show them by switching to... shit, they're the only option.
If there was competition in the marketplace, I'd agree with you. But alas, I don't even have the option between DSL and cable, let alone FTTH. I get a choice between Charter Communications cable and dial-up (most likely long-distance), which isn't exactly a competing service.
Granted I live in a pretty small town, but that doesn't change the fact that my options are cable and no connectivity. I don't even get enough cell signal at home to have EDGE be my only source of web access, as painful as that option would be were it an option.
The bill, tentatively entitled the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008, would not actually declare throttling illegal specifically. Instead, it would call upon the Federal Communications Commission to hold a hearing to determine whether or not throttling is a bad thing, and whether it has the right to take action to stop it.
Hardly. Draw up a bill with a fancy new name (suggesting to me there's something irrelevant that we don't want passed stuck in there as well) that will only accomplish forcing the FCC to decide if it has the power to stop something that it has to determine is bad.
Yeah, that'll help. It's almost as useful to me as the letters back from my congresscritters about why they disregarded the Constitution and voted FOR telecom immunity.
For the few moments I was able to run it, it seemed MUCH faster than Firefox 3b2. Unfortunately, something's gone completely fucked up with my machine in the last hour or so that causes Firefox to crash every thirty seconds or so. And it also made a horrible mess of, well, pretty much everything - however at this point I'm inclined to think that there's something else up with my machine, as it's happening in b2 now as well. *sigh* Looks like I'll be using Safari for the next while:(
Okay, I'm a paranoid nutjob conspiracy theorist too, but how on earth would this kind of thing help the Think of the Children! movement? People dumb enough to put that kind of thing online tend to get tracked down pretty quickly anyways.
We've known this for years, which is why a lot of the better review sites moved away from timedemos a long while ago.
However, they can still (sort of) be used to compare cards against each other. They don't do much to reflect playability of a game at given settings accurately, but in theory all of the numbers you get from a timedemo should be inflated by about the same percent.
MS can afford for people to Hack Vista, especially when there are cliches in the Mac community that love the hardware, but like Vista better than OSX and use it as their primary OS and great if they hack and install Vista, and find out that it runs better on Mac hardware than OSX.
I know that I'm probably hanging around with the wrong stereotypical Mac types, but nobody I know buys them for the hardware. I've spent more time trying to get OS X running on non-Mac hardware than I've ever contemplated spending to get any Microsoft product running on any setup. I really hate the design of my MBP - while I can't deny it's got an attractive minimalist design, it's just awful from a usability perspective compared to laptops half the price. When I had a half-working copy of Tiger running on a Thinkpad specced about the same as a standard Macbook (from the hacks, I had no sound, no WiFi, no battery meter, no standby, and a few other oddities), I was always carrying that around with me instead of my MBP. The thinkpad, while butt-ugly and having an awful screen, was simply much more comfortable to use - no sharp corners right where my wrists rest, much cooler (temp.), and I'd say a bit lighter.
You've been modded funny, but that's how I run half my software. By running a cracked copy, I never have to worry about WGA, (re)activation, etc. I could do things completely legitimately and call up India every few months, or just install from a different disc despite owning a legal, shiny, "do not make illegal copies of this disc"-hologrammed copy, and never have to be bothered with any of it.
It's been working well for me for years, and I see no reason to stop. They have my money, I have their software, and I get to use what I paid for. Problem? Didn't think so.
I said it's safe, not useful for the viewer (though I'd argue that if the webmaster knows what s/he's doing, the analytics data will improve future visits to the site). As far as I'm concerned, it's just sophisticated server logs - it's not as if I'm losing privacy.
How would it work at a slightly reduced paranoia level? There are, I suppose, for options: block everything, block nothing, block off-site scripts, and only allow trusted scripts (somehow including a database of checksums of widely-deployed, known-safe scripts like Google Analytics' urchin, jquery, Amazon affiliate stuff, and... that's all that comes to mind). Foreign scripts aren't going to cause any damage unless the site itself is vulnerable to XSS attacks - malicious websites aren't likely to off-site the scripts. A database of the known acceptable scripts would be so minimal that it would defeat the point, especially as so few of them are of any benefit to the site visitor. Unless a built-in NoScript were to block specific functions in Javascript that could be used for malicious purposes (anything other than strict DOM manipulation, I suppose), it wouldn't do much good - and breaking half the JS on a site is probably going to be much worse than breaking everything.
It really depends on how technical you are, and if you have any skill in reverse-engineering existing themes. I can't speak for Drupal, but my Wordpress theme-building experience involves looking up functions in existing themes (show the body of the post, date of post, blogroll, "meta" links, etc) and then dropping them in my own content. Often times, it means digging through the seven or eight different levels of functions to find out what argument I actually need to get the output I want, since apparently it's best practice to have show_date() call date_of_post(date) which calls post_date(post, date), which calls... you get the idea (no idea if those are the actual functions, but it goes to show how messy the frequently used function calls are).
I can do it easily enough without buying a tome on the subject, it just requires a bit of digging. There's probably documentation on it somewhere. This kind of book wouldn't be appropriate for me, or people like me who will just rip apart existing code to find what they need. Truth be told, reverse-engineering a template shouldn't be nearly as complicated as that, but having a book as reference material wouldn't hurt. That said, it's the kind of thing that you should be able to consolidate into a couple-page quick reference card.
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Well that's remarkably deceptive. I knew that there were multiple versions being offered at different price-points, but that's quite well hidden until you get to the store. :(
...since the price has apparently dropped from $1500+ to "only" $462, according to Lebedev's website. And as a $600 iPhone owner, I thought Apple was bad. I suppose at that price I could almost give it serious consideration, but I think I'll wait it out for v2.0.
It really is a bad sign when a nut-job religious group is able to get people out protesting against them on the streets when there's so much other stuff going on that's much more worthy of hand-drawn signage. I really don't know what to make of it - are they that scary/powerful/insane enough of a group, or do we just have our priorities that far out of whack?
The idea of word-of-mouth advertising doesn't mean much to you, does it? If some geek uses a great online personal ads service, they're a lot more likely to recommend it to their geek friends. Let's also not forget that with a better "hit ratio" if you will, you can charge more for listings since they tend to be more effective.
Stop thinking in CPM.
While I agree that a lot of FOSS tools aren't that great (extending well beyond IDEs), I have to say that Visual Studio 2005 is probably the worst development tool I've ever used. Now in fairness I tend to prefer the old-school approaches, but I find its drag-and-drop nature to often be rather flaky, its live preview mode (for web development) to somehow render more unreliably and inconsistently than IE6, and its speed often rivaling that of frozen molasses traveling uphill.
I'm sure it's at least in part the fault of the code I'm working with, but that just can't be helped. Even still, just getting the list of files from a folder taking minutes is insane - and I'm on a C2D machine with 4GB of RAM. Unfortunately, there's no Coda for Windows and the drag-and-drop server controls we use are by-hand-only outside of VS and Dreamweaver.
That's true of any software where you have to authenticate. However, most installations on OS X (the "drag the icon into /Applications ones) don't require authentication since they don't have to make any major file changes. I'm rather weary about software from an untrusted publisher that asks for authentication, which is really the whole point behind not running as root. It could just as easily hit Linux installs of any flavor.
/System changes, and a second with an explicit warning that network-related (or whatever) changes are to be made for file changes in /wherver/these/settings/are. But then you're hitting the Vista UAC problem where you ask people to authenticate so often that it starts being ignored.
I think the best defense on the part of all OS writers would be to make it so you can't make changes to certain specific areas of the low-level system without having to authenticate twice - once for your standard
At the end of the day, the best defense is just being suspect of any program that asks for authentication. Those areas of the file-system require root-level access for a reason.
The problem with that is that they'll either have had to enable WAN router control panel access (unlikely if they weren't bright enough to change the default password) or you have to physically hit their network - even if just wardriving. I'm sure you'd be intelligent enough to clear out the router logs, but if someone else manages to get the machines themselves on the network infected with a DNS server attack, that's going to override your own.
Well you can set the DNS server to use within the OS - the machine just uses the first DNS server it knows about (local first, then router-level, then to your ISP, etc). Presumably, you just get some funky malware that makes the appropriate system changes.
I don't see why they wouldn't go for a poisoned HOSTS file. It's also been done in the past, and would be much harder to spot since so relative few people would think to look there if problems arise. Of course, the disadvantage of that approach is that the person running the hack doesn't (really) get to update your HOSTS file at any point in time, where they can point a poisoned DNS server to another bad site or add in more.
That's more impractical than Microsoft's approach of adding (yet another) meta-tag to have IE8 to render pages correctly.
Other than cutting off connectivity entirely for kids, the only almost-foolproof approach would be to put content filtering at the password-protected router level. Like other nannying software, it could run a combination of pulling in a list of blacklisted pages/sites/domains and content analysis-based filtering. Then - more importantly - lock the modem and router in a box so they can't go for the classic approach of physically bypassing the filter.
No method is sure to work, but an opt-in filter approach is sure to fail.
The cell phone is much worse. The passenger can see danger and not only shut the fuck up at an appropriate time, but point it out to you. Not so much for someone on the other side of some spectrum.
Well technically, you do pay a fee for the electricity used while you ate your meal, but it's bundled into the cost of the meal. Considering how much a cable line and a WiFi router for customer use would cost businesses, I'd be willing to pay an extra cent for my meal if it translated to 'free' WiFi access.
What's really intriguing here is that the ISPs took sides against their customers. I'm not sure about in the UK, but I'd assume they have some sort of Common Carrier equivalent that already gets them out of being liable for what their customers do. Assuming this is the case, how on earth is it in their best interest to get their customers sued?
Used? No. Sold? I don't see why not. Would people continue to have a use for that software? Not a chance.
The obvious flaw in your argument is that software becomes deprecated over time. Music, movies, and other entertainment IP doesn't. It may fall out of interest, but it's not replaced by the latest and greatest (per se). The real translation is whether software should automatically become freeware after X years, like movies and music effectively would - or, rather, open-source. But then again, not really - software is generally licensed, where movies and music aren't really. I know, I know. But when I buy my copy of a CD or a DVD, it's a fully working copy. If I download a copy of most software, I still need to provide it with a license for it to fully function.
But that's really what we're testing here. People here can make all the righteous "information wants to be free!!!" claims that they want, but we all know that reproducing copyrighted material without permission is illegal. Let's ignore the hairy argument about uploading versus downloading here, since you do both in a P2P network (and if you're going to make the "I was leeching only" argument, I'll come back at you with a claim of theft from the P2P networks). Of course, we all know that the real damage is done by the initial uploader rather than the people downloading from that person, but now I'm heading towards contradicting myself so I'll allow you a chance to re-read my previous point.
In any case, IP theft is a rather hazy area as compared to physical theft, since it really brings in the distribution, usage of what was reproduced, and all sorts of other complications into the equation. How is downloading a CD different than ripping off a photo from iStockPhoto and using it as your desktop background, since it's personal use only? IANAL, so I can only make moral judgements.
Back on topic though - we're contesting the legality of the information. The RIAA may be an organization comprised entirely of lawyers, but that doesn't make them a court system (and certainly not the NSA). If they want to get information via subpoena, there's a process they must follow. We've known since the start of this campaign that they always stick to grey areas when going through this process so that they can best attempt to prevent the user whose data is being subpoenaed to try fighting back prior to the data being released. ISP privacy laws, and all that. The question is not whether it's a valid lawsuit - it is - but rather whether the information of the person being sued was obtained in a completely legal and legitimate way (whether the evidence holds up in court is another matter entirely).
Yeah. I'll show them by switching to... shit, they're the only option.
If there was competition in the marketplace, I'd agree with you. But alas, I don't even have the option between DSL and cable, let alone FTTH. I get a choice between Charter Communications cable and dial-up (most likely long-distance), which isn't exactly a competing service.
Granted I live in a pretty small town, but that doesn't change the fact that my options are cable and no connectivity. I don't even get enough cell signal at home to have EDGE be my only source of web access, as painful as that option would be were it an option.
Hardly. Draw up a bill with a fancy new name (suggesting to me there's something irrelevant that we don't want passed stuck in there as well) that will only accomplish forcing the FCC to decide if it has the power to stop something that it has to determine is bad.
Yeah, that'll help. It's almost as useful to me as the letters back from my congresscritters about why they disregarded the Constitution and voted FOR telecom immunity.
I went ahead expecting you to ask for this and pre-negotiated you a 45% pay raise, retroactive since sign-up. Check is already in the mail.
For the few moments I was able to run it, it seemed MUCH faster than Firefox 3b2. Unfortunately, something's gone completely fucked up with my machine in the last hour or so that causes Firefox to crash every thirty seconds or so. And it also made a horrible mess of, well, pretty much everything - however at this point I'm inclined to think that there's something else up with my machine, as it's happening in b2 now as well. *sigh* Looks like I'll be using Safari for the next while :(
Okay, I'm a paranoid nutjob conspiracy theorist too, but how on earth would this kind of thing help the Think of the Children! movement? People dumb enough to put that kind of thing online tend to get tracked down pretty quickly anyways.
We've known this for years, which is why a lot of the better review sites moved away from timedemos a long while ago.
However, they can still (sort of) be used to compare cards against each other. They don't do much to reflect playability of a game at given settings accurately, but in theory all of the numbers you get from a timedemo should be inflated by about the same percent.
I know that I'm probably hanging around with the wrong stereotypical Mac types, but nobody I know buys them for the hardware. I've spent more time trying to get OS X running on non-Mac hardware than I've ever contemplated spending to get any Microsoft product running on any setup. I really hate the design of my MBP - while I can't deny it's got an attractive minimalist design, it's just awful from a usability perspective compared to laptops half the price. When I had a half-working copy of Tiger running on a Thinkpad specced about the same as a standard Macbook (from the hacks, I had no sound, no WiFi, no battery meter, no standby, and a few other oddities), I was always carrying that around with me instead of my MBP. The thinkpad, while butt-ugly and having an awful screen, was simply much more comfortable to use - no sharp corners right where my wrists rest, much cooler (temp.), and I'd say a bit lighter.
You've been modded funny, but that's how I run half my software. By running a cracked copy, I never have to worry about WGA, (re)activation, etc. I could do things completely legitimately and call up India every few months, or just install from a different disc despite owning a legal, shiny, "do not make illegal copies of this disc"-hologrammed copy, and never have to be bothered with any of it.
It's been working well for me for years, and I see no reason to stop. They have my money, I have their software, and I get to use what I paid for. Problem? Didn't think so.
I said it's safe, not useful for the viewer (though I'd argue that if the webmaster knows what s/he's doing, the analytics data will improve future visits to the site). As far as I'm concerned, it's just sophisticated server logs - it's not as if I'm losing privacy.
How would it work at a slightly reduced paranoia level? There are, I suppose, for options: block everything, block nothing, block off-site scripts, and only allow trusted scripts (somehow including a database of checksums of widely-deployed, known-safe scripts like Google Analytics' urchin, jquery, Amazon affiliate stuff, and... that's all that comes to mind). Foreign scripts aren't going to cause any damage unless the site itself is vulnerable to XSS attacks - malicious websites aren't likely to off-site the scripts. A database of the known acceptable scripts would be so minimal that it would defeat the point, especially as so few of them are of any benefit to the site visitor. Unless a built-in NoScript were to block specific functions in Javascript that could be used for malicious purposes (anything other than strict DOM manipulation, I suppose), it wouldn't do much good - and breaking half the JS on a site is probably going to be much worse than breaking everything.
It really depends on how technical you are, and if you have any skill in reverse-engineering existing themes. I can't speak for Drupal, but my Wordpress theme-building experience involves looking up functions in existing themes (show the body of the post, date of post, blogroll, "meta" links, etc) and then dropping them in my own content. Often times, it means digging through the seven or eight different levels of functions to find out what argument I actually need to get the output I want, since apparently it's best practice to have show_date() call date_of_post(date) which calls post_date(post, date), which calls... you get the idea (no idea if those are the actual functions, but it goes to show how messy the frequently used function calls are).
I can do it easily enough without buying a tome on the subject, it just requires a bit of digging. There's probably documentation on it somewhere. This kind of book wouldn't be appropriate for me, or people like me who will just rip apart existing code to find what they need. Truth be told, reverse-engineering a template shouldn't be nearly as complicated as that, but having a book as reference material wouldn't hurt. That said, it's the kind of thing that you should be able to consolidate into a couple-page quick reference card.