For me the X11 requirement on OS X is a real nuisance.
Agreed, but as I mainly use Linux, it didn't have the opportunity to grate on me too badly. Grandpa Otter installed NeoOffice (OpenOffice ported to run natively on the Mac). You might consider checking it out for the next 160 days or so.
The parent in me understands the concerns at play here; that we want to restrict the nature of the media that our children are exposed to. The geek in me understands why this short-term impossible, medium-to-long-term semi-workable on a small-scale, but undesirable for the ISPs, the search engines, and the like.
The only way you can pull this off is with a trust-system. The ratings analogy seems to conveniently skip over the existing infrastructure of that trust-system. The content producers are responsible for obtaining the ratings, and the end-distributors (movie houses, broadcasters) will only carry that content which already has obtained such ratings.
So you can try to get ISPs to only serve websites that have previously been "rated" by some certified body (something as reasoned and transparent as the MPAA-rating-committee, I'm sure) - but the sprawling nature of the web, and the user-driven-content model of the so-called "Web 2.0" sites are going to move most of the web off the field for that. What you're left with are a few sites that are specifically kid-oriented, and can probably be more easily achieved with a home-grown routing whitelist.
Are there not consumer products that easily allow parents to set such a list? Or are we talking about something that sounds nice in theory, but that no one is actually looking for? Seems to me that if you're worried about this kind of stuff in your home that it should be solvable with a $50 router and an hour reading the manual.
No they don't. You get a 'your friend has added X, JOIN NOW' and THEN you can decide if you want to join an application you can check the box "share my data with application X"
Yes. They do.
Read the article, and if you're on Facebook, go to "privacy" -> "Applications" -> "Other Applications" and read what it says under "What Other Users Can See via the Facebook Platform" very, very carefully.
Not really. I think you had a pretty hyperbolic reflection of my argument, and for that I was ribbing you -- but re-reading my post, I come off much more dickish than I had intended. Apologies, I was only trying to yank your chain a little.
Some point in the last few years, Bill Gates seems to have figured out he's roughly into the last third of his life, looked in the mirror, and didn't see anything there. It's clear he's decided to do something about that, and good on him for it. I read somewhere that Vampires can't see their reflection in the mirror either. So what your saying is that if Dracula were to suddenly change his ways and forgive all the people he had converted or bitten over the years, that he'd suddenly be a "good guy" you'd trust your kids with?
Yes. That is exactly what I am saying. Dracula, the reference to my children, the misuse of the word "your"; each of these linguistic leaps is a stunning display of your level of comprehension. My post was clearly a dense morass of language that you, and only you, nschubach, have been able to divine.
Even the name "nschubach" displays your rare grasp of depth. Though it appears to to be a nonsensical collection of letters, I happen to know it's Austrian for "Reads Joseph Conrad for recreation while dancing in own feces."
Well, Bill Gates is on the record (1995) for deriding other CEOs as having only "finite greed" and not being competitive enough by moving into new markets. Odd that he would call for "kinder capitalism."
Some point in the last few years, Bill Gates seems to have figured out he's roughly into the last third of his life, looked in the mirror, and didn't see anything there. It's clear he's decided to do something about that, and good on him for it.
That being said, he's got a lot to explain as he touts his newfound (and very worthy) repudiation of hoarding. Kinder capitalism? Why don't you show us how it's done, Bill? If anyone's in a position to do it, you are. Show us.
Anyone know if there will be some way to exchange formats, should HD-DVD finally die out? Buying a hybrid player seems like an awful waste for a single dvd. Anyone else have a contingency plan to play HD-DVD's that they own?
Rip it. Easier said than done, I know - but I've heard it can be done with HDDVD as well as Blu-Ray.
I've sat-out the format war, and while I believe Blu-Ray will win, I'm not convinced that I'll ever get into it. Of course, within this is a hope that the legitimate on-line market for video will finally get going. Seems a fool's dream at the moment, but two years ago it seemed impossible the music industry would ever wake-up and drop DRM.
In the past, I have looked at the iPaq and considered using older computers I have lying around, but for various reasons I have never jumped in to do it. Do you guys have any suggestions on what to use for a home file server (hardware and software)? The server would be feeding files to Windows PCs and connected to the network through a Linksys WRT54GL running DD-WRT firmware."
It's hard to supply advice without knowing what your requirements are and what the "various reasons" were that prevented you from employing the old PCs you mention. However...
In my basement, I have an Athlon 800 MHz, with 256 MB of RAM that houses a DVD drive, plus 3 IDE hard drives. A 15GB for the OS and such, and a 500GB and 200GB that are made available on my home network via NFS and Samba. The 200 gig is a "public" drive for people in the house to use. The 500 gig was a media drive until I built a myth box over Christmas, now it's a backup drive. I'm not doing RAID or anything. The machine runs Slackware 11, and is connected to the network on a 100 Mbit LAN.
Performance is fine. The most taxing I got was when I played my ripped movies from the file server in the basement to my Mac up in the family room. No stuttering or any other issues unless I saturated the link (ie. it couldn't serve two movies at once).
If you've got old PCs around - I see no reason not to use them. Otherwise, I'd probably just use an inexpensive NAS unless you want more out of the machine. I got Grandpa Otter a NAS for Christmas as he wanted centralized file storage on his LAN, but is not a hobbyist, and didn't want to muck with PC innards.
Knowing your requirements would produce better suggestions for hardware and software...but for file serving a home LAN - I'm thinking old hardware and any Linux distro will be most economical and get the job done.
Okay so the troll mod I can kind of understand, (I think the poster made an interesting point but got carried away), but off-topic? WTF, did you hit the wrong button?
You know, it can happen. I've had a few times moderated posts. The focus stays on the drop down box, and I scroll on down the page. Somewhere else, I hit the down arrow, trying to move the screen - and I've just changed the guy's moderation.
I click on "Moderate", they show me what my moderations were, and often I look at one, and furrow my brow.
I'm not convinced that incompetence is the explanation. For this or any of their other actions.
As is your right. As for me, yes I subscribe to the quote you've posted (which I understand to be Hanlon's Razor), but I also feel my observations bear this out. I've looked at the goals nominated by the current US government, and the only thing I see them good at doing is spreading confusion and fog. This has, at times, suited their interests, and by turns it has not...yet the confusion persists, and nothing else.
So, yes. Incompetence of the highest order. Delusions of Vader-ness, perhaps, but I think you'd be stroking their egos to put them on a par with Dr. Evil.
(..and for those whose partisan ire is raised; I mean both the executive and legislative branches of this government, and I've held said opinion while Congress was under control of each party.)
I know "US Government Caught Manipulating Wikipedia" is a cool title, but seriously, does anyone think the US government, the CIA or the Vatican would be stupid enough to get caught if they actually wanted to influence a wikipedia article?
I've still got a working C64 in my basement, including 2 working 1540 drives, and a working line printer for it. The 'Commodore' branded monitor is a little fuzzy now, but the system itself still works great. There's a Commodore PET down there too, which also still works. Not trolling - honest question; what do you do with it, if anything? I've got one myself that I'm pretty sure still works (my sister had custody of it for a while before giving it to me), I was thinking about teaching the pups some basic programming concepts when they got old enough - but besides that, I don't know much that I can do with it other than reminisce and burn electricity.
Suggestions are welcome.
If the number of people annoyed were so marginal, why didFacebook react so quickly?
A guess based on what I heard; because the vocal minority scared the partners more than it scared Facebook. The main shopping drive right now is Christmas; making this the absolute worst time to introduce a tool that publishes your shopping habits to your family and friends. Retailers get that, even if thick-headed social networking bosses don't.
If a couple of retailers get grumpy - or even just one of sufficient size (ie. Amazon), then Facebook would definitely want to tone it down, and try again in the new year.
Is there really much Slashdot/Facebook overlap? Everyone I know on this forum just hosts their own personal site(s). Facebook seems like more of a newbie technology than would normally be attractive to the average Slashdotter: kind of one step up from "what's your favorite desktop background image?"
I'm on it. As with others in this crowd, though, my presence is minimal. I'm there so friends/relatives from out of town can view the latest videos of the pups. At the time I signed up, I had made a comment that at least Facebook was more pretentious than MySpace. I wouldn't make that joke anymore.
Funny thing is; the beacon thing was giving me pause - and more from a data-mining point-of-view than that it would share them with my friends. What, I don't want my friends to know where I shop, but I'm okay with the overlords of Facebook keeping track??? (I get the problem it was creating for Christmas shoppers, though). As a result, I've started giving serious thought to running my own server to host the videos. I just need to see what that would do to my bandwidth, and then try and find the time.
I can go Google all that stuff and find out for myself, but why would I bother, if it's not clear to me why the story is important in the first place?
(I can't help but wonder if this is satire...)
Answer: I suppose you wouldn't.
I don't imagine anyone is going to lose sleep over that. If you're interested, take an interest. If you don't care, then just move one. We're all fine with that, really.
Slashdot: News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters. Context for Jason Lefkowitz.
I'd mod you up if I had the points. That was very well-written.
Appreciated, though when I re-read it, I think I fell into the trap of overusing the word "safe." I stand by what I said about how I plan to handle the internet thing, and safety is certainly an issue - but I meant to talk more about managing the introduction of what's out there, and educating them on how to approach/avoid/process it.
It can be hard for a parent (well, me) to keep objective and separate what is an actual threat to their child from what, frankly, they're just not ready to handle yet...then of course there's what we parents are not ready for them to handle yet.;>
Putting too much of that material under the category of "safety" is what leads to things like the "thinkofthechildren" meme. Images of hysterical parents condemning everything is certainly fair criticism, but for those of you without little ones, please believe me when I say that it's an incredibly hard job, with more nuance than can realistically be managed perfectly, and you often feel like you've got the whole multi-billion media industry against you.
I want to raise intelligent, critical, reasoned people with healthy egos, tempered consumer appetites, and the skills to thrive in the good times and cope in the bad times. Play about five minutes of television in opposition to that, and please forgive my momentary impulse to board up the windows.
Seriously, what is she really worried about? Is she questioning her job as a parent and worried the big, bad internet is going to so corrupt her son that all of the important life lessons she has imparted will be pushed aside?
My pups aren't teenagers (which really means anything from 13 to 19 - and can warrant very different actions in terms of guidance), but as a parent who thinks of himself as responsible (and pretty liberal, frankly), let me tell you; yeah. It's pretty much me vs. the world, and I'm constantly paranoid about what other information is burrowing its way into their mind and taking root.
If you've raised kids, you'll know that they are sponges and there's no way to predict what's gonna take hold and what they're going to ignore.
There's a lot more to be cautious of on the internet than porn; and let's not forget that there IS porn on there that is about as far away from healthy sexual curiosity as you can get. There's also scams, fraud, malware, etc, etc, etc...and we can throw in the predator thing - although the media has blown that out of several proportions.
There are many aspects of a child's education that are the parent's responsibility; and do not fall into the normal school curriculum. Media education (including the internet), in my opinion, is HUGE. I'm expecting to spend enormous effort on it. How to perceive television and movies; fiction versus reality, how to look at advertising critically, and now that the news has become infotainment I've gotta try and figure out how to encourage a healthy interest in the world around them while at the same time explaining they can't take anything said by anyone at face value. Then there's the internet, which is a whole other category.
First, I've gotta spend a lot of time explaining how to use it safely - before we even get in to what to do and what not to. Safe browsing's gonna be a little more than just "don't sit so close." Malware, spam, phishing, trojans, cookies, privacy, internet permanence, and explaining there is no such thing as total anonymity -- and we're not even doing anything interesting yet.
So, frankly, if a parent isn't worried - I'm not sure they're doing they're job.
Yeah, obviously responsible people of good conscience will disagree about the appropriateness of a lot of internet material - but there is some stuff that I'm pretty sure we can almost all agree on, and I'd value reliable tools that help me prevent that from exposure. I'm not trying to keep the kid from seeing tits - but I am trying to keep them safe.
My planned approach? Start with pretty locked down access (I've got a router and the skills to more or less pull that off), open it up over time as they learn and mature, and I'm going to monitor what they do. You're freakin' right I am. That doesn't mean I'm going to pour over every mail, and I'm certainly not going to do it secretly. They're going to know I'm watching from the time they start using the internet; I'm going to tell them, and I'm going to tell them it's gonna happen at school and work, and throughout the rest of their accessing lives.
That approach is not to be taken lightly, obviously. I view it like watching the kids at the playground. Watching to keep them safe, occasionally telling them to 'stop that or you'll break your neck', is not the same as jumping in and managing the kids every time they tussle over a toy, or argue about who is 'it.' It can't be a mechanism for trying to make them behave the way I want them to. I'll have to be an adult about it; I can't read every mail, and I can't come down on them because they call me an ass as they IM to their friends. And yeah, there's screw all I can do if they're at someone else's home.
If the woman in question doesn't have the skills or time for that - she can use some software, ask the ISP to block stuff, let the mail provider filter the spam; and she has to accept that it's going to be an imperfect situation.
So why don't you download it, just like I did, especially that it's legal to do so in Canada?
I feel compelled to reply to this; while I share the sentiment of many on this board that just because something is illegal, that doesn't mean it's wrong - I also believe the reverse. Just because something is legal, that doesn't make it right.
It is legal to download in Canada right now (I'm sure things are in the works to change that), but I don't think I'm entitled to download the album without paying for it. These are the fruits of the labour of others; made commercially for the purpose of profit.
I won't pay $45 for it - I agree it's a sucker's price. I have a right not to get hosed, and I exercise that right. I have a right to bitch about the price, and I exercise that right, too.
(...and if someone goes and spouts off that that's a low price due to <cue scary music> piracy, then I have the right to call them on their crap.)
I don't believe I have a right to own it without paying, just because I want it, or because I don't like the industry, or just because it's legal.
I don't judge anyone else, though. Thanks for the links - it was kind of you to point me to them, hope you enjoy it, but (since you asked) that's why I elect not to download it.
Because, as we all know, customers who want CD's at a decent price are OBVIOUSLY pirates...
You know - I'm living in Canada, never used p2p or anything like that to download music...don't consider myself a pirate at all. Happy to pay for the materials I want. Upon hearing HMV is slashing prices - I rejoice and head to the website.
The White Album is still forty-five freakin' dollars!
Piracy causes lower prices then, does it? I guess I just haven't been doing my part.
"There are some people who still want to make DVDs" I guess these's a fringe movement of people who want to cater to the 100 million or so DVD players out there!;) Someone tell these people that DVD is soooooooooooo last year! Other than that everything looked pretty solid.
Earlier this year I wanted to get an iMovie of the littlest Otter sent to my grandmother...since they thoughtlessly did not include iVHS to their media suite, I was forced to hook it up myself. Thank goodness for the analog hole!
Yeah, I think there'll be a market for iDVD for a while. Hell, there's a market for GarageBand.;P
So what's the performance of a Fileserver setup going to be like for video editing? I currently use a NFS/Samba fileserver at home, and I notice my Mac won't produce thumbnails for non-local drives. So how is the Mac going to behave when editing video on a remote drive? It's not going to insist on caching everyhting locally is it?
Okay; speaking as someone who has a Mac mini he uses for iMovie ('06), and a Slackware file server in the basement that houses the photos and video clips used *for* the movie (mounted through smbfs)...
The pictures and clips are cached locally; stored as part of the iMovie project file. My experience is that the project file must also be local on my mini. Trying to work on it while the project file is on my slack box produces bad results.
When I'm done with a project, I clean out the trash to make the project file smaller (note - clearing photos out of the trash will prevent you from mucking with the Ken Burns effect), and store them on the Slack file server.
(although I always use PICO because VI just seems like black magic to me)
So first - I agree with what the other fella said. You don't go around admitting things like that. If you really want to dis vi - start using emacs, and proclaim it to the world (wear a helmet).
Speaking as a vi user; it's not black magic. It is a little dark arts, though yes.
For black magic, you want to start doing your text editing with awk.
To really cross over to the other side, do everything in perl.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed, but as I mainly use Linux, it didn't have the opportunity to grate on me too badly. Grandpa Otter installed NeoOffice (OpenOffice ported to run natively on the Mac). You might consider checking it out for the next 160 days or so.
The parent in me understands the concerns at play here; that we want to restrict the nature of the media that our children are exposed to. The geek in me understands why this short-term impossible, medium-to-long-term semi-workable on a small-scale, but undesirable for the ISPs, the search engines, and the like.
The only way you can pull this off is with a trust-system. The ratings analogy seems to conveniently skip over the existing infrastructure of that trust-system. The content producers are responsible for obtaining the ratings, and the end-distributors (movie houses, broadcasters) will only carry that content which already has obtained such ratings.
So you can try to get ISPs to only serve websites that have previously been "rated" by some certified body (something as reasoned and transparent as the MPAA-rating-committee, I'm sure) - but the sprawling nature of the web, and the user-driven-content model of the so-called "Web 2.0" sites are going to move most of the web off the field for that. What you're left with are a few sites that are specifically kid-oriented, and can probably be more easily achieved with a home-grown routing whitelist.
Are there not consumer products that easily allow parents to set such a list? Or are we talking about something that sounds nice in theory, but that no one is actually looking for? Seems to me that if you're worried about this kind of stuff in your home that it should be solvable with a $50 router and an hour reading the manual.
Yes. They do.
Read the article, and if you're on Facebook, go to "privacy" -> "Applications" -> "Other Applications" and read what it says under "What Other Users Can See via the Facebook Platform" very, very carefully.
Not really. I think you had a pretty hyperbolic reflection of my argument, and for that I was ribbing you -- but re-reading my post, I come off much more dickish than I had intended. Apologies, I was only trying to yank your chain a little.
Yes. That is exactly what I am saying. Dracula, the reference to my children, the misuse of the word "your"; each of these linguistic leaps is a stunning display of your level of comprehension. My post was clearly a dense morass of language that you, and only you, nschubach, have been able to divine.
Even the name "nschubach" displays your rare grasp of depth. Though it appears to to be a nonsensical collection of letters, I happen to know it's Austrian for "Reads Joseph Conrad for recreation while dancing in own feces."
Thanks so much for your contribution. Dance on.
Some point in the last few years, Bill Gates seems to have figured out he's roughly into the last third of his life, looked in the mirror, and didn't see anything there. It's clear he's decided to do something about that, and good on him for it.
That being said, he's got a lot to explain as he touts his newfound (and very worthy) repudiation of hoarding. Kinder capitalism? Why don't you show us how it's done, Bill? If anyone's in a position to do it, you are. Show us.
You think that's bad? Wait till you see the price difference when they offer it in black.
Rip it. Easier said than done, I know - but I've heard it can be done with HDDVD as well as Blu-Ray.
I've sat-out the format war, and while I believe Blu-Ray will win, I'm not convinced that I'll ever get into it. Of course, within this is a hope that the legitimate on-line market for video will finally get going. Seems a fool's dream at the moment, but two years ago it seemed impossible the music industry would ever wake-up and drop DRM.
Physical media is dead to me.
It's hard to supply advice without knowing what your requirements are and what the "various reasons" were that prevented you from employing the old PCs you mention. However...
In my basement, I have an Athlon 800 MHz, with 256 MB of RAM that houses a DVD drive, plus 3 IDE hard drives. A 15GB for the OS and such, and a 500GB and 200GB that are made available on my home network via NFS and Samba. The 200 gig is a "public" drive for people in the house to use. The 500 gig was a media drive until I built a myth box over Christmas, now it's a backup drive. I'm not doing RAID or anything. The machine runs Slackware 11, and is connected to the network on a 100 Mbit LAN.
Performance is fine. The most taxing I got was when I played my ripped movies from the file server in the basement to my Mac up in the family room. No stuttering or any other issues unless I saturated the link (ie. it couldn't serve two movies at once).
If you've got old PCs around - I see no reason not to use them. Otherwise, I'd probably just use an inexpensive NAS unless you want more out of the machine. I got Grandpa Otter a NAS for Christmas as he wanted centralized file storage on his LAN, but is not a hobbyist, and didn't want to muck with PC innards.
Knowing your requirements would produce better suggestions for hardware and software...but for file serving a home LAN - I'm thinking old hardware and any Linux distro will be most economical and get the job done.
You know, it can happen. I've had a few times moderated posts. The focus stays on the drop down box, and I scroll on down the page. Somewhere else, I hit the down arrow, trying to move the screen - and I've just changed the guy's moderation.
I click on "Moderate", they show me what my moderations were, and often I look at one, and furrow my brow.
Yeah. We've got the dolphins, the mice, and so far nothing else.
As is your right. As for me, yes I subscribe to the quote you've posted (which I understand to be Hanlon's Razor), but I also feel my observations bear this out. I've looked at the goals nominated by the current US government, and the only thing I see them good at doing is spreading confusion and fog. This has, at times, suited their interests, and by turns it has not...yet the confusion persists, and nothing else.
So, yes. Incompetence of the highest order. Delusions of Vader-ness, perhaps, but I think you'd be stroking their egos to put them on a par with Dr. Evil.
(..and for those whose partisan ire is raised; I mean both the executive and legislative branches of this government, and I've held said opinion while Congress was under control of each party.)
This US government? Abso-fraking-lutely.
It's a perfectly cromulent word.
A guess based on what I heard; because the vocal minority scared the partners more than it scared Facebook. The main shopping drive right now is Christmas; making this the absolute worst time to introduce a tool that publishes your shopping habits to your family and friends. Retailers get that, even if thick-headed social networking bosses don't.
If a couple of retailers get grumpy - or even just one of sufficient size (ie. Amazon), then Facebook would definitely want to tone it down, and try again in the new year.
This is all about business, kids.
I'm on it. As with others in this crowd, though, my presence is minimal. I'm there so friends/relatives from out of town can view the latest videos of the pups. At the time I signed up, I had made a comment that at least Facebook was more pretentious than MySpace. I wouldn't make that joke anymore.
Funny thing is; the beacon thing was giving me pause - and more from a data-mining point-of-view than that it would share them with my friends. What, I don't want my friends to know where I shop, but I'm okay with the overlords of Facebook keeping track??? (I get the problem it was creating for Christmas shoppers, though). As a result, I've started giving serious thought to running my own server to host the videos. I just need to see what that would do to my bandwidth, and then try and find the time.
I can go Google all that stuff and find out for myself, but why would I bother, if it's not clear to me why the story is important in the first place?
(I can't help but wonder if this is satire...)
Answer: I suppose you wouldn't.
I don't imagine anyone is going to lose sleep over that. If you're interested, take an interest. If you don't care, then just move one. We're all fine with that, really.
Slashdot: News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters. Context for Jason Lefkowitz.
I'd mod you up if I had the points. That was very well-written.
Appreciated, though when I re-read it, I think I fell into the trap of overusing the word "safe." I stand by what I said about how I plan to handle the internet thing, and safety is certainly an issue - but I meant to talk more about managing the introduction of what's out there, and educating them on how to approach/avoid/process it.
It can be hard for a parent (well, me) to keep objective and separate what is an actual threat to their child from what, frankly, they're just not ready to handle yet...then of course there's what we parents are not ready for them to handle yet. ;>
Putting too much of that material under the category of "safety" is what leads to things like the "thinkofthechildren" meme. Images of hysterical parents condemning everything is certainly fair criticism, but for those of you without little ones, please believe me when I say that it's an incredibly hard job, with more nuance than can realistically be managed perfectly, and you often feel like you've got the whole multi-billion media industry against you.
I want to raise intelligent, critical, reasoned people with healthy egos, tempered consumer appetites, and the skills to thrive in the good times and cope in the bad times. Play about five minutes of television in opposition to that, and please forgive my momentary impulse to board up the windows.
Seriously, what is she really worried about? Is she questioning her job as a parent and worried the big, bad internet is going to so corrupt her son that all of the important life lessons she has imparted will be pushed aside?
My pups aren't teenagers (which really means anything from 13 to 19 - and can warrant very different actions in terms of guidance), but as a parent who thinks of himself as responsible (and pretty liberal, frankly), let me tell you; yeah. It's pretty much me vs. the world, and I'm constantly paranoid about what other information is burrowing its way into their mind and taking root.
If you've raised kids, you'll know that they are sponges and there's no way to predict what's gonna take hold and what they're going to ignore.
There's a lot more to be cautious of on the internet than porn; and let's not forget that there IS porn on there that is about as far away from healthy sexual curiosity as you can get. There's also scams, fraud, malware, etc, etc, etc...and we can throw in the predator thing - although the media has blown that out of several proportions.
There are many aspects of a child's education that are the parent's responsibility; and do not fall into the normal school curriculum. Media education (including the internet), in my opinion, is HUGE. I'm expecting to spend enormous effort on it. How to perceive television and movies; fiction versus reality, how to look at advertising critically, and now that the news has become infotainment I've gotta try and figure out how to encourage a healthy interest in the world around them while at the same time explaining they can't take anything said by anyone at face value. Then there's the internet, which is a whole other category.
First, I've gotta spend a lot of time explaining how to use it safely - before we even get in to what to do and what not to. Safe browsing's gonna be a little more than just "don't sit so close." Malware, spam, phishing, trojans, cookies, privacy, internet permanence, and explaining there is no such thing as total anonymity -- and we're not even doing anything interesting yet.
So, frankly, if a parent isn't worried - I'm not sure they're doing they're job.
Yeah, obviously responsible people of good conscience will disagree about the appropriateness of a lot of internet material - but there is some stuff that I'm pretty sure we can almost all agree on, and I'd value reliable tools that help me prevent that from exposure. I'm not trying to keep the kid from seeing tits - but I am trying to keep them safe.
My planned approach? Start with pretty locked down access (I've got a router and the skills to more or less pull that off), open it up over time as they learn and mature, and I'm going to monitor what they do. You're freakin' right I am. That doesn't mean I'm going to pour over every mail, and I'm certainly not going to do it secretly. They're going to know I'm watching from the time they start using the internet; I'm going to tell them, and I'm going to tell them it's gonna happen at school and work, and throughout the rest of their accessing lives.
That approach is not to be taken lightly, obviously. I view it like watching the kids at the playground. Watching to keep them safe, occasionally telling them to 'stop that or you'll break your neck', is not the same as jumping in and managing the kids every time they tussle over a toy, or argue about who is 'it.' It can't be a mechanism for trying to make them behave the way I want them to. I'll have to be an adult about it; I can't read every mail, and I can't come down on them because they call me an ass as they IM to their friends. And yeah, there's screw all I can do if they're at someone else's home.
If the woman in question doesn't have the skills or time for that - she can use some software, ask the ISP to block stuff, let the mail provider filter the spam; and she has to accept that it's going to be an imperfect situation.
I feel compelled to reply to this; while I share the sentiment of many on this board that just because something is illegal, that doesn't mean it's wrong - I also believe the reverse. Just because something is legal, that doesn't make it right.
It is legal to download in Canada right now (I'm sure things are in the works to change that), but I don't think I'm entitled to download the album without paying for it. These are the fruits of the labour of others; made commercially for the purpose of profit.
I won't pay $45 for it - I agree it's a sucker's price. I have a right not to get hosed, and I exercise that right. I have a right to bitch about the price, and I exercise that right, too.
(...and if someone goes and spouts off that that's a low price due to <cue scary music> piracy, then I have the right to call them on their crap.)
I don't believe I have a right to own it without paying, just because I want it, or because I don't like the industry, or just because it's legal.
I don't judge anyone else, though. Thanks for the links - it was kind of you to point me to them, hope you enjoy it, but (since you asked) that's why I elect not to download it.
I'll see it on for a real sale one of these days.
You know - I'm living in Canada, never used p2p or anything like that to download music...don't consider myself a pirate at all. Happy to pay for the materials I want. Upon hearing HMV is slashing prices - I rejoice and head to the website.
The White Album is still forty-five freakin' dollars!
Piracy causes lower prices then, does it? I guess I just haven't been doing my part.
Earlier this year I wanted to get an iMovie of the littlest Otter sent to my grandmother...since they thoughtlessly did not include iVHS to their media suite, I was forced to hook it up myself. Thank goodness for the analog hole!
Yeah, I think there'll be a market for iDVD for a while. Hell, there's a market for GarageBand. ;P
Okay; speaking as someone who has a Mac mini he uses for iMovie ('06), and a Slackware file server in the basement that houses the photos and video clips used *for* the movie (mounted through smbfs)...
The pictures and clips are cached locally; stored as part of the iMovie project file. My experience is that the project file must also be local on my mini. Trying to work on it while the project file is on my slack box produces bad results.
When I'm done with a project, I clean out the trash to make the project file smaller (note - clearing photos out of the trash will prevent you from mucking with the Ken Burns effect), and store them on the Slack file server.
So first - I agree with what the other fella said. You don't go around admitting things like that. If you really want to dis vi - start using emacs, and proclaim it to the world (wear a helmet).
Speaking as a vi user; it's not black magic. It is a little dark arts, though yes.
For black magic, you want to start doing your text editing with awk.
To really cross over to the other side, do everything in perl.