Make people feel better about buying media than they do about stealing it. Charge a fair price, don't saddle them with unnecessary restrictions (DRM), and don't be a bunch of assholes.
No, we don't have a right to their media. But we're obviously going to take it anyway, so why not play nice and get rich off of that? No, this isn't a legal argument, and it isn't ethical, but legality and ethics don't seem to be bothering the majority of the market, do they?
I'm not saying this is right, but it is reality. There are thousands (millions?) of people that have become legitimate music buyers because of ITMS. Clearly giving in to what people want (rather than what maximizes your profits) a bit helped the situation. Take that to the next level.
By the way, piracy isn't a huge problem to me. I think I feel worse about speeding than I do about stealing media. And since they want my money, and I can take their music no matter what, I'm the one that counts.
hordes of technorati are creaming their jeans for this email-cum-status-symbol.
Meh, not really anymore. Used to be I had a list of friends looking for GMail invites and my invites were going out as fast as they were coming in. Now I've got 6 just sitting around and nobody I know who wants one still needs one, AFAIK.
I do get what you're saying about the beta being a marketing ploy, but if that's all it were, I think they would have opened it up by now. It has ceased to be much of a status symbol, news coverage has died down significantly, and they could be making a lot more dough from advertising than they are now by letting the Yahoo and Hotmail expatriates in.
Lousy job to have? Heh, I had a couple people at my last job who left to go take jobs with the TSA screening people at airports.
By all accounts it's not a bad job to have if you can take the pay cut (and it really doesn't pay all that badly either provided you don't have kids and aren't used to driving a BMW). You get paid to harrass people in the name of national security and everyone is too scared to be delayed more (or worse) to say anything back to you (plus I hear Uncle Sam's benefits aren't bad).
By the way, if you find a way to get on the list for extra thorough screening by all means let me know. I always show up at the airport 2-3 hours before I need to be there anyway (old habit from a couple of close calls). Might give me an entertaining way to pass the time.
I wasn't the AC who posted it, but I'll stand behind it.
There is nothing wrong with security through obscurity unless that's all you have.
As best I can tell, your post states that promoting security through obscurity is a bad thing because it gives people the impression that obscurity is all they need.
The problem with that is AC explicitly says that you need more than security through obscurity. If people can read that and come away with the impression that security through obscurity is all that they need, then that's a reading comprehension or intelligence problem. It has nothing to do with whether security through obscurity is a viable part of a well-rounded security policy or not.
Of course there are situations where security through obscurity should not be employed, but these situations arise because there happens to be a greater payoff from openness, not because there's anything wrong with obscurity.
Let's be real. Not too many people very often suddenly decide to switch enterprise database systems. This is a red herring
Not exactly. The point isn't to be able to just hop between databases at will. The point is that if you wake up one day and your vendor no longer exists, has decided to start charging more than you can afford, or has discontinued their database product and won't give you quality support that you can switch to another database without having to rewrite a large portion/the bulk of your application.
I do think stored procedures have their place, so I don't necessarily disagree with your post. I do think writing off avoiding vendor lock-in as a valid argument is a bad idea, though. It's one of the best weapons you have to prevent your vendors from stomping all over you (not that this has ever happened *cough*).
If you were keeping "very close tabs" you wouldn't be so caught up in word choice and would be able to say why (from a technical standpoint) the current Java version doesn't work for you.
Maybe you've been refreshing that page every few months, but I doubt you've been keeping close tabs on anything.
You're free to use whatever you want for whatever reason you want. No need to pull my leg.
Use of most software in a production environment is generally always at your own risk anyway, unless you're paying lots and lots of money.
FreeBSD's JDK works, works well, and has for some time. Whether it meets your standards or not is up for debate, but you can certainly test it with the applications you need to run and see for yourself.
Not that I'm defending the tone of the grandparent post (though I did laugh a little). I'm a BSD user, and I don't care if you use it or not, but I'm not going to be a dick to actively dissuade you.
Of course who do you trust to maintain said database/algorithm if it's not open source? This is one of the many (many) cases where I would think open source is the only option.
Of course there would be numerous roadblocks to implementing this sort of thing, not the least of which being HTML rendering quirks in Outlook, Eudora, etc. that would have to be thoroughly accounted for.
I'll stick to doing things by hand (I didn't miss any, like most/.'ers, I'm sure), and those who can't could use something like what was proposed to filter out some of the more technically-incompetent scams. It's better than nothing, I suppose.
Best bet is probably to just write a plugin (or set a preference) that completely disables hyperlinks in email messages (using mutt or disabling HTML email, which is the devil, works too:P), that way people HAVE to type in visa.com (or cut and paste, at least JavaScript can't be used to hide the real URL this way), and they'd have a much better chance of actually dealing with VISA. Inconvenient? Yeah. So's sorting out your finances after an identity theft incident.
Identity theft scares the shit out of my (non-technical) parents. Last time I was home to visit they grilled me on the subject for an hour or two. It seems like it might be one of the few things that people might fear enough to be willing to inconvenience themselves slightly in the name of security.
It's about damn time we found something like that, besides fucking airport security.
What's so Flamebait about that? This guy does something that anyone with half a brain could have done (mind you, he needed the help of a national TV audience to do it, too) and it's news?
Heaven help us if he actually does something really notable. He'd probably get a free blowjob from CmdrTaco.
If shell access is part of your hosting agreement, and you can get from the web server to the mail server (or if they're the same box obviously), just create an SSH tunnel to the web server and forward a port on your local machine to the mail server's SMTP port. Then tell your mail client to use localhost:"the port you forwarded" as the SMTP server.
In Windows this can be easily done with PuTTY. In Linux or OS X the command line SSH clients are perfectly fine as well.
Of course you don't necessarily have to use your web server and mail server. This works as long as you've got a shell on one box, that box can reach the SMTP port on a mail server of your choice, and the shell box is authorized to relay through the mail server (or you use SMTP AUTH).
This isn't a solution for the masses (until someone comes up with a ridiculously easy tunnel application; I don't think PuTTY would cut it for mom and dad. Is there one already?), but if you didn't already know about it, it might be a solution in your specific case.
If you don't have a shell at all there's all kinds of places that sell them for ridiculously cheap. Not to mention there was a/. article about free shell providers recently. Either way.
I don't see the conflict of interest. id is presumably a neutral third party since, for their game to be successful, they need to cater to both NVIDIA and ATI card owners. The testing took place at ther location. Furthermore, both ATI and NVIDIA were present, and I'm sure the loser would be squawking (this might happen, so wait a couple days) if anything questionable is in the results.
I'm not aware of any reason why I should not trust benchmarks run by John Carmack's company, with oversight by both ATI and NVIDIA. I'm also not aware of any reason not to trust HardOCP, one of the few hardware review sites that I actually bother taking seriously.
So please enlighten me if I'm missing something.
As far as the two slots thing, yeah, it sucks. Fortunately it appears that ASUS has a single-slot GeForce 6800 Ultra, so other comapnies will follow, I'm sure. Also, the non-Ultra variants of the card (like the GT, also benchmarked) are all single slot, IIRC. With Ultras being anywhere from $500 to $600, and GTs and vanilla 6800s performing so well, Ultras probably will be in the minority of 6800 purchases anyway.
As far as buying a new power supply, I already have an excellent one so I don't care. The power supply, to me, is one of the most important components in a box. It also doesn't need upgrading nearly as much as other components. If you need to buy a new one for Doom 3, buy a nice Antec, PCP&C, or other reputable brand and you'll probably be set for years (or until you want a BTX machine).
I was just thinking the same thing! The 'Big O' is Overstock.com, right?
Re:Company's brand way too strong
on
Dell CEO Tells All
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Dell laptops by and large are shit, but compared to a machine you found on Pricewatch it's likely built like a tank.
PC components are generally cheap enough that you can get away, to a certain degree, with buying crap. Laptops, due to their integrated nature, the extra abuse they take, and the difficulty of obtaining and installing replacement parts are not so forgiving.
You should be spending well over a grand for any sort of decent machine that's new. You probably shouldn't be buying a Dell (of course I know people who swear by them), but don't buy some generic piece of crap either.
Slashdot Mirror
Make people feel better about buying media than they do about stealing it. Charge a fair price, don't saddle them with unnecessary restrictions (DRM), and don't be a bunch of assholes.
No, we don't have a right to their media. But we're obviously going to take it anyway, so why not play nice and get rich off of that? No, this isn't a legal argument, and it isn't ethical, but legality and ethics don't seem to be bothering the majority of the market, do they?
I'm not saying this is right, but it is reality. There are thousands (millions?) of people that have become legitimate music buyers because of ITMS. Clearly giving in to what people want (rather than what maximizes your profits) a bit helped the situation. Take that to the next level.
By the way, piracy isn't a huge problem to me. I think I feel worse about speeding than I do about stealing media. And since they want my money, and I can take their music no matter what, I'm the one that counts.
Are Real Open Standards anything like Real Ultimate Power?
Meh, not really anymore. Used to be I had a list of friends looking for GMail invites and my invites were going out as fast as they were coming in. Now I've got 6 just sitting around and nobody I know who wants one still needs one, AFAIK.
I do get what you're saying about the beta being a marketing ploy, but if that's all it were, I think they would have opened it up by now. It has ceased to be much of a status symbol, news coverage has died down significantly, and they could be making a lot more dough from advertising than they are now by letting the Yahoo and Hotmail expatriates in.
Now there's a movie that could use a sequel!
Actually, you know you're not a geek when you've never made the fsck/fuck connection before.
Jesus Christ that was a great post.
Lousy job to have? Heh, I had a couple people at my last job who left to go take jobs with the TSA screening people at airports.
By all accounts it's not a bad job to have if you can take the pay cut (and it really doesn't pay all that badly either provided you don't have kids and aren't used to driving a BMW). You get paid to harrass people in the name of national security and everyone is too scared to be delayed more (or worse) to say anything back to you (plus I hear Uncle Sam's benefits aren't bad).
By the way, if you find a way to get on the list for extra thorough screening by all means let me know. I always show up at the airport 2-3 hours before I need to be there anyway (old habit from a couple of close calls). Might give me an entertaining way to pass the time.
Ouch, man...
Just... ouch.
Holy shit! Chris has an iPod too?! Why wasn't I told?
I wasn't the AC who posted it, but I'll stand behind it.
There is nothing wrong with security through obscurity unless that's all you have.
As best I can tell, your post states that promoting security through obscurity is a bad thing because it gives people the impression that obscurity is all they need.
The problem with that is AC explicitly says that you need more than security through obscurity. If people can read that and come away with the impression that security through obscurity is all that they need, then that's a reading comprehension or intelligence problem. It has nothing to do with whether security through obscurity is a viable part of a well-rounded security policy or not.
Of course there are situations where security through obscurity should not be employed, but these situations arise because there happens to be a greater payoff from openness, not because there's anything wrong with obscurity.
Not exactly. The point isn't to be able to just hop between databases at will. The point is that if you wake up one day and your vendor no longer exists, has decided to start charging more than you can afford, or has discontinued their database product and won't give you quality support that you can switch to another database without having to rewrite a large portion/the bulk of your application.
I do think stored procedures have their place, so I don't necessarily disagree with your post. I do think writing off avoiding vendor lock-in as a valid argument is a bad idea, though. It's one of the best weapons you have to prevent your vendors from stomping all over you (not that this has ever happened *cough*).
If you were keeping "very close tabs" you wouldn't be so caught up in word choice and would be able to say why (from a technical standpoint) the current Java version doesn't work for you.
Maybe you've been refreshing that page every few months, but I doubt you've been keeping close tabs on anything.
You're free to use whatever you want for whatever reason you want. No need to pull my leg.
Use of most software in a production environment is generally always at your own risk anyway, unless you're paying lots and lots of money.
FreeBSD's JDK works, works well, and has for some time. Whether it meets your standards or not is up for debate, but you can certainly test it with the applications you need to run and see for yourself.
Not that I'm defending the tone of the grandparent post (though I did laugh a little). I'm a BSD user, and I don't care if you use it or not, but I'm not going to be a dick to actively dissuade you.
Actually, a great hacker would have said ++Java ;).
Of course who do you trust to maintain said database/algorithm if it's not open source? This is one of the many (many) cases where I would think open source is the only option.
/.'ers, I'm sure), and those who can't could use something like what was proposed to filter out some of the more technically-incompetent scams. It's better than nothing, I suppose.
:P), that way people HAVE to type in visa.com (or cut and paste, at least JavaScript can't be used to hide the real URL this way), and they'd have a much better chance of actually dealing with VISA. Inconvenient? Yeah. So's sorting out your finances after an identity theft incident.
Of course there would be numerous roadblocks to implementing this sort of thing, not the least of which being HTML rendering quirks in Outlook, Eudora, etc. that would have to be thoroughly accounted for.
I'll stick to doing things by hand (I didn't miss any, like most
Best bet is probably to just write a plugin (or set a preference) that completely disables hyperlinks in email messages (using mutt or disabling HTML email, which is the devil, works too
Identity theft scares the shit out of my (non-technical) parents. Last time I was home to visit they grilled me on the subject for an hour or two. It seems like it might be one of the few things that people might fear enough to be willing to inconvenience themselves slightly in the name of security.
It's about damn time we found something like that, besides fucking airport security.
*starts checking Fatwallet for hot deals on new supercomputer*
I guess my Turtle Beach Santa Cruz is going to have to last a few more years. Scratch me buying anything from Creative Labs.
(Nevermind that I bought the Santa Cruz specifically because I think Creative Labs makes shitty products.)
What's so Flamebait about that? This guy does something that anyone with half a brain could have done (mind you, he needed the help of a national TV audience to do it, too) and it's news?
Heaven help us if he actually does something really notable. He'd probably get a free blowjob from CmdrTaco.
Little "b" is bit. Big "B" is byte. 2Tb is 2 Terabits.
A byte is 8 bits. 250GB == 2Tb.
Pegasus probably meant TB, and AKC probably knew that.
How many thousands of people had already done that?
Stupid bitch.
If shell access is part of your hosting agreement, and you can get from the web server to the mail server (or if they're the same box obviously), just create an SSH tunnel to the web server and forward a port on your local machine to the mail server's SMTP port. Then tell your mail client to use localhost:"the port you forwarded" as the SMTP server.
/. article about free shell providers recently. Either way.
In Windows this can be easily done with PuTTY. In Linux or OS X the command line SSH clients are perfectly fine as well.
Of course you don't necessarily have to use your web server and mail server. This works as long as you've got a shell on one box, that box can reach the SMTP port on a mail server of your choice, and the shell box is authorized to relay through the mail server (or you use SMTP AUTH).
This isn't a solution for the masses (until someone comes up with a ridiculously easy tunnel application; I don't think PuTTY would cut it for mom and dad. Is there one already?), but if you didn't already know about it, it might be a solution in your specific case.
If you don't have a shell at all there's all kinds of places that sell them for ridiculously cheap. Not to mention there was a
I don't see the conflict of interest. id is presumably a neutral third party since, for their game to be successful, they need to cater to both NVIDIA and ATI card owners. The testing took place at ther location. Furthermore, both ATI and NVIDIA were present, and I'm sure the loser would be squawking (this might happen, so wait a couple days) if anything questionable is in the results.
I'm not aware of any reason why I should not trust benchmarks run by John Carmack's company, with oversight by both ATI and NVIDIA. I'm also not aware of any reason not to trust HardOCP, one of the few hardware review sites that I actually bother taking seriously.
So please enlighten me if I'm missing something.
As far as the two slots thing, yeah, it sucks. Fortunately it appears that ASUS has a single-slot GeForce 6800 Ultra, so other comapnies will follow, I'm sure. Also, the non-Ultra variants of the card (like the GT, also benchmarked) are all single slot, IIRC. With Ultras being anywhere from $500 to $600, and GTs and vanilla 6800s performing so well, Ultras probably will be in the minority of 6800 purchases anyway.
As far as buying a new power supply, I already have an excellent one so I don't care. The power supply, to me, is one of the most important components in a box. It also doesn't need upgrading nearly as much as other components. If you need to buy a new one for Doom 3, buy a nice Antec, PCP&C, or other reputable brand and you'll probably be set for years (or until you want a BTX machine).
I was just thinking the same thing! The 'Big O' is Overstock.com, right?
Dell laptops by and large are shit, but compared to a machine you found on Pricewatch it's likely built like a tank.
PC components are generally cheap enough that you can get away, to a certain degree, with buying crap. Laptops, due to their integrated nature, the extra abuse they take, and the difficulty of obtaining and installing replacement parts are not so forgiving.
You should be spending well over a grand for any sort of decent machine that's new. You probably shouldn't be buying a Dell (of course I know people who swear by them), but don't buy some generic piece of crap either.