They might get a counter-suing or two... but for every one they get I wouldn't be surprised if they get a dozen legitimate hits. Even after I made it clear I do NOT support DC++ I still get requests for related help on a regular basis (and I freaking charge to help people I don't know, if it's more than a just-a-few-minutes kind of issue). With exceptions countable on one hand, everybody I know with a computer in the dorms has DC++ or the alternate platform equivilents. They aren't using them to swap class notes or Linux distros either.
The question is, of course, where the cutoff point is in terms of making money with this (apparent) shotgun approach to copyright violation cases. At the UW, they might well feast.
The sad thing is, they are pretty much guaranteed to get a hit on that approach. The VAST majority of people here use DC++ to pirate media, and since DC++ requires 500MB (I think, I do not use it myself and refuse to help anybody set it up) of your own files to be available on the network, it's a pretty good bet that they are all uploading as well. They do block nearly all P2P apps to outside the dorms from inside (including limiting bittorrent to near-uselessness, which causes issues for everything from the Blizzard downloader to getting Linux CD images). Within the dorms though, not only are the networks unfiltered, there are a couple well-known DC++ hubs and everybody knows what they are used for.
Then of course, you get people like me (I strongly disagree with both the MAFIAA and media piracy, and while I don't support DRM or software patents I will laugh in your face if you download a noCD/noActivation/WGAVerification crack that fscks up your machine and then you ask me for help). I lived in the dorms. From time to time my computer was connected to a few different networks. I am sure some of those connections were used for illegal file copying (I know my roommates did). Aside from the question of how they were supposed to know who was using a given IP address in the first place, I'm possibly a target for one of these letters (yes, I got the email and wondered how long it would be until it appeared on Slashdot).
I like to think I have the resources to deal with this if I do get such a letter, but the truth is that I really don't if I want to graduate, not without major loans or some such. However, even if they only choose one student at random from the dorms, there is a well over 50% chance they would get a valid target. What they do then may be completely out of proportion but it's undeniable that UW dorm students, as a group and (on average) as individuals, commit copyright infringement on a vast scale.
Let me start off by stating that I created a MySpace profile explicitly to access the profile of a friend's band, and that the profile has been nearly abandoned. The same friend (who is a year ahead of me in school) got me into Facebook two years ago, when it was still college-only. In the case of Facebook, however, there wan't any specific reason; he just suggested I try it out.
Facebook for me covers many uses, many college-centric, but a few that have moved from MySpace with Facebook's opening to the public, and a few that are just general web site services. College-centric:
Facebook makes it easy to fand people in my classes (handy if I don't have contact info for somebody but need to ask a question about a class, for example).
Searching by majors is actually a very good way to find people, better than "interests" (althouth they can be combined for greater effect) both while looking for specific people and for people who might be interested in something or be able to provide help or advice.
Keeping in touch with students or alums who I no longer see very often, usually because they either moved (even just from the dorms to a nearby off-campus location is far enough to somebody who usually gets around on foot that I won't see them much unless I make a real effort) or because we aren't taking classes together anymore (internships, different majors that intersected for one class, or just taking different paths through the same major).
Facebook is still a good place to connect with people about things specific to my school (the tennis club, CSE students, and school rivalries)
MySpace-to-Facebook:
Groups representing real-life networks of friends related in some way that has nothing at all to do with school (cruising teens, for example). Such groups may exist on both sites, but it is much easier to discover and follow groups on Facebook than on MySpace.
Keeping track of events in the life of friends. What used to be accomplished by MySpace Bulletins (about the only thing I ever used them for) is now Facebook Status messages (and sometimes other things on the News Feed, such as relationship changes and events/parites).
Browsing humanity as a cure for boredom (usually late at night when I can't sleep and for some reason don't feel like coding or gaming). MySpace has more visible profiles, but Facebook has a higher persentage of interesting people (and yes, I realize that's probably a perception of the kind of class thing TFA talks about... but sorry, if you can't think of at least one favorite book, preferably not a religous text, you aren't likely to be intersting to me).
General web sites that happen to be on Facebook:
Discussion sites (for gaming, politics, or technology). Facebook's forum capabilites leave a lot to be desired (I've often wished they would implement at least some of the features of Slashcode) but most of the groups have few enough active members that the discussions are simply whatever we want to talk about (including things that would never make it through Slashdot's editors, or would be modded into oblivion).
Photo sharing. There are certainly better sites for this, but since I'm pretty much permanently signed into Facebook it's a convenient portal for things like this.
Meeting people looking for the same thing in a relationship as you are. Facebook is not a dating site and I don't attempt to use it this way, but I know people whose relationships started from Facebook (they may have met previously in person, but not realized they were looking for the same thing). People are often less shy about posting things like sexual orientation or even fetishes than they are speaking about them (or at least, one would have to ask first).
Bullshit troll; please read then mod parent
on
Pimp Your XP
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· Score: 1
*SIGH* All right, I guess I'll try again.
"An idiot check" - I take it this means your one of the idiot masses who run every program as an Administrator, and don't understand why every single other major OS in the world doesn't (by default). Perhaps you are also one of those fools who boast that you've never had a malware infection and therefore XP is, in fact, secure? For goodness sake... I stopped using XP explicitly because it was such a pain to run as a non-admin; until Vista betas were day-to-day usable I ran Linux exclusively and I still dual-boot.
"Even less compatibility" - You know, this one I find somewhere between funny and WTF. Pretty much anybody can name one or two programs or devices that have issues on Vista, but in essentially every case I've found it was due to simply bad design. If you rely on crap like that, I'm sorry you locked yourself in but there are still a few things you can try. Software: Run in Compatibility Mode and if necessary, run as Administrator. For example, the vast majority of Vista's "incompatible" software (most of which will actually run if you really care to) does idiotic shit like placing the user-level data in the installation folder (which is supposed to be read-only to user-level permissions) or similar stupidity. Usually this can be made to work by modifying the permissions on the program's data files, or by running it as an Admin. A few programs truly don't work, but I have actually found that Vista has better backward compatibility with some of my programs than XP did (pre-XP programs, obviously). Hardware: if the manufacturer hasn't produced a driver yet, then frankly they suck, but there are ways around even that issue (perfected during months of running pre-release Vista when drivers really WERE hard to find; nowadays everybody has them, near enough). If the driver installer for 2003, XP, 2000, or NT (in that order of preference) is available as an executable, set the executable's Compatibility Mode to the expected version of Windows and try running it. More than 90% of the time this worked without a hitch for me. For those few places it didn't find or extract the.inf file and modify it manually. I realize this is a pain, but it isn't actually difficult once you know how. My point here is, virtually any driver for XP will also work on Vista. I've found exactly one device that did not work as expected after I loaded its driver installer using Compatibility mode. It was a horrendously bizarre one-off brand from Malaysia, plus it was designed for Windows 2000/XP SP0 and wasn't plug-and-play even on XP. It was a WiFi driver that paid no respect to the WiFi networking stack and worked like crap even in XP. You know what? It still almost worked in Vista... and the last time I tred was on a pre-release version. 16-bit: Ok, now you've crossed the line from bullshitting into trolling. NO 64-bit version of Windows will run 16-bit apps (that includes XP and 2003, in case you were wondering) and 32-bit Vista runs them perfectly well; at least as compatibly as 32-bit XP (moreso in the case of one of my programs). Honestly, if your post hadn't been moderated so high I'd have given up in disgust when I read that part... you obviosuly not only haven't used Vista, you've believed the worst of everything you heard about it without even attempting to verify anything.
"Security aspect... hasn't changed much" - Are you fucking insane? IE7 with Protected Mode is actually fairly close to Firefox 2 on Secunia, although it is not, at present, as good (in the past, it has sometimes rated higher). Vista includes a bi-directional firewall, far better than the POS that comes with XP. Vista uses Address Space Layout Randomization, making buffer overflow attacks far more difficult in any software, first- or third-party. Vista integrated Defender, whih while not an anti-virus is nonetheless a very useful tool and the only reputable anti-spyware program with a real-time scanner that is available free. There's more, but those are probably the big ones. Don
That is fantastically bad software design (reminiscent of Windows 9x single-user-centric programming) and may explain one of the reasons that Vista initially had so many issue with iTunes. Vista more or less FORCES programs to handle multiple users well.
The thing that astounds me is that anybody could write flagship software for their own POSIX OS with such flaws in it. Does anybody know whether iTunes has the same problem running on OS X? (I presume OS X supports multiple graphical sessions running in at once.) If it does, how the hell did they fsck it up so badly on Windows?
As somebody who uses Linux (openSuse at present) and Wine, but has been displeased by every single personal experience I've had with Ubuntu, I'm really quite tired of A) people who assume that Ubuntu == Linux B) People who assume that Wine == Linux (it runs on other OSs; it's not much more than some libraries plus a user-space program that converts Win32 syscalls to POSIX calls).
Wine is not Linux, and Linux is not Ubuntu (makes me want to start my own distribution, LinU, which would come with a complete build toolchain and a graphical package manager that doesn't suck, among other things). The fact that this validation was performed on a system running the Ubuntu distribution has NOTHING to do with the achievement of the Wine developers and the folks at IEs4Linux. The trick is that they managed to spoof enough of the tests that the WGA program checks for (product key, WGA-assigned system GUID, etc.) to fool WGA. It probably won't work forever, but for now that's a pretty impressive accomplishment (at one point, I believe validation checks explicitly tested for a Wine-specific registry key). Also note that this has very very little with pirated Windows software (which is what WGA is designed to fight) since without replacing a lot of the low-level stuff in Windows with Wine implementations, it won't help. That said, it's possible ReactOS will validate using this code.
Usually I stay out of these kinds of things on Slashdot, because the community is so full of people like you that I despair of ever changing anything. But I'll give it another shot today...
Windows update DOES NOT REQUIRE WGA! Is that clear enough? If not, how about WGA DOES NOT INVOLVE ANY KIND OF REGISTRATION?
At worst, Windows update requires exactly one type of significant information about your computer: what patch version of the OS you have. Since I'm assuming you don't mind Microsoft knowing what Windows patches you have so far; this is hardly personal information.
You might be confusing Windows Update with Microsoft Update, which is a service to update a variety of non-OS MS software. This does require WGA validation at least once. While this involves transmitting more identifiably useful information than, for example, most OSS update programs, it's important to remember that WGA is a response to a problem that OSS doesn't have. Consider the list of info that WGA sends, from the WGA Privacy Info page: Computer make and model: Useful for maintaining hardware profiles, and possibly for tracking down sources of mass software piracy. If you consider this info private I'm a bit worried about your priorities... you do realize that by visiting this web page you probably told Slashdot what type of browser and OS you use, and quite possibly what version? Version information for the OS and software you're validating: See above comment about patch version info. Region and language setting: This almost certainly is used the same way as the make/model info: in aggregate and possibly for help tracking down major operations. A software-assigned GUID for your computer: Can help detect hardware updates or piracy (in combination with the hardware info) or software reinstalls (identical hardware and software key but different GUID). Hash of product key and product ID: Needed to identify keys and install discs that are being misused. BIOS name, revision, and date: Probably the same as the make/model and regional info, although it might be useful to detect hardware updates on the same system or the mass distribution of unlicensed copies, especially when combined with the other hardware info. Hash of HDD serial number: Used to detect people creating images of a valid copy, then distributing those images (either already on hard disks as in hardware sales, or as installable system images). Which of these constitute "personal information that I KNOW microsoft doesn't need"?
For those who claim "MS is treating me like a thief..." I trust you all don't shop at stores with scanners at the door that chack for any tags in your purchases that weren't deactivated at the register? Why the fsck do you assume it's so personal? MS isn't treating 'you' like a thief, they're treating you as a member of a general public that has shown an incredible trend towards theft. What makes you so special, from MS's point of view, that you're automatically worthy of trust? (Incidentally, have you ever noticed how the same people who say that WGA means being treated like a thief insist that software piracy is NOT theft?)
How else do you propose the problem be solved anyhow? There's Apple's route (require a trusted platform chip in every system running the OS) but I suspect that would be very unpopular (if for no other reason than because most computers still don't have one). Software piracy IS a problem too; to the parent poster and everybody else who whine about how they don't use their legit versions because of validation, don't bitch to MS, bitch to all the people you know who use unlicensed copies (I doubt anybody on Slashdot doesn't know at least a few, even if they aren't one themselves). Especially, focus on not paying anybody for unlicensed copies; supporting the black market is not a good way to m
One of the biggest problems from my perspective is that Apple doesn't have anything remotely close to a decent desktop replacement. The 17" MBP is a nice machine, but for $2600 it damn well better be... and yet it still lacks a lot of things it really ought to have. A second hard drive bay, for example... most 17" laptops seem to have this now, and it makes a huge difference in whether the laptop can be used as your primary (only, since I'm a student without the cash for multiple machines) computer. The dv9000 also has a dedicated numpad, very handy for gaming and data entry. Speaking of gaming, the dv9000 is available with 512MB of VRAM (GeForece Go 7600, 256MB or 512MB). With a C2D (lower clock speed, but still fast) and 2GB of RAM, it's still hundreds less than the 17" MBP. Sure, the price goes up pretty fast as you upgrade the processor, but Apple's 17" MBP is basically their higher-end 15.4" with a bigger screen. For the increase in price they charge, they could have put a hell of a lot more stuff in there for you.
The dv9000 also offered things like a TV-tuner, HD-DVD drive, and a cardreader. Some of those are optional because they are unneccessary for most people, but as a photography buff, the includion of a built-in cardreader (not even optional, IIRC) vs. no cardreader at all makes me wonder just who the hell was in charge of the feature list for the MBP.
When I bought my dv9000, it cost $1800. Back then, MBPs weren't even using C2Ds yet (just so you realize how cutting edge the machine's hardware was). With a second harddrive, its capacity blows the MBP out of the water. Yes, it's still slower clock-wise, but it's a perfectly good gaming box. If I'd had the cash, I could have pushed the processor up a lot more (still withoug coming close to the MBP's price), but I've always felt people obsess about clock speed far too much.
It's an add-on, but you might be interested to know that there's a free/open source (BSD license) plug-in and converter for Office 2007 to support ODF. Reads, writes, and converts existing files. To the extent that I've tested it, it seems to work. A file that was 22.5KB in MS OOXML.docx is only 10.5KB in.odt, and it wasn't difficult to convert at all. It uses C# and XSLT to convert between the XML formats.
According to what I read, it's an ALSA issue, and the last time I checked there simply wasn't a new enough version of ALSA. People with older HP laptops got the mics working by patching ALSA or installing newer packages (once the pathes were added to the mainstream version). Unfortunately, they don't seem to have worked for me... it now sees the mic (I can adjust levels for it), but doesn't hear anything from it. Skype still reports no audio input as well. I doubt even a complete upgrade of the kernel would help, and Suse's kernel version tends to lag a bit behind anyhow due to modifications that would be lost if I went to the vanilla kernel. I suppose it's possible some other distro has written a driver for it, but I'd rather wait for that to be merged into the mainstream version of ALSA (or even patch and recompile) than switch to another distro at this point.
They have to choose to save or open it first. That dialog shows the full filename AND the file type. Furthermore, the fact that it's even asking if they want to open the file without just displaying it should clue tham in that it isn't an image.
That has nothing to do with what I said. If the user is expecting the file to be an image, they are NOT going to expect a dialog asking about running downloaded SOFTWARE.
Wow, when was the last time you used a system with a preinstalled copy of Windows on it? The question isn't whether it comes with image software, it's which software will end up as default. Then there's Picassa (which is both widely advertised online and bundled with lots of software) and Irvanview (which is perhaps the most widely used of those little hobbiest freeware programs you mentioned, and one of the easiest programs to get friends to install because it is simply fantastic at what it does). Then there's the various programs that come with every digital camera in existence and for some reason people actually go ahead and install them.
I don't do anything requiring a password on any untrusted computer, but your point is valid. However, aside from the fact that it would mess up my friend's machine (not mine) you're still missing a couple things.
Essentially all email programs show show the file extensions. If they don't, then people will probably get suspicious when they see the extension that they don't expect. Furthermore, most present a strong warning, at the least, about opening executables (some don't let you do so at all, which I consider the wrong approach, but it sure fixes this issue). Additionally, most programs (including Windows Explorer, in either desktop of file browser modes) tell you what type the file is. Honestly, that's why extensions are hidden by default... how many people know that a.scr file is an executable screen saver? Not bloody many... but they can read the tooltip/details column/Open or Save downloading file or attachment dialog box/Executable file warning dialog. Some people can't get Windows 98 out of their heads, though. Furthermore, the icon issue is a real one; Preinstalled Windows systems come with so much crap (usually including several image viewers) that there's no why of knowing which will be used out of the box, let alone after somebody puts in the CD that came with their digital camera and installs the included software. Also, programs like Irfanview or Picassa are among the easiest things to get friends (or web users) to install because XP's built-in viewer kind of sucks.
Your grandma argument has a lot of holes, so I'll point out just a few of them... Somebody who buys a computer as a fancy fax machine probably isn't qualified to be using one. Somebody like that probably wouldn't notice if the file was BabyPictures.exe or even BabyPictures.sh instead of BabyPictures.jpg.scr. She wouldn't need to. See reasons about warnings and file types above. Grandma wouldn't be opening files from just anybody, most likely (especially porn spam). Worms are a bigger threat, but any time you get a worm, it means somebody you know fscked up. Grandma probably wouldn't be in many peoples' address books. Finally, I don't know about you, but my grandma teaches computer use courses at the local senior center and while I wouldnt' quite call her a programmer, she probably knows more about Excel macros than I do. Don't assume that just beause somebody's children had already grown up before he or she first touched a computer means that person won't be able to use one well.
While there are certainly spambots in first-world contries running on legit version of Windows that are kept up to date, the vast majority come from Asian and African countries where the average consumer couldn't buy a legit copy even if they knew to ask, and therefore even if the systems come with SP2 and can connect to Windows Update, there could be anything pre-installed on them including rootkits, backdoors, or spam/hackbots. I've been there, I've seen 'em. There actually are some advantages to genuine versions of Windows, believe it or not.
I left this point for last because your argument should have been about Linux in general and not Ubuntu specifically, but ANY comparison between Ubuntu 7.xx and XP is automatically bogus. Even if you consider SP2, Ubuntu distros of that era were essentially unusable (hell, version 5.xx had showstopper bugs when I tried less than 18 months ago). Vista is a lot better about not assuming that the user knows how to safely use a computer.
A) You can disable that nagging B) There are free antivirus solutions. Hell, join a beta for one and you can even get the commercial ones for free. C) UAC isn't an antivirus. UAC limits privileges, nothing more. I could easily write an script for Linux that runs with user privileges, grabs all your documents, and emails them to a maildrop somewhere. It could do far more if I wanted it to, but I think you get the idea. If I wanted to write a real virus it would be difficult to infect any software installed outside the user directory, but not impossible... even leaving aside social engineering, I could (for example) write a malicious program, bundle it in a tarball for something else, and modify the makefile's install target to run it. There, one *nix trojan that will get itself installed with root privileges. Most people would probably fall for it too; I know I don't generally hashcheck my tarballs against some reputable source, and I only read the makefile if it doesn't build/install correctly on first try. Hmm... maybe I should start doing those. Anyhow, my point is that UAC doesn't provide immunity from viruses.
You do realize this is a COMMERCIAL product, right? I'm fully aware that the GPL allows commercialization and that some (very few) companies have survived selling open-source software (or at least support contracts for same) but this is one guy is trying to make a living off this thing (which is part of why MS is so pissed that he's abusing the intent of their free-of-charge product). There is a free (as in beer) version of his software, but - like Visual Studio Express editions - it's limited, and those limitations are what propel people to give him money for the full version.
That kind of model just doesn't work very well in the open-source world. If nothing else, he would probably see a real drop in income. The best he could hope for is that those who downloaded it for free rather than purchasing would send a donation. More likely it would be embraced by the OSS community, extended and improved in numerous ways... and the author would need to find a new source of revenue.
Open-sourcing JUST the portions that are already free of charge might work, but it would still lead to somebody taking his source and re-implementing all the proprietary features. While I support your sentiment (in the general sense of more Free/Open-source software for all) I can't see this as a smart move; certainly not as being worth doing *just* to spite the very company that produces the software his software extends.
No offense, but you're presenting both Linux and Windows in a quite unfair light if you're touting running as a non-admin the main advantage. I ran as a non-admin for the last 6 months I used XP, and it worked fine. For some things, like certain control panels, I had to start up an Explorer window as Admin and access them from there, which is slightly less secure, but I closed that window as soon as I was done with it. Most programs worked fine and installing using Runas was never an issue. Never mind that Vista's UAC provides most of the advantages of Linux's default style in its default configuration, and can be adjusted to do more (for example, by requiring a password like Ubuntu does for root access). To head off anybody who read somebody's claim about UAC or used a beta build or something and based on that thinks UAC prompts way too much/for silly things/is too annoying, I challenge you to find any regular action in Linux that doesn't require root privileges where in Vista UAC prompts for it. They even made it so that things like Admin-owned files on your desktop can be modified or deleted with just user permissions. Most user-space programs can be installed without admin privileges, even (same as Linux... unless you use a package manager or install using the default destination in most makefiles). It may not be the default, but it's dead easy to set up.
Additionally, the whole hidden extansions thing makes me wonder when you last used Windows. Yes, that "feature" is still enabled by default (and is the first thing I turned off) but the extensions do show as you download the file (as in, "X% of ABC.ext") and suggesting that it runs without prompts is total BS. At a minimum, Windows tags the file as downloaded and won't run it without throwing up a propmpt stating that the file was downloaded from the web, that this type of file can harm your computer, and that you should only run it if you trust the source. Also, don't forget that the icon will almost certainly be wrong. Oh, and they will be seeing "the extension" when they normally wouldn't expect to! It would take a fairly impressively dumb user to continue thinking that file was an image... and while I know there are people that dumb, the only way Linux is any safer for them is that nobody bothers to try socially engineering Linux users.
Then again, I suppose people don't like being told that they are too easily engineered into installing their own malware and that on Linux it will look out of place. That's mostly what it boils down to, though (and the issue of always running as Admin... which is one of the main improvements in Vista).
Sadly, I'm a laptop user (the dv9000 series is HPs current line of 17" 'entertainment' laptops) so neither option seems to work. I may well file a bug report, after going hunting for info again. It's not as if I actually use the built-in mic much, Skype aside. Evenrything else, including hibernate and WiFi (the bane of my previous Linux systems) runs fine.
in the tropics, I can assure you that cloudy days have a massive production impact. I actually live in Seattle now, but spent most of my high school days on a boat in the tropics. Said boat was powered entirely (whenever possible, and it usually was) by 4x 120W panels (that's supposed to be about 120W per 1KW insolation, so 12% efficiency). My chores, among other things, included monitoring the energy levels. Although I do not have as much data as I thought I had, it is online here. (My apologies for site design, I didn't know anything about web programming then).
Although the sample size could be larger and I don't explicitly note the weather on each day, consider 30 Jan vs. 7 Feb. and you'll notice the difference. It was never really grey and dark all day - we were in the Caribbean after all - but many readings on the 7th were far less than half those at the same time on the 30th. Consider especially the 12:45 to 14:15 period... and then notice what happened at 14:30 on the 30th, when production dropped to less than half the average for that hour and stayed that way for 30 minutes. That's a big squall, bit it was *just* a squall; nothing but clouds and rain.
Now consider what the impact on solar production Seattle's weather would be. For those who don't know, it doesn't actually rain the much here; it just rains (or looks like it's about to) constantly. We're up to a week of clear sunny skies at the moment, and its slightly scary. Girls are walking around in bikinis like it's Hawaii (ok, that part is cool). Everybody knows it won't last... and this is one of the best times of year here. During fall through most of spring, we're lucky to get more than a few hours like this in a week, doubly lucky if they fall on the same day.
I'm not saying that photovoltaics can't be used here, but anybody suggesting they would be 70%-80% as effective as somewhere ideal(that's how I read the gpp) is off his (or her) rocker. Clouds have a HUGE impact on energy production, and it doesn't help that we're 30 degrees further north than those readings were taken at so the base insolation is much lower to begin with.
Nope. alsamixer (and KDE's sound mixer, which I think is just a GUI for the same) don't even report that the mic exists. At all. As far as they're concerned I don't even have one. The only thing I can think of is that it may somehow be connected to the (non-functioning) webcam, becasue audio output works fine.
I went online and found a couple people mentioning similar problems, and downloaded & installed the packages they were talking about. It helped some things but the mic is still missing.
Oh, and is there a good way to get Linux to recognize me pluggin in the headphones and mute the main speakers (and do the reverse)? I seem to remember this on a previous Linux system of mine but it doesn't work now.
Possibly offtopic, since I haven't played LOTRO or even WoW (though I've seen enough of it) but I do play EVE...
The only downside to EVE's combat log is that it scrolls too fast when firing all weapons to be really readable, especially if you're fighting multiple enemies (their hits also show up). Like virtually all elements of the UI, it can be closed, minimized, made transparent, moved, resized, or possibly even merged with other windows (never tried this; I never have it on). Normally log info appears in fairly small text near the top middle of the screen. Still hard to read everything (usually impossible in fact) but enough to know that your target has heavy Kinetic defense, so you should switch to a different damage type.
Collision detection is slightly limited in EVE, most notably when undocking from a station (often I've undocked a small ship at the same time as somebody in a freighter, and I appear to be physically inside their ship). It usually sorts itself out the moment either ship maneuvers though. In combat, you can actually ram other ships to knock them off course (no damage, but it makes it hell to align for warping out) though the fact that interceptors (extra-small frigates) can "bump" freighters (literally thousands times the size of inties) is a bit weird; the small ships would presumably just bounce, even taking the vastly higher speed of inties into account.
It'd be a lie to say EVE has no grinding, but it's not a very essential part of the game by comparison. PVP is where it's at in EVE, unless you actually like mining. A couple hours can fund days of combat operations if your losses aren't too high and/or you don't fly terribly expensive stuff.
In EVE, there's no limiting on what you can or can't enter except that some large ships can't enter some complexes. Of course, you could go jump in a smaller one... The limitations on EVE are the size of space; without a warp bookmark (such as you get from an agent) you'll never find things like mission warp gates (which disappear after the mission is completed anyhow). All systems and all areas in those systems are accessible to every player, though.
You can target and destroy anything you want in EVE. Of course, if it's in secure space, you might get the police corps massively powerful drone ships pounding you into dust... but anything that exists in space can be targeted, anything that can be targeted can be shot and destroyed, and while most things won't leave anything valuable, sometimes fairly random targets will yield intersting spoils. It's not really worth going and shhoting all of them though... there are far faster ways to make money. Anyhow, note that this also applies to players. The only time you can't shoot at somebody is if they're behind a station shield or docked.
... if by CD you mean DVD. That's what I just did on my Vista/openSuse 10.2 box (a HP dv9000 laptop with lots of stuff like TV tuner, built-in webcam, etc.) Results:
Both worked well enough out-of-the-box, with all standard stuff including WiFi (Intel Extreme)
3D acceleration was not good enough in Linux for most gaming (nv driver, GeForce Go 7600) until the proprietary driver was installed. On Vista, Aero and gaming worked out-of-the-box, but I got better performance out of the card by installing a driver off nVidia's site (at the cost of driver stability; thank goodness the driver crashing doesn't take down the kernel in Vista).
WebCam recognized in Linux but tests suggest that it doesn't work. Worked OOTB on Vista.
TV Tuner card required finding the drivers online in Vista. Not supported in MythTV, can't find any Linux driver online.
Same for OneTouch keys. LinEAK doesn't recognize most of them at all, though the mute button now changes color when muted (pushing it does nothing though).
Bluetooth mouse worked in both
Microphone still doesn't work in Linux. This one rather baffles me, because the sound card is recognized.
CardReader (SD, etc.) required searching Microsoft Update for drivers (all automatic though). Haven't tried in Linux yet.
No other particular issues are coming to mind. Linux's autodetection was great, better than I've ever had before, but it is by no means better than Vista's. This is especially true if you include the automatically downloaded drivers off MS Update. Additionally, manually installing drivers on Windows is usually easier than on Linux, in cases when such is needed.
Odds that such a planet exists anywhere is astronomical
How ironic, since the very science tasked with discovering that planet is astronomy.
Seriously, after re-writing your statement to be more consistent and logical, something like "The probability against such a planet existing is astronomical", your argument is somewhere on the continuum from downright wrong to true but unprovable. After all, the number of planets to consider is also astronomical, even without our own galaxy. Add other galaxies (there are multiple galaxies in the volume of space occluded by the head of a pin at arm's length, generally all of which are so far away we don't even see them as point light sources) and you have an essentially infinite number of planets.
Since we know there's a finite chance of life developing (unless you prefer the deity-created-us-all-and-nobody-else argument, which I'm not even going to bother debating right now) it is pretty much a staticistical certainly that life has developed elsewhere. Might be bloody far away, but in an expanding universe where new stars and planets are constantly being formed, life is out there. Until the universe collapses (or the human race ceases to exist) all we can say is that we haven't found life yet. On the other hand, once we find even a single example, we'll know Earth wasn't alone.
There are numerous problems. Would you like them listed?
If God created Adam and Eve in His own image, and God is perfect or infallible, so too would Adam and Eve have been. Direct contradiction if you accept that interpretation.
If "free will" is what God has, and it is what He gave Adam and Eve, then that is certainly in His own image. However, humans have curiosity and must experiment to satisfy it, and God does not (based on the assumption that He already knows anything that He might possibly be curious about), so God clearly denied us a tool we needed to be safe (it was supposedly safe in the garden, right?) Put differently, exactly why were Knowledge and Life suppsed to be mutually exclusive?
For that matter, why would would God create such a temptation in the first place? What purpose does it serve? How was its creation essential to the creation of everything else? I'm pretty sure I haven't seen any trees of knowledge (or life) lately, so they can't be terribly important elements of the world. If nothing else, it clearly falls under the category of an attractive nuisance.
Let us not forget the God also supposedly created the snake (and apparently made it either evil or possessed of free will and a twisted sense of humor... not to mention speech) let it loose in his childrens' paradise! Nowhere does it state that the snake should have been created good (although one might infer that from the fact that its creator was supposedly the essence of goodliness) but what an utter lack of morality would be required to put such a thing in the garden where your children play! Thus God is either evil or both irresponsible and uncaring.
Almost at the end, the explanation most directly relevent: If God created Adam and Eve, then they were His children and His responsibility. It was His duty to teach them, to guide them, to nurture them, to comfort them, to correct them when they made mistakes, and to keep them safe from their own ignorance. Creating beings with free will, whether by divine powers or natural conception, makes you responsible for those who are created. If they screw up their lives because you left them in an environment with dangerous elements that your children have no experience in dealing with, then it is your fault. Heck, from the perspective of Adam and Eve, the snake was probably a perfectly legitimate source of guidance; nobody had told them it wasn't!
Finally, if God didn't want humans to be little automata, but denied us education, didn't He pretty much just make a pair of amusing little pets? At best, Adam and Eve were sentient monkeys in a zoo, placed there without having ever known their parents and watched by an uncaring master through semi-silvered glass. At worst, they essentially WERE automata, except they lacked a pre-defined sequence of instructions. Robots without any programming except curiosity, that had once been given a command but that had been designed to act with a certain degree of randomness. If that's your idea of creating beings with free will, I sure as hell hope you aren't involved in any major AI projects.
In any case, if Adam and Eve existed, then they had pretty much the worst growing up experience possible. They were given curiosity but were kept ignorant, provided with dangerous temptations, and given no guides save for malicious entities that they had never even been warned against. When the urge to satisfy that curiosity (at the urging of a creature made by their same creator and dwelling in their own safe garden) became too great, they were irrevocably changed, cast out from paradise, and defamed as the originators of sin for the rest of eternity. At THIS point, their all-powerful 'parent' offers no comfort or assistance, but decides that NOW He would put protection on the one thing that might, possibly, have reversed the change done to them.
You are arguing that this deity loves us, and that we should worship Him? The average everyday, non-omniceint, flawed-in-various-ways father and mother that most of us had growing up is far more worthy, in my opinion (not that I worship anybody, but maybe I'm just a bit too cynical).
My mod points literally expired minutes before I loaded this, but I'm giving you a virtual +1 Interesting.
The thing that always seems really stupid to me about these claims is that with the exception of joysticks for (combat) flight sims, the controls used in (violent) videogames are nothing at all like the ones used in real life. I'm a half-decent shot with a pistol and much better with a rifle, but I absolutely suck at FPS games... and I bet the reverse is usually true as well. FPSs just don't account for things like the weight or length of the weapon, the affect recoil has on aim (I mean, see above comment on FPS games, but even I know how to tip the sight control stick slightly down in Halo 2 so my SMGs don't climb from recoil... whereas real full automatics are far harder to control and vast amounts of R&D has gone into the invention of 'governers' that limit the number of shot fired in a burst, because otherwise people tend to shoot most of their ammo into the sky. The grips are also different, and even the triggers don't feel the same at all.
The real difference, however, is the aiming. Mouse, keyboard, analog stick, joystick, control pad... it doesn't matter, not a single one is anything like actually trying to hit a target with a real weapon. I don't shoot at people, obviously, and usually not at terribly mobile targets, but even lining up on a stationary target is a major difference. This is especially true if shooting 'from the hip' (which is WAY harder than movies make it look) where you don't have any kind of crosshairs, zoom, or direct LoS along the barrel. Until now, no videogame* I've ever seen has even approached what real-life aiming is like.
Now, along comes the Wii. You aim by... aiming. Your hand is on a object not terribly unlike any firearm without a pistol grip. You are shooting in a way that's pretty much 'from the hip' with perhaps the equivalent of a laser sight added (crosshairs on screen). I haven't played Red Steel or any other Wii game involving shooting with a Wiimote, and I'm sure the best of them still isn't terribly realistic, but it's a hell of a lot closer than any other mainstream control scheme I know of* and if JT actually gives a damn about the supposed reason behind his crusade (keeping people safe) and has an IQ of better than 40 (not sure about this either, but he did supposedly make it through law school) he should be terrified/outraged by this!
*Ok, duckhunt. But seriously, the aim in that game was a joke; it was more about learning how to game the system than about how to target accurately. There may have been others - I wasn't much into console games at all until recently - but by and large what I've said above holds true.
Wellll... he DID offer to provide free IT support and testing for any less-poorly-conceived measures they wanted to come up with for embedding the stream in the ad-riddled web page. Clearly, this is the act of somebody who is just out to get the poor Internet radio station by simultaneously increasing their users and denying them advertising income, while making a personal profit off them!!
Slashdot Mirror
They might get a counter-suing or two... but for every one they get I wouldn't be surprised if they get a dozen legitimate hits. Even after I made it clear I do NOT support DC++ I still get requests for related help on a regular basis (and I freaking charge to help people I don't know, if it's more than a just-a-few-minutes kind of issue). With exceptions countable on one hand, everybody I know with a computer in the dorms has DC++ or the alternate platform equivilents. They aren't using them to swap class notes or Linux distros either.
The question is, of course, where the cutoff point is in terms of making money with this (apparent) shotgun approach to copyright violation cases. At the UW, they might well feast.
The sad thing is, they are pretty much guaranteed to get a hit on that approach. The VAST majority of people here use DC++ to pirate media, and since DC++ requires 500MB (I think, I do not use it myself and refuse to help anybody set it up) of your own files to be available on the network, it's a pretty good bet that they are all uploading as well. They do block nearly all P2P apps to outside the dorms from inside (including limiting bittorrent to near-uselessness, which causes issues for everything from the Blizzard downloader to getting Linux CD images). Within the dorms though, not only are the networks unfiltered, there are a couple well-known DC++ hubs and everybody knows what they are used for.
Then of course, you get people like me (I strongly disagree with both the MAFIAA and media piracy, and while I don't support DRM or software patents I will laugh in your face if you download a noCD/noActivation/WGAVerification crack that fscks up your machine and then you ask me for help). I lived in the dorms. From time to time my computer was connected to a few different networks. I am sure some of those connections were used for illegal file copying (I know my roommates did). Aside from the question of how they were supposed to know who was using a given IP address in the first place, I'm possibly a target for one of these letters (yes, I got the email and wondered how long it would be until it appeared on Slashdot).
I like to think I have the resources to deal with this if I do get such a letter, but the truth is that I really don't if I want to graduate, not without major loans or some such. However, even if they only choose one student at random from the dorms, there is a well over 50% chance they would get a valid target. What they do then may be completely out of proportion but it's undeniable that UW dorm students, as a group and (on average) as individuals, commit copyright infringement on a vast scale.
Facebook for me covers many uses, many college-centric, but a few that have moved from MySpace with Facebook's opening to the public, and a few that are just general web site services.
College-centric:
MySpace-to-Facebook:
General web sites that happen to be on Facebook:
*SIGH* All right, I guess I'll try again.
.inf file and modify it manually. I realize this is a pain, but it isn't actually difficult once you know how. My point here is, virtually any driver for XP will also work on Vista. I've found exactly one device that did not work as expected after I loaded its driver installer using Compatibility mode. It was a horrendously bizarre one-off brand from Malaysia, plus it was designed for Windows 2000/XP SP0 and wasn't plug-and-play even on XP. It was a WiFi driver that paid no respect to the WiFi networking stack and worked like crap even in XP. You know what? It still almost worked in Vista... and the last time I tred was on a pre-release version.
"An idiot check" - I take it this means your one of the idiot masses who run every program as an Administrator, and don't understand why every single other major OS in the world doesn't (by default). Perhaps you are also one of those fools who boast that you've never had a malware infection and therefore XP is, in fact, secure? For goodness sake... I stopped using XP explicitly because it was such a pain to run as a non-admin; until Vista betas were day-to-day usable I ran Linux exclusively and I still dual-boot.
"Even less compatibility" - You know, this one I find somewhere between funny and WTF. Pretty much anybody can name one or two programs or devices that have issues on Vista, but in essentially every case I've found it was due to simply bad design. If you rely on crap like that, I'm sorry you locked yourself in but there are still a few things you can try.
Software: Run in Compatibility Mode and if necessary, run as Administrator. For example, the vast majority of Vista's "incompatible" software (most of which will actually run if you really care to) does idiotic shit like placing the user-level data in the installation folder (which is supposed to be read-only to user-level permissions) or similar stupidity. Usually this can be made to work by modifying the permissions on the program's data files, or by running it as an Admin. A few programs truly don't work, but I have actually found that Vista has better backward compatibility with some of my programs than XP did (pre-XP programs, obviously).
Hardware: if the manufacturer hasn't produced a driver yet, then frankly they suck, but there are ways around even that issue (perfected during months of running pre-release Vista when drivers really WERE hard to find; nowadays everybody has them, near enough). If the driver installer for 2003, XP, 2000, or NT (in that order of preference) is available as an executable, set the executable's Compatibility Mode to the expected version of Windows and try running it. More than 90% of the time this worked without a hitch for me. For those few places it didn't find or extract the
16-bit: Ok, now you've crossed the line from bullshitting into trolling. NO 64-bit version of Windows will run 16-bit apps (that includes XP and 2003, in case you were wondering) and 32-bit Vista runs them perfectly well; at least as compatibly as 32-bit XP (moreso in the case of one of my programs). Honestly, if your post hadn't been moderated so high I'd have given up in disgust when I read that part... you obviosuly not only haven't used Vista, you've believed the worst of everything you heard about it without even attempting to verify anything.
"Security aspect... hasn't changed much" - Are you fucking insane? IE7 with Protected Mode is actually fairly close to Firefox 2 on Secunia, although it is not, at present, as good (in the past, it has sometimes rated higher). Vista includes a bi-directional firewall, far better than the POS that comes with XP. Vista uses Address Space Layout Randomization, making buffer overflow attacks far more difficult in any software, first- or third-party. Vista integrated Defender, whih while not an anti-virus is nonetheless a very useful tool and the only reputable anti-spyware program with a real-time scanner that is available free. There's more, but those are probably the big ones. Don
That is fantastically bad software design (reminiscent of Windows 9x single-user-centric programming) and may explain one of the reasons that Vista initially had so many issue with iTunes. Vista more or less FORCES programs to handle multiple users well.
The thing that astounds me is that anybody could write flagship software for their own POSIX OS with such flaws in it. Does anybody know whether iTunes has the same problem running on OS X? (I presume OS X supports multiple graphical sessions running in at once.) If it does, how the hell did they fsck it up so badly on Windows?
As somebody who uses Linux (openSuse at present) and Wine, but has been displeased by every single personal experience I've had with Ubuntu, I'm really quite tired of
A) people who assume that Ubuntu == Linux
B) People who assume that Wine == Linux (it runs on other OSs; it's not much more than some libraries plus a user-space program that converts Win32 syscalls to POSIX calls).
Wine is not Linux, and Linux is not Ubuntu (makes me want to start my own distribution, LinU, which would come with a complete build toolchain and a graphical package manager that doesn't suck, among other things). The fact that this validation was performed on a system running the Ubuntu distribution has NOTHING to do with the achievement of the Wine developers and the folks at IEs4Linux. The trick is that they managed to spoof enough of the tests that the WGA program checks for (product key, WGA-assigned system GUID, etc.) to fool WGA. It probably won't work forever, but for now that's a pretty impressive accomplishment (at one point, I believe validation checks explicitly tested for a Wine-specific registry key). Also note that this has very very little with pirated Windows software (which is what WGA is designed to fight) since without replacing a lot of the low-level stuff in Windows with Wine implementations, it won't help. That said, it's possible ReactOS will validate using this code.
Usually I stay out of these kinds of things on Slashdot, because the community is so full of people like you that I despair of ever changing anything. But I'll give it another shot today...
Windows update DOES NOT REQUIRE WGA! Is that clear enough? If not, how about WGA DOES NOT INVOLVE ANY KIND OF REGISTRATION?
At worst, Windows update requires exactly one type of significant information about your computer: what patch version of the OS you have. Since I'm assuming you don't mind Microsoft knowing what Windows patches you have so far; this is hardly personal information.
You might be confusing Windows Update with Microsoft Update, which is a service to update a variety of non-OS MS software. This does require WGA validation at least once. While this involves transmitting more identifiably useful information than, for example, most OSS update programs, it's important to remember that WGA is a response to a problem that OSS doesn't have. Consider the list of info that WGA sends, from the WGA Privacy Info page:
Computer make and model: Useful for maintaining hardware profiles, and possibly for tracking down sources of mass software piracy. If you consider this info private I'm a bit worried about your priorities... you do realize that by visiting this web page you probably told Slashdot what type of browser and OS you use, and quite possibly what version?
Version information for the OS and software you're validating: See above comment about patch version info.
Region and language setting: This almost certainly is used the same way as the make/model info: in aggregate and possibly for help tracking down major operations.
A software-assigned GUID for your computer: Can help detect hardware updates or piracy (in combination with the hardware info) or software reinstalls (identical hardware and software key but different GUID).
Hash of product key and product ID: Needed to identify keys and install discs that are being misused.
BIOS name, revision, and date: Probably the same as the make/model and regional info, although it might be useful to detect hardware updates on the same system or the mass distribution of unlicensed copies, especially when combined with the other hardware info.
Hash of HDD serial number: Used to detect people creating images of a valid copy, then distributing those images (either already on hard disks as in hardware sales, or as installable system images).
Which of these constitute "personal information that I KNOW microsoft doesn't need"?
For those who claim "MS is treating me like a thief..." I trust you all don't shop at stores with scanners at the door that chack for any tags in your purchases that weren't deactivated at the register? Why the fsck do you assume it's so personal? MS isn't treating 'you' like a thief, they're treating you as a member of a general public that has shown an incredible trend towards theft. What makes you so special, from MS's point of view, that you're automatically worthy of trust? (Incidentally, have you ever noticed how the same people who say that WGA means being treated like a thief insist that software piracy is NOT theft?)
How else do you propose the problem be solved anyhow? There's Apple's route (require a trusted platform chip in every system running the OS) but I suspect that would be very unpopular (if for no other reason than because most computers still don't have one). Software piracy IS a problem too; to the parent poster and everybody else who whine about how they don't use their legit versions because of validation, don't bitch to MS, bitch to all the people you know who use unlicensed copies (I doubt anybody on Slashdot doesn't know at least a few, even if they aren't one themselves). Especially, focus on not paying anybody for unlicensed copies; supporting the black market is not a good way to m
One of the biggest problems from my perspective is that Apple doesn't have anything remotely close to a decent desktop replacement. The 17" MBP is a nice machine, but for $2600 it damn well better be... and yet it still lacks a lot of things it really ought to have. A second hard drive bay, for example... most 17" laptops seem to have this now, and it makes a huge difference in whether the laptop can be used as your primary (only, since I'm a student without the cash for multiple machines) computer. The dv9000 also has a dedicated numpad, very handy for gaming and data entry. Speaking of gaming, the dv9000 is available with 512MB of VRAM (GeForece Go 7600, 256MB or 512MB). With a C2D (lower clock speed, but still fast) and 2GB of RAM, it's still hundreds less than the 17" MBP. Sure, the price goes up pretty fast as you upgrade the processor, but Apple's 17" MBP is basically their higher-end 15.4" with a bigger screen. For the increase in price they charge, they could have put a hell of a lot more stuff in there for you.
The dv9000 also offered things like a TV-tuner, HD-DVD drive, and a cardreader. Some of those are optional because they are unneccessary for most people, but as a photography buff, the includion of a built-in cardreader (not even optional, IIRC) vs. no cardreader at all makes me wonder just who the hell was in charge of the feature list for the MBP.
When I bought my dv9000, it cost $1800. Back then, MBPs weren't even using C2Ds yet (just so you realize how cutting edge the machine's hardware was). With a second harddrive, its capacity blows the MBP out of the water. Yes, it's still slower clock-wise, but it's a perfectly good gaming box. If I'd had the cash, I could have pushed the processor up a lot more (still withoug coming close to the MBP's price), but I've always felt people obsess about clock speed far too much.
It's an add-on, but you might be interested to know that there's a free/open source (BSD license) plug-in and converter for Office 2007 to support ODF. Reads, writes, and converts existing files. To the extent that I've tested it, it seems to work. A file that was 22.5KB in MS OOXML .docx is only 10.5KB in .odt, and it wasn't difficult to convert at all. It uses C# and XSLT to convert between the XML formats.
According to what I read, it's an ALSA issue, and the last time I checked there simply wasn't a new enough version of ALSA. People with older HP laptops got the mics working by patching ALSA or installing newer packages (once the pathes were added to the mainstream version). Unfortunately, they don't seem to have worked for me... it now sees the mic (I can adjust levels for it), but doesn't hear anything from it. Skype still reports no audio input as well. I doubt even a complete upgrade of the kernel would help, and Suse's kernel version tends to lag a bit behind anyhow due to modifications that would be lost if I went to the vanilla kernel. I suppose it's possible some other distro has written a driver for it, but I'd rather wait for that to be merged into the mainstream version of ALSA (or even patch and recompile) than switch to another distro at this point.
They have to choose to save or open it first. That dialog shows the full filename AND the file type. Furthermore, the fact that it's even asking if they want to open the file without just displaying it should clue tham in that it isn't an image.
That has nothing to do with what I said. If the user is expecting the file to be an image, they are NOT going to expect a dialog asking about running downloaded SOFTWARE.
Wow, when was the last time you used a system with a preinstalled copy of Windows on it? The question isn't whether it comes with image software, it's which software will end up as default. Then there's Picassa (which is both widely advertised online and bundled with lots of software) and Irvanview (which is perhaps the most widely used of those little hobbiest freeware programs you mentioned, and one of the easiest programs to get friends to install because it is simply fantastic at what it does). Then there's the various programs that come with every digital camera in existence and for some reason people actually go ahead and install them.
I don't do anything requiring a password on any untrusted computer, but your point is valid. However, aside from the fact that it would mess up my friend's machine (not mine) you're still missing a couple things.
.scr file is an executable screen saver? Not bloody many... but they can read the tooltip/details column/Open or Save downloading file or attachment dialog box/Executable file warning dialog. Some people can't get Windows 98 out of their heads, though. Furthermore, the icon issue is a real one; Preinstalled Windows systems come with so much crap (usually including several image viewers) that there's no why of knowing which will be used out of the box, let alone after somebody puts in the CD that came with their digital camera and installs the included software. Also, programs like Irfanview or Picassa are among the easiest things to get friends (or web users) to install because XP's built-in viewer kind of sucks.
Essentially all email programs show show the file extensions. If they don't, then people will probably get suspicious when they see the extension that they don't expect. Furthermore, most present a strong warning, at the least, about opening executables (some don't let you do so at all, which I consider the wrong approach, but it sure fixes this issue). Additionally, most programs (including Windows Explorer, in either desktop of file browser modes) tell you what type the file is. Honestly, that's why extensions are hidden by default... how many people know that a
Your grandma argument has a lot of holes, so I'll point out just a few of them...
Somebody who buys a computer as a fancy fax machine probably isn't qualified to be using one. Somebody like that probably wouldn't notice if the file was BabyPictures.exe or even BabyPictures.sh instead of BabyPictures.jpg.scr.
She wouldn't need to. See reasons about warnings and file types above.
Grandma wouldn't be opening files from just anybody, most likely (especially porn spam). Worms are a bigger threat, but any time you get a worm, it means somebody you know fscked up. Grandma probably wouldn't be in many peoples' address books.
Finally, I don't know about you, but my grandma teaches computer use courses at the local senior center and while I wouldnt' quite call her a programmer, she probably knows more about Excel macros than I do. Don't assume that just beause somebody's children had already grown up before he or she first touched a computer means that person won't be able to use one well.
While there are certainly spambots in first-world contries running on legit version of Windows that are kept up to date, the vast majority come from Asian and African countries where the average consumer couldn't buy a legit copy even if they knew to ask, and therefore even if the systems come with SP2 and can connect to Windows Update, there could be anything pre-installed on them including rootkits, backdoors, or spam/hackbots. I've been there, I've seen 'em. There actually are some advantages to genuine versions of Windows, believe it or not.
I left this point for last because your argument should have been about Linux in general and not Ubuntu specifically, but ANY comparison between Ubuntu 7.xx and XP is automatically bogus. Even if you consider SP2, Ubuntu distros of that era were essentially unusable (hell, version 5.xx had showstopper bugs when I tried less than 18 months ago). Vista is a lot better about not assuming that the user knows how to safely use a computer.
A) You can disable that nagging
B) There are free antivirus solutions. Hell, join a beta for one and you can even get the commercial ones for free.
C) UAC isn't an antivirus. UAC limits privileges, nothing more. I could easily write an script for Linux that runs with user privileges, grabs all your documents, and emails them to a maildrop somewhere. It could do far more if I wanted it to, but I think you get the idea. If I wanted to write a real virus it would be difficult to infect any software installed outside the user directory, but not impossible... even leaving aside social engineering, I could (for example) write a malicious program, bundle it in a tarball for something else, and modify the makefile's install target to run it. There, one *nix trojan that will get itself installed with root privileges. Most people would probably fall for it too; I know I don't generally hashcheck my tarballs against some reputable source, and I only read the makefile if it doesn't build/install correctly on first try. Hmm... maybe I should start doing those. Anyhow, my point is that UAC doesn't provide immunity from viruses.
You do realize this is a COMMERCIAL product, right? I'm fully aware that the GPL allows commercialization and that some (very few) companies have survived selling open-source software (or at least support contracts for same) but this is one guy is trying to make a living off this thing (which is part of why MS is so pissed that he's abusing the intent of their free-of-charge product). There is a free (as in beer) version of his software, but - like Visual Studio Express editions - it's limited, and those limitations are what propel people to give him money for the full version.
That kind of model just doesn't work very well in the open-source world. If nothing else, he would probably see a real drop in income. The best he could hope for is that those who downloaded it for free rather than purchasing would send a donation. More likely it would be embraced by the OSS community, extended and improved in numerous ways... and the author would need to find a new source of revenue.
Open-sourcing JUST the portions that are already free of charge might work, but it would still lead to somebody taking his source and re-implementing all the proprietary features. While I support your sentiment (in the general sense of more Free/Open-source software for all) I can't see this as a smart move; certainly not as being worth doing *just* to spite the very company that produces the software his software extends.
No offense, but you're presenting both Linux and Windows in a quite unfair light if you're touting running as a non-admin the main advantage. I ran as a non-admin for the last 6 months I used XP, and it worked fine. For some things, like certain control panels, I had to start up an Explorer window as Admin and access them from there, which is slightly less secure, but I closed that window as soon as I was done with it. Most programs worked fine and installing using Runas was never an issue. Never mind that Vista's UAC provides most of the advantages of Linux's default style in its default configuration, and can be adjusted to do more (for example, by requiring a password like Ubuntu does for root access). To head off anybody who read somebody's claim about UAC or used a beta build or something and based on that thinks UAC prompts way too much/for silly things/is too annoying, I challenge you to find any regular action in Linux that doesn't require root privileges where in Vista UAC prompts for it. They even made it so that things like Admin-owned files on your desktop can be modified or deleted with just user permissions. Most user-space programs can be installed without admin privileges, even (same as Linux... unless you use a package manager or install using the default destination in most makefiles). It may not be the default, but it's dead easy to set up.
Additionally, the whole hidden extansions thing makes me wonder when you last used Windows. Yes, that "feature" is still enabled by default (and is the first thing I turned off) but the extensions do show as you download the file (as in, "X% of ABC.ext") and suggesting that it runs without prompts is total BS. At a minimum, Windows tags the file as downloaded and won't run it without throwing up a propmpt stating that the file was downloaded from the web, that this type of file can harm your computer, and that you should only run it if you trust the source. Also, don't forget that the icon will almost certainly be wrong. Oh, and they will be seeing "the extension" when they normally wouldn't expect to! It would take a fairly impressively dumb user to continue thinking that file was an image... and while I know there are people that dumb, the only way Linux is any safer for them is that nobody bothers to try socially engineering Linux users.
Then again, I suppose people don't like being told that they are too easily engineered into installing their own malware and that on Linux it will look out of place. That's mostly what it boils down to, though (and the issue of always running as Admin... which is one of the main improvements in Vista).
Sadly, I'm a laptop user (the dv9000 series is HPs current line of 17" 'entertainment' laptops) so neither option seems to work. I may well file a bug report, after going hunting for info again. It's not as if I actually use the built-in mic much, Skype aside. Evenrything else, including hibernate and WiFi (the bane of my previous Linux systems) runs fine.
in the tropics, I can assure you that cloudy days have a massive production impact. I actually live in Seattle now, but spent most of my high school days on a boat in the tropics. Said boat was powered entirely (whenever possible, and it usually was) by 4x 120W panels (that's supposed to be about 120W per 1KW insolation, so 12% efficiency). My chores, among other things, included monitoring the energy levels. Although I do not have as much data as I thought I had, it is online here. (My apologies for site design, I didn't know anything about web programming then).
Although the sample size could be larger and I don't explicitly note the weather on each day, consider 30 Jan vs. 7 Feb. and you'll notice the difference. It was never really grey and dark all day - we were in the Caribbean after all - but many readings on the 7th were far less than half those at the same time on the 30th. Consider especially the 12:45 to 14:15 period... and then notice what happened at 14:30 on the 30th, when production dropped to less than half the average for that hour and stayed that way for 30 minutes. That's a big squall, bit it was *just* a squall; nothing but clouds and rain.
Now consider what the impact on solar production Seattle's weather would be. For those who don't know, it doesn't actually rain the much here; it just rains (or looks like it's about to) constantly. We're up to a week of clear sunny skies at the moment, and its slightly scary. Girls are walking around in bikinis like it's Hawaii (ok, that part is cool). Everybody knows it won't last... and this is one of the best times of year here. During fall through most of spring, we're lucky to get more than a few hours like this in a week, doubly lucky if they fall on the same day.
I'm not saying that photovoltaics can't be used here, but anybody suggesting they would be 70%-80% as effective as somewhere ideal(that's how I read the gpp) is off his (or her) rocker. Clouds have a HUGE impact on energy production, and it doesn't help that we're 30 degrees further north than those readings were taken at so the base insolation is much lower to begin with.
Nope. alsamixer (and KDE's sound mixer, which I think is just a GUI for the same) don't even report that the mic exists. At all. As far as they're concerned I don't even have one. The only thing I can think of is that it may somehow be connected to the (non-functioning) webcam, becasue audio output works fine.
I went online and found a couple people mentioning similar problems, and downloaded & installed the packages they were talking about. It helped some things but the mic is still missing.
Oh, and is there a good way to get Linux to recognize me pluggin in the headphones and mute the main speakers (and do the reverse)? I seem to remember this on a previous Linux system of mine but it doesn't work now.
Possibly offtopic, since I haven't played LOTRO or even WoW (though I've seen enough of it) but I do play EVE...
The only downside to EVE's combat log is that it scrolls too fast when firing all weapons to be really readable, especially if you're fighting multiple enemies (their hits also show up). Like virtually all elements of the UI, it can be closed, minimized, made transparent, moved, resized, or possibly even merged with other windows (never tried this; I never have it on). Normally log info appears in fairly small text near the top middle of the screen. Still hard to read everything (usually impossible in fact) but enough to know that your target has heavy Kinetic defense, so you should switch to a different damage type.
Collision detection is slightly limited in EVE, most notably when undocking from a station (often I've undocked a small ship at the same time as somebody in a freighter, and I appear to be physically inside their ship). It usually sorts itself out the moment either ship maneuvers though. In combat, you can actually ram other ships to knock them off course (no damage, but it makes it hell to align for warping out) though the fact that interceptors (extra-small frigates) can "bump" freighters (literally thousands times the size of inties) is a bit weird; the small ships would presumably just bounce, even taking the vastly higher speed of inties into account.
It'd be a lie to say EVE has no grinding, but it's not a very essential part of the game by comparison. PVP is where it's at in EVE, unless you actually like mining. A couple hours can fund days of combat operations if your losses aren't too high and/or you don't fly terribly expensive stuff.
In EVE, there's no limiting on what you can or can't enter except that some large ships can't enter some complexes. Of course, you could go jump in a smaller one... The limitations on EVE are the size of space; without a warp bookmark (such as you get from an agent) you'll never find things like mission warp gates (which disappear after the mission is completed anyhow). All systems and all areas in those systems are accessible to every player, though.
You can target and destroy anything you want in EVE. Of course, if it's in secure space, you might get the police corps massively powerful drone ships pounding you into dust... but anything that exists in space can be targeted, anything that can be targeted can be shot and destroyed, and while most things won't leave anything valuable, sometimes fairly random targets will yield intersting spoils. It's not really worth going and shhoting all of them though... there are far faster ways to make money. Anyhow, note that this also applies to players. The only time you can't shoot at somebody is if they're behind a station shield or docked.
After playing EVE, I have different expectations.
Results:
No other particular issues are coming to mind. Linux's autodetection was great, better than I've ever had before, but it is by no means better than Vista's. This is especially true if you include the automatically downloaded drivers off MS Update. Additionally, manually installing drivers on Windows is usually easier than on Linux, in cases when such is needed.
How ironic, since the very science tasked with discovering that planet is astronomy.
Seriously, after re-writing your statement to be more consistent and logical, something like "The probability against such a planet existing is astronomical", your argument is somewhere on the continuum from downright wrong to true but unprovable. After all, the number of planets to consider is also astronomical, even without our own galaxy. Add other galaxies (there are multiple galaxies in the volume of space occluded by the head of a pin at arm's length, generally all of which are so far away we don't even see them as point light sources) and you have an essentially infinite number of planets.
Since we know there's a finite chance of life developing (unless you prefer the deity-created-us-all-and-nobody-else argument, which I'm not even going to bother debating right now) it is pretty much a staticistical certainly that life has developed elsewhere. Might be bloody far away, but in an expanding universe where new stars and planets are constantly being formed, life is out there. Until the universe collapses (or the human race ceases to exist) all we can say is that we haven't found life yet. On the other hand, once we find even a single example, we'll know Earth wasn't alone.
If God created Adam and Eve, then they were His children and His responsibility. It was His duty to teach them, to guide them, to nurture them, to comfort them, to correct them when they made mistakes, and to keep them safe from their own ignorance. Creating beings with free will, whether by divine powers or natural conception, makes you responsible for those who are created. If they screw up their lives because you left them in an environment with dangerous elements that your children have no experience in dealing with, then it is your fault. Heck, from the perspective of Adam and Eve, the snake was probably a perfectly legitimate source of guidance; nobody had told them it wasn't!
In any case, if Adam and Eve existed, then they had pretty much the worst growing up experience possible. They were given curiosity but were kept ignorant, provided with dangerous temptations, and given no guides save for malicious entities that they had never even been warned against. When the urge to satisfy that curiosity (at the urging of a creature made by their same creator and dwelling in their own safe garden) became too great, they were irrevocably changed, cast out from paradise, and defamed as the originators of sin for the rest of eternity. At THIS point, their all-powerful 'parent' offers no comfort or assistance, but decides that NOW He would put protection on the one thing that might, possibly, have reversed the change done to them.
You are arguing that this deity loves us, and that we should worship Him? The average everyday, non-omniceint, flawed-in-various-ways father and mother that most of us had growing up is far more worthy, in my opinion (not that I worship anybody, but maybe I'm just a bit too cynical).
My mod points literally expired minutes before I loaded this, but I'm giving you a virtual +1 Interesting.
The thing that always seems really stupid to me about these claims is that with the exception of joysticks for (combat) flight sims, the controls used in (violent) videogames are nothing at all like the ones used in real life. I'm a half-decent shot with a pistol and much better with a rifle, but I absolutely suck at FPS games... and I bet the reverse is usually true as well. FPSs just don't account for things like the weight or length of the weapon, the affect recoil has on aim (I mean, see above comment on FPS games, but even I know how to tip the sight control stick slightly down in Halo 2 so my SMGs don't climb from recoil... whereas real full automatics are far harder to control and vast amounts of R&D has gone into the invention of 'governers' that limit the number of shot fired in a burst, because otherwise people tend to shoot most of their ammo into the sky. The grips are also different, and even the triggers don't feel the same at all.
The real difference, however, is the aiming. Mouse, keyboard, analog stick, joystick, control pad... it doesn't matter, not a single one is anything like actually trying to hit a target with a real weapon. I don't shoot at people, obviously, and usually not at terribly mobile targets, but even lining up on a stationary target is a major difference. This is especially true if shooting 'from the hip' (which is WAY harder than movies make it look) where you don't have any kind of crosshairs, zoom, or direct LoS along the barrel. Until now, no videogame* I've ever seen has even approached what real-life aiming is like.
Now, along comes the Wii. You aim by... aiming. Your hand is on a object not terribly unlike any firearm without a pistol grip. You are shooting in a way that's pretty much 'from the hip' with perhaps the equivalent of a laser sight added (crosshairs on screen). I haven't played Red Steel or any other Wii game involving shooting with a Wiimote, and I'm sure the best of them still isn't terribly realistic, but it's a hell of a lot closer than any other mainstream control scheme I know of* and if JT actually gives a damn about the supposed reason behind his crusade (keeping people safe) and has an IQ of better than 40 (not sure about this either, but he did supposedly make it through law school) he should be terrified/outraged by this!
*Ok, duckhunt. But seriously, the aim in that game was a joke; it was more about learning how to game the system than about how to target accurately. There may have been others - I wasn't much into console games at all until recently - but by and large what I've said above holds true.
... and don't forget that it contains a lot of shit!
Wellll... he DID offer to provide free IT support and testing for any less-poorly-conceived measures they wanted to come up with for embedding the stream in the ad-riddled web page. Clearly, this is the act of somebody who is just out to get the poor Internet radio station by simultaneously increasing their users and denying them advertising income, while making a personal profit off them!!