KimTjik

First action of 2009 of a nowadays not so active member, partially because this site doesn't work for me unless I "lie" and use a false Windows-user-agent (I've sent several mails about this to the admins, but since no one bothers to reply it might be a rare problem; nevertheless I won't waste my time changing my user agent just to login). Plain desktop: Busy desktop: Edit: I know this isn't the place for this, but why not add some other info about the user-agent "silliness". Besides user-agent decides whether I'm logged in or not, it also enables or disables some of the thumbnails. It would be interesting to know what software this forum is built on.

I would also advice you to skip the live-CD. Coming from DIY-Street I remember that likewhoa made some really good and simple guides. No idea whether that material has been transferred to here, or where to find it. How much harder? That depends on how you look at it. Gentoo gives you good insight in the structure of Linux systems, so besides the initial obstacles it could well become easier in the long run. It's strength of compiling everything from source might on the other hand become time consuming. If you don't want the compiling hassle, or at least keep it optional, you could also try Arch a primary binary distribution. I know I'm biased since it's my favourite distribution, but nevertheless it's kind of an easy CLI oriented distribution (not to make it more difficult but more efficient and KISS), modular and rolling as Gentoo. I just wanted to confuse you with more options! Seriously, choose whatever suits you best.

Not totally true. The argument in favour of Gentoo is how every package gets compiled from source with optimized flags, hence it's potentially faster than a binary distro. To prove it in practise however is trickier. Several binary distros give the same freedom of only installing packages of your choice, hence booting and other routines are executed with the same speed as Gentoo. (For a first time user it could be wise to give the Gentoo project some more time to settle before setting up a system based on it. Even for a pro-Gentoo person like me it's difficult at the moment to see where it's heading.) On topic: - if some suggest Ubuntu, then there's no reason not to mention Mandriva - if easy means control according to the KISS-philosophy Arch is in my opinion superior - if you want to be sure of finding specialized server packages with distro support Fedora or CentOS are good choices - if you simply want a rolling-release that is as simple as it gets why not try a potential top 10 distro for the future, Pardus Knoppix is still viewed as a good and solid distro, it's just that some distros become more fashionable at times, not necessarily because of quality merits. Why not simply give some distros a spin without putting to much effort into it and see what you like? It's much about personal preferences.

Sorry technodanvan I didn't in my ignorance know that the Fox News has been such a pain. But over here Fox News never made an impression, and you rarely see it among what companies provide. Personally it's as I wrote: I did watch it some years ago, but that's all.

Not to criticize you in any sense, but many people feel the same about their home country. Some reasons for this: we're used to it, everything is familiar and make sense to us even the country specific problems or we might belong to a ethnic or social group which isn't affected by possible governmental or other maltreatment. In reality it has very little to do with greatness or the lack of it. Some years ago we were planning to visit some friends in the US; personally I haven't been in more than 12 states, so I can't say I have a complete picture of the US. At the time my wife didn't have a Swedish citizenship and hence was in need of a US visa. She was denied and when asking the embassy for a reason they plainly told me: "we think it's possible that she'll abandon you and stay as an illegal immigrant in the US"! Wow, besides being one of the less polite answers I ever received, it definitely also tells the story about how blind someone can be by a self proclaimed greatness. I don't hold this againts the US as country, now when years have passed it's more of a funny story... and yes my wife has never abandoned me, we're still happily married! No names, but a Cuban writer who has been living many years here in Sweden did tell a funny story. His mother living in Cuba came to visit him, or more precise he payed her ticked. Relatives in the US (the US doesn't play any role in this story, it's just a coincidence) very anti-Castro tried for a long time before hand convince her that she should stay in Sweden and search asylum. The mother came to Sweden stayed for a longer time, but then told them she didn't like it, because nothing was like home we're people had time for each other. It's interesting how people see things differently. Some loves and others hate it. Cuba is of course a special case, since the liberation of the mafia ruler-ship lead to soft communist dictatorship, too close to the US boarder, and hence in addition to other things been suffering from one of the most ridiculous trade embargoes in history. Anyway Sweden got a thumb down in comparison with Cuba in this case. I know that about myself as well: we're all living in our bubbles and presume to much about the world outside of it. Maybe because I've lived a third of my life abroad, but I can't stand the selfrighteous and pompous discussion I hear on media here in Sweden; it's like they figured out everything and know everything! ... Excuse me for such an ignorant question referring the A_G's rant: is Fox News really popular in the US? I saw it a longer period for some years ago out of interest, but it all appeared to be the Muppet Show dressed up as humans, with less humor, or bad jokes, so I decided such a poor news program can never survive. But it has, hasn't it?

Let's say these theories are correct, even though it's based on circumstantial evidence, I still think the death toll of these actions are well below that of Brzezinski's strategy against the Soviet Union on the ground of Afghanistan. I'm not thinking about the undeniable connection between Bin Laden and the whole network of CIA trained Islamic extremists, but about the whole infrastructure of narcotrafficking that "cleverly" was set in action to finance the US operations and arming of these extremists; by the advice of French secret service by the way, based on its experience in Korea. The narcotrafficking has possibly killed a lot more American lives than everything of 9/11 put together. One evil act doesn't make another better, so it was only my personal reflection after watching this video.

An alternative to making a bloated *buntu installation would be to follow this guide: http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/t277698.html I'm maybe biased since Arch is my main OS, but frankly speaking: if you only wish to run F@H this is the most efficient option, just a base system and the smp client. It's just text, but most will manage this install since no real difficult editing is needed, like getting a 3D desktop and such things. Using VMware gives you a boost in points, but performance is still about 10 - 20 % below that of a standard Linux installation. Besides performance the only possible culprit I've seen reported is that the virtual OS might get out of sync with the host, causing errors.

An "old" - at least in its genre - classic: Dinosaur Jr. - You're living all over me

I've got the same as you s1ick, but what I notice here is a huge difference between us two Europeans (I haven't looked through the whole thread) and US citizens: - we have equal speed up and down - other results here are showing a huge difference between up and down My question: is it very expensive to have a faster upload speed in the US?

It's difficult to get an overview of this thread, but hopefully it will be updated. What I thought of, which works perfectly well independent of operating system since it's based on Mozilla projects, is a nice alternative to Outlook with added advantages: - Add Lightning (the equalent of Sunbird but as an intergrated add-on) to Thunderbird - Now you have an Email client with calender features - If you don't have it create a Google account calender - Install another add-on for your Thunderbird/Lightning application, a Google extension - Create a new calender in Thunderbird/Lightning as a network calender, select Google calender and provide your XML - Now you got not just a full featured Email/Calender application, but it will also bi-synchronize automatically with Google Calender - Another advantage is that you'll be able to use the same applications, accounts and features independent of operating system I suppose there's some good guides for this, but in case there's a need for it I could write a guide.

Not really. What you have to do is to look at law in a broader context. The U.S. isn't the universal answer to any these issues, it's just one party with huge influence, even if diminishing. You're also misinterpreting some of my thoughts. If you forget about the patronizing references to 8 grade civics - why should your schooling system bother me anyway as a citizen of another country - you should have attended other lectures as well which dealt with philosophical definitions of principles and laws. That's the kind of definitions I was talking about. I'm not talking about some political document, in this case the Declaration of Independence, which has a very limited and specific purpose and doesn't have anything to do with this discussion. You did refer to the Constitution as an argument, not me, and I didn't say anywhere that the constitution is in need of change, thus you're making an argument about something irrelevant. I was talking about interpretations and legislated laws. Why choose a petitio principii? Still you acknowledge that certain changes to the law would be preferable by a democratic process. Did you think I had something else in mind? That I meant a bloody coup d`état or something? Why then be so upset and rumble about how you're practically wasting your time on someone who doesn't understand the basics? You yourself say that there's a need for change, and I said the same, though we have different views on the current state of affairs. It's not in the American spirit to give up, is it? Furthermore some changes take time. Indirectly I and directly my friends life are protected by some 50 specific cases won in the Supreme Court over a period of 100 years. That's the spirit of someone not resigning to a attitude of "boo hoo I'm so unhappy"! Some of your observations about the music industry is shared by me as well (I think you assumed too much when writing a response; see the "loudness war" thread), thus I don't feel any urge to comment much. Nevertheless some of the brightest talents were ripped off, and hence live very modest today. Many of the artists you refer to don't make their main profit on records sales anyway. These extremely rich persons wouldn't do less good if laws were adjusted the way some of us want, instead it would strengthen the less commercialized artists (they exist as you know) and that's very important. That piracy and bootleg part isn't either for me. I don't have a single illegally downloaded piece of music in any of my computers, despite a fiber optic connection . So this is another wrong assumption. If you're interested in software development, then you should understand why the patent system of the U.S. need to change. Europe is a safe haven, not because it encourage pirating, but because it has modernized its views on what fairly can be patented. How about the U.S.? I don't know, even though I think it will be forced to eventually progress, but it has sometimes a lot more complicated road to go in view of aggressive lobbying.

Fed up or not, Jennifer Pariser, Sony BMG's head of litigation, did actually utter those statements. Tactically a disaster for RIAA's case, but interesting in that it reveals views shared by some of its representatives. So we have enough circumstantial evidence to realize the threat posed by RIAA and what some of them would wish to come true. Nasty copy-protection mechanisms, Internet Radio in the U.S. being economically threatened, meddling in the affairs of other sovereign states and so on speaks for itself. The problem for RIAA is as ExRodie pointed out the the "fair use doctrine", which would force RIAA to some ludicrous actions if they ever decided to challenge it. In a sense RIAA is trapped. That can't be a proof of RIAA serving both the musicians and the publics interest, can it? To not be misinformed, if ever truly possible, demands more than the testimony of two fighting parties.

The logical conclusion of your post tcsenter is that all countries are slaves to outdated definitions. The U.S. Constitution (by the way: which part of 1:8 do you have in mind), which finally was ratified more than 200 years ago, consists of guiding fundamental principles, a framework for laws. Hence a principle which express fundamental human values shouldn't be changed, but laws might be changed if becoming irrelevant or obsolete. Unfortunately our society tend to focus solely on laws, while not grasping the principles behind them, hence the race in finding loopholes. "THE LAW supports RIAA's argument" put some words on the pedestal of infallible deities. The law of any country isn't perfect, it's nothing more than an expression of limited human understanding at a specific time. A society has to use all its thinking faculties and be humble enough to understand when something is outdated and in need of revision. Furthermore the U.S. has a lot of catching up to do: the whole patent system is outdated and does limit development of inventions, and might even fatally damage U.S. progress in the future. It's ridiculous to have copyright laws that actually make it profitable to run companies based on one business idea: manhunt inventions with "poor" copyright protection and destroy them. Do you want new firms with bright ideas to establish themselves in the U.S.? If yes, you need to make the environment more invention-friendly, making it possible to take risks without using 90 % of the resources to watch your back. The music industry is just one example of a bigger problem. And if you think so well of RIAA: why do they meddle in the affairs of other countries? What law or constitution give them such rights? If it's all about laws, why have the history seen so many mistreated musicians and artists? Does the constitution encourage fraud? Why do more and more musicians act against RIAA? Follow the money and realize who's interest they serve.

Out of interest: what does that story indicate? Who has the authority to make house search? It sounds like your privacy isn't worth anything, and that a search warrant is granted on the most ridiculous grounds. At least we got to know that Usama Bin Laden is true to his taliban heritage and doesn't rip degenerated western music, because if he would have RIAA would have found him by now. I wonder in such a case what crimes of Bin Laden's would have been priority number one: probably his mp3 collection, because that's a true crime against humanity! "When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song", and after that Jennifer answered another crucial question: "However I'm not so sure about who owned the copyrights to the twin towers. That's probably a more complicated case of public vs. protected, so I think we should stay focused on what really matters". According to RIAA's own figures they "represent" about 90 % of "all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States" (that's wacky or really sick: they must be bugging a lot of nasty sounds across the country). That will however for sure change, since musicians are the ones who get legally ripped off, at least the ones who are more concerned about their artistic qualities than selling themselves for whatever cost.

That's correct information Praz, but I still think its a questionable practice of MS to force an incompatible format on people who for sure will be a lot more confused than any of us. MS even has forced this to be the standard format for some crucial documentation available for download (take a look at Vista information). Why do they only use these new x-something formats? Hey, did they miss the worldwide used PDF format? It's kind of strange that MS continues to mistreat their own customers in their continuing attempt to lock people to their software. If they ever want to get a *nix user to switch side, which they obviously don't think is possible in view of this and other moves, how will they pass their information forward when using formats nobody in the open-source world will be able to read? "We've got this great piece of information for you which you can't read"? On the other why do I care?