Slashback: Setup, Heck, Servitude [updated] 58
Getcher Woody in prime operation! You may have noticed the report Saturday that Xfree86 debs are now available, and many readers pointed out problems with setting the newest XFree up. A mysteriously unnamed correspondent writes: "i've written an article to answer some of the questions raised and give an intro into how to set [XFree86 in Debian's unstable tree] up (3dx specifically)."
"Sir, I can't sell this to you without your GPS coordinates. No -- really, store policy." einstein writes "MSN and Radio Shack have gotten together to provide high speed internet access that will cover most of the continental US, looks to be great for rural areas, but the downfalls include: $59.95 a month upfront, for a year, $299 bucks in equipment, only works with Windows 98, and you have to buy a computer from Radio Shack. ugh."
D'ja ever stop to think of it this way ... Mr. Buckaroo writes: "Verant Interactive is again trying to change the license agreement of Everquest to make it legal for them to gather whatever information/files from your machine they deem necessary. They are also changing the agreement to prevent sale of characters, items, etc. I remember when games were just games."
Mr. Buckaroo included the full text of a letter to players from John Smedley Verant Interactive's president and CEO. It's long, but worth reading.Makes you think about the voluntary nature of this and the other software you use, and what you're willing to tolerate on your own system.[Updated 4:10GMT by timothy:] Reader Ted Milker set me straight on the above item, writing "That letter you posted about Everquest is months old. And it all came about from Everlore copying EQ Vaults archived news. EQ Vault restored a backup, and one of Everlore's posters decided to "scoop" that story without even reading it very carefully. Ruins of Kunark has been out for months, and April is past." Sheesh -- given game development time, I thought they meant next April! Mea culpa.Dear EverQuest Players,
An exciting time is now at hand. Within the next 2 days the Login Servers will be coming down and we will be doing a patch that will add the EverQuest Store into the front end of the game. At that time, the first product we will be offering will be the EverQuest: Ruins of Kunark (RoK) upgrade for existing customers. This will allow existing customers of EverQuest to purchase RoK for $16.95 (Plus S&H). In addition, we will offer various shipping options depending on which country you live in. EverQuest: Ruins of Kunark will be launching on April 24th. We want to insure that this product is in everybody's hands on or before that date.In addition to this change, we will also be modifying our User Agreement and Software License to add in some additional Terms and Conditions that we will require everyone to agree to before playing EverQuest.
The first of these changes concerns the selling of EverQuest Characters and Items outside of the game (i.e. things like Ebay). Here is the text of this change:
"You may not sell or auction any EverQuest characters, items, coin or copyrighted material."
You may ask why we are doing this. There are many reasons, but first and foremost of them is the amount of trouble this is causing our Customer Service group. Simply put there area lot of people out there who defraud others and we are being put in the middle of it, and we don't have the time or the resources to assist people with these disputes when they arise. The next reason is amore philosophical one and that is that we believe people should have to earn their items and characters in the game rather than from buying them outside the game. Obviously the second point can be argued from other perspectives that we do in fact respect, but we wanted you to hear ours.
The next change to the User Agreement and Software license concerns our efforts to stop people from hacking EverQuest and from doing malicious acts that we feel can affect EverQuest as an ongoing business concern. We have developed the technology to check for these hacking tools/programs and report that fact back to us. Without getting into the specifics of this technology, I can say that we in no way will search a user's harddrive(aside from the EverQuest directory during the patching process), registry nor will we send back any information other than the fact that a user is in fact running one of these programs (specifically we are NOT sending information about everything the user is running back to our servers).
It's disturbing that the amount of recent developments in the hacking community force us to do this. Many will say "ShowEQ" isn't worth worrying about. To us, it's cheating and it's not something we can allow in a game like EverQuest where it affects other people's enjoyment of the game. In addition, although this is the first time we'll be acknowledging this, ShowEQ isn't the worst offender. Recently we had someone attempting to bring down our servers with another malicious program. We were able to quickly identify what was going on and insure this didn't happen again, but nonetheless the potential is there and we need to be able to quickly identify and stop these types of programs. Again, I want to say it clearly that we will in NO WAY send any information back to the Everquest servers other than information regarding programs that we feel interfere with the intended operation of EverQuest. We have had this technology available for some time, but recently we've found it's going to be necessary to go to greater lengths to stop this kind of thing. To those of you concerned about privacy (and rightly so) I want to say that we feel it's necessary to do this but we want you to be informed that we are going to try these measures to protect both ourselves and the game's players.
Here is the text of this change:
"You hereby grant us permission to download Game-related files to you. You also grant us permission to access, extract and upload(i) Game-related data as part of the patching process and (ii)data relating to any program that we, in our reasonable discretion,determine interferes with the proper operation of EverQuest."
Involuntary servitude is another way to spell "truancy laws" Finally, Part Two of our trek through the Hellmouth is online. Read for more reactions on the world of bullies of all ages, and how to pull through it.
EQ+BO2k=null (Score:1)
Re:That Verant post is from April (Score:1)
Fraud (Score:3)
I am a former EQ player.. I no longer have an account on Verant's servers. I also do not wish do conceed to their License change - am I therefore able to receive a refund for this product that I purchased? It is 'no longer the same' product now that they have altered a 'all or nothing' license to use this product.
How the heck are Verant and the like getting away with this type of behaviour? Aren't there laws against this kind of crap? Like fraud, or theft or some such thing?
Re:Oh My God! (Score:1)
Just show them KDE2 they'll think it's windows (Score:1)
And this is coming from a devoted Gnome user (hey when you want distraction shoot up some panels.)
Course I like to mix them all. Blackbox w/ Konqueror and Gnome panels. Or uwm (god that looks cool just need to hack it to use menu the way even blackbox does), skipstone/galeon/gzilla(they look the same), and KWord.
Re:never happens (Score:1)
Just need packagemanger db converter.
Re:Vote (Score:1)
For that matter, Browne beat Buchanan here by only 68 votes, so my vote helped that margin by nearly 1.5%
Has anybody totted up the national figures for Browne? All the numbers I've seen cover Bush, Gore, Nader, and sometimes Buchanan (I assume they alone were on all 50 states' ballots).
Re:Montana (Score:1)
Whitefish = Big Mountain -- a skier's/boarder's dream.
Property is cheap too. You'll see tons of celebrities in Whitefish because you can get a buttload of NICE woodsy property for a fraction of what they pay in Cal/NY/wherever.
If you move to Whitefish and expect to have a decent paying job in the techie industry, you're sick in the head. They just don't have it there.
~dlb
Dude are you high? (Score:1)
People have no problem getting service. It's a whole other question of getting ripped off. There's more regulations and limits in the auto industry (considering it's a 100 year old invention).
Lack of Libc5 compatibility? Does windows support the 286?
Libc5 is half a decade old.
Re:Oh My God! (Score:1)
Re:Regarding the Windows-required policy (Score:1)
Re:Regarding the Windows-required policy (Score:1)
As far as reverse-enginering the satilite dish, good luck, but it's pretty screwy as I remember. It's done by Microsoft(TheMan), so I'm guessing that it would be next-to-impossible (not a taunt, just an edu-ma-cated guess) to figure out how to get it to work. Authentication would be rather difficult, as it would be hardwired into the software (this is conjecture)
-Peter Hessler
Re:yes (Score:2)
It's really because Windows is impossible to support. Redhat 7 is Redhat 7, plain and simple.
So you have Windows?
2/3.0/3.1/3.11/95 original/95A/95B/95 OSR2.5/98/98 SE/Win Me/NT 3.51/NT 4.0/Win2k?
Win16/Win32 built for 95/Win32 built for NT?
IE 3/4/5/5.5/6 beta?
x86/alpha?
Do you have xyz.dll in \windows\system?
Is it in your registry?
Do you have the latest service pack?
Don't forget the lack of proper Win 3.0 compatibility in Win 3.1 and after.
Re:never happens (Score:1)
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xfree86 4.0/Debian/Truetype (Score:1)
Before I start reading through source code (already read the docs) can anybody point me to some relevant documentation? Like on a webpage or howto somewhere?
Before somebody starts telling me about xfstt/xtt/xfsft/etc, I already had truetype support working under xfree 3.3.6. But the 4.0 server is supposed to support truetype natively. I'm interested in getting the native support working. Has anybody here done that?
Re:Vote (Score:1)
Gore: 48,852,679
Bush: 48,608,471
Nader: 2,660,122
Buchanan: 442,814
Browne: 379,163
This is as of 12:50pm EDT.
Kinda odd they don't list Browne's total since it is pretty close to Buchanan.
Some day I hope to have a
Bye Bye Pets.com (Score:1)
LINKS:
pets.com:
http://www.pets.com
commercials:
http://www.adcritic.com/content/pets.com-deliveri
mascot: (remove the space slashdot adds)
http://www.pets.com/cgi-bin/puppy/products/catego
press release:
http://www.pets.com/footer/press_release/pressrel
Why aren't the links in the paragraph?
Because the crappy slashcode bugs destroyed 3 of the URLs. As it is, they will probably show up with spaces that you'll have to remove yourself. Will they ever fix the stupid random tabs and spaces bugs????
Some day I hope to have a
Re:Vote (Score:1)
Mostly he's a loudmouth with great recognition, so he gets covered.
And hell, he did get more votes, much as I hate to admit it.
Re:Vote (Score:1)
Some day I hope to have a
Re:Vote (Score:1)
Are you sure it's not just that in places like that they have trouble with writing of any kind?
Re:That Verant post is from April (Score:2)
I'm just glad I got off evercrack long ago.
XFree 4.0 - Rage 128 Setup? (Score:1)
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Oh My God! (Score:1)
Montana (Score:3)
And believe me, the options around here are not great. When my family first signed up for internet access ~4 years ago, there were two choices, and we were only presented with one. The maximum speed was 33.6, and since then has only risen to 56k (for my particular ISP). The service is lowsy, although the stability is decent. A quick check shows almost 3000 accounts.
But recently things have begun to change. The larger ISP [digisys.net] in the area was bought out by CenturyTel [centurytel.net] (national telco). Goodbye customer service, hello broadband. This summer they offered it to customers in Kalispell (larger city by Whitefish), and they recently aquired another small ISP and started offering DSL in even more "rural" areas.
And what was one of the big issues the incumbant senator was running on? Wide spread broadband. I kid you not. According to common knowledge, there is only one pipe in Montana. Its not enough. My school couldn't even get a T1 line. They had to settle for DSL (for an entire school district). There is a district wide technology committee for the schools, and almost everyone recognizes the importance. Despite the lack of broadband, the internet has become very widespread in rural areas, and I can't think of a single friend who doesn't have it.
So I don't know how much of an impact the MS/RS deal will have on the area. We already have DSL in the more urban areas (a town of 4000 has it), for reasonable prices. The only benefit I can foresee is if it prompts the local telcos to built more stations in the rural areas, because DSL does no good at my house, which is many, many miles from the nearest station/DSLAM.
Any maybe timothy would care to comment on why he chose Whitefish? Perhaps he went to the entire-town-including-adults-get-dressed-up-and-pa rty Halloween celebration?
And the Banjo Plays On... (Score:1)
> getting broadband in Whitefish, Montana and other metropolae;
IIRC, Whitefish already has DSL. At the very least, Kalispell and the nearby areas, with (AT&T) cable internet scheduled soon. Hey, we even have a Radio shack!
Me? 7 Miles south of Kalispell sporting (in perpetuity) a 28.8 dialup connection. I'd check into the satellite deal, but that would require actually getting a job.
Goddamnit. (Score:1)
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Why the fuck don't story submitters RTFA?
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Re:Montana (Score:2)
It's true, though. Montana is in a technology backwash. And I don't think that the bandwidth here is going to get much bigger, since Montana is about dead last on USQwest's lists of priorities (if they could ever find their list of priorities, that is, at last check it was 2 feet up their ass with their heads). And since Conrad Burns is getting alot of donations from Qwest , as well as Southern Bell, etc., I don't think there is that much chance of things improving.
But if you are up in the Fish, how much does broadband matter? In a town where the biggest building is a brewery, you should be able to find other things to do to entertain yourself.
never happens (Score:1)
no (Score:1)
So you have linux?
kernel 2.0.x or 2.2.x
glibc or glibc2
xfree 3.3.6 or 4.0
x86 sparc alpha etc etc
did you compile module f00 into your kernel
do you have the latest kernel
See what I'm getting at? Lets not forget the lack of libc5 compatibility in redhat 7.
Re:never happens (Score:1)
Beyond that, how about video card driver versions? DirectX versions? OpenGL minidriver versions? Sound card driver versions?
Win95 or Win95B or Win95C or Win98 or Win98SE or WinME or Win2000 or WinNT4? What service pack(s) have you applied to NT4?
I'm guessing you've NEVER done tech support troubleshooting over the phone because these are ALL questions I've asked a thousand times. Win32 and Linux are on the same page in this case.
Re:JESUS CHRIST READ YOUR STORIES! (Score:1)
Re:Montana (Score:1)
But yes, there is at present only one pipe in Montana. Payscale sucks big time including the high-tech jobs. As a result the ratio of income-to-housing is higher here than many other states. We have very high property taxes and one of the highest state income taxes in the nation. I hope that there is a growing number of people working to change these negative factors. Whether we win out over the anti-growth faction is yet to be determined.
For those not from/in Montana it is kind of exciting to see Montana mentioned in a forum outside of Montana. It has seemed as if we have been left out of the new opprotunities that technology is opening up.
I personally do not ski, hunt, fish, or send mail bombs.
I think, therefore, ken_i_m
Re:Regarding the Windows-required policy (Score:1)
On topic:
You want to hack with the system? Great. Plunk down the $1249 for the full set of equipment, after it's installed and running, open up your shiny new Compaq, yank out the transmit and receive cards, put them in whatever box you choose. Or just install Linux onto your shiny new Compaq. Import Alan Cox to come and hack up some drivers for it. I'm all for it!
StarBand doesn't care, really, that you are using it specifically with Windows, RadioShack could care less that you are using it with Windows, Microsoft might care, but I highly doubt that StarBand or RadioShack could care less.
Now the system uses MSN as your ISP. That's the way it works. I'm sorry if that's unacceptable, but that's the way it is. Would you -rather- wait until 2002 and have DirecPC 2-way using AOL as your ISP? I didn't think so.
As I've said many times before, particularly in the article specifically about StarBand, do whatever the hell you want with the equipment - it's YOUR equipment! Just don't expect that StarBand is going to go out and offer tech support for those cards installed in a machine that hasn't been certified for use with those cards!
Why on earth would a company touting a brand new set of hardware and services go out on a total limb to try and provide support for 025742057 different hardware and software combinations? It doesn't make sense!
They are not trying to exclude Linux, or exclude non-Compaq hardware. Compaq, MSN, and RadioShack have all invested money into this service. RadioShack gets to be the primary retailer, MSN gets to be the ISP, and Compaq gets first dibs on certified hardware to run the T/R cards on.
Can any one of you tell me just what is wrong with this? Anything?
Re:That Verant post is from April (Score:2)
Re:ok look, another directPC (Score:1)
Re:This just in. . . (Score:1)
Posts like these make me wish I had some moderator points
Re:never happens (Score:2)
Go buy a lottery ticket NOW ! With your luck, you'' win for SURE...
I have nightmares (really) with dll incompatibilities
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Re:Ah, the suicide of restrictive licenses (Score:3)
Addicted to everquest? (Score:1)
Re:Debian XFree86 4 Clarification... (Score:1)
That was that
something on the other metropolae... (Score:1)
Re:Regarding the Windows-required policy (Score:1)
One really cool thing that RatShak/MS have done with the Starband (Gilat-to-home) system is bundle it in a uniform system.
The hardware/OS are all the same, so what you get will work- for sure (or break predictably which amounts to the same thing ;-)
This is also cool because the posited hackers will all be on the same page during development, thereby speeding things up a tad.
I have used and participated in beta testing of the Hughes DirecPC system (which once had a commercially available driver for linux) and have found it to be flaky, flaky pastry. Like all systems that use a land line return (the Hybrid [hybrid.com] Cable Modem in one incarnation springs to mind) tend to blow monkeys with relish. (The Hybrid in bi-directional wireless mode, is most fast and reliable, authentication security aside...)
All reports from Beta testers of the Starband/Gilat systems are much more positive.
Re:XFree 4.0 - Rage 128 Setup? [OFFTOPIC] (Score:1)
Section "Module" ... and others ... ]
Load "dri"
[
EndSection
Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection
in your XF86Config file.
why I chose Whitefish, Montana (Score:1)
She mentioned that the ranch has no regular phone connection, only a radio to town (though I was unclear as to whether 2-way telephone calls could be had over it). She was asking whether there were ways to get Internet service in a place with no phone lines, and I had to tell her "Well, there's Hughes
That area of the country is so beautiful, I'd rather like to live there if there were lower taxes (sorry to hear about that -- just wrecked my plans!) and good access.
So that's why I picked Whitefish. Besides which, it's the only town I could think of there;)
timothy
Re:Bye Bye Pets.com (Score:1)
Whoever sees something wrong with that, please raise your hands. Thank you.
Re:xfree86 4.0/Debian/Truetype (Score:1)
Has anybody here done that?
Works For Me(tm)
You have to add the truetype module to the list of Xserver extensions in the XF86Config file, and make sure your truetype fonts are in the fontpaths declared in that file too. Finally, the fonts.dir file needs to exist in the fonts directory (though if you had it working under 3.3.6 with xfstt then that side of things should be ok....)
--
Lose the EQ Quote (Score:3)
Ah, the suicide of restrictive licenses (Score:1)
Eventually, Everquest's company will download some copyrighted file off someone's hard drive, and a full license lawyer war will ensue!
Ah, I love proprietary licenses. When people realize what this says, they'll stop buying it. As Everquest is sued.
Think of it as the natural selection of the freeest (think speech, not beer) licenses over the most restrictive.
Regarding the Windows-required policy (Score:1)
I say someone gets a bundle of those dishes from RadioShack and resells them. Or, use the copy of Win98 that came with your last computer, and tell 'em "I have Win98; see?" Then, use it with Linux and help the community find the secrets behind it.
As we've seen with Lego Mindstorms, hacking HELPS the companies, not hurts. Show them that as well.
In due course, companies won't be scared of us because of what we can do; they'll be scared of us not buying their products, as our numbers continue to soar!
Long live hackers!
Re:Lose the EQ Quote (Score:1)
That Verant post is from April (Score:3)
Verant backed down and does not scan people's computer for 'unauthorized' programs.
Verant are still evil, but his particular evil episode happened almost 6 months ago
-----
Re:Goddamnit. (Score:1)
to gather whatever information/files from your machine
we in no way will search a user's harddrive
---
Fascinating Reversal... (Score:1)
But think about it: how many licenses actually grant license to the wild behavior of the manufacturer?
This could be the advent of a whole new battle, not so easily dismissed in court by those who have signed the EULA but regard the contract as absurd. What happens when Microsoft starts reserving the rights openly for the dirty tricks [vcnet.com] they used to have to do in secret?
This just in. . . (Score:5)
A Microsoft Spokesperson explained that the wording of their new License Agreement gave them the right to obtain copyrighted Microsoft Materials from their users. The offending part of the License Agreement appears below:
"...data relating to any program that we, in our reasonable discretion,determine interferes with the proper operation of EverQuest."
Microsoft has admitted that some functions of Windows can inhibit and interfere with the proper operation of Everquest, and that this new License agreement prompted them to take action.
The Verant thing.. (Score:2)
What happened was that EQvault [ign.com], an EverQuest game news site, lost their database. As they pressured their ISP to recover the most recent backup, they ran the site on an older database.. one from April.
It just so happened that the press release up above was the news posted that day.. and for most of this morning, it was the top story on EQvault. ;)
Was kind of funny watching smaller news sites leech the information; kind of gave an example of how many people steal news from other sites without ever READING it. Highly amusing to see it appear on Slashdot, though I must admit, I'm not entirely surprised. :)
Re:no (Score:2)
Its because linux is a nightmare to support. Win98 is win98 plain and simple.
What, and you're forgetting about "What version of COMCTL32.DLL are you running? Oh I know you say 5.81 but Microsoft likes to release different versions with the same number. Do you have IE5? Yes? Okay is it 5.0 or 5.0.00.1.23? Yes I see okay that should be fine... oh wait have you played solitaire in the last 24 hours?"
Supporting Linux is as simple (?) as supporting Win32. The reason it's not is because that just doubled the amount of knowhow your support staff is going to need.
Debian XFree86 4 Clarification... (Score:2)
I tried these instructions earlier today, but had to slightly modify them. Instead of:
dpkg --purge xserver-svga; apt-get update; apt-get install task-x-window-system libglide3*
I had to do:
dpkg --purge xserver-svga; apt-get update; apt-get install task-x-window-system* libglide3*
This made sure that I got task-x-window-system-core which has, among other things, dexter and xf86cfg.
Anyway, not a big deal, but that fixed it up for me.
Oh yeah, one more thing: When I patched 2.2.17 for the newest 2.2.18pre the compile failed on root.c: 643 in the proc area, any hints? I ended out just going with 2.4.0pre10, so now I get better SMP blah blah blah..
Sorry for rambling, hope the above helps...
Ben
JESUS CHRIST READ YOUR STORIES! (Score:1)
- Wedg