Free (As in beer and speech!)

Do you live in a utopia where you get as much beer as you want without having to pay for it, or do you live in a dystopia where you have to pay to be able to speak your mind and only in limited quantities?

Thank you for interjecting.

The data block would be modified but the signature of that block can’t be recomputed without the key used to sign it

Isn’t that also true of an encrypted checksum, though? For some plaintext block q there is a checksum r, but the attacker can only see and modify the encrypted q (Q) and encrypted r (R). How any change to Q would modify q (and R to r) can’t be known without knowing the encryption key, but the attacker would need to know that in order to keep q and r consistent.

I’m not a cryptographer (so maybe this is wrong), but my understanding is that although it’s possible to modify the cipher text, how those changes modify the plaintext are very difficult (or impossible) to predict. That can still be an attack vector if the attacker knows the structure of the plaintext (or just want to break something), but since the checksum is also encrypted, the chances that both the original file and checksum could be kept consistent after cipher text modification is basically zero.

In exchange, FF uses Google search by default. So they’re also getting direct value from the deal.

The classic gonewild is a bit sexist, though. They say it’s for porn of all sexes, but male posts get buried. It’s fine to be female-only, but then just say that.

I vaguely remember the advice actually being to leave it running but disconnect it from the internet. Although maybe hard disconnect the backups if you can.

The real problem is the government not protecting consumers from such predatory business practices. It’s almost certainly not legal, and if it is then it shouldn’t be. After 3-4 companies are absolutely destroyed, companies will stop doing it.

Customers have more power than companies would like you to believe. Politely explain the situation to customer support, and ask for a refund. If they refuse, mention that you purchased a game that was promised to work for at least several months, and you haven’t received the product you paid for. Because of that, you’re considering charging back through your bank. If that doesn’t work, say you’ll charge back if they don’t refund. If that doesn’t work, actually charge back through your bank. Banks are surprisingly cool about it as long as you don’t do it too often. Of course, you need to buy the game directly (no account balance) from a credit card.

Just don’t be a jerk to the support person, because it’s almost certainly not their fault. It’s also less likely to get you what you want. They’d rather give you what you want so you go away, and you just need to give them reasons that they can relay to their supervisor if necessary.

Does anyone else prefer no MOTD? You can SSH into your server without clobbering your scroll back buffer. It makes everything feel more seamless.

Stop pinging yourself, stop pinging yourself!

Just connecting to the internet on various networks can be confusing. And they’re going to need to periodically upgrade system packages, or they’ll be vulnerable to various exploits. Even if you set up auto-upgrades, occasionally some things will need manual intervention.

Assuming this story is true, Linux is going to be a nightmare for that woman. It’s come a long way, but it’s still not as dead simple as it needs to be for non-technical elderly people.

A robe and wizard hat.

Hi Richard!

OP is 13.

Now I want to start calling people "narse"s with no context.

Meh, it’s a hobby. Lots of people talk about their hobbies.

Still a funny comic, though.

SMH my head