Cav's Place

The second order was delivered yesterday around noon, so I finally had a better video card and could also finish building dad’s new computer. Something I only figured out after writing the previous post about this was that he might not have needed a new computer after all, but I’ll get to that later.
As expected, having to interact with the delivery guy was quite scary yet again. It’s a person I don’t know, so I’m extremely uncomfortable. But it went well enough, the only issue being that the bag was stapled at the top and I didn’t notice that when he handed it to me, so I pricked a finger in one of the staples. Actually, I’m quite unhappy with the fact that they always put the items in a plastic bag. Since computer parts come nicely boxed anyway, putting them in a plastic bag as well is just waste!

The video card I got is an EVGA GeForce GTS 250 1 Gb, as I said I might. If I’d rank video card manufacturers according to how much I trust them, EVGA would be the sixth or seventh, which isn’t too encouraging, but I didn’t really have any other options. It seems that I got the last one anyway, because the shop I ordered it from had it listed as “available upon on-line order” and then changed its status to “unavailable” as soon as they called me to say they ordered everything. Actually, it’s likely the last one the importer had, because other shops changed its status to “unavailable” that evening too.
I was quite impressed by its size, being the first dual-slot card I ever had. The volume is likely at least five times that of my old card, so I had to rearrange some cables to make everything fit well again. Otherwise, I noticed that its cooler is really noisy when it’s running at maximum speed, which it did until I installed the drivers. It’s still noticeable even at low speed…
I’m yet to put it through a serious performance test, but I’m sure it’s more than enough for any needs I might have in the near future. A very good thing is that it seems to use less power than I thought, at least if I understand the data from my UPS properly. With my old card and the CPU at 100%, it said the load was 17-18% on the desktop and 18-19% in games. Now it says 18-19% on the desktop and 22-23% in games. I expected more than 30% under full load…
Something seems to have changed since I installed it though. My HDD seems significantly louder and my case fans somewhat quieter. I keep thinking that I didn’t plug something back in quite right, possibly the front fan. The only problem with that theory is that I never had anything to do with the front fan when I installed the video card… I should probably open it again and check, but right now I really don’t feel like it…

Moving on to dad’s computer, I have to say something about the old one before writing about the new. I took it apart, looking for any visible signs of anything being burned, but all I found was a whole lot of dust. I even found dust in between the CPU cooler and the CPU, which made me think that was the reason why it decided to burn out now, after the cooler problem had been at least relatively fixed. But then I even found dust under the CPU, when I pulled it out of its socket. So I carefully cleaned that up, put it back together, tried to turn it on and saw that it worked! The dust might have been the cause of the problem, not a burned out CPU! Still, dad could certainly use a faster computer, even though it seems he didn’t really need it right now…
As for his new computer, the configuration is as follows:
Motherboard: ASRock P45DE
Processor: Intel Pentium E5200, 2.5 GHz
RAM: A-DATA 2 Gb DDR2, 800 MHz, “Gaming Series” (Link is quite generic, I can’t find a more specific one.)
Video card: Leadtek WinFast PX8400 GS TDH Extreme 256 Mb (My old one…)
HDD: Seagate 7200.10 250 Gb SATA-II, 16 Mb cache
Power supply: Rasurbo DLP-435
Case: Foxconn TLA570A
The RAM might seem like overkill, but the price differences are so small that it just wasn’t worth getting anything cheaper than that.
Overall, I think I did well enough, considering everything. He still needs several programs installed, but I’ll get to those when he’ll ask me to… Building it, installing the basics and copying everything from his old one to this one was quite enough for now.

I just have one more thing to say, thinking of my previous personal post: I found out what the most common Finnish curse word is…

I believe I know one more reason why file-sharers can’t be pirates: Pirates are supposed to be at least somewhat brave! Yes, this is partially a joke, but the joke is mainly on us. Very few file-sharers are willing to stand up publicly for the practice, which generally creates stark contrasts between the results and the comments when any site has a poll on this issue. And the very low number of people who have uploaded their pictures on filesharer.org only supports this theory even more.

I’m quite sick and tired of often being the only one arguing with copyright holders and their defenders when there are such polls or articles. There are polls where most people, sometimes even the vast majority, clearly support file-sharing and oppose punishing those who take part in it in any way, but if you read the comments you could think it’s exactly the other way around!
This time it was a poll on Care 2… Once again, I was pretty much left to argue the case alone until I got too frustrated. Yes, the results do appear much tighter than I’m used to seeing, but that “it depends” option might have something to do with it. Considering my stance on this issue, that’s what I should have picked too, but I picked “no” in order to make a point, plus that I assumed it was mainly about the regular kind of file-sharing, for personal and non-commercial use. So I was hoping for more of those who picked “no” and “it depends” to speak out, but once again very few did and not even those really argued the case.

How are we going to change these laws and overthrow the greedy publishers if we won’t even speak out? They can just pick us off as they see fit and we won’t even stand up for each other! They couldn’t do that anymore if only we’d band together. We’re probably talking about hundreds of millions of people worldwide, so if even 10% would make a stand in public they probably couldn’t do much about it anymore. But what am I saying about 10%? Even 1% would probably be good enough, though that might be quite risky.
It’s just a question of numbers in the end. They can sue and even jail one person or perhaps even one thousand, but if one million would speak out to support them, revealing themselves as being guilty of the same “crime”, there’d be nothing they could do against us anymore. You can’t jail millions! And if those millions decide to truly fight for something they believe in, no influential individuals or authorities could hope to go against their will. The problem is that publishers know that terrorism works and file-sharers allow it to be so, staying quiet and only breathing a sigh of relief that it wasn’t them when another is being charged of this “crime”…

Wanted to wait a few more days and only write a single post about all these things, but I think I need to split the story into two parts. Actually, it’s not a story, I’ll just babble a little about the last few days.

My dad’s computer finally decided to die a few days ago. I’m actually surprised that it lasted this long, considering that it’s been overheating for about two years. I could never figure out what was wrong with it and therefore assumed that it was a temperature reporting error, because otherwise I thought it’d have died rather quickly. But a couple of months ago he took it to a shop because of another problem and those people noticed a small crack in the CPU cooler, which caused serious airflow problems, meaning that it had really been overheating. Why did it decide to only burn out after it stopped overheating is not quite clear, but the fact is that it did.
Since you can’t find socket 478 CPUs anymore, and it wouldn’t have been worth repairing anyway, I was asked to order the required parts and build him a new computer as cheaply as possible. He also wanted me to reuse as many parts from the old one as I could and didn’t exactly like it when I said there’s hardly anything I could use… Was particularly disappointed that he couldn’t keep the RAM, since he had just bought some more for it. Hey, I told him it’s not worth spending anything on that piece of junk anymore, it’s not my problem he didn’t listen!
Either way, I got the parts yesterday and built it. Now I still need my new video card, which I plan to order tomorrow, to be able to put the one I have now on his new computer. I’m still discussing ordering a SATA HDD tomorrow as well, because until last night he insisted to keep using the IDE one from his old computer, despite the problems this causes. I might also persuade him to legally purchase the operating system…

Since I mentioned ordering a new video card for myself, I have to say that it seems I’ll need to sacrifice reliability for performance. After I saw the reviews which said that GeForce GTS 250 uses significantly less power than GeForce 9800 GTX+ despite the fact that it’s the exact same card as far as performance is concerned, I said I finally have something to buy. I had my eyes on one from BFG, but apparently only a few of those have been produced and sent to reviewers, as the model doesn’t seem to be available for purchase anywhere, not even abroad. MSI seems to have done the same thing with their overclocked 1 Gb version of the GTS 250, as they have even removed it from their own site recently.
Since I still want one with 1 Gb of memory, despite knowing that it doesn’t really matter if it has 512 Mb or 1 Gb, and want it at least somewhat overlocked from the start, I find myself required to accept only a two-year warranty, because the manufacturers which offer more don’t seem to have any such models available. I think I’ll get one from EVGA, which would probably be a little faster than the one from BFG I initially had in mind anyway. They have an even better one available, but it doesn’t seem to be sold in Romania…

On another note, met someone I’ve been talking to on-line for the past several months. This means I have now actually met three people after initially talking to them on-line, the first two being Andra and Jen. It wasn’t as scary as I thought, but I still was quite uneasy about the prospect. Actually, the previous times it went rather well as well, but that doesn’t mean the idea of meeting someone like that won’t still be just as scary from now on.
The difference between now and back when I met Andra or Jen was that now we just went for a walk, so all of it was in a public place, we didn’t get in and talk in my room (or in our room, since I met Jen when I was living with Andra). I’m not sure if that made it easier or harder… Being out makes me quite uneasy in itself, but at the same time it’d probably be a little weird to be in the same room with someone I don’t already have a connection with at a quite different level. Still, the fact that she found things to talk about for most of the time we spent together certainly made things easier, because if I’d have had to say much it’d have been very awkward for both of us.

Moving on, as if I didn’t feel embarrassed enough as it was, dad made me make a fool of myself yesterday morning… The guy who was supposed to deliver the parts for dad’s new computer called me to ask if I was at home and say that he’s in front of the building and is about to ring to be allowed in. I wondered why did he have to call and tell me that, but I went out of my room to wait for him. Parents asked if the order was about to arrive, I said yes and then was left to wander around for a few minutes, wondering why wasn’t that guy ringing yet.
I eventually looked and noticed that he couldn’t, because dad hadn’t turned the damn thing back on when he woke up, so that’s when I realized why he called. I assume that while I kept pacing and wondering why wasn’t he ringing, he kept ringing and wondering why I wasn’t answering.
Asked dad why was it off as soon as I noticed and he just shrugged, despite knowing that it should have been on and even saying the night before that he’ll remember to turn it on… Great, making a fool of myself when it’s not even my fault…

Since I had to wake up rather early to make sure the delivery guy won’t catch me still sleeping, I only slept about three and a half hours yesterday morning. So I got in bed after finishing what I had to do with the new computer and eating a bit… That didn’t go quite well, because it seems something didn’t want me to sleep then…
A few minutes after getting in bed, I get an SMS from dad, saying they’re coming back from the dentist. I roll over and try to get back to sleep, only to hear the really loud alarm clock from the living room ringing. I sigh, roll my eyes and try once again to fall asleep. Just then, they come in and start making noise… As soon as I thought I might get used to that, dad knocked on my door to ask how’s it going with his new computer, so we talked about that for a while. That left me thinking about too many things to be able to fall asleep just then, so I paced around the room for several minutes. Eventually I got back in bed, but things still didn’t go quite as planned.
Just as I was falling asleep once again, I felt the bed shake. Since I was partially asleep and things are quite different in my dreams, at first I assumed someone was shaking the bed. But I was still awake enough to remember that I’m sleeping alone a moment later, which made me wonder what’s going on. At first I felt around behind me, to make sure I was alone, then I really woke up and looked around in confusion. Eventually I figured out that there had probably been a small earthquake, but I wasn’t certain until I saw an e-mail with the news in my inbox right after I woke up.
I did manage to finally fall asleep after that and slept for about one hour and a half, but the problems weren’t quite over, as waking up was quite scary. I thought I was already awake, but still felt too tired to get up, so I waited a bit longer in bed. Then I felt this incredibly powerful blow to my face, followed by going completely numb. It made me think that a truck had somehow slammed into my face… My first thought was “and now I die”. A few seconds later, after realizing that’s not the case, the train of thought went to “apparently not, but I doubt there’s much left of me, so if I still have arms I have to reach under my bed, grab my cell phone, call 112 and then, if I also still have a mouth, say something, because I have no idea what just happened but it was really bad”. Luckily I actually woke up when I started moving towards my phone.
I was still seeing a lot of letters, numbers and pictures in all sorts of colors swimming in front of my eyes for a few minutes after I woke up and my brain felt rattled for about one hour after that. At first I checked for blood, then for bruises and lumps, but I didn’t find anything. And my head was pretty much below the pillow when I woke up, far away from anything I could have hit myself with, so I still have no idea what happened. Could have just been one of those nightmares you have when you’re very tired, in which you dream that you wake up, are convinced that you’re awake, and then something terrible happens.

So what about Finnish? Not much, just that I was noticing that my Finnish “vocabulary” went from two to about ten words over the past week and yet none of them is a curse word. I need to ask Alina for some soon, because that’s quite weird. Those are usually the first things you learn in another language, after all!

I’ll be brief today… Not much to say except to express a general annoyance towards fake activism.

Just wondering how many of those who supposedly celebrate Earth Day today are actually doing things for Earth? How many walk instead of driving? How many remember to always unplug chargers and actually turn off (and preferably also unplug) appliances when not using them? How many make sure to always fix leaky toilets or faucets as soon as the problem arises? How many even care how the electricity they use or the goods they buy have been produced? How many really struggle to at least persuade others to live a “greener” lifestyle? And if some might do some of these things today, how many do them every day?

Greenwashing seems to have stopped being just a corporate practice, since regular people seem to be using it more and more as well. It might be a good thing that being perceived as “green” has become so desirable, but it’s a very bad thing when it’s all talk and no action…

Considering the verdict of the Pirate Bay trial, I think a boycott is in order. It’s not an isolated case, it’s a matter of principle, and that’s why we all need to make a stand and hit them where it hurts the most. If they’re so worried about reduced sales, let’s see how they’d feel about no sales.
I won’t get into it all again, but they really need to understand that file-sharing is not stealing. It doesn’t cost them anything, they are still able to sell the product to those who wish to buy it, nobody removes the information regarding the real author and nobody is making any money out of it. Those who are really hurt by file-sharing are the “old school” pirates, those who used to burn movies, music or software to CDs or DVDs and then sell them, sometimes even tricking their customers into thinking that they were buying legitimate copies. Getting rid of those people seems like a good thing to me, because they actually used to make money off others’ work.

This does need to be a very specific boycott, however, and everyone who takes part needs to know exactly what they’re supposed to be doing and why. Having people scream about their rights and how they don’t care about those greedy copyright holders isn’t going to help anyone. Or, actually, it will help them and not us. If something like this is going to happen, we’ll have to be reasonable and speak very calmly and clearly.
But if we want them to understand the facts we first have to show that we understand them ourselves, and a fact about file-sharing is that people wouldn’t buy the tremendous majority of the things they download even if there’d be no other way to enjoy them, simply because they couldn’t afford them. That means we need to show the industry that they will face a truly significant loss of sales if they don’t leave file-sharing be. That said, while each person’s promise not to buy such things from now on does carry some weight, it should be obvious that those who have bought software, music or movies legally before are more important to the movement than those who haven’t, and those who buy regularly are more important than those who buy rarely. We can’t say that file-sharing is hardly causing any real losses and then claim that people who pledge to take part in the boycott without ever having legally bought such things do cause copyright holders any losses, because frankly they’re not.
On the other hand, if such a movement is to have any meaning it’ll have to be fair. That means the boycott should only apply to software, music or movies downloaded strictly for personal use and out of choice instead of need. This excludes content such as movies or music intended to be played at for-profit events or broadcasted by for-profit TV or radio stations. Another exclusion would involve productivity software used by companies or individuals in order to earn money or other goods, since it seems only fair to have to pay for something which is earning you a profit. Operating systems could also be excluded, seeing as computers would be unusable without them. The boycott also shouldn’t apply to software which requires constant maintenance from the developer in order to be useful, such as antivirus products or on-line games, because each user of such software does cost the developer money and it’s therefore only fair not to use it unless you’re willing to pay for it.

I recently read a report which said that 95% of the music which is in use today has not been legally purchased and that sales have dropped 20% since the start of the file-sharing “era”. I’m willing to accept those numbers, though I’d also argue that not all of that 20% drop is caused by file-sharing. Still, one has to look at those numbers carefully and see that they don’t represent what the industry would like people to think they represent. Yes, it does mean that 95 out of every 100 songs have not been paid for, but it also means that only one of those 95 had been paid for before the advent of file-sharing. The other 94 weren’t being legally purchased before either! Some of them were not listened to at all, while the others were being purchased from those “old school” pirates I mentioned before.
That means the copyright holders’ losses are limited to that one song and not all 95 of them. But that one song is still 20% of the current sales, which is still significant, so we need to look at that number for a moment. Once we do so, it becomes apparent that file-sharing is not fully responsible for it. This report analyzed last year’s data and that’s when the current global economic crisis started, so a part of the drop is a direct result of that. On top of that, another part is likely to be a direct result of the flawed marketing policies and high prices imposed by the distributors. So it is possible that file-sharing is responsible for some of that drop, but certainly not for all of it and likely not even for most of it. People who desire to buy such products and can afford doing so will generally still buy them, with or without file-sharing. In the end, reducing prices and protections and increasing the number of ways in which such products can be legally bought would be the real ways to improve sales.

I have been known to ask people if they have actually purchased their operating system or antivirus, or wonder if all the music broadcasted during a radio show which includes advertising has been paid for. I generally push for supporting the content creators by paying for their work when you can afford it, so I think I’m being quite reasonable. But the distributors, who generally tend to launch most of the attacks against file-sharing, are going too far and they need to be taught a lesson. I admit that such a boycott is going to negatively affect the content creators as well, but perhaps it’s time for them to make a stand as well and take back what’s theirs from the distributors. If we are careful and work together, we might still win this!