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The Floppy Awards
c_g12 wrote to us with the third annual Floppy Awards. It's a pretty humourous collection of some of the (mis)haps of the past year or so -- something to amuse yourself with going into the holiday weekend.
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And PC Magazine == Playboy for geeks?
... because installing Windows 2000 Professional on 974 floppy disks is FUN!
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http://vinnland.2y.net/
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Typical media story twisting made him out to be the author. Why? Because he was the one who got all the publicity. HE got questioned. HE got brought down to the police station. HE got his equipment seized. So, he must have been the one who did it....right?
Bzzzt. That only shows the ignorance of the modern media. The other members of MoRE are keeping low, and anonymous. Smart.
LinuxWorld: OK. Because I've seen conflicting media reports on that, and other things. Like, some say that you are 15, others say you are 16.
Jon Johansen: I'm 16 now, I was 15 when it happened
Sheesh. Innocent until proven guilty? Not on this planet. Accurate media coverage? Wake me when it happens.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
yeah, but he's subject to a *bundle* of lawsuits from investors who got creamed from his stunt.
I really hate it because as a cable modem user, the bottlenecks come from moving from page to page- not loading a page (it's usually those Q#$%#$ adservers' fault). However, the reason they do this, I believe, is because of said ads... the more views they get, the more money they get.
For Windows:
Add the following line to \windows\hosts --
adserver.example.com 127.0.0.1
For Linux: (replace iptables with ipchains if that's what you use)
iptables -a OUTPUT -j REJECT -p tcp -d adserver.example.com
Been a while since I've messed with iptables/ipchains, but I think that's the right syntax (or close to it).
Or just download Junkbuster.
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"Fdisk format reinstall, doo dah doo dah,
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
For those that don't know: A geek trying to prove the resourcefulness of the Web by holing himself up in his house for an entire YEAR! How ridiculous is that?
Salon has a good but lenghty article about the guy's lunacy
--------------------------upSIde dOwn -- umOp apISdn--------------------------
C'mon now! they had a perfectly legitimate claim...
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rev engineering IS legal.. it's just not legal in the US.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Here's a similarly themed, but funnier, article from Satirewire.com.
Fewer ads, as well.
While you are there, check out their George W. Bush weblog--it's really witty.
Wired == Vogue for geeks.
Business 2.0 is for folks who used used to read wired and have since gotten jobs. I nowadays I read wired and I think to myself "I just don't care."
Of course you can't read Wired or Business 2.0 because it's more ads than actual content. That's why Business 2.0 went bimonthly, you can spread more ads out over more issues, and noone notices.
it's not going to stop until you wise up, no it's not going to stop. so just give up.
Rich
The little man who rejected your form because you filled out a box wrong is in the heart of every cop who wrote out a speeding ticket.
Aren't the adds just links ot other sites? So, their selling their souls to waste 1/2 of your bandwidth :)
I take that back - looks like they have their own ads server. my bad
...way back in the day when I swapped floppies on my 128k ram macintosh for hours on end. I became the floppy swapping machine, and I had a killer one-hand technique.
Well, they also didn't mention the practical limitations to transferring several GBs of data over the Internet...
Well, if it's a girl, you'd call her "Dotty."
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Agreed, the amount of pages is highly irritating, but you can do something about the ads. On my NT workstation at work I run Proxomitron as a filtering proxy. I can even route it to the corporate firewall without much headache. At home I run CGIProxy on my home web server to get around the corporate firewall when it blocks pages (until they block my home machine). If you're running linux (or WinX, for that matter), you can set up a Junkbuster proxy that will perform pretty much the same function as Proxomitron.
The last page serves to remind us that, no matter how much the RIAA is ripping us off, whether or not we have credit card, whether or not we plan on buying the CD later, no matter how rich the music companies are, etc. etc. etc., downloading copyrighted music is illegal.
Now, don't get me wrong: I have an over 2 GB folder of MP3s myself... and a good portion of them I don't own the CDs to nor do I plan on buying them. But I don't try to justify it... it's wrong, but I do it anyway.
Computer Shopper == Guns and Ammo for geeks
On page 5 of the floppies, it reads:
"In an effort to watch DVD movies on a computer running Linux, 15-year-old Norwegian Jon Johansen created and distributed a program called DeCSS that cracked DVD encryption, allowing users to freely transfer the unencrypted video over the Internet. He was questioned and released."
He was questioned and released? That's it? What? They aren't reading the same press reports I'm reading.
More like: Wired == People for geek wannabees.
ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
But I'm paying $5 a month for my music subscription on Napster! -- It's illegal to distribute intellectual property you don't own.
But I have MP3's of Britney Spears making out with Justin -- It's illegal to distribute intellectual property you don't own.
But The Offpring support Napster -- It's illegal to distribute intellectual property you don't own.
I have to second that motion...
I really hate it because as a cable modem user, the bottlenecks come from moving from page to page- not loading a page (it's usually those Q#$%#$ adservers' fault). However, the reason they do this, I believe, is because of said ads... the more views they get, the more money they get.
But yeah, here here. I'm tired of the insanely small 'mini-column' that frequents many news sites; usually the ones based on paper publications... I didn't buy a 19" monitor to only have a 1/5-width column be viewable. >_<
The weather and your health. :-D
Hmm... scary thought... if CD-ROM drives were never invented (or any other means of cheap mass storage) would we have multiple floppy drives again? Perhaps some sort of device to put all 715 Word 2000 disks in, so that they are funneled in and don't have to be switched?
Hmm....
The author claims that Balmer predicting a drop in tech stocks is a mishap. Why is this a mishap? It proves that Steve Balmer had the foresight to predict the drop in technology stocks. The drop was clearly not caused by him making that prediction, if that is what the author intended by including that. Besides, Microsoft is the greatest company in the world and Steve Balmer is the CEO. I think if a person is the CEO of the greatest company ever created, then he is probably smarter than most people. Especially the author of that article.
And I nominate the win$hit 98 crash on public TV.
M$ stock dropped in 1/2 since last year. If you are a MCSE, you will be broke.
i think the intent here is to show that no amount of rationalization makes the illegal legal, but for me it ends up doing the opposite. the long list of benefits vs a single reference that you cant because its illegal (not to be confused with 'you can't because it's wrong). thus, downloading from napster is illegal, morally justifiable, and by that definition, civil disobedience by a large portion of the population vs an anti-social law.
on a side note, if guilds were protected by law and threatened by rampant mass production from factories, would we require that the factories keep the guilds in business through royalties? should the government subsidize the guilds? or maybe just outlaw factories for destroying the established market?
if the RIAA companies can't compete with the newest mass production market, maybe it's time for them to liquidate their assets and find a new business?
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The article claims that a program "claiming to be a Gameboy emulator for PalmOS" is really a virus. This isn't true. The program (Liberty) in question is quite real, although shareware. The "virus" (really just a trojan) is a different program which claims to convert the shareware version to the registered version. Read about it here
OK, I'll do the math. $400,000 in 15 years? That's $26,667 a year on averge. Whoop-de-do. Not only that but he gets to room with Bubba and have a permanent mark on his... um.. record.
No thanks.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
It is Viagra.
"Floppy Awards?" I nominate the movie where Bill Gates is publicly displaying how great windows 98 is and it crashes. :)
The anti-salmon
I just hate the fact the pets.com cease and desist Late Night.
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$ whoami
nobody
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$ whoami
nobody
Was the last page of Pro/Con Napster arguments a joke, or serious? It's hard to tell...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I wonder how much Slashdot.org would pay me to name my kid "Slashdot." What do I call him for short? Slash?
microsoft needs to get a floppy award for more than just their name. Their employees using outlook and exchange server manage to compromise their entire network. Official response "Oh no, our netowrk is secure, it's this one little hole the found, and we plugged it". Office 2002 code anyone?
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Since the invention of Viagara that is. :P
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
Between this and f*ckedcompany.com is there anything other than good old family/friend mishaps we can use to get humor for the holiday weekend? Maybe the look on someone's face when they get one of my low-budget presents. :D
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| aim: | bagel is back |
| icq: | 158450 |
( o ) one could say I'm rather baked
Ballmer's showing signs of an advanced "Greenspan complex."
For the love of god please do not let Shrub appoint Ballmer as chair of the Federal Reserve Board!!
Wired == Vogue for geeks.
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This is sad, not funny.
write, hah. port ie to linux... now the real question is, how many people will actually use a ms product on a linux box? Lets also not forget that most everyone using linux has the choice for a small fast browser on based on gecko or something similar... i see no possible way for ms to get IE on linux unless they gpl it and get it bundled with redhate or debian... but i would seriously doubt the debian peeps would include a ms product in their packages. atleast i hope not *grin*
on his site there's an interesting commentary by him about the experiment - i think ZDNet viewed it as a profit-making experience, when King didn't ;)
Just click on the 'print this page' link to get all on one page, without pesky banners or pictures.
- Andreas
Hmmmm... I've been thinking of building a page-collating proxy app for these sites. It would work somewhat like DejaSearch (for which I created the web front end), in that it fetches all content from the site and presents it in a human readable form, without the marketing-mandated mess. It would be configurable through some database-like system which contains site-specific filters. In this case, it would just follow the 'next page' links, get the content, and put it in your browser. Think this might be useful? Then please comment... Oh, and I do not need rants about 'stealing content' and 'breaking the internet by blocking ads' and such. The Net was there before the suits, and (the interesting part of) it will survive after they are declared bankrupt.
Cheers//Frank
--frank[at]unternet.org
Look at that...an opportunity to get some info out there and ZDNet can't even do better than "He was questioned and released"...like DeCSS is no big deal...
I read about the kid who pulled (well, kinda) the Emulex hoax (he lives in the same county as I, so it was all over the local news paper). Although the 15 years in prison doesnt sound too enticing, the fact that he got docked half a mil isnt as bad as it sounds: he pulled in over $900K from the prank. You do the math :)
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If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed...
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What about the eToys mess reported earlier by USA Today.
Goes right along with all the other "Dot-Com Desperation" reported in this article...just as sad! :P
Goes to Web Sites like ZD Net for selling their souls and 1/2 of their bandwidth and cpu cycles to advertisers.
Who the hell breaks a 1000 word story up into 9 freaking pages!?!!!
Gah.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
Napster, blah blah, Microsoft, blah blah, Britney, blah blah, dumb thieves/blackmailers. Is there nothing more to talk about?
What became of that book anyway? Last I heard, sales of the first chapter were way less than expected.
Anyway, ZD could at least have explained why that venture deserved a Floppy Award.
Hands in my pocket