Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Banco, Warez, Fiction
What about a Dvorak-layout program for the number keys? hex4def6 writes "Ticalc.org is back up for business after the unfortunate incident in which "inapropriate Content" was pressed onto the CD's that Texas Instruments included in their "Fun Kit" graphlink kit from the Ticalc archives. New things in the archives include a neat winamp plugin that allows you to control winamp from your Ti-89 webpage. Check it out here. All the archives are back up, but there is a backlisting of new files submited."
Many happy returns! Eileen Gunn writes "Last August, Slashdot ran a story about The Infinite Matrix, an online SF zine aimed at technogeeks, that posted its first and last issue in one fell swoop, after losing its funding (what's new?). The site was slashdotted, of course, and among those visiting it was a Slashdot reader who threw the zine a 6-month financial lifeline. The Infinite Matrix is now posting new material every day from both Bruce Sterling and Terry Bisson. Plus, there's a new story by SF giant Avram Davidson, more fiction by Richard Kadrey and Kathleen Goonan, columns by John Clute and David Langford. Thanks, Slashdot! You've made my life infinitely more complicated."
This is like reading Jules Verne when he was writing newspaper serials -- and no eBook reader is required.
The perils of translation and the world of international banking. Al Giordano of Narco News wrote from Cochabamba, Bolivia, with a correction of my (incorrect) correction on Yesterday's post about First Amendment protections granted online journalism. He provides a better explanation about nomenclature and the Mexican banking system:
"Banamex, or Banco Nacional de Mexico (the way the plaintiff's name appears on the now-dismissed complaint against us), is translated as National Bank of Mexico.The 'Mexican Fed' that you refer to is titled Banco de Mexico, or Bank of Mexico.
So you got it right the first time!
The confusion stems from this: All Mexican banks were nationalized before becoming privatized. It's a long and bloody story and in fact my own story about it is one of the exhibits used by Banamex in its now-fracased SLAPP suit.
When Banamex filed suit against Mario Menendez, Narco News and me, it was still a Mexican bank. The Citibank merger wasn't announced until May 2001 and wasn't finalized until July 20, 2001, ironically, the same day we had our court hearing in New York."
Unfortunately, there's no monopoly on sketchiness. S^(2) writes "Here is a better rundown of the warez crackdowns across the globe. I guess people are running scared a bit and this page is hopping from mirrored site to site, but for now at least check out; http://www.cyberworld.ru/scenebusted/ It breaks down what groups were suspected to have been FEDs, which groups/members will be needing legal defense funds, which groups have shutdown, and a bit on the howto of the crackdown, such as agents raiding a house and watching what connections happened without pulling the plug. That can't be legal, can it? Should I hide my pc behind a wall of something benign, like say VHS bootlegs?"
Or, on the other hand, not distributing warez is an option.
The Scientology situation was handled way above my head. I have no particular opinion about it, except to note that Scientology has more money than VA Linux (excuse me, VA Software) does. And more lawyers. And a demonstrated immunity to bad press.
I don't think most people understand moderation very well. I see there's a reply that is correct about changes in Slash 2.2 that let the site maintainer turn off moderation, comment posting and story submission for particular users. CmdrTaco is the sole administrator of that on Slashdot.
So if you never get moderation points on Slashdot, there are two possible reasons. You might not qualify normally - moderator points are assigned to people who aren't within the newest accounts created, read the site often but not too often, and so forth, several different criteria. Or you might have been flagged. Doing things like moderating up goatse.cx links is a good way to get flagged as a bad moderator if CmdrTaco notices.
Is that "political"? Yeah, I suppose. But the politics being promoted is "trying to run a good discussion site", same as the motivation for everything else.
After snooping around a little with Google, it would seem that TI has banned programs featuring:
Profanity
Pornography or sexually explicit content
Drug-related content
Content promoting or depicting terrorism or racial/ethnic hatred.
Content promoting or depicting violence in schools
Programs made exclusively for cheating (e.g. fake memory-clearing programs)
Copyright or trademark violations (e.g. calculator ROMs, text or graphics that violate others' copyrights or trademarks)
Programs that were specifically mentioned by people included Drug Wars (too bad, that was a fun game, but I could see how parental no-fun no-humor censor types could get pissed off) and strip blackjack (which somehow had no pornography in it actually, or so they say).
the real link, not that russian one is: www.urbanghetto.net/dod. it contains way more information and is more up to date. the other one is old news
Of course you can do 842 calculations in 15 seconds if you mindlessly press 2 [ENTER] 2+2+ 2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2... I mean how hard is that? But I find that the CAS in the HP series could use some SERIOUS work. I hate that damn equation editor. I hate the stupid menus that you need to do almost everything. My TI-89 can handle things just fine. If you happen to have a short term memory and can't figure out where to put your parenthesis they make PRETTY PRINT for that! I admit that RPN has some nice features and that yes, the 49G can switch between the two systems, but c'mon the 89 is at least as technically advanced as the 49G.
>such as agents raiding a house and watching what connections happened without pulling the plug. That can't be legal, can it
By what logic? They are observing illegal activity taking place. They did not put up the site, they did not instigate people to use it, it's not entrapment.
That's like saying watching a drug transaction go down to find out who is involved instead of stopping it is illegal.
You didn't notice the attribution to Reuters at the bottom of that story? That's not NZ journalism.
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
... has been a mess since it was nationalized in 1982. Basically, one day all the investments companies like Bank Of America and Citi had in Mexico back then was for all practical purposes stolen, and the country paid the price for the next 15 years - no investment institutions would do business there no matter how good the odds were.
Things have gotten better over the last few years, where now they're at the point of allowing foreign companies to acquire what was once the "pride" of the mexican financial system, Banamex (mentioned in the article). The problem is that Banamex was supremely in bed with the ruling party, and thus it can still do whatever the heck it pleases. Having said that, US law should hopefully shoot them down in this sad case.
FWIW, the mexican 'fed' is technically not the Banco De Mexico, but the board of governors headed by the Minister of Finance and the governor of the bank itself. For many years this 'bank' was really just a money production factory, back in the golden days of the banana republic mindset when the government printed more money if it suddenly ran out for some reason. 40% inflation baby!
As far as I can tell, the "No Electronic Theft" or NET act, making it illegal "to reproduce or distribute, including by electronic means, one or more copyrighted works having a total retail value of more than $1,000." (description from this page) is now law. It seems that you can read it here.
Now, it should be obvious to any reasonable person that 99% of the people who warez down software either can't afford to buy it, and so never would have bought it, or are just trying it out and will probably either buy it or decide it's crap and never run it again. Software "piracy" might not be a victimless crime, but it comes awfully close.
So why are the feds so concerned about it? Could be just that the adbusters people are right, and the corporations' interests override common sense and the public interest (like, having the FBI spend its time on actual threats to public safety rather than warez mavens, most of whom would probably never hurt a fly.)
But there's a subtler, more chilling trend going on, too. It's already illegal to buy or sell a radio scanner that tunes the cellular frequencies; you can't buy a wideband receiver unless you're the government (or live overseas; so much for the "land of the free"), and I believe you're not allowed to tune into alphanumeric pagers, though I can't find a reference for this. And the electromagnetic spectrum belongs to all of us, not the government, damnit; why can't I do what I want with the electrons running through my antenna on my property?
With these raids, they're telling us what we can and can't do with the bits that come down our cable modem; and with the truly chilling SSSCA and prohibitions on digital VCRs, they're going to prevent the computer and home electronics manufacturers from selling boxes that will even permit us from doing things they don't like with the bits.
It's still a pretty long way before Big Brother and the two-way, spying TV-- but that is the direction we are moving, and as annoying as it is that I'm not gonna be able to get warez as easily now, the broader implications are what really bug me.
Rangerinc.com has code developers in Toronto, venture capital from media lawyers in Vancouver, a web page based in Seattle and the scanning operations are in San Diego.
All the big Microsoft busts, MP3, and warez sites have been busted by this outfit. They're basically bounty hunters. You might have been scanned from this address: 209.95.126.167, they probably have others in San Antonio.
They regularly troll IRC chat rooms, web sites, for copyrighted downloads. Its a bad time to be hosting a WAREZ site.
A better idea is to contribute to GNU or some other free software site and don't buy software from the corporate police state. The consumer still has the right of choice.