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.
Submitting it will only annoy the editors. Instead, everyone should add this link to their .sig:
8 1& uid=169099
http://slashdot.org/journal.pl?op=display&id=28
Make sure to add a little comment indicating the topic of this discussion. That ought to attract a little attention.
A *little* professionalism, Mike. We are, after all, your audience/client/reason for getting paid.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
You're not exactly lending any support to your own reputation, michael. You're responding like a child who has been caught lying.
Here's something to think about. I'm the guy who clicks on the ThinkGeek banner ad and buys the t-shirt and the rounded IDE cables. I'm the guys who clicked through to Penguin Computing and convinced the boss to have them set us up with 6 new web servers. I'm the guy who LINES YOUR FUCKING WALLET. And you have the nerve to try and blow me off when I have a complaint. That, my friend, is why you're *still* not a real journalist.
Can this account of yours metamoderate? Assuming positive karma, your account should be able to metamod, given the fairly low UID.
If you cannot metamod, your account probably has been flagged in $rtbl, the Real Time Black List. Flagging the account also makes the account ineligible for moderation, AFAIK. It can be flagged by account, ipid or even subnet. If ipid or subnet is used, any account using said ipid or subnet will be affected by the action. Comments can be sorted by these id's, and the resulting comment list looks like if you were just browsing a user's comments list from clicking a link in a discussion. You also might be on the Top Abusers list, but I'm not too sure. I have yet to use said feature myself.
This account, despite high karma and existing for over 6 months now, never has moderated either. Also, this account has lost metamod capabilities some time ago. I'm pretty certain that my ipid has been $rtbl'ed, put on the Top Abusers list or both.
You gotta admit, it does take care of the multiple account issue, listing by ipid/subnet pretty much merges your accounts together.
Unlimited power for the owners of a site is a fact you're never going to be able to get around. We've got SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE on our side. We've got Apache's log files to identify you, and a firewall to keep you out. That's just the way the world works.
If you don't like it you can build your own site. You can even use the code we provide, for free. What a deal!
Agendas? We have the *ultimate* agenda tool, the ability to decide what stories get run! Nothing else compares. If you think our story-selection sucks, my advice is don't read them.
Michael Sims, I refuse to fight your straw man.
No one cares about story selection. Let me spell it out for you: we don't trust you. We want to know when you're moderating posts, when you're banning users. You have detailed systems to accomplish this and everyone knows it.
If you don't want people to know when you're posing as a User and moderating posts, that's fine. But if you don't tell people about it in your FAQ, that makes you just as hypocritical as every corporation you post an article to bash. You're forgetting your audience. We're nerds, computer geeks, programmers, hackers, freedom fighters. We have a finely tuned bullshit meter. And you people are setting it off.
Correct your FAQ to tell people that you're logging IP's and moderating posts. Or don't. But if you choose not to tell people what you're up to at the very least, don't whine about the consequences of being caught. You run a website that lives to "out" people, hell anytime Microsoft makes a wording mistake you are on them like hounds. That's your userbase. If you want to talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk.
Read the link in my signature. We're just asking for a message when an editor moderates us so we know when we're in danger of being blacklisted. And you know what I mean by blacklisted, the $rtbl flag, a secret user database flag to mark "the bad people". We read the Slashcode. We're not stupid. We won't be silenced. And the more you talk down to us, the angrier we'll get.
You should know what happens when people act condescending.
Someone should port a TI-89 emulator to the Strong-ARM 206MHz based PDAs, like the new Zaurus. Hardest thing would be to make a good GUI because the regular keypad on the TI-89 would take up too much room.
Before all you scoff at the busts remember this: the group hit the hardest "DoD" where the ones who told that 16 year old kid how to crack CSS. They told him how to do it, he just wrote the code. I remember you guys all loved DeCCS right, well DoD are the ones who figured it out how to do it...
Oh if you notice nobody from FLT or DVN got busted, after evading that sting you gotta admit FLT is fucking ereet.
Well I tried submitting a story on this earlier, but it was rejected. Anyways, for some information on what went down from people who are closely involved with the scene, check out this site , a detailed list of who was involved and the 'warez groups' they came from is there, as well as locations.
If OJ can get away with murder, some 18 year old in a college dorm can get away with IP infringement - with a good lawyer.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Amen! I've seen a student who claimed to have gotten straight A's in AP calc get a C followed by an F in first year calculus. He told me ``...if I could just use my calculator, I'd be fine...''. He was partly right; he did know what buttons to push for some familiar problems. But he had never learned calculus, and he had never learned how to learn math. All he knew was how to push buttons, and learn button sequences. He couldn't reason.
See what I've been reading.
Like it or not, copying commercial software is ILLEGAL. Although I agree that today's software licensing situation is beyond ridiculous, that methods used by the industry to calculate losses to "piracy" straight out of la-la land, and that small-scale piracy of products such as Windows 2000 have helped companies such as MS by letting would-be MCSE's get more practice, the laws currently on the books and the decisions currently being made by the courts say that unauthorized distribution of commerical software is copyright infringement and that such infringement is illegal.
This isn't about outlawing Linux or personal firewalls. This isn't about invasion of privacy. This isn't about the legal grey area that is file sharing software. This isn't about arresting Torvalds or raiding Transmeta. This is simply the police doing their job, enforcing well-understood and court-tested laws in what appears to be a very well-planned sting operation.
If you think that improvements in motor vehicle technology mean that 65 mph speed limits are too slow, you don't drive 120 and then expect people to listen to you when you are locked up for reckless driving. Similarly, you don't distribute warez and then go whining about censorship and the like once the law catches up with you. You won't get any points for calling it civil disobedience either, because you know full well that these people weren't doing this for the greater good, they were doing it because they wanted Photoshop for free.
Yeah, it sucks. But, as they say, if you don't want to do the time, don't do the crime. Besides, it's not like the police did anything new. Undercover cops posed as warez kiddies much as undercover cops have posed as drug dealers and prostitutes in the real world. With all the security technology out there, if warez kiddies couldn't avoid falling into a trap as simple as this, did they really deserve to survive?
2) Warez kiddies generally cannot interest celebrity lawyers into taking their case.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
There seems to be some confusion on when copywrite and license violation should be enforced. The greatest crime agains humanity is transgressing GPL. On the other hand, defending ones ability to breach copywrite and licensing is a noble task.
I submit that these are contrarian concepts and that greater thought should be applied. For what is a law without proper enforcement?
_____
::Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength. --Corrie TenBoom
--- "1.21 Jigawatts!" -Doc
If a big money fancy lawyer can let a person walk free after killing two people, then a case of copyright infringement should be no problem