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.
I disagree ENTIRELY. If a post is directed at challenging a slashdot editor's statements, as many are, then it is most definitely ON TOPIC. For example, I posted a comment about a month ago, directed against michael. The story was about a Microsoft security flaw; in his post, michael commented that the flaw was a WINDOWS security flaw, when in actuality, it was a flaw in the recent versions of IE. A valid argument, without question, that sat very nicely at +4 Interesting or Insightful for about 30 minutes. Then, suddenly, michael posted a reply to my comment. The rating on my post IMMEDIATELY dropped 3 full points to +1 Troll or something like it. Eventually, the REAL moderators sent some leverage my way and put me back up to +3 or +4. In this situation, the fact that michael's reply was so closely followed by a rash of negative moderation can hardly be called a simple coincidence. The guy doesn't like to be called out on ANYTHING that he says, and he showed it that day.
My question to you is this...knowing that my complaint was VERY RELEVANT to the posted story, where else would you suggest that i post it?
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.
an MD5 hash of an actual IP address can still be deduced to a real IP address...there is no question about that. And again, I really don't have a problem with a website logging my IP address or making it available only for purely "administrative" purposes. My problem (and i think everyone's for that matter) lies in the fact that this information is not made available to all slashdot readers. The FAQ NEVER states that IP addresses are available (in ANY form, MD5-hashed or otherwise) to editors. Take, for example, Malda's explanation of the AC system from the FAQ:
We think the ability to post anonymously is important. Sometimes people have important information they want to post, but are afraid to do it if they can be linked to it...
That's it. That is the ONLY mention of anonymous posting that is included in the FAQ, and it leads me to believe that my anonymous posts are just that - anonymous. But they're not. The last sentence even goes so far as to indicate that anonymous posters CANNOT BE LINKED TO THEIR COMMENTS, when in fact, they can.
While this might not seem like an issue, it is. As long as editors have the ability to moderate poster comments, they have the ability to discriminate against certain users, based on that user's IP address. That's where the entire problem lies. If editors can moderate, they have two VERY unfair advantages - infinite points, and the ability to truly push their own agenda on any topic they choose. If either one of these two abilities were removed (and the other made blatantly obvious to readers), there wouldn't be a problem. If posters were TRULY anonymous, then editors wouldn't be able to single them out even when they post anonymously. Conversely, if editors were subject to the same rules of moderation that regular users were, then even the ability to sort by IP address wouldn't help them, as they would no longer be able to mod a single user into oblivion.
I don't see why this is such a big problem for you to understand, michael. You seem like a fairly reasonable person (when you take away your very un-journalistic biases), but you have yet to acknowledge the fact that some people might have a problem with this system. Tell me, how do you rationalize the fact that these unadvertised "features" give editors a very unfair advantage over dissenting readers? Why can't the "features" be advertised? Why does the AC system even exist, if AC's aren't really anonymous?
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.
On an unrelated note, why don't you write about HP calculators some time? They are far superior from a technological and software standpoint, and RPN works a lot better than standard algebraic notation. Alas, I suppose now that HP's discontinuing them, they don't matter to the Slashdot crowd anymore...
Is your company running tools written by ma
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.
Damn, it's really shocking to read the crap those agents pulled on the warez groups. Even ignoring the obvious immorality/illegality of it, it seems to me like they put a lot of time into the raids.
/. and go get the papers ready for my companies upcoming audit.
What the hell are they wasting their time for (and our money) on little stuff like this? It's like the federal government has no capability to distinguish between minor crimes and major ones.
If we don't watch out, the next war (after terrorism) will be on software. Damn, imagine if the BSA ever got to use guns. *shudder*
That's not a good thought. Sigh, I'd better stop posting to
Since you mentioned tetris, I had to post this. At my high school, everybody was playing games on their calculators -- from Race to MARIO. However, the 83plus users couldn't play tetris, because it only worked on the 83. Anyway, I created a program called "TETRIS." What it did was displayed "Loading..." on the screen, while it archived every variable, including all of the unusual vars (such as the Str1 and Str2, etc.) except for the lists (I saved them for later). I put their screen in "split mode," while setting the graphing to Polar, with Xmin being larger than Xmax and Ymin larger than Ymax (resulting in a "Window Range" error screen). The program then filled a list named "SYS" up to 999 items, then going on to L1, L2, L3, etc.. until the program filled up the memory and threw an error.
I gave this to another kid (a snobby kid who never stopped playing games on his calc), and it crippled his calculator. He had to pay me five bucks to get it fixed.
I later lost my calculator, and I got it back two weeks with all of my games played repeatedly (with the high score list changed) and all my vars archived, lists filled, etc., resulting in it getting returned (they apparently thought it was broken). I lost it two more times, with the exact same results before it was returned to me.
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).
As one of my teachers told me, in college, 'lets face it. In real life, if you don't know the answer, you're going to either look it up, or ask somebody. So, on the tests, bring in your text books, go nuts. But the tests WILL be such that if you don't know the underlying theory, you're screwed.' And he did it, too. He'd structure some of the questions such that they looked like english wordings of the equasions, but he'd alter something. He'd go ahead and square root something that the forumla is supposed to, so if you plug it in, you'll square root it again, and fuck up. It was great.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
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.
It just struck me WHY this happened now, to DoD! The group released less than 1% of total releases last year, but they were the ones behind the DeCSS algorithm (though not the code). They couldn't get anything out of punishing a 16 year old foreign national, so this is their tactic. There is no other reason for the FBI to target DoD over other groups with _much_ higher volume.
Welcome to the Corporate Republic.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
Customs agent Allan Doody said each computer has between one to two terabytes of stolen software.
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
Warez kids are the best and the brightest?! Please explain. My notion of "best and brightest" doesn't associate itself with people who produce nothing, steal from those who do, and get caught doing it. This seems more like evolution in action to me.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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.
"I don't care what you do, as long as you don't disturb others. Paint your nails or sleep for all I care. While you're in summer school, I'll be teeing off on the golf course at 9am."
>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.
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.
Well I hate to say it but I'm somewhat in support of these groups, if only because I'm sick of buying the latest games only to discover that the best part of the game was the free demo. Truly great games are one in a thousand, and even then they don't last long enough.
That's where the warez scene can swoop in and deliver salvation: download a stripped-down rip of whatever game you want, try it out for a couple days, then go out and buy the full-blown masterpiece. Or delete it and forget it ever existed. It encourages the game houses that work hard, while cutting the revenue stream of the half-assed hype-machine con artists, most of which sell their crap at Mallwart and other idiot chains.
Think of it like music: they put a catchy song on the radio, you pop 20$ on the album, then find yourself duped because 8 of the 10 songs are just filler. You can't ask for a refund because you've already 'consumed' the product (because that's what it is: a product). They'll politely tell you you're a pirate and that it would be unlawful for them to return your money. Same thing applies to PC games.
To get back to the point, I say they deserve a fair trial (if such a thing exists), not on the basis that I support organized non-profit piracy, but rather because the law system was most likely manipulated by corporate interests and thus the accused were unjustly treated.
The problem lies within the game market itself: the insane price-gouging that's going on and getting worse every year. Why should I blow 80$ (50 of your U.S. dollars) on a product I haven't seen nor experienced, and that carries no useful warranty ? Just look at Hasbro and how they're destroying the game industry by raping classic titles, making flashy smelly shit with the original concepts and selling them anywhere there's a cash register.
Ironically, the shareware business is practically dead, even though it was probably the most honest form of software marketing in existence. You had a decent game/utility on its own, not just a crippled 5-minute unstable demo. If you enjoyed the experience and wanted to prolong it, you'd pay 15-20$ for 2-3 extra episodes, or a bunch of USEFUL extra features in the case of utilities/mini-applications. And what if you didn't need or want the extras ? Then you just kept on using the shareware version because it was actually a fully enjoyable piece of software on its own.
Warez may be illegal, but it definitely has its place in the world and on the net. And its working members certainly aren't rats. If you want a rat, go find your favorite pro-invasive-law lobbyist. They're the ones making our lives miserable and taking away from everyone. Warez takes away from those who are screwing us in the first place.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
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?
Of course, now that the source of 95% of the world's online pirated software has been shut down, big-name software companies will no doubt be dropping their exorbitant pricing -- the justification for which was the rate of online piracy.
Right?
*cough*
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
I'm a former mathematics teacher. You should be. Let me pick your post apart line by line. I'll be quite harsh, so stop reading now if you don't want your day ruined...
I'm sorry, but I draw the "geekiness" line at pissing away your time writing silly crap like that for a calculator.
Do you think it's silly for football players to lift weights because there are no weights on the football field? Learning to program in a small space develops excellent mental muscles. Learning to program in Z80 assembler (or whatever language is used) is invaluable to ANYONE who wants to understand computers. YOU don't see the usefulness in it, therefore you conclude it's pointless; I must disagree. I'd point out also (something that you as a teacher MUST come to understand) that anything that motivates a student to learn something, ANYTHING, is invaluable.
A calculator is a tool of science and business, not a gaming machine.
Ever hear of a computer? Ever hear of the IBM PC? Speak of facts, not wishes.
I cannot begin to describe the problems that it has caused me as a high-school math teacher.
Yes, you can. You go on to do so in the next sentence. It would have been better to say "I can only begin to describe..."
Not only has the rampant Tetris-playing caused my students to stop paying attention in class, but the ability to store "notes" in the calculator is a major source of cheating on tests.
You have a classroom management problem. The game-playing and cheating are symptomatic. It could be note-passing, it could be talking, it could be throwing pencils at the ceiling. The problem is not the paper, the mouths, or the pencils, it is the students' lack of respect and motivation. Like it or not, responsibility (if not causation) lies with you. Students play games because they have nothing better to do. As for the cheating, you make it sound as if you didn't understand the potential of these "tools", and I have no patience with this. You have no business teaching with them if you don't understand them. I worked with some of the early pioneers of the graphing calculator in secondary mathematics education, and rapidly learned that a teacher who didn't understand the technology would do more harm than good. Students would not only fail to progress in their mathematical skills; they would regress as they lost competence in skills they'd previously developed.
It has gotten so far that we have had to require that only scientific calculators be used on the upcoming midterm exams.
More evidence that you have NO business teaching with graphing calculators. You apparently hand students a tool, teach them to use it, and test them on their ability to accomplish tasks without the tool. You may as well teach them to do long division with paper and pencil and require oral examiniations in which they do all the work in their head. The analogy is almost exact. Here's what we did to solve your problem. On test days...
1. Students place all books under the desk as class starts; only the calculator and some writing implements are on the desk.
2. Students remove batteries from the calculators.
3. The teacher walks to each desk and verifies that the batteries are out.
4. The students replace batteries and place calculators under their desk.
5. The teacher passes out Part 1 of the test; it measures rote memorization of formulas, proofs, etc. This portion of the test is timed.
6. When Part 1 is completed, the teacher passes out Part 2; students could use their calculators.
This worked quite well for us.
On an unrelated note, why don't you write about HP calculators some time?
I believe they have...
They are far superior from a technological and software standpoint, and RPN works a lot better than standard algebraic notation.
Right, and Esperanto is far superior from a linguistic standpoint and works better than standard English phonics. But no one speaks Esperanto at my supermarket because everyone speaks English. RPN is a poor choice in a pedagogical environment because you must teach not one, but two mathematical languages. If you want to teach RPN, by all means do so..but teach only RPN and use textbooks whose notation makes RPN obvious.
Alas, I suppose now that HP's discontinuing them, they don't matter to the Slashdot crowd anymore...
Not a homogenous group...but you're probably mostly correct.
Some of this has been pointed out in other posts, but I wanted to be thorough. BTW, I'm a former mathematics teacher because I was a bad mathematics teacher. I loved mathematics, I loved my students, and I loved being in the classroom. I just really, really sucked at it. Anyway, I can see the symptoms from a thousand miles. You really need to either leave the field (as I did) or seek some drastic change to your teaching. A few years reflection on my failure has lead me t believe that classroom management (aka discipline) skills are the core competencies of good teachers.
... 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!
Obviously this is pertinent to the case of these busted warez organizations. From my humble participation in the scene in '94 and thereabouts, I never saw anyone from the larger groups (Razor, DoD, PwA, RTS) selling CDs, selling FTP access, or otherwise trying to make a buck from warez. Everybody just wanted to get the biggest and best 0-day releases, the coolest demos, and the hardest cracks, then spend all night in IRC bragging about it and trying to take over channels (yay EFnet).
Have there been any laws since the LaMacchia case that make priacy without profit a federal crime?
If you haven't got the faintest idea what I'm talking about, Google for David LaMacchia and Harvey Silverglate (civil libertarian and author of The Shadow University)
Imagine if the FBI had spent millions of dollars setting up dragnets on known jaywalkers around the world. These people KNOW they're breaking the law, and they've been caught red-handed. You don't have the RIGHT to jaywalk. Jail time is the only possible answer, right? And to top it all off, undercover agents secretly were telling suspects how to jaywalk, and where to jaywalk.
Puts things a little more in perspective, right?
(Note: I'm assuming that jaywalking is illegal in most jurisidictions.. if not, insert your own silly law here)
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
However, I think that the reason you believe that shareware is almost dead is because the mainstream producers/publishers we got accustomed to (Apogee, Epic Megagames, iD) have either replaced the word 'shareware' with 'demo' or went the commercial boxed route because they were successful enough. Well, that and the exodus of BBS users to the Internet. Anyway, there is still decent shareware gaming to be found. It is admittedly a couple of steps behind the Hollywood-style production process you see in most commercial games today, but in many cases that is made up for by the gameplay itself, the cheaper pricing, and the appreciation from the developer. I've been following the comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic and comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.space-sim newsgroups lately, and aside from a 6+ year flamewar there were a couple of suggestions for decent games from small developers. The first, Dominions (http://www.illwinter.com/dominions.html), is a turn-based strategy game that is somewhat similar in style to Master of Magic. The other, Starships Unlimited (http://www.apezone.com/), is a turn-based strategy game that is not unlike Master of Orion. I like turn-based strategy games. Also, I bought a game a couple of months ago called Pontifex (http://www.chroniclogic.com/pfx.html) in which you engineer bridges on a budget that are supposed to hold up under the stress of a train with a variable weight passing over it a variable number of times.
All of these are pretty neat games and meet your definition of shareware. I heard about all of them by wandering off of the normal game-finding path. (http://www.swreg.org) is one avenue many shareware developers (including all of the above) are turning to to sell their games; they should have a storefront on there somewhere where you can browse titles to download or buy, but I think the site might be broken right now. If you don't mind wading through it, Usenet is a good place to spot game reviews or announcements. (http://www.isonews.com) also has a pretty good game review forum on it, though given the general direction of the site these tend to be about standard commercial games and not shareware.
Anyway, I just wanted to mention that shareware is still alive and still worthy of trying out if you know where to look.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
2. Students remove batteries from the calculators.
3. The teacher walks to each desk and verifies that the batteries are out.
4. The students replace batteries and place calculators under their desk.
Tee hee, I remember my HP48GX had a mega-capacitor inside of it that would keep the memory for up to 10 minutes with no batteries. The idea was to make it easier to change the batteries without losing data, but it made it great for those who didn't understand the technology :)
Not to mention it had symbolic maniuplation and automatic built-in unit conversion YEARS before TI caught up.
Personally, I like the attitude of my calculus teacher. You had to show the steps on the test, so I wrote some programs that used the symbolic maniuplation to come up with the right results. A few of the other students thought this was an unfair advantage, but her opinion was, "If you understand the subject well enough to write a program to do it for you, more power to ya."