Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Intuit, Telemetry, Meetup
I'd prefer an apology from the IRS. Rico writes "Intuit have spoken out about the CD-protection methods of their TurboTax software. According to them, the protection is harmless to computers and does not erase data. Despite the huge negative customer feedback, Intuit are still profiting from the product."
Train the dog, then never call the command. Mitch Wagner writes "Barry Shein, subject of this week's /. interview, proposes in "ISP Head Floats Plan To Legalize Spam" that spam is impossible to block, and so instead should be legitimized and regulated, with a central, not-for-profit company charged with collecting fees from spammers and distributing those fees to ISPs that receive the spam. Of course, there have been many other plans for charging spammers to send spam, but those plans mostly have the fees going to the ISP that sends the e-mail, or to the user that receives the mail, rather than the ISP that receives it and has to deliver it to the end-users. I'm the author of the piece I link to in this article."
Make big money as an open source telemetrist! For anyone who missed it in the Science section, there's a great followup to the Linux-based home-brewed weather balloon we recently featured: the OpenTRAC project is looking for help in building an APRS-like protocol. If that's gibberish to you, check out their introduction to the protocol to get an idea of how it's useful. Future experimenters will thank you.
One good deed escapes punishment. Psyiode writes with a link to this story at the Houston Chronicle which begins "Jurors needed only about 15 minutes to acquit a Houston man who was accused of hacking into the Harris County district clerk's wireless computer system in March. One juror, Helen Smith, 62, said she and the other jurors found that Stefan Puffer indeed hacked into the system but they did not believe he caused any damage as the government had alleged."
Puffer was arrested last summer for demonstrating that the county court's wireless LAN wasn't secure, and telling them about it.
Do we need manned spaceflight? Professor_Quail writes "The BBC has a story on NASA's plans for a successor to the Space Shuttle. From the article: Nasa has revealed its first set of mission criteria for the Orbital Space Plane (OSP) - the series of space vehicle expected to replace the space shuttle from 2012. The new spacecraft's primary function will be to ferry crews to and from the International Space Station (ISS) and serve as a lifeboat if the station has to be evacuated."
Or do you have other plans? Finally, rufo writes "For those of you brave enough to weather the elements and meet your fellow geek, don't forget that the Slashdot Meetup is this Thursday at 7PM your local time zone. I've been to a couple and there's some rather interesting characters that show up, and the conversations are quite engaging. Highly recommended if you have nothing better to do on a Thursday evening." Hmmm, must check to see if there's one around Knoxville ...
It keeps reminding me that I STILL have to do my taxes, why can't I read slashdot when I get home and can remember it there.
I guess I just have to much to do at home and not enough to do at work, or is it that my priorities are out of whack?
moo.
I bet everyone is very corteous, civilized and good-manered. Nobody says "fuck you" or tells you you're a "dumbass" while hiding under a table. No asbestos suits are used or otherwise present. They all shake hands in the end and promise to send postcards.
Then on Monday it's open warfare again.
So at this meeting will there be any hot slashdot gir....oh.. nevermind..
sigh.
-=SiGH=-
Just a thought... I'm a student at Carnegie Mellon. We have /. meetups every day...they're called "class". ;)
Trips to Mars
We need them now
Oh please, NASA
Tell the Chinese how
Away they go
Into the sky
Their angle of re-entry, oh no!
They burn up and die die
So here's to space travel
It litters the orbit with metal of hunk
So that's what I pay taxes for?
I'd prefer a kick to the junk.
Lesse, I'm a spammer, I can spam people almost for free by stealing services from a bunch of folks who live half way around the globe ... or I can pay a comparably huge sum of cash and be perceived as a legitimate bulk mailer of my herbal viagra and penis enlargers.
Right.
Message for Barry Shein @ TheWorld ISP -- Stick to mission statements.
Cheers,
-- RLJ
"We did it [write to track 0] that way because we don't want to eat up disk space..." Thank goodness because my 40GB hard drive couldn't spare the sapce.
All you freaks in Grand Rapids, MI - CONFIRM dammit.
last months meetup ended up being kinda small - the selected venue ended up being closed unexpectedly, and only myself and one other person showed up (and went to another location)..
Every time someone vocalizes thier opinion, they have to finish with a Karma score joke or something.
/.er 1: "Yeah, I'm running Mandrake 9.1. Here are the cds if you want it. What're you running? Karma: bitchin, mostly due to your Camaro."
/.er 2: "Slackware, man. Keep yer frenchie distro. Dot sig. Insert funny sig here."
/.er 3: "Well, I build my own linux system myself. Those give away thier freedom to achieve a sense of security get nothing in return. Thomas Adams."
Yeah, and I can't wait for the quote that goes like:
I just asked him what he was doing at the store and he replied, "I want a lawyer." So I took that as an admission of guilt.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Read the fine print on their site...you can let as many people as you want use the software and file electronically, problem is, they are now saying you can only install it once on the same machine without getting them involved. This reminds me of the first and only copy of Mathematica i bought back when it was version 3. After trying to reinstall it on my same machine with a new mobo, i was told to contact customer no-service. In speaking with the tard at Wolfram, I actually had to FAX, that's right, FAX a my license agreement to them to get them to verify that I was not cheating the system. Needless to say, I fax a copy of the license with my middle finger to the side, and wrote on it "This is the last copy of your software I will buy"...and it has been to this day :)
"Simon Says, Fuck You" - George Carlin