I have a cron running on my windows and linux machines. The cron job calls a script that uses CURL to request a page and throw away the result. The page request contains a GET parameter with the machine's name. The website contains a PHP script which compares the sending IP from one currently in the database for that machine (in this case a plain text file is used as the database). If that IP doesn't match what is in the database I get an email notifying me that a particular machine has a new IP address. In addition, I update my DNS records as a poor man's dyndns service for my own domain.
I know within a few minutes whenever any machine I control changes IP. This is also useful for remote access and tech support.
I also keep a time stamp, so I can see if a machine hasn't checked in within a certain period of time. I don't do anything with this yet.
The reason for patenting ideas about the Manhattan Project are well explained in The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes which is a fantastic read. Nearly 1000 pages and Amazon is selling it for less than $15. The covers the recent history of modern science better than any textbook I've found.
Try Panera. Their Wi-Fi is free, remarkably uncluttered for the amount of people in there using it, and the food is significantly better than StarBucks (and the coffee is cheaper).
I bought the #6 and #8 Torx bits required to take apart most hard drives. The magnets are wonderful, especially some of the 6-8 platter SCSI drive magnets. The platters get thrown in the street and beat with the pointy end of a claw hammer. There's probably someone in the world that could read the data after that, but they're busy doing something else I'm sure.
This is getting out of hand. Microsoft's licensing and copy protection issues are not "DRM" issues. It's licensing issues. Licensing issues are an entirely different class of problems which have been around for decades. Don't start throwing anything you don't like with computers into your definition of "DRM". It's true that, once again, pirating software (on the high seas) eliminates both DRM and licensing issues, but it also eliminates problems like excessive cost. You wouldn't throw excessive cost into the definition of DRM, even though you know that the software went up in price merely because they had to pay to sub-license the copy protection software.
We'll ignore the argument that piracy makes the software cost more. Buying someone else's copy protection software is what brings the real cost of the software up. The companies will sell it for what they can sell it for. That's price, and with a complete lack of supply and demand balances, is always grossly overpriced.
But back to the DRM term misuse. This is similar to a story I heard the other day. A co-worker was telling me that her "identity was stolen" because she called a loan company and they couldn't find any record of having a loan with them. A computer glitch at a random company is not "identity theft" and confusing the two makes it seem like a non-issue. She called back a few days later and they found her record. I guess that means her identity was "recovered" and returned to her as property should be.
"My email was hacked!!!" "Wow, what happened?" "I sent a private email to a friend and he forwarded it to everyone he know."
Sounds like an easy way for a rogue IT employee to take out an entire company. Simply publish that company's key (or their special non-activation copy of windows) as a torrent, bunch of people download it, Microsoft picks up on the flux of installs and pulls the plug, the entire company goes dark.
"Dear CEO,
I have a copy of your Windows Vista install key. If you do not transfer $1,000,000 to my swiss bank account by 5pm I will publish this key on teh internets. How expensive would it be for every copy of Vista you own to go dark for a few days while you negotiate with Microsoft?
This is quite a soap opera, but I think only people who regularly post on those forums could really care. So here's to the three of you.
Next week on slashdot: How one moderator over at knittingmachines.org thwarted an attempt by 31337gr4ndm4 to copy the patterns of beloved moderator iknit4u.
Article: "We are afraid that they will sexually harass us"
This article sounds like the story from India a few years ago where cats were turning into large beasts and attacking people. 70% of the villagers had seen it, but somehow it was never photographed or captured.
This compared with, say, the telephone, where 99% of people feel pressured to answer their desk phone, with 1% feeling relaxed enough to go to voicemail.
Amen! Someone else notices these things? It's far from being centered around Slashdot. Anybody who brings up the term "Republican" or "Democrat" in a discussion about the government is typically unaware of the issue, just knows they're supposed to agree with X and disagree with Y.
I consider it the modern version of racism. We used to blindly discriminate against people because they were black/white, then because they were female/male. Now it's republican/democrat. There's no real difference, politicians are politicians, and anyone arguing otherwise is a tool.
But, perpetuating this argument gets the cattle fighting amongst themselves rather than fighting the real problem. Give them sports teams, and they'll rally behind one and blast all the others. Give them an operating system, and they'll rally behind one and blast all the others.
As long as we're busy fighting "republican" vs. "democrat", we're blind to the real battle of "cattle" vs. "politicians". Millions of people will passionately vote to remove one from power and replace it with the other. As we're in the street arguing about hanging Chads, both sides are sharing a drink over their mutual win.
I've always had to go into the MIME types and tell quicktime to play mp3s in the browser. The installed default is not to. It's a setting in the program, try looking.
If you sue the Bush Daughters for 2 mil, and they happen to accidentally spill that much out of their purses when they drunkenly trip on a curb, does this add to the legitimacy of the RIAA's claim?
"Studies have shown that people who drive and talk are many times more likely to have an accident."
Then we should ban talking while driving. They don't say that using the phone is the problem, they say talking is the problem. There should be a nation wide ban on having communications with anyone else inside or outside the car. I think this would be quite difficult to enforce. An easier option would be to ban passengers along with cell phones. Without a passenger or a cell phone there would be no conversations. No talking, no accident.
I don't see the big deal. We all have ghosts in our past, getting past them and moving on with our lives is what makes us human. Who hasn't gone bar hopping and picked up underage hookers? What guy hasn't cheated on his wife during late-night filming sessions? Who doesn't have a picture on flickr of themselves completely trashed with a dog licking peanut butter off of their dingle-berries.
I don't think any of these will interfere with my life in any way. Besides, any previous evidence of me touching underage children and cheating the system to make myself rich will just set me up for a lifetime position as a priest or politician.
The crane operator's union is having a meeting next week, which is likely to delay the mating operation. Expect a possible delay in the launch schedule.
The New York MTA Subway stops are now shown on Google Maps. This works on the PC version, but doesn't seem to be active for the mobile version of Google Maps yet. I hope they update this soon.
Slashdot Mirror
Napster bad!
I have a cron running on my windows and linux machines. The cron job calls a script that uses CURL to request a page and throw away the result. The page request contains a GET parameter with the machine's name. The website contains a PHP script which compares the sending IP from one currently in the database for that machine (in this case a plain text file is used as the database). If that IP doesn't match what is in the database I get an email notifying me that a particular machine has a new IP address. In addition, I update my DNS records as a poor man's dyndns service for my own domain.
I know within a few minutes whenever any machine I control changes IP. This is also useful for remote access and tech support.
I also keep a time stamp, so I can see if a machine hasn't checked in within a certain period of time. I don't do anything with this yet.
The reason for patenting ideas about the Manhattan Project are well explained in The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes which is a fantastic read. Nearly 1000 pages and Amazon is selling it for less than $15. The covers the recent history of modern science better than any textbook I've found.
Try Panera. Their Wi-Fi is free, remarkably uncluttered for the amount of people in there using it, and the food is significantly better than StarBucks (and the coffee is cheaper).
I bought the #6 and #8 Torx bits required to take apart most hard drives. The magnets are wonderful, especially some of the 6-8 platter SCSI drive magnets. The platters get thrown in the street and beat with the pointy end of a claw hammer. There's probably someone in the world that could read the data after that, but they're busy doing something else I'm sure.
This is getting out of hand. Microsoft's licensing and copy protection issues are not "DRM" issues. It's licensing issues. Licensing issues are an entirely different class of problems which have been around for decades. Don't start throwing anything you don't like with computers into your definition of "DRM". It's true that, once again, pirating software (on the high seas) eliminates both DRM and licensing issues, but it also eliminates problems like excessive cost. You wouldn't throw excessive cost into the definition of DRM, even though you know that the software went up in price merely because they had to pay to sub-license the copy protection software.
We'll ignore the argument that piracy makes the software cost more. Buying someone else's copy protection software is what brings the real cost of the software up. The companies will sell it for what they can sell it for. That's price, and with a complete lack of supply and demand balances, is always grossly overpriced.
But back to the DRM term misuse. This is similar to a story I heard the other day. A co-worker was telling me that her "identity was stolen" because she called a loan company and they couldn't find any record of having a loan with them. A computer glitch at a random company is not "identity theft" and confusing the two makes it seem like a non-issue. She called back a few days later and they found her record. I guess that means her identity was "recovered" and returned to her as property should be.
"My email was hacked!!!"
"Wow, what happened?"
"I sent a private email to a friend and he forwarded it to everyone he know."
Sounds like an easy way for a rogue IT employee to take out an entire company. Simply publish that company's key (or their special non-activation copy of windows) as a torrent, bunch of people download it, Microsoft picks up on the flux of installs and pulls the plug, the entire company goes dark.
"Dear CEO,
I have a copy of your Windows Vista install key. If you do not transfer $1,000,000 to my swiss bank account by 5pm I will publish this key on teh internets. How expensive would it be for every copy of Vista you own to go dark for a few days while you negotiate with Microsoft?
Tick tock tick tock..."
Wont they of considered this possibility and have a defence ready?
Why would they of? (of what?!?)
It's Mispeek:
"Wont" -> "Won't"
"of" -> "have"
"defence" -> "defense"
Welcome to MySpace English - mispeek.
This is quite a soap opera, but I think only people who regularly post on those forums could really care. So here's to the three of you.
Next week on slashdot: How one moderator over at knittingmachines.org thwarted an attempt by 31337gr4ndm4 to copy the patterns of beloved moderator iknit4u.
Slashdot: "are sexually harassing the women"
Article: "We are afraid that they will sexually harass us"
This article sounds like the story from India a few years ago where cats were turning into large beasts and attacking people. 70% of the villagers had seen it, but somehow it was never photographed or captured.
This compared with, say, the telephone, where 99% of people feel pressured to answer their desk phone, with 1% feeling relaxed enough to go to voicemail.
Last person who asked me who to turn off "all those SMART errors" had the drive fail a week later.
Amen! Someone else notices these things? It's far from being centered around Slashdot. Anybody who brings up the term "Republican" or "Democrat" in a discussion about the government is typically unaware of the issue, just knows they're supposed to agree with X and disagree with Y.
I consider it the modern version of racism. We used to blindly discriminate against people because they were black/white, then because they were female/male. Now it's republican/democrat. There's no real difference, politicians are politicians, and anyone arguing otherwise is a tool.
But, perpetuating this argument gets the cattle fighting amongst themselves rather than fighting the real problem. Give them sports teams, and they'll rally behind one and blast all the others. Give them an operating system, and they'll rally behind one and blast all the others.
As long as we're busy fighting "republican" vs. "democrat", we're blind to the real battle of "cattle" vs. "politicians". Millions of people will passionately vote to remove one from power and replace it with the other. As we're in the street arguing about hanging Chads, both sides are sharing a drink over their mutual win.
This sounds all too familiar: Light Ocular-Oriented Kinetic Emotive Responses.
Thanks James Douglas!
This question would be best answered by the early version of tagging beta being turned back on: yes, no, itsatrap
I've always had to go into the MIME types and tell quicktime to play mp3s in the browser. The installed default is not to. It's a setting in the program, try looking.
Yeah, and Jaywalking is illegal, too. Just another law on the books that will be ignored hundreds of thousands of times a day in New York.
If you sue the Bush Daughters for 2 mil, and they happen to accidentally spill that much out of their purses when they drunkenly trip on a curb, does this add to the legitimacy of the RIAA's claim?
Can't they start by filtering the spam? Once they've figured that out, then they can move onto a more complex target.
"Studies have shown that people who drive and talk are many times more likely to have an accident."
Then we should ban talking while driving. They don't say that using the phone is the problem, they say talking is the problem. There should be a nation wide ban on having communications with anyone else inside or outside the car. I think this would be quite difficult to enforce. An easier option would be to ban passengers along with cell phones. Without a passenger or a cell phone there would be no conversations. No talking, no accident.
Reminds me of the XKCD comic - http://xkcd.com/c237.html
I don't see the big deal. We all have ghosts in our past, getting past them and moving on with our lives is what makes us human. Who hasn't gone bar hopping and picked up underage hookers? What guy hasn't cheated on his wife during late-night filming sessions? Who doesn't have a picture on flickr of themselves completely trashed with a dog licking peanut butter off of their dingle-berries.
I don't think any of these will interfere with my life in any way. Besides, any previous evidence of me touching underage children and cheating the system to make myself rich will just set me up for a lifetime position as a priest or politician.
The crane operator's union is having a meeting next week, which is likely to delay the mating operation. Expect a possible delay in the launch schedule.
The New York MTA Subway stops are now shown on Google Maps. This works on the PC version, but doesn't seem to be active for the mobile version of Google Maps yet. I hope they update this soon.