I actually found it rather useful to test a IP/user-agent switching plugin. (I use it to test environment sensitive sections of websites I write). All works fine, which IP address would they like me to come from?
The irony with this whol thing is I'm anti-piracy, I'm one of those weirdos who thinks artists deserve to get money for what they produce, however easy it is to copy bit for bit. But that SOCA message strikes me offensive and wildly accusatory that I'm starting to think my anti-piracy crusade needs to go on the back burner while I deal with the important thing, keeping the internet free.
You know what's more expensive? Losing customers. I'm on a rural connection where it takes around 24 hours to download 1Gb, so after requiring a ~3Gb download on Battlefield 3 I'm not going to risk buying anything from EA again. The game was so broken on release it required a "patch" of 60% of the game disc? No thanks, I'm not going to bother in the future. If it's not right, don't release it. To top it all you had to download extended content even if you weren't going to pay to activate it. Nonsense all round.
It might have been unenforceable, but I happen to think my argument resulted in a quicker resolution. Didn't require lawyers either, always a bonus in my book.
Yup, I know where you're coming from, I worked for a (UK) bookshop company which included a similar clause along the lines of "any invention or program you come up with while an employee belongs to us if it is related to the business, whether or not you do it on company time."
Now this is a company I liked, I got on well with the bosses. I was developing a POS/stock control system for use at temporary bookshops, and if it ended up being as cool as I wanted it to be I wanted to open source the thing. So I went and had a chat. They did have a point when they pointed out that I'd be helping the competition if I did that, and I countered with the idea of then charging the competition for support and updates. The conversation went back and forth for a bit.
Then I asked if they would be happy to take responsibility for me writing a (hypothetical!) virus which attacked Amazon's systems.
The reason big old fashioned mainframes are still in use in many places is simply the cost of moving away from them. They're generally running custom code, custom databases, custom hardware....the sheer cost of re-doing everything is the big problem, not the fact that modern hardware has any issues doing the job.
Clusters of PS3s make a perfectly serviceable supercomputer, but if your existing solution still works...
They do that in the UK too, you just take a little USB stick type device (not actually a USB stick) to the shops and they load it up with credit, then you stick it in your meter and get credited. It's often used in rented premises so the landlord doesn't get hit with a big bill if the tennants default. Hardly a new idea.
I was curious as to who submitted this. The link leads to an "under construction" page, but another site (urloz) does have some advice for him: "The domain roblimo.com contains words that might trigger Google filters:'raping'". I'm not making this up: http://urloz.com/www.roblimo.com.html
That's why, as with dolphins, a third body is required to brace against. "The Three Dolphins Club" is the microgravity equivalent of the Mile High Club.
Water?! Luxury! When I was a little IT MD we used to have to get up three hours before we went to sleep, work 46 hours a day in a pit running nothing but Vista, then when we got home Bill Gates would beat us to death with the buckle end of his belt and dance on our graves.
Depends on your religious point of view - for me (an atheist) then while the rest of my life might be vaguely important to me, on the scale of things its importance tends to zero. If I can earn enough through my scam to change the lifes of future generations then the cost is near zero in comparison.
If I was religious, on the other hand, eternity in hell means that the cost is effectively infinite, even for stealing a single penny.
Strange how drastically your interpretation of the world changes when there is/isn't an afterlife.
This is indicative of the main problem in the banking system - money can be brought into existence regardless of whether it actually represents anything. In this case it's through fiddled figures, but it's perfectly normal and acceptable to do essentially the same thing en-masse. As long as enough people are claiming something is worth more than it is then it's worth more, and there's extra money to be had, the only mistake these guys made is not being thousands or millions of people. Look at the Facebook floatation - I don't know what the company is actually worth if you were to break it up today, but it's market value will be pretty much unrelated to that figure simply because lots of people want it to be valuable.
There's only one regulation that's really needed (outside obvious fraud), and that's a conservation law a-la momentum. You want more money? Well you're either going to have to achieve it by taking it from somebody else or by creating new resources through mining, manufacturing or man-hours etc. I'd like to see the hypothetical world-wide balance sheet for the last couple of decades, because I bet it would fail the most simple anti-fraud tests.
Well, that depends on your point of view. For the crew of a spaceship it would take zero time, or an arbitrarily small time depending on how close to c you can get, a round trip in the region of a year isn't outrageous if we can build a ship with a good sustained thrust.
But yes, whatever happens it's a >44yr wait for those of us sitting on the Earth.
So how does this tie in with the whole "free speech" thing I keep hearing about? Presumably they weren't technically in the US, and not US citizens, so it doesn't apply? Or is it fine for them to say these things, and the real problem is what they were thinking?
I've seen people confused by them before though, I was just suggesting that the target demographic of most wedding invitations includes people who won't have anything to do with computers.
I don't have a mini-CD player, I tried putting it in my wireless set but it didn't make any music. What is it anyway?
Love, everyone's gran.
Seriously, assume that 50% of the guests don't own a computer. By all means, provide "extras" in a geeky way, but make the invitation/response aspect strictly old fashioned unless you're only inviting geeks under the age of 50.
Nope, but the telegraph system went down. If you've not heard of the telegraph it was a long-range communication system which relied on long thin bits of wire, sort of like a series of tubes;)
Precisely. I had a play around with their App Inventor system, about five minutes with it. I got so many emails urging me to download my "app" before they took the system offline that it would have been annoying but for the fact they were trying not to be evil.
The cloud is a joke generally, but trust "them" to give you your backups 99.99999% of the time, and that's really useful.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually found it rather useful to test a IP/user-agent switching plugin. (I use it to test environment sensitive sections of websites I write). All works fine, which IP address would they like me to come from?
The irony with this whol thing is I'm anti-piracy, I'm one of those weirdos who thinks artists deserve to get money for what they produce, however easy it is to copy bit for bit. But that SOCA message strikes me offensive and wildly accusatory that I'm starting to think my anti-piracy crusade needs to go on the back burner while I deal with the important thing, keeping the internet free.
You know what's more expensive? Losing customers. I'm on a rural connection where it takes around 24 hours to download 1Gb, so after requiring a ~3Gb download on Battlefield 3 I'm not going to risk buying anything from EA again. The game was so broken on release it required a "patch" of 60% of the game disc? No thanks, I'm not going to bother in the future. If it's not right, don't release it. To top it all you had to download extended content even if you weren't going to pay to activate it. Nonsense all round.
It might have been unenforceable, but I happen to think my argument resulted in a quicker resolution. Didn't require lawyers either, always a bonus in my book.
More interestingly, do DDOS hits count towards advertising revenue? If so I've got a great idea for a website that will annoy anonymous...
Yup, I know where you're coming from, I worked for a (UK) bookshop company which included a similar clause along the lines of "any invention or program you come up with while an employee belongs to us if it is related to the business, whether or not you do it on company time."
Now this is a company I liked, I got on well with the bosses. I was developing a POS/stock control system for use at temporary bookshops, and if it ended up being as cool as I wanted it to be I wanted to open source the thing. So I went and had a chat. They did have a point when they pointed out that I'd be helping the competition if I did that, and I countered with the idea of then charging the competition for support and updates. The conversation went back and forth for a bit.
Then I asked if they would be happy to take responsibility for me writing a (hypothetical!) virus which attacked Amazon's systems.
The clause was changed rather quickly.
Agreed, I was referring to some of the excruciatingly old systems that are still running, some going back three decades or more.
Dave...my mind is going....I can feel it....
I use that as a low-power alert on my netbook, it still freaks me out a little.
The reason big old fashioned mainframes are still in use in many places is simply the cost of moving away from them. They're generally running custom code, custom databases, custom hardware....the sheer cost of re-doing everything is the big problem, not the fact that modern hardware has any issues doing the job.
Clusters of PS3s make a perfectly serviceable supercomputer, but if your existing solution still works...
They do that in the UK too, you just take a little USB stick type device (not actually a USB stick) to the shops and they load it up with credit, then you stick it in your meter and get credited. It's often used in rented premises so the landlord doesn't get hit with a big bill if the tennants default. Hardly a new idea.
I was curious as to who submitted this. The link leads to an "under construction" page, but another site (urloz) does have some advice for him: "The domain roblimo.com contains words that might trigger Google filters:'raping'". I'm not making this up: http://urloz.com/www.roblimo.com.html
That's why, as with dolphins, a third body is required to brace against. "The Three Dolphins Club" is the microgravity equivalent of the Mile High Club.
So anything "created from thin air" is balanced against the bank's capital worth? Sounds like a good start.
Water?! Luxury! When I was a little IT MD we used to have to get up three hours before we went to sleep, work 46 hours a day in a pit running nothing but Vista, then when we got home Bill Gates would beat us to death with the buckle end of his belt and dance on our graves.
Now tell that to the young ITs today....
Depends on your religious point of view - for me (an atheist) then while the rest of my life might be vaguely important to me, on the scale of things its importance tends to zero. If I can earn enough through my scam to change the lifes of future generations then the cost is near zero in comparison.
If I was religious, on the other hand, eternity in hell means that the cost is effectively infinite, even for stealing a single penny.
Strange how drastically your interpretation of the world changes when there is/isn't an afterlife.
Where's the "+0 Insightful Flamebait" mod when you need it?
This is indicative of the main problem in the banking system - money can be brought into existence regardless of whether it actually represents anything. In this case it's through fiddled figures, but it's perfectly normal and acceptable to do essentially the same thing en-masse. As long as enough people are claiming something is worth more than it is then it's worth more, and there's extra money to be had, the only mistake these guys made is not being thousands or millions of people. Look at the Facebook floatation - I don't know what the company is actually worth if you were to break it up today, but it's market value will be pretty much unrelated to that figure simply because lots of people want it to be valuable.
There's only one regulation that's really needed (outside obvious fraud), and that's a conservation law a-la momentum. You want more money? Well you're either going to have to achieve it by taking it from somebody else or by creating new resources through mining, manufacturing or man-hours etc. I'd like to see the hypothetical world-wide balance sheet for the last couple of decades, because I bet it would fail the most simple anti-fraud tests.
Well, that depends on your point of view. For the crew of a spaceship it would take zero time, or an arbitrarily small time depending on how close to c you can get, a round trip in the region of a year isn't outrageous if we can build a ship with a good sustained thrust.
But yes, whatever happens it's a >44yr wait for those of us sitting on the Earth.
So how does this tie in with the whole "free speech" thing I keep hearing about? Presumably they weren't technically in the US, and not US citizens, so it doesn't apply? Or is it fine for them to say these things, and the real problem is what they were thinking?
I was actually aware of what a mini-CD is ;)
I've seen people confused by them before though, I was just suggesting that the target demographic of most wedding invitations includes people who won't have anything to do with computers.
I don't have a mini-CD player, I tried putting it in my wireless set but it didn't make any music. What is it anyway?
Love, everyone's gran.
Seriously, assume that 50% of the guests don't own a computer. By all means, provide "extras" in a geeky way, but make the invitation/response aspect strictly old fashioned unless you're only inviting geeks under the age of 50.
Nope, but the telegraph system went down. If you've not heard of the telegraph it was a long-range communication system which relied on long thin bits of wire, sort of like a series of tubes ;)
Precisely. I had a play around with their App Inventor system, about five minutes with it. I got so many emails urging me to download my "app" before they took the system offline that it would have been annoying but for the fact they were trying not to be evil.
The cloud is a joke generally, but trust "them" to give you your backups 99.99999% of the time, and that's really useful.
It can cure the common cold and being hit by lightning...
I sense a use-once variable embedded in a pub website coming on...
Yes, but it wouldn't scan as well when used in a spoof of "supercallifragelisticexpialidocious", which was the origin.
Best one I've seen is "paracetemoxyfrusobendroneomycin" (a ficticious drug which cures almost everything, and causes most side-effects)