How do you enforce the massive quantities of spam coming from dodgy countries like China, Korea, Nigeria and Florida?
Answer: You can't.
The limited number of Swiss-originating spam that I see in my inboxes (and I live there) is quickly dealt with by a very close-knit network of ISPs and their ilk. It's not tolerated anyway.
If the US can't even effectively kill spam inside its own borders, how would, for example, the Justice Dept. react to a request for legal assistance and/or prosecution against the Sanford Wallaces living in the States?
Switzerland has some fairly colorful history regarding technology-related laws and reaction to things like spam. For example, for a long time, some UK mobile providers blocked all SMS messages from Swiss numbers, because there were no laws in place prohibiting SMS spamming. Hence, people set up SMS relays all over the place here.
Also, there are quite a few examples where federal or canton (state) level judges ordered ISPs to block websites for various types of content (including one example of "questionable" political messages--look at the SwiNOG archives for details.)
There's a fairly good understanding of technolgy at a government level, but very often not of the consequences. You have to understand that the Swiss mentality (I'm half Swiss so I get to pontificate on this) is largely based on the idea that people are basically decent and law abiding and that processes have to be followed at all costs. This makes the tax people where I live be really nice and proper, but on the other hand, we've had incidents where we were told not to investigate Nigerian phishers too closely, because we'd make ourselves liable for incitement to commit fraud.
Regarding the army, it's a joke. It's an underfunded mass force; they can't find enough for the poor bastards to do, so they set them on guard duty for festivals and to building grandstands at parades, whatnot. Most young people get in contact with at least soft drugs during their basic training, and it's very widely seen as a complete waste of time (n.b. I didn't go, I got a psychiatrist to certify me for a section 8.)
And, deviating from the tech-topics a bit, we've been very wussy and inconsistent in dealing with foreign countries in general and with the E.U. in particular. The Swiss (and this is a sweeping overgeneralization) don't have the killer competitive instinct that your average German, Brit or American displays in dealing with a lot of issues. It's a really beautiful, pleasant, clean, functional and well-run place to live, and that sort of spoils you over time.
Google doesn't, and this is outside the scope of this article, but I've seen phony pop-ups delivered by quite a few scam sites. They'll use the (now "fixed") IE bug of URL forgery (create a link using http://www.google.com%01%00@badsite.com and IE only ses http://www.google.com), have badsite.com be nothing but a pass-through redirect to google.com with a few web bugs and stuff, and pop up an ad purporting to originate with google.)
You get this quite a lot with amazon and paypal among others, both for people phishing for account details, and for unscrupulous advertisers trying to present their 'product' as something originating with the legitimate site that loads in the background.
Microsoft issued a patch which flat-out prohibits use of '@' in http URLs without some registry changes. Maybe the authors just got their facts mixed a bit.
You'd get all the cute young stewardesses in short skirts, great food, freebies from the pilot, and all that really nice silverware they have on planes.
This means you won't have to go through expensive layoffs and re-hiring phases during economic cycles.
When it turns out you have too many employees, just send a couple of them into the freezers under some pretext, and thaw them out when things get busy again.
OK, after having posted this, I went on a rampage last night, and after going through about 2-3 servers full of 24-16 games, I finally found a balanced one on a Boomtown server.
Promptly killed, repeatedly, by an engineer, via single headshot, who ran around behind a hillock out of sight, while I was running laterally on my side. He randomly popped up, and nailed me while jumping. He could not have had any idea where I was, and he literally got me the very moment he popped up.
Uncanny. I'll usually give them the benefit of the doubt, but I am 100% sure this was a hack. And the guy was being fairly clued otherwise (being in the right place, doing stuff a bot could not) so I have to assume there is a good aim-assist bot out there somewhere for BF.
I am an avid (if second-rate) BF1942 player, on regular BF, RTR and SW servers. I've only seen about 3 players in the last year where I definitely suspected cheating, including engineers who would score headshots on moving, concealed targets at massive distances while jumping (!).
Out of curiosity, I once downloaded and tried out a few cheats, including an aimbot. They were utterly horrible and useless. First, a complete pain in the ass to get installed. Second, the ones that ran outside the cilent slowed my machine (2.4ghz PIV/1 gig memory, good gfx/sound) to a miserable crawl. Lastly, the only one I found even remotely useful, one which pointed out players to me, actually hurt me in combat, as I realized I was far faster spotting actual players than trying to associate some symbol with a guy hiding somewhere.
One thing I learned when playing Netrek during several years in college was that 'borgs', or partial-to-full robot clients, never substitute for skill. This is a generalization, I realize, but it usually holds for BF1942 as well. Only someone who knows what they are doing and is generally pretty decent on his own merits will be able to use a cheat as a crutch, and those players are usually good enough not to have to/want to.
In addition, the beauty of large, objective-based games like BF is that the effect of the odd cheater may increase his personal score, but it is no substitute for a decent team with good cooperation and clue. Yeah, a cheater may defend a flag better against one or two people, but if you have a few decent players going for the target, it's no different than without cheats. Sure, we all look at our scores, but I'd rather play to win the game for my team. If I fight the cheater on his own ground (i.e. turn it into a personal, one-on-one vendetta) I will probably come off the worse, and my team will be down one useful player. Do as master Sun says, flow around obstacles:) The hackers may tweak the laws of statistics a bit, but they can't defeat them.
All in all, actual cheating hasn't bothered me nearly as much as the backlash from it (good players automatically being labelled 'cheaters').
...for games. After all, cricket, pub crawls and football riots, while interesting concepts for games, probably don't appeal to the vast majority of consumers 8-)
That's right. He was shipped to the mainland, and is currently being analyzed at the secret government research lab where I work...wait, what's that? Why are the walls shaking?
Oh man, you're just missing the whole point. For those of us who are not native Japanese speakers, and thus incapable of picking up the alliterative subtleties of the sinister one-eyed Col. Yamaguchi and his elite reaction anti-monster force, or Prof. Shiro and his young daughter trying to save the world, the dubbing opens up whole new artistic dimensions.
*moves lips* *pause* Look! Godzilla! *lips still moving* *lips stop moving* We are doomed!
Am I the only one who is having hard time seeing what's the difference between this and just losing your head and spawning up at a safer place?
Well it would be pretty interesting to be able to spot people who died all the time (they're the ones RUNNING AROUND WITHOUT A HEAD.)
Although one thing I thought would be cool would be sort of a karmic reincarnation scenario--where you come back as a better or worse character depending on how bad you've been, what you've done, etc.
playing a troll would really suck though, especially after getting stoned...
Yeah that's the idea--if you've been pkilling too much, you come back as a troll.
Or if you didn't have a head anymore, you'd have to go to a head shop (ba-dump) to buy a new one.
though maybe those wussies should just play more nethack instead. that would teach them that a mere @ sign gets much more meaningful if you can't get it back when you die.
Good call, same with Angband & friends. But to be honest, I never really minded dying in those for more than 5 minutes, because (a) they were free and (b) I could play them any old time on my laptop.
Shazam is incredibly cool. I saw it when visiting some friends and hanging out in AKA with them in London.
It caught about 75% of the songs blasting on the speakers--although for the ones it missed, it came up with some pretty fantastically hilarious "interpretations".
What I thought was even cuter was the San Francisco startup a few years ago where you could call up, get a human on the phone, hum some off-key bars of a song to them or tell them some lyrics, and they'd go find out what song it was and let you buy the CD. Wonder why they went under...:)
Yeah but I think there's a bit of a difference between chowing down on what's essentially a cast-off bit of "stuff" and gnawing on some guy's genitalia that you've whacked off and stir-fried while he's still alive (cross-reference that German guy.)
Where's the difference between the placenta example and going to have a quick dump and serving it with a sauce bernaise? Granted, the latter probably falls under several obscenity laws (not that anyone's got any business mandating that I don't cook up "dump-ling surprise" if it's what floats my boat) but cannibalism? Sounds a bit extreme.
I always thought cannibalism was sort of loosely defined as eating any bits of a human being that formed part of the body before you started feeling a bit peckish for for the flambe'd Paraguayan rugby team cheeseburger.
Disagree? You're agreeing with me! That was part of my whole argument:)
To clarify; what I meant to say was that it's dangerous to rely on information generated by this sort of a mechanism as in any way complete or authoritative, as people who'd be involved in it (slashdot geeks?) probably have their brains wired different ways from some Pakistani religious student seeking an express ticket to see his 70 doe-eyed virgins and take as many of us corrupt, decadent infidel scum as possible with him in the process.
Rather, it'd be interesting to see what comes out of it, as no more than one of many forms of input or analysis. Hence my use of the word "brainstorming". The idea being that you will almost certainly not cover all the bases, but some novel approaches will inevitably result when you have a whole bunch of people not coming from (a) a terrorist or (b) an intelligence or government background thinking, "hmm, how would _I_ commit terrorist acts?" as a purely academic process.
Whether or not this would come up with anything really useful, whether one could separate the really feasible ideas from the chaff, and how much credibility one should assign to such ideas is left as an exercise for the reader.
The closest I've seen to this is a display option on Swisscom phones that tells you which municipal area you're in (Bern, Zurich, etc.) One would hope that nobody would ever get _that_ lost:)
It strikes me as interesting, trying to predict the actions of homicidal fanatics through whatever mechanism, be it something like this, which is essentially an extended human brainstorming, or through methodical, automated risk analysis.
It could be interesting to bring completely unrelated individuals' ideas into play, to see what someone pretty random with violence on their mind might go for (I mean, I'm sure that _someone_ uninformed would have come up with the idea of ramming planes into an office tower) but I would always be aware of a few caveats:
- Most people who would play something like this think differently (basic cultural mindset and all that) than a mad bomber from a middle eastern country (or Iowa for that matter) - There's a danger of coming up with a lot of purely hypothetical red herrings--as anyone who works in security and who has ever held a brainstorming session to determine potential avenues of attack can tell you (no, it's not realistic that the Martians will attack with death ray spaceships, although it is conceivable) - The more factors are considered in putting together a "risk" big picture (such as having a ton of online gamer geeks come up with ideas to blow up as many civilians as possible in one go), the greater is the human propensity to see said big picture as "authoritative".
That said, if it's just used as a tool to model potential avenues of attack, not a bad way of going about it.
Great. This reminded me of a list I once posted to rec.humor.funny about getting electric power from hamsters.
Until now, the poor things were limited to purely acoustic music. This way, we can finally get an all-electric hamster band going!
I'm just waiting for hamster groupies.
Here's the list:
The following should be credited to the UC Berkeley CSUA. I left a world-writeable file in my account and waited to see what people would put in it...
42 ways to get electric power from hamsters
Stick copper and zinc electrode-needles in opposite ends of hamster. Use in series for higher voltage. -gwh
Shove them back and forth in Richard Gere's butt. Creates static electricity.
Go to Radio Chack and offer them the hamster in exchange for two AAA batteries.
Attach the hamster to a hand-crank generator and then drop it onto a trampoline.
Ignite in large numbers. Use heat released to drive steam turbine.
Kidnap and threaten to torture. Extort ransom from animal-rights activists and other anti-cruelty types: demand payment in the form of electric current.
Drop hamsters from great heights. Use water-mill like turbine to generate electricity.
Drop large numbers of hamsters into tar pit, wait a few million years, drill for crude oil at same location to run electric turbine.
Cold Fusion -> Steam Turbine. No explanation necessary. -seano
Any form of neutron capture / beta emission. -seano
Convince hamsters they're really lemmings. Show cliff to hamsters. Install turbine halfway down cliff.
Densely pack hamsters into flywheel shape. Spin rapidly. Attach generator.
Put hamster on electricity-generating treadmill. Feed back small portion of generated electricity into hamster brain pleasure center. Watch him generate his little heart out!
Seal large quantity of hamsters in air tight holding tanks. Add water. Allow suitable time to pass for decomposition. Collect methane gas resulting. Put gas in fuel cells.
Smush mucho hamsters in a trough, use the drippings/blood to run a waterwheel for hydroelectric power.
Give hamsters lots of shitty beer. Use piss and vomit to run hydroelectric generator.
Skin hamster. Melt animal fat into tallow and then form candles. Heat steam turbine.
Switch hamsters for P6 chips coming of Intel assembly lines. Saved electricity will be enormous. Cover performance loss by releasing new version of Windows NT at the same time. -gwh
Build glass room. Put hamsters inside. Put cocaine inside. Ground the floor and attach negative leads to the ceiling. -gwh
Have hamster steal one of kube's magic cards. Leech power from resulting nuclear strike.
Teach hamsters to play blackjack. Once they're at the competitive level, convince Las Vegas hotel owners to convert to serving hamsters. Saved electricity from smaller lights, hotels, etc. -gwh
Accumulate enough hamsters that the self-gravitational force causes the mass to shrink and heat up. Use thermocouples to generate energy. -gwh
Raid PG&E corporate headquarters. Threaten to drop hamster down CEO's pants unless he gives you a power plant. -gwh
Get several dozen hamsters. Shoot them up with crystal meth. Attach dog sled.
(This is, undoubtedly, the way to get the most power from them) Combine the hamster with an equal mass of antimatter -- a anti-hamster if you will. Then harness the massive energy release for power....
Have the Emperor warp and twist a hamster clone into an evil Anti-Hamster, Darth Hamster. This should be good for 4-6 sequels. Install tension to electricity converters into theatre. -gwh
a. Find a _good_ genetic engineer. b. Splice appropriate genes from electric eels into hamsters, because they're smaller and cuter and, well, hamsters. c. Feed the hamsters. d. Surgically install appropriate electrodes. e. Periodically drain off the volt
I believe that the deputy is probably a good officer with good intentions, as most officers are based on my experience
You argue well, young jedi, and my general experience with cops meshes with yours (although I have known many who could get a bit over-enthusiastic about their view of the "law" as an immutable, nearly religious concept.)
However, one of the finer points of a democratic society based on the rule of law is that it should not depend on the professionalism, dedication and reasonableness (is that a word?) of individuals tasked with its enforcement. I'm not trying to set up a straw man argument here, but what you see with a lot of monarchists is that they support the concept of an absolute ruler based on the ideal of a "benevolent tyrant". That is, one who means well and who has the power to do good things despite the opposition of idiots and evil men.
That said, what happens when said power falls into the hand of someone who's not-so-benevolent? No security mechanism in the world can guarantee that this will not happen. Likewise, even if 99% of cops are good, what's stopping you from hitting the one bad apple, or maybe even just a guy having a bad day?
Perhaps I'm stretching a bit here, but I find the title of this/. article extremely appropriate. Pragmatically speaking, I, as a (generally) law-abiding citizen don't have a problem with having my papers checked. It doesn't really harm me, even if I may believe that its impact on everybody's safety is miniscule. However, I do not want this to become the standard, as I fear the prospect of a nazi or soviet or islamic or whatever state arising, with the powers (obtained under the premise of good, responsible police using them only when appropriate) to check my ID, detain me, take it from there.
And YES some cops have a sense of humor.
Yes, who doesn't, but alas, this "sense of humor" could also be applied to a bunch of cop buddies of a UK friend of mine who made a sport of playing 'car check bingo' (i.e. pulling over drivers based on the color of their cars--"oop, I need a red one. There's one! Let's check his license!") Sounds hilarious, I agree, but not if I'm the driver.
the Supreme Court will NOT uphold any law that requires showing ID to law enforcement for NO reason.
Probably right too--however, define "reason". Never forget that there have been and are countries where "probably cause" includes "he looks like an enemy of the state". Or arab. Or jew. Or whatever.
You'd never do that, you say? You know what, I believe you. I honestly do. Nor would the guys who helped us chase the drug-addict trying to kick down our door, or the cops who brought my girlfriend home when she had an accident, or the ex-cop who ran one of my IT projects. But the 20-something combat-booted cocksuckers who wanted to impress their female colleagues (okay, I would too, I have something for cute chicks in uniform carrying submachine guns, sue me) by picking on the guy in a sports car, well, I don't hesitate to believe for a second that they would. And they're just immature, badly-trained idiots. I shudder to think what happens if were that aforementioned, purely hypothetical one-in-a-hundred bad apple who really is a card carrying member of the Michigan militia in his free time.
Oh, and as an aside, you shouldn't rule out replying to flames and trolls--they're sometimes the most amusing ones:-)
Me: Vroom! Vroom! Yee-haa, 250km/h! *pop open a cold one to celebrate* *glug glug glug* Car: Sir, time for a rolling re-test! (cue: honker breathalyzer tube falling from the ceiling) *whap!* Smack in the face! Me: Eek! Car: Screeech! WHAM! *flip* *roll* *bounce bounce bounce* *BOOM!* (Car explodes in kindergarten playground off shoulder of autobahn, splattering passer-bys with bits of 3-year-olds) Me: Ooogh. Pain. Onlooker: Well, at least he's not a traffic hazard anymore.
My lord, tobacco _AND_ alcohol? Sexual activity in a game? Holy cow! I really would not have bought my latest copy of Super Slayer Commando XXIII if the label on it hadn't assured me that it was much much cleaner than Super Slayer Commando XXII!!!
I am shocked, shocked I tell you. Computer games containing graphic violence? Why seeing that guy I blew away in Quake Death Rampage Umpteen makes me so angry I want to go out and wipe out my office! I'm just glad I was not exposed to such abominations as an impressionable child--who knows, I might have turned out as a psychopathic axe murderer, or even, god forbid, a..a...MUSIC DOWNLOADER!
This revelation makes me never, ever ever want to touch another one of these products of satan again for as long as I live. And especially if I ever have children, good grief, think of what might happen if my little boy or girl were to see such morally reprehensible content while I am away working 12 hour days?!? Why, I think I might have to limit them to watching professional football, or Wile E. Coyote having wholesome anvils dropped on him on TV!
Phew, I've vented my spleen against those evil peddlers of smut and gore. Now back to watching Janet Jackson's nipple and some CNN shots of dead bodies on my wholesome, wholesome television.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny thing, that's exactly what I see at the top of every two-bit v1@gr@ shop sending me mails :-)
How do you enforce the massive quantities of spam coming from dodgy countries like China, Korea, Nigeria and Florida?
Answer: You can't.
The limited number of Swiss-originating spam that I see in my inboxes (and I live there) is quickly dealt with by a very close-knit network of ISPs and their ilk. It's not tolerated anyway.
If the US can't even effectively kill spam inside its own borders, how would, for example, the Justice Dept. react to a request for legal assistance and/or prosecution against the Sanford Wallaces living in the States?
Switzerland has some fairly colorful history regarding technology-related laws and reaction to things like spam. For example, for a long time, some UK mobile providers blocked all SMS messages from Swiss numbers, because there were no laws in place prohibiting SMS spamming. Hence, people set up SMS relays all over the place here.
Also, there are quite a few examples where federal or canton (state) level judges ordered ISPs to block websites for various types of content (including one example of "questionable" political messages--look at the SwiNOG archives for details.)
There's a fairly good understanding of technolgy at a government level, but very often not of the consequences. You have to understand that the Swiss mentality (I'm half Swiss so I get to pontificate on this) is largely based on the idea that people are basically decent and law abiding and that processes have to be followed at all costs. This makes the tax people where I live be really nice and proper, but on the other hand, we've had incidents where we were told not to investigate Nigerian phishers too closely, because we'd make ourselves liable for incitement to commit fraud.
Regarding the army, it's a joke. It's an underfunded mass force; they can't find enough for the poor bastards to do, so they set them on guard duty for festivals and to building grandstands at parades, whatnot. Most young people get in contact with at least soft drugs during their basic training, and it's very widely seen as a complete waste of time (n.b. I didn't go, I got a psychiatrist to certify me for a section 8.)
And, deviating from the tech-topics a bit, we've been very wussy and inconsistent in dealing with foreign countries in general and with the E.U. in particular. The Swiss (and this is a sweeping overgeneralization) don't have the killer competitive instinct that your average German, Brit or American displays in dealing with a lot of issues. It's a really beautiful, pleasant, clean, functional and well-run place to live, and that sort of spoils you over time.
Google doesn't, and this is outside the scope of this article, but I've seen phony pop-ups delivered by quite a few scam sites. They'll use the (now "fixed") IE bug of URL forgery (create a link using http://www.google.com%01%00@badsite.com and IE only ses http://www.google.com), have badsite.com be nothing but a pass-through redirect to google.com with a few web bugs and stuff, and pop up an ad purporting to originate with google.)
You get this quite a lot with amazon and paypal among others, both for people phishing for account details, and for unscrupulous advertisers trying to present their 'product' as something originating with the legitimate site that loads in the background.
Microsoft issued a patch which flat-out prohibits use of '@' in http URLs without some registry changes. Maybe the authors just got their facts mixed a bit.
Wait a sec, that's not true.
You'd get all the cute young stewardesses in short skirts, great food,
freebies from the pilot, and all that really nice silverware they have on planes.
Oh wait...er..
Are those the new exploding vehicles for the GameBoy Tux Racer port?
This means you won't have to go through expensive layoffs and re-hiring phases during economic cycles.
When it turns out you have too many employees, just send a couple of them into the freezers under some pretext, and thaw them out when things get busy again.
OK, after having posted this, I went on a rampage last night, and after going through about 2-3 servers full of 24-16 games, I finally found a balanced one on a Boomtown server.
Promptly killed, repeatedly, by an engineer, via single headshot, who ran around behind a hillock out of sight, while I was running laterally on my side. He randomly popped up, and nailed me while jumping. He could not have had any idea where I was, and he literally got me the very moment he popped up.
Uncanny. I'll usually give them the benefit of the doubt, but I am 100% sure this was a hack. And the guy was being fairly clued otherwise (being in the right place, doing stuff a bot could not) so I have to assume there is a good aim-assist bot out there somewhere for BF.
That's pretty interesting.
:) The hackers may tweak the laws of statistics a bit, but they can't defeat them.
I am an avid (if second-rate) BF1942 player, on regular BF, RTR and SW servers. I've only seen about 3 players in the last year where I definitely suspected cheating, including engineers who would score headshots on moving, concealed targets at massive distances while jumping (!).
Out of curiosity, I once downloaded and tried out a few cheats, including an aimbot. They were utterly horrible and useless. First, a complete pain in the ass to get installed. Second, the ones that ran outside the cilent slowed my machine (2.4ghz PIV/1 gig memory, good gfx/sound) to a miserable crawl. Lastly, the only one I found even remotely useful, one which pointed out players to me, actually hurt me in combat, as I realized I was far faster spotting actual players than trying to associate some symbol with a guy hiding somewhere.
One thing I learned when playing Netrek during several years in college was that 'borgs', or partial-to-full robot clients, never substitute for skill. This is a generalization, I realize, but it usually holds for BF1942 as well. Only someone who knows what they are doing and is generally pretty decent on his own merits will be able to use a cheat as a crutch, and those players are usually good enough not to have to/want to.
In addition, the beauty of large, objective-based games like BF is that the effect of the odd cheater may increase his personal score, but it is no substitute for a decent team with good cooperation and clue. Yeah, a cheater may defend a flag better against one or two people, but if you have a few decent players going for the target, it's no different than without cheats. Sure, we all look at our scores, but I'd rather play to win the game for my team. If I fight the cheater on his own ground (i.e. turn it into a personal, one-on-one vendetta) I will probably come off the worse, and my team will be down one useful player. Do as master Sun says, flow around obstacles
All in all, actual cheating hasn't bothered me nearly as much as the backlash from it (good players automatically being labelled 'cheaters').
...for games. After all, cricket, pub crawls and football riots, while interesting concepts for games, probably don't appeal to the vast majority of consumers 8-)
*runs*
That's right. He was shipped to the mainland, and is currently being analyzed at the secret government research lab where I work...wait, what's that? Why are the walls shaking?
Oh man, you're just missing the whole point. For those of us who are not native Japanese speakers, and thus incapable of picking up the alliterative subtleties of the sinister one-eyed Col. Yamaguchi and his elite reaction anti-monster force, or Prof. Shiro and his young daughter trying to save the world, the dubbing opens up whole new artistic dimensions.
*moves lips* *pause* Look! Godzilla! *lips still moving* *lips stop moving* We are doomed!
Well it would be pretty interesting to be able to spot people who died all the time (they're the ones RUNNING AROUND WITHOUT A HEAD.)
Although one thing I thought would be cool would be sort of a karmic reincarnation scenario--where you come back as a better or worse character depending on how bad you've been, what you've done, etc.
Yeah that's the idea--if you've been pkilling too much, you come back as a troll.
Or if you didn't have a head anymore, you'd have to go to a head shop (ba-dump) to buy a new one.
Good call, same with Angband & friends. But to be honest, I never really minded dying in those for more than 5 minutes, because (a) they were free and (b) I could play them any old time on my laptop.
Shazam is incredibly cool. I saw it when visiting some friends and hanging out in AKA with them in London.
:)
It caught about 75% of the songs blasting on the speakers--although for the ones it missed, it came up with some pretty fantastically hilarious "interpretations".
What I thought was even cuter was the San Francisco startup a few years ago where you could call up, get a human on the phone, hum some off-key bars of a song to them or tell them some lyrics, and they'd go find out what song it was and let you buy the CD. Wonder why they went under...
Look up "ex post facto". And not to nitpick, but the PATRIOT act does not provide for civil liability, I believe.
Yeah but I think there's a bit of a difference between chowing down on what's essentially a cast-off bit of "stuff" and gnawing on some guy's genitalia that you've whacked off and stir-fried while he's still alive (cross-reference that German guy.)
Where's the difference between the placenta example and going to have a quick dump and serving it with a sauce bernaise? Granted, the latter probably falls under several obscenity laws (not that anyone's got any business mandating that I don't cook up "dump-ling surprise" if it's what floats my boat) but cannibalism? Sounds a bit extreme.
I always thought cannibalism was sort of loosely defined as eating any bits of a human being that formed part of the body before you started feeling a bit peckish for for the flambe'd Paraguayan rugby team cheeseburger.
Disagree? You're agreeing with me! That was part of my whole argument :)
To clarify; what I meant to say was that it's dangerous to rely on information generated by this sort of a mechanism as in any way complete or authoritative, as people who'd be involved in it (slashdot geeks?) probably have their brains wired different ways from some Pakistani religious student seeking an express ticket to see his 70 doe-eyed virgins and take as many of us corrupt, decadent infidel scum as possible with him in the process.
Rather, it'd be interesting to see what comes out of it, as no more than one of many forms of input or analysis. Hence my use of the word "brainstorming". The idea being that you will almost certainly not cover all the bases, but some novel approaches will inevitably result when you have a whole bunch of people not coming from (a) a terrorist or (b) an intelligence or government background thinking, "hmm, how would _I_ commit terrorist acts?" as a purely academic process.
Whether or not this would come up with anything really useful, whether one could separate the really feasible ideas from the chaff, and how much credibility one should assign to such ideas is left as an exercise for the reader.
The closest I've seen to this is a display option on Swisscom phones that tells you which municipal area you're in (Bern, Zurich, etc.) One would hope that nobody would ever get _that_ lost :)
That's the problem with mechanisms meant to safeguard against theft; there's always a way around them. Think camera cellphones.
...in the form of a geopolitical futures market?
It strikes me as interesting, trying to predict the actions of homicidal fanatics through whatever mechanism, be it something like this, which is essentially an extended human brainstorming, or through methodical, automated risk analysis.
It could be interesting to bring completely unrelated individuals' ideas into play, to see what someone pretty random with violence on their mind might go for (I mean, I'm sure that _someone_ uninformed would have come up with the idea of ramming planes into an office tower) but I would always be aware of a few caveats:
- Most people who would play something like this think differently (basic cultural mindset and all that) than a mad bomber from a middle eastern country (or Iowa for that matter)
- There's a danger of coming up with a lot of purely hypothetical red herrings--as anyone who works in security and who has ever held a brainstorming session to determine potential avenues of attack can tell you (no, it's not realistic that the Martians will attack with death ray spaceships, although it is conceivable)
- The more factors are considered in putting together a "risk" big picture (such as having a ton of online gamer geeks come up with ideas to blow up as many civilians as possible in one go), the greater is the human propensity to see said big picture as "authoritative".
That said, if it's just used as a tool to model potential avenues of attack, not a bad way of going about it.
Giglikatana. 'Nuf said.
Maybe, and we can hope, two negatives would end up as a positive and we'd have a killer game.
"You are a mafia assassin using your great big butt to hunt down beasties through time" or something.
Great. This reminded me of a list I once posted to rec.humor.funny about getting electric power from hamsters.
Until now, the poor things were limited to purely acoustic music. This way, we can finally get an all-electric hamster band going!
I'm just waiting for hamster groupies.
Here's the list:
The following should be credited to the UC Berkeley CSUA. I left a world-writeable file in my account and waited to see what people would put in it...
42 ways to get electric power from hamsters
Stick copper and zinc electrode-needles in opposite ends of hamster. Use in series for higher voltage. -gwh
Shove them back and forth in Richard Gere's butt. Creates static electricity.
Go to Radio Chack and offer them the hamster in exchange for two AAA batteries.
Attach the hamster to a hand-crank generator and then drop it onto a trampoline.
Ignite in large numbers. Use heat released to drive steam turbine.
Kidnap and threaten to torture. Extort ransom from animal-rights activists and other anti-cruelty types: demand payment in the form of electric current.
Drop hamsters from great heights. Use water-mill like turbine to generate electricity.
Drop large numbers of hamsters into tar pit, wait a few million years, drill for crude oil at same location to run electric turbine.
Cold Fusion -> Steam Turbine. No explanation necessary. -seano
Any form of neutron capture / beta emission. -seano
Convince hamsters they're really lemmings. Show cliff to hamsters. Install turbine halfway down cliff.
Densely pack hamsters into flywheel shape. Spin rapidly. Attach generator.
Put hamster on electricity-generating treadmill. Feed back small portion of generated electricity into hamster brain pleasure center. Watch him generate his little heart out!
Seal large quantity of hamsters in air tight holding tanks. Add water. Allow suitable time to pass for decomposition. Collect methane gas resulting. Put gas in fuel cells.
Smush mucho hamsters in a trough, use the drippings/blood to run a waterwheel for hydroelectric power.
Give hamsters lots of shitty beer. Use piss and vomit to run hydroelectric generator.
Skin hamster. Melt animal fat into tallow and then form candles. Heat steam turbine.
Switch hamsters for P6 chips coming of Intel assembly lines. Saved electricity will be enormous. Cover performance loss by releasing new version of Windows NT at the same time. -gwh
Build glass room. Put hamsters inside. Put cocaine inside. Ground the floor and attach negative leads to the ceiling. -gwh
Have hamster steal one of kube's magic cards. Leech power from resulting nuclear strike.
Teach hamsters to play blackjack. Once they're at the competitive level, convince Las Vegas hotel owners to convert to serving hamsters. Saved electricity from smaller lights, hotels, etc. -gwh
Accumulate enough hamsters that the self-gravitational force causes the mass to shrink and heat up. Use thermocouples to generate energy. -gwh
Raid PG&E corporate headquarters. Threaten to drop hamster down CEO's pants unless he gives you a power plant. -gwh
Get several dozen hamsters. Shoot them up with crystal meth. Attach dog sled.
(This is, undoubtedly, the way to get the most power from them) Combine the hamster with an equal mass of antimatter -- a anti-hamster if you will. Then harness the massive energy release for power....
Have the Emperor warp and twist a hamster clone into an evil Anti-Hamster, Darth Hamster. This should be good for 4-6 sequels. Install tension to electricity converters into theatre. -gwh
a. Find a _good_ genetic engineer.
b. Splice appropriate genes from electric eels into hamsters, because they're smaller and cuter and, well, hamsters.
c. Feed the hamsters.
d. Surgically install appropriate electrodes.
e. Periodically drain off the volt
You argue well, young jedi, and my general experience with cops meshes with yours (although I have known many who could get a bit over-enthusiastic about their view of the "law" as an immutable, nearly religious concept.)
However, one of the finer points of a democratic society based on the rule of law is that it should not depend on the professionalism, dedication and reasonableness (is that a word?) of individuals tasked with its enforcement. I'm not trying to set up a straw man argument here, but what you see with a lot of monarchists is that they support the concept of an absolute ruler based on the ideal of a "benevolent tyrant". That is, one who means well and who has the power to do good things despite the opposition of idiots and evil men.
That said, what happens when said power falls into the hand of someone who's not-so-benevolent? No security mechanism in the world can guarantee that this will not happen. Likewise, even if 99% of cops are good, what's stopping you from hitting the one bad apple, or maybe even just a guy having a bad day?
Perhaps I'm stretching a bit here, but I find the title of this
Yes, who doesn't, but alas, this "sense of humor" could also be applied to a bunch of cop buddies of a UK friend of mine who made a sport of playing 'car check bingo' (i.e. pulling over drivers based on the color of their cars--"oop, I need a red one. There's one! Let's check his license!") Sounds hilarious, I agree, but not if I'm the driver.
Probably right too--however, define "reason". Never forget that there have been and are countries where "probably cause" includes "he looks like an enemy of the state". Or arab. Or jew. Or whatever.
You'd never do that, you say? You know what, I believe you. I honestly do. Nor would the guys who helped us chase the drug-addict trying to kick down our door, or the cops who brought my girlfriend home when she had an accident, or the ex-cop who ran one of my IT projects. But the 20-something combat-booted cocksuckers who wanted to impress their female colleagues (okay, I would too, I have something for cute chicks in uniform carrying submachine guns, sue me) by picking on the guy in a sports car, well, I don't hesitate to believe for a second that they would. And they're just immature, badly-trained idiots. I shudder to think what happens if were that aforementioned, purely hypothetical one-in-a-hundred bad apple who really is a card carrying member of the Michigan militia in his free time.
Oh, and as an aside, you shouldn't rule out replying to flames and trolls--they're sometimes the most amusing ones
Me: Vroom! Vroom! Yee-haa, 250km/h! *pop open a cold one to celebrate* *glug glug glug*
Car: Sir, time for a rolling re-test!
(cue: honker breathalyzer tube falling from the ceiling)
*whap!* Smack in the face!
Me: Eek!
Car: Screeech! WHAM! *flip* *roll* *bounce bounce bounce* *BOOM!* (Car explodes in kindergarten playground off shoulder of autobahn, splattering passer-bys with bits of 3-year-olds)
Me: Ooogh. Pain.
Onlooker: Well, at least he's not a traffic hazard anymore.
Sign me up...
My lord, tobacco _AND_ alcohol? Sexual activity in a game? Holy cow! I really would not have bought my latest copy of Super Slayer Commando XXIII if the label on it hadn't assured me that it was much much cleaner than Super Slayer Commando XXII!!!
I am shocked, shocked I tell you. Computer games containing graphic violence? Why seeing that guy I blew away in Quake Death Rampage Umpteen makes me so angry I want to go out and wipe out my office! I'm just glad I was not exposed to such abominations as an impressionable child--who knows, I might have turned out as a psychopathic axe murderer, or even, god forbid, a..a...MUSIC DOWNLOADER!
This revelation makes me never, ever ever want to touch another one of these products of satan again for as long as I live. And especially if I ever have children, good grief, think of what might happen if my little boy or girl were to see such morally reprehensible content while I am away working 12 hour days?!? Why, I think I might have to limit them to watching professional football, or Wile E. Coyote having wholesome anvils dropped on him on TV!
Phew, I've vented my spleen against those evil peddlers of smut and gore. Now back to watching Janet Jackson's nipple and some CNN shots of dead bodies on my wholesome, wholesome television.