You know, I've gotten REALLY tired of the burden being placed on the end user to set up filters and all to avoid junk Email, and it seems like no matter what we do, the SPAM just keeps on coming. So when I hear a story like this, it makes me happy.
This afternoon,I found a link to the SpamCon Foundation, whose mission is "to protect email as a viable communication medium by reducing the amount of unwanted and unsolicited email, or "spam", that crosses private networks, while ensuring that wanted and requested email reaches its recipients."
If you hate SPAM, and if you're reading this thread, you probably do, you may want to check it out.
Games are extremely addictive, as my poor wife can attest.
This got me thinking, considering how pervasive games are, and how the "mainstream" is trying so hard to demonize video games, how long is it before we hear this exchange?
"Now, Mr. President, did you or did you not play Quake when you were in college?"
"I did play it, once, but I didn't like it, and I never fragged."
I have a great idea. Let's send Tito to Jerusalem for a week, then ask him how to broker peace in the Middle East. Then, we'll send him to Ethiopa for a week, and ask him how to feed thousands of starving people. I think he'd be perfect for these tasks, since it only took him one week to become an expert on space science. Imagine what he could do right here on earth!
My friend works for a large film company that has made many Toy and Bug oriented CG films. Since we are both actors, films like FF could really hurt our potential careers. We were talking about "Cyberthespians" backstage a couple of weeks ago, because we'd seen the trailer, and I was very impressed with it. I thought that it was the first step towards phasing out flesh and bone actors. I mean, Jar Jar was straight out of hell, but, if you take away the character, and just focus on the animation, it was prety impressive.
Anyway, here is something she Emailed me about our discussion, which/.-ers may find interesting:
Although this may be a leap forward in CG humans, it still has far, far
to go. Textures, of skin, of cloth are still not quite right. Skin
shaders are also evasive. Even the newest, most cutting edge CG skin
still has a rubbery look. I've heard the next step is to create "oil
maps" of skin to map out parts of a texture map that will have much
higher specularity - that shiny look.
Then there's the movement. I've heard FF's characters look really
stilted and jerky. Although they used motion capture for body motion,
it still is not fluid. Facial expressions were animated by hand.
I talked to a guy yesterday who is working on CG hair for a CG head for
a real body. I asked him why not just put a wig on the actor and CG the
face? A lot cheaper than creating a hair map and rendering out
thousands of CG hairs (that look rubbery.) His answer is what I call
"the boys with the toys." There's a few men in the world who have the
money to RnD computerized anything to no PARTICULAR end, just because
they can. Of course, if you can apply it to a multi-million dollar
movie and get a return on your investment, that's OK too.
I often hear CG artists joke that a CG actor will never strike. But
they all know that one CG actor takes YEARS and millions of dollars to
create. It's neither cheaper nor better. It's just another way to play
a video game.
This doesn't surprise me one bit. Remeber back in the old days, when we'd call AT&T "The Death Star"? Well, I suggest that this moniker be passed along to Clam^H^H^H^HEarthlink.
Here's an abbrivated version of my trials with Earthlink: For years, I was a netcom customer. A very happy customer. Then Netcom was bought by Mindspring, and I was a less happy customer. Then Mindspring was assimilated by Earthlink, and I became a very angry customer. I am now an Earthlink subscriber, not by choice, and I am leaving them just as soon as I can find a good DSL provider in my area. But I digress. Since Earthlink took over, the quality of service has plummeted. I get busy signals when I never did before, I am paying for 56K and I usually connect at 48 or 33.6! When I complain, I'm told that it must be a problem with my modem or my wiring, and when I reply that there was no problem until Earthlink took over, they DON'T REPLY! Recently, Earthlink "phased out" a bunch of Netcom dialups, and changed a bunch of DNS servers, and we Netcom subscribers couldn't login, and I wasn't able to get Email for two weeks. They did this without any advance warning, although they did see fit to send us Emails encouraging us to get our friends to switch to Earthlink.
Earthlink does suck, and why shouldn't they? They are the 800 pound gorilla of ISPs, and they really have no incentive to improve their service.
There is considerable reason to believe that scientology was started as a joke and/or a business. Many countries (e.g. Germany) do not regard Scientology as a religion but as a business.
It is widely known to critics of $cientology that this is exactly why Hubard created his cult.
A New York based magazine editor recalled, in 1986,
"[Hubbard] was really quite a character. I always knew he was exceedingly anxious to hit big money - he used to say he thought the best way to do it would be to start a cult."
This seems to echo Hubbard's statements to a Newark, New Jersey science fiction club in 1949:
"Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous," he told the meeting. "If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be to start his own religion."
And consider this quote, from California Superior Court Judge Breckenridge, speaking of Scientology founder, L. Ron Hubbard, in a 1984 legal decision:
"The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background and achievements. The writings and documents in evidence additionally reflect his egoism, greed, avarice, lust for power, and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or hostile."...
"[The court record is] replete with evidence [that Scientology] is nothing in reality but a vast enterprise to extract the maximum amount of money from its adepts by pseudo scientific theories... and to exercise a kind of blackmail against persons who do not wish to continue with their sect.... The organization clearly is schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard."
Finally, Hubbard himself is quoted in a communication to his followers dated 25 February 1966:
"Make money. Make more money. Make people produce so as to make more money."
I thought the first sign of suckness was the trailer, which unfortunately makes a good argument for giving away too much of the movie in a preview. I think I'll spend my 7 bucks on renting a truly accurate historical epic, Holy Grail.
I have always opted out whenever I can, but I've always felt strange about it. It's like I'm going to the company, and saying, "Here's all the information you guys want to give your advertisers: my name, address, phone number, and email address. Now, please don't use it."
Call me crazy, but I just don't trust that my info won't "accidentally" find its way into some other database, somewhere.
I wonder...what happens if enough people get together and complain that Yahoo! is selling, say, bibles. Or that they have religion oriented clubs. Will they stop carrying them, too?
Remember this, kids: we don't have to protect the popular things from censorship and removal. It's the unpopularthings that we need to stand up for, because sooner or later, they're going to come gunning for something that you care about.
Sex sells. It always has, and it always will. Through good times and bad, the human libido continues.
This is a good point, that bears some further discussion. Throughout history, whenever a new media is developed, someone immediately finds a way to use that media to deliver pornographic content. Here are some:
I'd say that people's desire for pornography has driven many technologies. Many people credit the adult industry with the rapid development of VCRs and portable video cameras. What do you think the number one use of Polaroid cameras is? Hint: It's not taking pictures for the bullettin board at work. Bottom line? Porn sells. Always has, and always will. I'd even be willing to bet that the race to create a good Virtual Reality program to perform complex, life-saving surgeries is being run with just slightly less vigor than the race to create a Virtual Reality program to give blow jobs.
This explains something I heard on my scanner the other night:
Mission Control: Shuttle, this is Mission Control. We'd like you to do some housekeeping...
Shuttle: Shut up, mission control! You're not the boss of me!
MC: Actually, Shuttle, we are the boss of you. And now, you can't come to our birthday party.
S: Fine! We didn't want to come to your birthday, anyway. You're a butthead!
MC: I know you are, but what am I?
S: Nuh-huh! I know you are, but what am I?!
MC: I know you are, but what am I?!
S: You!
MC: No, you! Shut up!
S: You shut up! I'm telling!
The whole thing went on like this for another hour, until Dan Goldin got on the line, and sent both the Shuttle, and Mission Control to timeouts in their rooms until they could be nice to each other again. Weird.
From the article: "Searching for 'Madonna,' for example, yielded no songs Thursday, where in the past the search would have found many hundreds of tracks. Changing the spelling slightly -- to 'Maddona' or 'Madona' -- still resulted in many tracks, though."
It's just a matter of time before someone figures out an easy workaround to the naming/renaming scheme, then Napster will be right back up where it was before. In the meantime, there is always Aimster.
...the idea that they wouldn't be aware of other sites on the Internet seems ludicrous to me.
Actually, the Clams are required by CO$ to install a special filter on their browser, which prevents sites which are critical of $cientology from being displayed. Apparently, it's for their own good...CO$ wouldn't want to let the poor little drones think for themselves...that'd be bad.
People, put yourselves in poor George Lucas's shoes. He has consistently put out great quality entertainment (Willow, Ewok Adventures, Jar Jar Binks), and is just a struggling artist, not unlike the Park Wars guys. Now, George has to protect the "integrity" of his creation, right? I mean, he wouldn't just sit back and allow the complex mythology of Star Wars, the epic, timeless battle between good and evil, be reduced to something like a trade war, right? And he couldn't allow The Force become something like...oh, a virus, right? I mean, George has to keep a tight rein on these things, or who knows what could happen?
I disagree. While the production values may not have been stellar, they certainly were up to the standards of the time, for a weekly network series. And sure, not all the episodes were great, but unless you're doing "The Prisoner", where you focus on 17 episodes, you're going to have some dogs.
Consider this, though: I argue that the brilliance of SF is that it can address very volitile social issues, like racism, environmentalism, sexism, etc., and do so safely. People may dismiss a story about slavery, for example, but when you change the races to Gorthos enslaving Kangoids, you can tell the same story, and get the same message across. Those of us who grew up in the 70's and 80's all clearly remember the fear of nuclear war, right? The most memorable episode for me was the one called "Experiment in Terra", where Apollo ends up on a suspiciously "earth-like" planet, and has to diffuse a nuclear confrontation between "The Eastern Alliance" and "The People's Nationalist Force". The allegories were clear, even to my 10 year-old brain. It was then that I learned the true power of Science Fiction, and officially became a nerd.
Oh, great. If you thought Wesley was annoying, just wait until we have a CG character, ala Jar Jar Binks running around Starfleet. Warm up the airlocks now.
Lancaster California, from my (detached) view, seems to be a town full of iodine seeking crank junkies and intolerant white-folk --
I live in Pasadena, California, and Lancaster is about an hour away from where I live. I can say, based on first-hand experience, that you are 100% correct in your assessment. The funny thing is, the communities in that area -Valencia, Palmdale, and Lancaster - advertise to prospective homebuyers with the slogan, "Where family values still exist". I leave it to the reader to devine exactly what "family values" they are referring to.
Slashdot Mirror
This afternoon,I found a link to the SpamCon Foundation, whose mission is "to protect email as a viable communication medium by reducing the amount of unwanted and unsolicited email, or "spam", that crosses private networks, while ensuring that wanted and requested email reaches its recipients."
If you hate SPAM, and if you're reading this thread, you probably do, you may want to check it out.
Yeah, you can have my SPAM when you pry it out of my cold, dead hand!
Games are extremely addictive, as my poor wife can attest.
This got me thinking, considering how pervasive games are, and how the "mainstream" is trying so hard to demonize video games, how long is it before we hear this exchange?
/sarcasm
Anyway, here is something she Emailed me about our discussion, which /.-ers may find interesting:
Here's an abbrivated version of my trials with Earthlink: For years, I was a netcom customer. A very happy customer. Then Netcom was bought by Mindspring, and I was a less happy customer. Then Mindspring was assimilated by Earthlink, and I became a very angry customer. I am now an Earthlink subscriber, not by choice, and I am leaving them just as soon as I can find a good DSL provider in my area. But I digress. Since Earthlink took over, the quality of service has plummeted. I get busy signals when I never did before, I am paying for 56K and I usually connect at 48 or 33.6! When I complain, I'm told that it must be a problem with my modem or my wiring, and when I reply that there was no problem until Earthlink took over, they DON'T REPLY! Recently, Earthlink "phased out" a bunch of Netcom dialups, and changed a bunch of DNS servers, and we Netcom subscribers couldn't login, and I wasn't able to get Email for two weeks. They did this without any advance warning, although they did see fit to send us Emails encouraging us to get our friends to switch to Earthlink.
Earthlink does suck, and why shouldn't they? They are the 800 pound gorilla of ISPs, and they really have no incentive to improve their service.
Waihopai, INFOSEC, Information Security, Information Warfare, IW, IS, Priavacy, Information Terrorism, Terrorism Defensive Information, Defense Information Warfare, Offensive Information, Offensive Information Warfare, National Information Infrastructure, InfoSec, Reno, Compsec, Computer Terrorism, Firewalls, Secure Internet Connections, ISS, Passwords, DefCon V, Hackers, Encryption, Espionage, White House, Undercover, NCCS, Mayfly, PGP, PEM, RSA, Perl-RSA, MSNBC, bet, AOL, AOL TOS, CIS, CBOT, AIMSX, STARLAN, 3B2, BITNET, COSMOS, DATTA, E911, FCIC, HTCIA, IACIS, UT/RUS, JANET, JICC, ReMOB, LEETAC, UTU, VNET, BRLO, BZ, CANSLO, CBNRC, CIDA, JAVA, Active X, Compsec 97, LLC, DERA, Mavricks, Meta-hackers, ^?, Steve Case, Tools, Telex, Military Intelligence, Scully, Flame, Infowar, Bubba, Freeh, Archives, Sundevil, jack, Investigation, ISACA, NCSA, spook words, Verisign, Secure, ASIO, Lebed, ICE, NRO, Lexis-Nexis, NSCT, SCIF, FLiR, Lacrosse, Flashbangs, Masuda, Forte, AT, GIGN, Exon Shell, CQB, CONUS, CTU, RCMP, GRU, SASR, GSG-9, 22nd SAS, GEOS, EADA, BBE, STEP, Echelon, Dictionary, MD2, MD4, MDA, MYK, 747,777, 767, MI5, 737, MI6, 757, Kh-11, Shayet-13, SADMS, Spetznaz, Recce, 707, CIO, NOCS, Halcon, Duress, RAID, Psyops, grom, D-11, SERT, VIP, ARC, S.E.T. Team, MP5k, DREC, DEVGRP, DF, DSD, FDM, GRU, LRTS, SIGDEV, NACSI, PSAC, PTT, RFI, SIGDASYS, TDM. SUKLO, SUSLO, TELINT, TEXTA. ELF, LF, MF, VHF, UHF, SHF, SASP, WANK, Colonel, domestic disruption, smuggle, 15kg, nitrate, Pretoria, M-14, enigma, Bletchley Park, Clandestine, nkvd, argus, afsatcom, CQB, NVD, Counter Terrorism Security, Rapid Reaction, Corporate Security, Police, sniper, PPS, ASIS, ASLET, TSCM.
It is widely known to critics of $cientology that this is exactly why Hubard created his cult.
A New York based magazine editor recalled, in 1986,
This seems to echo Hubbard's statements to a Newark, New Jersey science fiction club in 1949:
And consider this quote, from California Superior Court Judge Breckenridge, speaking of Scientology founder, L. Ron Hubbard, in a 1984 legal decision:
Finally, Hubbard himself is quoted in a communication to his followers dated 25 February 1966:
Don't forget about the pledge breaks between each level...
"We'd like to load the next level, but we can't, until we reach our goal for this hour..."
I thought the first sign of suckness was the trailer, which unfortunately makes a good argument for giving away too much of the movie in a preview. I think I'll spend my 7 bucks on renting a truly accurate historical epic, Holy Grail.
Ni!
He is playing first.
Dr. What is on second, and Doctor I Don't Know is on third...
Call me crazy, but I just don't trust that my info won't "accidentally" find its way into some other database, somewhere.
Remember this, kids: we don't have to protect the popular things from censorship and removal. It's the unpopularthings that we need to stand up for, because sooner or later, they're going to come gunning for something that you care about.
This is a good point, that bears some further discussion. Throughout history, whenever a new media is developed, someone immediately finds a way to use that media to deliver pornographic content. Here are some:
Photos
Daguerreotypes
Stereoscopes
Postcards
I'd say that people's desire for pornography has driven many technologies. Many people credit the adult industry with the rapid development of VCRs and portable video cameras. What do you think the number one use of Polaroid cameras is? Hint: It's not taking pictures for the bullettin board at work. Bottom line? Porn sells. Always has, and always will. I'd even be willing to bet that the race to create a good Virtual Reality program to perform complex, life-saving surgeries is being run with just slightly less vigor than the race to create a Virtual Reality program to give blow jobs.
How many residents of third world countries can even eat?
Mission Control: Shuttle, this is Mission Control. We'd like you to do some housekeeping...
Shuttle: Shut up, mission control! You're not the boss of me!
MC: Actually, Shuttle, we are the boss of you. And now, you can't come to our birthday party.
S: Fine! We didn't want to come to your birthday, anyway. You're a butthead!
MC: I know you are, but what am I?
S: Nuh-huh! I know you are, but what am I?!
MC: I know you are, but what am I?!
S: You!
MC: No, you! Shut up!
S: You shut up! I'm telling!
The whole thing went on like this for another hour, until Dan Goldin got on the line, and sent both the Shuttle, and Mission Control to timeouts in their rooms until they could be nice to each other again. Weird.
Guess I'll have to travel many country by myself now. *sigh*
It's just a matter of time before someone figures out an easy workaround to the naming/renaming scheme, then Napster will be right back up where it was before. In the meantime, there is always Aimster.
Actually, the Clams are required by CO$ to install a special filter on their browser, which prevents sites which are critical of $cientology from being displayed. Apparently, it's for their own good...CO$ wouldn't want to let the poor little drones think for themselves...that'd be bad.
All hail Xenu!
Oh, and he also needs to make more money.
Consider this, though: I argue that the brilliance of SF is that it can address very volitile social issues, like racism, environmentalism, sexism, etc., and do so safely. People may dismiss a story about slavery, for example, but when you change the races to Gorthos enslaving Kangoids, you can tell the same story, and get the same message across. Those of us who grew up in the 70's and 80's all clearly remember the fear of nuclear war, right? The most memorable episode for me was the one called "Experiment in Terra", where Apollo ends up on a suspiciously "earth-like" planet, and has to diffuse a nuclear confrontation between "The Eastern Alliance" and "The People's Nationalist Force". The allegories were clear, even to my 10 year-old brain. It was then that I learned the true power of Science Fiction, and officially became a nerd.
Oh, great. If you thought Wesley was annoying, just wait until we have a CG character, ala Jar Jar Binks running around Starfleet. Warm up the airlocks now.
Of course, when they release the new version, we'll hear "Oh my god, Spock...it's full of Tribbles."
I live in Pasadena, California, and Lancaster is about an hour away from where I live. I can say, based on first-hand experience, that you are 100% correct in your assessment. The funny thing is, the communities in that area -Valencia, Palmdale, and Lancaster - advertise to prospective homebuyers with the slogan, "Where family values still exist". I leave it to the reader to devine exactly what "family values" they are referring to.
Of course, the way the CIA and DOD think, it is more likely that these would be used to deploy chemical or biological weapons.