It shouldn't be illegal to falsify whois records. Lookup the whois info on your favorite pr0n site. I'll bet it's not a real person that you find. It should be legal to put false information into the whois database because sometimes you're better off without people being able to find out who you are.
It should be treated with the highest level of seriousness when someone hides behind false information to commit crimes, but providing that false information shouldn't be a crime in and of itself.
referring to Basham's co-defendant, who plead guilty and was sentenced to death
Seriously, what's wrong with this guy? Why would he plead guilty without some type of consideration?
If I'm facing the death penalty, I'd at least take my chances with a trial. There's no point in pleading guilty KNOWING that the state is seeking execution.
Or does the machine start vibrating under the load?
I think he means that the vibration keeps knocking the router off of his desk. Unfortunately, he only has one hand available at the time and can't catch it.
You, sir, are lying. My D-Link DI-604 router works perfectly with Linux. In fact, I don't think I've ever even touched the configuration interface under Windows.
My Linksys has worked perfectly with Linux, Mac OS X, Mac OS 8, Mac OS 9 and Windows.
Guns are problematic. First, there's the obvious safety issue of having a gun in the house.
This is a non-issue if you have any brain power at all. Keep the gun in a secure place. Gun safes and cabinets are made for a reason.
Second, there's the fact that if you miss (or even if you don't), you could toss a bullet through a wall and kill your kid sleeping in the next room or the neighbor down the block.
That's why they make frangible ammunition and specialty ammo like the Glaser Safety Slug, they exist to reduce the threat to people in the next room.
It's even effective if you don't have a clear shot -- spray it into the hall and you'll deny access to a section of the house while you dial 911. And if your kids find it, the worse that can happen is they'll spray themselves and need an eye wash. Painful, but beats a bullet in the head.
Pepper spray is nothing to someone who is hopped up on hard drugs. A Sherm head who just got wet won't even notice that he's been pepper sprayed. For people like that, lethal force should be something that you can consider. It should be a last resort if possible, but it should be an option you leave open for yourself.
Given the real risks of even keeping a handgun, in most realistic scenarios (aka, 35 gang members probably aren't going to rush your house), pepper spray is a far better solution given the overall risk/rewards.
While it's true that the chances of 35 gang bangers invading your home is ~0%, ONE dope fiend looking for money for his next fix is ample reason to consider a firearm.
Do, or don't it's your choice, but understand the risks involved if you choose not to.
While it is easier to kill intentionally with a powerful rifle, it is easier to kill, or seriously maim, unintentionally, with a shotgun.
I'm not so sure about that.
First and foremost, you have no business shooting at anyone or anything that you do not intend to kill. End of story. Warning shots and shooting to wound is best left in the movies.
If you get shot with a hunting rifle, the hydrastatic shock of the bullet entering your abdomen WILL break open several of your internal organs. Maybe you'll be lucky and have it be your heart, so your death is quick and painless. Maybe you'll be unlucky enough to have it be your intestines. When the contents of your intestines are freed to float around in your abdomen and you die a week later from septicemia, you'll have a much worse death than if you had been shot in the face.
A heavy leather coat would provide you with a slight amount of protection against a shotgun blast. The pellets wouldn't bounce off of you, but it could rob enough energy from them to prevent them from reaching your heart and lungs.
Close range, a rifle is just as deadly as a shotgun. Possible even moreso.
You raise a valid point. For example, it's widely known that somewhere around 90% of black people vote Democrat. Democrats know that they have 90% of that block in the bag so they don't need to work to get it. Republicans know that at best they will get 10$ of that block, so it is against the Republican self-interest to squander too many resources trying to get those votes.
Latinos and Hispanics are a minority group that is very similar in size to black people, but Democrats and Republicans alike are trying to get their votes. Why? Because the Latinos split their votes.
What's the result of this? Racial profiling, no one in congress even mentions it anymore. Immigration policy reform, everyone in congress talks about it, but they pretend that most of the illegal aliens aren't coming through our southern border because they don't want to risk losing latino votes.
I'm undecided as to what I think about splitting electoral votes. Who's fault is it that Bush can ignore New York and California? Who's fault is it that Kerry can forget about Texas, Idaho and Vermont?
I'd say it's the fault of the people who have made themselves irrelavent by standing so strongly behind one party.
Funny thing about that requirement. About 10-12 years ago, I knew a guy who went through the trouble to become a licensed locksmith. Then he could legally carry lockpicks. He would use those lockpicks to rip off vending and gambling machines.
No, it's not free money. It literally cost you a leg to get that money.
What tort reform like this does is give HMOs and insurance companies a hard number to factor in when calculating how much risk to take with someone's health.
If cutting a few corners will save 10 Million dollars over the course of the next 10 years but statistically there will be 30 people who are adversely affected by these cut corners, the company only has to do the math. 7.5 million dollars spent over 10 years as a result of settling the lawsuits, or 10 million dollars spent as a result of paying to do it right...
Capping awards has the effect of making profit more important than quality health care.
Medical mistakes kill more people in the US every year than tobacco! But who is it that the government shook down for money? "Big Tobacco"!
How about the guy who had his penis removedby mistake? Is $250,000 supposed to be just compensation for him? FUCK NO!
Tort "reform" would have the effect of limiting the responsibility that health care professionals have to take over the quality of their work.
It could be good because history has shown that there is nothing better for opening up a closed society than business. Trade has turned the former USSR into the USA's ally. Trade is what prompted the debate about normalizing US relations with Vietnam. So perhaps more trade with China will open up their society and lead to the easing of the restrictions placed upon their people.
It could be bad in that these big corporations could get used to having slave labor. Don't mistake it, people in China are slaves. The country limits how many children you can have. They will use force to prevent you from having children. They don't allow people to decide for themselves what to do with the dead bodies of their loved ones.
This could result in the exporting of all work to 3rd world countries. Instead of paying someone $36k per year, they can pay 36 people $1k per year. In Bangladesh, where people make nearly no money, this would be a fortune.
Using specialised DSPs makes more sense to me than burning up generic CPU cycles. There have been many examples over the years of how a specialized DSP is more efficient and effective for a narrow task than a regular CPU. Look at portable MP3 players. They use tiny specialized DSPs to decode the files in a manner that is much more efficient than using a regular CPU.
We'll still need to do traditional development to interpret the data from the DSPs. We'll need to parse the output so that we can use natural commands to control devices.
My last board was a K7S5A, that board and the Athlon XP 1800+ that I got with it are now in my girlfriend's machine. With the exception of losing the bios settings every few weeks, that board is fantastic. Cheap and stable, even if not all that fast compared to its contemporaries. But I challenge anyone to find a better board new for $40.
It may feel good to pump 12 rounds into an unarmed tresspasser, but comon...
That is perfectly legal where I live.
In fact, I will most likely put 2 into an intruder before I find out if he's armed or not.
Seriously, if someone breaks into your home while you are there, you'd be a fool not to assume that he is armed and act accordingly. Don't issue warnings and threats eg "I just called the cops, you'd better leave", that will only alert the intruder to your location and the fact that you are now a threat to him. If it's within your power, incapacitate him.
I have an N2U400A from ECS. It is a cheap ass mobo, but when I get it installed and running I was surprised at how sweet the NForce 2 Ultra chipset is. Fast, and I do mean FAST and stable. I put some stress on my system. I'll run the distributed.net client in the background, while I have a VPN connection open to the database server, I'll be importing records into that database, A VNC session running, and all while while playing Counter Strike in the foreground. System stays smooth and responsive.
Via needs to change something, because the NForce chipset is kicking ass all over their offerings for only a few dollars more.
I was kind of wary when I heard that NVidia was releasing a mobo chipset, I thought that since they were a "video card" company that they wouldn't be able to make a good chipset. I am so glad I was wrong. Now, I'd like to see what ATI can do.
I am currently making my living as a database developer. We put in a lot of hard work, so I understand this guy not wanting people to pirate his program, but as a developer I also know that sometimes programs behave unexpectedly. I also know that people sometimes mistype numbers.
What if a legit serial was sufficiently similar to a bogus serial that some user mistyped a bogus serial instead of their legit one? The ill will alone will be enough to kill your project. If the program refused to work, or even uninstalled itself that would be cool in my book, but to trash an entire user directory is fucked up.
Warez is a result of this lame sense of entitlement that today's computer users have.
As opposed to what era's computer users? As far back as people have been using computers, they have been sharing programs. From the boys at Bell Labs to Berkley, software was shared. The idea that there's nothing wrong with sharing isn't new.
id Software lost over a million dollars to record-breaking piracy the weekend before Doom 3's release. Ask Carmack sometime how he feels about that.
If, and only if everyone who pirated the game would have bought it if they couldn't get it for free.
You can't put an actual dollar amount on lost sales, because there is no way to prove a lost sale. The whole argument of "lost potential sales" opens the door to Ballmer claiming that every linux server out there is lost revenue for M$. It's idiotic and illogical.
As more and more people pirate the fuck out of everything, the system will eventually completely crumble, and nobody will be able to make a living off of any software. We won't have the Photoshops or 3D Studio Maxes or Cubases of the world, because there won't be businesses behind them doing the development.
Bullshit. Adobe makes the Lion's share of its Photoshop profits from graphic design shops. Not from individuals like me. I do happen to own a legal copy of Photoshop, I got it for free from Adobe reps. No matter how much the software is pirated by the little people, companies are going to continue to buy it because it's not worth the risk of getting caught with bogus copies.
Slashdot Mirror
I think this is the right way to go about this.
It shouldn't be illegal to falsify whois records. Lookup the whois info on your favorite pr0n site. I'll bet it's not a real person that you find. It should be legal to put false information into the whois database because sometimes you're better off without people being able to find out who you are.
It should be treated with the highest level of seriousness when someone hides behind false information to commit crimes, but providing that false information shouldn't be a crime in and of itself.
LK
Kick a dog first. Try that out.
referring to Basham's co-defendant, who plead guilty and was sentenced to death
Seriously, what's wrong with this guy? Why would he plead guilty without some type of consideration?
If I'm facing the death penalty, I'd at least take my chances with a trial. There's no point in pleading guilty KNOWING that the state is seeking execution.
LK
As long as the release the source, the GPL does not prevent it. It's perfectly acceptable under the GPL to fork a product.
Is Firefox licensed under the GPL?
LK
Or does the machine start vibrating under the load?
I think he means that the vibration keeps knocking the router off of his desk. Unfortunately, he only has one hand available at the time and can't catch it.
LK
You, sir, are lying. My D-Link DI-604 router works perfectly with Linux. In fact, I don't think I've ever even touched the configuration interface under Windows.
My Linksys has worked perfectly with Linux, Mac OS X, Mac OS 8, Mac OS 9 and Windows.
No problems here either.
LK
I'd be happy for a good copy. Just imagine a custom case with one of those and a bright ass LED behind it.
LK
Guns are problematic. First, there's the obvious safety issue of having a gun in the house.
This is a non-issue if you have any brain power at all. Keep the gun in a secure place. Gun safes and cabinets are made for a reason.
Second, there's the fact that if you miss (or even if you don't), you could toss a bullet through a wall and kill your kid sleeping in the next room or the neighbor down the block.
That's why they make frangible ammunition and specialty ammo like the Glaser Safety Slug, they exist to reduce the threat to people in the next room.
It's even effective if you don't have a clear shot -- spray it into the hall and you'll deny access to a section of the house while you dial 911. And if your kids find it, the worse that can happen is they'll spray themselves and need an eye wash. Painful, but beats a bullet in the head.
Pepper spray is nothing to someone who is hopped up on hard drugs. A Sherm head who just got wet won't even notice that he's been pepper sprayed. For people like that, lethal force should be something that you can consider. It should be a last resort if possible, but it should be an option you leave open for yourself.
Given the real risks of even keeping a handgun, in most realistic scenarios (aka, 35 gang members probably aren't going to rush your house), pepper spray is a far better solution given the overall risk/rewards.
While it's true that the chances of 35 gang bangers invading your home is ~0%, ONE dope fiend looking for money for his next fix is ample reason to consider a firearm.
Do, or don't it's your choice, but understand the risks involved if you choose not to.
LK
While it is easier to kill intentionally with a powerful rifle, it is easier to kill, or seriously maim, unintentionally, with a shotgun.
I'm not so sure about that.
First and foremost, you have no business shooting at anyone or anything that you do not intend to kill. End of story. Warning shots and shooting to wound is best left in the movies.
If you get shot with a hunting rifle, the hydrastatic shock of the bullet entering your abdomen WILL break open several of your internal organs. Maybe you'll be lucky and have it be your heart, so your death is quick and painless. Maybe you'll be unlucky enough to have it be your intestines. When the contents of your intestines are freed to float around in your abdomen and you die a week later from septicemia, you'll have a much worse death than if you had been shot in the face.
A heavy leather coat would provide you with a slight amount of protection against a shotgun blast. The pellets wouldn't bounce off of you, but it could rob enough energy from them to prevent them from reaching your heart and lungs.
Close range, a rifle is just as deadly as a shotgun. Possible even moreso.
LK
You raise a valid point. For example, it's widely known that somewhere around 90% of black people vote Democrat. Democrats know that they have 90% of that block in the bag so they don't need to work to get it. Republicans know that at best they will get 10$ of that block, so it is against the Republican self-interest to squander too many resources trying to get those votes.
Latinos and Hispanics are a minority group that is very similar in size to black people, but Democrats and Republicans alike are trying to get their votes. Why? Because the Latinos split their votes.
What's the result of this? Racial profiling, no one in congress even mentions it anymore. Immigration policy reform, everyone in congress talks about it, but they pretend that most of the illegal aliens aren't coming through our southern border because they don't want to risk losing latino votes.
I'm undecided as to what I think about splitting electoral votes. Who's fault is it that Bush can ignore New York and California? Who's fault is it that Kerry can forget about Texas, Idaho and Vermont?
I'd say it's the fault of the people who have made themselves irrelavent by standing so strongly behind one party.
LK
A "discount" rate? Why is it not free?
Because they're a business. Because they have expenses.
LK
Everything has its place in the chain :-)
Maybe, but not in MY back yard.
And I don't mean, in my neighborhood, or in my personal space, or anything like that. I actually mean the yard behind the building where I live.
LK
Honestly judge, I wasn't drunk, I was taking a nutritional supplement.
LK
Sure. Just like CD prices fell after the CD price fixing settlemet... oh, wait...
You can get new releases at Best Buy and Circuit City for like $13. It wasn't like that 5 years ago.
LK
Funny thing about that requirement. About 10-12 years ago, I knew a guy who went through the trouble to become a licensed locksmith. Then he could legally carry lockpicks. He would use those lockpicks to rip off vending and gambling machines.
LK
This is just free money.
No, it's not free money. It literally cost you a leg to get that money.
What tort reform like this does is give HMOs and insurance companies a hard number to factor in when calculating how much risk to take with someone's health.
If cutting a few corners will save 10 Million dollars over the course of the next 10 years but statistically there will be 30 people who are adversely affected by these cut corners, the company only has to do the math. 7.5 million dollars spent over 10 years as a result of settling the lawsuits, or 10 million dollars spent as a result of paying to do it right...
Capping awards has the effect of making profit more important than quality health care.
Medical mistakes kill more people in the US every year than tobacco! But who is it that the government shook down for money? "Big Tobacco"!
How about the guy who had his penis removed by mistake? Is $250,000 supposed to be just compensation for him? FUCK NO!
Tort "reform" would have the effect of limiting the responsibility that health care professionals have to take over the quality of their work.
LK
It could be good because history has shown that there is nothing better for opening up a closed society than business. Trade has turned the former USSR into the USA's ally. Trade is what prompted the debate about normalizing US relations with Vietnam. So perhaps more trade with China will open up their society and lead to the easing of the restrictions placed upon their people.
It could be bad in that these big corporations could get used to having slave labor. Don't mistake it, people in China are slaves. The country limits how many children you can have. They will use force to prevent you from having children. They don't allow people to decide for themselves what to do with the dead bodies of their loved ones.
This could result in the exporting of all work to 3rd world countries. Instead of paying someone $36k per year, they can pay 36 people $1k per year. In Bangladesh, where people make nearly no money, this would be a fortune.
I look at this with guarded optimism.
LK
Using specialised DSPs makes more sense to me than burning up generic CPU cycles. There have been many examples over the years of how a specialized DSP is more efficient and effective for a narrow task than a regular CPU. Look at portable MP3 players. They use tiny specialized DSPs to decode the files in a manner that is much more efficient than using a regular CPU.
We'll still need to do traditional development to interpret the data from the DSPs. We'll need to parse the output so that we can use natural commands to control devices.
"Coffee maker, brew 10 cups, strong."
"Bathroom lights, on."
Without some manner of AI to interpret them, these phrases will be useless.
LK
Rotate the map 90 degrees clockwise. It looks like a tortoise getting ready to fuck a hare.
Seriously, do it.
LK
My last board was a K7S5A, that board and the Athlon XP 1800+ that I got with it are now in my girlfriend's machine. With the exception of losing the bios settings every few weeks, that board is fantastic. Cheap and stable, even if not all that fast compared to its contemporaries. But I challenge anyone to find a better board new for $40.
LK
It may feel good to pump 12 rounds into an unarmed tresspasser, but comon...
That is perfectly legal where I live.
In fact, I will most likely put 2 into an intruder before I find out if he's armed or not.
Seriously, if someone breaks into your home while you are there, you'd be a fool not to assume that he is armed and act accordingly. Don't issue warnings and threats eg "I just called the cops, you'd better leave", that will only alert the intruder to your location and the fact that you are now a threat to him. If it's within your power, incapacitate him.
LK
I have an N2U400A from ECS. It is a cheap ass mobo, but when I get it installed and running I was surprised at how sweet the NForce 2 Ultra chipset is. Fast, and I do mean FAST and stable. I put some stress on my system. I'll run the distributed.net client in the background, while I have a VPN connection open to the database server, I'll be importing records into that database, A VNC session running, and all while while playing Counter Strike in the foreground. System stays smooth and responsive.
Via needs to change something, because the NForce chipset is kicking ass all over their offerings for only a few dollars more.
I was kind of wary when I heard that NVidia was releasing a mobo chipset, I thought that since they were a "video card" company that they wouldn't be able to make a good chipset. I am so glad I was wrong. Now, I'd like to see what ATI can do.
LK
I am currently making my living as a database developer. We put in a lot of hard work, so I understand this guy not wanting people to pirate his program, but as a developer I also know that sometimes programs behave unexpectedly. I also know that people sometimes mistype numbers.
What if a legit serial was sufficiently similar to a bogus serial that some user mistyped a bogus serial instead of their legit one? The ill will alone will be enough to kill your project. If the program refused to work, or even uninstalled itself that would be cool in my book, but to trash an entire user directory is fucked up.
LK
I hate to break it to you but sharing is not
pirating. Your Bell Labs to Berkley analogy is broken because they agreed to share their code.
I spoke of those not to justify piracy, but to debunk the notion that it's a recent phenomenon that users want software for free.
If you pirate someones software it is theft.
Pure and simple. No amount of handwaving will
change that.
No, pirating someone's software is copyright infringement, pure and simple. Repeating that tired old mantra will not change that.
LK
Warez is a result of this lame sense of entitlement that today's computer users have.
As opposed to what era's computer users? As far back as people have been using computers, they have been sharing programs. From the boys at Bell Labs to Berkley, software was shared. The idea that there's nothing wrong with sharing isn't new.
id Software lost over a million dollars to record-breaking piracy the weekend before Doom 3's release. Ask Carmack sometime how he feels about that.
If, and only if everyone who pirated the game would have bought it if they couldn't get it for free.
You can't put an actual dollar amount on lost sales, because there is no way to prove a lost sale. The whole argument of "lost potential sales" opens the door to Ballmer claiming that every linux server out there is lost revenue for M$. It's idiotic and illogical.
As more and more people pirate the fuck out of everything, the system will eventually completely crumble, and nobody will be able to make a living off of any software. We won't have the Photoshops or 3D Studio Maxes or Cubases of the world, because there won't be businesses behind them doing the development.
Bullshit. Adobe makes the Lion's share of its Photoshop profits from graphic design shops. Not from individuals like me. I do happen to own a legal copy of Photoshop, I got it for free from Adobe reps. No matter how much the software is pirated by the little people, companies are going to continue to buy it because it's not worth the risk of getting caught with bogus copies.
LK