The first time I read of such vending machines, a cigarette vending machine in Japan was the center of attention. I'm to lazy to do a serious google search, but here's a link about Japan and smart vending machines. I think the machine in TFA is a bit of misapplication of technology, but the tech sounds kinda cool.
So - tell me, what do you eat that CANNOT spread diseases? And, you might be interested to know that my devout Catholic grandparents, along with their sizeable clan of relatives, ate that blood pudding at almost every holiday.
I guess my mother's ethnic background rubbed off on me, because I only remember tasting blood pudding a couple of times. Seems that she brainwashed me into turning my nose up at it by the time I reached school age.
Funny? I see nothing funny here. We have idiots running the country, and China is taking advantage of those idiots. We also have ignorant "consumers" who buy everything that China puts on the market, and of course China takes advantage of that too.
Some day, it will be time to pay the fiddler. We'll just have to see how that bill is payed. But, it won't be funny. I expect that it will be more tragic than funny.
Of course, I said something similar two or three years before the housing bubble finally burst. I wasn't nearly smart enough to know how tragic that shit would be, but I knew it would be a tragedy. People just don't learn . . .
And, who exactly is this "we" you speak of? Perhaps you are unaware that China has an ongoing mission, to probe any and all possible sources of intelligence and/or Imaginary Property held by the United States government and/or corporations?
So, in the face of attacks that have been going on for a decade or more, what would you propose?
I like your attitude. And, I'm tired of hearing my country whining. We see the same problem with "unemployment" among the younger generation. If the little fuckers won't get off their asses, they will never succeed at anything.
I heard my dad say a thousand times, "Do something, right or wrong." I've lived my life that way. I just can't sit around and watch life pass me by. Today's America is doing exactly that. Space exploration gone stagnant, jobs being exported, science and engineering pretty much in decline for lack of college grads, economy sucks - I could go on. All because people are sitting around, waiting for things to get better.
HEY AMERICA!!! GET OFF THE COUCH AND DO SOMETHING!!
For starters, let's put a few manned missions on Mars. With the 12th or 15th mission, we should be in shape to try something impressive, like a colony on one of the gas giant's moons!
Hell, I'm over 50, and I'd still volunteer for a Mars mission, given a 50/50 chance of failure! The moon? Better make that an 80% or better chance of success. Mars is where it's at!
You really don't understand the maintenance of alcoholism, do you? To much booze, and they're worthless. To little booze, and they are worse than worthless. You have to know the individual alcoholic, and maintain him at the proper level for maximum production, while keeping an eye on that weak link, the liver. At some point, the liver will fail, but you want to maximize production, while balancing a possible reduction of useful life.
'Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance,'
If one starts with that premise, then it's impossible to arrive at any rational conclusion. Allow me to rephrase, so that one and all might start over, and possibly arrive at some meaningful conclusion.
'Fighting online piracy is futile." Notice the full stop, no need for a comma, or any gibberish phrases to be tacked on.
People who care about nothing except raw power never have, and never will, understand "efficiency". You'll have noticed by now that no one is willing to waste time defining "efficient" for you.
How many factories does Microsoft own? And, what physical products do they sell? In view of their vast financial empire, they own very few physical assets, and produce even fewer. The vast majority of Microsoft's "products" are Imaginary Property. Or, what elitists tend to refer to as "Intellectual Property".
I say MS is a patent troll, along with Apple, and a lot of other companies. They aren't quite as repulsive as some of those east Texas companies that have never marketed a damned thing in their history, but they are still patent trolls.
I really don't like your attitude, that KDE is just a Windows ripoff.
Unfortunately, as time passes, it seems that you are right. I really don't like that Plasma desktop, nor do I like the way Gnome is going. I'm trying to get used to the Enlightenment desktop. Maybe I need to look at this Qt desktop. Wonder how hard it is to install and configure? Well . . . I'll know in a few days, I guess. I can't resists a challenge like that for long!
Please - I did not use the word "hate" in my post. I said what I meant. "I don't like China". There are countries that I really like, there are countries that I like less, and there are countries that I don't like. Same thing here in the states. I really like some states, I like others less, and there are a couple that I don't like much. No hatred implied.
The fact is, of those few Chinese people that I've met, I've liked most of them. Only one came across as some kind of an asshole, and another seemed to be from another world. The rest? We got along fine.
As DarkOx points out, DDOSing can *help* to cover tracks.
However, you will not that I didn't specifically mention DDOSing. I mentioned "pointless nuisance attacks", of which DDOSing is a subset. LOIC and HOIC are the script kiddie's primary tools, but they are most certainly not restricted to them. I haven't heard from L0pht Heavy Industries in quite a long while - but most assuredly, someone, somewhere, has repackaged and redistributed L0pht's tools, if they haven't actually improved on them.
I won't count android as "Linux", unless and until the end user possesses root privileges.
And, even the most naive, uninformed, and uneducated of Linux users are at least exploring the lower boundaries of "hacking". They've discovered that there is an alternative to the "Microsoft way" of doing things. Or, the Apple way.
Maybe I exaggerated. Maybe half of all Linux users have an IT guy or gal around to get them started with a nice tidy desktop environment. But, I'll stick with 50% of Linux users being "hackers".
Of course, I accept the definition of hacker found at places like lifehacker.com - that is, people who look for a better way of doing things, and not just running with the crowd and/or what some marketing department tells you.
"while the majority of the people involved in a particular operation are merely script kiddies, there are often more competent people involved."
That's the part that few people understand. You get a thousand, or ten thousand, dummies worldwide to launch pointless annoyance attacks, while as few as a dozen competent people sit back and evaluate the responses and defenses. When they find a crack in the defenses, then they exploit it.
I'm fairly sure (can't be positive) that the FBI has some pretty sharp hackers among their ranks. But, Anon is a lot bigger than the FBI, and they have plenty of cannon fodder to keep the FBI's real hackers busy. The FBI can claim a "victory" when they bust a few stupid script kiddies, but they are only grasping at smoke and mirrors, while the real actors remain invisible behind proxy chains, and botnets.
A statistician should attempt to take into account something called "morale". Troops who know they are doomed, and that their leaders will not assist any survivors for hours, or days, or possibly even weeks, simply won't fight as well as troops who KNOW that the leadership will do all in their power to tend to the sick and wounded.
An ounce of morale is worth at least a couple pounds of weaponry.
I think that I will just agree to disagree with you. I don't think that Castro was a more or less innocent bystander. He was rightfully pissed at the United States, and was happy to grab hold of an opportunity to get back at the US.
Which part of "party to" did you fail to understand? DUHHH!!! He was indeed PART OF the problem. Nowhere did I imply that he was solely responsible for the crisis, now did I?
Sorry, phantomfive - but I think that Sharklaser is speaking with a cultural background that you lack.
Personally, I've never been to China. I've only met a few Chinese people. I don't like China because it is communist, and because they are working hard to steal American jobs, American tech, and they are working hard to dominate American interests.
Despite my likes and dislikes, I've read enough to understand that Chinese culture has almost no resemblance to my own culture. The fact that I have traveled, seen other cultures, and due to the fact that my own relatives represented different cultures gives me some framework to understand what Sharklaser seems to be saying.
The fact is, you don't just turn a culture upside down overnight, unless you enjoy chaos. People who have lived a certain way for generations simply aren't going to accept radical change in ten years, or even twenty.
How many years have the women's libbers been working on their agenda? And, women still bitch about that "glass ceiling". Change doesn't happen overnight, or even within a lifetime. It takes centuries to make really big changes in a culture, UNLESS you're wiling to accept a lot of turmoil.
Slashdot Mirror
The first time I read of such vending machines, a cigarette vending machine in Japan was the center of attention. I'm to lazy to do a serious google search, but here's a link about Japan and smart vending machines. I think the machine in TFA is a bit of misapplication of technology, but the tech sounds kinda cool.
So - tell me, what do you eat that CANNOT spread diseases? And, you might be interested to know that my devout Catholic grandparents, along with their sizeable clan of relatives, ate that blood pudding at almost every holiday.
I guess my mother's ethnic background rubbed off on me, because I only remember tasting blood pudding a couple of times. Seems that she brainwashed me into turning my nose up at it by the time I reached school age.
Can't help it - I'm feeling like a smartass . . .
I've NEVER had due process when purchasing footwear, cheap or otherwise!
Funny? I see nothing funny here. We have idiots running the country, and China is taking advantage of those idiots. We also have ignorant "consumers" who buy everything that China puts on the market, and of course China takes advantage of that too.
Some day, it will be time to pay the fiddler. We'll just have to see how that bill is payed. But, it won't be funny. I expect that it will be more tragic than funny.
Of course, I said something similar two or three years before the housing bubble finally burst. I wasn't nearly smart enough to know how tragic that shit would be, but I knew it would be a tragedy. People just don't learn . . .
And, who exactly is this "we" you speak of? Perhaps you are unaware that China has an ongoing mission, to probe any and all possible sources of intelligence and/or Imaginary Property held by the United States government and/or corporations?
So, in the face of attacks that have been going on for a decade or more, what would you propose?
I like your attitude. And, I'm tired of hearing my country whining. We see the same problem with "unemployment" among the younger generation. If the little fuckers won't get off their asses, they will never succeed at anything.
I heard my dad say a thousand times, "Do something, right or wrong." I've lived my life that way. I just can't sit around and watch life pass me by. Today's America is doing exactly that. Space exploration gone stagnant, jobs being exported, science and engineering pretty much in decline for lack of college grads, economy sucks - I could go on. All because people are sitting around, waiting for things to get better.
HEY AMERICA!!! GET OFF THE COUCH AND DO SOMETHING!!
For starters, let's put a few manned missions on Mars. With the 12th or 15th mission, we should be in shape to try something impressive, like a colony on one of the gas giant's moons!
Hell, I'm over 50, and I'd still volunteer for a Mars mission, given a 50/50 chance of failure! The moon? Better make that an 80% or better chance of success. Mars is where it's at!
You really don't understand the maintenance of alcoholism, do you? To much booze, and they're worthless. To little booze, and they are worse than worthless. You have to know the individual alcoholic, and maintain him at the proper level for maximum production, while keeping an eye on that weak link, the liver. At some point, the liver will fail, but you want to maximize production, while balancing a possible reduction of useful life.
'Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance,'
If one starts with that premise, then it's impossible to arrive at any rational conclusion. Allow me to rephrase, so that one and all might start over, and possibly arrive at some meaningful conclusion.
'Fighting online piracy is futile." Notice the full stop, no need for a comma, or any gibberish phrases to be tacked on.
Actually, I think the English invented their language. And, that predated Great Britain by a couple of years, at least.
People who care about nothing except raw power never have, and never will, understand "efficiency". You'll have noticed by now that no one is willing to waste time defining "efficient" for you.
How many factories does Microsoft own? And, what physical products do they sell? In view of their vast financial empire, they own very few physical assets, and produce even fewer. The vast majority of Microsoft's "products" are Imaginary Property. Or, what elitists tend to refer to as "Intellectual Property".
I say MS is a patent troll, along with Apple, and a lot of other companies. They aren't quite as repulsive as some of those east Texas companies that have never marketed a damned thing in their history, but they are still patent trolls.
http://www.paultow.com/2009/06/10/how-to-block-ads-with-a-router/
Unsurpassed in it's functionality and simplicity. Uhhmmmm - that would be the Classic theme, right?
I really don't like your attitude, that KDE is just a Windows ripoff.
Unfortunately, as time passes, it seems that you are right. I really don't like that Plasma desktop, nor do I like the way Gnome is going. I'm trying to get used to the Enlightenment desktop. Maybe I need to look at this Qt desktop. Wonder how hard it is to install and configure? Well . . . I'll know in a few days, I guess. I can't resists a challenge like that for long!
Please - I did not use the word "hate" in my post. I said what I meant. "I don't like China". There are countries that I really like, there are countries that I like less, and there are countries that I don't like. Same thing here in the states. I really like some states, I like others less, and there are a couple that I don't like much. No hatred implied.
The fact is, of those few Chinese people that I've met, I've liked most of them. Only one came across as some kind of an asshole, and another seemed to be from another world. The rest? We got along fine.
I actuall googled for L0pht - seems they are still around!
http://www.l0pht.com/ This page last updated
on March 24th, 2011
Where else would we expect to find them? LOL
As DarkOx points out, DDOSing can *help* to cover tracks.
However, you will not that I didn't specifically mention DDOSing. I mentioned "pointless nuisance attacks", of which DDOSing is a subset. LOIC and HOIC are the script kiddie's primary tools, but they are most certainly not restricted to them. I haven't heard from L0pht Heavy Industries in quite a long while - but most assuredly, someone, somewhere, has repackaged and redistributed L0pht's tools, if they haven't actually improved on them.
I won't count android as "Linux", unless and until the end user possesses root privileges.
And, even the most naive, uninformed, and uneducated of Linux users are at least exploring the lower boundaries of "hacking". They've discovered that there is an alternative to the "Microsoft way" of doing things. Or, the Apple way.
Maybe I exaggerated. Maybe half of all Linux users have an IT guy or gal around to get them started with a nice tidy desktop environment. But, I'll stick with 50% of Linux users being "hackers".
Of course, I accept the definition of hacker found at places like lifehacker.com - that is, people who look for a better way of doing things, and not just running with the crowd and/or what some marketing department tells you.
"while the majority of the people involved in a particular operation are merely script kiddies, there are often more competent people involved."
That's the part that few people understand. You get a thousand, or ten thousand, dummies worldwide to launch pointless annoyance attacks, while as few as a dozen competent people sit back and evaluate the responses and defenses. When they find a crack in the defenses, then they exploit it.
I'm fairly sure (can't be positive) that the FBI has some pretty sharp hackers among their ranks. But, Anon is a lot bigger than the FBI, and they have plenty of cannon fodder to keep the FBI's real hackers busy. The FBI can claim a "victory" when they bust a few stupid script kiddies, but they are only grasping at smoke and mirrors, while the real actors remain invisible behind proxy chains, and botnets.
A statistician should attempt to take into account something called "morale". Troops who know they are doomed, and that their leaders will not assist any survivors for hours, or days, or possibly even weeks, simply won't fight as well as troops who KNOW that the leadership will do all in their power to tend to the sick and wounded.
An ounce of morale is worth at least a couple pounds of weaponry.
I think that I will just agree to disagree with you. I don't think that Castro was a more or less innocent bystander. He was rightfully pissed at the United States, and was happy to grab hold of an opportunity to get back at the US.
Which part of "party to" did you fail to understand? DUHHH!!! He was indeed PART OF the problem. Nowhere did I imply that he was solely responsible for the crisis, now did I?
I hear you, and I hope you're not right. It's hard to imagine the little twit being worse than big Kim.
You do remind me that I've said the same thing about Syria, Egypt, Libya, and several other countries and the Arab Spring.
Sorry, phantomfive - but I think that Sharklaser is speaking with a cultural background that you lack.
Personally, I've never been to China. I've only met a few Chinese people. I don't like China because it is communist, and because they are working hard to steal American jobs, American tech, and they are working hard to dominate American interests.
Despite my likes and dislikes, I've read enough to understand that Chinese culture has almost no resemblance to my own culture. The fact that I have traveled, seen other cultures, and due to the fact that my own relatives represented different cultures gives me some framework to understand what Sharklaser seems to be saying.
The fact is, you don't just turn a culture upside down overnight, unless you enjoy chaos. People who have lived a certain way for generations simply aren't going to accept radical change in ten years, or even twenty.
How many years have the women's libbers been working on their agenda? And, women still bitch about that "glass ceiling". Change doesn't happen overnight, or even within a lifetime. It takes centuries to make really big changes in a culture, UNLESS you're wiling to accept a lot of turmoil.