The point is, the cost of the ticket is actually a good deal because by charging exhorbatent prices for popcorn they can get money from people with more disposable income
while still allowing people with less disposable income to see the movie.
That's exactly it. I mean, yeesh. If you don't want to buy the popcorn, eat your steak dinner before the theatre. That's what I do. Well, unless I don't want to look cheap to a date.:)
If the US is ever again drawn into a conflict as large-scale as WW2 was, be sure that a draft will be put in place. This will not be a sign that we've "already lost", but rather a sign that we are willing to do what it takes to win.
And if the government decides that it's a proper use of my life to draft me, at gunpoint, to go to off and get used as cannon fodder, the cost-benefits analysis shows that I'm better off having a shootout with the lackie that himself got out of being used as cannon fodder by being a draft officer.
All the arguments for equal rights for women, womens sufferage, the ban of slavery, affirmative action, equal housing laws, anti-descrimination laws, equal opportunity employment laws, racial quotas, and other such crap apply to the draft. If I can't advertise "men only" positions in the paper, get an advantage over women in academic admissions processes, etc., then they damned well better get their asses thrown on the front line like everyone else. Otherwise they aren't equal, and nobody should be treating them as such.
Yet does anyone else find it just a tad suspicious that the rabid man-hating feminists aren't lining up to DEMAND that women be included in the draft because not doing so descriminates against them and devalues them as human beings? Didn't think so.
The existing plug-in causes Mozilla to crash consistently on certain web sites. The plug-in is crap, and doesn't even have the decency to give an error message before it unceremoniously shits itself. Maybe if they would bother to fix that kind of stuff, I'd take them more seriously.
The RIAA sues users for violating the license agreements on their media, which the users HAVE never signed. The RIAA sues Kazaa because its users are violating the license agreements on the RIAA's media, which Kazaa has never signed. Kazaa sues the RIAA for violating the license agreement on Kazaa, which the RIAA probably had to click through to get there. Now, as for the KazaaLite authors being liable as opposed to the RIAA, if this is true then Kazaa is liable for all the RIAA copyright violations instead of users, because the users are "innocent users" who got duped.
Now, the question here is whether the RIAA violated a "computer security system" under the DMCA by:
1) Clearly uploading fake files, thus resulting in "unauthorized use" of users' computers to download their fake files. 2) In using a modified version of Kazaa violated a "computer security system" on users' computers in the sense that the Kazaa network was clearly not designed to allow tracking of users in this fashion.
The authors of KazaaLite violated the Kazaa license agreement. The RIAA then used KazaaLite to scan the network and subpoena people.
The people putting content for upload violated the RIAA license agreement. Users then used Kazaa to download data from the network.
If the liable party in the first case is KazaaLite's authors, then the liable party in the second case is the people placing material on the network for download. Hence, the solution is just to put the servers providing material outside of U.S. borders.
Applying Occam's Razor to this situation from what I can gather, the most likely explanation is that the extortionist was using a program that automatically rendered HTML mail. The FBI sent an email message to the suspected extortionist with the intent that his mail reader would then request a file (e.g., a JPEG) from the network. When that happened, it would have been immediately obvious what the extortionist's IP address was, because he would be the only one who has the URL.
The solution to this is more Columbines, albeit better directed at the offenders. No, seriously, think about it. (I'm not saying it's the IDEAL solution, mind you.)
After enough picked-on kids get pissed off and beat to death, shoot, publically humiliate, etc., the bullies, it will stop.
The root of the problem is that the schools back the bullies up, not the victims. If a kid defends himself, *he* is expelled or suspended half the time. The end result is that we have fewer fucking juvenile sociopaths out there.
One of the major clinical automation systems used in American hospitals uses soundex as a primary matching algorithm for patient lookups in the admitting department. Everyone is smart enough not to use it for names like "Juan Garza," but for names like "Steve Franklin" the chance of getting false-positives on your search algorithm is REALLY high. This is largely because of how the system itself implements things.
Two notable occasions have occured where patients were admitted as the incorrect "Steve Franklin" (name make up for use here, of course). Needless to say, this might be a bit of a problem when the medical and nursing staff then takes that admission record and looks back at labs, radiographs, and such ON THE WRONG PATIENT.
Of course, this same "highly advanced" system is really just a set of SQL tables that don't even use variable lengths for fields like comments (instead restricting the user to something obscene like 38 characters). The user interface is really just a Curses program that reads the columns on the table and displays them, allowing the user to edit them. Nearest I can tell, SQL functions handle all the data verification and such, and don't even do a good job at it.
I've worked with this computer system for four years, suffering through it's stupidity.
The point is that one should never assume that sucky, disgusting software is written by first year comp sci majors. There are enough professional programmers out there to cause a far bigger disaster.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups, or in corporate culture.
People have a marginal value for driving dangerously, which is balanced by the marginal cost of that action. Where the two meet (marginal cost-vs-marginal value curve) is how people behave (or drive in this case).... Thus, the driver is able to "afford" more dangerous driving...
Yes and no. While in economic theory this is entirely valid, reality is slightly more complicated. The same argument is used against handing out condoms in schools, i.e., that handing out condoms in public schools, free access to birth control, and so on is going to decrease the marginal cost to having sex, thus leading to more sexual promiscuity.
This is true, but think about it just a little more. In situations such as this, people who are not going to have sex anyway are probably not having it due to restraints imposed by personal values, shyness, inability to get any, or whatever. Giving these people condoms is not going to induce them to have sex. By contrast, people who are going to have more sex because they suddenly have an endless supply of contraceptive devices are already having sex, and because the supply of contraceptives was what induced them to have more sex, they were probably having sex unprotected in the first place. Therefore, we're all better off.
The situation is similar here. The people who are going to write crappy code are going to write it anyway. Te people who are going to write decent code are going to write it anyway. What the nonexecutable stack patch protects us from is people who either write code that is crappy and don't care (e.g., risk-taking, dangerous drivers without regard for other motorists [or pedestrians when they're driving on the sidewalk]), and from people who write good code and just screw up (e.g., an accident).
Maybe in ten years Berlin/Fresco/whatever will be useable. The last time I looked at it about a year ago, the developers were proud that they'd managed to draw simple geometric shapes.
Yeah!! And why should companies have to hire blacks and women if they don't want to?
Good question! I hereby class my reduced number of dates compared to the local playboy as a "disability" and demand that it be brought under the scope of the ADA. Then I will have "equal opportunity" and ability! I'm entitled to this because looks and the like are genetic, and we can't have "genetic descrimination," and since all (wo)men are created equal if I'm not as successful as the playboy it MUST be because I'm being descriminated against!
God damn, I love the ADA!
The United States reminds me of being in preschool, where "I'm okay, You're Okay" and everyone is "equal" to everything can be "fair." Of course, most people eventually grow up and realize that some people are better at things than others, and for some people, for no fault of their own, life sucks. Deal with it and shut the fuck up.
So anonymously post it to black hat communities
on
WarTalking Arrest
·
· Score: 1
So, the solution is simple. Since you obviously can't go to the head of IT for the county and demonstrate to him that his security blows, you might as well call up 2600 and then see how long it takes the county to realize where the bandwidth is going and why attacks are being launched from their county courthouse.
I went to a public high school which shall remain nameless. Suffice to say that the school mascot was a ram.
Password for administrative access to network servers (and from there to things like the grading system): gorams
Password for school library system: public
Password for cafeteria accounts: goodfood
Of course, since the losers knew nothing about compartmentalization of access, logging in under the cafeteria manager's account would also get you access to the grading system, for example. Apparently, it was simpler to make everyone ROOT.
DNA is stable. RNA is relatively easily formed during certain conditions, and evolution would tend to push an organism towards using DNA, rather than RNA, as the primary storage format for its genetic material. DNA is RNA with a missing hydroxyl, which makes it far less reactive, and less prone to various chemical attacks. I don't have a hard time believing that an alien lifeform might use DNA. Besides, this doesn't disprove the "life from space" theory.
However, if the organism's "universal code" (i.e., how the DNA is translated ultimately into proteins) is exactly or mostly similar to the predominately form found on Earth, then it would tend to imply one of two things:
1) There exists a common ancestor for both Terran life and the life from wherever this came from. See the "life from space" theory.
What, Salon shouldn't publish the interviews they do with stupid people?
No, quite the contrary. Salon should definately publish the interviews which they do with stupid people. But perhaps they should also do one of the following:
Challenge it during the interview. The person doing the interview should have some clue about the topics.
Make a mention of how it was incorrect in the article.
But yes, Salon should definately publish interviews with stupid people. Stupid people aren't quite like cockroaches, in that when the light comes on they fight rather than run, but they're certaintly as disgusting and as numerous.
Perhaps a better question is how technology will affect the law. The government and sheeple can pass all the laws that they want, but unless they can enforce them the laws aren't worth much, particularly if they're so stupid that people won't follow them just because "it's the law."
For example, I'll focus on pornography because it's everywhere and has been a hot issue. Porn has always been around. When the camera was invented, people whined about porn there. When the VCR was invented, people whined about people having or buying porn tapes. (Ironically, porn is one of the reasons that VCRs got so much market penetration so fast...pardon the pun.) When the camcorder was invented, there was complaining that people were using it to tape their sex romps.
For some reason when it gets to computers, people freak out more than usual. When BBSes became popular, people were being jailed (e.g. Amateur Action BBS). When the Internet became popular, the news media, public, and political scum went nuts, passed laws like the Communications Decency Act, made hit-and-run attacks on the Internet such as the "computer pedophile" episode of NBC's "Crusaders" back around 1995.
But look at the change in culture between, say, the mid-80s and the year 2000 in America. Sex is nowhere near as taboo as it was. "Alternative sexualities" (sexual orientiations as well as things like bondage) are tolerated and practiced far more mainstream. It's discussed more openly. It's more prevalent in movies and on TV. This is a pretty massive change. (As a side note, you can tell how tolerated sex has become by observing how readily people like Dr. Laura freak out.
Of course, banning pornography was hard already. Banning it in the future will be nearly impossible with file sharing networks like Freenet.
For better or worse, I expect that technology will have some of these effects over the next few years:
Restricting things like child pornography will rapidly become very difficult, if not impossible.
(The legality and ethics of this is a completely separate issue, which is more complicated than most people think, involving things like different ages of consent in different countries.)
Intellectual property, in the form of software, music, and video, will rapidly become obsolete. New market models will have to be developed.
Strong cryptography will become more commonplace.
Many "undernets" will spring up across the Internet which use strong cryptography, tunnelling, and have their own email, news, and other systems. I know for a fact that this has already happened, and they have restricted access and fairly complex entrance systems. An infinitely more mainstream but very watered-down version of this is Gnutella.
In these cases, the law could try, but they can't readily enforce, just like they can't readily enforce laws against having sex in positions other than the missionary position. They can't regulate what they can't see. In the latter case, it's your house, curtains, or whatever. In the case of the Internet and technology, it's cryptography, systems like Freenet, and plain old practicality.
In a Salon interview dated 07/31/2000, Talal Shamoon, a "key technologist for the SDMI," has this pearl of wisdom to share with us, found here:
Do I think that Gnutella will move in where Napster stopped? I personally don't, the reason being that Gnutella requires you to set up a direct connection with an individual you've never met. So while the dangers surrounding Napster, regarding viruses and child molesters, were moderately nebulous, they're going to be very severe with Gnutella.
Napster also makes a direct connection to transfer the files. In reality, even if it was routed through a third party it wouldn't make any difference, unless the third party somehow scanned the files being transfered, undoing whatever packaging someone had done, etc..
What the hell does either Gnutella or Napster have to do with child molesters?
If someone runs files from an untrusted source in an account which can do anything other than play in a very contained environment, they deserve what they get. (Yes, with Windows everything is root. They deserve what they get too if they do this.)
Oh, and this "key technologist" has a doctoral degree from Cornell.
I can only conclude, given Shamoon's qualifications and educational background, and the fact that Salon posted this and still expects to be taken as a credible news source, that Shamoon knows something that I don't. I can only surmise, therefore, that Shamoon knows of some group of child molesting virus writers out there who are involved in creating subliminal messages to embed in the music which will mind control any children listening to it to have sex.
Encryption doesn't help, folks. Nothing stops the attacker from trojaning the software, or even having canned attacks ready to be automatically deployed for software the user brings in.
Yes, this is a lot of trouble, but it needs to be mentioned. Every time this kind of issue comes up, someone suggests encryption as the end-all-be-all, and suggests that if the user uses it, all is safe. It isn't so.
Slashdot Mirror
A 9mm compact with loaded eight round clip. Maybe an MP5 slung around my shoulder if it's the deep inner city.
That's exactly it. I mean, yeesh. If you don't want to buy the popcorn, eat your steak dinner before the theatre. That's what I do. Well, unless I don't want to look cheap to a date. :)
Good God. I did this years ago.
This is simple, people. Just find a way to send the spam to the bit bucket, while still getting paid. Talk about sticking it to them!
And if the government decides that it's a proper use of my life to draft me, at gunpoint, to go to off and get used as cannon fodder, the cost-benefits analysis shows that I'm better off having a shootout with the lackie that himself got out of being used as cannon fodder by being a draft officer.
All the arguments for equal rights for women, womens sufferage, the ban of slavery, affirmative action, equal housing laws, anti-descrimination laws, equal opportunity employment laws, racial quotas, and other such crap apply to the draft. If I can't advertise "men only" positions in the paper, get an advantage over women in academic admissions processes, etc., then they damned well better get their asses thrown on the front line like everyone else. Otherwise they aren't equal, and nobody should be treating them as such.
Yet does anyone else find it just a tad suspicious that the rabid man-hating feminists aren't lining up to DEMAND that women be included in the draft because not doing so descriminates against them and devalues them as human beings? Didn't think so.
The existing plug-in causes Mozilla to crash consistently on certain web sites. The plug-in is crap, and doesn't even have the decency to give an error message before it unceremoniously shits itself. Maybe if they would bother to fix that kind of stuff, I'd take them more seriously.
The RIAA sues users for violating the license agreements on their media, which the users HAVE never signed. The RIAA sues Kazaa because its users are violating the license agreements on the RIAA's media, which Kazaa has never signed. Kazaa sues the RIAA for violating the license agreement on Kazaa, which the RIAA probably had to click through to get there. Now, as for the KazaaLite authors being liable as opposed to the RIAA, if this is true then Kazaa is liable for all the RIAA copyright violations instead of users, because the users are "innocent users" who got duped.
Now, the question here is whether the RIAA violated a "computer security system" under the DMCA by:
1) Clearly uploading fake files, thus resulting in "unauthorized use" of users' computers to download their fake files.
2) In using a modified version of Kazaa violated a "computer security system" on users' computers in the sense that the Kazaa network was clearly not designed to allow tracking of users in this fashion.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
The authors of KazaaLite violated the Kazaa license agreement. The RIAA then used KazaaLite to scan the network and subpoena people.
The people putting content for upload violated the RIAA license agreement. Users then used Kazaa to download data from the network.
If the liable party in the first case is KazaaLite's authors, then the liable party in the second case is the people placing material on the network for download. Hence, the solution is just to put the servers providing material outside of U.S. borders.
Applying Occam's Razor to this situation from what I can gather, the most likely explanation is that the extortionist was using a program that automatically rendered HTML mail. The FBI sent an email message to the suspected extortionist with the intent that his mail reader would then request a file (e.g., a JPEG) from the network. When that happened, it would have been immediately obvious what the extortionist's IP address was, because he would be the only one who has the URL.
The solution to this is more Columbines, albeit better directed at the offenders. No, seriously, think about it. (I'm not saying it's the IDEAL solution, mind you.)
After enough picked-on kids get pissed off and beat to death, shoot, publically humiliate, etc., the bullies, it will stop.
The root of the problem is that the schools back the bullies up, not the victims. If a kid defends himself, *he* is expelled or suspended half the time. The end result is that we have fewer fucking juvenile sociopaths out there.
Fuck the bullies. Fuck the education system.
He was obviously killed by deviant machines from the future with killer bodies and a very nice set of...uh, plasma cannons. That's it.
One of the major clinical automation systems used in American hospitals uses soundex as a primary matching algorithm for patient lookups in the admitting department. Everyone is smart enough not to use it for names like "Juan Garza," but for names like "Steve Franklin" the chance of getting false-positives on your search algorithm is REALLY high. This is largely because of how the system itself implements things.
Two notable occasions have occured where patients were admitted as the incorrect "Steve Franklin" (name make up for use here, of course). Needless to say, this might be a bit of a problem when the medical and nursing staff then takes that admission record and looks back at labs, radiographs, and such ON THE WRONG PATIENT.
Of course, this same "highly advanced" system is really just a set of SQL tables that don't even use variable lengths for fields like comments (instead restricting the user to something obscene like 38 characters). The user interface is really just a Curses program that reads the columns on the table and displays them, allowing the user to edit them. Nearest I can tell, SQL functions handle all the data verification and such, and don't even do a good job at it.
I've worked with this computer system for four years, suffering through it's stupidity.
The point is that one should never assume that sucky, disgusting software is written by first year comp sci majors. There are enough professional programmers out there to cause a far bigger disaster.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups, or in corporate culture.
Yes and no. While in economic theory this is entirely valid, reality is slightly more complicated. The same argument is used against handing out condoms in schools, i.e., that handing out condoms in public schools, free access to birth control, and so on is going to decrease the marginal cost to having sex, thus leading to more sexual promiscuity.
This is true, but think about it just a little more. In situations such as this, people who are not going to have sex anyway are probably not having it due to restraints imposed by personal values, shyness, inability to get any, or whatever. Giving these people condoms is not going to induce them to have sex. By contrast, people who are going to have more sex because they suddenly have an endless supply of contraceptive devices are already having sex, and because the supply of contraceptives was what induced them to have more sex, they were probably having sex unprotected in the first place. Therefore, we're all better off.
The situation is similar here. The people who are going to write crappy code are going to write it anyway. Te people who are going to write decent code are going to write it anyway. What the nonexecutable stack patch protects us from is people who either write code that is crappy and don't care (e.g., risk-taking, dangerous drivers without regard for other motorists [or pedestrians when they're driving on the sidewalk]), and from people who write good code and just screw up (e.g., an accident).
Does anyone remember Hackers: Episode One: The Phantom Mitnick? :)
Maybe in ten years Berlin/Fresco/whatever will be useable. The last time I looked at it about a year ago, the developers were proud that they'd managed to draw simple geometric shapes.
Good question! I hereby class my reduced number of dates compared to the local playboy as a "disability" and demand that it be brought under the scope of the ADA. Then I will have "equal opportunity" and ability! I'm entitled to this because looks and the like are genetic, and we can't have "genetic descrimination," and since all (wo)men are created equal if I'm not as successful as the playboy it MUST be because I'm being descriminated against!
God damn, I love the ADA!
The United States reminds me of being in preschool, where "I'm okay, You're Okay" and everyone is "equal" to everything can be "fair." Of course, most people eventually grow up and realize that some people are better at things than others, and for some people, for no fault of their own, life sucks. Deal with it and shut the fuck up.
So, the solution is simple. Since you obviously can't go to the head of IT for the county and demonstrate to him that his security blows, you might as well call up 2600 and then see how long it takes the county to realize where the bandwidth is going and why attacks are being launched from their county courthouse.
After reading that article, I feel compelled to go out and get laid.
I went to a public high school which shall remain nameless. Suffice to say that the school mascot was a ram.
Password for administrative access to network servers (and from there to things like the grading system): gorams
Password for school library system: public
Password for cafeteria accounts: goodfood
Of course, since the losers knew nothing about compartmentalization of access, logging in under the cafeteria manager's account would also get you access to the grading system, for example. Apparently, it was simpler to make everyone ROOT.
No joke.
However, if the organism's "universal code" (i.e., how the DNA is translated ultimately into proteins) is exactly or mostly similar to the predominately form found on Earth, then it would tend to imply one of two things:
1) There exists a common ancestor for both Terran life and the life from wherever this came from. See the "life from space" theory.
2) It came from Earth.
No, quite the contrary. Salon should definately publish the interviews which they do with stupid people. But perhaps they should also do one of the following:
Challenge it during the interview. The person doing the interview should have some clue about the topics.
Make a mention of how it was incorrect in the article.
But yes, Salon should definately publish interviews with stupid people. Stupid people aren't quite like cockroaches, in that when the light comes on they fight rather than run, but they're certaintly as disgusting and as numerous.
For example, I'll focus on pornography because it's everywhere and has been a hot issue. Porn has always been around. When the camera was invented, people whined about porn there. When the VCR was invented, people whined about people having or buying porn tapes. (Ironically, porn is one of the reasons that VCRs got so much market penetration so fast...pardon the pun.) When the camcorder was invented, there was complaining that people were using it to tape their sex romps.
For some reason when it gets to computers, people freak out more than usual. When BBSes became popular, people were being jailed (e.g. Amateur Action BBS). When the Internet became popular, the news media, public, and political scum went nuts, passed laws like the Communications Decency Act, made hit-and-run attacks on the Internet such as the "computer pedophile" episode of NBC's "Crusaders" back around 1995.
But look at the change in culture between, say, the mid-80s and the year 2000 in America. Sex is nowhere near as taboo as it was. "Alternative sexualities" (sexual orientiations as well as things like bondage) are tolerated and practiced far more mainstream. It's discussed more openly. It's more prevalent in movies and on TV. This is a pretty massive change. (As a side note, you can tell how tolerated sex has become by observing how readily people like Dr. Laura freak out.
Of course, banning pornography was hard already. Banning it in the future will be nearly impossible with file sharing networks like Freenet. For better or worse, I expect that technology will have some of these effects over the next few years:
Restricting things like child pornography will rapidly become very difficult, if not impossible. (The legality and ethics of this is a completely separate issue, which is more complicated than most people think, involving things like different ages of consent in different countries.)
Intellectual property, in the form of software, music, and video, will rapidly become obsolete. New market models will have to be developed.
Strong cryptography will become more commonplace.
Many "undernets" will spring up across the Internet which use strong cryptography, tunnelling, and have their own email, news, and other systems. I know for a fact that this has already happened, and they have restricted access and fairly complex entrance systems. An infinitely more mainstream but very watered-down version of this is Gnutella.
In these cases, the law could try, but they can't readily enforce, just like they can't readily enforce laws against having sex in positions other than the missionary position. They can't regulate what they can't see. In the latter case, it's your house, curtains, or whatever. In the case of the Internet and technology, it's cryptography, systems like Freenet, and plain old practicality.
Napster also makes a direct connection to transfer the files. In reality, even if it was routed through a third party it wouldn't make any difference, unless the third party somehow scanned the files being transfered, undoing whatever packaging someone had done, etc..
What the hell does either Gnutella or Napster have to do with child molesters?
If someone runs files from an untrusted source in an account which can do anything other than play in a very contained environment, they deserve what they get. (Yes, with Windows everything is root. They deserve what they get too if they do this.)
Oh, and this "key technologist" has a doctoral degree from Cornell.
I can only conclude, given Shamoon's qualifications and educational background, and the fact that Salon posted this and still expects to be taken as a credible news source, that Shamoon knows something that I don't. I can only surmise, therefore, that Shamoon knows of some group of child molesting virus writers out there who are involved in creating subliminal messages to embed in the music which will mind control any children listening to it to have sex.
Oh, wait, SDMI is embedded in the content...Nah.
Yes, this is a lot of trouble, but it needs to be mentioned. Every time this kind of issue comes up, someone suggests encryption as the end-all-be-all, and suggests that if the user uses it, all is safe. It isn't so.