Agreed. There is never a winner in such cases, for the victim's or perpetrator's families.
Believe me...I know.
My mother got 26 years for killing her boyfriend after he gave her an STD. She's on year 16 now.
My dad, who I think is innocent, is serving 30 years for sexual assault of child (3yrd). He's on year 9. He'll be 73 the first time he could get parole (which he probably won't - They don't do that in Texas) or 88 if he has to serve the entire sentence. I think he is innocent because there was no physical evidence and just the word of a 3yr old. He carded my mom before he would date her. My step mother also said my sister (9yr old @the time) had been abused during the trial, but that turned out to be false. The 3yr old's brother was a sex offender and her dad, who was divorced from the mother, would come over every Wednesday night to his ex's home to bathe the little girl. So all of that makes me think he is innocent. There really is little hope for my dad. He has exhausted his appeals...Everyone thinks that if the appeals didn't get him out then he must be guilty...well appeals are for finding errors in the trial. They are not about finding out if he was guilty or not. You only get one chance to prove that.
My grandparents refuses to discuss my mother with anyone who might have known her. They feel it as a personal shame. Like they messed up as parents. They have lived 16 years like that....
My sister went from getting 4 times her child support payment to none when my dad went to jail. She went from seeing her daddy every other weekend to living with the knowledge of what he was convicted of and going to junior high, then high school. She didn't even know all the facts about the case until a few months ago.
so yeah...I feel for the kids...I feel for their entire family on either side.
I'm sorry but they are just doing their job. This is the prosecution. They are supposed to look for always of getting someone convicted. It is up to a judge and jury to curtail this.
Remember this case is not about justice or right or wrong. It is about the prosecution getting a conviction (and possibly future convictions because they build their careers on them.) It is about a defense attorney getting his client off the hook. It is about a judge making sure rules are enforced and if no jury, making a decision based on precedent.
It has nothing to do with whether the law is a good law or not. We the public make that call through our elected representatives.
If this prosecution works or does not work, we have to get our elected officials to tweak the legal code to prevent such interpretations in the future.
To quote Muhammad Ali, "The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life"
Not making the same mistakes will only work if the person grows with time....how many people do you know that get stuck in their ways as they get older?
mandatory churn might solve it...force people to work their way back up...to re-see the issues that they once saw.
the problem with mandatory churn is it doesn't work unless you take away the person's money too....
How many music bands start to suck once they make it big and lose their edge? I'd say many.
I've known several high level managers that stepped down only because they were getting age related health problems.
Toss in, from your example, mindsets of earlier generations and you could get cultural stagnation in addition to age related caste systems.
The supreme court in the US would have to change...currently appointing a young judge to the supreme court would mean stabilizing the cultural fluxes for the next couple of generations. Now if they lived near forever, you'd be talking about cultural stagnation...
Imagine congress without term limits too...as the concept of term limits is new. Would women get the right to vote? Would jim crow laws still exits?
If living near forever ever comes to pass, I predict revolutions rather than the democratic process are going to shape the future. After all, the elderly vote....
Google should get behind this. I think their Picasa would benefit from it.
Generate some autotags.
What would be nice also is if they had a feature where if you labeled someone in a picture, if you uploaded another picture with that person in the picture, the program would prompt to auto tag.
I've been going through old family photos and it would save so much time if the programs I am using autolabeled based off details in the picture.
I'm sure this research will help...In fact I'd bet this tech would help with Colonizing Venus...after all it is just a sea of air to do it
Aerostat habitats and floating cities
Geoffrey A. Landis has summarized the perceived difficulties in colonizing Venus as being merely from the assumption that a colony would need to be based on the surface of a planet:
"However, viewed in a different way, the problem with Venus is merely that the ground level is too far below the one atmosphere level. At cloud-top level, Venus is the paradise planet."
He has proposed aerostat habitats followed by floating cities, based on the concept that breathable air (21:79 Oxygen-Nitrogen mixture) is a lifting gas in the dense Venusian atmosphere, with over 60% of the lifting power that helium has on Earth.[4] In effect, a balloon full of human-breathable air would sustain itself and extra weight (such as a colony) in midair. At an altitude of 50 km above Venusian surface, the environment is the most Earthlike in the solar system - a pressure of approximately 1 bar and temperatures in the 0ÂC-50ÂC range. Because there is not a significant pressure difference between the inside and the outside of the breathable-air balloon, any rips or tears would cause gases to diffuse at normal atmospheric mixing rates, giving time to repair any such damages. In addition, humans would not require pressurized suits when outside, merely air to breathe and a protection from the acidic rain. Alternatively two-part domes could contain a lifting gas like hydrogen or helium (extractable from the atmosphere) to allow a higher mass density[5].
Cloud-top colonization also offers a way to avoid the issue of slow Venusian rotation. At the top of the clouds the wind speed on Venus reaches up to 95 m/s, circling the planet approximately every four Earth days in a phenomenon known as "super-rotation".[6] Colonies floating in this region could therefore have a much shorter day length by remaining untethered to the ground and moving with the atmosphere. While a space elevator extending to the surface of Venus is impractical due to the slow rotation, constructing a skyhook that extended into the upper atmosphere and rotated at the wind speed would be difficult compared to constructing a space elevator on Earth.
Since such colonies would be viable in current Venusian conditions, this allows a dynamic approach to colonization instead of requiring extensive terraforming measures in advance. The main challenge would be using a substance resistant to sulfuric acid to serve as the structure's outer layer; ceramics or metal sulfates could possibly serve in this role. (The sulfuric acid itself may prove to be the main motivation for creating the structure in the first place, as the acid has proven to be extremely useful for many different purposes such as lead-acid batteries.)
Landis has suggested that as more floating cities were built, they could form a solar shield around the planet, and could simultaneously be used to process the atmosphere into a more desirable form. If made from carbon nanotubes (recently fabricated into sheet form) or graphene (a sheet-like carbon allotrope), the major structural materials can be produced using carbon dioxide gathered in situ from the atmosphere. The recently synthesised amorphous carbonia might prove a useful structural material if it can be quenched to STP conditions, perhaps in a mixture with regular silica glass. According to Birch's analysis such colonies and materials would provide an immediate economic return from colonizing Venus, funding further terraforming efforts.
Now years down the road, space travel becomes really important, and they're poised to make a huge profit. Are we (as a society) prepared to let them profit for their decades of investment, or will we claim that this undeserving elite is trying to exploit our need from a position of unfair advantage? I think C. J. Cherryh has covered this frequently in her books...
In particular, your example would fit well with Foreigner series....in that case Humans were already space explorers, but had to colonize a world already filled with sentient life because of an accident. Admittedly the books are more space opera and dealing with the interactions of different species' views...however the core issue is man has space technology and when the Atevi attain the level of tech capable of space exploration...all the issues that develop between the people that want the tech and the people that have the tech...
In general I think C. J. Cherryh writes a realistic view of what the cultures of space are going to be like...how they will view the planet bound and how the gravity well inhabitants will view their space brethren.
GP has it right. After...And Justice For All (1988), it was all a downhill slide from there. that is because that was the last album that Cliff Burton had any contribution at all on...He was dead before they did any recording, but he wrote several of the songs.
IMHO Cliff was the heart of Metallica and the band has been on a pace maker since 1986.
As for the OP, Metallica is too late and done too much damage. I have not bought a Metallica album since they shutdown Napster and I use to buy the same albums over and over again because I'd get them scratched up hauling them around with me. I was their perfect fan until they made me hate the new them. May they rot for screwing over their fans.
I remember when they gave away their albums at concerts ('Kill'em all' is the one I remember.)
To quote Mike Mearls who even recognized that the game system has issues with fighters:
The one stumbling block is that the game expects fighters to wear heavy armor, but you could get around that by building a simple house rule (a fighter in light armor gets a flat bonus to AC to make up the gap).
in 3E a fighter who didn't wear armour was crazy depends on the DM. I've known several fighters that went with leather armor if any armor went the Combat Expertise feat tree...which, as you know,trades attack bonuses for AC bonuses. They primarily did that for the increased base move speed for not wearing heavy armor and for the noise factor...heavy armor's skill check penalties for move silently sucked.
And 3E rogues *did* get trap related class features automatically, although you could choose to not exploit them by neglecting the Search and Disable Device skills. true...but the point was I don't want them at all for the swashbuckler.
To quote Mike Mearls who even recognized that the game system has issues with fighters:
The one stumbling block is that the game expects fighters to wear heavy armor, but you could get around that by building a simple house rule (a fighter in light armor gets a flat bonus to AC to make up the gap).
But I and everyone I know who has actually played 4E with a good GM will tell you one simple feature that puts 4E over the top: It's more fun. (my bolded above)
Having a good DM can make any system good. They know how to go beyond the rules.
but there aren't many good DMs. I've been playing since 1981 and I can say I've had only two DMs that have been good and in the tens that have been bad.
As for 4e being more fun...we'll see. I have yet to feel like they have targeted me in any way shape or form.
From what I've heard, it sounds like this,
(the average fouth edition combat round will be:)
Fighter uses martial power "sword stabbity death" to attack for 1d6+Str damage. Roll to hit.
Mage uses arcane power "magic missile" to attack for 1d6+Int damage. Roll to hit.
Cleric uses divine power "holy blargh" to attack for 1d6+Wis damage. Roll to hit.
Succubus uses fiendish power "corruption touch" to attack for 1d6+6 damage. Roll to hit.
And so on. Solid game design. Just somewhat boring. If the powers are to add spice, then I'd think there need to be a lot of powers available to make a combat round interesting. Hopefully there are.
Where each so-called class is now one of a role filler as in tank/healer/cannon. No more, well I'm a fighter but specialize in damage... Here's my example: say you want to play a swashbuckler or a duelist, does a fighter fit? They wear heavy armor in 4e because they are tanks. So our fighter swashbuckler swinging from the chandelier is wearing plate mail...Not a good image for a swashbuckler...
Ok how about the Rogue? Well they won't fall on their ass because of the heavy armor and they get trapfinding.....so while the swashbuckler or duelist is dancing around attacking, they can look for traps in the brassieres of the wenches.
Basically if you wanted to play a class different than how WotC thinks you should min/max it, you are screwed in essence, getting junk you don't need (heavy armor or trapfinding as examples above)...
In 3rd edition you would have run into similar problems with the fighter...but not so with the rogue.
4e is just making the matters worse with the Roles, which basically tweak characters to min/max one way.
I'm not surprised by this study. I think adults are built around their past free will decisions. What I learned, whether consciously or subconsciously, influences my decisions, consciously and subconsciously.
Take cigarettes. I'm willing to bet the researchers could predict when someone was going to lite up before they did it.
Likewise I think an interesting study would be scanning people as they unlearned a behavior. Give them a reward for doing an action and do it a few times to get them use to the reward and then change it to watch how their brain rewires itself to receive the same fix.
Free will I'm sure does still exist...I'm pretty sure my free will was absent when I responded to this thread...I thought it was a cool topic and felt a need to respond...I enjoy (get a fix) responding to topics I like....
However I equally sure that I had free will in writing this post.
I might have the simple parts (words & punctuation) to writing this post hard wired, but it takes some complex decisions to put all the words in a some what right order;)
Lets see...for that $30/month broadband, we'll tack on
$5 for the RIAA $5 for the MPAA $5 for the APP (Association of American Publishers, Inc. i.e books) $5 for the porn industry (I don't want to search for their association) $5 for the future podcast association $5 for the Newspapers (after all they have been losing money on the net) $5 for all the spammers that are not making enough money because you are not buying enough Viagra.
where does it end? When do you no longer guarantee someone's revenue stream?
it's not for colonizing Alpha Centauri, mate, it's just while they haul you to ER.
Baby steps...lets sleep to mars and then look to Alpha Centauri.
Keep the bodies cold (not freezing) and let them sleep the entire way to Mars.
Hook them up to a vitamin packed IV, so they don't starve. Even at their slowed rate, two years is a long time.
Admittedly we might just do periodic wake ups so they can eat, stretch their muscles, and send status reports. The rate would just depend on the safety margin of the hibernation.
This advance sounds like something extremely suited to exploring our solar system.
How to Obscure Any URL How Spammers And Scammers Hide and Confuse Last Updated Sunday, 13 January 2002
Since this page was first written in 1999, Internet Explorer and Netscape have both begun dealing with URLs differently, particularly in versions 6 and above. Some of the examples here will no longer work with those browser versions.
It is also http://3468664375/obscure.htm. Go ahead and click on that link. It'll take you right back to this very page.
The weird-looking address above takes advantage of several things many people don't know about the structure of a valid URL.
There's a little more to Internet addressing than commonly meets the eye; there are conventions which allow for some interesting variations in how an Internet address is expressed.
These tricks are known to the spammers and scammers, and they're used freely in unsolicited mails. You'll also see them in ad-related URLs and occasionally on web pages where the writer hopes to avoid recognition of a linked address for whatever reason. Now, I'm making these tricks known to you. Read on, and you'll soon be very hard to fool.
(Note: Depending on your browser type and its version, some of the oddly-formatted URLs on this page may not work. Also if you're on a LAN and using a proxy [gateway] for Internet access, many of them are unlikely to work. Also, fear not; this page does not exploit the "Dotless IP Address" vulnerability of some IE versions.)
First take note of the "@" symbol that appears amid all those numbers. In actual fact, everything between "http://" and "@" is completely irrelevant! Just about anything can go in there and it makes no difference whatsoever to the final result. Here are two examples:
Go ahead and use the links. If they work at all with your browser, you'll be back to this page again.
This feature is actually used for authentication. If a login name and/or password is required to access a web page, it can be included here and login will be automatic.
If you didn't know better, you might think this page were at playboy.com!
By the way, the @ symbol can be represented by its hex code %40 to further confuse things; this works for the IE browser, but not for Netscape. (Thanks to The Webskulker for this.)
All right, so what about that long number after the "@"? How does 3468664375 get you to www.pc-help.org?
In actual fact, the two are equivalent to one another. This takes a little explaining so follow me carefully here.
The first thing you need to know (most Net users know this), is that Internet names translate to numbers called IP addresses. An IP address is normally seen in "dotted decimal" format. www.pc-help.org translates to 206.191.158.55. So of course, this page's address can be expressed as: http://206.191.158.55/obscure.htm.
Numeric IP addresses are generally unrecognizable to people, and not easily rememberd. That's wh
What they need to do is get bandwidth increased for the average citizen and then allow them to download movies that have been watermarked.
True the watermarking can be removed, but it would catch the average idiot fool enough to share without removing the watermark.
I get a lot of PDFs and I hate the DRM protected PDFs. Mostly because I've changed computers 9 times in the last 6 years. It is a pain to get one computer removed from the list and another added...Luckly I haven't had to call Adobe in more than a year.
Now my watermarked pdfs I love and they work for their purpose...I'd never give them out and I have no interest in circumventing the watermarking...because after all, I have what I wanted.
You could never move enough people off at once to counter the people being born at that same instant.
Sure you can. It is just a question of dedication. If the ancient greeks could found colonies to solve their population problems and create trading partners at the same time, then we can do it.
The major difference between then and now is resources devoted to the task. I mean if everyone on the planet was in some way contributing to the space effort, I'm pretty sure we could shift some of our population.
Admittedly it would an on going process and we couldn't limit ourselves to sol colonies. We'd have to think bigger and develop generational spacecrafts to send to other solar systems. Send a few men with a ton of women and include a genetics bank to draw on once the colony is established. Sending more women would solve issues on earth and space.
Or better yet, develop artificial wombs and send unmaned spacecraft with only genetic samples. The ones providing the dna can then be sterilized on earth knowing that they have contributed.
The chief obstacle is our own genetic heritage. There are many traits that have been useful over the eons, but will be a problem in the future. One example I can give that is current is garbage. In the past we could make a mess and walk away. Now we have to do something with it. Lucy didn't have those issues and no other primate other than man has this issue.
There are others...criminal activity probably gave us an advantage in the past, but if we want everyone to survive we are going to have to work towards the common good...
Prisoners are risk-takers whose risks weren't well-chosen and didn't pan out so well (hence the whole "prison" thing). You really think they're the ideal population to found colonies in space?
True for some...for others it was just a matter of time before the risks they were taking caught up to them...choose the 'masterminds' and not the druggies or idiots that write demands for cash on their own checks.
It'd be just like the Mayflower... Only without the natives and smallpox...
I'd rather do the Greek Colonies one way trip. Send excess population out into space to found colonies that will eventually trade with Mother Earth.
Colonies might be easier on Earth, but the principle is the same. We just have higher start up costs and planning for space.
I could easily see China doing this. The red planet might be Red.
Firefly will probably turn out right...Mandarin and English will be the spoken languages in space.
Also, I'm all for doing The Moon is a Harsh Mistress i.e. sending prisoners out into space. Prisoners are usually are risk takers. I can think of nothing more rewarding and risky than founding new colonies in the long term.
Slashdot Mirror
Faith requires you to believe in something without questioning it and without seeing any evidence of that thing being true or actually existing.
I find that absurd.
Hermione, give Luna a break.
Agreed. There is never a winner in such cases, for the victim's or perpetrator's families.
Believe me...I know.
My mother got 26 years for killing her boyfriend after he gave her an STD. She's on year 16 now.
My dad, who I think is innocent, is serving 30 years for sexual assault of child (3yrd). He's on year 9. He'll be 73 the first time he could get parole (which he probably won't - They don't do that in Texas) or 88 if he has to serve the entire sentence. I think he is innocent because there was no physical evidence and just the word of a 3yr old. He carded my mom before he would date her. My step mother also said my sister (9yr old @the time) had been abused during the trial, but that turned out to be false. The 3yr old's brother was a sex offender and her dad, who was divorced from the mother, would come over every Wednesday night to his ex's home to bathe the little girl. So all of that makes me think he is innocent. There really is little hope for my dad. He has exhausted his appeals...Everyone thinks that if the appeals didn't get him out then he must be guilty...well appeals are for finding errors in the trial. They are not about finding out if he was guilty or not. You only get one chance to prove that.
My grandparents refuses to discuss my mother with anyone who might have known her. They feel it as a personal shame. Like they messed up as parents. They have lived 16 years like that....
My sister went from getting 4 times her child support payment to none when my dad went to jail. She went from seeing her daddy every other weekend to living with the knowledge of what he was convicted of and going to junior high, then high school. She didn't even know all the facts about the case until a few months ago.
so yeah...I feel for the kids...I feel for their entire family on either side.
I'm sorry but they are just doing their job. This is the prosecution. They are supposed to look for always of getting someone convicted. It is up to a judge and jury to curtail this.
Remember this case is not about justice or right or wrong. It is about the prosecution getting a conviction (and possibly future convictions because they build their careers on them.) It is about a defense attorney getting his client off the hook. It is about a judge making sure rules are enforced and if no jury, making a decision based on precedent.
It has nothing to do with whether the law is a good law or not. We the public make that call through our elected representatives.
If this prosecution works or does not work, we have to get our elected officials to tweak the legal code to prevent such interpretations in the future.
To quote Muhammad Ali, "The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life"
Not making the same mistakes will only work if the person grows with time....how many people do you know that get stuck in their ways as they get older?
mandatory churn might solve it...force people to work their way back up...to re-see the issues that they once saw.
the problem with mandatory churn is it doesn't work unless you take away the person's money too....
How many music bands start to suck once they make it big and lose their edge? I'd say many.
The part that scares me is the lack of change.
I've known several high level managers that stepped down only because they were getting age related health problems.
Toss in, from your example, mindsets of earlier generations and you could get cultural stagnation in addition to age related caste systems.
The supreme court in the US would have to change...currently appointing a young judge to the supreme court would mean stabilizing the cultural fluxes for the next couple of generations. Now if they lived near forever, you'd be talking about cultural stagnation...
Imagine congress without term limits too...as the concept of term limits is new. Would women get the right to vote? Would jim crow laws still exits?
If living near forever ever comes to pass, I predict revolutions rather than the democratic process are going to shape the future. After all, the elderly vote....
Mind describing the process? I need to move several PSTs into my gmail account.
Google should get behind this. I think their Picasa would benefit from it.
Generate some autotags.
What would be nice also is if they had a feature where if you labeled someone in a picture, if you uploaded another picture with that person in the picture, the program would prompt to auto tag.
I've been going through old family photos and it would save so much time if the programs I am using autolabeled based off details in the picture.
I haven't seen anyone mention this...but I think making furniture out of it would be awesome...
Imagine lifting that heavy couch upstairs...now it would just be bulky!
In particular, your example would fit well with Foreigner series....in that case Humans were already space explorers, but had to colonize a world already filled with sentient life because of an accident. Admittedly the books are more space opera and dealing with the interactions of different species' views...however the core issue is man has space technology and when the Atevi attain the level of tech capable of space exploration...all the issues that develop between the people that want the tech and the people that have the tech...
In general I think C. J. Cherryh writes a realistic view of what the cultures of space are going to be like...how they will view the planet bound and how the gravity well inhabitants will view their space brethren.
IMHO Cliff was the heart of Metallica and the band has been on a pace maker since 1986.
As for the OP, Metallica is too late and done too much damage. I have not bought a Metallica album since they shutdown Napster and I use to buy the same albums over and over again because I'd get them scratched up hauling them around with me. I was their perfect fan until they made me hate the new them. May they rot for screwing over their fans.
I remember when they gave away their albums at concerts ('Kill'em all' is the one I remember.)
O'how the mighty have fallen.
To quote Mike Mearls who even recognized that the game system has issues with fighters:
Having a good DM can make any system good. They know how to go beyond the rules.
but there aren't many good DMs. I've been playing since 1981 and I can say I've had only two DMs that have been good and in the tens that have been bad.
As for 4e being more fun...we'll see. I have yet to feel like they have targeted me in any way shape or form.
From what I've heard, it sounds like this,
(the average fouth edition combat round will be:)
Fighter uses martial power "sword stabbity death" to attack for 1d6+Str damage. Roll to hit.
Mage uses arcane power "magic missile" to attack for 1d6+Int damage. Roll to hit.
Cleric uses divine power "holy blargh" to attack for 1d6+Wis damage. Roll to hit.
Succubus uses fiendish power "corruption touch" to attack for 1d6+6 damage. Roll to hit.
And so on. Solid game design. Just somewhat boring. If the powers are to add spice, then I'd think there need to be a lot of powers available to make a combat round interesting. Hopefully there are.
Ok how about the Rogue? Well they won't fall on their ass because of the heavy armor and they get trapfinding.....so while the swashbuckler or duelist is dancing around attacking, they can look for traps in the brassieres of the wenches.
Basically if you wanted to play a class different than how WotC thinks you should min/max it, you are screwed in essence, getting junk you don't need (heavy armor or trapfinding as examples above)...
In 3rd edition you would have run into similar problems with the fighter...but not so with the rogue.
4e is just making the matters worse with the Roles, which basically tweak characters to min/max one way.
I'm not surprised by this study. I think adults are built around their past free will decisions. What I learned, whether consciously or subconsciously, influences my decisions, consciously and subconsciously.
;)
Take cigarettes. I'm willing to bet the researchers could predict when someone was going to lite up before they did it.
Likewise I think an interesting study would be scanning people as they unlearned a behavior. Give them a reward for doing an action and do it a few times to get them use to the reward and then change it to watch how their brain rewires itself to receive the same fix.
Free will I'm sure does still exist...I'm pretty sure my free will was absent when I responded to this thread...I thought it was a cool topic and felt a need to respond...I enjoy (get a fix) responding to topics I like....
However I equally sure that I had free will in writing this post.
I might have the simple parts (words & punctuation) to writing this post hard wired, but it takes some complex decisions to put all the words in a some what right order
Lets see...for that $30/month broadband, we'll tack on
$5 for the RIAA
$5 for the MPAA
$5 for the APP (Association of American Publishers, Inc. i.e books)
$5 for the porn industry (I don't want to search for their association)
$5 for the future podcast association
$5 for the Newspapers (after all they have been losing money on the net)
$5 for all the spammers that are not making enough money because you are not buying enough Viagra.
where does it end? When do you no longer guarantee someone's revenue stream?
Columbus didn't discover America, but he made the most impact on it.
So what if Edison didn't make the first recording. He is the guy that ran with the ball and scored the touchdown.
Give props where they are due. Have this, 2 decade earlier guy, be a footnote.
it's not for colonizing Alpha Centauri, mate, it's just while they haul you to ER.
Baby steps...lets sleep to mars and then look to Alpha Centauri.
Keep the bodies cold (not freezing) and let them sleep the entire way to Mars.
Hook them up to a vitamin packed IV, so they don't starve. Even at their slowed rate, two years is a long time.
Admittedly we might just do periodic wake ups so they can eat, stretch their muscles, and send status reports. The rate would just depend on the safety margin of the hibernation.
This advance sounds like something extremely suited to exploring our solar system.
I guess some mean people might do this:
http://www.pc-help.org/obscure.htm
How to Obscure Any URL
How Spammers And Scammers Hide and Confuse
Last Updated Sunday, 13 January 2002
Since this page was first written in 1999, Internet Explorer and Netscape have both begun dealing with URLs differently, particularly in versions 6 and above. Some of the examples here will no longer work with those browser versions.
The URL (Universal Resource Locator) of the page you are now viewing is http://www.pc-help.org/obscure.htm.
It is also http://3468664375/obscure.htm. Go ahead and click on that link. It'll take you right back to this very page.
The weird-looking address above takes advantage of several things many people don't know about the structure of a valid URL.
There's a little more to Internet addressing than commonly meets the eye; there are conventions which allow for some interesting variations in how an Internet address is expressed.
These tricks are known to the spammers and scammers, and they're used freely in unsolicited mails. You'll also see them in ad-related URLs and occasionally on web pages where the writer hopes to avoid recognition of a linked address for whatever reason. Now, I'm making these tricks known to you. Read on, and you'll soon be very hard to fool.
(Note: Depending on your browser type and its version, some of the oddly-formatted URLs on this page may not work. Also if you're on a LAN and using a proxy [gateway] for Internet access, many of them are unlikely to work. Also, fear not; this page does not exploit the "Dotless IP Address" vulnerability of some IE versions.)
How It's Done
Here it is again: http://3468664375/obscure.htm
First take note of the "@" symbol that appears amid all those numbers. In actual fact, everything between "http://" and "@" is completely irrelevant! Just about anything can go in there and it makes no difference whatsoever to the final result. Here are two examples:
http://www.pc-help.org/obscure.htm
http:///^&*()_+`-={}|[]:;@www.pc-help.org/obscure.htm
Go ahead and use the links. If they work at all with your browser, you'll be back to this page again.
This feature is actually used for authentication. If a login name and/or password is required to access a web page, it can be included here and login will be automatic.
Example: http://www.whatever.com/secret/eyesonly.htm
But if the page requires no authentication, the authentication text is in effect ignored by both browser and server.
This presents interesting possibilities for confusing the unsuspecting user. How about this one:
http://3468664375/obscure.htm
If you didn't know better, you might think this page were at playboy.com!
By the way, the @ symbol can be represented by its hex code %40 to further confuse things; this works for the IE browser, but not for Netscape. (Thanks to The Webskulker for this.)
All right, so what about that long number after the "@"? How does 3468664375 get you to www.pc-help.org?
In actual fact, the two are equivalent to one another. This takes a little explaining so follow me carefully here.
The first thing you need to know (most Net users know this), is that Internet names translate to numbers called IP addresses. An IP address is normally seen in "dotted decimal" format. www.pc-help.org translates to 206.191.158.55. So of course, this page's address can be expressed as: http://206.191.158.55/obscure.htm.
Numeric IP addresses are generally unrecognizable to people, and not easily rememberd. That's wh
What they need to do is get bandwidth increased for the average citizen and then allow them to download movies that have been watermarked.
True the watermarking can be removed, but it would catch the average idiot fool enough to share without removing the watermark.
I get a lot of PDFs and I hate the DRM protected PDFs. Mostly because I've changed computers 9 times in the last 6 years. It is a pain to get one computer removed from the list and another added...Luckly I haven't had to call Adobe in more than a year.
Now my watermarked pdfs I love and they work for their purpose...I'd never give them out and I have no interest in circumventing the watermarking...because after all, I have what I wanted.
Like it or not, I believe "humans" are the worst of all monsters. Unlimited potential for evil, and the will to do so at any time.
That's why for Halloween I go as "a homicidal maniac, they look just like everyone else."
Cheapest costume e-v-e-r!
You could never move enough people off at once to counter the people being born at that same instant.
Sure you can. It is just a question of dedication. If the ancient greeks could found colonies to solve their population problems and create trading partners at the same time, then we can do it.
The major difference between then and now is resources devoted to the task. I mean if everyone on the planet was in some way contributing to the space effort, I'm pretty sure we could shift some of our population.
Admittedly it would an on going process and we couldn't limit ourselves to sol colonies. We'd have to think bigger and develop generational spacecrafts to send to other solar systems. Send a few men with a ton of women and include a genetics bank to draw on once the colony is established. Sending more women would solve issues on earth and space.
Or better yet, develop artificial wombs and send unmaned spacecraft with only genetic samples. The ones providing the dna can then be sterilized on earth knowing that they have contributed.
The chief obstacle is our own genetic heritage. There are many traits that have been useful over the eons, but will be a problem in the future. One example I can give that is current is garbage. In the past we could make a mess and walk away. Now we have to do something with it. Lucy didn't have those issues and no other primate other than man has this issue.
There are others...criminal activity probably gave us an advantage in the past, but if we want everyone to survive we are going to have to work towards the common good...
Prisoners are risk-takers whose risks weren't well-chosen and didn't pan out so well (hence the whole "prison" thing). You really think they're the ideal population to found colonies in space?
True for some...for others it was just a matter of time before the risks they were taking caught up to them...choose the 'masterminds' and not the druggies or idiots that write demands for cash on their own checks.
It'd be just like the Mayflower... Only without the natives and smallpox...
I'd rather do the Greek Colonies one way trip. Send excess population out into space to found colonies that will eventually trade with Mother Earth.
Colonies might be easier on Earth, but the principle is the same. We just have higher start up costs and planning for space.
I could easily see China doing this. The red planet might be Red.
Firefly will probably turn out right...Mandarin and English will be the spoken languages in space.
Also, I'm all for doing The Moon is a Harsh Mistress i.e. sending prisoners out into space. Prisoners are usually are risk takers. I can think of nothing more rewarding and risky than founding new colonies in the long term.