It must be really interesting living in the world of total friggin' ignorance that advertisement agents live in.
Don't these people realize that there is a "mute" button on your TV set because consumers demanded one? Don't these people realize that the reason consumers demand such a thing is because advertising is FUCKING ANNOYING?!?!
Around christmas last year I stayed at a friend's place for a day on my way to my parent's place. It was the first time in about six months that I had actually watched TV. I was completely blown away by how much I was expected to be nothing more than a pair of eyeballs to advertise at, and the content was just an excuse for ad placement. What surprised me even more was the fact that I was surprised by it. I had grown up in a world where this was *normal*, and it had taken me months to unlearn my tolerance for such bullshit, and now they want to do the same thing for the web? Give it up! That's a better way to lose customers than to keep them coming back. ---
What's wrong with having the coolest games on the planet run on computers that only cost $500-700? I honestly have *no* problem with that at all! It means that you don't have to be making $50K+ just to afford such a toy. Even more interesting is that the lack of demand for the higher end machines means that you can get a bitchin' top-of-the-line computer for only about $1700 (that's Canadian too...), as opposed to about $5000 a few years ago. Hell, lately I've been having a hard time finding a generic-brand computer that costs more than $2000.
Basically, what this means is that now we're giving processing power to the people! The lowliest gas jockey making minimum wage can play starcraft or use the web like the rest of us! Schools can actually buy *new* computers! A computer on every desk in every office and every home! This is good for all of us! ---
Actually, it probably has something to do with the fact that they have a governor on the throttle to keep them under that speed, either for safety or for sanity (would *you* want to be going 65 MPH over terrain that would make backwoods logging roads look like the autobahn?), plus there's also that minor problem with fuel efficiency (ie, there is none at 2 gallons per mile).
Just my 2 bits. I'm probably talking out of my ass.;) ---
Heh. Canadians have it worse. We have a choice of DSL providers: The Phone Company, or someone who's buying DSL from The Phone Company. Cable is at least as bad: you can buy Cable internet from The Cable Company or (very occasionally) someone who's buying cable access from The Cable Company. Technically, The Phone Company is competing with The Cable Company, but that's about it.
While it's true that recently the CRTC allowed long distance providers to start setting up shop here, you still can't buy local telephone access from anybody else, so of course, you still have to get DSL from *them*. ---
Go directly here for a listing of ISP's and the speeds they provide. This page also has links to prices on the providers' webpages for more accurate information.
Oh my god this is the most brain damaged idea in the history of the universe. So fine... set your firewall to allow napster. Then set your firewall for starcraft. And set your firewall for Quake. And set your firewall for ICQ. And set your firewall for IRC. Ad nauseum. Even if it's *easy* to do, users won't know why things don't work when they should. 80% or more of users don't even know what a firewall *is* let alone that it's blocking some certain bit of network traffic on a certain port. I feel very sorry for tech support people at ISP's already.
Far too much effort is being wasted in superfluous programs that have no real chance of every producing a usable application. For centuries,
the common man has supported the scientific elite in their search for 'knowledge', and now I think its time that the debt be paid back. Rather
than focusing on theoretical work, it is time for scientists to submit to their natural social role of technology providers.</i>
<p>
Heh. It's worth noting that theoretical work is invariably useful. Because when you prove that something exists in theory, (or disprove it even, which is equally useful) it usually ends up that it exists in reality, just not quite as neatly. This is especially true of physics and mathematics. Take Einstein's theory of general relativity... seventy years later, we're *still* finding neato things that prove that his theoretical work is practical reality. A hundred years from now, we'll be doing things with it that the man on the street will be able to use. Like quantum computers or funky rocket ships and stuff.;)
<p>
Oh btw... science isn't about providing technology or service to the general public. It's about satisfying curiosity. It's engineering that puts science to work for the general public. ---
... They're increasing the NASA budget. Not by a huge amount, but 2% of 14 billion dollars is still a lot.:)
While in general I don't like Bush, (acually, loathe would be a better word) his head seems to be in the right place with NASA, although this still has yet to be proven in reality. ---
I'm sure that this argument has been beaten to death already, but Religion and science *must* remain separate for the sake of both religion *and* science.
Science is by definition creative thinking that withstands peer review, and for a conclusion to be made, the person making the conclusion must prove conclusively each logical step taken in drawing that conclusion. A classic example of this is drawing the conclusion that if it is raining, it must be cloudy. This conclusion is drawn by starting with the assumption (which we assume to be true) that rain comes from clouds. We can then make the backwards conclusion that if rain is present, clouds must be present for it to come from. However, if the base assumption were to be proven to be false, then the entire assumption is also false. This is essential to not only science, but mathematics and philosophy.
What this has to do with religion is that these logical rules do not necessarily apply due to the very nature of faith. Faith is belief without proof. If you prove that God exists, then you cannot have faith. Therein lies the problem with scientific arguments that include God. You cannot have science without proof, and you cannot have religion with proof. If you make the base assumption that God created the universe and the Earth and every living being on it, you cannot use this assumption to build a logical conclusion, because you cannot prove the existence of God. And if you were to prove the existence of God, you would destroy faith in any case, which is the last thing religion needs or wants.
The root of the problem really lies in how religious zealots feel they need to take Genesis as gospel, rather than what it really is - God (an omniscient, omnipotent being who lives for an infinte amount of time, and probably has no real concept of what time is and likely doesn't percieve it either) telling a story to a peasant who believes the world to be flat and who probably doesn't know much about mathematics, let alone something as complicated as calculus. God cannot tell him that the universe really started out as a hot soup of pure energy, or that e=mc^2, and that's really not the point anyway. The point is "Rule number 1: thou shalt not kill..." ---
There's certainly a lot less in terms of choice. And you can forget finding sound drivers, or the like.
There seems to be no problem porting drivers to FreeBSD. For instance, FreeBSD had USB support in a stable version a whole year before Linux did. And ATA100 if I recall correctly (and I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong). *BSD developers seem to focus more on making it work than making it cool, but that's okay by me, since 9 times out of 10 I would much rather have something working instead of waiting for it to come out "real soon now." ---
Heh. Not only is it the honorable and brave thing to do, it's also infinitely more effective. If they toast off 99%+ of the people stealing their service, that's a lot more effective than using law enforcement or lawsuits to catch 5% of the theives, and hoping that perhaps 20% of them will stop their theiving. People will still continue to steal if they can.:) ---
It's illegal in Canada, that's for sure. You can't, for instance, pick out an especially young-looking 21 year old woman, do her hair in pigtails (why is it always pigtails?) and have her portray a 15 year old in a porn movie. Of course, Canada's child porn laws are extraordinarily repressive and are in the process of being re-made. (for instance, it is illegal to argue that the law itself is wrong)
Then there is also an issue with how realistic the special effects make your characters look. Face it, eventually we won't be able to tell the difference between a real actor and a computer generated one... how are you going to say "well, that's *clearly* a 9 year old girl who's being exploited by this producer?" ---
Re:Screw Katz ... I LIKED Antitrust!
on
Antitrust
·
· Score: 1
It was a MOVIE, folks!
It's great hearing this on/. It means that people here believe that they can expect substandard crap in their culture because it is a MOVIE. What if it were software?
Reviewer: "It's insecure, unstable, bloated spaghetti code that was obviously written by a finite number of monkeys."
Slashdot: "But it's SOFTWARE! It's not supposed to be good! It's supposed to be predigested porridge that fills checkboxes! It's worth $50! Really!"
Whatever. It's shit, and a waste of time and money.
Heh. This is something that I've never done, but I know first-hand what the effect on customers would be.
How to fuck an ISP: Forge e-mail from root@ISP.com to all customers. Make sure you have every e-mail address listed in the "To:" or "Cc:" headers, so that everyone can see it was sent to everyone. Tell everyone in detail that you have hacked their server, what it means to have root access, how none of them are safe, and how you have complete control over the system, their accounts and passwords. Tell them that the company will do its best to lie to them that this is all just a prank in a desperate bid to keep them as customers.
Probably around 80% of their customers will ditch them right there. Probably 10% will realize the truth, and another 10% won't believe you.
Also, you don't want them to get new customers again, so you need to send rumours about the ISP being hacked to your local newspaper.
Of course, doing this (and getting caught) would probably result in criminal charges. So don't do it.:)
How do I know it would work? I was working tech support for an ISP once when some bonehead sent e-mail to all customers that said (and I quote) "Hacked by X0rg." People called in by the hundreds afraid that they had been hacked and in general were quite confused. Being specific in the e-mail would remove that confusion.:)
This is assuming that he actually believed in what he was saying, rather than playing the devil's advocate or portraying a role in society that he utterly loathes.
I can also say as someone who has had three out of five girlfriends that have at some point in their lives been raped, that most - if not all - women who live though this awful experience *blame themselves.* Add to this the kind of attitudes men had towards women (and women had towards women... and are still prevalent today, unfortunately) about how only bad girls do, and out pops something as loathesome as a line like this any time the subject of rape comes up. I think that there's a good chance he was trying to get us to think "But that's just fucked up! What a stupid attitude!" Even cooler if we would get off our asses and _do_ something about it.
Personally, I haven't read the book, but now I'm definitely going to.:) ---
What are you talking about? Telus is the slavedriver, not the CRTC. The CRTC is merely the watchdog that holds the power to allow Telus to _be_ a slavedriver. (ie, if they see fit, they can revoke Telus' telecommunications license.)
If you knew what Telus was like 15 years ago,(then the monopoly(ies) named BCTel, EdTel, Bell Canada et al) this would be REALLY obvious to you. Back then it was $0.36 a minute to call the nearest town, $0.50 a minute to call 4 hours drive away, and $1.00 a minute to call the province's capital from where I lived. Now you can place a call anywhere in Canada for $0.10 a minute to a maximum long distance bill of $20, anything after that is free. This is because the CRTC took away their monopoly, and because technology has made telecommunications cheap as hell (although it was cheap before, they were just gouging us because they could).
Sometimes government regulation does not equate to losing freedom but instead getting it back. ---
This may certainly be true, but more importantly they shouldn't have to release their findings within 72 hours when the proposed impact date is 30 years from now. I mean, it's great to start planning for these things ASAP, but I think that accuracy is more important than urgency when sounding alarm bells like these. It's like having a car alarm that goes off every time someone walks by on the sidewalk... you just stop caring after a little while. ---
Heh. If you suspect that you are under surveilance by the FBI using carnivore (and that suspicion will either be paranoid or very very hard without well-paid judges) then there is of course, an infinitely easier way to circumvent it: Get a new ISP for the love of god. Or use public internet access. Or even just STOP DOING whatever illegal activity it is that you're doing. And I don't mean warez. The FBI doesn't care about that.
It is true that Beethoven had a mental disorder... I believe that he was posthumously diagnosed as Bipolar (also known as manic depression). The problem with being Bipolar is that it's a double-edged sword. In its most acute form, sufferers experience short bursts of wild creativity and frenetic activity which they wouldn't give up for the world, except for the insanity and burden of the extended periods of deep depression that they feel for most of the rest of the time.
Numerous other artists also have suffered from this condition, which is why the stereotype exists that deression is artistic. However, even though these short bursts of wild creativity have benefitted humanity uncountable number of times, there isn't a single sufferer of this disorder who would wish it upon his or her worst enemy.
Thus, the dilemma exists: do we change our genes to eliminate this disease for the sake of humanity, or do we leave them alone for the sake of humanity?
Just a nice happy thought to keep discussion going.:) ---
"He who is willing to give up a little freedom for a little more security does not deserve either."
Sound familiar?
And if you take it to the logical extreme, you end up in a police state. Sure, there's no crime anymore, but that's because lots of innocent people are going to jail. And lots of police officers searching lots of people's houses and reading people's mail for no good reason at all. But that's okay, because you're nice and secure, right? ---
And considering they're in the midst of the appeals process, you'd think they'd have half a brain and at least give the appearance of behaving.
But they didn't do anything wrong! They're exercising their "freedom to 'innovate!'" And the government is just ab big bully trying to destroy things they obviously don't understand!
This is of course, a big load of horseshit brought to you by the idiots who are so blinded by their own holiness that they can't see that they're driving straight towards their own doom at 120 miles per hour. ---
Slashdot Mirror
It must be really interesting living in the world of total friggin' ignorance that advertisement agents live in.
Don't these people realize that there is a "mute" button on your TV set because consumers demanded one? Don't these people realize that the reason consumers demand such a thing is because advertising is FUCKING ANNOYING?!?!
Around christmas last year I stayed at a friend's place for a day on my way to my parent's place. It was the first time in about six months that I had actually watched TV. I was completely blown away by how much I was expected to be nothing more than a pair of eyeballs to advertise at, and the content was just an excuse for ad placement. What surprised me even more was the fact that I was surprised by it. I had grown up in a world where this was *normal*, and it had taken me months to unlearn my tolerance for such bullshit, and now they want to do the same thing for the web? Give it up! That's a better way to lose customers than to keep them coming back.
---
What's wrong with having the coolest games on the planet run on computers that only cost $500-700? I honestly have *no* problem with that at all! It means that you don't have to be making $50K+ just to afford such a toy. Even more interesting is that the lack of demand for the higher end machines means that you can get a bitchin' top-of-the-line computer for only about $1700 (that's Canadian too...), as opposed to about $5000 a few years ago. Hell, lately I've been having a hard time finding a generic-brand computer that costs more than $2000.
Basically, what this means is that now we're giving processing power to the people! The lowliest gas jockey making minimum wage can play starcraft or use the web like the rest of us! Schools can actually buy *new* computers! A computer on every desk in every office and every home! This is good for all of us!
---
Heh. It's because 42 is the "answer." ;)
;)
Actually, it probably has something to do with the fact that they have a governor on the throttle to keep them under that speed, either for safety or for sanity (would *you* want to be going 65 MPH over terrain that would make backwoods logging roads look like the autobahn?), plus there's also that minor problem with fuel efficiency (ie, there is none at 2 gallons per mile).
Just my 2 bits. I'm probably talking out of my ass.
---
This is kind of like how human beings are changing the climate with pollution, is it not? About as likely and scientific, if you ask me.
---
Heh. Canadians have it worse. We have a choice of DSL providers: The Phone Company, or someone who's buying DSL from The Phone Company. Cable is at least as bad: you can buy Cable internet from The Cable Company or (very occasionally) someone who's buying cable access from The Cable Company. Technically, The Phone Company is competing with The Cable Company, but that's about it.
While it's true that recently the CRTC allowed long distance providers to start setting up shop here, you still can't buy local telephone access from anybody else, so of course, you still have to get DSL from *them*.
---
Hope that helps. HAND. :)
---
Oh my god this is the most brain damaged idea in the history of the universe. So fine... set your firewall to allow napster. Then set your firewall for starcraft. And set your firewall for Quake. And set your firewall for ICQ. And set your firewall for IRC. Ad nauseum. Even if it's *easy* to do, users won't know why things don't work when they should. 80% or more of users don't even know what a firewall *is* let alone that it's blocking some certain bit of network traffic on a certain port. I feel very sorry for tech support people at ISP's already.
---
Far too much effort is being wasted in superfluous programs that have no real chance of every producing a usable application. For centuries,
the common man has supported the scientific elite in their search for 'knowledge', and now I think its time that the debt be paid back. Rather
than focusing on theoretical work, it is time for scientists to submit to their natural social role of technology providers.</i>
<p>
Heh. It's worth noting that theoretical work is invariably useful. Because when you prove that something exists in theory, (or disprove it even, which is equally useful) it usually ends up that it exists in reality, just not quite as neatly. This is especially true of physics and mathematics. Take Einstein's theory of general relativity... seventy years later, we're *still* finding neato things that prove that his theoretical work is practical reality. A hundred years from now, we'll be doing things with it that the man on the street will be able to use. Like quantum computers or funky rocket ships and stuff.
<p>
Oh btw... science isn't about providing technology or service to the general public. It's about satisfying curiosity. It's engineering that puts science to work for the general public.
---
... They're increasing the NASA budget. Not by a huge amount, but 2% of 14 billion dollars is still a lot. :)
While in general I don't like Bush, (acually, loathe would be a better word) his head seems to be in the right place with NASA, although this still has yet to be proven in reality.
---
I'm sure that this argument has been beaten to death already, but Religion and science *must* remain separate for the sake of both religion *and* science.
Science is by definition creative thinking that withstands peer review, and for a conclusion to be made, the person making the conclusion must prove conclusively each logical step taken in drawing that conclusion. A classic example of this is drawing the conclusion that if it is raining, it must be cloudy. This conclusion is drawn by starting with the assumption (which we assume to be true) that rain comes from clouds. We can then make the backwards conclusion that if rain is present, clouds must be present for it to come from. However, if the base assumption were to be proven to be false, then the entire assumption is also false. This is essential to not only science, but mathematics and philosophy.
What this has to do with religion is that these logical rules do not necessarily apply due to the very nature of faith. Faith is belief without proof. If you prove that God exists, then you cannot have faith. Therein lies the problem with scientific arguments that include God. You cannot have science without proof, and you cannot have religion with proof. If you make the base assumption that God created the universe and the Earth and every living being on it, you cannot use this assumption to build a logical conclusion, because you cannot prove the existence of God. And if you were to prove the existence of God, you would destroy faith in any case, which is the last thing religion needs or wants.
The root of the problem really lies in how religious zealots feel they need to take Genesis as gospel, rather than what it really is - God (an omniscient, omnipotent being who lives for an infinte amount of time, and probably has no real concept of what time is and likely doesn't percieve it either) telling a story to a peasant who believes the world to be flat and who probably doesn't know much about mathematics, let alone something as complicated as calculus. God cannot tell him that the universe really started out as a hot soup of pure energy, or that e=mc^2, and that's really not the point anyway. The point is "Rule number 1: thou shalt not kill..."
---
Sol will be shutting down in five minutes for scheduled maintenance. Please save your work and log off now. We apologize for the inconvenience.
---
There seems to be no problem porting drivers to FreeBSD. For instance, FreeBSD had USB support in a stable version a whole year before Linux did. And ATA100 if I recall correctly (and I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong). *BSD developers seem to focus more on making it work than making it cool, but that's okay by me, since 9 times out of 10 I would much rather have something working instead of waiting for it to come out "real soon now."
---
Heh. Not only is it the honorable and brave thing to do, it's also infinitely more effective. If they toast off 99%+ of the people stealing their service, that's a lot more effective than using law enforcement or lawsuits to catch 5% of the theives, and hoping that perhaps 20% of them will stop their theiving. People will still continue to steal if they can. :)
---
It's illegal in Canada, that's for sure. You can't, for instance, pick out an especially young-looking 21 year old woman, do her hair in pigtails (why is it always pigtails?) and have her portray a 15 year old in a porn movie. Of course, Canada's child porn laws are extraordinarily repressive and are in the process of being re-made. (for instance, it is illegal to argue that the law itself is wrong)
Then there is also an issue with how realistic the special effects make your characters look. Face it, eventually we won't be able to tell the difference between a real actor and a computer generated one... how are you going to say "well, that's *clearly* a 9 year old girl who's being exploited by this producer?"
---
It's great hearing this on /. It means that people here believe that they can expect substandard crap in their culture because it is a MOVIE. What if it were software?
Reviewer: "It's insecure, unstable, bloated spaghetti code that was obviously written by a finite number of monkeys."
Slashdot: "But it's SOFTWARE! It's not supposed to be good! It's supposed to be predigested porridge that fills checkboxes! It's worth $50! Really!"
Whatever. It's shit, and a waste of time and money.
---
Heh. This is something that I've never done, but I know first-hand what the effect on customers would be.
:)
:)
How to fuck an ISP: Forge e-mail from root@ISP.com to all customers. Make sure you have every e-mail address listed in the "To:" or "Cc:" headers, so that everyone can see it was sent to everyone. Tell everyone in detail that you have hacked their server, what it means to have root access, how none of them are safe, and how you have complete control over the system, their accounts and passwords. Tell them that the company will do its best to lie to them that this is all just a prank in a desperate bid to keep them as customers.
Probably around 80% of their customers will ditch them right there. Probably 10% will realize the truth, and another 10% won't believe you.
Also, you don't want them to get new customers again, so you need to send rumours about the ISP being hacked to your local newspaper.
Of course, doing this (and getting caught) would probably result in criminal charges. So don't do it.
How do I know it would work? I was working tech support for an ISP once when some bonehead sent e-mail to all customers that said (and I quote) "Hacked by X0rg." People called in by the hundreds afraid that they had been hacked and in general were quite confused. Being specific in the e-mail would remove that confusion.
---
This is assuming that he actually believed in what he was saying, rather than playing the devil's advocate or portraying a role in society that he utterly loathes.
:)
I can also say as someone who has had three out of five girlfriends that have at some point in their lives been raped, that most - if not all - women who live though this awful experience *blame themselves.* Add to this the kind of attitudes men had towards women (and women had towards women... and are still prevalent today, unfortunately) about how only bad girls do, and out pops something as loathesome as a line like this any time the subject of rape comes up. I think that there's a good chance he was trying to get us to think "But that's just fucked up! What a stupid attitude!" Even cooler if we would get off our asses and _do_ something about it.
Personally, I haven't read the book, but now I'm definitely going to.
---
What are you talking about? Telus is the slavedriver, not the CRTC. The CRTC is merely the watchdog that holds the power to allow Telus to _be_ a slavedriver. (ie, if they see fit, they can revoke Telus' telecommunications license.)
If you knew what Telus was like 15 years ago,(then the monopoly(ies) named BCTel, EdTel, Bell Canada et al) this would be REALLY obvious to you. Back then it was $0.36 a minute to call the nearest town, $0.50 a minute to call 4 hours drive away, and $1.00 a minute to call the province's capital from where I lived. Now you can place a call anywhere in Canada for $0.10 a minute to a maximum long distance bill of $20, anything after that is free. This is because the CRTC took away their monopoly, and because technology has made telecommunications cheap as hell (although it was cheap before, they were just gouging us because they could).
Sometimes government regulation does not equate to losing freedom but instead getting it back.
---
This may certainly be true, but more importantly they shouldn't have to release their findings within 72 hours when the proposed impact date is 30 years from now. I mean, it's great to start planning for these things ASAP, but I think that accuracy is more important than urgency when sounding alarm bells like these. It's like having a car alarm that goes off every time someone walks by on the sidewalk... you just stop caring after a little while.
---
Heh. If you suspect that you are under surveilance by the FBI using carnivore (and that suspicion will either be paranoid or very very hard without well-paid judges) then there is of course, an infinitely easier way to circumvent it: Get a new ISP for the love of god. Or use public internet access. Or even just STOP DOING whatever illegal activity it is that you're doing. And I don't mean warez. The FBI doesn't care about that.
Script kiddies. Sheesh.
---
Hehehe. Unless of course, you consider using a firewall and ssh port forwarding. :)
ipfw allow tcp from 12.34.56.78 to $oif 23 setup
ipfw deny tcp from any to $oif 8080 setup
And of course, private ip's on the inside of either firewall can get easy access to your files. :)
---
It is true that Beethoven had a mental disorder... I believe that he was posthumously diagnosed as Bipolar (also known as manic depression). The problem with being Bipolar is that it's a double-edged sword. In its most acute form, sufferers experience short bursts of wild creativity and frenetic activity which they wouldn't give up for the world, except for the insanity and burden of the extended periods of deep depression that they feel for most of the rest of the time.
:)
Numerous other artists also have suffered from this condition, which is why the stereotype exists that deression is artistic. However, even though these short bursts of wild creativity have benefitted humanity uncountable number of times, there isn't a single sufferer of this disorder who would wish it upon his or her worst enemy.
Thus, the dilemma exists: do we change our genes to eliminate this disease for the sake of humanity, or do we leave them alone for the sake of humanity?
Just a nice happy thought to keep discussion going.
---
"He who is willing to give up a little freedom for a little more security does not deserve either."
Sound familiar?
And if you take it to the logical extreme, you end up in a police state. Sure, there's no crime anymore, but that's because lots of innocent people are going to jail. And lots of police officers searching lots of people's houses and reading people's mail for no good reason at all. But that's okay, because you're nice and secure, right?
---
But they didn't do anything wrong! They're exercising their "freedom to 'innovate!'" And the government is just ab big bully trying to destroy things they obviously don't understand!
This is of course, a big load of horseshit brought to you by the idiots who are so blinded by their own holiness that they can't see that they're driving straight towards their own doom at 120 miles per hour.
---
Hmm.
Definitely time for some wild speculation. ;)
---