Many movie theatres, by fiat, will not show anything stronger than an "R" rating. And it matters not why it's rated NC-17. Wheather it's explicit sex, excessive violence (Robocop was edited to avoid NC-17), or just for the dialog ("[George] Carlin on Campus" got NC-17 and it's just stand up comedy; mere words!). Ratings are forcing Hollywood to limit their creativity or to butcher movies at the last minute. I don't need others to make decisions for me and my family. Only I, and no one else, has permission to exercise my own right of choice.
I don't know about you, but Christmas cards cannot be replaced by e-cards and web-o-grams or what not. Besides, you can't tape ecards up all along the edge of the big mirror in the living room by the Christmas tree. (Well, you could, maybe, if your printer can print shiny ink and make raised cards, cut in the shape of Santa Claus, etc.)
The only reason DIVX was never cracked was because half of the encryption system sat within a centralized server that DIVX players dialed into periodically. With DVD all the decoding is done locally, and if the docoding can be done in software (which it often is, under windows, anyway) then that code can be RIPPED and ported to other platforms. Period. The Law? Fuck the law. Someone will do it regardless and post it to USENET and ftp servers in countries where US law is meaningless, and the SW will spread and no one will be able to stop it. The secret nature of DVD decoding is already doomed and has been since day one when software was released to do it. If they really wanted to keep it secret, they'd have had a better chance if they kept all the decoding in hardware. But it's too late now. The genie is out of the bottle. Now, it's only a matter of time. And I think this is what was really intended. Electronics makers want to sell players. And the way to do that is to make players that can play as many discs as possible. The who region encoding thing makes no sense.Why has the industry never made a big deal about import audio CDs? Why should video be treated differently?I think the region thing was just stuck in to appease Hollywood into supporting the format. By the time it's broken, the format will be entrenched and all will be well at that time.
>I mean what sense does it make that the exact same transaction in taxed if you do it >in person, as opposed to through the mail or over the internet.Suppose I live in CA and buy from NY over the 'net. I have no voice in the NY state gov't affairs. Why should they tax me?Also, how do 'net purchases differ taxwise from phone orders, mail orders? Why should they? Why are new laws needed? As it is, sales tax is collected if the company resides or has operations in my home state. Otherwise, no tax is collected. Of course I'm still supposed to pay sales tax to my local state on out of state purchases, it's just that that some other state has no authority to collect taxes on bahalf of another state in which it has no business. No one pays this tax, hence the urban legend that mail orders (now extended to the net) from out of state are 'tax free'. They never were. It's just that no one can enforce the rules.
The key word is defamation. Weather it comes from an anonymous source or a non-anoymous source should be irrelevant. Defamation never was a protected form of speech just like you can be arrested for yelling "fire" in a theater when there's no fire.This ruling about defamation- not anonymity.
>The real problem here is stupid users running untrusted code from random sources.
Exactly. Under Linux, I can run unchecked programs as user=jailbird'/group='playpen' and not worry about my kernel being hacked.
Under DOS/Win31/Win9x, I CANNOT RUN ANY PROGRAM IN A SECURE ENVIRONMENT. This is what the M$ supporters Just Don't Get(tm).Where everyone is a God, no one is safe. When everyone is the superuser, no computer is safe.
Overkill, but std fans suck. Here's my solution.
on
CPU Cooling Insanity
·
· Score: 2
I got tired of replacing these cheap CPU fans that keep dying on me (Do they *all* suck?). They don't seem to last very long and they don't blow a lot of air onto the heat sink. So I mounted a squirrel-cage type blower above my CPU. 10X the airflow of a regular fan; no condensation problems (unlike peltier or liquid [pick your favorite gas] CPU cooling); and still quiet. I'm not trying to overclock, but even stock stuff gets hot in my non-airconditioned room here in Las Vegas where ambient room temp reaches 100+ sometimes. Check it out here.
I guess that's why I (and probably many of us love Slashdot). It's reminiscent of the USENET of long ago. It discusses mostly tech topics and topics of interest to fellow geeks. The S/N ratio is pretty high. Newbies (usually in September) were whacked for bad postings after which they fell into line or were filtered out with killfiles (you rarely had to go this far, though). There was zero spam (it was once a usenet axiom that *you* *don't* *post* *ads* *in* *newsgroups*- *period*. [expecting.forsale and later biz.* groups]). USENET had a common culture back then much like Slashdot has a common culture now. Unfortunately it's a catch-22. Success, like when the internet went mainstream, destroys that culture. USENET is a wasteland now. And Slashdot is becoming popular... hmmm... we shall see. At least Slashdot has a control element the anarchastic USENET lacked.
We can't be managed. Let us be and we'll do fine.
on
How to Manage Geeks?
·
· Score: 5
Just give us our task and get out of our way. Geek work isn't like grunt work. You can't count the number of lines of code we write or amount of CPU time we log and make any meaningful judgement from that. Most geek work is creative in nature and can't just be turned on and off with output rigidly measured like a water faucet. We may get a lot done on some days. Or we may zone for a week out staring at a block of code and produce nothing. When I code for a project, I tend to create all the functions (tools) I think I will need. There's nothing to show the boss at this time. The GUI comes last. At the very end, all the tools are all linked together to complete the project and it appears (to the boss) that a lot of work is suddenly completed in rapid manner (whilst he had chastized you earlier for 'dragging your feet' and not 'producing anything meaningful'). And looking over our shoulders all the time, or being interrupted by phone calls only slows us down. What is very important and what management doesn't seem to 'get' is that geek work requires uninterrupted concentration; but not only that, geeks need the knowledge, in advance, that they will be allowed to work undisturbed for a known period of time. After all, if the boss asks you to handle the support phone, you're not going to get much work done. Though it may not ring often or even ring at all, just knowing that it might ring and saddle you with 1-60 minutes of unrelated work at any time, or 5-minutes troubleshoots every 45 minutes, randomly throughout the day causes you enough anxiety to hinder your work ability. Just give us the requirements and leave us be. We'll do fine. Really.
frob% cd/tmp/ie frob% tar -xzf msie5.0.666.tgz frob%./ms-install Error: Internet explorer may only be installed by the superuser frob% su Password: ******* frob#./ms-install MSIE5.0 installer for Linux x86 Checking for available disk space... Installing MSIE5.0... Installing system fonts... Installing JFC 1.x... Installing Plugins... Configuring IE5.0... Updating system settings... Done. The installer will now restart your machine so the changes can take effect...
[beep]
Broadcast message from root (ttyp0) Tue May 25 04:29:06 1999...
Updating ESCD...Success. Verifying DMI Pool Data...Done
Starting Windows 98...
Scores should be inherited up the comment tree
on
Slashdot Notes
·
· Score: 5
It always bothers me when I see a comment with a score of 5 within a tree of comments rooted by a comment with a score of -1. I think if any comment receives a score of 2 or higher (maybe 3), then all of its parents should be automatically bumped up to at least 0 (to regain default visibility). Nothing that generates a score 5 comment truly deserves a score of -1 does it?
Either that or replace below-the-threshold comments with blanked out stubs.
Many laptops save the entire state of the system when you put them in 'sleep' mode. The contents of RAM, register values, program counter location, etc., are saved to disk. When you power up the machine again, everything's quickly reloaded and continues where you left off.
For faster reboots, all you have to do is reboot, let the system come up, and then save the state of the system at this point. Later when NT goes BSOD, you just reload your freshly rebooted image which is much faster than a true reboot, since the time it takes to restore a system state is essentially the time it takes to reload RAM (128MB tops) plus state info (insignificantly sized chunk of data).
Next week on 60 minutes. They're your neighbors. They're your colleagues. You walk past them on the street everyday. And they're thinking up new and horrible imagery that they plan to show to your kids each and every day they're on the job. What is the government doing about? The answer may surprise you. Tune in next week for this and much more on 60 minutes, "Marketing death and violence to the youth of America".
They will often register two domains each acting as the authoritative nameserver for the other and each points to the other for contact names, tech/zone/billing contact. So whois is useless for finding out who is upstream from the spammer. However, packets have to get to and from the spammers web page somehow. Use mail headers to find the spammers source ip address and then remember,
Traceroute is your friend.
(1) Do a traceroute to the spam site and see who supplies the IP connection to the spammer. (2) Bitch at them for supporting spam. (3) If this proves futile (spammers often supply feeds to other spammers), go upstream one more node and bitch at them. (4) BTW, use http://www.arin.net/whois/arinwhois.html to convert unnamed IP addresses to real names of ISPs. (5) Most of all, have fun! tracking spammers down. Put notches on the side of your PC case for each one killed off of the 'net. Start competitions with your friends. Hold spam hunting tournaments! Spread the word! Kill the spam!
...reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, sent to a remote system, etc., without my express written permission. Rob, Slashdot, and all you comment readers, magically agree to this just by having read it.
NSI's notice (see below) is just as silly.
>>>> You agree that you will not reproduce, sell, transfer, or modify any of the data presented in response to your search request, or use of any such data for commercial purpose, without the prior express written permission of Network Solutions.
I buy real estate at lower prices and resell it for higher prices. There's a lot of us in this business. I fail to see how domain names are any different. When registering domains was a free service to the registrand, paid for by the gov't, I can see a "squatting issue". But the moment NSI started charging for domain names, the concept of a squatter became non-existant. He who pays for a domain gets it, and he can do whatever he likes with it, be it using it, reselling it, or just sitting on it for all eternity. He bought it. He PAID for it, with his own money. It's his. How much more simple can it be than that?
It's disgusting the way policemen and firemen are described (often themselves doing the describing) as being hereoes for risking their life every day for you and me. Bah. Just like everyone else, they work for a paycheck. Without good pay, they'd switch jobs in a heartbeat. There's no heroism involved, and people don't deserve medals just for doing their jobs.
>Yep, because I'd definitely want police, fire, EMS, teachers and civil >servants that were only in it for the money.
But real medical doctors do get six figure salaries. Does that mean you wonder if they are working to save your life or just for their paycheck. I really don't care, so long as they do their job.
>When some freak runs through the city wearing a Barney shirt killing people we >don't expect children to stop watching Barney or advertisements to stop.
Remember a TV show called "The Greatest American Hero"? The main character's name was Ralph Hinkley. But after John Hinkley's attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, the character was thereafter referred to as simply "Mr. H".
School districts all across the nation have banned all sorts of clothes if it can in any way be associated with crime or bad behavior. In one case gangs used particulat sports team logos to identify themselves. Others used colored shoe laces. Big baggy pants were banned in some places. So were certain hair styles (not just shaving words/letters). The bottom line is that out paranoid society will alter or ban anything with negative ties if it has anything whatsoever to do with children.
[ ] Top-Down (Break up big taks into bite sized chunks) [ ] Bottom Up (You can't build until you have a good set of tools) [ ] Just dive in and code [ ] Wait for orders from management [ ] Cut, paste, tweak; cut, paste, tweak; bash, bash, hack; debug, debug, debug.
When the school reopens, the geeks will still be shunned and ridiculed. Anyone 'caught' making comments like the thousands Katz received will be subjected to the trauma of being ordered to receive 'counseling' or expelled. The lesson being that differing opinions and the improper use of words is itself a dangerous and heinous act to be suppressed. This just builds more tension and resentment toward a school system structured more like a prison than an educational institution. And no one, not the student, not the parents, not the media, will stand up to defend a different opinion because a paranoid society will only suppress such people harder. Some will, on mere reflex, curse them as nazi/homo/goth/deathsquad sympathizers. Others, particularly in the schools, where mind control is stronger, will try to convince them of the error of their wrongthink. They will be badgered, continuously, unendingly, letters written to their parents, physicians secretly notified, psychiatrists and social workers too, all behind their backs, the conformists see it as their God given mission to 'help' these people before (they just assume) they can hurt anyone else.
How many lines is that? 7? (total lines in program including blank lines) 6? (ignoring blank lines) 4? (is '{' and '}' really a 'line of code'?) 3? (#include is not really code) hundreds? (stdio.h is huge and includes many other header files)
Slashdot Mirror
Many movie theatres, by fiat, will not show anything stronger than an "R" rating. And it matters not why it's rated NC-17. Wheather it's explicit sex, excessive violence (Robocop was edited to avoid NC-17), or just for the dialog ("[George] Carlin on Campus" got NC-17 and it's just stand up comedy; mere words!). Ratings are forcing Hollywood to limit their creativity or to butcher movies at the last minute. I don't need others to make decisions for me and my family. Only I, and no one else, has permission to exercise my own right of choice.
From the article: "It [the new bill] says any White House export decision cannot be challenged in court"
This is a democratic government? This all sounds highly dictatorial to me.
I don't know about you, but Christmas cards cannot be replaced by e-cards and web-o-grams or what not. Besides, you can't tape ecards up all along the edge of the big mirror in the living room by the Christmas tree. (Well, you could, maybe, if your printer can print shiny ink and make raised cards, cut in the shape of Santa Claus, etc.)
The only reason DIVX was never cracked was because half of the encryption system sat within a centralized server that DIVX players dialed into periodically. With DVD all the decoding is done locally, and if the docoding can be done in software (which it often is, under windows, anyway) then that code can be RIPPED and ported to other platforms. Period. The Law? Fuck the law. Someone will do it regardless and post it to USENET and ftp servers in countries where US law is meaningless, and the SW will spread and no one will be able to stop it. The secret nature of DVD decoding is already doomed and has been since day one when software was released to do it. If they really wanted to keep it secret, they'd have had a better chance if they kept all the decoding in hardware. But it's too late now. The genie is out of the bottle. Now, it's only a matter of time. And I think this is what was really intended. Electronics makers want to sell players. And the way to do that is to make players that can play as many discs as possible. The who region encoding thing makes no sense.Why has the industry never made a big deal about import audio CDs? Why should video be treated differently?I think the region thing was just stuck in to appease Hollywood into supporting the format. By the time it's broken, the format will be entrenched and all will be well at that time.
>I mean what sense does it make that the exact same transaction in taxed if you do it
>in person, as opposed to through the mail or over the internet.Suppose I live in CA and buy from NY over the 'net. I have no voice in the NY state gov't affairs. Why should they tax me?Also, how do 'net purchases differ taxwise from phone orders, mail orders? Why should they? Why are new laws needed? As it is, sales tax is collected if the company resides or has operations in my home state. Otherwise, no tax is collected. Of course I'm still supposed to pay sales tax to my local state on out of state purchases, it's just that that some other state has no authority to collect taxes on bahalf of another state in which it has no business. No one pays this tax, hence the urban legend that mail orders (now extended to the net) from out of state are 'tax free'. They never were. It's just that no one can enforce the rules.
The key word is defamation. Weather it comes from an anonymous source or a non-anoymous source should be irrelevant. Defamation never was a protected form of speech just like you can be arrested for yelling "fire" in a theater when there's no fire.This ruling about defamation- not anonymity.
I remember Kelley from a number of Westerns, usually playing the bad guy. He will be missed.
>The real problem here is stupid users running untrusted code from random sources.
Exactly. Under Linux, I can run unchecked programs as user=jailbird'/group='playpen' and not worry about my kernel being hacked.
Under DOS/Win31/Win9x, I CANNOT RUN ANY PROGRAM IN A SECURE ENVIRONMENT. This is what the M$ supporters Just Don't Get(tm).Where everyone is a God, no one is safe. When everyone is the superuser, no computer is safe.
I got tired of replacing these cheap CPU fans that keep dying on me (Do they *all* suck?). They don't seem to last very long and they don't blow a lot of air onto the heat sink. So I mounted a squirrel-cage type blower above my CPU. 10X the airflow of a regular fan; no condensation problems (unlike peltier or liquid [pick your favorite gas] CPU cooling); and still quiet. I'm not trying to overclock, but even stock stuff gets hot in my non-airconditioned room here in Las Vegas where ambient room temp reaches 100+ sometimes. Check it out here.
I guess that's why I (and probably many of us love Slashdot). It's reminiscent of the USENET of long ago. It discusses mostly tech topics and topics of interest to fellow geeks. The S/N ratio is pretty high. Newbies (usually in September) were whacked for bad postings after which they fell into line or were filtered out with killfiles (you rarely had to go this far, though). There was zero spam (it was once a usenet axiom that *you* *don't* *post* *ads* *in* *newsgroups*- *period*. [expecting .forsale and later biz.* groups]). USENET had a common culture back then much like Slashdot has a common culture now. Unfortunately it's a catch-22. Success, like when the internet went mainstream, destroys that culture. USENET is a wasteland now. And Slashdot is becoming popular... hmmm... we shall see. At least Slashdot has a control element the anarchastic USENET lacked.
Just give us our task and get out of our way. Geek work isn't like grunt work. You can't count the number of lines of code we write or amount of CPU time we log and make any meaningful judgement from that. Most geek work is creative in nature and can't just be turned on and off with output rigidly measured like a water faucet. We may get a lot done on some days. Or we may zone for a week out staring at a block of code and produce nothing. When I code for a project, I tend to create all the functions (tools) I think I will need. There's nothing to show the boss at this time. The GUI comes last. At the very end, all the tools are all linked together to complete the project and it appears (to the boss) that a lot of work is suddenly completed in rapid manner (whilst he had chastized you earlier for 'dragging your feet' and not 'producing anything meaningful'). And looking over our shoulders all the time, or being interrupted by phone calls only slows us down. What is very important and what management doesn't seem to 'get' is that geek work requires uninterrupted concentration; but not only that, geeks need the knowledge, in advance, that they will be allowed to work undisturbed for a known period of time. After all, if the boss asks you to handle the support phone, you're not going to get much work done. Though it may not ring often or even ring at all, just knowing that it might ring and saddle you with 1-60 minutes of unrelated work at any time, or 5-minutes troubleshoots every 45 minutes, randomly throughout the day causes you enough anxiety to hinder your work ability. Just give us the requirements and leave us be. We'll do fine. Really.
It'll go something like this
/tmp/ie ./ms-install ./ms-install
frob% cd
frob% tar -xzf msie5.0.666.tgz
frob%
Error: Internet explorer may only be installed by the superuser
frob% su
Password: *******
frob#
MSIE5.0 installer for Linux x86
Checking for available disk space...
Installing MSIE5.0...
Installing system fonts...
Installing JFC 1.x...
Installing Plugins...
Configuring IE5.0...
Updating system settings...
Done.
The installer will now restart your machine so the changes can take effect...
[beep]
Broadcast message from root (ttyp0) Tue May 25 04:29:06 1999...
The system is going down for reboot NOW !!
[beep]
Stopping ftpd...
Stopping inetd...
...
Unmounting filesystems...
Rebooting system...
[system reboots, BIOS screen, etc.]
Updating ESCD...Success.
Verifying DMI Pool Data...Done
Starting Windows 98...
It always bothers me when I see a comment with a score of 5 within a tree of comments rooted by a comment with a score of -1. I think if any comment receives a score of 2 or higher (maybe 3), then all of its parents should be automatically bumped up to at least 0 (to regain default visibility). Nothing that generates a score 5 comment truly deserves a score of -1 does it?
Either that or replace below-the-threshold comments with blanked out stubs.
Many laptops save the entire state of the system when you put them in 'sleep' mode. The contents of RAM, register values, program counter location, etc., are saved to disk. When you power up the machine again, everything's quickly reloaded and continues where you left off.
For faster reboots, all you have to do is reboot, let the system come up, and then save the state of the system at this point. Later when NT goes BSOD, you just reload your freshly rebooted image which is much faster than a true reboot, since the time it takes to restore a system state is essentially the time it takes to reload RAM (128MB tops) plus state info (insignificantly sized chunk of data).
Next week on 60 minutes. They're your neighbors. They're your colleagues. You walk past them on the street everyday. And they're thinking up new and horrible imagery that they plan to show to your kids each and every day they're on the job. What is the government doing about? The answer may surprise you. Tune in next week for this and much more on 60 minutes, "Marketing death and violence to the youth of America".
for supreme waste of bandwidh. :)
They will often register two domains each acting as the authoritative nameserver for the other and each points to the other for contact names, tech/zone/billing contact. So whois is useless for finding out who is upstream from the spammer. However, packets have to get to and from the spammers web page somehow. Use mail headers to find the spammers source ip address and then remember,
Traceroute is your friend.
(1) Do a traceroute to the spam site and see who supplies the IP connection to the spammer.
(2) Bitch at them for supporting spam.
(3) If this proves futile (spammers often supply feeds to other spammers), go upstream one more node and bitch at them.
(4) BTW, use http://www.arin.net/whois/arinwhois.html to convert unnamed IP addresses to real names of ISPs.
(5) Most of all, have fun! tracking spammers down. Put notches on the side of your PC case for each one killed off of the 'net. Start competitions with your friends. Hold spam hunting tournaments! Spread the word! Kill the spam!
...reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, sent to a remote system, etc., without my express written permission. Rob, Slashdot, and all you comment readers, magically agree to this just by having read it.
NSI's notice (see below) is just as silly.
>>>>
You agree that you will not reproduce, sell, transfer, or
modify any of the data presented in response to your search request, or
use of any such data for commercial purpose, without the prior
express written permission of Network Solutions.
I buy real estate at lower prices and resell it for higher prices. There's a lot of us in this business. I fail to see how domain names are any different. When registering domains was a free service to the registrand, paid for by the gov't, I can see a "squatting issue". But the moment NSI started charging for domain names, the concept of a squatter became non-existant. He who pays for a domain gets it, and he can do whatever he likes with it, be it using it, reselling it, or just sitting on it for all eternity. He bought it. He PAID for it, with his own money. It's his. How much more simple can it be than that?
It's disgusting the way policemen and firemen are described (often themselves doing the describing) as being hereoes for risking their life every day for you and me. Bah. Just like everyone else, they work for a paycheck. Without good pay, they'd switch jobs in a heartbeat. There's no heroism involved, and people don't deserve medals just for doing their jobs.
>Yep, because I'd definitely want police, fire, EMS, teachers and civil
>servants that were only in it for the money.
But real medical doctors do get six figure salaries. Does that mean you wonder if they are working to save your life or just for their paycheck. I really don't care, so long as they do their job.
>When some freak runs through the city wearing a Barney shirt killing people we
>don't expect children to stop watching Barney or advertisements to stop.
Remember a TV show called "The Greatest American Hero"? The main character's name was Ralph Hinkley. But after John Hinkley's attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, the character was thereafter referred to as simply "Mr. H".
School districts all across the nation have banned all sorts of clothes if it can in any way be associated with crime or bad behavior. In one case gangs used particulat sports team logos to identify themselves. Others used colored shoe laces. Big baggy pants were banned in some places. So were certain hair styles (not just shaving words/letters). The bottom line is that out paranoid society will alter or ban anything with negative ties if it has anything whatsoever to do with children.
[ ] Top-Down (Break up big taks into bite sized chunks)
[ ] Bottom Up (You can't build until you have a good set of tools)
[ ] Just dive in and code
[ ] Wait for orders from management
[ ] Cut, paste, tweak; cut, paste, tweak; bash, bash, hack; debug, debug, debug.
When the school reopens, the geeks will still be shunned and ridiculed. Anyone 'caught' making comments like the thousands Katz received will be subjected to the trauma of being ordered to receive 'counseling' or expelled. The lesson being that differing opinions and the improper use of words is itself a dangerous and heinous act to be suppressed. This just builds more tension and resentment toward a school system structured more like a prison than an educational institution. And no one, not the student, not the parents, not the media, will stand up to defend a different opinion because a paranoid society will only suppress such people harder. Some will, on mere reflex, curse them as nazi/homo/goth/deathsquad sympathizers. Others, particularly in the schools, where mind control is stronger, will try to convince them of the error of their wrongthink. They will be badgered, continuously, unendingly, letters written to their parents, physicians secretly notified, psychiatrists and social workers too, all behind their backs, the conformists see it as their God given mission to 'help' these people before (they just assume) they can hurt anyone else.
How many lines is that?
7? (total lines in program including blank lines)
6? (ignoring blank lines)
4? (is '{' and '}' really a 'line of code'?)
3? (#include is not really code)
hundreds? (stdio.h is huge and includes many other header files)
Double the image size and apply a logarithmic contrast adjustment on that image. The logo is then very easily seen.