I've emailed the Proxomitron people to see if they'd release the source so it could be ported over to Linux; no response yet, but it wasn't too long ago that I asked. I think it'd be trivially easy to port; all it's doing is being a proxy.
Come on. You can do plenty of good work for a company in fifteen months. More than enough to justify the time and money they spent on you. And it's not like you're going to just up and go or anything; I'm guessing you'll give 'em at least the two-weeks-notice. Judging from your present ethical dilemma, you'll probably even give them much more than two weeks.
Gah. If you were leaving in fifteen days, that's a dilemma. 15 months. Gah.
I usually stop playing such a game when vision of said game appear in my sleep
Heh. Yeah. The most vivid example I've ever gone through is when I went through a serious SimCity stunt a long time ago; I was having all these wacky dreams where I had to zone everything and place power lines . . . When I was awake but really tired, my mind would start slipping into SimCity patterns. I'd be walking across campus and end up thinking things like "they can't put a road there; it's the wrong kind of incline." So yeah, I stopped.
For me it usually happens with programming, though, as most games can't keep me occupied long enough to have that happen (Alpha Centauri, SimCity, and their ilk can do it pretty easily, which is why I avoid those). I'll just start kind of "thinking" in the language, and then I know it's time to take a break.:P
I'll add my (-1, Redundant) voice to the throng in saying that it's a simply glorious day when a First Post can be modded up to (5, Insightful). Flame on, all you soulless troglodytes who continue to rant about how idiotic Slashdot is today while neglecting to realize that they could just NOT READ slashdot today if it really bugs them that much! (How's that for a run-on sentence?)
Are you implying that Slashdot is a news outlet with some credibility left? Heh.
On a serious note, how exactly have you spent your life fighting mind-entropy? And how do you see April Fool's as being a serious source of entropy? Okay, so Slashdot is fast becoming somewhat moronic in its slavish posting of virtually every April Fool's joke it can find (not that I mind - I find it amusing), but I'd hardly call the holiday as a whole a menace to public health. Certainly it encourages behavior outside a socially-accepted norm, and it requires that people be more "on their toes" than usual, lest they fall prey to an unfortunate prank, but I hardly think that those things are detrimental.
If that is indeed what you're worried about, I'd suggest checking out some really cool philosophical work that's being done at reciprocality.org, specifically M0. It's a little dense but highly interesting.
Oh, a curse on me and my incorrect grammar! The plurality of that sentence was all wrong. Should have been "True, a story may not be . .." Second time I've made a gross mistake like that today. Second time that I've caught, anyway. *GASP!* There might be more!
True, stories may not be funny just because it is about Linux, bashes Microsoft, has a CowboyNeal option, or was posted on April 1st, but that post to debian-devel was quite funny, on it's own. The 1337speak in the Description field was wonderful.
Have you considered that maybe the whole "basically make the site worthless for a day" thing you're perceiving is actually a part of the "Slashdot Experience?"
Sure, Slashdot's fun. Slashdot brings me some "news" items I might not have heard about otherwise. But it's not like the world's going to end if, for one day out of the year, there's a bunch of bogus stories.
Right, many of you are paying for Yahoo services, but unless I'm mistaken, none of you are actually paying for the base email service. I hold again that if you're upset that Yahoo is using your "most valuable personal and financial information," then you've just made the serious mistake of trusting them with the information in the first place.
As to the second point, it's entirely relevant. I haven't taken the time to read through the little internet agreement thing that you sign when getting your free email, but I'm guessing that if you did, they'd have some provisions that they would be able to change preferences like that.
If they've got your info and you don't want them to, then it's your own fault.
No, Yahoo's giving you a free email service, and you're paying to have them host a DNS MX record for you . . . If you weren't paying them that money, you'd still have the Yahoo account; you just couldn't get to it using "whoever@mydomain.blah" Unless I've misunderstood, in which case you might just want to give up on me.:)
I was going to be all jerky and write a sarcastic remark about how I'd just be shattered to have my "feel free to deposit spam here" address yanked away from me, but then I got to thinking about people who aren't fortunate enough to have college accounts or friends with large datapipes running into their homes. And in any case, I wouldn't trust Yahoo with real information anyway.
So what options are there for people who need free email (well, "need" is a pretty strong word - let's say that unless it's free, they'll just live without it)? What's a good site to go to that doesn't have those kinds of clauses in their agreement-thinger?
Well, that was the problem, really. As a general rule of thumb, DON'T give out your address or credit card info on the web. Or if you do, certainly don't tie it in to some user account somewhere, so they can pull something like this. If somewhere makes you create a profile just to buy something, refuse. There's a pretty good chance you don't actually need whatever it was you were buying, or in the case of travel you can always get tickets elsewhere.
Um, I use two Yahoo addresses outside of my mail address: one that gets used whenever websites want me to register to get in, and one for a few Yahoo lists I'm on. Neither of those accounts know about my real email address. There's a field when you're signing up that asks you for another email address, but it's entirely not required.
I certainly wouldn't do anything with data out of Yahoo. I certainly didn't give them real information when I signed up, nor has any one of my friends I've talked to. Anyone basing anything off of stats from a free webmail provider has got to be insane.
Slashdot Mirror
w3m is nice, too . . .
I've emailed the Proxomitron people to see if they'd release the source so it could be ported over to Linux; no response yet, but it wasn't too long ago that I asked. I think it'd be trivially easy to port; all it's doing is being a proxy.
. . . stops sending me those damn CDs in the mail, then maybe I'll get excited about them winning a case against a spammer.
Gah. If you were leaving in fifteen days, that's a dilemma. 15 months. Gah.
For me it usually happens with programming, though, as most games can't keep me occupied long enough to have that happen (Alpha Centauri, SimCity, and their ilk can do it pretty easily, which is why I avoid those). I'll just start kind of "thinking" in the language, and then I know it's time to take a break. :P
I'll add my (-1, Redundant) voice to the throng in saying that it's a simply glorious day when a First Post can be modded up to (5, Insightful). Flame on, all you soulless troglodytes who continue to rant about how idiotic Slashdot is today while neglecting to realize that they could just NOT READ slashdot today if it really bugs them that much! (How's that for a run-on sentence?)
Limitless potential! Now all I've gotta do is get some friends to "xhost +" my box . . . Bwahahahahaha!
And you thought you were being silly.
On a serious note, how exactly have you spent your life fighting mind-entropy? And how do you see April Fool's as being a serious source of entropy? Okay, so Slashdot is fast becoming somewhat moronic in its slavish posting of virtually every April Fool's joke it can find (not that I mind - I find it amusing), but I'd hardly call the holiday as a whole a menace to public health. Certainly it encourages behavior outside a socially-accepted norm, and it requires that people be more "on their toes" than usual, lest they fall prey to an unfortunate prank, but I hardly think that those things are detrimental.
If that is indeed what you're worried about, I'd suggest checking out some really cool philosophical work that's being done at reciprocality.org, specifically M0. It's a little dense but highly interesting.
Oooooh, right, right. So I probably shouldn't have said anything, eh? :P
Well, only if Megatokyo doesn't mind, that is. :P
Oh, a curse on me and my incorrect grammar! The plurality of that sentence was all wrong. Should have been "True, a story may not be . . ." Second time I've made a gross mistake like that today. Second time that I've caught, anyway. *GASP!* There might be more!
True, stories may not be funny just because it is about Linux, bashes Microsoft, has a CowboyNeal option, or was posted on April 1st, but that post to debian-devel was quite funny, on it's own. The 1337speak in the Description field was wonderful.
Sure, Slashdot's fun. Slashdot brings me some "news" items I might not have heard about otherwise. But it's not like the world's going to end if, for one day out of the year, there's a bunch of bogus stories.
And what exactly is this "Slashdot experience?" that's being ruined here?
(note to the people who haven't gotten it: look at a calendar)
As to the second point, it's entirely relevant. I haven't taken the time to read through the little internet agreement thing that you sign when getting your free email, but I'm guessing that if you did, they'd have some provisions that they would be able to change preferences like that.
If they've got your info and you don't want them to, then it's your own fault.
No, Yahoo's giving you a free email service, and you're paying to have them host a DNS MX record for you . . . If you weren't paying them that money, you'd still have the Yahoo account; you just couldn't get to it using "whoever@mydomain.blah" Unless I've misunderstood, in which case you might just want to give up on me. :)
That's why you don't give out your address to Yahoo stores. :P
Ah, well in that case, you're still not actually paying for the Yahoo mail itself, which is what's being affected by this.
So what options are there for people who need free email (well, "need" is a pretty strong word - let's say that unless it's free, they'll just live without it)? What's a good site to go to that doesn't have those kinds of clauses in their agreement-thinger?
Well, that was the problem, really. As a general rule of thumb, DON'T give out your address or credit card info on the web. Or if you do, certainly don't tie it in to some user account somewhere, so they can pull something like this. If somewhere makes you create a profile just to buy something, refuse. There's a pretty good chance you don't actually need whatever it was you were buying, or in the case of travel you can always get tickets elsewhere.
But is that just for a bigger Inbox? I'm guessing that you're still getting the basic service for free.
Um, I use two Yahoo addresses outside of my mail address: one that gets used whenever websites want me to register to get in, and one for a few Yahoo lists I'm on. Neither of those accounts know about my real email address. There's a field when you're signing up that asks you for another email address, but it's entirely not required.
I certainly wouldn't do anything with data out of Yahoo. I certainly didn't give them real information when I signed up, nor has any one of my friends I've talked to. Anyone basing anything off of stats from a free webmail provider has got to be insane.