Surprise, surprise, Microsoft has given AT LEAST $50,000 to BOTH candidates George W. Gore and Al Bush.
I've tried to submit a story about Who's Giving The Big Bucks To BushGore.
Read 66 Smart Billionaires for the full list.
Jello Biafra showed us a funny prop from the Democritan National Propaganda Show, Live from LA.
It was a 12" disk saying "Tipper Rocks."
But that's nothing.
Lieberman is the champion of censorship in the Senate. He is one of the people that believes the first amendment freedom of speech means "political speech for the current state of affirs only", freedom of religion means "you must believe in some deity".
Billionaires for Bush or Gore is a site worth reading if you really think that Gore and Bush are so fucking different.
Both had daddies who were Big Men on the Mall, quintessential DC Insiders.
Both of their families made their fortunes in industries which were/are taxpayer subsidized.
Both of them are pro-death penalty and pro-WTO, an organization which has the ability to overrule a nation's laws.
Read some of my past posts and see the light.
And by the way: These "A vote for Nader is a vote for whomever" crap? Congrats, you've been brainwashed.
Last I checked, a vote for Bush is a vote for Bush. A vote for Gore is a vote for Gore. A vote for NADER is a vote for NADER.
If you want to subscribe to the switch-vote lie, then it's more like a vote for BUSH is a vote for GORE and a vote for GORE is a vote for BUSH.
And finally, voting for "the lesser of two evils" is like choosing between Pneumonia and Influenza, according to Studs Terkel. Both are nasty, and both can kill. (And the worst part about voting the lesser of two evils is that you've still got TWO EVILS.)
For those of you who think that the Gore-Lieberman ticket is better:
Mr Lieberman is on record stating that the Constitution was NOT for everyone, but for a "moral and religious people."
That is, he is another person who states that the First Amendment is the right to believe in how you want, but you gotta believe.
Yet another reason that, though I am an Orthodox Christian, I refuse to swear oaths "under God."
I also would encourage any/.ers that have younger brothers and sisters (or, if they're really old, sons and daughters) to not say the "Pledge of Allegiance" at school. If the teacher asks a reason, tell them to say,
"This pledge says that I am subservient to the state. However, in a democracy, the state is subservient to me. If anyone should swear oaths, then the government should swear that it will protect me from those who would hurt me, abuse me, stop me from saying my mind and my beliefs.
"This country is supposed to be free, but this oath is to make a nation of free people into slaves. Amen."
Moreover do you
believe it would have been a good thing to through young George Bush and Al Gore into prison?
'Twould be good, but not likely at all.
Both of their fathers were Washington insiders and their family fortunes were made on the backs of tax dollars.
And you can bet that neither would stop the Con On Drugs. There is too much money involved: from the police who are given ransoms for drug busts to the DA's who are kept busy and flush with election-swinging cases to the corporate prisons with their decently-paid guards.
The Spam database, and the anti-spam textisms
on
Deja For Sale
·
· Score: 1
Old-school email addresses rock.
Nothling like a bang-path to throw off modern spammers.
What are your campaigns policies about accepting contributions from a) corporations in general, b) persons or corporations which have contracts with the federal government, c) unions, d) 'soft money' in the forms of donations to party war chests, advertising for either a party in general or for a candidate but paid for by a person not identified as with the party (eg: the AFL-CIO advertising for Gore would be an example of the latter).
Also, how would you reform the debates process? Many people have spoken out against the CPD and its acceptance of corporate sponsorship. Would you amend the current debate standards? Would you revert them to the League of Women Voters (or whomever held debates before the corrupt CPD)?
I used to believe that. Then I reconsidered. The problem is not that religion (an outside influence) causes one to become less intelligent. The problem is that less intelligent people are drawn to religion.
In the 1st century AD or CE, the Greeks had proven that the world was round and they had a number for the circumference off by about one or two percent. They had logically discerned the world rotated about the sun and had even come up with atomic theory, the idea that matter has a smallest point at which point it was indivisible without changing what the matter was. The concept of using steam as a source for work was proposed, but rejected because "we have slaves to do that." (The idea was that, by lighting a fire by the doors of a temple, water in pipes would boil, the steam would expand, and the doors would open.)
Then, Christianity rolled in.
By the 4th century AD, the universe rotated about a plate of the earth, which one could fall off. The Western Roman Empire fell apart after Theodoric tried valiantly to salvage it. The Dark Ages in the West lasted for centuries.
In the East, in the Byzantine Empire, the intellectuals were all but drafted to the service of the Church. From philosophy, which was condemned as a pagan outbranch, they turned to theosophy. Some new research continued, and some impressive things came out of it (look at Ayia Sophia, a church about 150 meters square, built in an earthquake zone, and lasting one and a half millenia!)
However, Europe was thrown back for 1500 years after Christianity, until brilliant people like Gallileo, Newton, Copernicus, and their ilk came up and said, No, this is how the universe works, with numbers and not vaguaries.
Should the government go open-source? In terms of software, yes. Maintenance costs are cheaper when you go in-house (most of the time) and these sorts of positions are somewhat immunized against graft. Hardware is another story: They should use straight standards, but this IS government we're talking about.
In reality, it won't happen. Closed software yields great fiscal rewards for corporate America. They can survive hell freezing over as long as they have that government contract.
I support the Gallic and Deutch moves towards an open source friendly government.
I like the Konqueror. It runs more smoothly than Netscape and doesn't scream to the world (according to privacy.net's scanpage).
As far as beta status, almost all software is beta. The only non-beta software never needs to be updated, so games like You Don't Know Jack aren't beta.
Linux is always beta, but it is stable and works great.
Windows is always beta, and has more bugs than a beehive.
"What violence is in a dictatorship, propaganda is in a democracy."
During war time, the information available was deliberately limited to pre-edited propaganda reels and edited front-line reels.
Then, came Vietnam. The Television media was somewhat edited, but was raw. This swayed public opinion against the war.
Watergate as well brought the people against the government and made people believe the media more redily.
Then, you have Reagan, an actor who knew how to play the cameras. He was trustworthy, because he knew how to be. And Bush showed The Perfect Political War, the Iraqi Attacks. 90+% opinion polls.
Now, we have the Internet. A technology which crosses boundries, which crosses nations with a dot-uk, dot-gr, dot-iq, dot-cn, dot-ru, dot-cd, dot-whatever-two-letter-ISO-code. You can see the rest of the world through a different nation's set(s) of eyes, and in a nation like ours where the media is highly controlled and pro-gorment and pro-megacorp, this is dangerous.
China's solution was the Great Firewall, one of whose major crackers I had the priviledge of seeing a few months ago.
However, in a nation of free-speech and free-media guaranteed by law, this is impossible.
So what's the solution? Condemnation. The internet's bad, and naughty, and rotten, and filled with violence, and lies, and porn.
And because people still believe the megacorporate media, they believe the lies more readily than the truth because of the infallibility of the source.
Jello Biafra of Dead Kennedys said that the best way to combat the media is to becaome the media. I guess that's one of the purposes of Slashdot.
I admit that 3D games are fun. However, there are many games that are not 3D and still kick.
Civilization and its derivitives are my favorite time-killers. You build a world from the ground up, and try to survive 5 millenia or take over the world or try to contact an Alien race (in CivCTP) or reach Alpha Centauri (in Freeciv or F.O. Civ).
I visit some BBS's and play the games there, which are middle-school old. Text with some ANSI graphics, and it was fun.
I play Q3A, and I like it. (Too bad I suck at it.)
The main restriction that CSS, err.. SDMI would impose is that would mandate that hardware and software MP3 solutions would have to convert to SDMI only within a short timespan.
Now, if you read the article, it says one thing that none of us would have expected: Many SDMI members think there isn't [another solution to watermarking] -- and that this could mean that SDMI will now implode for lack of any plausible ideas for how to meet the recording industry's demands for secure music.
Maybe this means that there won't be an SDMI for a technological century! (Or six years;)
I have felt that any form of direct or indirect governmental or paragovernmental control over the Net is wrong, but it's always nice to see this view validated in a new way.
The only guyw who should have say on the nature of the Internet are the guys who wrote the RFC's and the comments thereof.
This article is pretty important for those of you fantasizing about a job in corporate America (as anyone that actually does work instead of managing to do nothing).
The world has changed radically with the explosion of the Internet. Information which was once hard to find is now harder to find, but easier to look up. (Search engines and spider engines help somewhat.)
Now, with the exponential growth of computers in in EVERY aspect of corporate life, the white-collar world is changing the same way the blue-collar world changed in the 1970's with the introduction of robotics to assembly lines, and automation in lower-eschelon tasks.
It used to be that computers were something of a novelty except for number-crunching. Desktops were word processors and Rolodexes with Solitaire. Big iron was written in COBOL to figure out the numbers so the shareholders would look and say, Gee, the company made a profit this term, good job, keep it up, and I'll buy ten thousand more shares.
Now, everything is computerized. Accountants use spreadsheets and overglorified adding tapes for the books. The media uses computers to help shape the images on the screen, the words on the page, the pictures in the two-page spread. Managers can type their own memos and torture their departments with OneOS mentality (Aka You use Vin-dose!)
The corporate towers are changing. Cat5 is required in every office. The jobs of today will be gone or radically altered in less than a decade, some estimates say in as little as 5 years. 95% of the jobs will be different or gone. (The other 5% is the Top Escelon Positions, the CxO's VP's and Presidents and Chairs of the Board.)
Also i ask as a question which is more illegal: If a company A, releases a device D (like the CueCat), and A says that they are
not collecting information, that the device D has no way of identifying someone &tc, if a person P, reverse engineers D, does
only P get into trouble, is there no accountablility for A, which lied to the public?
This has been an issue for a long time in the United States. The laws basically say that if something is investigated illegally, it
can't be used in court and therefore in your semi-hypothetical situation the company does not get in trouble. This is actually
intended to protect the citizens from the government, but in this situation you no longer have the citizens being protected.
Obviously, something needs to be reevaluated.
Let's add something: The Cuecat sent its serial through with the swipe, and this could be determined with Notepad. Now, if installed, this could not really be a violation of hardware integrity because you are using your wetware and trial-and-error to figure out, hey, this does something different from the first one I used.
And PS: In order to prove evidence is illegal, the burden is on the opposition to prove it was illegal, and not the provider to prove it was.
It is clear that half the regulation either hasn't caught up with the digital age and the other half has been subverted by the
companies taking advantage of us. Does anyone know of plans to challenge the DMCA in court? I know a number of
organizations that are probably doing this but haven't seen an organized effort (mostly due to my own ignorance).
I am hereby stating that I am going to run for Congress in 2004, when I will be (just barely!) legal age.
We need more hackers to be in office, and remember: Spread information far and wide to those who will hear.
The most important duty of a citizen is to be involved in the political affairs of his State.
I claim that my invention is an extremely large, dense, spheroid mass which creates a sufficiently large magnetic field to attract smaller bodies of mass. This invention, due to its size, rotates independently of any visible external forces, and contains a heat source which, if properly harnessed, could maintain a temperature of approx. 30 deg. C in most structures.
This spheroid is also capable of harnessing energy, as well; if sufficiently close to an active stellar mass, it can retain a percentage of the emmitted electromagnetic energy sufficient to maintain dihydrogen oxide at liquid temperatures throughout the rotational period.
I'm an online merchant. ATT thinks I'M goint to pay THEM when someone buys something from my site. They can kiss my ass. I'm not paying them shit. I don't care if they're coming from ATT's network or not. For one, how are they going to prove it, magically decrypt the SSL transaction and read everything that goes on?
You don't think the national ISP's keep logs of the sites that are visited, and from what dynamic-IP, and from what user-ID?
Hmm.. Mr. Stevens... It seems there were three thousand four hundred thirty two visits to your business' website. At industry averagesof one-half percent, you have done 18 sales. However, our logs show three hundred SSL connections. How do you explain that, Mr. Stevens?I don't possibly see how this could ever work. They bill me because someone else PAID THEM to access their network and use it to buy stuff from me? Whatever. I don't know what they've been smoking, but they've obviously smoked it all.
They were smoking the best hash in Amsterdam. That way, they can fail the drug test and legitimize the results.
Right now, the net is a loss-leader. Deregulation happened, and the telcos are scrambling to get newer money makers at expense of service and reliability. I mean, a decade and change ago, payphones were all over the place and a local call was a dime. Now, it's 35 cents. IF you find one. (I mean, outside Manhattan.)
It costs a nickel off the hardline to call my dialup node, but to call further than eight cable-miles is a dime a minute.
My home's wiring is so old, we can't get a second line without extensive work. (We actually have an old Blackphone rotary in our laundry room!)
And service will take no less than a MONTH to do anything! All thanks to Amerit-!@#&%!)@#&)(!*##*#!
NO CARRIER
An interesting quote I saw was
"Unless some exceptions are created, they argue, the entertainment industry will have more control than the Constitution allows. "
I agree with you there. If corporations are
'persons' as they are considered by Supreme Court rulings, then they indubitably should have to follow the same rules and regs as a living, breathing human.
However, corporations are not living, breathing beings, and so they are pretty much immunized, at least criminally, from being prosecuted.
Can a corp go to jail? Nope.
Can a corp be married? Nope.
Can a corp be executed? Nope, and in some states it is illegal for a corp to go under because of a civil remedy (see the Big Tobacco case).
Now, excuse me if I just don't "get" this, but isn't the Constitution the Supreme Law of the Land?
Yes. The legal higherarchy is skewed, but roughly, it's:
The Constitution, which provides the ground rules of operation;
Federal Law, which makes more clear definitions of what's good and what's not;
And the Bitch, Case Law (or Common Law). This is law pressed out in court rulings. Read the DeCSS briefs? The A vs. B (regular courts) and A v. B (Supreme Court) rulings make the intricate web of law only lawyers, judges, and felons in good prisons with libraries can understand.
Personally, I believe we can solve all of this corporate boldness fairly easily. Add a EULA to the Constitution:
"By use of this document, you hereby attest that you have not and will not attempt to bypass the civilian rights listed herein. If at any time this statement is no longer valid, the person and/or corporation that does so will lose all rights listed herein."
Yeah, right. Every Republocrat and Democritan in the House and Senate and in every Governorship and State Assembly in the nation is bankrolled with CORPORATE MONEY. The government and the corporations WANT to take your rights away.
Welcome to the Corporate Socialist regime.
This is why I am voting for Ralph Nader, and every civil-liberty loving bastard should as well. He is the biggest voice against corporate power. He is responsible for the Clean Air and Water Acts... seatbelts.. airbags... Freeedom of Information Act... and another three dozen pieces of legislation which protect citizens' and their rights.
Non-geeks don't know anything other than what the numbers and PR tells them.
I talk to people who wonder about the "LINUXGRUVEN" sticker on my laptop, and I oft come up with "Windows is easy to learn and hard to use, while Linux is hard to learn and easy to use."
User-friendly, ergonomic, simple interfaces are for Gee Q. Public. There is an overwhelming majority that use computers for e-mail and IM and basic web work and word-proc-ing. They want a simple interface and a simple system. At least in the first part, MS did it.
But.. if you offer to teach people on how to use Linux, we can make an inroads. I've offered my cousin, a 13 yo who likes computers and hates AOL (praise Jeebus!), to teach him how to use Linux and let him use some of my sacred pile of O'Reilly books. I offer classmates that are interested the same option, to liberate themselves from Microsoft tyranny (and save big bucks in software).
No takers, but the offer is open.
The way to increase Linux use by GQP is to make it less imposing. Teach it to your friends.
Yes, this approach may sound familiar. It's how most religions got started, by a faithful few spreading the word to the World At Large.
YES. I am a collar-wearing linux evangelist. I intend to join the GeekCorps.
Yea, but when does the evaluation "expire"
Usually, I don't reply to trollbait, but this one deserved to be neg2'd.
IT NEVER EXPIRES. It is a fully-functional Linux distro. Most of it is GNU, and the rest is freebeer licensed.
You can use the Eval Distro until hell freeezes over and the devil gives free sleigh rides.
Is it true that theoretically I could drive a boat out the international waters and broadcast this stuff? "See that boat there. They're broadcasting Standford law lectures with implied oral consent not expressed written consent... or so the legend goes."
IANAL but play one online.:)
International Waters is a legal concept worth clarifying.
Every nation in the world with a water border, whether lake, river, or ocean, has a region around them which is Their Sovereign Territory. For example, the Great Lakes besides Lake Chicago.. err.. Michigan all share the border with Canada, and are, by treaty, split along the midpoint with the two countries. There are rivers in Europe which make national boundries, and the rule is that at the geographic halfway point is where the country's sovereign territory starts.
Now, oceans are a hell of a lot larger than rivers or lakes. So, how do you demark the amount of waterspace is a country's?
Each country declares a certain amount, true, but the normal amount recognized is 12 nautical miles. (Yes, some countries claim 200 plus. BFD.)
Inside that 12-mile (or whatever) area, you are fully subject to the national and regional (if applicable) laws of whatever country's area it is. For example, you yacht off the UN building in NYC, you are subject to NYC, New York State, and US law.
When you are in international waters, no specific nation's laws apply. However, you can't just murder in IW and get away with it! Most likely scenario if you commit a felonious act (read: damned serious crime) in IW is that, upon arriving at a port of call, is your butt gets thrown into the slammer.
The security forces of a ship are the effective police force aboard. Ships usually carry a brig where serious criminals are detained until an effective law enforcement agency can take custody of the individual.
However, there are many, many concepts of International Law which apply to IW. Example: Sealand was abandonded property in IW, so the former Lieutenant now Prince of Sealand was able to claim the former military installation and claim it as a separate nation. (Long story. Check Slashdot's older pages, amen.)
Main rule of IW is: Lower drek ain't important, what you finds you keeps, and the big stuff will eventually be punished.
If you bought Quake3Arena for Linux, you may have noticed the SuSE 6.3 "evaluation copy" on a CD.
This was great to convert those Windows people who liked the tin better than the lame-o box.
At Comdex's Linux Business Expo in Chicago, they gave away 6.4 disks, which I used to initially upgrade my laptop.
The 7.0 Live Evaluation is a great idea. It makes Linux more painless and gives people a definition of 'free software' that costs nothing (extra;) to learn.
Slashdot Mirror
Surprise, surprise, Microsoft has given AT LEAST $50,000 to BOTH candidates George W. Gore and Al Bush. I've tried to submit a story about Who's Giving The Big Bucks To BushGore. Read 66 Smart Billionaires for the full list.
Jello Biafra showed us a funny prop from the Democritan National Propaganda Show, Live from LA.
It was a 12" disk saying "Tipper Rocks."
But that's nothing.
Lieberman is the champion of censorship in the Senate. He is one of the people that believes the first amendment freedom of speech means "political speech for the current state of affirs only", freedom of religion means "you must believe in some deity".
Billionaires for Bush or Gore is a site worth reading if you really think that Gore and Bush are so fucking different.
Both had daddies who were Big Men on the Mall, quintessential DC Insiders.
Both of their families made their fortunes in industries which were/are taxpayer subsidized.
Both of them are pro-death penalty and pro-WTO, an organization which has the ability to overrule a nation's laws.
Read some of my past posts and see the light.
And by the way: These "A vote for Nader is a vote for whomever" crap? Congrats, you've been brainwashed.
Last I checked, a vote for Bush is a vote for Bush. A vote for Gore is a vote for Gore. A vote for NADER is a vote for NADER.
If you want to subscribe to the switch-vote lie, then it's more like a vote for BUSH is a vote for GORE and a vote for GORE is a vote for BUSH.
And finally, voting for "the lesser of two evils" is like choosing between Pneumonia and Influenza, according to Studs Terkel. Both are nasty, and both can kill. (And the worst part about voting the lesser of two evils is that you've still got TWO EVILS.)
For those of you who think that the Gore-Lieberman ticket is better:
/.ers that have younger brothers and sisters (or, if they're really old, sons and daughters) to not say the "Pledge of Allegiance" at school. If the teacher asks a reason, tell them to say,
Mr Lieberman is on record stating that the Constitution was NOT for everyone, but for a "moral and religious people."
That is, he is another person who states that the First Amendment is the right to believe in how you want, but you gotta believe.
Yet another reason that, though I am an Orthodox Christian, I refuse to swear oaths "under God."
I also would encourage any
"This pledge says that I am subservient to the state. However, in a democracy, the state is subservient to me. If anyone should swear oaths, then the government should swear that it will protect me from those who would hurt me, abuse me, stop me from saying my mind and my beliefs.
"This country is supposed to be free, but this oath is to make a nation of free people into slaves. Amen."
Here endeth the lesson.
Moreover do you believe it would have been a good thing to through young George Bush and Al Gore into prison? 'Twould be good, but not likely at all. Both of their fathers were Washington insiders and their family fortunes were made on the backs of tax dollars. And you can bet that neither would stop the Con On Drugs. There is too much money involved: from the police who are given ransoms for drug busts to the DA's who are kept busy and flush with election-swinging cases to the corporate prisons with their decently-paid guards.
Old-school email addresses rock.
Nothling like a bang-path to throw off modern spammers.
What are your campaigns policies about accepting contributions from a) corporations in general, b) persons or corporations which have contracts with the federal government, c) unions, d) 'soft money' in the forms of donations to party war chests, advertising for either a party in general or for a candidate but paid for by a person not identified as with the party (eg: the AFL-CIO advertising for Gore would be an example of the latter).
.sig follows. Amen.)
Also, how would you reform the debates process? Many people have spoken out against the CPD and its acceptance of corporate sponsorship. Would you amend the current debate standards? Would you revert them to the League of Women Voters (or whomever held debates before the corrupt CPD)?
(Shamelessly political
I used to believe that. Then I reconsidered. The problem is not that religion (an outside influence) causes one to become less intelligent. The problem is that less intelligent people are drawn to religion. In the 1st century AD or CE, the Greeks had proven that the world was round and they had a number for the circumference off by about one or two percent. They had logically discerned the world rotated about the sun and had even come up with atomic theory, the idea that matter has a smallest point at which point it was indivisible without changing what the matter was. The concept of using steam as a source for work was proposed, but rejected because "we have slaves to do that." (The idea was that, by lighting a fire by the doors of a temple, water in pipes would boil, the steam would expand, and the doors would open.) Then, Christianity rolled in. By the 4th century AD, the universe rotated about a plate of the earth, which one could fall off. The Western Roman Empire fell apart after Theodoric tried valiantly to salvage it. The Dark Ages in the West lasted for centuries. In the East, in the Byzantine Empire, the intellectuals were all but drafted to the service of the Church. From philosophy, which was condemned as a pagan outbranch, they turned to theosophy. Some new research continued, and some impressive things came out of it (look at Ayia Sophia, a church about 150 meters square, built in an earthquake zone, and lasting one and a half millenia!) However, Europe was thrown back for 1500 years after Christianity, until brilliant people like Gallileo, Newton, Copernicus, and their ilk came up and said, No, this is how the universe works, with numbers and not vaguaries.
Should the government go open-source? In terms of software, yes. Maintenance costs are cheaper when you go in-house (most of the time) and these sorts of positions are somewhat immunized against graft. Hardware is another story: They should use straight standards, but this IS government we're talking about.
In reality, it won't happen. Closed software yields great fiscal rewards for corporate America. They can survive hell freezing over as long as they have that government contract.
I support the Gallic and Deutch moves towards an open source friendly government.
I like the Konqueror. It runs more smoothly than Netscape and doesn't scream to the world (according to privacy.net's scanpage).
As far as beta status, almost all software is beta. The only non-beta software never needs to be updated, so games like You Don't Know Jack aren't beta.
Linux is always beta, but it is stable and works great.
Windows is always beta, and has more bugs than a beehive.
"What violence is in a dictatorship, propaganda is in a democracy." During war time, the information available was deliberately limited to pre-edited propaganda reels and edited front-line reels. Then, came Vietnam. The Television media was somewhat edited, but was raw. This swayed public opinion against the war. Watergate as well brought the people against the government and made people believe the media more redily. Then, you have Reagan, an actor who knew how to play the cameras. He was trustworthy, because he knew how to be. And Bush showed The Perfect Political War, the Iraqi Attacks. 90+% opinion polls. Now, we have the Internet. A technology which crosses boundries, which crosses nations with a dot-uk, dot-gr, dot-iq, dot-cn, dot-ru, dot-cd, dot-whatever-two-letter-ISO-code. You can see the rest of the world through a different nation's set(s) of eyes, and in a nation like ours where the media is highly controlled and pro-gorment and pro-megacorp, this is dangerous. China's solution was the Great Firewall, one of whose major crackers I had the priviledge of seeing a few months ago. However, in a nation of free-speech and free-media guaranteed by law, this is impossible. So what's the solution? Condemnation. The internet's bad, and naughty, and rotten, and filled with violence, and lies, and porn. And because people still believe the megacorporate media, they believe the lies more readily than the truth because of the infallibility of the source. Jello Biafra of Dead Kennedys said that the best way to combat the media is to becaome the media. I guess that's one of the purposes of Slashdot.
I admit that 3D games are fun. However, there are many games that are not 3D and still kick.
Civilization and its derivitives are my favorite time-killers. You build a world from the ground up, and try to survive 5 millenia or take over the world or try to contact an Alien race (in CivCTP) or reach Alpha Centauri (in Freeciv or F.O. Civ).
I visit some BBS's and play the games there, which are middle-school old. Text with some ANSI graphics, and it was fun.
I play Q3A, and I like it. (Too bad I suck at it.)
The main restriction that CSS, err.. SDMI would impose is that would mandate that hardware and software MP3 solutions would have to convert to SDMI only within a short timespan. Now, if you read the article, it says one thing that none of us would have expected: Many SDMI members think there isn't [another solution to watermarking] -- and that this could mean that SDMI will now implode for lack of any plausible ideas for how to meet the recording industry's demands for secure music. Maybe this means that there won't be an SDMI for a technological century! (Or six years ;)
Cheap joke, but oh well.
I have felt that any form of direct or indirect governmental or paragovernmental control over the Net is wrong, but it's always nice to see this view validated in a new way.
The only guyw who should have say on the nature of the Internet are the guys who wrote the RFC's and the comments thereof.
I am in some metaphysical state over this.
I don't know what, but definately something.. special...
Excuse me, I need a tissue.
[serious moment]
Any word on the sort of pricing and raw POWER out of these babies?
I can't wait to try Q3A on this.. this.. behemoth of x86 archetecture.
[/serious moment]
This article is pretty important for those of you fantasizing about a job in corporate America (as anyone that actually does work instead of managing to do nothing).
The world has changed radically with the explosion of the Internet. Information which was once hard to find is now harder to find, but easier to look up. (Search engines and spider engines help somewhat.)
Now, with the exponential growth of computers in in EVERY aspect of corporate life, the white-collar world is changing the same way the blue-collar world changed in the 1970's with the introduction of robotics to assembly lines, and automation in lower-eschelon tasks.
It used to be that computers were something of a novelty except for number-crunching. Desktops were word processors and Rolodexes with Solitaire. Big iron was written in COBOL to figure out the numbers so the shareholders would look and say, Gee, the company made a profit this term, good job, keep it up, and I'll buy ten thousand more shares.
Now, everything is computerized. Accountants use spreadsheets and overglorified adding tapes for the books. The media uses computers to help shape the images on the screen, the words on the page, the pictures in the two-page spread. Managers can type their own memos and torture their departments with OneOS mentality (Aka You use Vin-dose!)
The corporate towers are changing. Cat5 is required in every office. The jobs of today will be gone or radically altered in less than a decade, some estimates say in as little as 5 years. 95% of the jobs will be different or gone. (The other 5% is the Top Escelon Positions, the CxO's VP's and Presidents and Chairs of the Board.)
Here endeth the lesson.
Also i ask as a question which is more illegal: If a company A, releases a device D (like the CueCat), and A says that they are not collecting information, that the device D has no way of identifying someone &tc, if a person P, reverse engineers D, does only P get into trouble, is there no accountablility for A, which lied to the public? This has been an issue for a long time in the United States. The laws basically say that if something is investigated illegally, it can't be used in court and therefore in your semi-hypothetical situation the company does not get in trouble. This is actually intended to protect the citizens from the government, but in this situation you no longer have the citizens being protected. Obviously, something needs to be reevaluated. Let's add something: The Cuecat sent its serial through with the swipe, and this could be determined with Notepad. Now, if installed, this could not really be a violation of hardware integrity because you are using your wetware and trial-and-error to figure out, hey, this does something different from the first one I used. And PS: In order to prove evidence is illegal, the burden is on the opposition to prove it was illegal, and not the provider to prove it was. It is clear that half the regulation either hasn't caught up with the digital age and the other half has been subverted by the companies taking advantage of us. Does anyone know of plans to challenge the DMCA in court? I know a number of organizations that are probably doing this but haven't seen an organized effort (mostly due to my own ignorance). I am hereby stating that I am going to run for Congress in 2004, when I will be (just barely!) legal age. We need more hackers to be in office, and remember: Spread information far and wide to those who will hear. The most important duty of a citizen is to be involved in the political affairs of his State.
I claim that my invention is an extremely large, dense, spheroid mass which creates a sufficiently large magnetic field to attract smaller bodies of mass. This invention, due to its size, rotates independently of any visible external forces, and contains a heat source which, if properly harnessed, could maintain a temperature of approx. 30 deg. C in most structures.
This spheroid is also capable of harnessing energy, as well; if sufficiently close to an active stellar mass, it can retain a percentage of the emmitted electromagnetic energy sufficient to maintain dihydrogen oxide at liquid temperatures throughout the rotational period.
I'm an online merchant. ATT thinks I'M goint to pay THEM when someone buys something from my site. They can kiss my ass. I'm not paying them shit. I don't care if they're coming from ATT's network or not. For one, how are they going to prove it, magically decrypt the SSL transaction and read everything that goes on? You don't think the national ISP's keep logs of the sites that are visited, and from what dynamic-IP, and from what user-ID? Hmm.. Mr. Stevens... It seems there were three thousand four hundred thirty two visits to your business' website. At industry averagesof one-half percent, you have done 18 sales. However, our logs show three hundred SSL connections. How do you explain that, Mr. Stevens? I don't possibly see how this could ever work. They bill me because someone else PAID THEM to access their network and use it to buy stuff from me? Whatever. I don't know what they've been smoking, but they've obviously smoked it all. They were smoking the best hash in Amsterdam. That way, they can fail the drug test and legitimize the results. Right now, the net is a loss-leader. Deregulation happened, and the telcos are scrambling to get newer money makers at expense of service and reliability. I mean, a decade and change ago, payphones were all over the place and a local call was a dime. Now, it's 35 cents. IF you find one. (I mean, outside Manhattan.) It costs a nickel off the hardline to call my dialup node, but to call further than eight cable-miles is a dime a minute. My home's wiring is so old, we can't get a second line without extensive work. (We actually have an old Blackphone rotary in our laundry room!) And service will take no less than a MONTH to do anything! All thanks to Amerit-!@#&%!)@#&)(!*##*#! NO CARRIER
Can a corp be married? Nope.
Can a corp be executed? Nope, and in some states it is illegal for a corp to go under because of a civil remedy (see the Big Tobacco case). Now, excuse me if I just don't "get" this, but isn't the Constitution the Supreme Law of the Land? Yes. The legal higherarchy is skewed, but roughly, it's:
- The Constitution, which provides the ground rules of operation;
- Federal Law, which makes more clear definitions of what's good and what's not;
- And the Bitch, Case Law (or Common Law). This is law pressed out in court rulings. Read the DeCSS briefs? The A vs. B (regular courts) and A v. B (Supreme Court) rulings make the intricate web of law only lawyers, judges, and felons in good prisons with libraries can understand.
Personally, I believe we can solve all of this corporate boldness fairly easily. Add a EULA to the Constitution: "By use of this document, you hereby attest that you have not and will not attempt to bypass the civilian rights listed herein. If at any time this statement is no longer valid, the person and/or corporation that does so will lose all rights listed herein." Yeah, right. Every Republocrat and Democritan in the House and Senate and in every Governorship and State Assembly in the nation is bankrolled with CORPORATE MONEY. The government and the corporations WANT to take your rights away. Welcome to the Corporate Socialist regime. This is why I am voting for Ralph Nader, and every civil-liberty loving bastard should as well. He is the biggest voice against corporate power. He is responsible for the Clean Air and Water Acts... seatbelts.. airbags... Freeedom of Information Act... and another three dozen pieces of legislation which protect citizens' and their rights.Non-geeks don't know anything other than what the numbers and PR tells them.
I talk to people who wonder about the "LINUXGRUVEN" sticker on my laptop, and I oft come up with "Windows is easy to learn and hard to use, while Linux is hard to learn and easy to use."
User-friendly, ergonomic, simple interfaces are for Gee Q. Public. There is an overwhelming majority that use computers for e-mail and IM and basic web work and word-proc-ing. They want a simple interface and a simple system. At least in the first part, MS did it.
But.. if you offer to teach people on how to use Linux, we can make an inroads. I've offered my cousin, a 13 yo who likes computers and hates AOL (praise Jeebus!), to teach him how to use Linux and let him use some of my sacred pile of O'Reilly books. I offer classmates that are interested the same option, to liberate themselves from Microsoft tyranny (and save big bucks in software).
No takers, but the offer is open.
The way to increase Linux use by GQP is to make it less imposing. Teach it to your friends.
Yes, this approach may sound familiar. It's how most religions got started, by a faithful few spreading the word to the World At Large.
YES. I am a collar-wearing linux evangelist. I intend to join the GeekCorps.
Amen. Thus ends the lesson.
[drug]
;)
I am a patch junkie! I need to get 2.4!
I don't trust the pre-versions and the bloody-edge odd numbered releases!
Please, call it 2.4! C'mon, man!
I'm jonesin' for a fix!
[/drug]
Seriously, I hope that 2.4 is filled with fresh code and higher-levelUSB support. (I cannot wait to add a USB HD
And maybe better joystick support.
Yea, but when does the evaluation "expire" Usually, I don't reply to trollbait, but this one deserved to be neg2'd. IT NEVER EXPIRES. It is a fully-functional Linux distro. Most of it is GNU, and the rest is freebeer licensed. You can use the Eval Distro until hell freeezes over and the devil gives free sleigh rides.
Is it true that theoretically I could drive a boat out the international waters and broadcast this stuff? "See that boat there. They're broadcasting Standford law lectures with implied oral consent not expressed written consent... or so the legend goes." IANAL but play one online. :)
International Waters is a legal concept worth clarifying.
Every nation in the world with a water border, whether lake, river, or ocean, has a region around them which is Their Sovereign Territory. For example, the Great Lakes besides Lake Chicago.. err.. Michigan all share the border with Canada, and are, by treaty, split along the midpoint with the two countries. There are rivers in Europe which make national boundries, and the rule is that at the geographic halfway point is where the country's sovereign territory starts.
Now, oceans are a hell of a lot larger than rivers or lakes. So, how do you demark the amount of waterspace is a country's?
Each country declares a certain amount, true, but the normal amount recognized is 12 nautical miles. (Yes, some countries claim 200 plus. BFD.)
Inside that 12-mile (or whatever) area, you are fully subject to the national and regional (if applicable) laws of whatever country's area it is. For example, you yacht off the UN building in NYC, you are subject to NYC, New York State, and US law.
When you are in international waters, no specific nation's laws apply. However, you can't just murder in IW and get away with it! Most likely scenario if you commit a felonious act (read: damned serious crime) in IW is that, upon arriving at a port of call, is your butt gets thrown into the slammer.
The security forces of a ship are the effective police force aboard. Ships usually carry a brig where serious criminals are detained until an effective law enforcement agency can take custody of the individual.
However, there are many, many concepts of International Law which apply to IW. Example: Sealand was abandonded property in IW, so the former Lieutenant now Prince of Sealand was able to claim the former military installation and claim it as a separate nation. (Long story. Check Slashdot's older pages, amen.)
Main rule of IW is: Lower drek ain't important, what you finds you keeps, and the big stuff will eventually be punished.
If you bought Quake3Arena for Linux, you may have noticed the SuSE 6.3 "evaluation copy" on a CD. This was great to convert those Windows people who liked the tin better than the lame-o box. At Comdex's Linux Business Expo in Chicago, they gave away 6.4 disks, which I used to initially upgrade my laptop. The 7.0 Live Evaluation is a great idea. It makes Linux more painless and gives people a definition of 'free software' that costs nothing (extra ;) to learn.