Once the evidence supports the hypothesis of one conspiracy, it necessarily supports the concept that there may in fact be several conspiracies operating independently of one another, but potentially still inter-linked. For instance, the same group of people that rigged the Ohio election in 04 are probably NOT the same group that rigged the New Hampshire election for Hilary. The theory that best fits the facts is absurdly simple. People in power are corrupt, they rig elections and otherwise manipulate information to gain more power for themselves and their interests. There is no monolithic structure of deceit, this is simply how american politics works. It's how it has worked for more than 50 years, and it doesn't show a single sign of changing.
Which brings up the only really pertinent question... what are we gonna do about it?
Unfortunately, the answer appears to be nothing what so ever.
The biggest deterrent to hacking something like Gmail is that the amount of data is far to vast to be moved around. At least, as a whole. You'll probably never see anything like "Gmail hacked, all emails from every user are on pirate bay". Because every email from every user wouldn't FIT on pirate bay, or BT as a whole. (ok, maybe it would, but it would sure be a pain in the ass to find seeders). I've got about 3tb of storage here locally. But I'm not likely to give all of it, or even half of it over to massive archives of emails.
Much more likely, we'll see specific accounts compromised, which we've already seen (sarah palin, yahoo mail, etc etc). Cloud services have been around a long time, and they've never been secure, not really.
Not it will not. Portable DNA matching? You have been watching a little too much CSI my friend. It still takes a lab full of equipment, consumables and trained professionals to create a DNA profile and compare it to a sample or database. Even then, it's not nearly as accurate as you've been lied to believe. See, they don't actually sequence your DNA that would take too long, so they only do a profile. Which, while it might match a sample from the crime scene, it does not positively identify any one person. Only a class of people.
For instance, if the sample from the crime scene came from a white male of non-jewish decent, then that sample profile will match something like 15% of all white males of non-jewish decent. Even more, it will match all the males in a particular blood line. (depending on sample).
Why is it you are quoting screen resolutions out of my 1999 gaming rig configuration? And furthermore, why are you quoting them as if they were actually good? I'll grant that there are a lot of bad monitors out there, mainly because there are a lot of uninformed consumers. You seem to be one of those.
Define "full HD" in respect to computer monitors? Please? Let me help you out, the CRT monitor I was using in 1999 to play counterstrike ran at 1900x1200. What ever made you think a specification designed for televisions has any bearing what so ever on computer monitors? You didn't seriously believe them when they told you this display was HD! What does HD stand for? High Definition? Why are "high definition" displays several steps down from the cutting edge displays from 1999?
In case it's not obvious, I'm not trying bash on you personally, I'm just sick to death of peopling acting like HD is some kind of improvement. For your TV, sure! For your computer, which was capable of HD before there was an HD spec... it's asinine. And the longer we, collectively - as geeks, allow this fallacy to continue, the longer we have to put up with low spec displays that belonged on the trash heap 5 generations ago.
Do you really not understand this? No, I want you to stop and think about the chain of events for a few seconds...You still don't get it? Wow. Let me see if I can help... see, apple decided to make all their toys over in china. Shortly afterward massive numbers of counterfeit apple products started showing up in asian markets. Then, someone opened an entire store cloned off the apple store concepts.
Do I actually have to draw a line between the shady as all fuck manufacturers that apple contracted with and the counterfeit products? Or are you simply unaware of typical Chinese manufacturing process? I can help there too. See, Manufacturer takes contract to run 12 hours a day at 150 units an hour. They use your source material, and their hardware to do the production run. Then, at the end of 12 hours, they shut down your production run and do another 12 hour production run, expect this time they use their own source material, and their own hardware, and they sell the fakes out the back door. Now, I know what you are thinking, this is BS, this isn't really how it happens. But it actually is.
I'm seeing a lot of really goofy suggestions in here. I'm going to make my own. First, let me say that my last job was to create massive image archives sourced from disparate media, and store them, permanently. Massive, as in 30tb a year. (maybe not that massive, but we were a tiny company, with a matching budget).
First, let me tell you what won't work. Optical media. Just DON'T. It's unreliable, slow and generally a pain in the ass. I worked at a place that burned 150 CDs a day for distribution, we had consistent failure rates within 20 days of 50%. Granted, that's using the cheapest possible media, but that's still awful. Further our "archive" had thousands of discs in it, was stored well, and as a whole, had a 41% failure rate over 10 years. Optical media is crap for long term storage.
Something else that won't work, TAPE. I know, heresy. But listen for a minute... do you know anything about tape? Ever used it? No? Then don't touch it, unless you plan to hire someone that is an expert to build out the system and keep it running. Were you planning to hire a full time systems manager? I didn't think so. Alternately, if you happen to have experience with tape, hell, use it. You can't beat the density or reliability.
Now, a suggestion that does work. Build your own NAS (or buy one if you don't have the chops to build it). You ought to be able to build/buy a 5tb array for under 3k, give or take. It will quietly hum along in the closet doing it's thing for pretty much the next few years. After 3 years, start a swap program to replace each and every hard drive. Doing this all at once allows you to store the old raid in cold storage (box it up and stick it in the corner). Doing this at the rate of one drive per month allows you to absorb the costs a little easier. Continue forever.
Now, if you are really nuts, and you actually think your data is valuable (you know, like you can trade it for money at some point), then you build out the NAS, order three of them, and keep one at your mom's house (or wherever), then you buy co-lo rack space and put the third unit (did I mention you need 3?) in there and sync all three as often as you can afford the bandwidth. This is, for all intents and purposes, how google backs up data. 3 systems, in 3 locations, each with a complete copy of the data. It's not exactly CHEAP, but neither is redoing all that work.
I'm going to leave out suggestions like using a kodak image writer to burn the images to microfilm that is digitally indexed. Why, because you don't know the first thing about a system like that, and because you want "backups" not permanent archives. Also, you can't afford this method. I'll also skip the really wacky shit, like using BD discs, or SSD arrays (in the terrabyte range? Fuck off$$$), or anything that involves the clouds.
Storing relatively large groups of data has been dirt cheap and easy for the last 5 or so years. Even before that it wasn't that hard. Don't invent a difficult system, or buy into enterprise gear. You don't need difficult, and you don't need a NAS that performs 100,000 IO ops a second with a fiber channel back haul. You need a couple of raided drives in a box in the corner, powered up pretty much all the time.
Oh yeah, and do you know the single greatest cause of HDD failure? Cold storage. TURN THE FUCKING THINGS ON, and leave them that way. They last MUCH, much longer. God it was hard to teach people that concept at my last company. No, putting the drives in a box in the storage locker does not make them last longer, in fact, they started failing the minute you unplugged them. (yes, I know, physical shock is probably actually higher up on the list, as is manufacturing defects, a little hyperbole never hurt anyone)
First, who is we? Second, when did we (see previous) get over the whole Eye for an Eye thing? US courts are chock full of "eye for an eye". Not just in lawsuits, but in the law itself. For all intents and purposes, vast tracks of US law essentially say "If ACTOR does ACTION then YOUGETMONEYX" Sorry if my pseudo code sucks.
Obviously that's a gross over simplification, but we all know if I start quoting ACTUAL law people will get bored and wander off. tl:dr
I'm not trying to say that LulzSec (or anyone else) has moral ground to stand on, just that our LAW doesn't reflect your observation. (at least not here in the USA) There are a lot of people out there that think that LulzSec is doing some good. They are wrong, but that never stopped anyone.
Congratulations, you just invented the concept of Tourist Pyschos. I'm fairly certain that I first read about the idea in a book called Kaleidoscope Century.
Typical users lack the expertise, because up until now, they didn't need it. I assure you, they will gain this expertise rather shockingly fast. The only way to motivate "typical [l]users" to learn something new is to block something they want. Years ago typical users didn't know how to download HTTP warez, because they didn't understand ZIP files. Years ago typical users didn't know how to access Napster/Kazaa/whatever. Years ago typical users didn't know what a Bit Torrent client was, or why they needed one. Users learn what they need to in order to get what they want.
Yes. It's REALLY REALLY easy. There aren't any. Bot mining isn't profitable when compared to L4 missions, not even close. If you can mine decently, you could have been a decent l4 pilot too, and the botters know it. The only mining you'll see is nubs, or AFK miners that are either not present at all (IE: fit a badger II with extenders and a mining laser and leave it running after you go to sleep), or AFK miners that are doing something else while they mine and only occasionally check up on things.
At sea you take special care not to get lost. It's pretty easy actually. First, if you left coastal waters we can assume you have charts, a compass, and a decent clock. This is in addition to any technological measures you have on board. The rest is just good piloting. You mark your starting point and time, and plot from there on out. If you ever fail to do so... you are a dumb ass, which is now lost. If you are old school, you can get by with a sextant and some knowledge, but that's a dying art.
I can't tell you how many times I've heard about someone getting "lost at sea" while still less than 5 miles from shore. The problem isn't reliance on (unreliable) technology. The problem is people are fucking stupid. Like the guy in the slip next to me that has a $250,000 yacht, with every electronic toy you could ask for, 3 radios and a satellite internet link, and he gets lost going from SF bay to the ocean. No, I wish I was kidding, but I'm not. It's happened TWICE.
Reminds me of the marines. A paper map with a bullet hole in it is still a map (slightly less detail). A computer with a bullet in it is a paper weight. Pack accordingly.
Partly, because the whole industry is just barely above "fly by night" status. Partly because setting up proper billing and account transfers is a pain in the ass. And partly because credit processing is EASY and when you don't have any serious volume, or a great credit rating, it's the only thing left.
It's also worth noting that for every 100 resellers we signed up, only 10 ever placed an order, and only 1 of those more than once. So you can see why CCs were easier (if not sane and rational). One more note: Dropshipdirect is all but bankrupt, due to the insanity of the CEO and founder (not me). I didn't set it up, I didn't make the rules, I just worked for the owner. It was horrifying.
So... you think that 71% of 635 apps are in violation of OSS licenses even though TFA states that only 68 apps out of the 635 included OSS licensed code? I'm going to stick with my original assertion. It's unfortunate that TFA is so badly worded. It's also unfortunate that basic logic processing isn't still taught to kids in school.
1: yes, this is true. 99% of the 'work' done by the middlemen is just passing the order further on, and taking their cut.
2: Totally wrong. I know this is how lots of people think it works, but in reality, if you are buying from a reseller on amazon, you are wrong. Ever heard of dropshipping? Been there, done that, ran a DS company. Here is how it really works. I start a website like... oh say... dropshipdirect.com. I call up a bunch of distributors or manufacturers and ask for wholesale pricing structures, dropship delivery and product info data. They send the data along, I plug it into my Estore website. Then I solicit resellers to use my estore as a product base to make listings on third party sites like amazon or ebay or their own estore site. Fast forward to an actual purchase. I'm going to use a real example order, where the reseller runs their own branded Ecommerce website. The chain goes like this. Consumer buys item on Reseller website. Reseller then buys item on my Distributor site. I buy the product from the actual distributor (or manufacturer) and the manufacturer/distributor sends the item by UPS/FEDex to the original customer. EVERY step in this chain is handled with a credit card by default. Now, processing fees vary wildly, but we were paying 3% and.25 per transaction. Most Ecommerce sites are getting something like that for processing rates. The relationship between the actual stocking distributor, and the manufacturer is not within my purview and may or may not involve credit transactions. It doesn't matter, because if you buy an Itouchless pepper mill from amazon, you paid with a credit card, Amazon paid the transaction costs, took their cut and send the rest to the reseller directly, The reseller used his credit card to place the order with his source, and his source (being a company like dropshipdirect) then used their credit card to pass the order to the stocking distributor (or in this case the manufacturer).
This isn't how ALL ecommerce goes, but a fairly large part of it is done this way, especially on sites like amazon. The reason the costs are still reasonable is simply due to the insane inflation that is retail pricing. Also worth noting, lots of specific goods don't fit into this model. You'll never see Playstations or Xboxs or Ipods sold this way, because the manufacturer controls the pricing so throughly that there are no margins for middlemen.
There are a couple of specific niche items I could point to, like Ghillie suits, where I can look at google shopping and see the typos I made 5 years ago in a product description. Because not only am I the point source for most of those product descriptions (I'm sorry), but I also had a hand in creating a great many of those images.
Incidentally, if you are buying off amazon (or similar), and you aren't getting a really great price, see if you can contact the manufacturer directly. Chances are you will pay less that way, even if it's a bit more hassle. Anything "Itouchless" brand is perfect example of this. Since they do single item wholesale dropshipping. **(the world wholesale has no agreed apun definition, it might be 50% of MSRP, or it might be 85% or it might be 10%, the many factors involved are not worth going into here)
I came here with the intent of saying that it's ridicules to be using TO or CC for long lists of people in the first place, so reply all is a non-issue. As it turns out, apparently, large portions of slashdot are spammers. I keep seeing things like "I use it to keep the team together" or "how else do you keep on top of a project?" and other similar sentiments. As a consultant, one of the first bits of training I give to companies is proper email formatting. And the first part of that is distribution lists, and then proper mass mailing formats. TO: YOURSELF : CC: THE BOSS BCC: EVERYONE ELSE.
I guess such wisdom falls on the deaf ears of the current generation of IT. After all, you guys are all too busy checking the 400 messages you receive a day. 98% of which aren't for you, or don't add anything useful. My current employer has this problem, he spends most of the day checking and replying to email. But he doesn't get paid for doing that, and neither do most of you.
I'm not saying that reply all and long lists of people aren't useful in some cases. They are. Essential in fact. SOMETIMES. Far more often you are wasting your time, and everyone else's. I would ask you to take an objective look at your inbox, and figure how much of that cruft is actually helpful, and how much of it you could get by without. Now consider how much more time each day you would have, if the only messages you got or sent were critical.
Email in the workplace has ballooned so badly that in some cases, I've actually recommended turning it off. I'm not talking about a 20 person office either, I'm talking about fortune 500 companies. I'm well aware that before email, it was phones. The difference being, in an office, being on the phone is obvious and what you are accomplishing is also obvious. If you are wasting time, your boss knows it, you know he knows it so it's a self limiting issue. With email, no one can tell the difference between typing an email with value, typing an email without value, or typing that TPS report you were supposed to have on my desk yesterday. I sent you a message about it, didn't you get it? FAR too many office workers spend FAR too much time trading email of little or no value what so ever. And don't even get me started on grammar, spelling, composition, or intelligent discourse.
A fun exercise, get your IT director, the highest level manager you can find, and someone from HR. Now, pull 10% of the days mail que down to a terminal, and sit down and review the contents. Have the IT guy obfuscate the TO: FROM: fields, and just look at what is written. I've never done this with anyone that didn't decide that email usage required some {more} training.
Are the vast majority of/. not aware of the used book market? I mean seriously..99cents for a paper back has been pretty much standard fair for... well, get off my lawn.
Not to change subjects, but if any of you happen to be in the SF bay area, look up Funders. Paperbacks are 1$, hardbacks are 2$. Bring donations of your own used books and trade straight across.
It's actually kinda funny to watch the progression of commerce on the internet. At first, everyone was like... uh, what is that thing? Then "retailers" realized they could sell all the stuff they have in stores, but ONLINE. It didn't really effect them seriously. Then came along places like Amazon, which is sort of a middle man multiplying agent. (ebay too) We went from a distributor/retailer model to a manufacturer - distributor - product carrier (non-stocking distributor) - Amazon - reseller - customer. By the time everyone is done taking their cut, the products costs considerably more than it should have.
The really scary part is the credit card processors. Those guys are cleaning up. On a typical Amazon purchase, you should expect to see this CC history. CUSTOMER>AMAZON>RESELLER>RESTOCKER>DISTRIBUTOR>MANUFACTURER>. Now, at typical rates, that's 3% of each sale total, and.23cents per transaction. What a joke.
I like the idea of capitalism. I like the idea of Corpratism even better. But, here's the problem. Every attempt in the history of mankind to achieve these noble states has resulted in a shift of power from "the people" to "the company" and then to "the Board", which results in even MORE abuse of the people than existed previously.
Scary how well that works, isn't it? Pretty much along the lines of "democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others". The bottom line is the problem isn't our societal, social, or financial structures. It is, quite simply, people. You can't count on a random human actually acting like a human being. Or caring 1 wit about his fellow men (her/women). While people are capable of such compasion, it can not be expected. Further, capitalism and corporatism (fascism if you ask Mussolini) put finacial incentives on all the wrong stuff. Even worse, they NEVER EVER put a human being first. PROFIT is first, all else can come begging on it's knees. Yeah, well, "More than that"? I'd like to live in a world where people take care of each other, our government is actually there for the people, and the corporations are the lap dogs. I know, fat chance.
Slashdot Mirror
Once the evidence supports the hypothesis of one conspiracy, it necessarily supports the concept that there may in fact be several conspiracies operating independently of one another, but potentially still inter-linked. For instance, the same group of people that rigged the Ohio election in 04 are probably NOT the same group that rigged the New Hampshire election for Hilary. The theory that best fits the facts is absurdly simple. People in power are corrupt, they rig elections and otherwise manipulate information to gain more power for themselves and their interests. There is no monolithic structure of deceit, this is simply how american politics works. It's how it has worked for more than 50 years, and it doesn't show a single sign of changing.
Which brings up the only really pertinent question... what are we gonna do about it?
Unfortunately, the answer appears to be nothing what so ever.
What breached gas main might look like
http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2010/09/18/159403657-550x412.jpg
http://media.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/photos/images/2010/sep10/san_bruno_sm/san_bruno_02.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_BSZ5QQi2Puk/TTr5MYXsmCI/AAAAAAAAAY0/NXFeEVK_vWU/s1600/gas_explosion_san_bruno.jpg
A lawyer and a representative from The Department of Industrial Relations.
Or if you prefer grand standing, a lawyer and a reporter.
The biggest deterrent to hacking something like Gmail is that the amount of data is far to vast to be moved around. At least, as a whole. You'll probably never see anything like "Gmail hacked, all emails from every user are on pirate bay". Because every email from every user wouldn't FIT on pirate bay, or BT as a whole. (ok, maybe it would, but it would sure be a pain in the ass to find seeders). I've got about 3tb of storage here locally. But I'm not likely to give all of it, or even half of it over to massive archives of emails.
Much more likely, we'll see specific accounts compromised, which we've already seen (sarah palin, yahoo mail, etc etc). Cloud services have been around a long time, and they've never been secure, not really.
That was a fabulous typo. It corrected the misconception you seem to have about police.
Not it will not. Portable DNA matching? You have been watching a little too much CSI my friend. It still takes a lab full of equipment, consumables and trained professionals to create a DNA profile and compare it to a sample or database. Even then, it's not nearly as accurate as you've been lied to believe. See, they don't actually sequence your DNA that would take too long, so they only do a profile. Which, while it might match a sample from the crime scene, it does not positively identify any one person. Only a class of people.
For instance, if the sample from the crime scene came from a white male of non-jewish decent, then that sample profile will match something like 15% of all white males of non-jewish decent. Even more, it will match all the males in a particular blood line. (depending on sample).
Why is it you are quoting screen resolutions out of my 1999 gaming rig configuration? And furthermore, why are you quoting them as if they were actually good? I'll grant that there are a lot of bad monitors out there, mainly because there are a lot of uninformed consumers. You seem to be one of those.
Define "full HD" in respect to computer monitors? Please? Let me help you out, the CRT monitor I was using in 1999 to play counterstrike ran at 1900x1200. What ever made you think a specification designed for televisions has any bearing what so ever on computer monitors? You didn't seriously believe them when they told you this display was HD! What does HD stand for? High Definition? Why are "high definition" displays several steps down from the cutting edge displays from 1999?
In case it's not obvious, I'm not trying bash on you personally, I'm just sick to death of peopling acting like HD is some kind of improvement. For your TV, sure! For your computer, which was capable of HD before there was an HD spec... it's asinine. And the longer we, collectively - as geeks, allow this fallacy to continue, the longer we have to put up with low spec displays that belonged on the trash heap 5 generations ago.
Do you really not understand this? No, I want you to stop and think about the chain of events for a few seconds...You still don't get it? Wow. Let me see if I can help... see, apple decided to make all their toys over in china. Shortly afterward massive numbers of counterfeit apple products started showing up in asian markets. Then, someone opened an entire store cloned off the apple store concepts.
Do I actually have to draw a line between the shady as all fuck manufacturers that apple contracted with and the counterfeit products? Or are you simply unaware of typical Chinese manufacturing process? I can help there too. See, Manufacturer takes contract to run 12 hours a day at 150 units an hour. They use your source material, and their hardware to do the production run. Then, at the end of 12 hours, they shut down your production run and do another 12 hour production run, expect this time they use their own source material, and their own hardware, and they sell the fakes out the back door. Now, I know what you are thinking, this is BS, this isn't really how it happens. But it actually is.
I'm seeing a lot of really goofy suggestions in here. I'm going to make my own. First, let me say that my last job was to create massive image archives sourced from disparate media, and store them, permanently. Massive, as in 30tb a year. (maybe not that massive, but we were a tiny company, with a matching budget).
First, let me tell you what won't work. Optical media. Just DON'T. It's unreliable, slow and generally a pain in the ass. I worked at a place that burned 150 CDs a day for distribution, we had consistent failure rates within 20 days of 50%. Granted, that's using the cheapest possible media, but that's still awful. Further our "archive" had thousands of discs in it, was stored well, and as a whole, had a 41% failure rate over 10 years. Optical media is crap for long term storage.
Something else that won't work, TAPE. I know, heresy. But listen for a minute... do you know anything about tape? Ever used it? No? Then don't touch it, unless you plan to hire someone that is an expert to build out the system and keep it running. Were you planning to hire a full time systems manager? I didn't think so. Alternately, if you happen to have experience with tape, hell, use it. You can't beat the density or reliability.
Now, a suggestion that does work. Build your own NAS (or buy one if you don't have the chops to build it). You ought to be able to build/buy a 5tb array for under 3k, give or take. It will quietly hum along in the closet doing it's thing for pretty much the next few years. After 3 years, start a swap program to replace each and every hard drive. Doing this all at once allows you to store the old raid in cold storage (box it up and stick it in the corner). Doing this at the rate of one drive per month allows you to absorb the costs a little easier. Continue forever.
Now, if you are really nuts, and you actually think your data is valuable (you know, like you can trade it for money at some point), then you build out the NAS, order three of them, and keep one at your mom's house (or wherever), then you buy co-lo rack space and put the third unit (did I mention you need 3?) in there and sync all three as often as you can afford the bandwidth. This is, for all intents and purposes, how google backs up data. 3 systems, in 3 locations, each with a complete copy of the data. It's not exactly CHEAP, but neither is redoing all that work.
I'm going to leave out suggestions like using a kodak image writer to burn the images to microfilm that is digitally indexed. Why, because you don't know the first thing about a system like that, and because you want "backups" not permanent archives. Also, you can't afford this method. I'll also skip the really wacky shit, like using BD discs, or SSD arrays (in the terrabyte range? Fuck off$$$), or anything that involves the clouds.
Storing relatively large groups of data has been dirt cheap and easy for the last 5 or so years. Even before that it wasn't that hard. Don't invent a difficult system, or buy into enterprise gear. You don't need difficult, and you don't need a NAS that performs 100,000 IO ops a second with a fiber channel back haul. You need a couple of raided drives in a box in the corner, powered up pretty much all the time.
Oh yeah, and do you know the single greatest cause of HDD failure? Cold storage. TURN THE FUCKING THINGS ON, and leave them that way. They last MUCH, much longer. God it was hard to teach people that concept at my last company. No, putting the drives in a box in the storage locker does not make them last longer, in fact, they started failing the minute you unplugged them. (yes, I know, physical shock is probably actually higher up on the list, as is manufacturing defects, a little hyperbole never hurt anyone)
First, who is we? Second, when did we (see previous) get over the whole Eye for an Eye thing? US courts are chock full of "eye for an eye". Not just in lawsuits, but in the law itself. For all intents and purposes, vast tracks of US law essentially say "If ACTOR does ACTION then YOUGETMONEYX" Sorry if my pseudo code sucks. Obviously that's a gross over simplification, but we all know if I start quoting ACTUAL law people will get bored and wander off. tl:dr I'm not trying to say that LulzSec (or anyone else) has moral ground to stand on, just that our LAW doesn't reflect your observation. (at least not here in the USA) There are a lot of people out there that think that LulzSec is doing some good. They are wrong, but that never stopped anyone.
Congratulations, you just invented the concept of Tourist Pyschos. I'm fairly certain that I first read about the idea in a book called Kaleidoscope Century.
Typical users lack the expertise, because up until now, they didn't need it. I assure you, they will gain this expertise rather shockingly fast. The only way to motivate "typical [l]users" to learn something new is to block something they want. Years ago typical users didn't know how to download HTTP warez, because they didn't understand ZIP files. Years ago typical users didn't know how to access Napster/Kazaa/whatever. Years ago typical users didn't know what a Bit Torrent client was, or why they needed one. Users learn what they need to in order to get what they want.
Yes. It's REALLY REALLY easy. There aren't any. Bot mining isn't profitable when compared to L4 missions, not even close. If you can mine decently, you could have been a decent l4 pilot too, and the botters know it. The only mining you'll see is nubs, or AFK miners that are either not present at all (IE: fit a badger II with extenders and a mining laser and leave it running after you go to sleep), or AFK miners that are doing something else while they mine and only occasionally check up on things.
At sea you take special care not to get lost. It's pretty easy actually. First, if you left coastal waters we can assume you have charts, a compass, and a decent clock. This is in addition to any technological measures you have on board. The rest is just good piloting. You mark your starting point and time, and plot from there on out. If you ever fail to do so... you are a dumb ass, which is now lost. If you are old school, you can get by with a sextant and some knowledge, but that's a dying art.
I can't tell you how many times I've heard about someone getting "lost at sea" while still less than 5 miles from shore. The problem isn't reliance on (unreliable) technology. The problem is people are fucking stupid. Like the guy in the slip next to me that has a $250,000 yacht, with every electronic toy you could ask for, 3 radios and a satellite internet link, and he gets lost going from SF bay to the ocean. No, I wish I was kidding, but I'm not. It's happened TWICE.
Reminds me of the marines. A paper map with a bullet hole in it is still a map (slightly less detail). A computer with a bullet in it is a paper weight. Pack accordingly.
Is it just me, or is using (sic) becoming more and more snarky? Nah, must just be me, I can't imagine grammar and spelling nazi's being snarky.
Partly, because the whole industry is just barely above "fly by night" status. Partly because setting up proper billing and account transfers is a pain in the ass. And partly because credit processing is EASY and when you don't have any serious volume, or a great credit rating, it's the only thing left.
It's also worth noting that for every 100 resellers we signed up, only 10 ever placed an order, and only 1 of those more than once. So you can see why CCs were easier (if not sane and rational). One more note: Dropshipdirect is all but bankrupt, due to the insanity of the CEO and founder (not me). I didn't set it up, I didn't make the rules, I just worked for the owner. It was horrifying.
So... you think that 71% of 635 apps are in violation of OSS licenses even though TFA states that only 68 apps out of the 635 included OSS licensed code? I'm going to stick with my original assertion. It's unfortunate that TFA is so badly worded. It's also unfortunate that basic logic processing isn't still taught to kids in school.
1: yes, this is true. 99% of the 'work' done by the middlemen is just passing the order further on, and taking their cut.
... oh say... dropshipdirect.com. I call up a bunch of distributors or manufacturers and ask for wholesale pricing structures, dropship delivery and product info data. They send the data along, I plug it into my Estore website. Then I solicit resellers to use my estore as a product base to make listings on third party sites like amazon or ebay or their own estore site. Fast forward to an actual purchase. I'm going to use a real example order, where the reseller runs their own branded Ecommerce website. The chain goes like this. Consumer buys item on Reseller website. Reseller then buys item on my Distributor site. I buy the product from the actual distributor (or manufacturer) and the manufacturer/distributor sends the item by UPS/FEDex to the original customer. EVERY step in this chain is handled with a credit card by default. Now, processing fees vary wildly, but we were paying 3% and .25 per transaction. Most Ecommerce sites are getting something like that for processing rates. The relationship between the actual stocking distributor, and the manufacturer is not within my purview and may or may not involve credit transactions. It doesn't matter, because if you buy an Itouchless pepper mill from amazon, you paid with a credit card, Amazon paid the transaction costs, took their cut and send the rest to the reseller directly, The reseller used his credit card to place the order with his source, and his source (being a company like dropshipdirect) then used their credit card to pass the order to the stocking distributor (or in this case the manufacturer).
2: Totally wrong. I know this is how lots of people think it works, but in reality, if you are buying from a reseller on amazon, you are wrong. Ever heard of dropshipping? Been there, done that, ran a DS company. Here is how it really works. I start a website like
This isn't how ALL ecommerce goes, but a fairly large part of it is done this way, especially on sites like amazon. The reason the costs are still reasonable is simply due to the insane inflation that is retail pricing. Also worth noting, lots of specific goods don't fit into this model. You'll never see Playstations or Xboxs or Ipods sold this way, because the manufacturer controls the pricing so throughly that there are no margins for middlemen.
There are a couple of specific niche items I could point to, like Ghillie suits, where I can look at google shopping and see the typos I made 5 years ago in a product description. Because not only am I the point source for most of those product descriptions (I'm sorry), but I also had a hand in creating a great many of those images.
Incidentally, if you are buying off amazon (or similar), and you aren't getting a really great price, see if you can contact the manufacturer directly. Chances are you will pay less that way, even if it's a bit more hassle. Anything "Itouchless" brand is perfect example of this. Since they do single item wholesale dropshipping. **(the world wholesale has no agreed apun definition, it might be 50% of MSRP, or it might be 85% or it might be 10%, the many factors involved are not worth going into here)
And now we know why the terribly flawed system perpetuates. Congratulations on your feat of logic.
I came here with the intent of saying that it's ridicules to be using TO or CC for long lists of people in the first place, so reply all is a non-issue. As it turns out, apparently, large portions of slashdot are spammers. I keep seeing things like "I use it to keep the team together" or "how else do you keep on top of a project?" and other similar sentiments. As a consultant, one of the first bits of training I give to companies is proper email formatting. And the first part of that is distribution lists, and then proper mass mailing formats. TO: YOURSELF : CC: THE BOSS BCC: EVERYONE ELSE.
I guess such wisdom falls on the deaf ears of the current generation of IT. After all, you guys are all too busy checking the 400 messages you receive a day. 98% of which aren't for you, or don't add anything useful. My current employer has this problem, he spends most of the day checking and replying to email. But he doesn't get paid for doing that, and neither do most of you.
I'm not saying that reply all and long lists of people aren't useful in some cases. They are. Essential in fact. SOMETIMES. Far more often you are wasting your time, and everyone else's. I would ask you to take an objective look at your inbox, and figure how much of that cruft is actually helpful, and how much of it you could get by without. Now consider how much more time each day you would have, if the only messages you got or sent were critical.
Email in the workplace has ballooned so badly that in some cases, I've actually recommended turning it off. I'm not talking about a 20 person office either, I'm talking about fortune 500 companies. I'm well aware that before email, it was phones. The difference being, in an office, being on the phone is obvious and what you are accomplishing is also obvious. If you are wasting time, your boss knows it, you know he knows it so it's a self limiting issue. With email, no one can tell the difference between typing an email with value, typing an email without value, or typing that TPS report you were supposed to have on my desk yesterday. I sent you a message about it, didn't you get it? FAR too many office workers spend FAR too much time trading email of little or no value what so ever. And don't even get me started on grammar, spelling, composition, or intelligent discourse.
A fun exercise, get your IT director, the highest level manager you can find, and someone from HR. Now, pull 10% of the days mail que down to a terminal, and sit down and review the contents. Have the IT guy obfuscate the TO: FROM: fields, and just look at what is written. I've never done this with anyone that didn't decide that email usage required some {more} training.
Are the vast majority of /. not aware of the used book market? I mean seriously. .99cents for a paper back has been pretty much standard fair for... well, get off my lawn.
Not to change subjects, but if any of you happen to be in the SF bay area, look up Funders. Paperbacks are 1$, hardbacks are 2$. Bring donations of your own used books and trade straight across.
You work with Excel a lot don't you?
It's actually kinda funny to watch the progression of commerce on the internet. At first, everyone was like ... uh, what is that thing? Then "retailers" realized they could sell all the stuff they have in stores, but ONLINE. It didn't really effect them seriously. Then came along places like Amazon, which is sort of a middle man multiplying agent. (ebay too) We went from a distributor/retailer model to a manufacturer - distributor - product carrier (non-stocking distributor) - Amazon - reseller - customer. By the time everyone is done taking their cut, the products costs considerably more than it should have.
.23cents per transaction. What a joke.
The really scary part is the credit card processors. Those guys are cleaning up. On a typical Amazon purchase, you should expect to see this CC history. CUSTOMER>AMAZON>RESELLER>RESTOCKER>DISTRIBUTOR>MANUFACTURER>. Now, at typical rates, that's 3% of each sale total, and
I like the idea of capitalism. I like the idea of Corpratism even better. But, here's the problem. Every attempt in the history of mankind to achieve these noble states has resulted in a shift of power from "the people" to "the company" and then to "the Board", which results in even MORE abuse of the people than existed previously.
Scary how well that works, isn't it? Pretty much along the lines of "democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others". The bottom line is the problem isn't our societal, social, or financial structures. It is, quite simply, people. You can't count on a random human actually acting like a human being. Or caring 1 wit about his fellow men (her/women). While people are capable of such compasion, it can not be expected. Further, capitalism and corporatism (fascism if you ask Mussolini) put finacial incentives on all the wrong stuff. Even worse, they NEVER EVER put a human being first. PROFIT is first, all else can come begging on it's knees. Yeah, well, "More than that"? I'd like to live in a world where people take care of each other, our government is actually there for the people, and the corporations are the lap dogs. I know, fat chance.