Just a preemptive disclaimer, before I get flamed... this IS NOT mine, it was originally written by Bob Rankin
We've all seen lots of those email warnings and virus alerts, but this
one tops them all. So I've decided to pass along this little story I
justed concocted - err, I mean just received from a credible source,
for your edification. This is not a chain letter! This is not a joke!
This is absolutely true! (Yeah, right...)
--- WARNING, DANGER! ---
I know this guy whose neighbor, a young man, was home recovering from
the trauma of his friend's aunt who took her kids to a Burger King
restaurant in a major city and they all got bit by snakes in the ball
pit. Anyway, he decided to forget his troubles by having a few stiff
drinks at Mulligans, and the the next thing he awoke in a hotel bathtub
full of ice and he was sore all over. When he got out of the tub he saw
a note on the mirror saying that HIS KIDNEYS HAD BEEN STOLEN by Bill
Gates, and he could only get them back by dialing 9-0-# and forwarding
5000 emails to a dying girl at Disney World.
THIS IS ABSOLUTELY TRUE!!! My uncle's friend heard this story from his
neighbor who got it from a guy named Craig Shergold who used to work for
the American Cancer Society in a major city.
Well the poor guy immediately tried to call 911 from a pay phone to
report his missing kidneys, but upon reaching into the coin-return slot
he got jabbed with an HIV-infected needle around which was wrapped a
note that said, "JOIN THE CREW". He was so distraught at this point
that he went into the nearest theater and bought a ticket. It was then
that he felt a sharp pain in his left shoulder blade. The people behind
him got up laughing and tossed a wadded-up paper ball at him as they ran
out. When he uncrumpled the paper, it said "WIN A HOLIDAY" and was
signed by Jessica Mydek.
THIS IS NOT A JOKE!!! I have a friend who works next door to the police
department of a major city and he heard it from his elderly aunt.
The poor man, having no kidkeys and infected with a dread disease,
stumbled into a nearby Neiman Marcus cafe and ordered a plate of
cookies. He asked for the recipe and was told that it would cost "two
fifty". When he received his bill, there was a charge for 250 dollars.
Furious, he fired up his laptop and sent an email to his lawyer. It was
then that he noticed his Palm Pilot was infected by the Budweiser
screen saver virus. A "flashing IM" sppeared on his AOL screen, and
without thinking, he clicked on it. Instantly, hackers stole his password
and began downloading salacious photos of Nina Tottenberg onto his
hard drive.
So anyway the poor guy tried to drive himself to the hospital, but on
the way he noticed another car driving along without its lights on. To
be helpful, he flashed his lights at him and was promptly shot as part
of a gang initiation in a major city. His arm was bleeding badly, but
he was able to make it into the mall parking lot. Just at that moment,
he saw two guys with black hoods stuffing his wife into a van.
Apparently they had told the woman there was a dying baby in the parking
lot and asked for her help.
THIS IS NOT A CHAIN LETTER!!! Please forward this urgent message to
every one you can, and spread the news that the Take-A-Bath Foundation
will donate a pair of Nike sneakers to everyone at Disney World, but
only if you send it to 1000 people. Don't be a thoughtless jerk - it
only takes a minute of your time to spread this chain letter, and it
could be true!
...
Have a great new year, everyone. Feel free to pass this story (including
this paragraph) along to a few friends, and be sure to tell them to sign
up for the free TOURBUS newsletter. You can find the REAL story about all
of these hoaxes in the TOURBUS archives at http://www.tourbus.com/ .
This story is by Bob Rankin Copyright (c) January 1999
A local video store in a certain location in a shopping center would go under. The building would remain vacant for a couple months, then, lo and behold, another Mom n Pop video store moves in. They fail. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The lesson that nobody bothered to learn is, that place was OBVIOUSLY A LOUSY LOCATION FOR A VIDEO STORE.
How many Eurocentric Linux distros are going to have to eat it before they figure this one out?
I've heard a lot of people saying "wait a couple months, the price will drop."
There's no reason for that to happen, now that Nvidia has no real competition. Why not keep prices on the GF3 high? People who want it that badly will pay it, those who won't will have to buy some other Nvidia product if they want to keep up with the pack. Nvidia wins either way.
As I said previously, if I can find no evidence of copyright violation, I do nothing at all.
If they created the file themselves, there's NO copyright violation, ergo, no penalty.
I work as an Abuse Specialist at a large broadband provider, so I have a unique insight into this whole process.
First of all, if I'm given a subpoena, it has a deadline for turnaround on it. I have to match the IP on the subpoena to any and all information I can drudge up on the sub it belongs to within that timeframe, or we could face serious legal penalties. Franchise agreements would be violated, etc, etc. Once it gets to the subpoena level, there's not much more I can do besides hand over the info.
Now, if I just receive a complaint of infringement, or something along those lines, I've got a lot of options in front of me.
But once Powell has built a relationship with the ISP, they become amazingly compliant with CCS demands. Saunders says CCS is rarely questioned when it notifies an ISP about an infringing user.
"We found ISPs remove things even though they could argue it," he says. "They are reclaiming large amounts of bandwidth. We are providing a service to them, essentially."
This, at least in my case, is almost 100% B.S.
I'm not just going to cut some subscriber loose because some jackass with a title claims something is amiss. "Reclaiming bandwidth" isn't THAT big of a deal. The value of "reclaimed bandwidth" compared to the value of a customer paying 40+ bucks a month indefinitely is pretty measly.
When I receive a complaint about infringement, I investigate the matter, looking for anonymous FTP access, trying common passwords, etc. If I can identify copyright violations, I send the sub a warning letter and give them a phone call, notifying them that the offending material needs to be taken down IMMEDIATELY and permanently, or termination of the account will take place. (You don't want to know how many kids I've gotten grounded;). If I can't find any evidence of infringement, I wait, and try again. If I NEVER see any evidence of infrigement, then, well, looks like the problem is solved.
Point being, if you're innocent, this will never get to the subpoena stage, and you can (at least if I'm handling the case) fight against the accusations.
I work as an Abuse Specialist at a large broadband provider. We HAVE to quickly give up the information, if served with a subpoena, or we'll be in violation of a boatload of franchise agreements as well as who knows what else.
Slashdot Mirror
They obviously didn't NAME it... ;)
BSD's not nearly as snappy an acronym as "CHATS," and the government loooooooooooooves snappy acronyms for their toys. ;)
Mandrake 7.2 comes with an optional 2.4 kernel. Just set "hack" as your default boot kernel.
Troll? How??? :/
"Damn these kids and their fancy-pants text streams!!! GRRR!!!! Back in my day we leeched bandwidth by CARRIER PIGEON YA LAZY GOOD FER NUTHINS!!!"
I'm just making the point that, while there's a demand, is it ENOUGH of a demand to make any kind of money?
Apparently not.
Once, again, just my opinion. Perhaps you should switch to decaf? :-)
We've all seen lots of those email warnings and virus alerts, but this one tops them all. So I've decided to pass along this little story I justed concocted - err, I mean just received from a credible source, for your edification. This is not a chain letter! This is not a joke! This is absolutely true! (Yeah, right...)
--- WARNING, DANGER! ---
I know this guy whose neighbor, a young man, was home recovering from the trauma of his friend's aunt who took her kids to a Burger King restaurant in a major city and they all got bit by snakes in the ball pit. Anyway, he decided to forget his troubles by having a few stiff drinks at Mulligans, and the the next thing he awoke in a hotel bathtub full of ice and he was sore all over. When he got out of the tub he saw a note on the mirror saying that HIS KIDNEYS HAD BEEN STOLEN by Bill Gates, and he could only get them back by dialing 9-0-# and forwarding 5000 emails to a dying girl at Disney World.
THIS IS ABSOLUTELY TRUE!!! My uncle's friend heard this story from his neighbor who got it from a guy named Craig Shergold who used to work for the American Cancer Society in a major city.
Well the poor guy immediately tried to call 911 from a pay phone to report his missing kidneys, but upon reaching into the coin-return slot he got jabbed with an HIV-infected needle around which was wrapped a note that said, "JOIN THE CREW". He was so distraught at this point that he went into the nearest theater and bought a ticket. It was then that he felt a sharp pain in his left shoulder blade. The people behind him got up laughing and tossed a wadded-up paper ball at him as they ran out. When he uncrumpled the paper, it said "WIN A HOLIDAY" and was signed by Jessica Mydek.
THIS IS NOT A JOKE!!! I have a friend who works next door to the police department of a major city and he heard it from his elderly aunt.
The poor man, having no kidkeys and infected with a dread disease, stumbled into a nearby Neiman Marcus cafe and ordered a plate of cookies. He asked for the recipe and was told that it would cost "two fifty". When he received his bill, there was a charge for 250 dollars. Furious, he fired up his laptop and sent an email to his lawyer. It was then that he noticed his Palm Pilot was infected by the Budweiser screen saver virus. A "flashing IM" sppeared on his AOL screen, and without thinking, he clicked on it. Instantly, hackers stole his password and began downloading salacious photos of Nina Tottenberg onto his hard drive.
So anyway the poor guy tried to drive himself to the hospital, but on the way he noticed another car driving along without its lights on. To be helpful, he flashed his lights at him and was promptly shot as part of a gang initiation in a major city. His arm was bleeding badly, but he was able to make it into the mall parking lot. Just at that moment, he saw two guys with black hoods stuffing his wife into a van. Apparently they had told the woman there was a dying baby in the parking lot and asked for her help.
THIS IS NOT A CHAIN LETTER!!! Please forward this urgent message to every one you can, and spread the news that the Take-A-Bath Foundation will donate a pair of Nike sneakers to everyone at Disney World, but only if you send it to 1000 people. Don't be a thoughtless jerk - it only takes a minute of your time to spread this chain letter, and it could be true!
Have a great new year, everyone. Feel free to pass this story (including this paragraph) along to a few friends, and be sure to tell them to sign up for the free TOURBUS newsletter. You can find the REAL story about all of these hoaxes in the TOURBUS archives at http://www.tourbus.com/ . This story is by Bob Rankin Copyright (c) January 1999
The Radeon2 is competition?
A local video store in a certain location in a shopping center would go under. The building would remain vacant for a couple months, then, lo and behold, another Mom n Pop video store moves in. They fail. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The lesson that nobody bothered to learn is, that place was OBVIOUSLY A LOUSY LOCATION FOR A VIDEO STORE.
How many Eurocentric Linux distros are going to have to eat it before they figure this one out?
Just my opinion... :)
There's no reason for that to happen, now that Nvidia has no real competition. Why not keep prices on the GF3 high? People who want it that badly will pay it, those who won't will have to buy some other Nvidia product if they want to keep up with the pack. Nvidia wins either way.
Lynx here I come...
Freely available booze sounds like a pretty good one. ;)
I will be handing out violations for people using this "tool" on my network. Your ISP will probably be doing the same thing. Care to chance it? >:)
As I said previously, if I can find no evidence of copyright violation, I do nothing at all. If they created the file themselves, there's NO copyright violation, ergo, no penalty.
Heh, sorry about the formatting, s'my second slashdot post ever. :/
I work as an Abuse Specialist at a large broadband provider, so I have a unique insight into this whole process. First of all, if I'm given a subpoena, it has a deadline for turnaround on it. I have to match the IP on the subpoena to any and all information I can drudge up on the sub it belongs to within that timeframe, or we could face serious legal penalties. Franchise agreements would be violated, etc, etc. Once it gets to the subpoena level, there's not much more I can do besides hand over the info. Now, if I just receive a complaint of infringement, or something along those lines, I've got a lot of options in front of me. But once Powell has built a relationship with the ISP, they become amazingly compliant with CCS demands. Saunders says CCS is rarely questioned when it notifies an ISP about an infringing user. "We found ISPs remove things even though they could argue it," he says. "They are reclaiming large amounts of bandwidth. We are providing a service to them, essentially." This, at least in my case, is almost 100% B.S. I'm not just going to cut some subscriber loose because some jackass with a title claims something is amiss. "Reclaiming bandwidth" isn't THAT big of a deal. The value of "reclaimed bandwidth" compared to the value of a customer paying 40+ bucks a month indefinitely is pretty measly. When I receive a complaint about infringement, I investigate the matter, looking for anonymous FTP access, trying common passwords, etc. If I can identify copyright violations, I send the sub a warning letter and give them a phone call, notifying them that the offending material needs to be taken down IMMEDIATELY and permanently, or termination of the account will take place. (You don't want to know how many kids I've gotten grounded ;). If I can't find any evidence of infringement, I wait, and try again. If I NEVER see any evidence of infrigement, then, well, looks like the problem is solved.
Point being, if you're innocent, this will never get to the subpoena stage, and you can (at least if I'm handling the case) fight against the accusations.
I work as an Abuse Specialist at a large broadband provider. We HAVE to quickly give up the information, if served with a subpoena, or we'll be in violation of a boatload of franchise agreements as well as who knows what else.