How about a photo contest, using Wal-Mart (or pick your own local bone-headed photo printer) as the unwitting judge. Everybody submits a set of photos, and the winner is the one with the most rejects "for professionalism".
Beauty of it is - winner pays the least (ideally, nothing). If they don't give you the prints, they'll have to eat the cost of the printing.
Now, the snot-nosed clerks at the store aren't going to be the best judges of artistic merit in the world. But if you send the same sets to several different outfits, you'll probably get a good average weighting. So the winner is the one with the lowest number of successful prints across several *Marts...
See... any instance of corporate stupidity may be turned into a fun social activity, with a little thought:-)
If this exact same situation (with all of the verified facts and events) had really happened in say, Ohio, Democrats all over the country would forget their hatred of guns and start an armed revolution.
But here, it's just a series of unexplainanble coincidences and unfortunate mistakes. Nothing to see here... move along...
>The first one, is to ask you to... to forgive Maureen O'Gara. What she did was vile; but it was out of frustration and anger.
No, what she did was cold, calculated, and deliberate. The article wasn't a spur-of-the-moment flame on a chat site. It cost her and her backers time, money, and planning. And she's been building up to it for some time, as reflected in her "reporting".
>and it seems unlikely that a single individual could possibly run it all on her own.
She doesn't - there's a large community of volunteers and contributors that provide much of the material. Not to mention the hosting service's in-house Admins. So, a single, dedicated person could easily run the actual site itself.
>Again, this is my plea to the community to forgive Maureen and to do our best to act in a civil manner about this episode.
Oh, we should be civil (as civil as it gets on/.:-) But just walking away means that MOG essentially gets away with it. So she'll do it again, either to PJ, or another victim. After all, you tend to go with what works, and it's not like she's a great journalist.
Unless the community puts their foot down, and makes this kind of personal attack economically unviable, expect to see more of them..
So where's the list of advertisers? Has anyone put together a list of them (and I mean for the *entire* Sys-Con empire)? (and boy, is *that* company aptly named....:-)
It'll be great for the immediate area (lower Queen Anne, Belltown, etc.), but lousy for the downtown core. All those office towers are going to block the signal unless you have LOS, which is the minority. And forget about coverage in areas shadowed by the hills (sorry Ballard).
But I'm 3 blocks away, with a direct LOS out my office window. So I'm fine:-)
At first glance, this appears to cover any sort of web-based forum, such as Slashdot. At least ones that allow users to post comments vieweable by other users.
Then again,/. may be their primary target:-)
I'll have to sit down and read over the 3 primary claims again (1,9,16), but I'll bet this thing's got P.A. all over it. Especially since they only cited *2* references, and thiese ideas have been out there for quite a while.
Hmmm... the Blue Angels are *Navy* - not Air Force. That's the Thunderbirds. And they don't crash into the audience - I think you're thinking of an airshow in Europe somewhere.
(Windows, on the other hand, *does* crash everywhere...)
It started *way* before 9/11 and the PA - the airlines and car rental companies started requiring CCs in the early 90's, if not before. That way, the ticket clerks don't have to handle cash, and the rental companies can do a background check before they give you their precious car.
>Q: can't they track you?! >A: no. the read range is only 2 inches max. even
*Your* read range is 2 inches - I'll bet a bit of tweaked hardware can extend it to multiple feet. If I pass near you with a reader in my coat pocket, I'll get your tag #. Then I can spoof it, and enjoy the same physical access you do.
>with a high powered reader, the chip itself does >not have the capability to transmit farther than >a couple inches tops. this makes it very >difficult to scan my RFID chip without me >noticing, and it's definitely not possible to scan >it just by me walking by a sensor or something. >It has to be pretty deliberate.
Wanna bet? *You* might not be a target right *now* (too obscure), but wait until lots of people are carrying RFID'd stuff. Then it's worth the effort. It'll be just like wardriving.
Then again, you've just raised your profile enough that it might tempt someone near you to try and hack your system. Just for the cred - are you sure you can engineer it securely enough?
>Q: what about the mark of the beast!? >A: well, last time I checked, this chip wasn't >required, I won't be killed for not having one, I
Not yet, anyway...
>don't need it to buy/sell things, and with
Ever try to travel without a credit card? You can't buy an airline ticket, reserve a hotel room, rent a car, or a number of other things without using a CC. Oh, it *might* be possible in some cases, but those are getting rarer and rarer.
>billions of unique ID codes (numbers and >letters), I don't see how each unique code could >be calculated in some way to 666. bottom line, if
They don't have to. In fact, you'd want the tag to be very unique to the person. But the very *act* of agreeing to such an implant could be used as a loyalty test.
>this ever becomes an oppressive technology, >required by some government, I can simply take it >out.
Really? You're applying today's legalities to tomorrow, which is always tricky.
A cashless economy based on implanted RFID tags has, on the surface, a lot of positives. Theft would be a lot harder. Not impossible, but harder (at least compared to stealing cash or credit cards). And convenient - no more forgetting your checkbook at the supermarket. Stores will love it - no robberies (no cash on hand), and complete tracking of individual purchases.
Governments will love it also. Buying patterns could be mined for potential anti-establishment patterns. Assuming a central authorization system(s) somewhere (needed to prevent fraud, you see), a dissident could become a non-person at the touch of a button. Put this in a global government, and there would be nowhere to run. Total control, on a scale impossible before computers and global networking.
The best part of all is that taking a tag doesn't have to be legally mandated. If you can't buy food without one, that'll be incentive enough to "volunteer". Use PR to associate the tags with some social or patriotic feeling ("All *good* citizens have the chip - why don't you?"). That way, peer pressure will take care of most of the casual resisters. The rest can be left to starve or try to survive on the fringes of society.
That's just because after 9 months of winter, *anything* tastes good....:-)
Honestly, when making lutefisk the old-fashioned way, the fumes from the lye can peel the paint off the walls. My gransmother used to drive me out of the house with the stench...
Slashdot Mirror
Only if a developer wants to raze the Solar system to put in a mall or something. And I'm sure we'll get our just desserts...uh, compensation.
(Vogons are probably heading this way right now....)
Yeah, but $6mil *used* to get you an arm, two legs, and an eye. Now it's just an arm.
I guess that's inflation for you...
A teen not answer their phone??? What universe do you live in? Here, it's physically not possible...
:-)
(unless their CID say's it's the 'rents calling - then suddenly they're out of service
How about a photo contest, using Wal-Mart (or pick your own local bone-headed photo printer) as the unwitting judge. Everybody submits a set of photos, and the winner is the one with the most rejects "for professionalism".
:-)
Beauty of it is - winner pays the least (ideally, nothing). If they don't give you the prints, they'll have to eat the cost of the printing.
Now, the snot-nosed clerks at the store aren't going to be the best judges of artistic merit in the world. But if you send the same sets to several different outfits, you'll probably get a good average weighting. So the winner is the one with the lowest number of successful prints across several *Marts...
See... any instance of corporate stupidity may be turned into a fun social activity, with a little thought
If this exact same situation (with all of the verified facts and events) had really happened in say, Ohio, Democrats all over the country would forget their hatred of guns and start an armed revolution.
But here, it's just a series of unexplainanble coincidences and unfortunate mistakes. Nothing to see here... move along...
with that Dr. Who episode a couple of months ago...
oh. never mind...
/. stories have been performing this feat for years...
(the trick is to get them to *stop* duplicating...)
A few comments on this comment....
/. :-) But just walking away means that MOG essentially gets away with it. So she'll do it again, either to PJ, or another victim. After all, you tend to go with what works, and it's not like she's a great journalist.
>The first one, is to ask you to... to forgive Maureen O'Gara. What she did was vile; but it was out of frustration and anger.
No, what she did was cold, calculated, and deliberate. The article wasn't a spur-of-the-moment flame on a chat site. It cost her and her backers time, money, and planning. And she's been building up to it for some time, as reflected in her "reporting".
>and it seems unlikely that a single individual could possibly run it all on her own.
She doesn't - there's a large community of volunteers and contributors that provide much of the material. Not to mention the hosting service's in-house Admins. So, a single, dedicated person could easily run the actual site itself.
>Again, this is my plea to the community to forgive Maureen and to do our best to act in a civil manner about this episode.
Oh, we should be civil (as civil as it gets on
Unless the community puts their foot down, and makes this kind of personal attack economically unviable, expect to see more of them..
So where's the list of advertisers? Has anyone put together a list of them (and I mean for the *entire* Sys-Con empire)? (and boy, is *that* company aptly named.... :-)
I was probably just a few specks of dust on the Swift lens....
It'll be great for the immediate area (lower Queen Anne, Belltown, etc.), but lousy for the downtown core. All those office towers are going to block the signal unless you have LOS, which is the minority. And forget about coverage in areas shadowed by the hills (sorry Ballard).
:-)
But I'm 3 blocks away, with a direct LOS out my office window. So I'm fine
At first glance, this appears to cover any sort of web-based forum, such as Slashdot. At least ones that allow users to post comments vieweable by other users.
/. may be their primary target :-)
Then again,
I'll have to sit down and read over the 3 primary claims again (1,9,16), but I'll bet this thing's got P.A. all over it. Especially since they only cited *2* references, and thiese ideas have been out there for quite a while.
They just want to get all the OSS leaders together in one room, then.....
(oh wait, that was Dr. Who this week. Never mind....)
Hmmm... the Blue Angels are *Navy* - not Air Force. That's the Thunderbirds. And they don't crash into the audience - I think you're thinking of an airshow in Europe somewhere.
(Windows, on the other hand, *does* crash everywhere...)
Yes, but only once... then the wings come off.
No, this was the *cause* of WW III..... :-)
script kiddie. Oh sure, she could *use* nmap, but would she know the correct way to use setsockopt() to optimize a send buffer? Not likely...
This is why the plasma conduits in the Federation control panels keep blowing up in their faces...
It started *way* before 9/11 and the PA - the airlines and car rental companies started requiring CCs in the early 90's, if not before. That way, the ticket clerks don't have to handle cash, and the rental companies can do a background check before they give you their precious car.
>Q: can't they track you?!
>A: no. the read range is only 2 inches max. even
*Your* read range is 2 inches - I'll bet a bit of tweaked hardware can extend it to multiple feet. If I pass near you with a reader in my coat pocket, I'll get your tag #. Then I can spoof it, and enjoy the same physical access you do.
>with a high powered reader, the chip itself does
>not have the capability to transmit farther than
>a couple inches tops. this makes it very
>difficult to scan my RFID chip without me
>noticing, and it's definitely not possible to scan
>it just by me walking by a sensor or something.
>It has to be pretty deliberate.
Wanna bet? *You* might not be a target right *now* (too obscure), but wait until lots of people are carrying RFID'd stuff. Then it's worth the effort. It'll be just like wardriving.
Then again, you've just raised your profile enough that it might tempt someone near you to try and hack your system. Just for the cred - are you sure you can engineer it securely enough?
>Q: what about the mark of the beast!?
>A: well, last time I checked, this chip wasn't
>required, I won't be killed for not having one, I
Not yet, anyway...
>don't need it to buy/sell things, and with
Ever try to travel without a credit card? You can't buy an airline ticket, reserve a hotel room, rent a car, or a number of other things without using a CC. Oh, it *might* be possible in some cases, but those are getting rarer and rarer.
>billions of unique ID codes (numbers and
>letters), I don't see how each unique code could
>be calculated in some way to 666. bottom line, if
They don't have to. In fact, you'd want the tag to be very unique to the person. But the very *act* of agreeing to such an implant could be used as a loyalty test.
>this ever becomes an oppressive technology,
>required by some government, I can simply take it
>out.
Really? You're applying today's legalities to tomorrow, which is always tricky.
A cashless economy based on implanted RFID tags has, on the surface, a lot of positives. Theft would be a lot harder. Not impossible, but harder (at least compared to stealing cash or credit cards). And convenient - no more forgetting your checkbook at the supermarket. Stores will love it - no robberies (no cash on hand), and complete tracking of individual purchases.
Governments will love it also. Buying patterns could be mined for potential anti-establishment patterns. Assuming a central authorization system(s) somewhere (needed to prevent fraud, you see), a dissident could become a non-person at the touch of a button. Put this in a global government, and there would be nowhere to run. Total control, on a scale impossible before computers and global networking.
The best part of all is that taking a tag doesn't have to be legally mandated. If you can't buy food without one, that'll be incentive enough to "volunteer". Use PR to associate the tags with some social or patriotic feeling ("All *good* citizens have the chip - why don't you?"). That way, peer pressure will take care of most of the casual resisters. The rest can be left to starve or try to survive on the fringes of society.
San Diego is safe...
and most of them probably won't continue on.... :-)
but they'll exhaustively search each and every pub
That's just because after 9 months of winter, *anything* tastes good.... :-)
Honestly, when making lutefisk the old-fashioned way, the fumes from the lye can peel the paint off the walls. My gransmother used to drive me out of the house with the stench...
A cell phone user, noticing a hazard ahead, can hang up and become effectively sober immediately. A drunk stays impared for hours...
Not that this happens in practice much (either noticing *or* hanging up), but in theory...
read David Kahn's book "The Codebreakers". Absolutely fascinating stuff...