Maybe I wasn't clear, but if a movie company spokesperson can tell the press on Monday morning that a hundred zillion people downloaded their new blockbuster, then it must be a really great movie that everyone wants to see and if you don't have broadband, you should rush to the theater and see it, now!
How many copies of Gigli did you see floating around on the P2P networks?
Not very many, that's for sure.
Matrix Reloaded?
The Two Towers?
Finding Nemo?
Lots of those and of all the other popular movies so far this year. If you can claim that 'a hundred zillion pirates have already downloaded copies of your movie off the net', that must mean that it's a movie that everybody wants to see. If the entire breadth of your movie being pirated is 'some random oscar previewer made a poor VHS copy for his brother', then it must not be that great of a movie...
Worst I ever saw was on the interstate that runs N/S along the Vegas strip in NV. A woman was driving with her windows open and her head ducked down trying to light a cigarette without the wind blowing her lighter out. She ducked back up just in time to notice all the cars across all four lanes were stopped. She locked up her brakes, spun completely around and slid across three lanes of traffic right in front of me, and came to a complete stop on the right shoulder, thankfully facing the right direction. She then proceeded to finish lighting her cigarette and pulled back out into traffic.
We only support freedom/rights as long as they don't overlap our own freedom/rights.
In other words,
Your right to walk down the street swinging your arms around like a windmill ends where the tip of my nose begins.
Your right to listen to your choice of music at your choice of volumes ends at the point where I can hear it.
Your right to speak (including sending spam) ends at the point where I decide I don't want to hear it any more.
In my opinion spam is worse than telemarketing phone calls and if there can be federal regulations that keep somewhat legit telemarketers from interrupting my dinner, there is no reason there can't be similar legislation that stops spam from filling my inbox.
It's Wednesday afternoon and my 'Probable Junk Mail' folder already has 228 messages in it since quitting time last Friday. Someone sold part of our corporate e-mail list to a spammer and I'm one of the lucky few to be in that group. I can't even begin to imagine how much spinning drive space is currently occupied by spam messages in my employer's computer systems (dozens of GB I'm sure) let alone the entire world...
The diversity of characters in the strip was also unprecendented, from African-Americans (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Rosalinda) who, unlike black characters in other strips, namely Peanuts, were actually of their own ethnicity, to the wheelchair-bound 'Nam vet Cutter John.
JONES... Oliver Wendell JONES...
Oliver Wendell Holmes was a famous poet.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was a famous lawyer.
Oliver Wendell Jones was a famous young hacker with a Banana Jr. computer.
This hack is of interest to about a dozen people worldwide
Hmmm.. I wonder who the other 11 people are?
My girlfriend has two kids from former relationships; a son who is 14 and a daughter who is 5. Due to the difference in their ages, there isn't much they can agree on to watch, so putting a DVD player in our vehicle for long car trips would be kind of pointless. However, for only $100 I could buy two of these so they could each have one, and if I could figure out how to rip a DVD and put it on one or more of these discs, they could each watch whatever they want on the trip.
Shame really because the culprit will go on to rob someone else who may not be able to so easily absorb the cost
How right you are. To the best of my knowledge, he has been let go from or has voluntarily left in excess of 10 different jobs due to his sticky fingers.
One of the biggest jobs, for which he was never arrested because it couldn't be proven, was when he worked at a local custom PC manufacturing shop. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of new processors, hard drives, CD burners, etc. were delivered and locked in a storage room on a weeknight. The next morning when they came in they discovered that someone had managed to break into the building through a window (in his(!) office) and steal everything from the storage room without breaking any locks or windows. Apparently the latch on his window didn't work well. Every person that knew him *knew* that he was involved, but it couldn't be proven, there was no evidence, so once more he skated on down that slippery road to Hell.
There really should be a permanent employment record like a credit record that prospective employers can check before hiring someone. If they see that a guy has been let go from 10+ jobs in the past 3-4 years, and every time it was for 'possible theft', they might get wise and not hire him, but that would be 'invasive of his privacy' and so of course we can't recommend things like that on/.
Don't ever judge the security competence of the world based on BestBuy's loss prevention policies.
I worked part time at a BestBuy many years ago for some extra Christmas money. I discovered that one of the new employees was ripping the company off - severely. You know those boxes of laser printer paper that have the plastic belt/band around the box? He would very carefully slide the band off of a box, put the reams of paper for sale on the shelves, and then stash the boxes. You know those rollable ladders they keep in the IT area so they can get items from inventory up above the normal shopping shelves? Climb up one some time and take a look at how much room there is up there - more than you might think. Also take a look around for security cameras and see if any of them can see what goes on up there...
Anyways, back to the story. This guy was taking items he wanted from the 'upstairs' inventory, unpacking them and putting just the contents inside one of those empty printer paper boxes and then leaving the empty software/hardware boxes laying around 'upstairs'. After he would fill a box with whatever items he wanted, he'd close it up, put the belt/band back around the box and then carry it down the ladder and place it at the back of the shelf where the boxed paper was kept. Then, the next day, he'd come back into the store, push a shopping cart back to the IT area and load the box of 'paper' into the cart and then go check out, paying $20 for a box full of hard drives, sound cards, Windows CDs, etc.
I found out about it because the guy happened to be a friend of my brother, and apparently he didn't make the connection that since I worked at the store, it probably wasn't a great idea to detail his entire operation to my brother - in front of me.
I told my manager, then repeated the story to the store manager, and then again to the loss prevention manager. They eventually confronted the guy and told them that they knew what he'd been doing, they found the empty boxes 'upstairs, customers had returned boxes that were empty, etc. and that if he didn't immediately confess and return all the items, they would have to call the police. His response, "do whatever you have to do" and then he went back to work. One week later, he quit. No action was ever brought against him, the police were never involved. He took the store for well over $3000 in merchandise and they did nothing.
A few years earlier at that same BestBuy store, a young, male, asian customer was trying to purchase 3 laptops. Nothing too strange about that, except there had been a series of crimes in the general area consisting of asians with stolen credit cards making large purchases. The credit card was denied and when the sales clerk called the credit card 1-800 number, he was told he was dealing with a stolen card. He smiled, acted natural and asked the customer for a photo ID. The customer panicked, grabbed a laptop box and ran. The sales clerk hurdled the counter and pursued the 'customer' and caught him in the parking lot and restrained him until the police arrived and arrested him, which allowed the police to find the other gang members and bring the entire gang up on charges and take them off the street.
Pretty heroic act - too bad he got fired for it. BestBuy policy is that if you're involved in a 'robbery' you are to not resist. No weapons were involved, it wasn't a stick up, but apparently the managers felt it was in their best interest to not employ a bunch of 'John Waynes' and so he was let go. It made the front page of the local paper and created a huge public outcry and eventually the store manager reconsidered and re-hired the young man. That store manager left that store shortly thereafter.
Generally speaking, the LP guys at BestBuy are pretty good people, but the company's policies need a lot of work.
And as always, there are cracks available, at least for X-Plane, that will let you play without having the CD in the drive. Not that I would ever suggest or use such a crack, but I *hate* having to find a key disc just to play a game, especially since there are times I'll go for 3 or 4 months between playings, which means I have to dig through layers and layers of crap on my desk.
I purchased X-Plane v5.x at a used-book store that carries new and used software as well. They had multiple, unopened copies of X-Plane for $10.00 each, but they were the older v5.x. I sent an e-mail off to the makers of X-Plane and got a very reasonably priced upgrade plus the global scenery discs, which when added to the $10 I had already spent was about equal to the $55 price you quote for MS.
Yeah, MS FS has a more Windoze type interface (well, duh...) but I thought the whole point of Slashdot was to hate Microsoft and everything Windoze-like and root for the better, but maybe not as pretty underdog(s)...
Best PC game ending for me was from "Might and Magic IV: World of Xeen".
Worst PC game ending for me was the Bards Tale game where you get to the end, kill the last mob, it rewards you with the standard "you found a (magic item name)!" and before you can ever even see what the item is like, it cuts to a 'cut scene' and you see words scrolling letting you know that yadda, yadda, yadda, there will be stars in the sky named after you, yadda, yadda, yadda.
When I played, during that last encounter I saw "You found a YinYang Ring!" and ever since I occassionally find myself pounding my fist on my desk and saying "Where the f*ck is my YinYang Ring!".
Last I saw in a store, the MS Flight Sim 2003 Professional Edition was going for something outrageous like $79.95 which is a lot of money in my opinion. It's probably available cheaper, but $80 for a game published my Microsoft?
X-Plane. Period. Available here. It does it all, it's hackable, there are tons of free data files on the 'net you can download - new planes, scenery, etc.
For a few dollars more you can get the Mars scenery discs and fly a plane on Mars.
And the price is very reasonable compared to some other offerings.
Dang, just checked the site and saw that there is a version 7 out, guess I need to upgrade... again...
I saw a guy sit down and hit 6 blackjacks in 10 hands. Of the remaining four hands he won two and lost two. He got up and walked and took his winnings with him. Noone gave him a second look - not the dealer, not the pit boss, not the casino manager - noone.
The truth is that all games are set up to the house's advantage. Some games are better for the player (Blackjack ~1% house advantage, Craps Odds bets - 0% house advantage) and some are *much* better for the house (Roulette - ~12% house advantage, Big Six wheel - up to 30% house advantage). In all cases, though, the house will take your money over a long run of time, how fast they take it depends on the game you play.
It is possible to get on a 'winning streak' where lady luck seems to be helping you out, and when that happens the smart thing to do is ride that streak until it ends and you lose a hand or two and then take your winnings and leave. It's that simple.
Winning streaks are few and far between, and the chances of you hitting a second streak before you give back all of your winnings (and more!) is very, very slim.
There are two ways to come away a winner in a casino - one is to follow the advice I list here (which you will find in any reputable book on betting strategies), the other is to get extraordinarly lucky and hit a huge payout in a slot machine. Either way, take your money and go. If you stay, you will give it back.
You would win that bet. They do have the single best in-game support team of any game I've experienced.
They have player volunteers who teleport to your location (in game) some time shortly after you create your character and enter the world and offer to answer any questions you may have. Now *that* is customer service.
I hate to sound like a slashdot karma whore (even though I'm really good at it), I have Windows on my desktop at home for one reason - I play a lot of games that are only available for Windows. If I could play all my favorite games under Linux, I'd FDISK in a hearbeat. I run Linux on my secondary desktop at home for those times when I need to do actual work.
Slashdot Mirror
Point of order, Mr. Chairman...
Modems measure speed in Kilobits, computer RAM is measured in KiloBytes, so a computer with 64K of RAM contains ~64,000 Bytes or 512,000 bits.
A 56K modem downloads (at a theoretical maximum) 56,000 bits per second.
Simple math reveals that with 512,000 bits of RAM, at 56,000 bps it will take 9.1 seconds to fill it's RAM capacity.
While we're on the subject of bad molecular puns:
An atom walks into a bar and sits down. That atom looks very depressed.
The bartender says, "hey, are you ok?"
The atom says "I'm feeling down, I lost an electron today".
The bartender says "are you sure?"
The atom says "yeah, I'm positive".
Thank you! Try the veal! I'm here all week! Don't forget to tip your waitresses!
Maybe I wasn't clear, but if a movie company spokesperson can tell the press on Monday morning that a hundred zillion people downloaded their new blockbuster, then it must be a really great movie that everyone wants to see and if you don't have broadband, you should rush to the theater and see it, now!
How many copies of Gigli did you see floating around on the P2P networks?
Not very many, that's for sure.
Matrix Reloaded?
The Two Towers?
Finding Nemo?
Lots of those and of all the other popular movies so far this year. If you can claim that 'a hundred zillion pirates have already downloaded copies of your movie off the net', that must mean that it's a movie that everybody wants to see. If the entire breadth of your movie being pirated is 'some random oscar previewer made a poor VHS copy for his brother', then it must not be that great of a movie...
Worst I ever saw was on the interstate that runs N/S along the Vegas strip in NV. A woman was driving with her windows open and her head ducked down trying to light a cigarette without the wind blowing her lighter out. She ducked back up just in time to notice all the cars across all four lanes were stopped. She locked up her brakes, spun completely around and slid across three lanes of traffic right in front of me, and came to a complete stop on the right shoulder, thankfully facing the right direction. She then proceeded to finish lighting her cigarette and pulled back out into traffic.
Obligatory MallRats quote:
Needless to say, the regular server administrator for that site is in an uncomfortable spot now
"You mean like the backseat of a Volkswagen?"
But... but...
Damn...
We only support freedom if it doesn't bother us.
We only support freedom/rights as long as they don't overlap our own freedom/rights.
In other words,
Your right to walk down the street swinging your arms around like a windmill ends where the tip of my nose begins.
Your right to listen to your choice of music at your choice of volumes ends at the point where I can hear it.
Your right to speak (including sending spam) ends at the point where I decide I don't want to hear it any more.
In my opinion spam is worse than telemarketing phone calls and if there can be federal regulations that keep somewhat legit telemarketers from interrupting my dinner, there is no reason there can't be similar legislation that stops spam from filling my inbox.
It's Wednesday afternoon and my 'Probable Junk Mail' folder already has 228 messages in it since quitting time last Friday. Someone sold part of our corporate e-mail list to a spammer and I'm one of the lucky few to be in that group. I can't even begin to imagine how much spinning drive space is currently occupied by spam messages in my employer's computer systems (dozens of GB I'm sure) let alone the entire world...
I never left.
The diversity of characters in the strip was also unprecendented, from African-Americans (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Rosalinda) who, unlike black characters in other strips, namely Peanuts, were actually of their own ethnicity, to the wheelchair-bound 'Nam vet Cutter John.
JONES... Oliver Wendell JONES...
Oliver Wendell Holmes was a famous poet.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was a famous lawyer.
Oliver Wendell Jones was a famous young hacker with a Banana Jr. computer.
I like it, I like it!
Who robs the cave fish of their site?
Wow, the cave fish had their own web site?
This hack is of interest to about a dozen people worldwide
Hmmm.. I wonder who the other 11 people are?
My girlfriend has two kids from former relationships; a son who is 14 and a daughter who is 5. Due to the difference in their ages, there isn't much they can agree on to watch, so putting a DVD player in our vehicle for long car trips would be kind of pointless. However, for only $100 I could buy two of these so they could each have one, and if I could figure out how to rip a DVD and put it on one or more of these discs, they could each watch whatever they want on the trip.
but then the audio would be a few milliseconds out of synch... surely you're not going to play your audio *through the TV*, are you?
Care to quote book, chapter and verse where that's mentioned?
I don't remember that specifically in SiaSL, but I do remember Heinlein mentioning it about California in Friday, my personal favorite Heinlein novel.
Shame really because the culprit will go on to rob someone else who may not be able to so easily absorb the cost
/.
How right you are. To the best of my knowledge, he has been let go from or has voluntarily left in excess of 10 different jobs due to his sticky fingers.
One of the biggest jobs, for which he was never arrested because it couldn't be proven, was when he worked at a local custom PC manufacturing shop. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of new processors, hard drives, CD burners, etc. were delivered and locked in a storage room on a weeknight. The next morning when they came in they discovered that someone had managed to break into the building through a window (in his(!) office) and steal everything from the storage room without breaking any locks or windows. Apparently the latch on his window didn't work well. Every person that knew him *knew* that he was involved, but it couldn't be proven, there was no evidence, so once more he skated on down that slippery road to Hell.
There really should be a permanent employment record like a credit record that prospective employers can check before hiring someone. If they see that a guy has been let go from 10+ jobs in the past 3-4 years, and every time it was for 'possible theft', they might get wise and not hire him, but that would be 'invasive of his privacy' and so of course we can't recommend things like that on
Don't ever judge the security competence of the world based on BestBuy's loss prevention policies.
I worked part time at a BestBuy many years ago for some extra Christmas money. I discovered that one of the new employees was ripping the company off - severely. You know those boxes of laser printer paper that have the plastic belt/band around the box? He would very carefully slide the band off of a box, put the reams of paper for sale on the shelves, and then stash the boxes. You know those rollable ladders they keep in the IT area so they can get items from inventory up above the normal shopping shelves? Climb up one some time and take a look at how much room there is up there - more than you might think. Also take a look around for security cameras and see if any of them can see what goes on up there...
Anyways, back to the story. This guy was taking items he wanted from the 'upstairs' inventory, unpacking them and putting just the contents inside one of those empty printer paper boxes and then leaving the empty software/hardware boxes laying around 'upstairs'. After he would fill a box with whatever items he wanted, he'd close it up, put the belt/band back around the box and then carry it down the ladder and place it at the back of the shelf where the boxed paper was kept. Then, the next day, he'd come back into the store, push a shopping cart back to the IT area and load the box of 'paper' into the cart and then go check out, paying $20 for a box full of hard drives, sound cards, Windows CDs, etc.
I found out about it because the guy happened to be a friend of my brother, and apparently he didn't make the connection that since I worked at the store, it probably wasn't a great idea to detail his entire operation to my brother - in front of me.
I told my manager, then repeated the story to the store manager, and then again to the loss prevention manager. They eventually confronted the guy and told them that they knew what he'd been doing, they found the empty boxes 'upstairs, customers had returned boxes that were empty, etc. and that if he didn't immediately confess and return all the items, they would have to call the police. His response, "do whatever you have to do" and then he went back to work. One week later, he quit. No action was ever brought against him, the police were never involved. He took the store for well over $3000 in merchandise and they did nothing.
A few years earlier at that same BestBuy store, a young, male, asian customer was trying to purchase 3 laptops. Nothing too strange about that, except there had been a series of crimes in the general area consisting of asians with stolen credit cards making large purchases. The credit card was denied and when the sales clerk called the credit card 1-800 number, he was told he was dealing with a stolen card. He smiled, acted natural and asked the customer for a photo ID. The customer panicked, grabbed a laptop box and ran. The sales clerk hurdled the counter and pursued the 'customer' and caught him in the parking lot and restrained him until the police arrived and arrested him, which allowed the police to find the other gang members and bring the entire gang up on charges and take them off the street.
Pretty heroic act - too bad he got fired for it. BestBuy policy is that if you're involved in a 'robbery' you are to not resist. No weapons were involved, it wasn't a stick up, but apparently the managers felt it was in their best interest to not employ a bunch of 'John Waynes' and so he was let go. It made the front page of the local paper and created a huge public outcry and eventually the store manager reconsidered and re-hired the young man. That store manager left that store shortly thereafter.
Generally speaking, the LP guys at BestBuy are pretty good people, but the company's policies need a lot of work.
And as always, there are cracks available, at least for X-Plane, that will let you play without having the CD in the drive. Not that I would ever suggest or use such a crack, but I *hate* having to find a key disc just to play a game, especially since there are times I'll go for 3 or 4 months between playings, which means I have to dig through layers and layers of crap on my desk.
I purchased X-Plane v5.x at a used-book store that carries new and used software as well. They had multiple, unopened copies of X-Plane for $10.00 each, but they were the older v5.x. I sent an e-mail off to the makers of X-Plane and got a very reasonably priced upgrade plus the global scenery discs, which when added to the $10 I had already spent was about equal to the $55 price you quote for MS.
Yeah, MS FS has a more Windoze type interface (well, duh...) but I thought the whole point of Slashdot was to hate Microsoft and everything Windoze-like and root for the better, but maybe not as pretty underdog(s)...
Best PC game ending for me was from "Might and Magic IV: World of Xeen".
Worst PC game ending for me was the Bards Tale game where you get to the end, kill the last mob, it rewards you with the standard "you found a (magic item name)!" and before you can ever even see what the item is like, it cuts to a 'cut scene' and you see words scrolling letting you know that yadda, yadda, yadda, there will be stars in the sky named after you, yadda, yadda, yadda.
When I played, during that last encounter I saw "You found a YinYang Ring!" and ever since I occassionally find myself pounding my fist on my desk and saying "Where the f*ck is my YinYang Ring!".
I know, I really need to get out more.
What the f*ck is a YinYang Ring, anyways?
Last I saw in a store, the MS Flight Sim 2003 Professional Edition was going for something outrageous like $79.95 which is a lot of money in my opinion. It's probably available cheaper, but $80 for a game published my Microsoft?
X-Plane. Period. Available here. It does it all, it's hackable, there are tons of free data files on the 'net you can download - new planes, scenery, etc.
For a few dollars more you can get the Mars scenery discs and fly a plane on Mars.
And the price is very reasonable compared to some other offerings.
Dang, just checked the site and saw that there is a version 7 out, guess I need to upgrade... again...
Has anybody but me ever even been to Vegas?
I saw a guy sit down and hit 6 blackjacks in 10 hands. Of the remaining four hands he won two and lost two. He got up and walked and took his winnings with him. Noone gave him a second look - not the dealer, not the pit boss, not the casino manager - noone.
The truth is that all games are set up to the house's advantage. Some games are better for the player (Blackjack ~1% house advantage, Craps Odds bets - 0% house advantage) and some are *much* better for the house (Roulette - ~12% house advantage, Big Six wheel - up to 30% house advantage). In all cases, though, the house will take your money over a long run of time, how fast they take it depends on the game you play.
It is possible to get on a 'winning streak' where lady luck seems to be helping you out, and when that happens the smart thing to do is ride that streak until it ends and you lose a hand or two and then take your winnings and leave. It's that simple.
Winning streaks are few and far between, and the chances of you hitting a second streak before you give back all of your winnings (and more!) is very, very slim.
There are two ways to come away a winner in a casino - one is to follow the advice I list here (which you will find in any reputable book on betting strategies), the other is to get extraordinarly lucky and hit a huge payout in a slot machine. Either way, take your money and go. If you stay, you will give it back.
You would win that bet. They do have the single best in-game support team of any game I've experienced. They have player volunteers who teleport to your location (in game) some time shortly after you create your character and enter the world and offer to answer any questions you may have. Now *that* is customer service.
I hate to sound like a slashdot karma whore (even though I'm really good at it), I have Windows on my desktop at home for one reason - I play a lot of games that are only available for Windows. If I could play all my favorite games under Linux, I'd FDISK in a hearbeat. I run Linux on my secondary desktop at home for those times when I need to do actual work.