A protestor goes to the front of police lines and videotapes them. The camera is seized, but there's no tape inside. It's too late to stop the news from getting out; the group's been mirroring the contents of her pocket server the whole time, and are busy putting that up on their website in real time.
Or alternatively, one police car is designated the "friendly face" -- it's got a camera and one of these inside. The police are busy mirroring its movies/images in real time, to show the world that the protestors are getting out of hand and the police are doing their best to keep things cool.
"...and this is why I think it is very important to study the effects, upon international policy-making by semi-marginalized non-governmental stakeholders, of three-day Quake matches. I thank the comittee for their time."
Y'know, I like to read, I can't possibly imagine taking 100 books on a holiday. Guess you have more interesting holidays than me...:-)
Point taken, though. I could see, say, going on a business trip to install some equipment, and taking 100+ manuals and such...that would definitely r0ck.
The POTS is much more reliable now, I'll grant. But have you ever seen the prices on those ever-present phone cards sold in corner stores? Have a look some time. Most of the rates are pretty reasonable, leaving aside things like hidden and minimum charges. But, at least here in Canada, the calls to Vietname, Ethiopia, Korea and a few other places are a dollar a minute. And these are the cheep phone card rates.
Every internet cafe around where I live (downtown Vancouver) has lots and lots of Asian students playing games and chatting with friends back home over cam-n-chat websites. I can just imagine the amount of business they'll do if they advertise that you can call their special affiliate cafes in wherever for no more than the cost of your time in the cafe.
Alternatively, this could be a bit like the guy down the street with the ham radio: If he can get a connection to some guy in your home town, who can run out and grab your brother and let you guys talk for free or nearly, reliability will be, I think, very much the second of two concerns.
The FBI and the
US Attorneys are not some huge govt. agency listening in on everyones
phone calls and reading everyones email. They are an overworked,
underpaid agency doing its best to combat crime within a wierd,
confusing legal system. Of course they overstep their bounds
sometimes, but the amount of good work that they do with the miniscule
resources and respect they have is amazing.
No argument there; I got over my rampant paranoia many years ago, and realized that at the bottom, the TLAs of the world are just people, nothing more. But this does nothing to alleviate my fears.
You read the PATRIOT USA act; good on you -- you're one up on me. But did you read the article? It's claimed that the number of subpoenas to telcos is doubling every month. That is insane. There are reports of law enforcement agencies insinuating that asking for subpoenas is un-patriotic. That is also insane. I am reminded of every police state that will get me modded down as flamebait for mentioning.
No, I don't think they're gonna start rounding people up for the ovens any time soon. But will any good come out of this huge, overweening invasion of privacy? You can argue that these are relatively small steps, and I'd be hard pressed to come up with a good rejoinder. But so many small steps, in such a short time (seven months! seven!) are frightening. I can't
be the only one afraid that people -- ordinary people like you and me -- are trying to wade through a morass of data, trying to pick out The Bad Guys, pressured more and more to come up with Results, and being given, in contrast with the pre-September 11th culture, virtual carte blanche to grab whatever they want, and browbeat into submission everyone who dares disagree..
I'm Canadian. I'm not one of those gung-ho idiots in beer commercials (watch some Cdn. TV some time, you'll see what I mean); I've kept a relatively critical eye on my nation and my government, and gotten over a juvenile dislike of Americans, and I'm comfortable with the idea of moving away from Canada at some point, probably permanently. My wife would like nothing better than to move to Chicago; she loves the city, loves the idea of the city. This article makes me afraid to go there for a visit, let alone to live. I'm starting to wonder how you folks down there do it, or put up with it.
I understand that
trusting people works, mostly. But this quote really resonated with me:
"We endow government with tremendous power -- power to arrest you,
take away your property, take away your life, destroy your reputation,
take your children away from you," Dempsey said. "I think those powers
in the hands of human beings, acting under pressure, with the best of
intentions, facing time deadlines in a world of limited resources,
those kinds of powers need to be surrounded with a thicket of rules."
Wow...wow. Honestly, this is inspired. It'll be hard to make this not come across as sarcasm, but dude, that is inspired. Truly insightful. I congratulate you.
is that I loathe and detest dselect. It's meant to be the advanced option, but I cannot abide the awful choices for navigation keys, the entirely illogical page layout, and the horrendous switching of views that goes on every time you hit a key or try to select or de-select a package. I've given up even trying to understand it, and just take whatever the hell it wants to install. Afterward I go through with apt-get remove/update/dist-upgrade/install, in that order.
Don't get me wrong -- this is a minor bitch about an otherwise great distro, and it's very much IMNSHO. I seem to be moving more and more to FreeBSD these days, but whenever I need or want Linux I always pick Debian. It's easy, it's stable, I absolutely love apt-get install/dist-upgrade, and and and...yeah, it's pretty much all great. I think I'll be waiting w/CD-R in hand, too.
(One other minor complaint, something I found on my box at work: why the hell does suidperl conflict with lynx? I had to install lynx from source, because Debian kept removing it when I installed suidperl for a webmail package I was testing. Anyone?)
I agree...I was all prepared to post a Hunter S. Thompson-influenced (I've been reading his letters recently; high fun) about witless greedsuckers and waterheads in the US PTO, but...well, yes, it looks like they've got a good argument about infringement...but who the hell would let a goddamn thing like this get patented in the first place?
I swear to God I'm going to patent an algorithm for determing the total amount of monies held by totalling separate counts of differing values of paper and metal currency and then sue every goddamn bank on the planet for a grillion dollars. Thing is, these fuckers will have patented it first.
I wanted to do something like this...kudos to the guy for actually doing it.
A couple years ago my now-wife and I took a road trip in a 19-foot van named MURR! (that was really its name). We took two months, just about, and drove down from Vancouver, BC down to San Diego, across to Texas and New Orleans, up through Kentucky (Hi Amelie!), Ohio and Milwaukee (Hi Melissa!), then to Ontario, across the northern States again, up through Saskatchewan, Alberta and BC...home again, jiggity-jog. All told, 20,700 km (speak metric, American dogs!).
My idea was to get a Super-8 camera and a timer. I calculated that one frame every minute would, over two months, add up to about an hour of footage, which seemed the perfect length for a documentary-ish sort of thing -- narration, music, whatnot.
It was during the leadup to takeoff that I discovered that a camera that could do this wouldn't come cheap -- I think the one place I checked said >$1k, which scared the pants off me. The van and everything else cost a lot more than I'd expected, and as it was we ended up coming back with something like $50 in our pocket (which to my mind means our timing was perfect).
What I would do now is get a laptop and a webcam. I work at a small ISP, and one of our customers is a construction company that has a webcam and a FreeBSD box set up to take time-lapse photography of their latest construction site. The pix and movies are really neat, and that would have been a much easier and cheaper solution.
Crap...just realized that the worst part of me sitting here and reminiscing like this is that the guy's site is sure to be slashdotted now...oh well, I'll wait 'til Sunday when his server's cooled down a bit.
who thought that Indonesia was complaining that they had a hammerlock on the name "Java" or "Jakarta", and was prepared to immediately boycot all Indonesian...um...pencil cases until this was cleared up?
And when their ham 'n' eggs need savour
Coffee ketchup gives 'em flavour
Coffee pickles 'way outsell the dill...
They've got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil.
Have you heard Soul Coughing's cover of this? Quite amazing.
"Pretty clear" for billing purposes only? Sorry, but the "pretty clear" part was one assertion by one Netscape person. I want some more confirmation, and from some place *other* than Netscape, before I'm confident this is the case.
Touche. Like I said, I was angry. I'm not sure why, but the whole "what's my guarantee" question really got to me. I was reading 200+ pages (Lynx) at +3, and got about halfway through when I found that. My carefully-thought-out, sure-to-have-been-mature response went right out the window. FWIW, I'd mod you up right now.
I have a hard time understanding what *so much* of the whinging I just waded through (browsing at +3!) was about. Yes, we create the content./. provides the means that allow that comment. We provide the stories./. allows those stories to reach all of us, quickly and easily. Like (fortunately) a fair few) have said, it's not cheap. Something I haven't read yet: it's a symbiotic relationship,/. and its readers/posters (two diff. communities; read CT's constant statements about how many don't post). Neither one of us goes anywhere without the other.
If you don't like it, look at the ads or leave. If you like Slashdot like I do, stick around. I've paid my $20. Have you?
(Left here for posterity...there's no way this'll get read now.)
a) First of all, you're paying for ad-free page views. If you can't load a page, seems to me that...surprise!...you wouldn't be charged for one of your ad-free page views.
b)Grow the fuck up.
Do you think bandwidth is free?
Do you think those really hibby rack-mount servers are free?
Do you think that when one of those two fail, CmdrTaco is just gonna sit around, thumb up his ass, waiting for someone else to fix it?
Read CT's above comments: this is like a pledge drive for PBS. Instead of a tote-bag, you get ad-free pages. And remember: if you don't like it -- or Slashdot -- you're always free to fuck the fuck off.
Goddamn, but your comment has made me angry. I'll get modded down for sure, if anyone sees this in this field of 2000+ comments, but I don't care. I'm signing up because I like this goddamned site and I want to know it's going to stay around. I want to know that/. isn't going to sink beneath the waves because of apathy and "Where's my five-nines uptime guarantee?" clueless whining from idiots like yourself. I am honestly quite unable to understand what the fuck why your idiotic demands should seem important to you.
Hm...for me, there would be no choice at all: of course I'd want to have it myself! Cost doesn't really enter into it -- I'm already paying for DSL, and it would just plain be fun.
That said, my situation is a bit different. I'm not hosting my site at home; I'm hosting it at work. I've got a li'l ol' P200 hooked into my work's connection (small ISP). It's a small site, so bandwidth isn't a problem. (I keep trying to get slashdotted, but nobody cares.:-) And it's a small company, with a big emphasis on learning how to do things yourself. Seems a perfect tradeoff to me: they trade a small amt. of bandwidth and the space under my desk
for some free training for a wannabe-sysadmin. I mean, I've worked w/Linux/Apache/Perl/DNS on and off at home, but it's entirely another thing to be using it for something, you know? I also host a few sites for friends on the box -- again, ones that I don't expect to use too much bandwidth -- but I don't charge them. It doesn't cost me anything, it's free, and my work is also a hosting company.
Anyhow, my point is that I think it's fun to run your own machine, and depending on office politics there may well be a place you could stick a box in the corner. Just a thought.
Slashdot Mirror
Or alternatively, one police car is designated the "friendly face" -- it's got a camera and one of these inside. The police are busy mirroring its movies/images in real time, to show the world that the protestors are getting out of hand and the police are doing their best to keep things cool.
"...and this is why I think it is very important to study the effects, upon international policy-making by semi-marginalized non-governmental stakeholders, of three-day Quake matches. I thank the comittee for their time."
Point taken, though. I could see, say, going on a business trip to install some equipment, and taking 100+ manuals and such...that would definitely r0ck.
One more: I can stuff a book into a jacket pocket easily. Cost of folding your ebook reader aside, I bet it's not nearly so flexible.
Every internet cafe around where I live (downtown Vancouver) has lots and lots of Asian students playing games and chatting with friends back home over cam-n-chat websites. I can just imagine the amount of business they'll do if they advertise that you can call their special affiliate cafes in wherever for no more than the cost of your time in the cafe.
Alternatively, this could be a bit like the guy down the street with the ham radio: If he can get a connection to some guy in your home town, who can run out and grab your brother and let you guys talk for free or nearly, reliability will be, I think, very much the second of two concerns.
Isn't that still under discussion/appeal/whatever?
No argument there; I got over my rampant paranoia many years ago, and realized that at the bottom, the TLAs of the world are just people, nothing more. But this does nothing to alleviate my fears.
You read the PATRIOT USA act; good on you -- you're one up on me. But did you read the article? It's claimed that the number of subpoenas to telcos is doubling every month. That is insane. There are reports of law enforcement agencies insinuating that asking for subpoenas is un-patriotic. That is also insane. I am reminded of every police state that will get me modded down as flamebait for mentioning.
No, I don't think they're gonna start rounding people up for the ovens any time soon. But will any good come out of this huge, overweening invasion of privacy? You can argue that these are relatively small steps, and I'd be hard pressed to come up with a good rejoinder. But so many small steps, in such a short time (seven months! seven!) are frightening. I can't be the only one afraid that people -- ordinary people like you and me -- are trying to wade through a morass of data, trying to pick out The Bad Guys, pressured more and more to come up with Results, and being given, in contrast with the pre-September 11th culture, virtual carte blanche to grab whatever they want, and browbeat into submission everyone who dares disagree..
I'm Canadian. I'm not one of those gung-ho idiots in beer commercials (watch some Cdn. TV some time, you'll see what I mean); I've kept a relatively critical eye on my nation and my government, and gotten over a juvenile dislike of Americans, and I'm comfortable with the idea of moving away from Canada at some point, probably permanently. My wife would like nothing better than to move to Chicago; she loves the city, loves the idea of the city. This article makes me afraid to go there for a visit, let alone to live. I'm starting to wonder how you folks down there do it, or put up with it.
I understand that trusting people works, mostly. But this quote really resonated with me:
"We endow government with tremendous power -- power to arrest you, take away your property, take away your life, destroy your reputation, take your children away from you," Dempsey said. "I think those powers in the hands of human beings, acting under pressure, with the best of intentions, facing time deadlines in a world of limited resources, those kinds of powers need to be surrounded with a thicket of rules."
I could not possibly have said it better.
Wow...wow. Honestly, this is inspired. It'll be hard to make this not come across as sarcasm, but dude, that is inspired. Truly insightful. I congratulate you.
I hate to brag, Timothy, but I think you're being just a little short-sighted about this.
Thanks for the reply and the suggestions; I'll check it out.
Don't get me wrong -- this is a minor bitch about an otherwise great distro, and it's very much IMNSHO. I seem to be moving more and more to FreeBSD these days, but whenever I need or want Linux I always pick Debian. It's easy, it's stable, I absolutely love apt-get install/dist-upgrade, and and and...yeah, it's pretty much all great. I think I'll be waiting w/CD-R in hand, too.
(One other minor complaint, something I found on my box at work: why the hell does suidperl conflict with lynx? I had to install lynx from source, because Debian kept removing it when I installed suidperl for a webmail package I was testing. Anyone?)
when its version number is the same as my Linux 7.2.
I swear to God I'm going to patent an algorithm for determing the total amount of monies held by totalling separate counts of differing values of paper and metal currency and then sue every goddamn bank on the planet for a grillion dollars. Thing is, these fuckers will have patented it first.
A couple years ago my now-wife and I took a road trip in a 19-foot van named MURR! (that was really its name). We took two months, just about, and drove down from Vancouver, BC down to San Diego, across to Texas and New Orleans, up through Kentucky (Hi Amelie!), Ohio and Milwaukee (Hi Melissa!), then to Ontario, across the northern States again, up through Saskatchewan, Alberta and BC...home again, jiggity-jog. All told, 20,700 km (speak metric, American dogs!).
My idea was to get a Super-8 camera and a timer. I calculated that one frame every minute would, over two months, add up to about an hour of footage, which seemed the perfect length for a documentary-ish sort of thing -- narration, music, whatnot.
It was during the leadup to takeoff that I discovered that a camera that could do this wouldn't come cheap -- I think the one place I checked said >$1k, which scared the pants off me. The van and everything else cost a lot more than I'd expected, and as it was we ended up coming back with something like $50 in our pocket (which to my mind means our timing was perfect).
What I would do now is get a laptop and a webcam. I work at a small ISP, and one of our customers is a construction company that has a webcam and a FreeBSD box set up to take time-lapse photography of their latest construction site. The pix and movies are really neat, and that would have been a much easier and cheaper solution.
Crap...just realized that the worst part of me sitting here and reminiscing like this is that the guy's site is sure to be slashdotted now...oh well, I'll wait 'til Sunday when his server's cooled down a bit.
That's it, goddammit, I'm switching to FreeBSD. Linux and Linus are just too damned disorganized.
<crickets>
</crickets>
Okay, never mind then. Bastards.
Coffee ketchup gives 'em flavour
Coffee pickles 'way outsell the dill...
They've got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil.
Have you heard Soul Coughing's cover of this? Quite amazing.
A little more fact-checking in the future, please.
"Pretty clear" for billing purposes only? Sorry, but the "pretty clear" part was one assertion by one Netscape person. I want some more confirmation, and from some place *other* than Netscape, before I'm confident this is the case.
I have a hard time understanding what *so much* of the whinging I just waded through (browsing at +3!) was about. Yes, we create the content. /. provides the means that allow that comment. We provide the stories. /. allows those stories to reach all of us, quickly and easily. Like (fortunately) a fair few) have said, it's not cheap. Something I haven't read yet: it's a symbiotic relationship, /. and its readers/posters (two diff. communities; read CT's constant statements about how many don't post). Neither one of us goes anywhere without the other.
If you don't like it, look at the ads or leave. If you like Slashdot like I do, stick around. I've paid my $20. Have you?
(Left here for posterity...there's no way this'll get read now.)
a) First of all, you're paying for ad-free page views. If you can't load a page, seems to me that...surprise!...you wouldn't be charged for one of your ad-free page views.
b) Grow the fuck up. Do you think bandwidth is free? Do you think those really hibby rack-mount servers are free? Do you think that when one of those two fail, CmdrTaco is just gonna sit around, thumb up his ass, waiting for someone else to fix it?
Read CT's above comments: this is like a pledge drive for PBS. Instead of a tote-bag, you get ad-free pages. And remember: if you don't like it -- or Slashdot -- you're always free to fuck the fuck off.
Goddamn, but your comment has made me angry. I'll get modded down for sure, if anyone sees this in this field of 2000+ comments, but I don't care. I'm signing up because I like this goddamned site and I want to know it's going to stay around. I want to know that /. isn't going to sink beneath the waves because of apathy and "Where's my five-nines uptime guarantee?" clueless whining from idiots like yourself. I am honestly quite unable to understand what the fuck why your idiotic demands should seem important to you.
(I'll probably wake up tomorrow and regret how angrily I replied. But I won't regret that $20.
That said, my situation is a bit different. I'm not hosting my site at home; I'm hosting it at work. I've got a li'l ol' P200 hooked into my work's connection (small ISP). It's a small site, so bandwidth isn't a problem. (I keep trying to get slashdotted, but nobody cares. :-) And it's a small company, with a big emphasis on learning how to do things yourself. Seems a perfect tradeoff to me: they trade a small amt. of bandwidth and the space under my desk
for some free training for a wannabe-sysadmin. I mean, I've worked w/Linux/Apache/Perl/DNS on and off at home, but it's entirely another thing to be using it for something, you know? I also host a few sites for friends on the box -- again, ones that I don't expect to use too much bandwidth -- but I don't charge them. It doesn't cost me anything, it's free, and my work is also a hosting company.
Anyhow, my point is that I think it's fun to run your own machine, and depending on office politics there may well be a place you could stick a box in the corner. Just a thought.