"For instance the questions "Where can I buy an Ethernet cable" should take you to a site like Pricewatch and not to CompUSA in order to get the best deal. Ahem, you can buy ethernet cable at CompUSA. That makes it a "correct" answer. If you had asked "Where can I find the best price on ethernet cable" then you might have a point. On pricewatch, the ethernet cables which are under "other - cables" rather than my first guess of "networking - other" I would also need to know that ethernet cables can be found under both the "cat5" category and "10BT" (real meaningful distinction) Then I have to select a product based on bad descriptions from the retailer. Then I have to visit the dealers site. Then I have to find the product. Okay for me, but not OK for my mom. And let's be honest here, a search for "where can I buy ethernet cable" should take me to a page that says "steal it from your employer" as that's what we all do, right? --Shoeboy
Why didn't they go over to the excel team and learn how to do easter eggs right. Replacing the 404 page with "Netscape blows goats!" would have been cool. This is moronic. --Shoeboy
(is the truth half way between the flat-earth crowd and the spherical-earth crowd? What sort of shape is that?) Um, I guess its a roughly spherical object slightly flattened at the poles. Of course we all know the earth isn't really shaped like that. Right? --Shoeboy
The real highlight of Hackers was Fisher Stevens. Admit it. He was easilly the least menacing villain in the history of modern cinema. Without him, hackers would have been crap. With him, it was high camp. Maybe they could get him to play an evil archaeologist in Tomb Raider. --Shoeboy
This is not a virus, it is actually Microsoft's new Active Demolition technology. (Formerly called Schrapnel Linking and Embedding - SLE) It is another example of Microsoft's commitment to inovation. --Shoeboy the microserf
the fact that Geeks Like Me would be toast without the ability to go to a counselor or a dean of students and say, "That kid over there is beating me senseless on a daily basis. That sucks!" Heh. It's been a while, but I remember going to my counselor in 8th grade and saying just that. He told me not to let it bother me. Thank god I got that message, it made it all better. --Shoeboy
Seatte, WA In an anouncement that has all of Sillicon Valley and Redmond buzzing, abnormal psychologists at the University of Washington have found widespread insecurity among Linux advocates. Dr. Rajeev Papshigali and his team of graduate students analyzed Linux advocates in the lab for several months in the groundbreaking study. "We found several neuroses common among Linux advocates, including paranoid delusions of the most severe sort" reported Dr. Papshigali. "It was amazing, every time you mentioned anything unfavorable about Linux, they would become extremely defensive and begin shouting 'FUD!!!' Many of them also display paranoid delusions about Bill Gates."
Dr. Papshigali's study has lead several "Security Experts" to try and reach out to Linux users. Dr. Charles Widebottom, a popular self help author has just released a new book entitled My OS is Okay, Your OS is Okay. "The important thing for Linux advocates to realize is that not everything is FUD." advises Dr. Widebottom. "Some of it is valid criticism, and some articles like the silicon.com one are plain old fashioned stupidity." Dr. Widebottom hopes that Linux advocates will simply take a deep breath before accusing Microsoft of controlling every aspect of the Media.
Dr. Papshigali calls this approach naive. "One Linux advocate we studied actually walked into a McDonalds and ordered a burger with Linux on it. When the cashier said 'what's linux?' he started screaming 'microserf' and then accused Ronald McDonald of being a paid henchman of Bill Gates. I don't see how a deep breath will help these guys."
Dr. Papshigali also noted that other OS advocates display major insecurities. With Windows fans becoming very irate and defensive when you point out that Microsoft means 'small and flaccid', and mac users (to put it politely) thinking a bit different. "We see the possibility of virtually limitless research grants with the mac users." commented Dr. Papshigali. --Shoeboy
Bernie Dodwell, business development manager Clive Longbottom, strategy analyst at Strategy Partners Phil Roberts, systems manager for a network installer Since when did these chaps become "security experts" Anyone ever heard of them. Just for the purpose of comparison I did a quick poll of my chums and came up with this: 1 operations manager 1 senior DBA 1 dev manager 1 senior systems engineer Wow, equally impressive titles. Maybe we can start writing security articles too. I can spare 5 minutes to provide the same level of detailed, well researched analysis these guys did. --Shoeboy (full disclosure, I work for microsoft)
According to Teenage Research Unlimited, the percentage of teens who say that it is "in" to be online has jumped from 50 percent in 1994 to 74 percent in 1996 to 83 percent in 1998. It's now on par with dating and partying! Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but if 83% of teenagers think it's "in" to be online, and this puts it on a par with dating and partying, then 17% of teenagers must not think that dating and partying are "in." 17 fucking percent. So one in six teens thought partying and dating were "out". What was their response? "Parties are sooooo early 90's man, everyone cool these days is into sitting at home polishing their gun collection." Where did they find these kids? I'd expect partying and dating to show up at 99.44%. Did the sample group contain large numbers of amish teens? --Shoeboy
Ok, checked out the homepage of this user and don't get a lot of his complaints.
As customer, you are paying, so that the company owning the web-pages can profile you. Not only is tracking the default, there also is no way out, no "I don't wanna be tracked" button.
Ok, so I definitely don't understand all of this "location poisoning" technology, but I don't see anywhere that they are getting more information about you (IP address, pages viewed, etc...) than any other web site collects. Don't know about your friends and coworkers, but all the major websites that I've heard of and interviewed with do major tracking (300Gb data warehouses and such) of all hits and don't offer an opt-out option. How is this different?
With "paying" I do literally mean money and time. Location Poisoning disables proxy servers, DNS caching and other mechanisms that reduce the amount of net traffic. More traffic means waiting longer for pages to appear, and if you pay for your traffic (most small businesses do) it also means you are paying money that you shouldn't have to pay.
So what if I use this for dynamic content? In that case, caching doesn't matter anyway.
Location Poisoning also abuses HTTP and DNS standards.
Last time I checked, most of what web developers do abuses standards (mainly html) Ever noticed that client side scripting gets buried in comment tags? That's actually part of the standard, but it doesn't make it any less fucked up.
The reply to an initial request is a 302 error code, reserved for "Temporarily Moved" documents. Giving this reply is somewhat akin to a lie by the remote webserver. Yeah, just like how giving me "permission denied" is a bit of a lie on footfetish.com, what they ought to be sending me is the (forget the number) "payment required" http response. Those bastards!
Abusing standards for one-sided gains should not be endorsed. It undermines the standards and punishes those who try to respect them. How do you feel about all the html tags that netscape introduced? That was an abuse of the html standards process, but it's hard to deny that it dramatically improved the web. Why should http standards be different?
Location Poisoning tries to transparently add states to a stateless protocol. This is a bit like dehydrated water - sounds interesting, but doesn't make much sense. Come on, every web developer I know spends time trying to establish states on this stateless protocol. Like cookies are an elegan solution.
There are several ways to add states to HTTP, but they are far from transparent. So it appears that in the long (by IT standards) history of the web, absolutely everyone missed this quite simple solution? Hardly a believable claim, is it? Quite possible. I improve my throughput by using the mouse with my toes. My coworkers insist they've never heard of anything so daft.
Finally, Location Poisoning is a proprietary solution. If you use it, you are binding yourself to one partner. If at a later date you wish to work with someone else, you will have to completely redesign and re-implement your whole customer tracking system. Other mechanisms are open and can be taken over by your new partner. Location Poisoning is patented (or will be soon), and thus can't be used by someone else. Ever talked to a mac user. They're all pretty relaxed about being married to a single company. (OK, so they were pretty nervous about it a few years ago, but really)
If I'm missing the point here, feel free to flame.
If anyone has info on this tech that doesn't require me to brush up on my long forgotten knowledge of German I'd love to see it. Hell, I'd like to see any info that WAS in German. Sevenval's news page appears to only contain the word news repeated several times with some plus signs thrown in for variety. --Shoeboy
even Linux does not help women grow bushy beards I understand that Alan Cox has a patch for that, but Linus won't allow it into the main tree for reasons of aesthetics. --Shoeboy
Myth: If I use Linux and encourage others to use it, I'm not hurting anyone.
Fact: Employees of microsoft depend on the sale of Windows to support their families. By not buying Windows you will force them to starve on the street with their families. You can help prevent this by spending your rent and food budget on Microsft products.
Myth: Using Linux will make me a super stud.
Fact: Linux causes severe erectile disfunction. In a recent study, 47 impotent men were given computers running Linux. All 47 reported an inability to maintain an erection after using Linux for several days.
Myth: Using Unix-like OS's will help me grow a thick bushy beard.
Fact: Almost 7% of professional Unix admins do not have thick bushy beards.
I hope this clears things up for y'all. Thanks, --Shoeboy (full disclosure: I am a Microsoft employee.)
Ah yes, but look at it this way. Say I have a project called freessh and I want to increase traffic. I know that people looking for an open source ssh program are (assuming they're too stupid to use a search engine) most likely to type openssh.org or freessh.org or gnussh.org. So for 15 bucks I go register openssh.org. That's legit right? Now the openSSH groups argument rests on the claim that he registered it after learning of the existence of the openssh team. This info was apparently "leaked" rather than released. So it may be that Mr. de Joode had never even heard of the openssh project. Until we hear from Mr. de Joode, our only source of info is a group that has attempted to play to the paranoids in the audience with a load of security/privacy FUD. --Shoeboy
Check out the site. Looks like Mr. de Joode just wants to make sure that freessh.org and other free (beer) ssh projects are easy to find as well. Maybe a bit unfair to be claim jumping the domain, but it's hardly evil. Odd how the warning never mentioned that he was advertising competing projects. I guess the openssh guys wanted to hide that fact. (Which is probably why they say "Don't visit, he's tracking you!") --Shoeboy
Situation: Some guy has registered openssh.org and is pointing to the groups real site. He won't sell or give it away and he doesn't appear to be using it.
Conclusion: WE MUST BOYCOTT!!! He might be doing something awful!!!
Am I the only one who doesn't understand this response? I think the motives of OpenSSH.com in posting this warning are every bit as strange and unfathomable as Mr. de Joode's in grabbing the site. (Sorry for injecting a touch of sanity into a/. discussion, I won't ever do it again.) --Shoeboy
"Shoeboy! Eat yer fuckin' veggies!" Oddly enough this is what I used to say to my ex-girlfriend when I wanted to get her in the mood. (s/shoeboy/sarah/i) Didn't work. Can't imagine why not. --Shoeboy
If you moderate this down as 'Troll', I will complain that it should have been moderated 'Flamebait' thereby increasing your slashdot purity score. Thank you. --Shoeboy
I am a microserf! And I scored JonKatz wannabe. This test is broken. Clearly the JonKatz wannabe and microserf categories should be switched. I'm now motivated to protest. In public. Maybe that will raise me out of JonKatz territory. --Shoeboy
If human life was priceless could you sue for wrongful death? If human life was priceless, would be allow airlines to operate? What about cars? No, human life has a price and for my family and loved ones it's every bit of money, time and effort that I can give. That means something. "Priceless" means nothing. --Shoeboy
Slashdot Mirror
"For instance the questions "Where can I buy an Ethernet cable" should take you to a site like Pricewatch and not to CompUSA in order to get the best deal.
Ahem, you can buy ethernet cable at CompUSA. That makes it a "correct" answer. If you had asked "Where can I find the best price on ethernet cable" then you might have a point.
On pricewatch, the ethernet cables which are under "other - cables" rather than my first guess of "networking - other" I would also need to know that ethernet cables can be found under both the "cat5" category and "10BT" (real meaningful distinction) Then I have to select a product based on bad descriptions from the retailer. Then I have to visit the dealers site. Then I have to find the product. Okay for me, but not OK for my mom.
And let's be honest here, a search for "where can I buy ethernet cable" should take me to a page that says "steal it from your employer" as that's what we all do, right?
--Shoeboy
You asked: Can you answer a question with a simple yes or no?
9 matches by Excite - Are You Insane?
--Shoeboy
Why didn't they go over to the excel team and learn how to do easter eggs right. Replacing the 404 page with "Netscape blows goats!" would have been cool. This is moronic.
--Shoeboy
(is the truth half way between the flat-earth crowd and the spherical-earth crowd? What sort of shape is that?)
Um, I guess its a roughly spherical object slightly flattened at the poles. Of course we all know the earth isn't really shaped like that. Right?
--Shoeboy
The real highlight of Hackers was Fisher Stevens. Admit it. He was easilly the least menacing villain in the history of modern cinema. Without him, hackers would have been crap. With him, it was high camp. Maybe they could get him to play an evil archaeologist in Tomb Raider.
--Shoeboy
This is not a virus, it is actually Microsoft's new Active Demolition technology. (Formerly called Schrapnel Linking and Embedding - SLE) It is another example of Microsoft's commitment to inovation.
--Shoeboy the microserf
the fact that Geeks Like Me would be toast without the ability to go to a counselor or a dean of students and say, "That kid over there is beating me senseless on a daily basis. That sucks!"
Heh. It's been a while, but I remember going to my counselor in 8th grade and saying just that. He told me not to let it bother me. Thank god I got that message, it made it all better.
--Shoeboy
Seatte, WA In an anouncement that has all of Sillicon Valley and Redmond buzzing, abnormal psychologists at the University of Washington have found widespread insecurity among Linux advocates.
Dr. Rajeev Papshigali and his team of graduate students analyzed Linux advocates in the lab for several months in the groundbreaking study. "We found several neuroses common among Linux advocates, including paranoid delusions of the most severe sort" reported Dr. Papshigali. "It was amazing, every time you mentioned anything unfavorable about Linux, they would become extremely defensive and begin shouting 'FUD!!!' Many of them also display paranoid delusions about Bill Gates."
Dr. Papshigali's study has lead several "Security Experts" to try and reach out to Linux users. Dr. Charles Widebottom, a popular self help author has just released a new book entitled My OS is Okay, Your OS is Okay. "The important thing for Linux advocates to realize is that not everything is FUD." advises Dr. Widebottom. "Some of it is valid criticism, and some articles like the silicon.com one are plain old fashioned stupidity." Dr. Widebottom hopes that Linux advocates will simply take a deep breath before accusing Microsoft of controlling every aspect of the Media.
Dr. Papshigali calls this approach naive. "One Linux advocate we studied actually walked into a McDonalds and ordered a burger with Linux on it. When the cashier said 'what's linux?' he started screaming 'microserf' and then accused Ronald McDonald of being a paid henchman of Bill Gates. I don't see how a deep breath will help these guys."
Dr. Papshigali also noted that other OS advocates display major insecurities. With Windows fans becoming very irate and defensive when you point out that Microsoft means 'small and flaccid', and mac users (to put it politely) thinking a bit different. "We see the possibility of virtually limitless research grants with the mac users." commented Dr. Papshigali.
--Shoeboy
Bernie Dodwell, business development manager
Clive Longbottom, strategy analyst at Strategy Partners
Phil Roberts, systems manager for a network installer
Since when did these chaps become "security experts" Anyone ever heard of them. Just for the purpose of comparison I did a quick poll of my chums and came up with this:
1 operations manager
1 senior DBA
1 dev manager
1 senior systems engineer
Wow, equally impressive titles. Maybe we can start writing security articles too.
I can spare 5 minutes to provide the same level of detailed, well researched analysis these guys did.
--Shoeboy
(full disclosure, I work for microsoft)
According to Teenage Research Unlimited, the percentage of teens who say that it is "in" to be online has jumped from 50 percent in 1994 to 74 percent in 1996 to 83 percent in 1998. It's now on par with dating and partying!
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but if 83% of teenagers think it's "in" to be online, and this puts it on a par with dating and partying, then 17% of teenagers must not think that dating and partying are "in."
17 fucking percent. So one in six teens thought partying and dating were "out".
What was their response? "Parties are sooooo early 90's man, everyone cool these days is into sitting at home polishing their gun collection."
Where did they find these kids? I'd expect partying and dating to show up at 99.44%. Did the sample group contain large numbers of amish teens?
--Shoeboy
Ok, checked out the homepage of this user and don't get a lot of his complaints.
As customer, you are paying, so that the company owning the web-pages can profile you. Not only is tracking the default, there also is no way out, no "I don't wanna be tracked" button.
Ok, so I definitely don't understand all of this "location poisoning" technology, but I don't see anywhere that they are getting more information about you (IP address, pages viewed, etc...) than any other web site collects. Don't know about your friends and coworkers, but all the major websites that I've heard of and interviewed with do major tracking (300Gb data warehouses and such) of all hits and don't offer an opt-out option. How is this different?
With "paying" I do literally mean money and time. Location Poisoning disables proxy servers, DNS caching and other mechanisms that reduce the amount of net traffic. More traffic means waiting longer for pages to appear, and if you pay for your traffic (most small businesses do) it also means you are paying money that you shouldn't have to pay.
So what if I use this for dynamic content? In that case, caching doesn't matter anyway.
Location Poisoning also abuses HTTP and DNS standards.
Last time I checked, most of what web developers do abuses standards (mainly html) Ever noticed that client side scripting gets buried in comment tags? That's actually part of the standard, but it doesn't make it any less fucked up.
The reply to an initial request is a 302 error code, reserved for "Temporarily Moved" documents. Giving this reply is somewhat akin to a lie by the remote webserver.
Yeah, just like how giving me "permission denied" is a bit of a lie on footfetish.com, what they ought to be sending me is the (forget the number) "payment required" http response. Those bastards!
Abusing standards for one-sided gains should not be endorsed. It undermines the standards and punishes those who try to respect them.
How do you feel about all the html tags that netscape introduced? That was an abuse of the html standards process, but it's hard to deny that it dramatically improved the web. Why should http standards be different?
Location Poisoning tries to transparently add states to a stateless protocol. This is a bit like dehydrated water - sounds interesting, but doesn't make much sense.
Come on, every web developer I know spends time trying to establish states on this stateless protocol. Like cookies are an elegan solution.
There are several ways to add states to HTTP, but they are far from transparent. So it appears that in the long (by IT standards) history of the web, absolutely everyone missed this quite simple solution? Hardly a believable claim, is it?
Quite possible. I improve my throughput by using the mouse with my toes. My coworkers insist they've never heard of anything so daft.
Finally, Location Poisoning is a proprietary solution. If you use it, you are binding yourself to one partner. If at a later date you wish to work with someone else, you will have to completely redesign and re-implement your whole customer tracking system. Other mechanisms are open and can be taken over by your new partner. Location Poisoning is patented (or will be soon), and thus can't be used by someone else.
Ever talked to a mac user. They're all pretty relaxed about being married to a single company. (OK, so they were pretty nervous about it a few years ago, but really)
If I'm missing the point here, feel free to flame.
--Shoeboy
If anyone has info on this tech that doesn't require me to brush up on my long forgotten knowledge of German I'd love to see it. Hell, I'd like to see any info that WAS in German. Sevenval's news page appears to only contain the word news repeated several times with some plus signs thrown in for variety.
--Shoeboy
I wish you could retract posts. God that was stupid. What was I thinking.
--Shoeboy
I'm suing the operators of www.footfetish.com if they fail to provide me with vaseline and kleenex.
-Shoeboy
even Linux does not help women grow bushy beards
I understand that Alan Cox has a patch for that, but Linus won't allow it into the main tree for reasons of aesthetics.
--Shoeboy
Myth: If I use Linux and encourage others to use it, I'm not hurting anyone.
Fact: Employees of microsoft depend on the sale of Windows to support their families. By not buying Windows you will force them to starve on the street with their families. You can help prevent this by spending your rent and food budget on Microsft products.
Myth: Using Linux will make me a super stud.
Fact: Linux causes severe erectile disfunction. In a recent study, 47 impotent men were given computers running Linux. All 47 reported an inability to maintain an erection after using Linux for several days.
Myth: Using Unix-like OS's will help me grow a thick bushy beard.
Fact: Almost 7% of professional Unix admins do not have thick bushy beards.
I hope this clears things up for y'all.
Thanks,
--Shoeboy
(full disclosure: I am a Microsoft employee.)
It appears atop index.pl right above the "this page was generated by for ."
Hope that helps.
--Shoeboy
Did a little research: (whois)
OpenSSH.com:
Record created: 1999-10-25 08:44:41
OpenSSH.org
Record created: 04-Nov-1999.
Hmm...
So how did he squat the domain and force them to register openssh.com 9 days after they registered openssh.com?
If there's a reason not to trust the whois record dates, I'll accept that as a refutation.
--Shoeboy
Ah yes, but look at it this way. Say I have a project called freessh and I want to increase traffic. I know that people looking for an open source ssh program are (assuming they're too stupid to use a search engine) most likely to type openssh.org or freessh.org or gnussh.org. So for 15 bucks I go register openssh.org. That's legit right?
Now the openSSH groups argument rests on the claim that he registered it after learning of the existence of the openssh team. This info was apparently "leaked" rather than released. So it may be that Mr. de Joode had never even heard of the openssh project. Until we hear from Mr. de Joode, our only source of info is a group that has attempted to play to the paranoids in the audience with a load of security/privacy FUD.
--Shoeboy
Check out the site. Looks like Mr. de Joode just wants to make sure that freessh.org and other free (beer) ssh projects are easy to find as well. Maybe a bit unfair to be claim jumping the domain, but it's hardly evil. Odd how the warning never mentioned that he was advertising competing projects. I guess the openssh guys wanted to hide that fact. (Which is probably why they say "Don't visit, he's tracking you!")
--Shoeboy
Situation: Some guy has registered openssh.org and is pointing to the groups real site. He won't sell or give it away and he doesn't appear to be using it.
/. discussion, I won't ever do it again.)
Conclusion: WE MUST BOYCOTT!!! He might be doing something awful!!!
Am I the only one who doesn't understand this response? I think the motives of OpenSSH.com in posting this warning are every bit as strange and unfathomable as Mr. de Joode's in grabbing the site.
(Sorry for injecting a touch of sanity into a
--Shoeboy
"Shoeboy! Eat yer fuckin' veggies!"
Oddly enough this is what I used to say to my ex-girlfriend when I wanted to get her in the mood. (s/shoeboy/sarah/i) Didn't work. Can't imagine why not.
--Shoeboy
If you moderate this down as 'Troll', I will complain that it should have been moderated 'Flamebait' thereby increasing your slashdot purity score.
Thank you.
--Shoeboy
I am a microserf!
And I scored JonKatz wannabe. This test is broken. Clearly the JonKatz wannabe and microserf categories should be switched.
I'm now motivated to protest. In public. Maybe that will raise me out of JonKatz territory.
--Shoeboy
If human life was priceless could you sue for wrongful death?
If human life was priceless, would be allow airlines to operate? What about cars?
No, human life has a price and for my family and loved ones it's every bit of money, time and effort that I can give. That means something. "Priceless" means nothing.
--Shoeboy