Y'know, you'd think a private corporation would pay good money to have a hold on space. You could move Micro$oft HQ up there and decalre the company to be immune to our petty earthling laws. C'mon, Billy-boy, buy the space station... it's just pennies in the bucket to you.
...if I don't run out and get end-of-the-world insurance. Sometime in the next thousand years is a very vague notion. Think back to how much changed in the last thousand years. Pretty muh 95% of technology. Now, look at what we have, and image that as just 5% of what could be possible.
By the time Earth's no longer habitable, we'll have the technology to clean it up, or move elsewhere, or do whatever we feel like doing.
Or is this just an excuse to get peopel worried about the Y3K crisis?
For the 'inexpensive' price range:
1) A Palm/Handspring/whatever.
2) A nice leather rolling chair for the home arca...erm, office.
3) Portable MP3 player. As long as it's got 64 mes of memory and an FM tuner, it doesn't matter which one.
4) 8x CD burners are into the $200 range lately...
For the 'expensive' price range:
1) Flat-screen LCD monitor with TV Tuner.
2) A CD collection... no, wait, you can get those things free online.
3) A DVD player and sound system.
4) A year's suppl of Jolt Cola(tm) (figured at the cost of $1 a bottle, three bottles a day, 365 days a year)
For the 'unlimited' category:
1) Eschelon
2) A politician... wait, you can't buy those, right?
3) Your very own radio telescope so you can finally break away from SETI@Home and start your own search.
4) Your very own server with a fully-paid T3 connection and all the hard drive space you could possibly need.
A distributed screen-saver! All these monitors that auto-power-off don't need to spend their precious CPU cycles on a screensaver for themselves, so use them to run a screensaver on another computer! Imagine how fluid a single screensaver coudl be if it has the processing power of twenty CPUs behind it? Imagine, real-time-rendered flying toasters! Video-quality fish! You could fly through space just like you see on Star Trek!
Sure, video games can help a 6-year-old remember all 150 Pokemon and learn to count to 150... but beyond that, what good is it going to teach him beyond "fire beats water"?
And yes, that was sarcasm... we all know water should beat fire... that's part of my point. Sure, you can memorize every map on Final Fantasy II, but can you find your way form Boston to Seattle?
This thing already discovered proof of intelligent life on other planets. Apparently it picked up a broadcast from Alpha Centauri of voices singing "Will The Real Slim Shady Please Shut Up"...
Okay, first off, it's just a working title... but then, that's what they said last time.
Second... hey, it's better than "The Phantom Menace".
Third... hrm. "The Phantom Menace," "The Rise of the Empire," something, "A New Hope," "The Empire Strikes Back," and "The Return of the Jedi"... hrm. It's going to be hard to find a title for the third movie that fits in there. "The Death of The Dream", maybe? Or is that for X-Men III?
new rules which would make it easier for plaintiffs to get domain names which are '"geographical terms," individuals' personal names and "tradenames"'
Have a man named George River, a company called George River, and an apartment complex called George River all file cases claiming that they should own georgeriver.com, and not the current owner, the George River Tour Group.
Ingrediants: One Win9x machine, one ATI TV Card (or Linux and a Matrox, from what I've heard... I bought the wrong damn card three years ago), and one massive hard drive.
Directions: Set the software to record your shows.
It may not be in a cheap self-contained box like TiVo or the other clones... but it works, and you can do all kinds of nifty stuff to the video. All you'd have to do is write your own web-based programable-thingie and you can do it yourself.
TiVo is for people who want to seem high-tech but can't figure out how to work a computer. The real geeks can use a TV Tuner card.
First off: You didn't mention Columbine once, Katz. Good for you.:)
Seriously, tho... who here doesn't know any of this already? This book sounds just like another volume of the "Well, Duh!" series of Common Sense for Dummies books. The only way to get privacy nowadays is to live in a cabin out in the woods of a mostly-rural backwater state and not use technology whatsoever. And even then, they still found the Unabomber.
Privacy is what you make it, folks. If you don't want to be tracked through cyberspace, don't use it. Just like if you don't want your fingerprints on file, don't get arrested. If you don't want your email box to get spammed, don't give out your address. The only way to have true privacy is if you don't do anything. But then, if you do nothing, you don't need privacy.
You realize that this will compeltely distroy most of the (commercial) web? Suddenly, companies will have proof of just how little time people spend looking at web advetisements. Since nobody watches them, they'll stop paying people for them, sites will vanish for not having the funds to pay for a server, and eventually every good clean site out there will vanish. As will every porn site that survives simply on advertising revenues.
Or, there's the flipside: If you aren't looking at an ad, the UI will move the ad into your line of sight or make it expand until you _have_ to look at a page's banner ads for five seconds before reading anything else on the page.
Are cell phones dangerous? For the casual user, probably not. I can't see them doing more to damage you than microwaving a burrito every night (well, microwaving anything every night). What's going to cause problems is that for those total and complete sociopaths who use their cell phones constantly (cars, elevators, walking the dog, etc), the effects of the phones are going to build up over time and really mess them up. It's like a drug addiction: If you did it once in a long while in high school, you're probably fine. But if you do it constantly, you're in trouble.
But then, you've got a better chance fo dying in a car accident 'cause you were too %*!(&%(!&% busy on the phone to bother noticing the two cars in front of you slamming on their brakes, than you are to actually worry about radiation.
Okay, just for a moment, let's cut all the X-Files government conspiracy paanoia bullcrap and look at this thing at face value.
(Note: This is all educated guesswork, I'm quit probably wrong on some of it) It grabs the header of the email, checks the To: and From: fields (and probably the CC, BCC, ETC fields) to see if there's a match against the address fo whoever it's looking for. Probably does a check on IP addresses, too. If it is, it checks the subject line to see if it's something useful, and then (wether or not it seems useful, otherwise, it'd be easy to get around), puts the message into a file for humans to look at later.
Okay, so, this 'box' has the ability to see who you're sending emails to and their subject. For practical reasons, it probably has some more of spam-beater set up, and more than likely doesn't have a lot of output unless the person being watched is doing a lot of emailing.
The point of all this? Anyone doing anything to get the FBI interested in them will be smart enough to have a web-based anonymous email adress somewhere. The rest of us are, unless the FBI is a dark and sinister agency with a need for power, not going to have anything happen to us. No harm, no foul.
Unless, of course, those Carnivore boxes include mini-tacnukes, designed to help bring down the 'net permenantly. But then, that's just a conspiracy theory...
Am I the only one who sees the inherent problem with this? Probably not. But, Y'know... so what? The reason you don't see many bad game reviews by magazines is because if they do a bad one, they don't get games to review from the same company. It's not the promise of free software that's getting good reviews... it's the implied threat of _no_ free software if there's a bad one. It's the difference between bribery and extortion.
...isn't that an awful lot of overhead just to send byte-by-byte? You're sending more bytes for the header than for the data, so your transfer speed will be low... and (granted, this is coming from someone who barely qulifies as a geek by some standards), isn't receiving a lot of headers without any actual content a red flag that something's going on?
The thing about this is, most of the geeks I know who care about this sort of thing already have some way around the region-coding (someone already mentioned Remote Selector for Creative Dxr cards, there's others out there). I know this may get flamed, but this is more of a Linux issue than anything else, people wanting something that wasn't released as open source.
My question is, if you're ticked you can't play DVDs in Linux... why not go out and buy a cheep $180 player (is the hackable Apex still available?) instead of buying the DVD drive for your comp? After all, just because you couldn't get drivers for your ATI TV tuner cards in Linux doesn't mean you don't have a TV sitting around somewhere to watch.
--Infinity "Okay, so, I'm a raging Windows user. I'll change later."
...you can't be arrested for thinking something, but writing about it in a text file on your own personal computer means it can be used as evidence against you... and don't forget, the government can't tell the different between a sci-fi game sourcebook and a plot to destroy the world's computers...
Wow, my first post and I got _two_ flaming trolls. That'd be flaming in the non-geek sense. And they're even dating each other, it sounds like... I'll have to buy you two a wedding present.
It's only half-past midnight EST, and the site's not responding. Don't you people have reasons to be asleep by now instead of looking at stuff like this?
Slashdot Mirror
Y'know, you'd think a private corporation would pay good money to have a hold on space. You could move Micro$oft HQ up there and decalre the company to be immune to our petty earthling laws. C'mon, Billy-boy, buy the space station... it's just pennies in the bucket to you.
...if I don't run out and get end-of-the-world insurance. Sometime in the next thousand years is a very vague notion. Think back to how much changed in the last thousand years. Pretty muh 95% of technology. Now, look at what we have, and image that as just 5% of what could be possible.
By the time Earth's no longer habitable, we'll have the technology to clean it up, or move elsewhere, or do whatever we feel like doing.
Or is this just an excuse to get peopel worried about the Y3K crisis?
For the 'inexpensive' price range:
1) A Palm/Handspring/whatever.
2) A nice leather rolling chair for the home arca...erm, office.
3) Portable MP3 player. As long as it's got 64 mes of memory and an FM tuner, it doesn't matter which one.
4) 8x CD burners are into the $200 range lately...
For the 'expensive' price range:
1) Flat-screen LCD monitor with TV Tuner.
2) A CD collection... no, wait, you can get those things free online.
3) A DVD player and sound system.
4) A year's suppl of Jolt Cola(tm) (figured at the cost of $1 a bottle, three bottles a day, 365 days a year)
For the 'unlimited' category:
1) Eschelon
2) A politician... wait, you can't buy those, right?
3) Your very own radio telescope so you can finally break away from SETI@Home and start your own search.
4) Your very own server with a fully-paid T3 connection and all the hard drive space you could possibly need.
A distributed screen-saver! All these monitors that auto-power-off don't need to spend their precious CPU cycles on a screensaver for themselves, so use them to run a screensaver on another computer! Imagine how fluid a single screensaver coudl be if it has the processing power of twenty CPUs behind it? Imagine, real-time-rendered flying toasters! Video-quality fish! You could fly through space just like you see on Star Trek!
You're just jealous because I managed to get the top post without putting "First Post" in it, aren't you? :)
I wonder what sort of ping times you get from there...
"Dammit, I just got fragged by another Earth-bound runt again..."
I wonder if a Napster server in space could get sued?
Sure, video games can help a 6-year-old remember all 150 Pokemon and learn to count to 150... but beyond that, what good is it going to teach him beyond "fire beats water"?
And yes, that was sarcasm... we all know water should beat fire... that's part of my point. Sure, you can memorize every map on Final Fantasy II, but can you find your way form Boston to Seattle?
This thing already discovered proof of intelligent life on other planets. Apparently it picked up a broadcast from Alpha Centauri of voices singing "Will The Real Slim Shady Please Shut Up"...
Okay, first off, it's just a working title... but then, that's what they said last time.
Second... hey, it's better than "The Phantom Menace".
Third... hrm. "The Phantom Menace," "The Rise of the Empire," something, "A New Hope," "The Empire Strikes Back," and "The Return of the Jedi"... hrm. It's going to be hard to find a title for the third movie that fits in there. "The Death of The Dream", maybe? Or is that for X-Men III?
Have a man named George River, a company called George River, and an apartment complex called George River all file cases claiming that they should own georgeriver.com, and not the current owner, the George River Tour Group.
Ingrediants: One Win9x machine, one ATI TV Card (or Linux and a Matrox, from what I've heard... I bought the wrong damn card three years ago), and one massive hard drive.
Directions: Set the software to record your shows.
It may not be in a cheap self-contained box like TiVo or the other clones... but it works, and you can do all kinds of nifty stuff to the video. All you'd have to do is write your own web-based programable-thingie and you can do it yourself.
TiVo is for people who want to seem high-tech but can't figure out how to work a computer. The real geeks can use a TV Tuner card.
West Point?
...Censorware doesn't work! Oh, and government is corrupt, beer is intoxicating, and computer games are violent.
All facts we know to be true... it's just damned fun to prove them true to people who can't figure it out.
First off: You didn't mention Columbine once, Katz. Good for you. :)
Seriously, tho... who here doesn't know any of this already? This book sounds just like another volume of the "Well, Duh!" series of Common Sense for Dummies books. The only way to get privacy nowadays is to live in a cabin out in the woods of a mostly-rural backwater state and not use technology whatsoever. And even then, they still found the Unabomber.
Privacy is what you make it, folks. If you don't want to be tracked through cyberspace, don't use it. Just like if you don't want your fingerprints on file, don't get arrested. If you don't want your email box to get spammed, don't give out your address. The only way to have true privacy is if you don't do anything. But then, if you do nothing, you don't need privacy.
You realize that this will compeltely distroy most of the (commercial) web? Suddenly, companies will have proof of just how little time people spend looking at web advetisements. Since nobody watches them, they'll stop paying people for them, sites will vanish for not having the funds to pay for a server, and eventually every good clean site out there will vanish. As will every porn site that survives simply on advertising revenues.
Or, there's the flipside: If you aren't looking at an ad, the UI will move the ad into your line of sight or make it expand until you _have_ to look at a page's banner ads for five seconds before reading anything else on the page.
Are cell phones dangerous? For the casual user, probably not. I can't see them doing more to damage you than microwaving a burrito every night (well, microwaving anything every night). What's going to cause problems is that for those total and complete sociopaths who use their cell phones constantly (cars, elevators, walking the dog, etc), the effects of the phones are going to build up over time and really mess them up. It's like a drug addiction: If you did it once in a long while in high school, you're probably fine. But if you do it constantly, you're in trouble.
But then, you've got a better chance fo dying in a car accident 'cause you were too %*!(&%(!&% busy on the phone to bother noticing the two cars in front of you slamming on their brakes, than you are to actually worry about radiation.
Okay, just for a moment, let's cut all the X-Files government conspiracy paanoia bullcrap and look at this thing at face value.
(Note: This is all educated guesswork, I'm quit probably wrong on some of it) It grabs the header of the email, checks the To: and From: fields (and probably the CC, BCC, ETC fields) to see if there's a match against the address fo whoever it's looking for. Probably does a check on IP addresses, too. If it is, it checks the subject line to see if it's something useful, and then (wether or not it seems useful, otherwise, it'd be easy to get around), puts the message into a file for humans to look at later.
Okay, so, this 'box' has the ability to see who you're sending emails to and their subject. For practical reasons, it probably has some more of spam-beater set up, and more than likely doesn't have a lot of output unless the person being watched is doing a lot of emailing.
The point of all this? Anyone doing anything to get the FBI interested in them will be smart enough to have a web-based anonymous email adress somewhere. The rest of us are, unless the FBI is a dark and sinister agency with a need for power, not going to have anything happen to us. No harm, no foul.
Unless, of course, those Carnivore boxes include mini-tacnukes, designed to help bring down the 'net permenantly. But then, that's just a conspiracy theory...
Am I the only one who sees the inherent problem with this? Probably not. But, Y'know... so what? The reason you don't see many bad game reviews by magazines is because if they do a bad one, they don't get games to review from the same company. It's not the promise of free software that's getting good reviews... it's the implied threat of _no_ free software if there's a bad one. It's the difference between bribery and extortion.
...isn't that an awful lot of overhead just to send byte-by-byte? You're sending more bytes for the header than for the data, so your transfer speed will be low... and (granted, this is coming from someone who barely qulifies as a geek by some standards), isn't receiving a lot of headers without any actual content a red flag that something's going on?
The thing about this is, most of the geeks I know who care about this sort of thing already have some way around the region-coding (someone already mentioned Remote Selector for Creative Dxr cards, there's others out there). I know this may get flamed, but this is more of a Linux issue than anything else, people wanting something that wasn't released as open source.
My question is, if you're ticked you can't play DVDs in Linux... why not go out and buy a cheep $180 player (is the hackable Apex still available?) instead of buying the DVD drive for your comp? After all, just because you couldn't get drivers for your ATI TV tuner cards in Linux doesn't mean you don't have a TV sitting around somewhere to watch.
--Infinity
"Okay, so, I'm a raging Windows user. I'll change later."
...you can't be arrested for thinking something, but writing about it in a text file on your own personal computer means it can be used as evidence against you... and don't forget, the government can't tell the different between a sci-fi game sourcebook and a plot to destroy the world's computers...
Wow, my first post and I got _two_ flaming trolls. That'd be flaming in the non-geek sense. And they're even dating each other, it sounds like... I'll have to buy you two a wedding present.
It's only half-past midnight EST, and the site's not responding. Don't you people have reasons to be asleep by now instead of looking at stuff like this?
Then again, why am I still up?