The courts are finally catching on to the RIAA's game. People should start suing *them*.
At least one group already has (Webcaster Alliance), Findlaw has lots of good info on laws and cases, including a whole section on our good buddies, the RIAA:
I recall reading at one time about a group of lawyers who theorized that the mass lawsuits against large groups of people who were unlikely to be able to afford legal representation, while offering a "settlement" less that the likely costs of defense, amounted to extortion. I can't find any source for it now, though.
I actually meant exactly what pod thought. I've have surprisingly good luck getting the sales guys to cart out a couple of monitors for me to compare on their demo systems. It's generally quite simple, I say to them "I've researched all the LCDs on the market, and the one I want is this model you have, the SuperWhammyDyne Model 4000. You guys sell it for an excellent price, but I've heard that the quality between units can vary a lot. Rather than have me buy one and have to exchange it tomorrow, could we just hook one up now to be sure that it's OK?"
I've had both CompUSA and Best Buy do this for me. It probably helps that I look and sound like a "serious customer" to them.
If you absolutely can't find a store to do this for you (I would be surprised, unless you look/act like a hooligan) then bring your laptop and leave it in the car. Also bring a 12VDC -> 120VAC inverter, then just walk outside, try the display there on your laptop, and bring it right back. (Car inverters are limited to about 100W, so this won't work with large CRT monitors.) Maybe after the second round of this they'll figure out that it's easier to just let you look in-store.:-)
I love NewEgg, and I buy a ton of stuff from them. They're only slightly more expensive than the cheapest you can find, and they're super reliable. You can't buy LCDs from the though, and here's why:
I would expand what you said even more. I buy NewEgg all the time, but there are some things I won't buy mail order from ANYONE. They are
cases
keyboards
mice
displays
Perhaps you see the theme? These are mostly items that I interact with directly so they need to fit me perfectly. No specification is going to describe how a mouse feels in my hand, or if the bounce from the keys on the keyboard feel right.
The one exception is the case. I may not touch a case all the time, but I still need to feel if the stamped metal edges have been properly dulled or if I have a nice knife edge waiting for me. It's also helpful to see how the fans mount, if drive rails are needed, etc.
Probably the item where I'm the MOST picky is the display. Since quality can vary greatly between individual displays, I make sure to get one of the helpful salespeople to hook up the monitor I'm about to buy to one of their demo PCs. It's amazing how many odd defects monitors can have (both LCD and CRT). Fuzzy picture, misalignment on one side, pixel issues, distortion in small areas, etc.
Mail order is great, but sometimes it's worth paying 10-20% more to ensure that you get what you want. I bet that 10-20% ends up costing less than repeated return shipping.
Call me old school, but remember back in the day when opening e-mail was ok, and that executable attachments were what we watched out for?
I remember those days fondly, but unfortunately as I've learned more about software bugs and exploits the more I know "opening e-mail was ok" was false.
Even the "safe" mailers have been subject to terminal-based exploits using features of displays which allowed special escape sequences to "type" arbitrary commands. Text-based E-mail programs have also had problems with buffer overflows. (Pine comes to mind, but it's certainly not alone.)
Today's complex software makes problems more likely, but a lot of the perceived drop in security from "the old days" is simply that we're now more aware of it.
In a Web-based attack scenario, an attacker would have to host a Web site that contains a Web page that is used to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker would have no way to force users to visit a malicious Web site. Instead, an attacker would have to persuade them to visit the Web site, typically by getting them to click a link that takes them to the attacker's site.
I like the phrase "no way to force users to visit a malicious Web site". How many users have image views enabled in their mail client? How hard would it be for a shady advertiser or a hacked advertiser to include a malicous JPEG as a banner ad?
From page 3 in the PDF of his sheet music, copyright 1945:
HOLLYWOOD SONGS DON'T LAST. Broadway songs are sprayed with hundreds of thousands of dollars to get them sprouted and going. They sprout, they burst, they bloom and they fade. Wagon loads of your good money are shoveled and scattered onto them, but they are not our true history and we don't take them deep into our heart.
THE MONOPOLY ON MUSIC pays a few por(?) writers to go screwy trying to write and rewrite the same old notes under the same old formulas and the same old patterns. The songs have no guts. They sonnd[sic] sissified, timid, the spinning dreams of a bunch of neurotic screwballs. How can they be otherwise when they have no connection with the work and the fight of the whole human race? They are bad. They are hurtful, poisonous, complasent[sic], distracting, full of jerky headaches and jangled nerves.
Often it's the professors writing the new edition!
One of my college professors with an overabundance of ethics made it a point to hand out, in cash, his $4 royalty back to each student who purchased his book.
While this would be ripe for abuse in larger classes (i.e. get in line multiple times) a similar arrangement would be simple to reach with the bookstore where the book simply gets sold for less than normal, and it comes out of the professor's royalties.
An even better approach would be to contribute to www.opentextbook.org instead. In particular, this would be a great way for a new professor to show off his/her writing skills in a way that's simpler than trying to find a publisher.
This was a singularly bad example to use as "legal" P2P. A better example might be 3dgamers.com who use bittorrent as one of many download options for content they have been given to redistribute.
Also, the "default" state of copyright seems to be lost on many Slashdotters-- thanks for clearing up that in the absence of a EULA, "default" copyright law applies, which does not allow redistribution.
The two times I tried using my heavy duty tape degausser it did nothing except create a couple of spots where reading returned an I/O errror. The vast bulk of the data was unaffected, and I bet the spots that returned an I/O error could be read perfectly with the right equipment.
The shielding around these things and/or the magnetic strength needed to flip bits on the disk seem to be stronger than one might expect.;-)
Sticking one inside a high strength superconducting magnet like those used for magnetic resonance imaging might work, but you risk physical damage to both the machine and anyone close by as the strong field flings the drive around. I bet the physical damage there would also void your warranty...
(Note: For the sarcasm impaired, the following is humor. I hope.)
I think they finally realized that the best way to make money is by selling personal information to marketing agencies. This is all part of their plan to cull E-mail addresses, bank accounts, social security numbers, tin foil hat size, and pornography preferences directly from the platters of the RMAed drives.
Think about it! The drive is dead so you can't wipe it. Physical destruction voids you warranty. Ha! They've got you.:-)
At least you don't have to pay to replace the second drive in your mirrored set.
Oh, you don't have a mirrored set? I guess that $100k of data wasn't worth the $175 it cost for a second drive then...;-)
Seriously, if your data is worth anything more than few hundred dollars (based on your own value of the time you'd spend re-creating it) it should be mirrored, and backed up to some sort of removable media. While few of us have data that's worth a whole lot, the cost of making a backup once a quarter (or once a year, even) is pretty negligible compared to the cost of re-creating everything.
The research group at MIT that preceded EPC global released GPL reference source code for an ONS client and server which I've been unable to locate online since EPC global took over. All I can recall is that they were on an mit.edu FTP site that was buried about 10 links down in the midst of their research papers. However, I do have the filenames and md5sums in case someone finds a mirror:
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the freediag Open Source (GPL) effort to build a program to read the diagnostic information that's available. A special hardware interface is needed to connect your PC to your car, but they're not hard to find and not horribly expensive. (see the freediag supported interfaces list for more info including one RS232 to OBD-II converter you can build yourself.)
The project is still pretty new, so if your car isn't supported and the codes are available from the National Automotive Task Force site, it probably wouldn't be too hard to hack them in.
Also, if your relationship has already gone south and you really want to keep it, don't be afraid to go talk with a counselor-- by yourself at first, but you might need to both go together to someone else, too.
Finally, if games are really more important than time with her-- stick with what you enjoy. Keep in mind that you might be making a long-term mistake for some short-term satisfaction.
Alton is a TV Personality, he's just not going to get into that level of detail in the time he has available. Instead, if you'd like to know the details of things like this reach for the books he refers to frequently:
On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee The Curious Cook by Harold McGee Cookwise by Shirley Corriher
One time in college (how many good stories start this way?) we had the Playboy channel going with the sound muted and some heavy music playing. One of our friends stopped by, saw the "action" on the TV and commented "Wow, is that the new Guns and Roses video? It rules!"
Slashdot Mirror
At least one group already has (Webcaster Alliance), Findlaw has lots of good info on laws and cases, including a whole section on our good buddies, the RIAA:
http://news.findlaw.com/legalnews/lit/riaa/
I recall reading at one time about a group of lawyers who theorized that the mass lawsuits against large groups of people who were unlikely to be able to afford legal representation, while offering a "settlement" less that the likely costs of defense, amounted to extortion. I can't find any source for it now, though.
After a bit of Googling, I found some "teaser" images advertising the purchase of the raw data, including links to SO2 and O3 maps.
2 .html (nyud.net cached copy)
http://www.temis.nl.nyud.net:8090/airpollution/ (nyud.net cached copy)
Nitrogen Dioxide:
http://www.temis.nl.nyud.net:8090/airpollution/no
The US sulfur dioxide emissions seemed pretty low, even in the acid-rain-prone Northeast. Some of the ocean blooms of SO2 seemed odd, tho.
I actually meant exactly what pod thought. I've have surprisingly good luck getting the sales guys to cart out a couple of monitors for me to compare on their demo systems. It's generally quite simple, I say to them "I've researched all the LCDs on the market, and the one I want is this model you have, the SuperWhammyDyne Model 4000. You guys sell it for an excellent price, but I've heard that the quality between units can vary a lot. Rather than have me buy one and have to exchange it tomorrow, could we just hook one up now to be sure that it's OK?"
:-)
I've had both CompUSA and Best Buy do this for me. It probably helps that I look and sound like a "serious customer" to them.
If you absolutely can't find a store to do this for you (I would be surprised, unless you look/act like a hooligan) then bring your laptop and leave it in the car. Also bring a 12VDC -> 120VAC inverter, then just walk outside, try the display there on your laptop, and bring it right back. (Car inverters are limited to about 100W, so this won't work with large CRT monitors.) Maybe after the second round of this they'll figure out that it's easier to just let you look in-store.
- cases
- keyboards
- mice
- displays
Perhaps you see the theme? These are mostly items that I interact with directly so they need to fit me perfectly. No specification is going to describe how a mouse feels in my hand, or if the bounce from the keys on the keyboard feel right.The one exception is the case. I may not touch a case all the time, but I still need to feel if the stamped metal edges have been properly dulled or if I have a nice knife edge waiting for me. It's also helpful to see how the fans mount, if drive rails are needed, etc.
Probably the item where I'm the MOST picky is the display. Since quality can vary greatly between individual displays, I make sure to get one of the helpful salespeople to hook up the monitor I'm about to buy to one of their demo PCs. It's amazing how many odd defects monitors can have (both LCD and CRT). Fuzzy picture, misalignment on one side, pixel issues, distortion in small areas, etc.
Mail order is great, but sometimes it's worth paying 10-20% more to ensure that you get what you want. I bet that 10-20% ends up costing less than repeated return shipping.
Profiteers? Sounds like a Disney movie to me. :)
I remember those days fondly, but unfortunately as I've learned more about software bugs and exploits the more I know "opening e-mail was ok" was false.
Even the "safe" mailers have been subject to terminal-based exploits using features of displays which allowed special escape sequences to "type" arbitrary commands. Text-based E-mail programs have also had problems with buffer overflows. (Pine comes to mind, but it's certainly not alone.)
Today's complex software makes problems more likely, but a lot of the perceived drop in security from "the old days" is simply that we're now more aware of it.
I like the phrase "no way to force users to visit a malicious Web site". How many users have image views enabled in their mail client? How hard would it be for a shady advertiser or a hacked advertiser to include a malicous JPEG as a banner ad?
The full text of this book is available online via O'Reilly's Safari subscription service:
http://safari.oreilly.com/059600611X
This is a great service for serious readers. (I have no connection with them other than as a subscriber.)
Should you wish to publicly comment, here is a cached/Coralized link to the article on the NIH site to save your taxpayer bandwidth:
/ notice-files/NOT-OD-04-064.html
N OT-OD-04-064.html
http://grants1.nih.gov.nyud.net:8090/grants/guide
For those who fear cached nastiness, here's the original link:
http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/
Hmmm... who wanted a monopoly on the music again?
Opentextbook.org has very little content-- the link I meant to include is http://en.wikibooks.org
One of my college professors with an overabundance of ethics made it a point to hand out, in cash, his $4 royalty back to each student who purchased his book.
While this would be ripe for abuse in larger classes (i.e. get in line multiple times) a similar arrangement would be simple to reach with the bookstore where the book simply gets sold for less than normal, and it comes out of the professor's royalties.
An even better approach would be to contribute to www.opentextbook.org instead. In particular, this would be a great way for a new professor to show off his/her writing skills in a way that's simpler than trying to find a publisher.
This was a singularly bad example to use as "legal" P2P. A better example might be 3dgamers.com who use bittorrent as one of many download options for content they have been given to redistribute.
Also, the "default" state of copyright seems to be lost on many Slashdotters-- thanks for clearing up that in the absence of a EULA, "default" copyright law applies, which does not allow redistribution.
The two times I tried using my heavy duty tape degausser it did nothing except create a couple of spots where reading returned an I/O errror. The vast bulk of the data was unaffected, and I bet the spots that returned an I/O error could be read perfectly with the right equipment.
;-)
The shielding around these things and/or the magnetic strength needed to flip bits on the disk seem to be stronger than one might expect.
Sticking one inside a high strength superconducting magnet like those used for magnetic resonance imaging might work, but you risk physical damage to both the machine and anyone close by as the strong field flings the drive around. I bet the physical damage there would also void your warranty...
(Note: For the sarcasm impaired, the following is humor. I hope.)
:-)
I think they finally realized that the best way to make money is by selling personal information to marketing agencies. This is all part of their plan to cull E-mail addresses, bank accounts, social security numbers, tin foil hat size, and pornography preferences directly from the platters of the RMAed drives.
Think about it! The drive is dead so you can't wipe it. Physical destruction voids you warranty. Ha! They've got you.
At least you don't have to pay to replace the second drive in your mirrored set.
;-)
Oh, you don't have a mirrored set? I guess that $100k of data wasn't worth the $175 it cost for a second drive then...
Seriously, if your data is worth anything more than few hundred dollars (based on your own value of the time you'd spend re-creating it) it should be mirrored, and backed up to some sort of removable media. While few of us have data that's worth a whole lot, the cost of making a backup once a quarter (or once a year, even) is pretty negligible compared to the cost of re-creating everything.
The research group at MIT that preceded EPC global released GPL reference source code for an ONS client and server which I've been unable to locate online since EPC global took over. All I can recall is that they were on an mit.edu FTP site that was buried about 10 links down in the midst of their research papers. However, I do have the filenames and md5sums in case someone finds a mirror:
8 c01c98ae31f31 ons-server-1.0.tar.gz
D -T M-004.pdf
ae99d2b01957e827e4b4eea0f5520d6e ons-1.0.tar.gz
596126f77a460818902d4253c3927feb ons-content-server-1.0.tar.gz
b65115d6e619272f99
It's implemented as patches to the GNU adns server, so their implementation remains GPLed. If you can find the source.
This paper describes ONS in detail:
http://www.autoidlabs.com/whitepapers/MIT-AUTOI
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the freediag Open Source (GPL) effort to build a program to read the diagnostic information that's available. A special hardware interface is needed to connect your PC to your car, but they're not hard to find and not horribly expensive. (see the freediag supported interfaces list for more info including one RS232 to OBD-II converter you can build yourself.)
The project is still pretty new, so if your car isn't supported and the codes are available from the National Automotive Task Force site, it probably wouldn't be too hard to hack them in.
In addition to the above obvious solution, check out Everquest Widows and try to avoid doing the things the "widows" complain about:
Yahoo Groups: Everquest Widows
Also, if your relationship has already gone south and you really want to keep it, don't be afraid to go talk with a counselor-- by yourself at first, but you might need to both go together to someone else, too.
Finally, if games are really more important than time with her-- stick with what you enjoy. Keep in mind that you might be making a long-term mistake for some short-term satisfaction.
Just be careful when that baby core dumps. It's not pretty. ;-)
Alton is a TV Personality, he's just not going to get into that level of detail in the time he has available. Instead, if you'd like to know the details of things like this reach for the books he refers to frequently:
On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee
The Curious Cook by Harold McGee
Cookwise by Shirley Corriher
Sounds about right-- what's Windows' market share right now?
One time in college (how many good stories start this way?) we had the Playboy channel going with the sound muted and some heavy music playing. One of our friends stopped by, saw the "action" on the TV and commented "Wow, is that the new Guns and Roses video? It rules!"
You can live it all over again. Check out:
http://sc2.sourceforge.net/
Yes, it's Open Source now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special :Booksources&isbn=0849326478