In early 1990, the United States Secret Service carried out a nationwide crackdown on hackers which came to be known as Operation Sundevil. The sweep was highly publicized, in an effort to discourage many of the hackers whom it did not target. Naturally, this crackdown had an adverse effect on Phrack magazine. In late December of 1989, Issue 30 was released; a mere three weeks later, Phrack was shut down by the USSS during Operation Sundevil. Over the course of 1990, several attempts were made to re-establish Phrack, however, since they were not done with the consent of the original editors, they were unfocused and not generally accepted by the hacker community.
As we all know Apple stocks took a beating, a severe one at that, couple of days back when it crashed more than 20 points because of its shortcoming in earnings for the 4th quarter. Analysts are hoping that Mac OS X would help Apple to earn its reputation of a survivor again
In the past also Apple had been through severe beatings, but nothing like this. Wired has an article where they have mentioned that OS X might be the only straw it has. Remains to be seen..
Apple however priced the Cube for a price too high for anyone to afford, which made it inaccessible for both novice users and power users. At 1799 a piece it was too high for anyone with a sane mind to afford it, but for its elegance. And that was too silly a reason to fork out 1800 in cash, and it was reported that feature wise it really didnt make a difference from the G4 macs.
Hope apple would get its act together. It would be worth watching. As for me, I am just gonna go ahead and buy a couple of stocks:)
And starts a new space colony involving monkies writing Windows 2005 code. Gates has firmly stated that 10,000 monkies should be able to put together the Windows 2005 kernel (aptly named as Code Name : Monkey business) in less than 3 years by making available to them 10,000 keyboards and dumb Windows Terminal Clients. Gates suggests that even if they write things that doesnt make sense (which their programmers do in Seattle after taking LSD for lunch) one out of 1000 monkeys should write a valid subroutine in three months. He further stated that he would be staying at Mir himself to avoid any potential Law suits and would screen visitors for Janet Reno look alikes, and from now on would be wearing Face masks resembling Darth Vader to support Slashdot claims that he is really Darth Vader.
In a related news Hackers have decrypted Windows 2000 binary to reveal underlying source code which looks like this :
And not because I download music from Napster, which I do not very often owing to the fact that people are not quite open about their private collections like old days. Previously it was quite possible to download pretty much anything that you wanted to, and I use to leave napster running through out the night and see around 300 downloads by the next day. However nowadays, I have found people masquerading 56kb links as T3 and shutting off access to their private collection, while at the same time downloading from others. Thats what napster community has become.
I would pay the amount but I dont really believe that everyone would, because most of the people who download music from napster really dont care about RIAA, Napster and what free digital content is all about. They just wanna download just another mp3 while Napster is still up and running. What Napster really did to the world was just opening up a new way to trade mp3 files. It really didnt care about anything other than that. I respect Napster and the people behind it for creating the first (maybe) Peer to Peer sharing mechanism, and its a sad thing that it was used for piracy. But then thats life. In a similar analogy, the only Ecommerce sites (after all this dot com hype) who makes money are the Porn sites. So its quite humane to take technology and profit from it no matter whats being exchanged and most of the times its quite impossible to define whats legal and whats not.
I would pay 4.95 and I would hope that the court rules against RIAA (I dont care whether they rule in favour of napster) atleast to rip off the masks they been wearing protecting their own interests and not of their musicians. I hope someone would soon come up with a new model where musicians would be able to reach their fans directly and benefit from it. At the same time I think its crap when people say that music should be free. Maybe part of it, but leave that to the musician, he should be the deciding factor, not some 10 yr old kid in his basement:)
Its true. At one of the Job Posting sites, I remember seeing a poll for Job Satisfaction and 95 percentage were of the opinion that they were not happy with what they are doing. Its quite surprising. I feel that as long as you have a Good Architect and a Manager who listens to his team, the team would stay. I have been in situations where the company wasnt doing so good, but people stayed because of their manager. Loyalty is hence hard to find and come by in the IT job market.
If companies could hire managers who know the different between HTTP and FTP, between Kernel and Shell, could stand up for his team in Management meetings and take a beating for it, could explain in lucid detail to the management about schedule slippages and cover everyones ass and not just his then he would build a team which would stick through thick and thin for him. But from so far I have seen, this particular breed is dying fast. Everyone wants to cover their ass first.
Just providing Nerf gun battles and ping pong tables doesnt motivate people. People motivate people. Good diplomatic Managers tend to motivate people to excel in their work and make them stay. Making them stay back after six everyday and not reward them is begging them to leave. Most of the firms, even the big ones doesnt have a clue as to how to retain people. I would rather choose a firm which has Quake 3 deathmatches every alternate days or Fridays, where my Manager understands what I do and not judge me for my errors, where he first covers my ass and then his if i screw up,is the first one to comment or reward anyone who deserves it.
I havent found one, but being a sucker I am still looking.
I got Pacbell, signed up for it and got it installed within 21 days, though I presume it might be a longer wait if you decide to sign up now, since they have a huge back log. The connection speed, at its peak is a comfortable 144 kbps and I havent had a problem with that. I dont have a Static IP, so I need to login, though even if I keep my connection open it doesnt hurt as very few times I got disconnected. Overall support has been good, and I am paying 40$ per month for the service and I got the equipment and installation free, which I believe is quite normal nowadays.
I had a friend who signed up for Cable modem with AT&T and was told that he would have it by the end of November. Between Cable and DSL, I would choose DSL since we all must have heard the age old notion of Cable being slower since its used by more than one person at the same time . DSL is no different, I must say and speed varies depending on the load on the server.
I am not interested in your Grand Father. Well I dont give a damn whether he won a Purple heart in the war. As far as I am concerned, Hitler was not defeated by Americans, he was defeated by the Russians. And your Grand Father was born in Germany and he decided to take arms against your own country men ? Well, He decided to take a stand and make his ground on what he thought was right, regardless of what the rest of the country believed. Well, as for you, I pity you, you never deserve to be his grand child. You deserve to rant like an idiot.
I feel bad for people who are made to leave after 6 years. They made what you see around you, they made a difference. They toiled hard, they slogged their butts for every dollar they earned. They leave this country as a better place, and they deserve some respect. All they demand is some respect, the green card process to be sped up, nothing else. I havent filed for a Green Card, I dont believe US would remain the main industry focus five years down the line, once Europe picks up.
It doesnt make sense for your Congress to cry that theres a shortage and not realise the brain drain happening at the same time. They are taking in 100,000 new people every year by letting 45,000 experienced people walk out of here. That doesnt make sense. And I believe the shortage is hyped, to keep the tech wages lower.
Your nick says everything.. Anonymous coward. You shouldnt be afraid to lose out on a couple of karma points to show what you believe in, you karma whore. But then again, you just proved your point..:)
Where did you come from my friend ? Where do you belong ? Would you say US ? If so, ask your Father how he came here, or your grandfather ? Your ancestors couldnt have been living here all the time unless they were plucking fruits with chimpanzees, before the first immigrants reached the shore. I assume it was the former. You belong to them
If you have something worthwhile to say, say it, dont rant like an uncouth goat.
I doubt whether this posting would be read by anyone at all, since the amount of posts before me are sheer huge, but anyway I decide to make my point since I believe these are the facts. I currently hold an H1-B and work for a EBusiness Solutions firm(previously a Staff augmentation firm - also known as a Body shopper:)).
I have been given an opportunity to work here and I am thankful for it. And I do my job to the best of my abilities. I have seen and heard and experienced a lot of wrong committed H1-B holders in this country and the saddest part is that these wrongs are mostly committed by people from the same community, most of the times Indians. I am yet to hear an American milking his employees by not giving him a fair salary, but I could be wrong. But what I have seen and experienced is the following. I have seen people brought here by the truckload, not because of their experience or expertise, but just brains to be sold to someone to make 45 dollars per hour for the employer and to be paid measly 45-55k per year.
I am proud to belong to the indian community, and I must say that 70% of the H1-B holders who come to US are qualified academically or make up for it in terms of their expertise or experience. However, no matter how funny it may sound, I have also heard that people whom havent even touched a keyboard were also brought here in the pretext of being a software engg and made to work on making systems Y2K compliant. I have seen people getting threatened by their employers and being made to work more than 12 hours per day for no over time. Well I have seen cases where in which the employer sweet talks their employees in to doing over time for their own cause without the employees getting benefited.
I dont believe the people who have the guts to speak up, or to start looking for something on their own have to fear anything. A majority of the people here on H1-B are still consultants and not permanent employees of any firms. They need to wake up and realise that they have been kept under a dark cloud of uncertainty and fear, and decide to stand their ground. I dont think its hard to get a permanent job here for anyone with decent communication skills and relevant expertise. I have around 3 to 3.5 years of experience and I have been offered jobs that range from 110k to 130k per annum and I dont believe thats a bad salary to start with. Its just that these people have been kept so long in the dark that they are not willing or able to start looking something on their own. Most of them tend to follow the others (reason why we see so many Hondas and Toyotas being driven by Indians:) . I dont think its wrong, but it goes to show that we are just not capable to think alound and make a decision on our own. The irony is I own a Honda myself).
We need to stand up and demand fair rights and better pay rate. And as mentioned in a post prior to this, once they start paying their employees better, all this shortage would go away.
MSNBC report states that most of the systems which are compromised are Red Hat systems,using a recent exploit, for which patches are available. These compromised systems are surely systems whose admins are either ignorant or crackheads who believes Linux or Red Hat is too secure to be compromised.
This again brings to light the eternal question which begs an answer. Is it the fault of the company behind the OS or the Sys admins who forgets to apply the newly released patches who are responsible for these attacks. My opinion would be the latter.
Any piece of code is liable to exploits, including Windows and *nix, and its quite obvious that the script kiddies behind these attacks do not envisage new exploits, rather piggyback on existing exploits for which users or admins might not have applied the patch. The fault I must say lies with the Admins.
As long as there are systems liable for attack, whether they might be open source or closed, there would be kids who take advantages of the exploits that arise from these systems. Rather than crying foul everytime a new exploit is released, the geek community should make sure to plug these holes, rather than pointing fingers.
As long as we dont plug the holes in the Internet Infrastructure which allows these kind of DDOS attacks, that would be the sanest thing to do.
Cudos to the Lady. Universal definitely has to respond to her suit and what I assume is that they might shell out a million or two at the most, but the major share would remain with them. Atleast the judge who ruled in their favour would regret the fact that he took money from one wrong party and gave it another one. Kind of like milking the drug dealers to pay to the mob scenario. Ultimately its the artists who are screwed and atleast now they should realise that the record companies are out to screw them and napster and mp3 are out to screw them too. Someone has to soon come up with a viable business model to take advantage of this situation.
It would have been better if mp3 while admitting to pay damages to Universal had some say in how much money should go to the artists. Or it would have been better if the Court had a say on the matter. I dont mind the artists getting paid for what they create, but I dont see the point in Universal pocketing its profits leaving the artists and the public screwing each other.
Like it or not, Digital content is here to stay. Well, now atleast all those self professed "Copy rights enthusiasts" who vouched for the major Content firms and the poor artists might tuck their tail and shut up.
Everytime theres an article that comes close to mentioning the evil empire, slashdot puts "Bill Vader" out on the right hand corner of the Article. However this time, its the blue IE icon.. Why ?? Did Lord Vader pay Hemos to keep his face away from the public ? Did Microsoft buy Slashdot ? Did Hemos get married to Lord Vaders daughter ? Mysteries abound...
One of the few errors when you buy a MS compliant Toaster from Fry's for 159$.
Whats next ? Vibrators with MS chip enabled within ? hmmm...interesting. I dont think they would come in large sizes and I presume they would either self destruct or deflate since they were made by "MICRO" "SOFT":)
I found Guru.com to be in the Coremetric partner page, however Guru.com doesnt mention Coremetric at all at their Privacy page. However they do mention DoubleClick, but no mention is made to their partnership with Coremetric or the notorious invisible gifs that might be splattered across their pages.
Someone has to make a stand. We are not mere eyeballs meant to be captured and targeted. I have found these invisible gifs in the huge amount of junk emails that I receive in my hotmail account. I wish Icould just reach in and just wring that stupid's neck who sent it to me. But thanks to the preliminary screening for emails targeted to me through the Bcc option, I atleast dont have them on my inbox. Nowadays I dont even open them, I just block their addresses and move them to the trash can. Regardless of that, I still get around 10 junk emails per day.
The Govt should stop pursuing small time companies like napster and 2600.org and start concentrating on these firms who dont give a dick about privacy and sell individuals like commodities with no qualms about their rights.
I bought the Tshirt from Copyleft a couple of months back and I have been proudly flaunting it eversince. People have come to me and asked me what DeCSS, and I have explained to them in detail as to what the media has twisted to sound like a stealing of Intellectual property. I believe this is how you increase awareness among people about an issue that you believe in.
My other question would be, would I be able to put any kind of source code on my Tshirt or not ? Coz any stupid lawyer could mistake that sourcecode to something proprietary and sue me for it. Where would this end ? Well all this have done is anger the geek community and made sure atleast another hundred would buy the Tshirt and wear it proudly. As for me, I am gonna wear it tomorrow.:).
......................... "Yes?" I say, pausing the picture.
"I seem to have accidentally deleted my C.V!" the voice at the other end of the line says.
"You have? What was your username?"
He tells me. What the hell, I AM bored.
"Ah no, you didn't delete it - I did."
"What?"
"I deleted it. It was full of shit! You didn't ever get more than a B- in any of your subjects!"
"Huh?"
"And that crap about being a foreign exchange student, that was your girlfriend and we both know it!"
"Huh?!!"
"Your academic records. I checked them, you were lying.. Besides which, you forgot to include your criminal record.."
"How did y.." He clicks. "It's you isn't it? THE BASTARD OPERATOR FROM HELL!"
"In the flesh, on the phone and in your account.... You shouldn't have called you know. You especially shouldn't have given me your username.." >clicketyclickclicketyclickclickedy click "..change my username back, and..."
"b-b-b.." he blubs, like a stood-up date
"Goodbye now" I say pleasantly, "you've got bags to pack and a life to start over..."
I hang up.
Two seconds later the red phone goes. I pick it up, it's the boss. He mumbles the username of the person I was just talking to, mentions something about a nasty mail message, and utters the words "You know what to do...", with the dots and everything.
Later, inside the Municipal Energy Authority Computer, as I'm modifying the poor pleb's Energy Bill by several zeros, I can't help but think about what lapse of judgement - what act of heinous stupidity - causes them to call. Then, even later, when I'm adding the poor pleb's photo image over the top of the FBI's online "MOST Wanted Armed and Dangerous, SHOOT ON SIGHT" offenders list, I realise I'll probably never know; but then life goes on.
A couple of hours later, as I see the SWAT vehicle roll up outside the poor pleb's apartment I realise that for some, it just doesn't.
But tommorrow is another day. .......................
I love these guys. SysAdmins have been some of my best friends. But that doesnt mean I call them up and tell them what my username is...heh heh...
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
Soon, we would see newspapers and ignorant print media lamenting about "hackers" launching dos attacks against sites who support open speech and even get away with a couple of snide remarks on how these sites were in turn lauding hackers and blah..blah..blah.
I wish this guys would identify those script kiddies and wipe the floor with their ass. I was looking at the "Know thy enemy" article on rootprompt.org and its quite interesting to see the type of people who does this, and who profess to be hackers. I could imagine "nothing to do" 14 yr old kids, morons who have no better job to do, and people who are trying to prove to the world that they could make an impact on this economy and the internet that fosters it, by bringing it down. Though I would respect the meticulous manner in which some of these attacks are organised, I would definitely love to see them go down. It doesnt make the world a better place, coz there would be still a lot of them out there and you could only do so much.
Slashdot for one, need to make a clear definition as to whats right and whats wrong. If we tell the future generations that pirating is ok, trading pirated software is ok, then theres nothing stopping them from resorting to dos attacks like this, just because they believe what they do is true. This is a never ending question and theres no clear cut answer as to whats right or wrong. The line is thin and it borders on the consciousness of us human beings. Most of the times, we are so hard to identify whats right or wrong. Whats right ? Is trading pirated software right thing to do ? Is napster evil ? Or is it the Music Industry who is licking their fingers ? Who is the winner and whos the loser ? There are no clear rules in this game. As long as there are people who believe that the laws of the land doesnt apply to them, and they could do what they please, we would see more of this. And if they are careful enough to cover their tracks, like anonymous cowards, they would keep on doing it. But the question that begs attention is, are we right in condemning them ? Are we better off than these script kiddies ??
This is not a flame Bait. I wish we could all debate on this.
(From the Article..very interesting. read on) An FPS aiming proxy works like this: The proxy program is run on a networked computer and the player configures it with the address of the server they are going to play on. They then run the FPS game on another machine and connect to the proxy machine, which in turn connects the game to the server, acting just like an Internet packet router.
The only hitch is that the proxy monitors and attempts to decode all of the packets it is routing. The program keeps track of the movements and locations of all the players the server is reporting to the game, building a simple model. When the proxy sees a Fire Weapon command packet issued by the cheating player, it checks the locations and directions of all the players it is currently tracking and picks a target from them. It then inserts a Move/Rotate command packet into the stream going to the server in front of (or into) the Fire Weapon command packet that points the player straight at the selected target. And there you have it: perfect aim without all the mouse twisting. (End of Article)
I just cant help thinking, these guys are so desperate about cheating. All this effort could have been spent on building something productive or learning how to use the mouse with the keyboard and kicking bots ass. Why cant we just learn to lose sometimes. Why is winning so important ? I have had my ass kicked by bots and humans alike, but I jump right back up and rail his sweet ass to kingdom come. Gaming is not all about winning, but its about perspiration that drips from your eyebrows, but you cant wipe it off, because you know your enemy is out there, seeking you out with a railgun combined with the power of Quad Damage, with an ethereal blue shadow to his skin, and you wish you were somewhere else...:)
Toonz is a complete 2D animation system designed to meet the rigorous production criteria of the modern cel animation industry while preserving the integrity of the animator's work.
Toonz allows artists to capture the emotive quality of their hand-drawn art. It also simplifies and accelerates the production process allowing artists to fast forward through the more tedious steps like inking and painting and focus more on the creative aspects of production. Artists can then augment their work through advanced digital compositing and special effects.
Toonz is used extensively in feature film, commercial, video, and interactive media productions.
Designed by cel animation artists and producers, Toonz is an exposure sheet-driven digital ink and paint program that precisely traces the steps of traditional hand-drawn animation, while giving you all the efficiencies and options of a digitized medium.
Toonz behaves like a traditional toolset, but contains powerful tools that automate time-consuming tasks. Easy to learn, animators can become productive almost immediately. Flexible database management tools provide quick and easy access to your work. Recent improvements include faster render and preview speeds.
Set about four thousand years before Star Wars: Episode I, the game's story will focus on the ancient struggles between the Jedi and the evil Sith. Fans of the Dark Horse Sith series of comics will note that this period in Star Wars history has already been richly developed by the comic books. However, this game will have an entirely new story that currently does not involve any of the characters from the comic books. In this period, the Jedi Knights form a huge and far-reaching order that protects a multitude of planets in a vast republic, as well as unaffiliated, outlying systems. There is no monolithic evil overwhelming the galaxy, as in classic Star Wars, but the Sith, the predecessors of Darth Vadar and the Dark Jedi, are spreading their dark influence.
Could this be the killer app to get Linux on the desktop. wait and see. As for Maya, I saw it on the GDC 2000 and my jaw simply dropped at the awesome visuals. I guess its about time Linux came on to the art/gaming market and captured a fair share. Makes me wonder whether MS would ever release a DirectX version for Linux now:). Who knows, they might..
Slashdot Mirror
In early 1990, the United States Secret Service carried out a nationwide crackdown on hackers which came to be known as Operation Sundevil. The sweep was highly publicized, in an effort to discourage many of the hackers whom it did not target. Naturally, this crackdown had an adverse effect on Phrack magazine. In late December of 1989, Issue 30 was released; a mere three weeks later, Phrack was shut down by the USSS during Operation Sundevil. Over the course of 1990, several attempts were made to re-establish Phrack, however, since they were not done with the consent of the original editors, they were unfocused and not generally accepted by the hacker community.
As we all know Apple stocks took a beating, a severe one at that, couple of days back when it crashed more than 20 points because of its shortcoming in earnings for the 4th quarter. Analysts are hoping that Mac OS X would help Apple to earn its reputation of a survivor again
:)
In the past also Apple had been through severe beatings, but nothing like this. Wired has an article where they have mentioned that OS X might be the only straw it has. Remains to be seen..
Apple however priced the Cube for a price too high for anyone to afford, which made it inaccessible for both novice users and power users. At 1799 a piece it was too high for anyone with a sane mind to afford it, but for its elegance. And that was too silly a reason to fork out 1800 in cash, and it was reported that feature wise it really didnt make a difference from the G4 macs.
Hope apple would get its act together. It would be worth watching. As for me, I am just gonna go ahead and buy a couple of stocks
And starts a new space colony involving monkies writing Windows 2005 code. Gates has firmly stated that 10,000 monkies should be able to put together the Windows 2005 kernel (aptly named as Code Name : Monkey business) in less than 3 years by making available to them 10,000 keyboards and dumb Windows Terminal Clients. Gates suggests that even if they write things that doesnt make sense (which their programmers do in Seattle after taking LSD for lunch) one out of 1000 monkeys should write a valid subroutine in three months. He further stated that he would be staying at Mir himself to avoid any potential Law suits and would screen visitors for Janet Reno look alikes, and from now on would be wearing Face masks resembling Darth Vader to support Slashdot claims that he is really Darth Vader.
In a related news Hackers have decrypted Windows 2000 binary to reveal underlying source code which looks like this :
#include Windows31.h
#include Windows95.h
#include Windows98.h
#include BillRules.h
#include JanetRenosucks.h
for (i=1 to 10000000)
{
//ping linux servers on the network every five seconds to bring them down
//bring up messageboxes telling the user how dumb he is
//scan the users harddrive for childporn and send them to janet reno
//do nothing
}
Msgbox "Your server would selfdestruct in five seconds"
And not because I download music from Napster, which I do not very often owing to the fact that people are not quite open about their private collections like old days. Previously it was quite possible to download pretty much anything that you wanted to, and I use to leave napster running through out the night and see around 300 downloads by the next day. However nowadays, I have found people masquerading 56kb links as T3 and shutting off access to their private collection, while at the same time downloading from others. Thats what napster community has become.
:)
I would pay the amount but I dont really believe that everyone would, because most of the people who download music from napster really dont care about RIAA, Napster and what free digital content is all about. They just wanna download just another mp3 while Napster is still up and running. What Napster really did to the world was just opening up a new way to trade mp3 files. It really didnt care about anything other than that. I respect Napster and the people behind it for creating the first (maybe) Peer to Peer sharing mechanism, and its a sad thing that it was used for piracy. But then thats life. In a similar analogy, the only Ecommerce sites (after all this dot com hype) who makes money are the Porn sites. So its quite humane to take technology and profit from it no matter whats being exchanged and most of the times its quite impossible to define whats legal and whats not.
I would pay 4.95 and I would hope that the court rules against RIAA (I dont care whether they rule in favour of napster) atleast to rip off the masks they been wearing protecting their own interests and not of their musicians. I hope someone would soon come up with a new model where musicians would be able to reach their fans directly and benefit from it. At the same time I think its crap when people say that music should be free. Maybe part of it, but leave that to the musician, he should be the deciding factor, not some 10 yr old kid in his basement
My two cents
Monolithic Cumbersome technology prevailing over Smart Concise solutions...
I aint paying 1000 bucks for Minesweeper :)
Well all the more reason to go for Linux huh...
Bahhh!!! I use Windows 2000 for work.. I was just kidding anyway..
Its true. At one of the Job Posting sites, I remember seeing a poll for Job Satisfaction and 95 percentage were of the opinion that they were not happy with what they are doing. Its quite surprising. I feel that as long as you have a Good Architect and a Manager who listens to his team, the team would stay. I have been in situations where the company wasnt doing so good, but people stayed because of their manager. Loyalty is hence hard to find and come by in the IT job market.
If companies could hire managers who know the different between HTTP and FTP, between Kernel and Shell, could stand up for his team in Management meetings and take a beating for it, could explain in lucid detail to the management about schedule slippages and cover everyones ass and not just his then he would build a team which would stick through thick and thin for him. But from so far I have seen, this particular breed is dying fast. Everyone wants to cover their ass first.
Just providing Nerf gun battles and ping pong tables doesnt motivate people. People motivate people. Good diplomatic Managers tend to motivate people to excel in their work and make them stay. Making them stay back after six everyday and not reward them is begging them to leave. Most of the firms, even the big ones doesnt have a clue as to how to retain people. I would rather choose a firm which has Quake 3 deathmatches every alternate days or Fridays, where my Manager understands what I do and not judge me for my errors, where he first covers my ass and then his if i screw up,is the first one to comment or reward anyone who deserves it.
I havent found one, but being a sucker I am still looking.
I got Pacbell, signed up for it and got it installed within 21 days, though I presume it might be a longer wait if you decide to sign up now, since they have a huge back log. The connection speed, at its peak is a comfortable 144 kbps and I havent had a problem with that. I dont have a Static IP, so I need to login, though even if I keep my connection open it doesnt hurt as very few times I got disconnected. Overall support has been good, and I am paying 40$ per month for the service and I got the equipment and installation free, which I believe is quite normal nowadays.
I had a friend who signed up for Cable modem with AT&T and was told that he would have it by the end of November. Between Cable and DSL, I would choose DSL since we all must have heard the age old notion of Cable being slower since its used by more than one person at the same time . DSL is no different, I must say and speed varies depending on the load on the server.
My two cents
I am not interested in your Grand Father. Well I dont give a damn whether he won a Purple heart in the war. As far as I am concerned, Hitler was not defeated by Americans, he was defeated by the Russians. And your Grand Father was born in Germany and he decided to take arms against your own country men ? Well, He decided to take a stand and make his ground on what he thought was right, regardless of what the rest of the country believed. Well, as for you, I pity you, you never deserve to be his grand child. You deserve to rant like an idiot.
I feel bad for people who are made to leave after 6 years. They made what you see around you, they made a difference. They toiled hard, they slogged their butts for every dollar they earned. They leave this country as a better place, and they deserve some respect. All they demand is some respect, the green card process to be sped up, nothing else. I havent filed for a Green Card, I dont believe US would remain the main industry focus five years down the line, once Europe picks up.
It doesnt make sense for your Congress to cry that theres a shortage and not realise the brain drain happening at the same time. They are taking in 100,000 new people every year by letting 45,000 experienced people walk out of here. That doesnt make sense. And I believe the shortage is hyped, to keep the tech wages lower.
Your nick says everything.. Anonymous coward. You shouldnt be afraid to lose out on a couple of karma points to show what you believe in, you karma whore. But then again, you just proved your point.. :)
Where did you come from my friend ? Where do you belong ? Would you say US ? If so, ask your Father how he came here, or your grandfather ? Your ancestors couldnt have been living here all the time unless they were plucking fruits with chimpanzees, before the first immigrants reached the shore. I assume it was the former. You belong to them
If you have something worthwhile to say, say it, dont rant like an uncouth goat.
I doubt whether this posting would be read by anyone at all, since the amount of posts before me are sheer huge, but anyway I decide to make my point since I believe these are the facts. I currently hold an H1-B and work for a EBusiness Solutions firm(previously a Staff augmentation firm - also known as a Body shopper :)).
:) . I dont think its wrong, but it goes to show that we are just not capable to think alound and make a decision on our own. The irony is I own a Honda myself).
I have been given an opportunity to work here and I am thankful for it. And I do my job to the best of my abilities. I have seen and heard and experienced a lot of wrong committed H1-B holders in this country and the saddest part is that these wrongs are mostly committed by people from the same community, most of the times Indians. I am yet to hear an American milking his employees by not giving him a fair salary, but I could be wrong. But what I have seen and experienced is the following. I have seen people brought here by the truckload, not because of their experience or expertise, but just brains to be sold to someone to make 45 dollars per hour for the employer and to be paid measly 45-55k per year.
I am proud to belong to the indian community, and I must say that 70% of the H1-B holders who come to US are qualified academically or make up for it in terms of their expertise or experience. However, no matter how funny it may sound, I have also heard that people whom havent even touched a keyboard were also brought here in the pretext of being a software engg and made to work on making systems Y2K compliant. I have seen people getting threatened by their employers and being made to work more than 12 hours per day for no over time. Well I have seen cases where in which the employer sweet talks their employees in to doing over time for their own cause without the employees getting benefited.
I dont believe the people who have the guts to speak up, or to start looking for something on their own have to fear anything. A majority of the people here on H1-B are still consultants and not permanent employees of any firms. They need to wake up and realise that they have been kept under a dark cloud of uncertainty and fear, and decide to stand their ground. I dont think its hard to get a permanent job here for anyone with decent communication skills and relevant expertise. I have around 3 to 3.5 years of experience and I have been offered jobs that range from 110k to 130k per annum and I dont believe thats a bad salary to start with. Its just that these people have been kept so long in the dark that they are not willing or able to start looking something on their own. Most of them tend to follow the others (reason why we see so many Hondas and Toyotas being driven by Indians
We need to stand up and demand fair rights and better pay rate. And as mentioned in a post prior to this, once they start paying their employees better, all this shortage would go away.
MSNBC report states that most of the systems which are compromised are Red Hat systems,using a recent exploit, for which patches are available. These compromised systems are surely systems whose admins are either ignorant or crackheads who believes Linux or Red Hat is too secure to be compromised.
This again brings to light the eternal question which begs an answer. Is it the fault of the company behind the OS or the Sys admins who forgets to apply the newly released patches who are responsible for these attacks. My opinion would be the latter.
Any piece of code is liable to exploits, including Windows and *nix, and its quite obvious that the script kiddies behind these attacks do not envisage new exploits, rather piggyback on existing exploits for which users or admins might not have applied the patch. The fault I must say lies with the Admins.
As long as there are systems liable for attack, whether they might be open source or closed, there would be kids who take advantages of the exploits that arise from these systems. Rather than crying foul everytime a new exploit is released, the geek community should make sure to plug these holes, rather than pointing fingers.
As long as we dont plug the holes in the Internet Infrastructure which allows these kind of DDOS attacks, that would be the sanest thing to do.
My two cents
Cudos to the Lady. Universal definitely has to respond to her suit and what I assume is that they might shell out a million or two at the most, but the major share would remain with them. Atleast the judge who ruled in their favour would regret the fact that he took money from one wrong party and gave it another one. Kind of like milking the drug dealers to pay to the mob scenario. Ultimately its the artists who are screwed and atleast now they should realise that the record companies are out to screw them and napster and mp3 are out to screw them too. Someone has to soon come up with a viable business model to take advantage of this situation.
It would have been better if mp3 while admitting to pay damages to Universal had some say in how much money should go to the artists. Or it would have been better if the Court had a say on the matter. I dont mind the artists getting paid for what they create, but I dont see the point in Universal pocketing its profits leaving the artists and the public screwing each other.
Like it or not, Digital content is here to stay. Well, now atleast all those self professed "Copy rights enthusiasts" who vouched for the major Content firms and the poor artists might tuck their tail and shut up.
Everytime theres an article that comes close to mentioning the evil empire, slashdot puts "Bill Vader" out on the right hand corner of the Article. However this time, its the blue IE icon.. Why ?? Did Lord Vader pay Hemos to keep his face away from the public ? Did Microsoft buy Slashdot ? Did Hemos get married to Lord Vaders daughter ? Mysteries abound...
One of the few errors when you buy a MS compliant Toaster from Fry's for 159$.
:)
Whats next ? Vibrators with MS chip enabled within ? hmmm...interesting. I dont think they would come in large sizes and I presume they would either self destruct or deflate since they were made by "MICRO" "SOFT"
My two cents..
Now thats something those geeks out there should be looking at. Are you going to the Linuxworld ? www.linuxworld.com
I found Guru.com to be in the Coremetric partner page, however Guru.com doesnt mention Coremetric at all at their Privacy page. However they do mention DoubleClick, but no mention is made to their partnership with Coremetric or the notorious invisible gifs that might be splattered across their pages.
Someone has to make a stand. We are not mere eyeballs meant to be captured and targeted. I have found these invisible gifs in the huge amount of junk emails that I receive in my hotmail account. I wish Icould just reach in and just wring that stupid's neck who sent it to me. But thanks to the preliminary screening for emails targeted to me through the Bcc option, I atleast dont have them on my inbox. Nowadays I dont even open them, I just block their addresses and move them to the trash can. Regardless of that, I still get around 10 junk emails per day.
The Govt should stop pursuing small time companies like napster and 2600.org and start concentrating on these firms who dont give a dick about privacy and sell individuals like commodities with no qualms about their rights.
I bought the Tshirt from Copyleft a couple of months back and I have been proudly flaunting it eversince. People have come to me and asked me what DeCSS, and I have explained to them in detail as to what the media has twisted to sound like a stealing of Intellectual property. I believe this is how you increase awareness among people about an issue that you believe in.
:).
My other question would be, would I be able to put any kind of source code on my Tshirt or not ? Coz any stupid lawyer could mistake that sourcecode to something proprietary and sue me for it. Where would this end ? Well all this have done is anger the geek community and made sure atleast another hundred would buy the Tshirt and wear it proudly. As for me, I am gonna wear it tomorrow.
This happens to be one of my fav episodes..
.........................
"Yes?" I say, pausing the picture.
"I seem to have accidentally deleted my C.V!" the voice at the other end of the line says.
"You have? What was your username?"
He tells me. What the hell, I AM bored.
"Ah no, you didn't delete it - I did."
"What?"
"I deleted it. It was full of shit! You didn't ever get more than a B- in any of your subjects!"
"Huh?"
"And that crap about being a foreign exchange student, that was your girlfriend and we both know it!"
"Huh?!!"
"Your academic records. I checked them, you were lying.. Besides which, you forgot to include your criminal record.."
"How did y.." He clicks. "It's you isn't it? THE BASTARD OPERATOR FROM HELL!"
"In the flesh, on the phone and in your account.... You shouldn't have called you know. You especially shouldn't have given me your username.." >clicketyclickclicketyclickclickedy click "..change my username back, and..."
"b-b-b.." he blubs, like a stood-up date
"Goodbye now" I say pleasantly, "you've got bags to pack and a life to start over..."
I hang up.
Two seconds later the red phone goes. I pick it up, it's the boss. He mumbles the username of the person I was just talking to, mentions something about a nasty mail message, and utters the words "You know what to do...", with the dots and everything.
Later, inside the Municipal Energy Authority Computer, as I'm modifying the poor pleb's Energy Bill by several zeros, I can't help but think about what lapse of judgement - what act of heinous stupidity - causes them to call. Then, even later, when I'm adding the poor pleb's photo image over the top of the FBI's online "MOST Wanted Armed and Dangerous, SHOOT ON SIGHT" offenders list, I realise I'll probably never know; but then life goes on.
A couple of hours later, as I see the SWAT vehicle roll up outside the poor pleb's apartment I realise that for some, it just doesn't.
But tommorrow is another day.
.......................
I love these guys. SysAdmins have been some of my best friends. But that doesnt mean I call them up and tell them what my username is...heh heh...
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
Soon, we would see newspapers and ignorant print media lamenting about "hackers" launching dos attacks against sites who support open speech and even get away with a couple of snide remarks on how these sites were in turn lauding hackers and blah..blah..blah.
I wish this guys would identify those script kiddies and wipe the floor with their ass. I was looking at the "Know thy enemy" article on rootprompt.org and its quite interesting to see the type of people who does this, and who profess to be hackers. I could imagine "nothing to do" 14 yr old kids, morons who have no better job to do, and people who are trying to prove to the world that they could make an impact on this economy and the internet that fosters it, by bringing it down. Though I would respect the meticulous manner in which some of these attacks are organised, I would definitely love to see them go down. It doesnt make the world a better place, coz there would be still a lot of them out there and you could only do so much.
Slashdot for one, need to make a clear definition as to whats right and whats wrong. If we tell the future generations that pirating is ok, trading pirated software is ok, then theres nothing stopping them from resorting to dos attacks like this, just because they believe what they do is true. This is a never ending question and theres no clear cut answer as to whats right or wrong. The line is thin and it borders on the consciousness of us human beings. Most of the times, we are so hard to identify whats right or wrong. Whats right ? Is trading pirated software right thing to do ? Is napster evil ? Or is it the Music Industry who is licking their fingers ? Who is the winner and whos the loser ? There are no clear rules in this game. As long as there are people who believe that the laws of the land doesnt apply to them, and they could do what they please, we would see more of this. And if they are careful enough to cover their tracks, like anonymous cowards, they would keep on doing it. But the question that begs attention is, are we right in condemning them ? Are we better off than these script kiddies ??
This is not a flame Bait. I wish we could all debate on this.
(From the Article..very interesting. read on) An FPS aiming proxy works like this: The proxy program is run on a networked computer and the player configures it with the address of the server they are going to play on. They then run the FPS game on another machine and connect to the proxy machine, which in turn connects the game to the server, acting just like an Internet packet router.
:)
The only hitch is that the proxy monitors and attempts to decode all of the packets it is routing. The program keeps track of the movements and locations of all the players the server is reporting to the game, building a simple model. When the proxy sees a Fire Weapon command packet issued by the cheating player, it checks the locations and directions of all the players it is currently tracking and picks a target from them. It then inserts a Move/Rotate command packet into the stream going to the server in front of (or into) the Fire Weapon command packet that points the player straight at the selected target. And there you have it: perfect aim without all the mouse twisting. (End of Article)
I just cant help thinking, these guys are so desperate about cheating. All this effort could have been spent on building something productive or learning how to use the mouse with the keyboard and kicking bots ass. Why cant we just learn to lose sometimes. Why is winning so important ? I have had my ass kicked by bots and humans alike, but I jump right back up and rail his sweet ass to kingdom come. Gaming is not all about winning, but its about perspiration that drips from your eyebrows, but you cant wipe it off, because you know your enemy is out there, seeking you out with a railgun combined with the power of Quad Damage, with an ethereal blue shadow to his skin, and you wish you were somewhere else...
Toonz is a complete 2D animation system designed to meet the rigorous production criteria of the modern cel animation industry while preserving the integrity of the animator's work.
Toonz allows artists to capture the emotive quality of their hand-drawn art. It also simplifies and accelerates the production process allowing artists to fast forward through the more tedious steps like inking and painting and focus more on the creative aspects of production. Artists can then augment their work through advanced digital compositing and special effects.
Toonz is used extensively in feature film, commercial, video, and interactive media productions.
Designed by cel animation artists and producers, Toonz is an exposure sheet-driven digital ink and paint program that precisely traces the steps of traditional hand-drawn animation, while giving you all the efficiencies and options of a digitized medium.
Toonz behaves like a traditional toolset, but contains powerful tools that automate time-consuming tasks. Easy to learn, animators can become productive almost immediately. Flexible database management tools provide quick and easy access to your work. Recent improvements include faster render and preview speeds.
Set about four thousand years before Star Wars: Episode I, the game's story will focus on the ancient struggles between the Jedi and the evil Sith. Fans of the Dark Horse Sith series of comics will note that this period in Star Wars history has already been richly developed by the comic books. However, this game will have an entirely new story that currently does not involve any of the characters from the comic books. In this period, the Jedi Knights form a huge and far-reaching order that protects a multitude of planets in a vast republic, as well as unaffiliated, outlying systems. There is no monolithic evil overwhelming the galaxy, as in classic Star Wars, but the Sith, the predecessors of Darth Vadar and the Dark Jedi, are spreading their dark influence.
As on Feb 7th 2000, Maya Batch Renderer ver : 2.5 is qualified for RedHat 6.0. And its about time
p port/pages/qualification_charts/QUAL/may a_linux_2_5.html
:). Who knows, they might..
Ref : http://www.aliaswavefront.com/pages/home/pages/su
Could this be the killer app to get Linux on the desktop. wait and see. As for Maya, I saw it on the GDC 2000 and my jaw simply dropped at the awesome visuals. I guess its about time Linux came on to the art/gaming market and captured a fair share. Makes me wonder whether MS would ever release a DirectX version for Linux now