What if there is an alien race which has a huge case of xenophobia (due to a previous war or something, who knows)? They have a number of wandering probes that survey the galaxy as possible, but mostly they listen intently for the wailing of new civilizations across the stars (aka: radio waves). After hearing a new threat come into existence they send out the fleets to destroy it. Might take a hundred years or more for them to reach the newbies due to distance or course.
Sure it's a thought with plenty of holes in it, but my random goal of the week is to see how many kooks I can set off. Ever see a guy try to saw down a broadcasting tower?
"They're going to hear us, you have to stop transmitting! Ahhhhh!"
...the person who registered soon as they opened didn't say something very silly like "First Post!" and forget the other 5998 words their far descendants might read.
Actually, it looks like Intel might have known those chips were less than perfectly stable. In the review Tom had mentioned the motherboards having very conservative settings. He made a good hypothesis that these might have been used to offset stability issues.
Not only does Tom give you the facts, but he often has a "gut instinct" or opinion about things included in the review. Always a pleasure to find someone willing to say what they think based on their experience.
I can understand the frustration with being constantly exposed to commercials. The problem is that those commercials pay for the programming, everything from the worker's pay to buying equipment. Guess what funds websites? All those banner ads you see. Important sites would never be anything like they are today without advertising money flowing into the coffers - this one included.
The alternative is pretty much the business model used by cable. So you want CNN? $10 per month. It gets to be impressive if you are someone who watches ten or twelve different channels.
Let's steal a gallon of this, sneak onto Kevin Bacon's estate, and then inject him with it. Him or Rodney Dangerfield, though I don't think Rodney would notice the difference.
The problem is that some kids will decide to have a make-out party in a mall furniture store (or something like that, this is *ahm* hypothetical of course) and when the robots go berserk they will be massacred.
What in the world made you put Australia and Canada before Russia? Should the US be on guard against APBs (Armored Polar Bears) or anti-aircraft kangaroos?
They might have financial woes, but do few entities ready to file Chapter 11 can lob a nuke into your backyard.
I very much agree with you, in running a movie review site I often receive films from studios or PR reps. If one ever sent me a contract that had to be signed before receiving a movie for review I would outright refuse. In any correspondence it is implicit that while I will post a review, I can not say it will be full of glowing praise. My only guarantee is for it to be my honest reaction after viewing the film at least twice.
Unfortunately someone doing hardware reviews for high priced items like leading edge video cards has more financial concerns than a movie reviewer. A DVD might cost $20 and a VHS $10, while a brand new 3D card is $200 - $250.
I'm not saying it's right, but the benefit of not spending ungodly amounts of cash has to make that carrot (nVidia dangles) taste better.
A little off topic, but this should be of interest to some.
Hosting a website on a Linux box running on an SDSL connection is the cheap way to go, for around $275 you get 1.1mbps (best deal in the present area) and unlimited traffic. This is critical when you run an independent site which transfers large amounts of data (75GB monthly).
In steps Scour, unfortunately they index your site and suddenly a mass of people are downloading mpegs (and only mpegs) from you. Nobody is actually visiting you, nor reading your content, and that normally smooth 1.1mbps connection is choking.
At the time there was no automated way to easily remove the site from Scour, nor could I find what the Scour robot was named. Most search engines' robots are listed on one FAQ or another, so it's easy to set your robots.txt file for them not to index your site. You end up shooting them a frantic email asking to be removed ASAP (since you're experiencing a DDOS for all purposes) and parsing through your server log to try and find that pesky robot's name.
The heart of the matter is that while Scour may be one stop shopping for everyone it's a hidden pitfall for websites - people download anything you have up, but never actually visit your page or make an impression on that ad counter.
I think it is enforceable, due to the fact that he seems to "act" the same way every time. So the next time his signature bastardness pops up they start tracking him down. It might take time and money, but Ebay has plenty of both.
If they're smart they'll just be the high bidder on one of his auctions or get the cooperation of someone who put an item up that he high bids for. "Okay, so where do we send the check?"
I run a website and a little bit ago ran into problems with a kid posting idiocy to the Phorum message board (though I was secondary to his main target of annoying another b-movie website). Imagine ten postings that say nothing more than "F**k this, f**k that, bwhahahaha." He was an AOLer so I used AIM to contact him one night. Little brat sat there bragging about being able to annoy people with impunity. It's infuriating to encounter someone who has no respect for others when they think they can get away with it. Being a rather large Marine I'm certain he wouldn't act that way to my face, but over the Internet he feels free to be a bastard.
Sent complaints to AOL to get his account canceled, but he soon made a mistake by using a school (Jr High) computer to make his postings. After that it was very easy to contact the network admin with the IP address info and suddenly he became a very apologetic little boy with much less free time on his hands.
Sounds like the subject Ebay abuser conducted himself in much the same way, flouting their attempts to ban him and only trying to be a nuisance. After repeated attempts to handle it on their own by deleting his account and telling him to go away Ebay is laying down the law. They are establishing a case for pressing charges/suing for damages if he ever pulls this again.
While it might fall under "selling personal information" I think you really meant to post over here.
Besides, why should someone be afraid to stand behind their opinions and views? If I say that Microsoft sucks then let it be known that I think Microsoft sucks. Anonymous criticism has so little impact anyway. Now saying that about the mob or an employer might have other considerations.
To get back on topic, if Toysmart is being bought out as a whole by some other company I can see them having some ground to stand on. Selling off just the database of customer information to someone would be wrong though.
...is when we all wake up and the heating and air industry has been subsidized by the government. To lower costs they use an army of Bob Hoskins clones.
That subject line was the first thing that crossed my mind upon reading this too. Collisions in a car at 25mph are going to result in little damage (so long as you are wearing your seltbelt), but stumble at that speed and I don't relish the idea of skidding on my face. Wearing the same protective gear as a rollerblader might work though.
He should find that guy who created the bear suit, I would love to watch him hopping around a Kodiak.
You're probably talking about "Deadly Eyes," which is remake of "The Killer Shrews." Try and find that second title if you get a chance, it stars a very young Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane along with lots of dogs wearing carpet scraps and "shrew" masks. How do you get a dog to wear a mask anyway?
Other rodent on the rampage films: Food of the Gods Food of the Gods II Graveyard Shift Rats Burial of the Rats (vixens more than rats really) Of Unknown Origin Ben Willard
My best guess is they must be annoyed at using time and (probably human) resources to try and collect fees for registering domains.
Consider the following: You and your buddies are drinking one night and on a whim decide to register www.coupleofdrunkguys.com, after a couple of interesting side trips due to typing errors you do so. All in all it probably took you 5-10 minutes to act on your impulsive thought. Later you decide it was a bad idea, can't find affordable hosting, get tired of running a site for alcoholics, and so on and so on. It's only been a week or two so you decide to not pay the fee. Poor Network Solutions (annoying as they are) gets stuck with a multitude of people doing this. Devoting massive time and resources to send emails and contact collection agencies finally annoyed some manager, so this is an attractive way to recoup losses.
I personally can not blame them, so long as an honest attempt was made to contact whoever registered the domain - including via snail mail.
What in the heck happened to my second "L?" Are two of them in a row not allowed by/.? Just odd, especially since I spell checked the entire thing. We'll see if they come up this time.
Granted that companies and big bands are fighting any sort of digital transfer medium and charge entirely too much for CDs, but...
...what I'm seeing is a huge amount of creativity (and original thought) put into circumventing a tracking effort. When you come down to it the only concerned parties would be someone who has 3087 mp3 files on their computer, but does not own even 1 album. Not exactly above reproach.
Everyone wants the price of buying music to go down, seeing a way to distribute it online would be a huge bonus as well. The obvious solution is not to purchase music until the Gods of Rock do so. The obvious problem is not enough people are willing to do that, hence our current conundrum.
What is the solution? Nothing easy for certain. Compiling a database of the music people own (so a central point could keep track of who is allowed to download what) is unrealistic. Unfortunately trusting your average human to work on the honor system is unrealistic as well. When a reckoning is finally arrived at I'm betting everyone will be unhappy, but one side much more so than the other.
I run an online movie review site and include multimedia clips, only once in two years has a representative of some studio wrote me to remove a film review.
Granted most b-movie distributors are delighted to have the free advertisement, even if it is negative, but I was prepared for someone to complain. While deciding how to start the site I watched television reviews, especially Siskell and Ebert, to see how long the video clips were. In addition, before a review was ever posted, I put up a page about the Fair Use Law.
Armed with that I sent the studio rep a reply, pointing him to my Fair Use Law page. It has been over a year, either they're a bit behind on email or dealing with anyone of an informed nature scares them. Plus it is hosted off a Linux box in a friend's house, hanging off a DSL line, which prevents a nervous webhost from ditching me at first sign of trouble.
Final thoughts...why does going to the movies cost $8.50 these days? The modern league of actors and directors came about due to, among other reasons, producers wanting "professionals." With someone like that box office returns are guarenteed right? Unfortunately "Batman and Robin" and "The Avengers" pretty well disprove that idea. Let me pay $3.00 to watch the efforts of some New Zealand kid (filmed over a period of 4 years on 16mm) and my chances of being entertained are pretty darn good.
I ran into a problem along the same vein with Maryland's Dept of Motor Vehicles. My 1969 Camaro was registered in DE. After having the tag around 6 months I received notification from a collection agency in CA that parking fines were overdue for that tag. Considering the violation was over two years old and for a jeep (exactly - what the heck?) I sent them a letter that I had been issued my tag only 6 months before and owned an entirely different vehicle, providing a nice suggestion they find out who was issued the tag at the time it was ticketed.
So what do I get in response? A threatening form letter along with instructions to prove I was not the guilty party. My second letter had a copy of all the correspondence up to this point attached and was a single sheet of white paper with the following words: "You are morons."
You know who might benefit from open sourcing their drivers and firmware? Some company who is behind in terms of quality/stability for their product due to less than optimal drivers - or even a new firm.
Unfortunately I am certain quite a few (companies who could gain from this approach) are nervous after watching Netscape's long gestation period. Granted that a web browser is a huge effort compared to a driver, perhaps a spin-off from one of the open source software companies would be more tractable. Long live the Red Hat/FreeBSD modem!
I honestly can not see a successful and profitable firm with matured software opening up their product. Companies who are leaving the business world doing so (if it would not violate another company's rights) would be fantastic, unfortunately they're often just going through the motions of closing shop.
You beat me to the punch, IDG is only playing the bully in this scenario. One would expect their lawyers to be competent enough to recognize a nonprofit website or email (apparently they took offense to a mailing list email sent with "for dummies" in the subject) as noncommercial and exempt from the trademark law. When their nasty form letter lands in your email send them a reply. Be rude, be sarcastic, or be polite, but let them know you are familiar with the applicable laws. Andrew Borntreger
Slashdot Mirror
Notice it is called the ":Cat" and this translates into "Colon Cat." They certainly are anal...
Andrew Borntreger
What if there is an alien race which has a huge case of xenophobia (due to a previous war or something, who knows)? They have a number of wandering probes that survey the galaxy as possible, but mostly they listen intently for the wailing of new civilizations across the stars (aka: radio waves). After hearing a new threat come into existence they send out the fleets to destroy it. Might take a hundred years or more for them to reach the newbies due to distance or course.
Sure it's a thought with plenty of holes in it, but my random goal of the week is to see how many kooks I can set off. Ever see a guy try to saw down a broadcasting tower?
"They're going to hear us, you have to stop transmitting! Ahhhhh!"
Andrew Borntreger
...the person who registered soon as they opened didn't say something very silly like "First Post!" and forget the other 5998 words their far descendants might read.
Andrew Borntreger
I'm sorry, but those were previously awarded to a British Neanderthal named "Oog-Oog" and God respectively.
Thank goodness God doesn't ask for licensing fees, though I guess all his would have expired by now...
Andrew Borntreger
Actually, it looks like Intel might have known those chips were less than perfectly stable. In the review Tom had mentioned the motherboards having very conservative settings. He made a good hypothesis that these might have been used to offset stability issues.
Not only does Tom give you the facts, but he often has a "gut instinct" or opinion about things included in the review. Always a pleasure to find someone willing to say what they think based on their experience.
Andrew Borntreger
I can understand the frustration with being constantly exposed to commercials. The problem is that those commercials pay for the programming, everything from the worker's pay to buying equipment. Guess what funds websites? All those banner ads you see. Important sites would never be anything like they are today without advertising money flowing into the coffers - this one included.
The alternative is pretty much the business model used by cable. So you want CNN? $10 per month. It gets to be impressive if you are someone who watches ten or twelve different channels.
Andrew Borntreger
Let's steal a gallon of this, sneak onto Kevin Bacon's estate, and then inject him with it. Him or Rodney Dangerfield, though I don't think Rodney would notice the difference.
Andrew Borntreger
The problem is that some kids will decide to have a make-out party in a mall furniture store (or something like that, this is *ahm* hypothetical of course) and when the robots go berserk they will be massacred.
Not that it ever happened before.
Andrew Borntreger
What in the world made you put Australia and Canada before Russia? Should the US be on guard against APBs (Armored Polar Bears) or anti-aircraft kangaroos?
They might have financial woes, but do few entities ready to file Chapter 11 can lob a nuke into your backyard.
Andrew Borntreger
I very much agree with you, in running a movie review site I often receive films from studios or PR reps. If one ever sent me a contract that had to be signed before receiving a movie for review I would outright refuse. In any correspondence it is implicit that while I will post a review, I can not say it will be full of glowing praise. My only guarantee is for it to be my honest reaction after viewing the film at least twice.
Unfortunately someone doing hardware reviews for high priced items like leading edge video cards has more financial concerns than a movie reviewer. A DVD might cost $20 and a VHS $10, while a brand new 3D card is $200 - $250.
I'm not saying it's right, but the benefit of not spending ungodly amounts of cash has to make that carrot (nVidia dangles) taste better.
Andrew Borntreger
A little off topic, but this should be of interest to some.
Hosting a website on a Linux box running on an SDSL connection is the cheap way to go, for around $275 you get 1.1mbps (best deal in the present area) and unlimited traffic. This is critical when you run an independent site which transfers large amounts of data (75GB monthly).
In steps Scour, unfortunately they index your site and suddenly a mass of people are downloading mpegs (and only mpegs) from you. Nobody is actually visiting you, nor reading your content, and that normally smooth 1.1mbps connection is choking.
At the time there was no automated way to easily remove the site from Scour, nor could I find what the Scour robot was named. Most search engines' robots are listed on one FAQ or another, so it's easy to set your robots.txt file for them not to index your site. You end up shooting them a frantic email asking to be removed ASAP (since you're experiencing a DDOS for all purposes) and parsing through your server log to try and find that pesky robot's name.
The heart of the matter is that while Scour may be one stop shopping for everyone it's a hidden pitfall for websites - people download anything you have up, but never actually visit your page or make an impression on that ad counter.
Here is a FAQ on search engine robots for those interested. The name of Scour.net's robot is: "SCOUR"
Andrew Borntreger
I think it is enforceable, due to the fact that he seems to "act" the same way every time. So the next time his signature bastardness pops up they start tracking him down. It might take time and money, but Ebay has plenty of both.
If they're smart they'll just be the high bidder on one of his auctions or get the cooperation of someone who put an item up that he high bids for. "Okay, so where do we send the check?"
Andrew Borntreger
I run a website and a little bit ago ran into problems with a kid posting idiocy to the Phorum message board (though I was secondary to his main target of annoying another b-movie website). Imagine ten postings that say nothing more than "F**k this, f**k that, bwhahahaha." He was an AOLer so I used AIM to contact him one night. Little brat sat there bragging about being able to annoy people with impunity. It's infuriating to encounter someone who has no respect for others when they think they can get away with it. Being a rather large Marine I'm certain he wouldn't act that way to my face, but over the Internet he feels free to be a bastard.
Sent complaints to AOL to get his account canceled, but he soon made a mistake by using a school (Jr High) computer to make his postings. After that it was very easy to contact the network admin with the IP address info and suddenly he became a very apologetic little boy with much less free time on his hands.
Sounds like the subject Ebay abuser conducted himself in much the same way, flouting their attempts to ban him and only trying to be a nuisance. After repeated attempts to handle it on their own by deleting his account and telling him to go away Ebay is laying down the law. They are establishing a case for pressing charges/suing for damages if he ever pulls this again.
I say more power to them.
Andrew Borntreger
While it might fall under "selling personal information" I think you really meant to post over here.
Besides, why should someone be afraid to stand behind their opinions and views? If I say that Microsoft sucks then let it be known that I think Microsoft sucks. Anonymous criticism has so little impact anyway. Now saying that about the mob or an employer might have other considerations.
To get back on topic, if Toysmart is being bought out as a whole by some other company I can see them having some ground to stand on. Selling off just the database of customer information to someone would be wrong though.
Andrew Borntreger
...is when we all wake up and the heating and air industry has been subsidized by the government. To lower costs they use an army of Bob Hoskins clones.
Andrew Borntreger
That subject line was the first thing that crossed my mind upon reading this too. Collisions in a car at 25mph are going to result in little damage (so long as you are wearing your seltbelt), but stumble at that speed and I don't relish the idea of skidding on my face. Wearing the same protective gear as a rollerblader might work though.
He should find that guy who created the bear suit, I would love to watch him hopping around a Kodiak.
Andrew Borntreger
You're probably talking about "Deadly Eyes," which is remake of "The Killer Shrews." Try and find that second title if you get a chance, it stars a very young Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane along with lots of dogs wearing carpet scraps and "shrew" masks. How do you get a dog to wear a mask anyway?
Other rodent on the rampage films:
Food of the Gods
Food of the Gods II
Graveyard Shift
Rats
Burial of the Rats (vixens more than rats really)
Of Unknown Origin
Ben
Willard
Andrew Borntreger
You think that is bad? Their own domain has been expired for about 2 months...
Registrant:
Network Solutions, Inc. (NETWORKSOLUTIONS5-DOM)
505 Huntmar Park Drive
Herndon, VA 20170
US
Domain Name: NETWORKSOLUTIONS.COM
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
Network Solutions, Inc. (NSOL-NOC) noc@NETSOL.COM
Network Solutions, Inc.
505 Huntmar Park Drive
Herndon, VA 20170
US
703-742-4777
Billing Contact:
idNames, Accounting (IA90-ORG) accounting@IDNAMES.COM
idNames from Network Solutions, Inc
440 Benmar
Suite #3325
Houston, TX 77060
US
703-742-4777
Fax- - 281-447-1160
Record last updated on 20-May-2000.
Record expires on 27-Apr-2010.
Record created on 27-Apr-1998.
Database last updated on 21-Jun-2000 20:32:18 EDT.
Andrew Borntreger
My best guess is they must be annoyed at using time and (probably human) resources to try and collect fees for registering domains.
Consider the following:
You and your buddies are drinking one night and on a whim decide to register www.coupleofdrunkguys.com, after a couple of interesting side trips due to typing errors you do so. All in all it probably took you 5-10 minutes to act on your impulsive thought. Later you decide it was a bad idea, can't find affordable hosting, get tired of running a site for alcoholics, and so on and so on. It's only been a week or two so you decide to not pay the fee. Poor Network Solutions (annoying as they are) gets stuck with a multitude of people doing this. Devoting massive time and resources to send emails and contact collection agencies finally annoyed some manager, so this is an attractive way to recoup losses.
I personally can not blame them, so long as an honest attempt was made to contact whoever registered the domain - including via snail mail.
Andrew Borntreger
What in the heck happened to my second "L?" Are two of them in a row not allowed by /.? Just odd, especially since I spell checked the entire thing. We'll see if they come up this time.
Andrew Borntreger
Granted that companies and big bands are fighting any sort of digital transfer medium and charge entirely too much for CDs, but...
...what I'm seeing is a huge amount of creativity (and original thought) put into circumventing a tracking effort. When you come down to it the only concerned parties would be someone who has 3087 mp3 files on their computer, but does not own even 1 album. Not exactly above reproach.
Everyone wants the price of buying music to go down, seeing a way to distribute it online would be a huge bonus as well. The obvious solution is not to purchase music until the Gods of Rock do so. The obvious problem is not enough people are willing to do that, hence our current conundrum.
What is the solution? Nothing easy for certain. Compiling a database of the music people own (so a central point could keep track of who is allowed to download what) is unrealistic. Unfortunately trusting your average human to work on the honor system is unrealistic as well. When a reckoning is finally arrived at I'm betting everyone will be unhappy, but one side much more so than the other.
Andrew Borntreger
I run an online movie review site and include multimedia clips, only once in two years has a representative of some studio wrote me to remove a film review.
Granted most b-movie distributors are delighted to have the free advertisement, even if it is negative, but I was prepared for someone to complain. While deciding how to start the site I watched television reviews, especially Siskell and Ebert, to see how long the video clips were. In addition, before a review was ever posted, I put up a page about the Fair Use Law.
Armed with that I sent the studio rep a reply, pointing him to my Fair Use Law page. It has been over a year, either they're a bit behind on email or dealing with anyone of an informed nature scares them. Plus it is hosted off a Linux box in a friend's house, hanging off a DSL line, which prevents a nervous webhost from ditching me at first sign of trouble.
Final thoughts...why does going to the movies cost $8.50 these days? The modern league of actors and directors came about due to, among other reasons, producers wanting "professionals." With someone like that box office returns are guarenteed right? Unfortunately "Batman and Robin" and "The Avengers" pretty well disprove that idea. Let me pay $3.00 to watch the efforts of some New Zealand kid (filmed over a period of 4 years on 16mm) and my chances of being entertained are pretty darn good.
Andrew Borntreger
I ran into a problem along the same vein with Maryland's Dept of Motor Vehicles. My 1969 Camaro was registered in DE. After having the tag around 6 months I received notification from a collection agency in CA that parking fines were overdue for that tag. Considering the violation was over two years old and for a jeep (exactly - what the heck?) I sent them a letter that I had been issued my tag only 6 months before and owned an entirely different vehicle, providing a nice suggestion they find out who was issued the tag at the time it was ticketed.
So what do I get in response? A threatening form letter along with instructions to prove I was not the guilty party. My second letter had a copy of all the correspondence up to this point attached and was a single sheet of white paper with the following words: "You are morons."
Haven't heard from them in 4 years.
Andrew Borntreger
You know who might benefit from open sourcing their drivers and firmware? Some company who is behind in terms of quality/stability for their product due to less than optimal drivers - or even a new firm.
Unfortunately I am certain quite a few (companies who could gain from this approach) are nervous after watching Netscape's long gestation period. Granted that a web browser is a huge effort compared to a driver, perhaps a spin-off from one of the open source software companies would be more tractable. Long live the Red Hat/FreeBSD modem!
I honestly can not see a successful and profitable firm with matured software opening up their product. Companies who are leaving the business world doing so (if it would not violate another company's rights) would be fantastic, unfortunately they're often just going through the motions of closing shop.
Andrew Borntreger
You beat me to the punch, IDG is only playing the bully in this scenario. One would expect their lawyers to be competent enough to recognize a nonprofit website or email (apparently they took offense to a mailing list email sent with "for dummies" in the subject) as noncommercial and exempt from the trademark law. When their nasty form letter lands in your email send them a reply. Be rude, be sarcastic, or be polite, but let them know you are familiar with the applicable laws.
Andrew Borntreger