That's simple, actually. You cannot agree to a contract that you have not yet seen (or heard, in the case of verbal contracts). That's like me saying that by reading this post you have to pay me a million. I can't do that. I have to offer you the opportunity to agree (verbally or in writing) and then allow you to view the post. For example:
By replying to this post and including the phrase "Demonspawn, I'd like to see another reply." you will agree to pay me $100,000 USD for my reply to your reply.
Now if you reply to this post and include that phrase, you will owe me money for whatever reply I choose to give to you, as I have given you the opportunity to agree to the contract before selling you the goods. That is the crucial point... When I buy a shrink-wrapped copy of Word at Best Buy, I exchange $230 for a box with manuals and software inside. At that point I have agreed to no further conditions on the sale. I am bound only by applicable laws at that point, the biggest of which is copyright.
Tell ya what. Next time you buy a piece of software, open yer favorite hex editor and change the EULA to: "1. The company who produced this software package will pay 4 billion USD for installing this software package."
Save the binary and install the package. Now, since you didn't agree to said EULA when you purchaced the software package, you are only bound by the laws of copyright. Under those laws, you are allowed to modifiy that which you purchace, as long as you do not distribute. If the software company's no-longer-existing EULA is binding, then so is yours.
I, and a group of my friends, run a LAN party once a month. Very very very often, one of us will have a new game that they like very much. What do we do? We make coppies, of course.
But the amazing part is what happens next month. By next month, if the game is good enough, half of us have purchaced it. If the game is good enough, and becomes one of our regular games that we play, by the time the price of the game is less than $20, ALL of us have purchaced it.
Do we end up pirating games that we never pay for? Yes. Usually, these are the games that we take home from the party, play for 3 hours, find out that it sucks, and it isn't played at the next LAN.
If the game is worth it, we all buy it. This has happened with Half Life, Ghost Recon, Starcraft, Warcraft III, Medal of Honor, etc. Yes, some of us end up playing the game before we have purchaced it, but we do all still pay for it, the price that we feel is worthy. If it wasn't for the 'piracy' that we commit, I'm sure we would of just stuck the the major few games.
Yes, Men are inherently evil. I figured this out the other night. The socal programing I've been getting from the media finally clicked.
See... I was watching TV the other night. There was one of these community commercials where lil boys were walking up to adult men, and asking to have their attitudes towards women readjusted. It was part of the "end violence against women" campaign.
The very next commerical was for some average family based sitcom with an idiot father and the wife who knows soooo much more than him. Well in the spot for the show, the guy said something stupid, and the woman slaped him upside the head for it, and the laughtrack followed.
So I guess I should just go and get my sexchange now. That way I can finally attone for all of my sins I commit by simply being male.
Been a while since I've done this perticular problem in physics, so I'd like to have it clarified. It is my understanding that given two objects with the same drag cofficent, the one with the greater mass will have a higher terminal velocity. As an example, a baloon filled with Nitrogen will reach terminal velocity at a slower rate of decent (fall slower) than a baloon filled with Krypton. If you can disprove me, please do so.
I will never go for console gaming (seriously that is, I still have a PS2 for when friends come over, but a small selection of games). Why? Because reciently I took my most advanced machine, a whopping 2.5 years old, and made it current for all games short of Doom3/HL2 by purchacing and installing a $200 video card. 1.4GHz / 512MB RAM / 9600 XT gives good framerates in every game I play, and was one hell of a jump from my old TNT 2 Ultra.
It's the same reason I'll probally only ever have my old 486 laptop. It does everything I want to use it for (Network diagnostic tool, router/switch config) and I laugh at my friend who used a laptop as his main gaming machine. Ya, it is a hell of a lot easier to carry to the LAN parties, but around the time I got my $200 card, he had to buy a new $2000+ laptop to keep up.
Bah.. wanted to mod this article, but I found your comment so insightful yet ignorant at the same time that I had to reply.
I had a similar upbringing to yours. When I misbehaved, it was the hand or the belt. I learned quick, wised up, and was able to get out on my own not long after I landed a successful job.
The problem? I've got rugrats of my own now. If I tried to give them a similar upbringing, I'd be in jail for any of the "omfg you DARED to spank your child" laws in existance now.
And we wonder why most children are so out of control.......
We have a trademark on Google. We _MUST_ defend the trademark or else the courts will say is has fallen into common useage (e.g. Xerox, Kleenex). Therefore, we unfortunatly must challenge this guy in court.
I doubt it would be illegal. A lot of the old dialup "Web Accelerators" usto do something similar to this. They would start to download likely next page links once the page had loaded, and then when the user clicked the page would already be half downloaded.
But, let's follow your idea to the logical end. If web ads no longer paid money, there would be a lot of smaller sites that would have to either shut down or start charging for content to cover bandwith costs. Keenspace for comics would likely no longer exist. Many tech review sites would go pay only. Is that the future you wish for the Internet?
I agree that pop-ups and pop-unders are annoying as hell, and I block them as well. But, when I see a banner ad, I just ignore it. The web is not free, content providers need to cover their costs somehow.
The problem with the HIV strat, however, is that unlike some of thier biological counterparts, all computer virii are cureable. Somtimes you have to wipe and reload to do so, but it is still cureable.
I had an extremely deep conversation with a co-worker once about computer virii and life. We came to the conclusion that if we define biological virii as 'life' then we must define computer virii as 'life' as well. They both mutate, they both propigate by infecting hosts. The only main difference we could find was one was carbon based and the other was electron based (we equivilized inactivity due to the computer being shut down with cryogenic stasis of a biological host).
Considering that the US fought the Germans in WWII, the Germans whuped almost all of Europe, and, according to your post, the US would never wage war against anyone capable of a reaonsable fight, then, ergo, anyone in Europe must not be able to put up a reasonable fight.
I calculated it once. Due to the earth's curvature, it falls 6 feet per mile on calm seas (i.e. 'flat').
So if you mount the railgun 60 feet over the surface of the water, you have a 10 mile line of sight, 120' gets you 20 miles. Flight deck from the one carrier I looked up is around 90', so that will get you the ability to fire on another carrier of the same class from up to 14 miles away (to score an under keel hit) 30 miles away (to score any hull hit) or up to 45 miles away if you only want to hit the island.
Not bad ranges:)
P.S. ya... 17 miles for a 6' person standing on deck sounds approximately right
Yes, it's called a dry pair. Before I moved, I had a friend who lived off of the same CO but was too far away to string a ethernet cable. We ended up getting a dry pair inbetween our houses and ran DSL inbetween eachother.
We both had basements, and with 1.4MB/s inbetween us, we'd often have competing fragfest LAN parties(my house vs. his house). Good times:)
I will admit that the US government does make mistakes. I think the biggest was the policy in the 70's and 80's that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" which set us up for several problems.
However, I must fimly disagree with the bulshit line: Fighting violence with violence begets more violence. Let me make it clear for you:
You are the victim of violence (on a national level). You can:
1) Do nothing, appologize to those who struck violence against you. This will make you weak in the eyes of our own people, but most dangerously, in the eyes of other potential violence tatic users. Pretty soon you are getting pretty regular bombings to influce your governmental decisions. You might as well just give up your soverngity to the terrorists. This is the worst solution.
2) Diplomatic solutions. While this is honestly the perfered method, wipe from your mind the belief that this will work in all occasions. "War will exist as long as someone out there belives in something so strongly that they are willing to die for it" --Me In the case of the 9/11 attacks, we already knew this to be the case. The terrorists commited suicide to inflict damage upon us. Therefore, this can quickly removed as a potential solution.
3) You strike back in an inpercise manner. This leads to your belief that violence begets more violence, as the survivors of the orginization will seek revenge, and likely the relatives/close friends of those who were colateral dammage will seek vengance as well. I perfer this to option 1, however.
4) Effective, controled, accurate violence. This works. This works because your enemies are dead. Unfortunatly, this is difficult to acomplish in an absolute state.
Slashdot Mirror
Equipment needed to jack into an SBC access point (the ones they install outside of the house as the demarc at residences):
1 phillips head screwdriver #2
1 telephone able to plug into a RJ11 jack
That's it.
Unless someone spots you, there will be no marks of tampering to suggest someone other than the homeowner made the call.
--Demonspawn
That's simple, actually. You cannot agree to a contract that you have not yet seen (or heard, in the case of verbal contracts). That's like me saying that by reading this post you have to pay me a million. I can't do that. I have to offer you the opportunity to agree (verbally or in writing) and then allow you to view the post. For example:
By replying to this post and including the phrase "Demonspawn, I'd like to see another reply." you will agree to pay me $100,000 USD for my reply to your reply.
Now if you reply to this post and include that phrase, you will owe me money for whatever reply I choose to give to you, as I have given you the opportunity to agree to the contract before selling you the goods. That is the crucial point... When I buy a shrink-wrapped copy of Word at Best Buy, I exchange $230 for a box with manuals and software inside. At that point I have agreed to no further conditions on the sale. I am bound only by applicable laws at that point, the biggest of which is copyright.
--Demonspawn
EULA's are binding?
Tell ya what. Next time you buy a piece of software, open yer favorite hex editor and change the EULA to: "1. The company who produced this software package will pay 4 billion USD for installing this software package."
Save the binary and install the package. Now, since you didn't agree to said EULA when you purchaced the software package, you are only bound by the laws of copyright. Under those laws, you are allowed to modifiy that which you purchace, as long as you do not distribute. If the software company's no-longer-existing EULA is binding, then so is yours.
Think about that for a second.
--Demonspawn
I, and a group of my friends, run a LAN party once a month. Very very very often, one of us will have a new game that they like very much. What do we do? We make coppies, of course.
But the amazing part is what happens next month. By next month, if the game is good enough, half of us have purchaced it. If the game is good enough, and becomes one of our regular games that we play, by the time the price of the game is less than $20, ALL of us have purchaced it.
Do we end up pirating games that we never pay for? Yes. Usually, these are the games that we take home from the party, play for 3 hours, find out that it sucks, and it isn't played at the next LAN.
If the game is worth it, we all buy it. This has happened with Half Life, Ghost Recon, Starcraft, Warcraft III, Medal of Honor, etc. Yes, some of us end up playing the game before we have purchaced it, but we do all still pay for it, the price that we feel is worthy. If it wasn't for the 'piracy' that we commit, I'm sure we would of just stuck the the major few games.
--Demonspawn
Yes, but we do say The President.
--Demonspawn
Yes, Men are inherently evil. I figured this out the other night. The socal programing I've been getting from the media finally clicked.
See... I was watching TV the other night. There was one of these community commercials where lil boys were walking up to adult men, and asking to have their attitudes towards women readjusted. It was part of the "end violence against women" campaign.
The very next commerical was for some average family based sitcom with an idiot father and the wife who knows soooo much more than him. Well in the spot for the show, the guy said something stupid, and the woman slaped him upside the head for it, and the laughtrack followed.
So I guess I should just go and get my sexchange now. That way I can finally attone for all of my sins I commit by simply being male.
--Demonspawn
Actually, works better phrased this way:
;)
Set a patent lawyer a fire and keep him warm for a day.
Set a patent lawyer afire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
Extremly humorous that your post is moded 'flamebait' tho
--Demonspawn
Been a while since I've done this perticular problem in physics, so I'd like to have it clarified. It is my understanding that given two objects with the same drag cofficent, the one with the greater mass will have a higher terminal velocity. As an example, a baloon filled with Nitrogen will reach terminal velocity at a slower rate of decent (fall slower) than a baloon filled with Krypton. If you can disprove me, please do so.
--Demonspawn
I will never go for console gaming (seriously that is, I still have a PS2 for when friends come over, but a small selection of games). Why? Because reciently I took my most advanced machine, a whopping 2.5 years old, and made it current for all games short of Doom3/HL2 by purchacing and installing a $200 video card. 1.4GHz / 512MB RAM / 9600 XT gives good framerates in every game I play, and was one hell of a jump from my old TNT 2 Ultra.
It's the same reason I'll probally only ever have my old 486 laptop. It does everything I want to use it for (Network diagnostic tool, router/switch config) and I laugh at my friend who used a laptop as his main gaming machine. Ya, it is a hell of a lot easier to carry to the LAN parties, but around the time I got my $200 card, he had to buy a new $2000+ laptop to keep up.
--Demonspawn
Bah.. wanted to mod this article, but I found your comment so insightful yet ignorant at the same time that I had to reply.
I had a similar upbringing to yours. When I misbehaved, it was the hand or the belt. I learned quick, wised up, and was able to get out on my own not long after I landed a successful job.
The problem? I've got rugrats of my own now. If I tried to give them a similar upbringing, I'd be in jail for any of the "omfg you DARED to spank your child" laws in existance now.
And we wonder why most children are so out of control.......
--Demonspawn
What they were thinking:
We have a trademark on Google. We _MUST_ defend the trademark or else the courts will say is has fallen into common useage (e.g. Xerox, Kleenex). Therefore, we unfortunatly must challenge this guy in court.
Trademark law is evil in nature.
--Demonspawn
I doubt it would be illegal. A lot of the old dialup "Web Accelerators" usto do something similar to this. They would start to download likely next page links once the page had loaded, and then when the user clicked the page would already be half downloaded.
But, let's follow your idea to the logical end. If web ads no longer paid money, there would be a lot of smaller sites that would have to either shut down or start charging for content to cover bandwith costs. Keenspace for comics would likely no longer exist. Many tech review sites would go pay only. Is that the future you wish for the Internet?
I agree that pop-ups and pop-unders are annoying as hell, and I block them as well. But, when I see a banner ad, I just ignore it. The web is not free, content providers need to cover their costs somehow.
--Demonspawn Armageddon
The problem with the HIV strat, however, is that unlike some of thier biological counterparts, all computer virii are cureable. Somtimes you have to wipe and reload to do so, but it is still cureable.
--Demonspawn
I had an extremely deep conversation with a co-worker once about computer virii and life. We came to the conclusion that if we define biological virii as 'life' then we must define computer virii as 'life' as well. They both mutate, they both propigate by infecting hosts. The only main difference we could find was one was carbon based and the other was electron based (we equivilized inactivity due to the computer being shut down with cryogenic stasis of a biological host).
--Demonspawn
Considering that the US fought the Germans in WWII, the Germans whuped almost all of Europe, and, according to your post, the US would never wage war against anyone capable of a reaonsable fight, then, ergo, anyone in Europe must not be able to put up a reasonable fight.
Logic is a bitch, ain't it?
--Demonspawn
+++
ATH
ATZ
ATDT 18009689474
--Demonspawn
So I am assuming you are going to convert to Islam and make your wife/GF dress in a burka now that the terrorists have a single Marine as a hostage?
It is an unfortunate, but still acceptable, cost.
--Demonspawn
So a terrorist holding a single person hostage should be able to take over a country?
I'm glad you don't run things.
--Demonspawn
I calculated it once. Due to the earth's curvature, it falls 6 feet per mile on calm seas (i.e. 'flat').
:)
So if you mount the railgun 60 feet over the surface of the water, you have a 10 mile line of sight, 120' gets you 20 miles. Flight deck from the one carrier I looked up is around 90', so that will get you the ability to fire on another carrier of the same class from up to 14 miles away (to score an under keel hit) 30 miles away (to score any hull hit) or up to 45 miles away if you only want to hit the island.
Not bad ranges
P.S. ya... 17 miles for a 6' person standing on deck sounds approximately right
--Demonspawn
Yes, it's called a dry pair. Before I moved, I had a friend who lived off of the same CO but was too far away to string a ethernet cable. We ended up getting a dry pair inbetween our houses and ran DSL inbetween eachother.
:)
We both had basements, and with 1.4MB/s inbetween us, we'd often have competing fragfest LAN parties(my house vs. his house). Good times
--Demonspawn
Preinstalled != Free
--Demonspawn
You think there is anything stopping this from happening now?
At least a court order has a longer papertrail than simply bending an ISP's arm.
--Demonspawn
So would you, or would you not have a problem with my deerskin coat?
--Demonspawn
No no NO! Make the "Carrier Droppings" joke!
--Demonspawn
I will admit that the US government does make mistakes. I think the biggest was the policy in the 70's and 80's that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" which set us up for several problems.
However, I must fimly disagree with the bulshit line: Fighting violence with violence begets more violence. Let me make it clear for you:
You are the victim of violence (on a national level). You can:
1) Do nothing, appologize to those who struck violence against you. This will make you weak in the eyes of our own people, but most dangerously, in the eyes of other potential violence tatic users. Pretty soon you are getting pretty regular bombings to influce your governmental decisions. You might as well just give up your soverngity to the terrorists. This is the worst solution.
2) Diplomatic solutions. While this is honestly the perfered method, wipe from your mind the belief that this will work in all occasions. "War will exist as long as someone out there belives in something so strongly that they are willing to die for it" --Me In the case of the 9/11 attacks, we already knew this to be the case. The terrorists commited suicide to inflict damage upon us. Therefore, this can quickly removed as a potential solution.
3) You strike back in an inpercise manner. This leads to your belief that violence begets more violence, as the survivors of the orginization will seek revenge, and likely the relatives/close friends of those who were colateral dammage will seek vengance as well. I perfer this to option 1, however.
4) Effective, controled, accurate violence. This works. This works because your enemies are dead. Unfortunatly, this is difficult to acomplish in an absolute state.
--Demonspawn