Left to their own devices the majority of humanity will slump into an eternal ritual where every moment of their lives is entirely predictable from the greetings that their co-workers give as they walk into the office to the format, outcomes and even dialog of their favorite shows.
Hahahah...someone actually gets it. Thanks for this post. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one.
There is another thing that the few people who actually think can do. It is to exploit the rest of society. Sure, I'm working in a tech related job, and I see how pointless it is (which I remind my coworkers of a lot) but noone else seems to understand. Even though I am exploiting the system and making a lot of money for such a useless job as designing interfaces to databases and such, I do think that the important people don't get paid enough at all. I think for example, teachers should be the highest paid of us all, so we could encourage more intelligent people to bring up the kids in the world as thinkers instead of just sheep. I honestly have no clue as to why people just seem to not have more than their brain stem intact. I wish I knew why the majority of people are little more than animals. There are so few sentient beings among us that it's nice to see someone else that sees life similarly to how I do.
P.S. - If you are reading this and are a moderator or a flamer and don't understand this, don't mark it down, do as the moderator guidelines suggests and mark up something that you think is of good quality. I really don't care about the whole "karma" system, but it's nice to have posts that people can actually read instead of 0 or -1.
It's about the only thing that keeps us in control of our environments. If everything is black-boxed, we're at the mercy of faceless corporations and their faceless products.
Don't forget the faceless criminals that could use this technology against us by finding some simple exploits, they decide to steal our credit card numbers from an e-commerce site...
If it wasn't for people that spread this information through things like bugtraq, we'd be fucked. We have to keep the companies that make products in check. You don't go out and buy a car and aren't allowed to look under the hood or fix your own car.
Unfortunately, laws like the DMCA were made without looking at similar situations in the regular world. There are a few things unique to the internet that can't be explained, but reverse engineering is not one of them. It will be the downfall of our economy that these companies are relying on legal means to ensure they make money, rather than actually making a decent product.
Another point, is that in the world of computers, accessories (left vague intentionally) is a big market as well. Those iOpeners are a great example. Some people did minor modifications, which would be considered reverse engineering by legal means I believe. This cheap little device's sales went up tremendously due to this little hack. Unfortunately for the company, they had a stupid way of trying to sell them and didn't make any money off of them. However, if they were to sell these things and offer an additional kit that contains the hard drive and is supported and such, they would have made a fortune probably. It's restrictions that make a lack of selection for consumers, and all the regulations against the consumers will only serve to the marketplace.
OFF TOPIC PART: I was just recently a moderator, and I was hoping there would be another H1-B type article like I love to argue with the Xenophobes about. Unfortunately one hasn't come out yet, and I didn't get to use any of my 5 points to further my personal goals and I moderated fairly. Where is the fun is that?
In this situation, what is needed is citizenship. These people shouldn't come live here for six years then leave, that is bad on our country. We need these skilled people to stay here and boost our economy. What the government is doing here is simply training people here to do the tech work, then sending them out into the world so that the U.S. will not be at all dominant in the technology field in the future. I know this may be a long ways off, but I hope that instead of having temporary people here, we end up keeping these quality immigrants.
Perhaps we should send some of these crack smoking welfare recipients to the other countries and clean out ours a bit. I'd much rather have a hard working person from India that is willing to work for a living and participate in our economy, than some trailer trash/ghetto trash type individuals that just want to pop out babies to get more money that they steal from hard working people, including the H-1B visa holding people. By the way, I don't want this to be interpreted as racist because I said "trailer trash" or "ghetto trash" as I realize that the amount of melanin in one's skin doesn't make a difference in the amount of laziness. I was just giving examples.:o)
I have only worked a few jobs dealing with I.T. in my life at this point, but it is definitely true. Most of the managers I have met, whether for I.S. or other fields, are not properly trained, and they couldn't get any other sort of job so they got the type of work they could.
A big reason for this is that it is so easy to get an MBA. It does require work to get an MBA, but it is not as difficult as Computer Science, Law School, etc. Basically the problem is that a team of people are working at a job...someone should be the lead, and eventually that person can become a manager if they wish. That way they will know the process of the company, the members of the team, other contacts and tricks they have found while working there as a peon.
Unfortunately, in the real world, the management often comes from somewhere else, doesn't know anything about what their people are doing or how they work, and come in and cause tension. Also, most of the managers I have known have problems dealing with people in a diplomatic way, and they lack basic logic skills that are required to function in a business environment. When the managers are internal, they are usually sent to MBA school where they are taught what appears to be incorrect techniques and methods against common sense so they change to be incompetant at their job as well. Also, these people getting their MBA's are doing so because their management treats them badly and they think they can move up because of that. When they still get treated badly after getting their MBA, they go to another company and become an out of touch manager, or just decide management is not for them and that they will stay a programmer/admin/etc.
What Corporate America needs to realize is that I am more important than my boss, or his boss. It is harder to find someone with my skills, and so I should get paid more than the director and have better benefits. The problem is that we are organized in a pyramid according to who controls more people and the pay scale is adjusted for that. In reality, the importance of people would be better designed as a parabola. Us programmers and such that actually do the work are important and necessary for the company to survive. At the same time, the people on the very top that make the decisions are important as they provide guidance for the company. Middle management, for the most part, are useless individuals that only serve to water down and corrupt the communications between the workers and the board...
Personally, I am planning to work for a small company soon. There will be less benefits, but, at the same time it is a better quality of life when I can directly talk to the owner of the business and understand the direction the company should take, as well as the work that I should do.
I use them in Atlanta, Georgia and get great service. Occasionally there are routing problems, but I have only had those about 3 times in the past two months I have used them. Also, their tech support is 50/50...I always get a human within the first two minutes, but sometimes I think they give the janitor a phone and a script to read. Overall I am very happy with them and their product.
You have the problem of who guards the guardians. The backdoors are OK as long as the NSA can be trusted not to abuse them by exploiting them when not appropriate. But can you trust the guardians? Who guards the guardians?
I don't think this is a good thing at all. Of course, it's getting to the point of them requiring us to have this software and it will be completely treading on our constitutional rights as U.S. citizens...nevermind how illegal this should be to do to the rest of the world. I see it as search and siezure of my personal data, also, if this backdoor uses up any space on my hard drive, any processing or memory power, then it is also illegally forcing me to house government troops on my property (a bit of a stretch, but still true.) I'm sure that we could also say that they are pressuring us against speaking freely online because we know they are "watching" us. Hmmm...let's just say that it's very obvious that the NSA is doing all they can to take away the Bill of Rights from U.S. citizens...I see this as treason, and I think everyone in the NSA deserves to be lined up against the wall and shot.
NTFS sucks. I run NT at home and if I used NTFS not only would it be unreadable from linux, it would also be unreadable from my windows95 partition. The thing is, we all have those MS-DOS tools that we would want to run on our NT drives, but can't if you use NTFS. There are advantages to using it if you have a fast machine that acts as a fileserver (file auditing is possible with NTFS) but at most places I worked, the C: was FAT while the raid drives were NTFS. Also, it won't matter if you can't read NTFS if you are on a network as samba should take care of that little problem, so this seems to only affect users in certain situations as far as I can tell.
1) Users with multiple OS's on one machine.
2) Users who wish to have one of those linux versions that run off of a floppy disk (I don't remember any for linux, just picobsd for bsd)
3) Someone moving hard drives and wishes to be able to read their NTFS disk in linux.
There doesn't seem to be any real loss here, except for Micro$oft. It can give them bad PR for doing what seems to be actively threatening people that develop linux products. It's nothing new, and doesn't matter that much...even if some drivers were written, M$ would then change the way NTFS works and come out with a newer version that doesn't work with the linux drivers. It's nothing new.
Ok...look at who the majority of people doing these DoS attacks are. Normally they are teenage boys who's hormones are going wild. This is not always the case but it is a safe bet that it is true over 50% of the time. So...here is the solution to prevent these kids from doing DoS attacks:
1) Legalize drugs.
2) Legalize prostitution.
3) Create a welfare type program for those who do not get enough sex or need to do drugs in order to not use the computer.
That should take care of just about all the problems in society. You're welcome.
I do know the difference between 95, CE and NT. In fact, my machine at home runs 95, NT Workstation, and SuSE linux. Also, I did take some classes for NT and such, and I've been a systems administrator for NT, various unices, and a few mainframes that run their own OS's. So, the point is, I was being sarcastic. Laugh at my joke and move on. Personally I don't like getting blue screens whether it is the "System is busy. Press Crtl Alt Del" type dialog of 95, or the authentic BSOD from NT with the hex crap all over the screen. I've seen CE and tried it out, and I don't like it. Desktop operating systems (more specifically a gui, which M$ ties in to their OS too much) are not meant for handhelds in my opinion, although it could work with linux if you have a small enough distro and don't have to run X. It sounds like that is what is going on here but I don't know enough about this device...oh...back to the parody part. The point is that I was making fun of all the people that hack their devices to run linux. It's a cool idea but sometimes a bit silly.
I feel like I just explained a joke to the paranoid android. What was his name? Marvin?
Well, since it's common for people to want to hack their devices that run other OS's to run linux, can we run windows on this thing? I sometimes get the GSOD on my palm pilot, I'm really looking forward to being able to expand to a BSOD on another piece of equipment. It would enable me to complain about microsoft anywhere that I can't take my laptop to. I can be on a hike in the middle of the mountains, and be able to yell, "GOD DAMN YOU MICROSOFT!!!" when I get a blue screen on my pda and get to hear the echos going throughout the valleys.
On a side note, slashdot and Ron Bacardi do not mix very well.
From the article: While the FBI refuses to comment on specific products, spokeswoman Chris Watney confirmed that the information is all the bureau is interested in. How they get it, as long as it's legal and complete, doesn't matter, she said.
So it appears to me that the FBI has no problem with ISP's using this software. At least that's the way I interpret it. If this is so, then there's no problem here that I can see. Yes, carnivore may have done more than this software does, but the FBI is backed into a hole, and since they claim that they only need specific information, which this software provides, then we win this battle.
For you conspiracy buffs out there, this may change in the future when they come out with "Carnivore ME" that has enhanced features that they claim are proprietary and can't legally be reverse engineered in the U.S. thanks to stupid laws passed like the DMCA and such.
I agree. I just moved to the northern part of Atlanta recently and have my own apartment with a DSL router (telocity.com is great in the Atlanta area, although I do have minor routing problems every once in a while) and about 3 PC's and a hub. I'm working on setting up my lan so I can use all of them on the DSL connection (gotta get linux to recognize my new damn NIC) and then I will have a truly geek apartment of my own. There's only one person I will share it with, but she hasn't done much with unix so it would be my responsibility to maintain the network. It would be a much nicer chore than washing dishes or cleaning the bathroom.:o)
By the way...This is off topic...I don't like Atlanta all that much. I live up around Dunwoody, so maybe it's just the area, but it's a bit too stuffy. I'm not the type to want to go to Buckhead very often, so it seems a bit boring for me here. My girlfriend is coming in November so I have to find something to do by then (other than the obvious) so we can go out and have fun. Any suggestions?
I agree with you. And it makes me disgusted to see how ignorant a lot of people replying to this article are with their "send those commie bastards back to India!" type comments. (A side note, I am aware that India is a democracy, but I was being sarcastic.) As far as I know, the U.S. government steps on everyone's rights all the time as it is, whether you are a citizen or not, so why not treat the people who really want to be here any better? I was born and raised in the U.S. and have lived all over the place. It's funny to see those people that have been born and never left places like NYC to complain about how their is no space left in the U.S. when anyone who has gone a few miles outside of most big cities sees that there is a lot of space. That is not the problem. There are a lot of jobs for everyone and then some. I can quit my job today and be working again in about a week. I get two or three calls/emails a day asking to interview me, and I didn't even graduate college.
It's horrible to see how the U.S. has gone downhill. I am giving it another year, and if things don't improve I will start looking to move elsewhere. I have friends in the Netherlands and Canada, where even though there may not be as much work as I can find in the U.S., I shouldn't have trouble finding a job. I know I'm not the only one, this backwards redneck exclusionary attitude that it seems some of the more vocal people on slashdot have must go. You would think that the tech industry would be a lot less racist and xenophobic, but I guess this goes to show that even I can be wrong (although not very often.)
Oh well, my country is on it's deathbed now, as the crowd of fat, smelly, pigs that are in control of everything roll around in their own shit. Welcome to the United States of American! You are not free, you are a sheep, and belong to the highest bidder, and you will like it or they'll kick you out (foreign citizens) or kill you (Branch Davidians).
A college is not an ISP...it is like a crossroads of being an adult and a minor. They take away a lot of your rights as an adult, because they are kinda responsible for you. The difference between you and your ISP is that you connect to your ISP. You do not take your computer there, then give them permission to take it. When you live on campus you sign away a lot of your property and privacy rights, even though you probably don't realize it. They have their own rules that the real world doesn't have to deal with. It's very big brotherish, but if you don't like it, there are few alternatives to get a degree.
Not necessarily. I used to work at a college, and the manager of Systems Support said that any computer equipment you put on their network, becomes their property in a way. From a legal side, if I were a l33t h4x0r and decided to DoS microsoft.com from school, M$ would see it as an attack from the school, they are not going to know who it was, and they would expect the school to handle it since it was using their network, and thus their property. Schools have their own sets of rules that you have to live by while a student, and that is often one of them. If you use a baseball bat to go around breaking the windows in the cars in the faculty parking lot, they are going to seize it.
Now, as to whether trading mp3's is a moral thing to do, or whether the RIAA is evil or not, is an entirely different discussion, but I don't see this as being different than business as usual for a school, as long as they have a policy that allows for this.
It maybe a long road but eventualy the music industry will lose, and music will have a NEW
DISTROBUTION. They wont get paid for every cd, and they will have to learn to like it basicly.
I normally don't comment on spelling...but the way you misspelled distribution is too funny. Rob being the key word here, it seems like any way a musician looks at it they lose if they are in it for the money. Right now the RIAA gets their claws in them, or some new way of distributing music may come along and the artists will eventually make less money than they think they deserve then also. I think there is a lot to be said for finding a way to make the price of making music cheaper for the artists, and help them advertise locally on the radio and such, or have contests (eg. Star Search...bwahahahahah!) that will let people go on TV and advertise themselves while under the guise of a contest. I think we would have a lot higher quality music than we have now. I'm pretty tired of bands thrown together by record labels that think they know what we want to pay for. Maybe the TV shows that have those contests can be specialized and hosted by popular artists...'Gwar Search' for example would be my idea of quality entertainment.
Neal Stephenson isn't the first. Leonardo DaVinci was even more of a genius at predicting things like that and actually inventing them. After all, he did design the helicopter...well, it just didn't work the way he had designed, but still he did come up with it first.:o)
I wanted to flame them and say "These guys are just like J.P. from antionline now that they are threatening Harvard with no real legal backing." but I won't say that, even if it is true.:o)
It does seem pretty dumb from a logical point of view, but it falls into the same category as many other lawsuits and such nowdays -- Sue whoever is easiest to get the most money from rather than suing the guilty party.
Nevermind that it is the students at the schools, the majority who are over 18 and thus legally responsible for themselves as adults (In the U.S.) However, we all know this type of stupidity works in the courts. We have too many previous examples of these things already and I'm sure Metalligreed will win if Harvard doesn't bend over for a buttrock band of elderly hicks. After all, Lars' rights are more important than those of a college or the students that don't do anything wrong (both of them.) Nevermind that if there is a big settlement to Metallica, or if they win in a court case, that the schools will raise tuition and make everyone unable to afford school, and drop out, get a job at McDonalds, and listen to Metallica music while complaining about how much life sucks and how they can't make any money...but then again, maybe that's the idea.
BoZ - who would be leaping for joy if a giant meteor was heading directly to destroy the Earth.
Sorry, I wasn't very specific. Yes, some of the games are available for Windows. I use linux, a palm pilot, etc. also...and especially my palm pilot I need small games that don't take a lot of time, such as pacman, tetris, etc. Since the games have not been officially released for the palm platform (I am not aware of them being released anyways) I get clones...the same goes for linux. Sometimes you need a break from xbill.:o)
What does Hasbro hate about these classic games so much?
They haven't released them in any way that I can see, and there's no Hasbro endorsed version of Pacman that I can buy, so why not let these other people do it? We like those games, and I want to play them. If Hasbro isn't going to do anything with them, then there shouldn't be a problem.
By the way...isn't there a law that should help against this? I seem to remember it being legal to make something in a way that it hasn't been done before...I want pacman on my palm pilot, Hasbro doesn't release it, so someone else makes a clone. It sounds perfectly fine to me. Oh wait...that same law was supposed to be used in the case of making a DVD player software for linux...oops.
I agree with you there...
I see the two party system we have as a joke. We're stuck with this two headed dragon of beurocracy, and no matter which side gets into office (one will, I don't see anything about any other candidates being very strongly endorsed) we lose. The U.S. government is a joke right now, the only reason we have any freedoms at all are because of what people have done in the past. I know on slashdot it's very limited to the technology issues, but crimes against the citizens are happening in all sorts of different categories. We could open a big discussion on taxation. Uncle Sam takes 40% of my money off the top, then steals 7% in sales tax, and in addition other various things such as for driving my car, etc. leading to at least %50 of all my money to waste on things I don't like. We could also discuss health care, how it's a ripoff and HMO's are concerned about not spending money rather than their customer's health.
It's all based on money. Humans are greedy by nature, and unfortunately those that are in power for long periods of time get more corrupted over time. Throughout history we have tried many different approaches. When the religious officials are in charge, the people are oppressed and the leaders are evil. When people with military might are in power, the people are oppressed and the leaders are evil. When big businesses are in control, the people are oppressed and the leaders are evil. What ever happened to "We the people"? Most of us got lazy and apathetic, and now we're stuck in a downard cycle that can't be changed until it's too late.
Of course...if I had my way, all the politicians in D.C. would be lined up against the wall right now...instead, it's us, the people, who are lined up in front of the firing squard (figuratively of course, it hasn't gotten quite that bad yet.)
I agree with you both somewhat. I do think that the immigration process is rediculous in it's present form and hinders good people from coming to the U.S. from other countries. The process should be easier, and rather than giving the visas they should become citizens. Also, there should be some checking involved, we don't want criminals to come to the U.S. unchecked.
There is another problem though. Let's say we do make it easier for good people to come here. What about all the racists and xenophobes that are here? I think all people should be treated fairly, but in some areas there are quite a few people that feel otherwise. One thing that the U.S. needs is to be better educated about other countries. At this point in time, I do think that the U.S. is the best place for me to live, but as things are changing and this country is going further downhill, I have researched other places that I can potentially move to such as Canada, Germany, etc. I think more Americans need to see how other places in the world function. I feel that you can learn something from anyone if you look hard enough. Eg., I may not like France very much, but, they do have their eating habits down correct. Fresh food is a novelty in the U.S., so we eat all the chemicals and crap and we get fat and sick. On the other hand, I do see a lot of hatred towards the U.S. that is uninformed also. It seems that some people base their opinion of the U.S. on what TV shows and movies come from here. We are not a bunch of fatass cowboy redneck idiots that are intolerant towards the rest of the world and too concerned with sports and religion to know our elbows from our asses. A lot of us do speak more than English to a certain extent, they usually teach Spanish starting in Kindergarten or the 1st grade. In high school, I had the options to learn Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Italian, and Sign Language (ok, so it's not a spoken language and it technically is English but it still counts for something). To get into college you have to have passed some foreign language classes. Yes, there is a problem with the U.S. education system, but that boils down to the biggest problem that we have in the U.S. -- $Money$. There is too much greed on the upper class of society so the middle class is being wiped out, which includes teachers and other skills that are essential.
Unfortunately for the immigrants that come to the U.S., they usually come to live in poverty. It's the way it has almost always been, because they are exploited by greedy people. It's nothing new and happens all over the world. The sweatshops that Nike owns are allowed by the governments in those countries because they get money.
Anyways I am going into a rant off the subject, but I do think that the U.S. should make it easier for people to come here to live, after all, we are supposedly a melting pot of the best people of the world...let's make that a reality.
Just be careful and hope I don't find out who you are. It's very easy to say those things anonymously, but should you slip up and I find out who you are, you will wish that you had never said any of that. I am not going to make threats, but be assured that I don't take these rude sorts of comments lightly.
Be careful, and watch your back because one of my people could be watching you at any time as soon as I find out who you are.
One of my girlfriend's nicknames is Sol...so, the fact that I saw what appeared to be a death threat to her on slashdot scared the shit out of me.
Of course, after realizing that it was only about that big burning sphere of gas that will not burn out until long after my carcass has rotted away into dust...I calmed down. But, I would think that if the dolphins do not get opposable thumbs first, we, as the dominant species, will figure out how to leave Earth and go pretty far away to other places that are far more miserable than the trailer trashy hunk of space dust we reside on now. I just hope that we can avoid the Vogons and their damned poetry.
Slashdot Mirror
There is another thing that the few people who actually think can do. It is to exploit the rest of society. Sure, I'm working in a tech related job, and I see how pointless it is (which I remind my coworkers of a lot) but noone else seems to understand. Even though I am exploiting the system and making a lot of money for such a useless job as designing interfaces to databases and such, I do think that the important people don't get paid enough at all. I think for example, teachers should be the highest paid of us all, so we could encourage more intelligent people to bring up the kids in the world as thinkers instead of just sheep. I honestly have no clue as to why people just seem to not have more than their brain stem intact. I wish I knew why the majority of people are little more than animals. There are so few sentient beings among us that it's nice to see someone else that sees life similarly to how I do.
P.S. - If you are reading this and are a moderator or a flamer and don't understand this, don't mark it down, do as the moderator guidelines suggests and mark up something that you think is of good quality. I really don't care about the whole "karma" system, but it's nice to have posts that people can actually read instead of 0 or -1.
Don't forget the faceless criminals that could use this technology against us by finding some simple exploits, they decide to steal our credit card numbers from an e-commerce site...
If it wasn't for people that spread this information through things like bugtraq, we'd be fucked. We have to keep the companies that make products in check. You don't go out and buy a car and aren't allowed to look under the hood or fix your own car.
Unfortunately, laws like the DMCA were made without looking at similar situations in the regular world. There are a few things unique to the internet that can't be explained, but reverse engineering is not one of them. It will be the downfall of our economy that these companies are relying on legal means to ensure they make money, rather than actually making a decent product.
Another point, is that in the world of computers, accessories (left vague intentionally) is a big market as well. Those iOpeners are a great example. Some people did minor modifications, which would be considered reverse engineering by legal means I believe. This cheap little device's sales went up tremendously due to this little hack. Unfortunately for the company, they had a stupid way of trying to sell them and didn't make any money off of them. However, if they were to sell these things and offer an additional kit that contains the hard drive and is supported and such, they would have made a fortune probably. It's restrictions that make a lack of selection for consumers, and all the regulations against the consumers will only serve to the marketplace.
OFF TOPIC PART: I was just recently a moderator, and I was hoping there would be another H1-B type article like I love to argue with the Xenophobes about. Unfortunately one hasn't come out yet, and I didn't get to use any of my 5 points to further my personal goals and I moderated fairly. Where is the fun is that?
Perhaps we should send some of these crack smoking welfare recipients to the other countries and clean out ours a bit. I'd much rather have a hard working person from India that is willing to work for a living and participate in our economy, than some trailer trash/ghetto trash type individuals that just want to pop out babies to get more money that they steal from hard working people, including the H-1B visa holding people. By the way, I don't want this to be interpreted as racist because I said "trailer trash" or "ghetto trash" as I realize that the amount of melanin in one's skin doesn't make a difference in the amount of laziness. I was just giving examples. :o)
A big reason for this is that it is so easy to get an MBA. It does require work to get an MBA, but it is not as difficult as Computer Science, Law School, etc. Basically the problem is that a team of people are working at a job...someone should be the lead, and eventually that person can become a manager if they wish. That way they will know the process of the company, the members of the team, other contacts and tricks they have found while working there as a peon.
Unfortunately, in the real world, the management often comes from somewhere else, doesn't know anything about what their people are doing or how they work, and come in and cause tension. Also, most of the managers I have known have problems dealing with people in a diplomatic way, and they lack basic logic skills that are required to function in a business environment. When the managers are internal, they are usually sent to MBA school where they are taught what appears to be incorrect techniques and methods against common sense so they change to be incompetant at their job as well. Also, these people getting their MBA's are doing so because their management treats them badly and they think they can move up because of that. When they still get treated badly after getting their MBA, they go to another company and become an out of touch manager, or just decide management is not for them and that they will stay a programmer/admin/etc.
What Corporate America needs to realize is that I am more important than my boss, or his boss. It is harder to find someone with my skills, and so I should get paid more than the director and have better benefits. The problem is that we are organized in a pyramid according to who controls more people and the pay scale is adjusted for that. In reality, the importance of people would be better designed as a parabola. Us programmers and such that actually do the work are important and necessary for the company to survive. At the same time, the people on the very top that make the decisions are important as they provide guidance for the company. Middle management, for the most part, are useless individuals that only serve to water down and corrupt the communications between the workers and the board...
Personally, I am planning to work for a small company soon. There will be less benefits, but, at the same time it is a better quality of life when I can directly talk to the owner of the business and understand the direction the company should take, as well as the work that I should do.
I use them in Atlanta, Georgia and get great service. Occasionally there are routing problems, but I have only had those about 3 times in the past two months I have used them. Also, their tech support is 50/50...I always get a human within the first two minutes, but sometimes I think they give the janitor a phone and a script to read. Overall I am very happy with them and their product.
I don't think this is a good thing at all. Of course, it's getting to the point of them requiring us to have this software and it will be completely treading on our constitutional rights as U.S. citizens...nevermind how illegal this should be to do to the rest of the world. I see it as search and siezure of my personal data, also, if this backdoor uses up any space on my hard drive, any processing or memory power, then it is also illegally forcing me to house government troops on my property (a bit of a stretch, but still true.) I'm sure that we could also say that they are pressuring us against speaking freely online because we know they are "watching" us. Hmmm...let's just say that it's very obvious that the NSA is doing all they can to take away the Bill of Rights from U.S. citizens...I see this as treason, and I think everyone in the NSA deserves to be lined up against the wall and shot.
Yes, I am very opinionated.
1) Users with multiple OS's on one machine.
2) Users who wish to have one of those linux versions that run off of a floppy disk (I don't remember any for linux, just picobsd for bsd)
3) Someone moving hard drives and wishes to be able to read their NTFS disk in linux.
There doesn't seem to be any real loss here, except for Micro$oft. It can give them bad PR for doing what seems to be actively threatening people that develop linux products. It's nothing new, and doesn't matter that much...even if some drivers were written, M$ would then change the way NTFS works and come out with a newer version that doesn't work with the linux drivers. It's nothing new.
1) Legalize drugs.
2) Legalize prostitution.
3) Create a welfare type program for those who do not get enough sex or need to do drugs in order to not use the computer.
That should take care of just about all the problems in society. You're welcome.
It's a joke, laugh.
I feel like I just explained a joke to the paranoid android. What was his name? Marvin?
On a side note, slashdot and Ron Bacardi do not mix very well.
While the FBI refuses to comment on specific products, spokeswoman Chris Watney confirmed that the information is all the bureau is interested in. How they get it, as long as it's legal and complete, doesn't matter, she said.
So it appears to me that the FBI has no problem with ISP's using this software. At least that's the way I interpret it. If this is so, then there's no problem here that I can see. Yes, carnivore may have done more than this software does, but the FBI is backed into a hole, and since they claim that they only need specific information, which this software provides, then we win this battle.
For you conspiracy buffs out there, this may change in the future when they come out with "Carnivore ME" that has enhanced features that they claim are proprietary and can't legally be reverse engineered in the U.S. thanks to stupid laws passed like the DMCA and such.
By the way...This is off topic...I don't like Atlanta all that much. I live up around Dunwoody, so maybe it's just the area, but it's a bit too stuffy. I'm not the type to want to go to Buckhead very often, so it seems a bit boring for me here. My girlfriend is coming in November so I have to find something to do by then (other than the obvious) so we can go out and have fun. Any suggestions?
It's horrible to see how the U.S. has gone downhill. I am giving it another year, and if things don't improve I will start looking to move elsewhere. I have friends in the Netherlands and Canada, where even though there may not be as much work as I can find in the U.S., I shouldn't have trouble finding a job. I know I'm not the only one, this backwards redneck exclusionary attitude that it seems some of the more vocal people on slashdot have must go. You would think that the tech industry would be a lot less racist and xenophobic, but I guess this goes to show that even I can be wrong (although not very often.)
Oh well, my country is on it's deathbed now, as the crowd of fat, smelly, pigs that are in control of everything roll around in their own shit. Welcome to the United States of American! You are not free, you are a sheep, and belong to the highest bidder, and you will like it or they'll kick you out (foreign citizens) or kill you (Branch Davidians).
God damn America.
A college is not an ISP...it is like a crossroads of being an adult and a minor. They take away a lot of your rights as an adult, because they are kinda responsible for you. The difference between you and your ISP is that you connect to your ISP. You do not take your computer there, then give them permission to take it. When you live on campus you sign away a lot of your property and privacy rights, even though you probably don't realize it. They have their own rules that the real world doesn't have to deal with. It's very big brotherish, but if you don't like it, there are few alternatives to get a degree.
Not necessarily. I used to work at a college, and the manager of Systems Support said that any computer equipment you put on their network, becomes their property in a way. From a legal side, if I were a l33t h4x0r and decided to DoS microsoft.com from school, M$ would see it as an attack from the school, they are not going to know who it was, and they would expect the school to handle it since it was using their network, and thus their property. Schools have their own sets of rules that you have to live by while a student, and that is often one of them. If you use a baseball bat to go around breaking the windows in the cars in the faculty parking lot, they are going to seize it. Now, as to whether trading mp3's is a moral thing to do, or whether the RIAA is evil or not, is an entirely different discussion, but I don't see this as being different than business as usual for a school, as long as they have a policy that allows for this.
I normally don't comment on spelling...but the way you misspelled distribution is too funny. Rob being the key word here, it seems like any way a musician looks at it they lose if they are in it for the money. Right now the RIAA gets their claws in them, or some new way of distributing music may come along and the artists will eventually make less money than they think they deserve then also. I think there is a lot to be said for finding a way to make the price of making music cheaper for the artists, and help them advertise locally on the radio and such, or have contests (eg. Star Search...bwahahahahah!) that will let people go on TV and advertise themselves while under the guise of a contest. I think we would have a lot higher quality music than we have now. I'm pretty tired of bands thrown together by record labels that think they know what we want to pay for. Maybe the TV shows that have those contests can be specialized and hosted by popular artists...'Gwar Search' for example would be my idea of quality entertainment.
Neal Stephenson isn't the first. Leonardo DaVinci was even more of a genius at predicting things like that and actually inventing them. After all, he did design the helicopter...well, it just didn't work the way he had designed, but still he did come up with it first. :o)
I'd probably just send in an "Ask Slashdot" question to find out. :o)
It does seem pretty dumb from a logical point of view, but it falls into the same category as many other lawsuits and such nowdays -- Sue whoever is easiest to get the most money from rather than suing the guilty party.
Nevermind that it is the students at the schools, the majority who are over 18 and thus legally responsible for themselves as adults (In the U.S.) However, we all know this type of stupidity works in the courts. We have too many previous examples of these things already and I'm sure Metalligreed will win if Harvard doesn't bend over for a buttrock band of elderly hicks. After all, Lars' rights are more important than those of a college or the students that don't do anything wrong (both of them.) Nevermind that if there is a big settlement to Metallica, or if they win in a court case, that the schools will raise tuition and make everyone unable to afford school, and drop out, get a job at McDonalds, and listen to Metallica music while complaining about how much life sucks and how they can't make any money...but then again, maybe that's the idea.
BoZ - who would be leaping for joy if a giant meteor was heading directly to destroy the Earth.
Sorry, I wasn't very specific. Yes, some of the games are available for Windows. I use linux, a palm pilot, etc. also...and especially my palm pilot I need small games that don't take a lot of time, such as pacman, tetris, etc. Since the games have not been officially released for the palm platform (I am not aware of them being released anyways) I get clones...the same goes for linux. Sometimes you need a break from xbill. :o)
They haven't released them in any way that I can see, and there's no Hasbro endorsed version of Pacman that I can buy, so why not let these other people do it? We like those games, and I want to play them. If Hasbro isn't going to do anything with them, then there shouldn't be a problem.
By the way...isn't there a law that should help against this? I seem to remember it being legal to make something in a way that it hasn't been done before...I want pacman on my palm pilot, Hasbro doesn't release it, so someone else makes a clone. It sounds perfectly fine to me. Oh wait...that same law was supposed to be used in the case of making a DVD player software for linux...oops.
It's all based on money. Humans are greedy by nature, and unfortunately those that are in power for long periods of time get more corrupted over time. Throughout history we have tried many different approaches. When the religious officials are in charge, the people are oppressed and the leaders are evil. When people with military might are in power, the people are oppressed and the leaders are evil. When big businesses are in control, the people are oppressed and the leaders are evil. What ever happened to "We the people"? Most of us got lazy and apathetic, and now we're stuck in a downard cycle that can't be changed until it's too late.
Of course...if I had my way, all the politicians in D.C. would be lined up against the wall right now...instead, it's us, the people, who are lined up in front of the firing squard (figuratively of course, it hasn't gotten quite that bad yet.)
There is another problem though. Let's say we do make it easier for good people to come here. What about all the racists and xenophobes that are here? I think all people should be treated fairly, but in some areas there are quite a few people that feel otherwise. One thing that the U.S. needs is to be better educated about other countries. At this point in time, I do think that the U.S. is the best place for me to live, but as things are changing and this country is going further downhill, I have researched other places that I can potentially move to such as Canada, Germany, etc. I think more Americans need to see how other places in the world function. I feel that you can learn something from anyone if you look hard enough. Eg., I may not like France very much, but, they do have their eating habits down correct. Fresh food is a novelty in the U.S., so we eat all the chemicals and crap and we get fat and sick. On the other hand, I do see a lot of hatred towards the U.S. that is uninformed also. It seems that some people base their opinion of the U.S. on what TV shows and movies come from here. We are not a bunch of fatass cowboy redneck idiots that are intolerant towards the rest of the world and too concerned with sports and religion to know our elbows from our asses. A lot of us do speak more than English to a certain extent, they usually teach Spanish starting in Kindergarten or the 1st grade. In high school, I had the options to learn Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Italian, and Sign Language (ok, so it's not a spoken language and it technically is English but it still counts for something). To get into college you have to have passed some foreign language classes. Yes, there is a problem with the U.S. education system, but that boils down to the biggest problem that we have in the U.S. -- $Money$. There is too much greed on the upper class of society so the middle class is being wiped out, which includes teachers and other skills that are essential.
Unfortunately for the immigrants that come to the U.S., they usually come to live in poverty. It's the way it has almost always been, because they are exploited by greedy people. It's nothing new and happens all over the world. The sweatshops that Nike owns are allowed by the governments in those countries because they get money.
Anyways I am going into a rant off the subject, but I do think that the U.S. should make it easier for people to come here to live, after all, we are supposedly a melting pot of the best people of the world...let's make that a reality.
Just be careful and hope I don't find out who you are. It's very easy to say those things anonymously, but should you slip up and I find out who you are, you will wish that you had never said any of that. I am not going to make threats, but be assured that I don't take these rude sorts of comments lightly. Be careful, and watch your back because one of my people could be watching you at any time as soon as I find out who you are.
Of course, after realizing that it was only about that big burning sphere of gas that will not burn out until long after my carcass has rotted away into dust...I calmed down. But, I would think that if the dolphins do not get opposable thumbs first, we, as the dominant species, will figure out how to leave Earth and go pretty far away to other places that are far more miserable than the trailer trashy hunk of space dust we reside on now. I just hope that we can avoid the Vogons and their damned poetry.