Fraud is Fraud anyway you cut it. As for this instance Mr. Garon committed two major errors, both highly illegal IMO.
1) He "Hijacked" an environment that was not owned by him, and he had no right to manipulate data on that environment. This should fall under the same cracking style laws that govern the prosecution of script kiddies and other web page defacers. 2) He used the words "IBM.net in his soliitations. This is going over the line that is somewhat grey to begin with but is reasonable well understood. If he had stopped at "You may already be a winner" or other technique that sweepstakes companies and such use, he may have been ok, however he did reference IBM.net and that's blatantly wrong and misleading.
They will trow the book at this guy, and I think the general public will have little sympathy for him. Being a spammer has got to be one of the most unpopular endevors one could choose as a line of work.
I liked the overall idea of the contest because it generates ideas and promotes new and unusual ways to utilize the technology. However in this case, all of the projects that were winners, or at least all the ones I cliocked on, were just vaporware. Most narratives started with "I would like to develop". Sheesh, at this rate Anyyone could have submitted stuff like, I would like to develop an Netpliance application that will fetch the paper for me in the morning, or maybe I would like to develop an Netpliance application that will feed all the worlds hungry perople.
So, next time they have a contest just fill in the blanks. I would like to develop an Netpliance application that will__________________________.
I think it was a joke, not really all that serious. He does illustrate a valid point however, in that IBM has made much ado lately about Open Source this and Open Source that and oh how we are great supporters of (buzword) Linux and the Open Source community as a whole.
IMO I think that IBM is working toward supporting the open source community from a HW compatibility perspective, most of the rest is hype to keep their name in the open source trades. Hopefully their claims will come to something and they will provide the open source community with more than just talk. However I don't think they will ever acheive the open Source Natalie like -osm would like.
I've been a thinkpad user for several years now. The 755CD is still my favorite for long trips due to it's fairly good power consumption and easily re-configurable ports. The DSP features have always worked well. Whith the new proposed chip and re-architecture, hopefully they will remove what I see as the Thinkpads worst feature. HEAT. The laptop gets unusually hot after an hour or so. With reduced power consumtion proposed in the new model, this should remove at least some of the heat thru better power management.
Financing provided by America Online, Gateway, Compaq Computer, Sony and several others should prove to be a real shot in the arm for Transmeta. As recently as the beginning of the year, Wall street was conserned that although Transmeta seemed to have a good product line, their customer base was small and targeted in only niche markets. With a little luck the 88M will change all that and Transmeta can become a much larger player. So far, only relatively small companies such as S3 have announced that they will use Transmeta's processors in their Internet appliances. Today's investments indicate that the technology elite see a future for the company's chips. They seem to have taken a different approach to cloning Intel chips than have other companies, such as AMD or National Semiconductor. Transmeta relies on "code-morphing" to translate instructions an Intel chip can understand into instructions the Transmeta chip can understand. The method appears to be faster than traditional emulation if you can beleive the press releases, because the instructions, once translated, are stored for later use. Last January of February Intel released its SpeedStep chipset, Which supposedly run faster when plugged in but become more efficient with power when unplugged. I wonder if Transmeta incorporated this style technology with theirs. I wish them well, This has got to only be good for the average consumer, having another big player in the processor market brings prices down across the board.
Pretty interesting little CGI script. To me this would constitute a trojan of sorts. Obviously it has, and looks like it will continue to dominate the thread. But maybe that isn't all that off-topic, due to the nature of the article. These are usually flamefests of Intel vs. AMD anyway, so having a troll take over seems somewhat natural.
I wonder how many hit's this has received. Very Steven Wotson-ish in flavor, you can hear the cash registers ringing up the clickthru revenues. At the rate it's replicating, someone sure is having a laugh. At least the script seems harmless enough, doesn't appear to be singing anyone up for Pr0n of the week subscriptions or anything, just replicating itself.
Agreed, Intel has had there problems delivering lately. AMD seems to have a little better track record of late with delivering on what is says it will.
I really wasn't getting that detailed, I was just trying to illustrate that they have the power to do just about anything they want with anything on their island.
And to your point, the current laws do follow loosly the laws of Britan, however on their official web site, not the passport one, they have ablub about all lwas are governed by "the corporation" of Sealand which is made up of self appointed senators and judges from the island. This said, we have to remember that their are only about 8 full time residence of Sealand, most live in Britan and only use it as a vacation spot.
Lastly about trusting Prince Roy. From reading through the many posted links it seems to me that Roys some Bates is the one whe is really running the show. Looks like the prince and the princess are enjoying the good life, they don't even live their anymore.
Off topic, but one og the articles said that Versacci;s killer had a Sealand passport and Sealand diplomatice license plates on his car when they caught up with him. I wonder how I could get Seland diplomatic tags?
What I was trying to figure out is what country, if any originally claimed the island as soverign property. My guess would be England, but it could have been the Scotts' or even Spain. If the property was never officially annexed, there might be some legal wiggle room under the laws of the country that was the previous "owner".
I seem to remember a series of battles in thelate 1500's or early 1600's where Spain with a fleet of a couple hunder warships sailed righ up to the entrance of the Thames and laid claim to many of the islands along the way. This one being only six miles from shore seems rather doubtful, but that is what I was curious about.
I don't know it I agree with the paronoid sounding statement They must me stopped". But I do agree with the first part of your post. Because they can make up laws as they go, I would assume this would also cover any data housed on the island. For instance. I have wizbang supercool new software that I'm developing for release under GPL of course. The government of the island takes a look at it and likes it, then wants to commercialize the software. So they lock down all the daya on the island, pass some dictator like law claiming all data property of the state. Release the software as their ow, etc, etc.
I know it's far fetched, but I wanted to illustrate that along with some benefit to housing data in an environment like this, there seems to be some huge risk. From the political instability if nothing else.
Maintaining the physical security of the Sealand fortress and HavenCo facility is of utmost importance to our success. Our business, personal reputations and financial bottom line, and that of all our customers, could be compromised in the event that a careless or malicious entity were to ship equipment to us that was altered to include a bomb or eavesdropping device. We don't like these precautions any more than you do, but this is the reality that we face in an increasily hostile world.
Although I agree thay phsical security as well as systems integrity is paramount in todays electronic environment. Taking measures this stiff is along the lines of James Bond films. These folks won't even let you bring in your own hardware. So is it a true COLO? From perusing the related HavenCo pages it appears that along with secure services, they also have quite a lockdown on content provided as well as a strong hold on how the hosted sites are run. I could see needing a facility like this to house some business critical warehousing, but that would be about it. I think the leasing arrangements and the spylike security will also come with a huge pricetag. If you spend all thismoney and house your site there, you still can't see or visit the facilities. Seems a bit paranoid to me.
I don't know if Hollywood is the best answer, maybe a part of it. Recently Disney announced some joint ventures which should help in the manner you referenced. I think the government should belly back up to the bar, cut massivly on the socialised support stuff, and put it right into NASA. I was born well before 1970 and grew up with the space race, boy I miss those days. All the technology advances, Prinde in the country etc.
I disagree, IMO a hack is finding new ways to exploit technology and such. He took known technology and looked at the application of it differently. I think Mr. Wu would agree. A hack doesn't nessasarily mean it's a bad or evil thing.
Seriously, this is pretty cool. I like the fact that VR is coming around again. The "new and cool" stuff seemed to slow down a lot over the last few years. This kid takes a webcam, a $5 toys r us lightsaber and hacks this out? This is great stuff. I hope Carmack and others like him are listening, there is a massive amount of talent and imagination out there. I love stories like this, where person out of nowhere hacks a solution to something that amazes everyone and does it without the big corporate bucks, just a little hustle and imagination.
I'm both saddened and happy for NASA these days. Saddened by things like Compton, metric conversions and delayed launches. happy for things like ISP and successfull shuttle missions.
However things like this:
The NASA-Dreamtime partnership will provide unprecedented public access to space exploration by creating a state-of-the-art multimedia portal, www.Dreamtime.com, that will, with the click of a mouse, open the door to thousands of images, sounds, documents, blueprints and plans from NASA's currently underused archives. Roll out of the in-depth portal site will begin within the next several months.
are confusing. I think the exposure is good, but the focus on what their core business is seems to be getting lost in the search for funding and public acceptance.
Anyway, I never really bought the oh we acidetally did it story. I think it was a well thought out excercise. I wouldn't blame the Air Force, the pilot gets his order to drop the pickle on spot x and he flies and drops. He has no breifing on the intel or what is really inside. Hell they could have told him Hitler was in the building, to him it doesn't matter, he's just following his mission plan. The spin that some CIA analyst didn't know the right street address? Come on, YHBT HAND.
I don't know if it'd be all that bad a PR thing for the US. The CIA blew up a Chinese embassy not to long ago, albeit it was and "accident". The government was able to spin their way out of that. And that was a tough one. I think having a little 4 ton spacecraft randomly fall from the sky would be much easier to explain.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree.
1) He "Hijacked" an environment that was not owned by him, and he had no right to manipulate data on that environment. This should fall under the same cracking style laws that govern the prosecution of script kiddies and other web page defacers.
2) He used the words "IBM.net in his soliitations. This is going over the line that is somewhat grey to begin with but is reasonable well understood. If he had stopped at "You may already be a winner" or other technique that sweepstakes companies and such use, he may have been ok, however he did reference IBM.net and that's blatantly wrong and misleading.
They will trow the book at this guy, and I think the general public will have little sympathy for him. Being a spammer has got to be one of the most unpopular endevors one could choose as a line of work.
Too bad the site owners didn't think ahead. They could have housed the servers at Sealands' Data Haven . Then this whole mess could have been avoided.
So, next time they have a contest just fill in the blanks.
I would like to develop an Netpliance application that will__________________________.
That's not funny.
IMO I think that IBM is working toward supporting the open source community from a HW compatibility perspective, most of the rest is hype to keep their name in the open source trades. Hopefully their claims will come to something and they will provide the open source community with more than just talk. However I don't think they will ever acheive the open Source Natalie like -osm would like.
Financing provided by America Online, Gateway, Compaq Computer, Sony and several others should prove to be a real shot in the arm for Transmeta. As recently as the beginning of the year, Wall street was conserned that although Transmeta seemed to have a good product line, their customer base was small and targeted in only niche markets. With a little luck the 88M will change all that and Transmeta can become a much larger player. So far, only relatively small companies such as S3 have announced that they will use Transmeta's processors in their Internet appliances. Today's investments indicate that the technology elite see a future for the company's chips. They seem to have taken a different approach to cloning Intel chips than have other companies, such as AMD or National Semiconductor. Transmeta relies on "code-morphing" to translate instructions an Intel chip can understand into instructions the Transmeta chip can understand. The method appears to be faster than traditional emulation if you can beleive the press releases, because the instructions, once translated, are stored for later use. Last January of February Intel released its SpeedStep chipset, Which supposedly run faster when plugged in but become more efficient with power when unplugged. I wonder if Transmeta incorporated this style technology with theirs. I wish them well, This has got to only be good for the average consumer, having another big player in the processor market brings prices down across the board.
I wonder how many hit's this has received. Very Steven Wotson-ish in flavor, you can hear the cash registers ringing up the clickthru revenues. At the rate it's replicating, someone sure is having a laugh. At least the script seems harmless enough, doesn't appear to be singing anyone up for Pr0n of the week subscriptions or anything, just replicating itself.
Agreed, Intel has had there problems delivering lately. AMD seems to have a little better track record of late with delivering on what is says it will.
The whole island is made of concrete piers? I thought they added the piers to an existing rock?
And to your point, the current laws do follow loosly the laws of Britan, however on their official web site, not the passport one, they have ablub about all lwas are governed by "the corporation" of Sealand which is made up of self appointed senators and judges from the island. This said, we have to remember that their are only about 8 full time residence of Sealand, most live in Britan and only use it as a vacation spot.
Lastly about trusting Prince Roy. From reading through the many posted links it seems to me that Roys some Bates is the one whe is really running the show. Looks like the prince and the princess are enjoying the good life, they don't even live their anymore.
Off topic, but one og the articles said that Versacci;s killer had a Sealand passport and Sealand diplomatice license plates on his car when they caught up with him. I wonder how I could get Seland diplomatic tags?
I seem to remember a series of battles in thelate 1500's or early 1600's where Spain with a fleet of a couple hunder warships sailed righ up to the entrance of the Thames and laid claim to many of the islands along the way. This one being only six miles from shore seems rather doubtful, but that is what I was curious about.
I know it's far fetched, but I wanted to illustrate that along with some benefit to housing data in an environment like this, there seems to be some huge risk. From the political instability if nothing else.
Captured from whom? The article doesn't say.
Maintaining the physical security of the Sealand fortress and HavenCo facility is of utmost importance to our success. Our business, personal reputations and financial bottom line, and that of all our customers, could be compromised in the event that a careless or malicious entity were to ship equipment to us that was altered to include a bomb or eavesdropping device. We don't like these precautions any more than you do, but this is the reality that we face in an increasily hostile world.
Although I agree thay phsical security as well as systems integrity is paramount in todays electronic environment. Taking measures this stiff is along the lines of James Bond films. These folks won't even let you bring in your own hardware. So is it a true COLO? From perusing the related HavenCo pages it appears that along with secure services, they also have quite a lockdown on content provided as well as a strong hold on how the hosted sites are run. I could see needing a facility like this to house some business critical warehousing, but that would be about it. I think the leasing arrangements and the spylike security will also come with a huge pricetag. If you spend all thismoney and house your site there, you still can't see or visit the facilities. Seems a bit paranoid to me.
500 billion is a lot of FLOPS. I wonder how it would handle overclocking?
I don't know if Hollywood is the best answer, maybe a part of it. Recently Disney announced some joint ventures which should help in the manner you referenced. I think the government should belly back up to the bar, cut massivly on the socialised support stuff, and put it right into NASA. I was born well before 1970 and grew up with the space race, boy I miss those days. All the technology advances, Prinde in the country etc.
Boy have we as a country lost focus.
Thanks again, BTW, what does IAAMOAC mean?
I disagree, IMO a hack is finding new ways to exploit technology and such. He took known technology and looked at the application of it differently. I think Mr. Wu would agree. A hack doesn't nessasarily mean it's a bad or evil thing.
Make your own, It doesn't look all that difficult. Read the link under related stuff for the more technical aspecs/
Seriously, this is pretty cool. I like the fact that VR is coming around again. The "new and cool" stuff seemed to slow down a lot over the last few years. This kid takes a webcam, a $5 toys r us lightsaber and hacks this out? This is great stuff. I hope Carmack and others like him are listening, there is a massive amount of talent and imagination out there. I love stories like this, where person out of nowhere hacks a solution to something that amazes everyone and does it without the big corporate bucks, just a little hustle and imagination.
Very good. Nice job. I miss the old days. . .
However things like this:
The NASA-Dreamtime partnership will provide unprecedented public access to space exploration by creating a state-of-the-art multimedia portal, www.Dreamtime.com, that will, with the click of a mouse, open the door to thousands of images, sounds, documents, blueprints and plans from NASA's currently underused archives. Roll out of the in-depth portal site will begin within the next several months.
are confusing. I think the exposure is good, but the focus on what their core business is seems to be getting lost in the search for funding and public acceptance.
Anyway, I never really bought the oh we acidetally did it story. I think it was a well thought out excercise. I wouldn't blame the Air Force, the pilot gets his order to drop the pickle on spot x and he flies and drops. He has no breifing on the intel or what is really inside. Hell they could have told him Hitler was in the building, to him it doesn't matter, he's just following his mission plan. The spin that some CIA analyst didn't know the right street address? Come on, YHBT HAND.
BTW, I like the oscar, nice site.
I don't know if it'd be all that bad a PR thing for the US. The CIA blew up a Chinese embassy not to long ago, albeit it was and "accident". The government was able to spin their way out of that. And that was a tough one. I think having a little 4 ton spacecraft randomly fall from the sky would be much easier to explain.