I often download using my Win32 box, then ftp the tarballs over to the linux box i'm in the process of building. It's alot more convenient to hunt for packages with IE6 than Lynx.
"Deadly force ONLY when you fear death or great bodily injury to yourself or another"
<joke> What if a BSA raid results in lots of extra licenses to buy within a ridiculously short timeframe, which will result in my inability to pay the protection racket to the local mob, who will subsequently dump me in the river ? </joke
The sad part is that a friend of mine was once stuck in a similar situation, of course he didn't kill anyone but he did have to get himself into alot of trouble and debt, in order to keep out of worse trouble and debt (and/or death). It's a crazy fucking world out there!
Re:No pain = bad, but less pain = good!
on
Pain-free mice
·
· Score: 1
Indeed, just stopping bleeding at major arteries is a no-no, since it blocks the blood flow. And since we can't effectively use a "patch artery" to complete the loop, it's probably better to let the blood flow, even if it is getting out of the body.
Oh fuck off! Overrated my ass. If you didn't like the movie, just move along. The only moderation that should apply to the above post is +1 Funny, or none at all.
Although this kind of software has existed for some time, it is to be taken with a grain of salt. Any instructor who blindly points the finger at the 'cheaters' this software discovers, is opening himself and the institution up to a barrage of lawsuits.
I've spent many evenings correcting C++ homework for a fellow teacher (who doesn't know squat about C++, of course). In the first few weeks, about half the group was copying off each other. Some of them were sneaky enough to swap lines of code around, or change a few variable names, but with a little thinking it was obvious that the code was identical. It was most obvious when those little modifications resulted in code that didn't even compile. Of course the students would argue that they did not copy, some cocky fucks even had their parents call me to personally insult me (it was a prestigious college, lots of the parents were ambassadors and/or wealthy business meatheads). Needless to say, we had them kicked out of the course very quickly while the college's mgmt handled the legal threats.
There were also some cases that looked similar, yet once you grokked the code you could sense the subtle differences in that particular student's reasoning; those cases would probably turn up as false positives using cheat-sniffing software. In such a case, being sued would be a very bad thing, since the odds are on the student's side : punitive damages and bad publicity are a great way to destroy an organization.
Finding cheaters can be easy, just as it can be devious. I wouldn't trust such a task to any dumb software.
If this were a tiny one-person business like myself, then I'd say 'fine, use the boilerplate license and don't hire a stupid lawyer'; but Borland ? They should have a resident legal expert, and I hope they do, so that this person can be severely beaten for not reading the license and pointing out these alarming tidbits of verbal threat.
Dude, haven't you ever seen 'Evolution' (the movie) ? Evil hyper-mutative blue-green goo will land in Texas, a bunch of redneck' military goons will swarm around it, and then we all die.
No pain = bad, but less pain = good!
on
Pain-free mice
·
· Score: 1
As others have raised, it would be quite suicidal to create a human that feels no pain. Pain is an immediate reaction to dangerous and often deadly situations.
What's preventing someone from bleeding to death if they're so doped up they can't feel the open wound ? It's happened to PCP abusers (w00t!), who would go berzerk and ram their foot/fist/head into a wall with a sick laugh "I'll kill you, you fucking brick wall!".
If they can't figure out how to _selectively_ discard certain types of pain, like arthritis pain or headaches, then perhaps it would be a good compromise to just reduce the pain to an unobtrusive level, or make it fade away very quickly. In that scenario, suppose you cut your finger while mutilating a head of lettuce, you would instantly feel the pain surge, warning you of the injury, but the feeling would attenuate very quickly so as to not incapacitate your nervous system and hinder your ability to react in an intelligent and timely manner.
The point isn't about piracy.. it's about harassing the hell out of everyone without any legal backing. True, buying proper licenses is the "right way", and that's how it should be.
That doesn't mean these guys can just walk in and raid your office however they see fit. I don't let the cops in without a warrant, so I wouldn't let the BSA in without a cop AND a warrant. They have no reasonable proof that I _MAY_ be using unlicensed software, so in theory they _SHOULD_ have no way of getting a search warrant. Anonymous tips on their web site don't count as 'reasonable proof', because no one can be held accountable. What they are doing is cooperative fraud, teaming with the megawhores of software. If at least they stood up for the small guys (like all the cheap fucks who used cracks and keygens on my old doorgames), then maybe I could find some sympathy for their extortionary tactics, but they don't and I won't.
Simple : Tell them you don't own a business, since you're at home. Then tell them to fsck off before you sue/shoot them. Or you could just go straight to shooting without warning (they are trespassing, after all).
The BSA is just an incompetent bunch of tie-wearing thugs. They handle M$ and others' dirty work every once in a while, just to scare the others.
They don't own any software, they don't have any licensing contracts with you, and they don't give you a plushie if you're compliant. Bottom line : they have no legal right to enter your premises, even less so to futz around on your PCs and collect data. Time to load that shotgun!
Getting out of the large manufacturers' deathgrip is exactly my point : if/when we get pushed into a locked-down hardware platform, there will be a need and demand for free (speech) hardware, like the "good old days". There will be a product, and we will manage to keep up with performance improvements. If we can get together a build a complete and fascinating operating system (or even a hundred), I am convinced we can create open source processor cores and motherboard chipsets that will meet and even exceed Intel/AMD.
Simple. If and when things fumble down to such nazi nonsense, there will be demand for an open system, and it will be produced by ourselves FOR ourselves. GPL'ed hardware isn't such a far-fetched idea these days.
This is the norm up here in Canada. Everywhere you go, your driver's license is the first choice for ID, whether you're applying for a loan, renting a hotel room or just picking up some registered mail.
The main reason why it is used is because it has an imprinted photograph and is rather strictly controlled by the government. It makes it easy to track down someone 'on the run' since it is linked to auto registration data and all your vitals, and people will tend to keep their address and phone number up to date, because that info is cross-checked with other databases and any discrepancies can quickly result in a revoked permit. It is good enough to deter small-time crooks, and secure enough to make it a pain for big crooks to forge.
I think the big problem with this idea is that anyone who thinks of portable gaming will immediately think "Gameboy", even the old folks, because that's been the standard since 1985 and it's still going today. Market recognition is a huge factor in this.
As a little anecdote, I walked into a Future Shop yesterday with a buddy to buy his PS2. This guy doesn't follow the news much, but still he loves games and rents stuff all the time. Well this 'buddy' thought the XBox was compatible with both PS2 and GCN software.. why ? because that's what he heard from his idiot coworkers and friends, and there was little or no media coverage to bring light on the new console.
We see PS2 ads all over the place : TV, movie theatres, and they have large displays in most stores. The Gamecube might not need that much publicity, since Nintendo is an established household name wherever kids are to be found, going hand-in-hand with Pokemon. But Microsoft ? We know M$, but does my mother-in-law know M$ ? Hell no, she probably thinks Windows _IS_ the computer, and that it's made by Dell or Compaq. Why does she not understand this ? Because you don't see many Microsoft products at Mallwart, Costco or any other non-PC store. Gates' company may very well be a cornerstone of modern computing, but outside that realm they are the new kid on the block for every other market segment.
That's why they have no chance of dethroning Nintendo, not today.. perhaps in ten or fifteen years.
What sets the Final Fantasies apart is that they each have a (usually) gripping story behind them. I'd say that FFX has the second best story, leaving FF2 in the lead. Sure, the gameplay is a bit old and repetitive, but it's the harsh and wonderfully imaginative storyline that drags you in and feeds upon your veins.
Increased capacity is always a good thing in my opinion (160gb on my home box and I still want more). The problem with IBM Microdrives is that they eat batteries faster than your 15-year-old 1st-gen discman. The typical handheld might last a whole day on its charge when using flash memory, but throw in a Microdrive and it will be dead within 2-3 hours.
Ironically, this is how 90% of Windows email virii work, only that it is Outlook Express that performs the first two tasks, the user only needs to click on "SpankBinLaden.exe".
Why do we need yet another closed proprietary OS ? If it's just a piece of software to 'enable high-bandwidth media over broadband' or whatever, then they're really wasting their time and everyone else's. We already have mp3, DivX and jpegs.. they work fine. The only thing I think these guys will try to pull off is to make these file formats and codecs completely transparent, thus turning your 1500$ PC into an ugly 19" TV.
I tried this thing too, it sounded too cool to be real, but it was indeed simultaneously cool and real. The only part I disliked is that it was too obvious when the game was calling and kind of detracted from the game. It represented a more apocalyptic world than reality, and as such was hard to believe at times.
I don't know about you, but where I live, when someone threatens your life they do it in person. It's hard to stab or shoot someone across the phone lines:)
I must've missed something.
on
Bionic Eyes
·
· Score: 1
All this visual nanotech is nice and all, but isn't the biggest problem with these electronic implants the actual interface to the human nerve system ? You could build a 40-bazillion pixel LCD for your retinas, but if you don't know how to hook it up to that fat optic nerve you're still in the dark (heh).
Someone bring them a laptop or PDA so they can look to the great internet to find out how pathetic this movie is going to be. But do it after they've been camping out for a few months, that way they'll surely kill themselves when they realize they could have been leeching pr0n off Kazaa all this time.
If you really want to piss off would-be keyloggers, build a keyboard solution that encrypts the scancodes somehow, right inside the keyboard's encoder chip, so that the keypress info is undecipherable to any device hooked between your keyboard and the PC. Then sell the idea for thousands of bucks to mob kings!
I decided to go on a hunch, so I looked up the guilty company (Unified Data Technologies). Although they do have the US patent, they don't have any Canadian patent whatsoever. Looks like they're a flakey business whose sole purpose is to extort money by abusing the US patent system.
Maybe I should sue THEM because I'm pretty sure I got the idea before they did:)
Slashdot Mirror
I often download using my Win32 box, then ftp the tarballs over to the linux box i'm in the process of building. It's alot more convenient to hunt for packages with IE6 than Lynx.
"Deadly force ONLY when you fear death or great bodily injury to yourself or another"
<joke> What if a BSA raid results in lots of extra licenses to buy within a ridiculously short timeframe, which will result in my inability to pay the protection racket to the local mob, who will subsequently dump me in the river ? </joke
The sad part is that a friend of mine was once stuck in a similar situation, of course he didn't kill anyone but he did have to get himself into alot of trouble and debt, in order to keep out of worse trouble and debt (and/or death). It's a crazy fucking world out there!
Indeed, just stopping bleeding at major arteries is a no-no, since it blocks the blood flow. And since we can't effectively use a "patch artery" to complete the loop, it's probably better to let the blood flow, even if it is getting out of the body.
Oh fuck off! Overrated my ass. If you didn't like the movie, just move along. The only moderation that should apply to the above post is +1 Funny, or none at all.
Although this kind of software has existed for some time, it is to be taken with a grain of salt. Any instructor who blindly points the finger at the 'cheaters' this software discovers, is opening himself and the institution up to a barrage of lawsuits.
I've spent many evenings correcting C++ homework for a fellow teacher (who doesn't know squat about C++, of course). In the first few weeks, about half the group was copying off each other. Some of them were sneaky enough to swap lines of code around, or change a few variable names, but with a little thinking it was obvious that the code was identical. It was most obvious when those little modifications resulted in code that didn't even compile. Of course the students would argue that they did not copy, some cocky fucks even had their parents call me to personally insult me (it was a prestigious college, lots of the parents were ambassadors and/or wealthy business meatheads). Needless to say, we had them kicked out of the course very quickly while the college's mgmt handled the legal threats.
There were also some cases that looked similar, yet once you grokked the code you could sense the subtle differences in that particular student's reasoning; those cases would probably turn up as false positives using cheat-sniffing software. In such a case, being sued would be a very bad thing, since the odds are on the student's side : punitive damages and bad publicity are a great way to destroy an organization.
Finding cheaters can be easy, just as it can be devious. I wouldn't trust such a task to any dumb software.
If this were a tiny one-person business like myself, then I'd say 'fine, use the boilerplate license and don't hire a stupid lawyer'; but Borland ? They should have a resident legal expert, and I hope they do, so that this person can be severely beaten for not reading the license and pointing out these alarming tidbits of verbal threat.
Dude, haven't you ever seen 'Evolution' (the movie) ? Evil hyper-mutative blue-green goo will land in Texas, a bunch of redneck' military goons will swarm around it, and then we all die.
As others have raised, it would be quite suicidal to create a human that feels no pain. Pain is an immediate reaction to dangerous and often deadly situations.
What's preventing someone from bleeding to death if they're so doped up they can't feel the open wound ? It's happened to PCP abusers (w00t!), who would go berzerk and ram their foot/fist/head into a wall with a sick laugh "I'll kill you, you fucking brick wall!".
If they can't figure out how to _selectively_ discard certain types of pain, like arthritis pain or headaches, then perhaps it would be a good compromise to just reduce the pain to an unobtrusive level, or make it fade away very quickly. In that scenario, suppose you cut your finger while mutilating a head of lettuce, you would instantly feel the pain surge, warning you of the injury, but the feeling would attenuate very quickly so as to not incapacitate your nervous system and hinder your ability to react in an intelligent and timely manner.
The point isn't about piracy.. it's about harassing the hell out of everyone without any legal backing. True, buying proper licenses is the "right way", and that's how it should be.
That doesn't mean these guys can just walk in and raid your office however they see fit. I don't let the cops in without a warrant, so I wouldn't let the BSA in without a cop AND a warrant. They have no reasonable proof that I _MAY_ be using unlicensed software, so in theory they _SHOULD_ have no way of getting a search warrant. Anonymous tips on their web site don't count as 'reasonable proof', because no one can be held accountable. What they are doing is cooperative fraud, teaming with the megawhores of software. If at least they stood up for the small guys (like all the cheap fucks who used cracks and keygens on my old doorgames), then maybe I could find some sympathy for their extortionary tactics, but they don't and I won't.
Simple : Tell them you don't own a business, since you're at home. Then tell them to fsck off before you sue/shoot them. Or you could just go straight to shooting without warning (they are trespassing, after all).
The BSA is just an incompetent bunch of tie-wearing thugs. They handle M$ and others' dirty work every once in a while, just to scare the others.
They don't own any software, they don't have any licensing contracts with you, and they don't give you a plushie if you're compliant. Bottom line : they have no legal right to enter your premises, even less so to futz around on your PCs and collect data. Time to load that shotgun!
Getting out of the large manufacturers' deathgrip is exactly my point : if/when we get pushed into a locked-down hardware platform, there will be a need and demand for free (speech) hardware, like the "good old days". There will be a product, and we will manage to keep up with performance improvements. If we can get together a build a complete and fascinating operating system (or even a hundred), I am convinced we can create open source processor cores and motherboard chipsets that will meet and even exceed Intel/AMD.
Simple. If and when things fumble down to such nazi nonsense, there will be demand for an open system, and it will be produced by ourselves FOR ourselves. GPL'ed hardware isn't such a far-fetched idea these days.
Why not have a X-Server running on that Citrix or MS desktop server ? Just 'emulate' the linux part using what you already have.
This is the norm up here in Canada. Everywhere you go, your driver's license is the first choice for ID, whether you're applying for a loan, renting a hotel room or just picking up some registered mail.
The main reason why it is used is because it has an imprinted photograph and is rather strictly controlled by the government. It makes it easy to track down someone 'on the run' since it is linked to auto registration data and all your vitals, and people will tend to keep their address and phone number up to date, because that info is cross-checked with other databases and any discrepancies can quickly result in a revoked permit. It is good enough to deter small-time crooks, and secure enough to make it a pain for big crooks to forge.
I think the big problem with this idea is that anyone who thinks of portable gaming will immediately think "Gameboy", even the old folks, because that's been the standard since 1985 and it's still going today. Market recognition is a huge factor in this.
As a little anecdote, I walked into a Future Shop yesterday with a buddy to buy his PS2. This guy doesn't follow the news much, but still he loves games and rents stuff all the time. Well this 'buddy' thought the XBox was compatible with both PS2 and GCN software.. why ? because that's what he heard from his idiot coworkers and friends, and there was little or no media coverage to bring light on the new console.
We see PS2 ads all over the place : TV, movie theatres, and they have large displays in most stores. The Gamecube might not need that much publicity, since Nintendo is an established household name wherever kids are to be found, going hand-in-hand with Pokemon. But Microsoft ? We know M$, but does my mother-in-law know M$ ? Hell no, she probably thinks Windows _IS_ the computer, and that it's made by Dell or Compaq. Why does she not understand this ? Because you don't see many Microsoft products at Mallwart, Costco or any other non-PC store. Gates' company may very well be a cornerstone of modern computing, but outside that realm they are the new kid on the block for every other market segment.
That's why they have no chance of dethroning Nintendo, not today.. perhaps in ten or fifteen years.
What sets the Final Fantasies apart is that they each have a (usually) gripping story behind them. I'd say that FFX has the second best story, leaving FF2 in the lead. Sure, the gameplay is a bit old and repetitive, but it's the harsh and wonderfully imaginative storyline that drags you in and feeds upon your veins.
Increased capacity is always a good thing in my opinion (160gb on my home box and I still want more). The problem with IBM Microdrives is that they eat batteries faster than your 15-year-old 1st-gen discman. The typical handheld might last a whole day on its charge when using flash memory, but throw in a Microdrive and it will be dead within 2-3 hours.
---- snip ----
rm -rf /
---- snip ----
save to a text file, chmod 700 and run as root
Ironically, this is how 90% of Windows email virii work, only that it is Outlook Express that performs the first two tasks, the user only needs to click on "SpankBinLaden.exe".
Why do we need yet another closed proprietary OS ? If it's just a piece of software to 'enable high-bandwidth media over broadband' or whatever, then they're really wasting their time and everyone else's. We already have mp3, DivX and jpegs.. they work fine. The only thing I think these guys will try to pull off is to make these file formats and codecs completely transparent, thus turning your 1500$ PC into an ugly 19" TV.
I tried this thing too, it sounded too cool to be real, but it was indeed simultaneously cool and real. The only part I disliked is that it was too obvious when the game was calling and kind of detracted from the game. It represented a more apocalyptic world than reality, and as such was hard to believe at times.
:)
I don't know about you, but where I live, when someone threatens your life they do it in person. It's hard to stab or shoot someone across the phone lines
All this visual nanotech is nice and all, but isn't the biggest problem with these electronic implants the actual interface to the human nerve system ? You could build a 40-bazillion pixel LCD for your retinas, but if you don't know how to hook it up to that fat optic nerve you're still in the dark (heh).
Someone bring them a laptop or PDA so they can look to the great internet to find out how pathetic this movie is going to be. But do it after they've been camping out for a few months, that way they'll surely kill themselves when they realize they could have been leeching pr0n off Kazaa all this time.
If you really want to piss off would-be keyloggers, build a keyboard solution that encrypts the scancodes somehow, right inside the keyboard's encoder chip, so that the keypress info is undecipherable to any device hooked between your keyboard and the PC. Then sell the idea for thousands of bucks to mob kings!
I decided to go on a hunch, so I looked up the guilty company (Unified Data Technologies). Although they do have the US patent, they don't have any Canadian patent whatsoever. Looks like they're a flakey business whose sole purpose is to extort money by abusing the US patent system.
:)
Maybe I should sue THEM because I'm pretty sure I got the idea before they did
Now any piece of scrap metal can stick to your fridge. Attach a fridge-bot to the door, to keep that pesky roommate from stealing all your beer.