OK, so I'm not the most technical person in the world, but why in the world aren't ISP's made to take more responsibility for stopping all the garbage. Virus, trojans, and 'sploits can't circulate beyond one or two "bad" computers if ISP stop the traffic that contains the malicious data... Right?
Why does this seem so obvious? People are not allowed to send bombs in the mail/post, so why are the electronic versions so easy to spread?
On a different but related topic...
And after spending like 2 hours trying to get CashBackBuddy off a coworker's computer yesterday, I HONESTLY don't know why someone that has not lost valuable or life-critical data to those asshats that make software like bargain buddy, bullseye network, cashback and navisearch, etc. has not been clubbed to death. I'm serious, I can see a circumstance where both the management responsible as well as the programmers are gunned down because they caused "the wrong person" to loose some important data, etc.
If these supreme fart-holes that are programming this stuff realized that their lives were in danger if they continue, perhaps that would help. Apparently the written laws or enforcement mechanisms are insufficient to deal with these people, so perhaps some good ol' vigilante justice makes sense until the wwwild wwwild wwwest is actually civilized.
I Run GDIScan, I see:
C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Dreamweaver MX 2004\gdiplus.dll
Version: 5.1.3097.0 -- Vulnerable version
I go to Macromedia, NOTHING THERE!
So WTF am I supposed to do?
It's all wonderful you guys want to throw bricks at M$, but perhaps someone can actually tell a poor, non-programmer, what the hell to actually do to protect my system. And the first one that says use Linux gets modded to -1000(asshat)
obesity, cancer, heart disease
The majority of deaths caused by those three are attributable to
voluntary behavior
. I don't want one damn cent spent to "help" people that caused their own problems while there are real causes like childhood leukemia etc. that need money or legislation. You get lung disease from smoking? Too fusking bad. It's your own damn fault. Now there's one less leech on the system to worry about. Troll? Hell no, it's the truth that knee-jerk liberals can't deal with personal responsibility.
So a frickin' space shuttle can remain hidden for years and years (which was not actually "hidden") in the desert, but people expect to be able to find WMD 's in an even BIGGER desert that actually WERE _HIDDEN_ in a few months... I just don't get it.
I don't see how someone could say that this is going to give Google any competition.
The heart of it IS Google.
It's just a meta-search tool that expands on things like alltheweb, dogpile, etc.
It is not a revolutionary "anything".
I'm still waiting for Google to provide a means to do a search, then "mark" results as "good" or "bad" and have Google refine the results based on that info.
I may be mistaken, but I could swear that possession of stolen credit card numbers is a crime. I "know" I've seen news stories about ID theft rings getting busted for the _possession_ of stolen credit cards and related info.
Now I do one of these Google searches, go to a page that has these numbers, names, addresses, etc. It's now in my browser cache of my laptop.
Some law enforcement person currently engaged in generating revenue for the city/state pulls me over for doing 45 in a 35 zone. As legally my car can be searched, they find my laptop and make me start it up. This guy decides to see what I've been looking at because of "kiddie porn" and stuff he's seen and he figures a +10 ticket is not enough to justify getting out of his cruiser on a 110 degree day in Arizona.
He discovers in my cache these "Stolen credit cards"
What happens then?
This may be tinfoil hat stuff, but maybe not. Kafka wasn't completely crazy.
Another problem is that NPCs are very very hard to do well in text adventures. Anything more than robot responses, and you are attempting writing something that should pass the turing test.
I'd propose that crafting an AI that can function in a kick-ass text-based adventure game where the "graphics" are in your mind the same way they are in LOTR (Rivendell and Moria are STILL cooler in my head than the movies could even hope to be) is much more noble (or Nobel heh...) than creating AI that pretends to be a chick for geeky men...
It would seem that in 30 years of Natural Language processing advancements and so forth, that it would be possible to revive text adventure type games.
Personally I loved the things, but hated the frustration of being locked into typing EXACTLY what the command processor/ parser wanted.
I would hazard a guess that if a larger publisher backed the development of a professional quality text adventure, that on a percentage ROI basis, it would be very worthwhile from a business standpoint.
Especially if it was marketed and promoted in a way that Myst was years ago. I mean Myst got a lot of non-gamers to play a "game" (actually Myst was basically a powerpoint presentation with cheesy 3D graphics, not actually a game).
Compare the development cost and time frame of a quality text adventure with something like DoomIII. The potential market is thousands of times bigger because you could run the game on pretty much anything with a screen and input device cable of text entry and the processing power to handle a REALLY robust parser and command interpreter. There's no need for 4-6 years of R&D. Success is driven by creativity, etc. rather than eye-candy.
Sure it's not for everyone, but if you eliminate the frustration normally associated with parsers, have a quality product, market it properly, it could be a very good business opportunity.
That is if game publishers weren't complete lemmings.
If you people that bitch and moan about Microsoft products spent HALF as much time actually learning how to use them as you do trying to get Linux to load/run/work, you'd have no issue.
This is not a troll, I mean it.
Average people (non-geeks) are better off using Windows application than learning Linux and trying to get its half-ass excuses for productivity software to work.
Microsoft Windows has A LOT of issues as an operating system. No doubt about it. But MS applications, _especially Office_ are amazing tools if you actually take the time to RTFM.
Also look at the list of country who refused to sign the International War Crime Court treaty
You mean because we did not want to be subjected to a kangaroo court run by the same class of morons that run the UN? Wow, shocking...
I am not a windows bigot, nor am I a fanboy. I use Windows XP and related windows software because it just works, and I'd rather actually use the PC than constantly fight it. I've used Unix in the past (Irix actually) and LOVED it, however I've basically given up or more accurately abandoned the desire to use Linux because XP does pretty everything I need, and the software availability and stability meet or exceed what I need (graphic design, web development, 3D modeling and animation, games).
Yes, I know there are "issues", but because I "know what I'm doing" and I'm protected by a firewalled router, as well as ZoneAlarm, SpyBot & TeaTimer, etc. I once again , just don't see the reason to learn a new OS. If I had a free week or two I might try Mandrake or something again.
The above spout was just to give background that I'm not an OS freak, nor a complete luser.
That said, I've always disliked IE as an application in it's own right (performance, memory utilization, UI, etc.), however after a few iterations of NS being complete crap (rendering , performance, etc.) I resigned to use IE. tried Opera, not really impressed, switched back to IE.
Recently installed FireFox and I will NEVER use IE again unless the page requires the active X crap.
I love everything about Firefox, and as more extensions become available, I love that I can make it work EXACTLY how I want it to work.
My only complaint is that I wish it was lighter weight in terms of system requirements, as I'd love to be able to run it on some REALLY old PC's that are essentially worthless for anything but dumb terminal applications (one example is y Fujitsu Point510 tablet).
Anyway, that's my story.
I would love to see an extension that spellchecked text boxes in online forms though...
Instead of telling us here about your issues, why don't you use your _*BETA*_ account to tell Google so they can address or improve these areas?
Or you could just keep pissing into the wind I suppose, after that's what/. is for.
It seems to me that it's quite poss. that all of these organizations (RIAA, MPAA, etc. etc.) are more interested in using lawsuits as ways to kill off or slow down these issues by the simple fact that they have mountains of cash and piles of lawyers and can afford just to play forever in the courtroom, and all these damned little upstarts that are threatening their cushy way of life are going to have to spend time and resources just to answer the charge. The outcome in court is of secondary importance to them. Having had the opportunity several times to bring civil complaints against people or organizations that very clearly were in the wrong, I just didn't 'cause they had more money than I did, so they could just drag it on, and, on, and on... Even though I knew I was right, everyone said I would win, it's still awfully hard to spend 10's or 100's of thousands of dollars to bring the case to court. It seems to be a similar kind of thing is going on here, except the financial constraint is placed on the defense side of the court. The RIAA et al are just using the court system, and a lot of really poorly thought out "laws", as their intimidation muscle, and they get 80% of the effect they are looking for even if it never gets to court, or even if they lose their case. Plus, if they get a temporary injunction along with the initial filing, then it gives them more time to figure out a way to actually catch up with the rest of the world, and figure out how they can make even more money by doing even less work. How much do you think MP3Board can afford to spend on defending itself? As far as I can tell, they prob. have a bit less cash laying around, and prob. don't have a crack team of entertainment law lawyers sitting around just waiting to put up a good defense. I can't imagine that banner ads are going to be real effective at funding the necessary legal defense fund. First came vinyl. Cost a bundle of money to make an album in production costs and transportation (remember how fragile those things were?), but they were not overly expensive. Around $8 in today's $$$ when they were the "in" format. Then came cassette tapes. Cost quite a bit relatively, due to the time it took to record them, and they actually had a full assembly to deal with to boot (all those moving parts, and the necessary QA that had to go along with them). But a tape only sold for like $8.00-$10.00 in today's $$$. Then came CD's. Amazingly cheap to manufacture. No moving parts, the recording process was very fast, and they were pretty much indestructible compared to the other formats. So, do we get the $$$ saved passed on to us? Hell no! CD's sell for upwards of 2X the price of cassettes! Now that the internet is here, and they can distribute an infinite amount of music for next to nothing in the way of production and distribution costs, I can imagine them coming up with a scheme where an mp3 "album" will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $350... This is all going to end badly for little ol' you and me.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, so I'm not the most technical person in the world, but why in the world aren't ISP's made to take more responsibility for stopping all the garbage. Virus, trojans, and 'sploits can't circulate beyond one or two "bad" computers if ISP stop the traffic that contains the malicious data... Right?
Why does this seem so obvious? People are not allowed to send bombs in the mail/post, so why are the electronic versions so easy to spread?
On a different but related topic...
And after spending like 2 hours trying to get CashBackBuddy off a coworker's computer yesterday, I HONESTLY don't know why someone that has not lost valuable or life-critical data to those asshats that make software like bargain buddy, bullseye network, cashback and navisearch, etc. has not been clubbed to death. I'm serious, I can see a circumstance where both the management responsible as well as the programmers are gunned down because they caused "the wrong person" to loose some important data, etc.
If these supreme fart-holes that are programming this stuff realized that their lives were in danger if they continue, perhaps that would help. Apparently the written laws or enforcement mechanisms are insufficient to deal with these people, so perhaps some good ol' vigilante justice makes sense until the wwwild wwwild wwwest is actually civilized.
It's like they say in racing... "It's my job to cheat and your job to catch me."
You can't blame the company for doing what it's legally entitled (and under corporate rules of fiduciary responsibility required) to do.
blame the asshats in congress and the judiciary system that let this stuff keep happening.
I Run GDIScan, I see: C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Dreamweaver MX 2004\gdiplus.dll Version: 5.1.3097.0 -- Vulnerable version I go to Macromedia, NOTHING THERE! So WTF am I supposed to do? It's all wonderful you guys want to throw bricks at M$, but perhaps someone can actually tell a poor, non-programmer, what the hell to actually do to protect my system. And the first one that says use Linux gets modded to -1000(asshat)
The majority of deaths caused by those three are attributable to
- voluntary behavior
. I don't want one damn cent spent to "help" people that caused their own problems while there are real causes like childhood leukemia etc. that need money or legislation.You get lung disease from smoking? Too fusking bad. It's your own damn fault. Now there's one less leech on the system to worry about.
Troll? Hell no, it's the truth that knee-jerk liberals can't deal with personal responsibility.
So a frickin' space shuttle can remain hidden for years and years (which was not actually "hidden") in the desert, but people expect to be able to find WMD 's in an even BIGGER desert that actually WERE _HIDDEN_ in a few months... I just don't get it.
I don't see how someone could say that this is going to give Google any competition.
The heart of it IS Google.
It's just a meta-search tool that expands on things like alltheweb, dogpile, etc.
It is not a revolutionary "anything".
I'm still waiting for Google to provide a means to do a search, then "mark" results as "good" or "bad" and have Google refine the results based on that info.
Seems simple enough...
Don't forget that US law still only applies to the US
Operative word, still, we'll get you yet my pretty. Pax Americana
When you rent a movie, you have taken one physical copy out of circulation. That's not the case if you tape a PPV movie/event.
No, when I rent a movie (DVD) I use DVDShrink to copy it, then return it... Sheesh... Doesn't everyone?
2.5 EVERY major governmental intelligence organization all over the world was positive that Iraq had or was developing WMD's...
Oh.. yes... and PBS or NPR is "fair and balanced"... Pttthhht!
There is no such thing as impartial news. Not even close.
I may be mistaken, but I could swear that possession of stolen credit card numbers is a crime. I "know" I've seen news stories about ID theft rings getting busted for the _possession_ of stolen credit cards and related info.
Now I do one of these Google searches, go to a page that has these numbers, names, addresses, etc. It's now in my browser cache of my laptop.
Some law enforcement person currently engaged in generating revenue for the city/state pulls me over for doing 45 in a 35 zone. As legally my car can be searched, they find my laptop and make me start it up. This guy decides to see what I've been looking at because of "kiddie porn" and stuff he's seen and he figures a +10 ticket is not enough to justify getting out of his cruiser on a 110 degree day in Arizona.
He discovers in my cache these "Stolen credit cards"
What happens then?
This may be tinfoil hat stuff, but maybe not. Kafka wasn't completely crazy.
Another problem is that NPCs are very very hard to do well in text adventures. Anything more than robot responses, and you are attempting writing something that should pass the turing test.
I'd propose that crafting an AI that can function in a kick-ass text-based adventure game where the "graphics" are in your mind the same way they are in LOTR (Rivendell and Moria are STILL cooler in my head than the movies could even hope to be) is much more noble (or Nobel heh...) than creating AI that pretends to be a chick for geeky men...
It would seem that in 30 years of Natural Language processing advancements and so forth, that it would be possible to revive text adventure type games.
Personally I loved the things, but hated the frustration of being locked into typing EXACTLY what the command processor/ parser wanted.
I would hazard a guess that if a larger publisher backed the development of a professional quality text adventure, that on a percentage ROI basis, it would be very worthwhile from a business standpoint.
Especially if it was marketed and promoted in a way that Myst was years ago. I mean Myst got a lot of non-gamers to play a "game" (actually Myst was basically a powerpoint presentation with cheesy 3D graphics, not actually a game).
Compare the development cost and time frame of a quality text adventure with something like DoomIII. The potential market is thousands of times bigger because you could run the game on pretty much anything with a screen and input device cable of text entry and the processing power to handle a REALLY robust parser and command interpreter. There's no need for 4-6 years of R&D. Success is driven by creativity, etc. rather than eye-candy.
Sure it's not for everyone, but if you eliminate the frustration normally associated with parsers, have a quality product, market it properly, it could be a very good business opportunity.
That is if game publishers weren't complete lemmings.
If you people that bitch and moan about Microsoft products spent HALF as much time actually learning how to use them as you do trying to get Linux to load/run/work, you'd have no issue.
This is not a troll, I mean it.
Average people (non-geeks) are better off using Windows application than learning Linux and trying to get its half-ass excuses for productivity software to work.
Microsoft Windows has A LOT of issues as an operating system. No doubt about it. But MS applications, _especially Office_ are amazing tools if you actually take the time to RTFM.
Except Clippy. There's no excuse for Clippy...
Also look at the list of country who refused to sign the International War Crime Court treaty
You mean because we did not want to be subjected to a kangaroo court run by the same class of morons that run the UN? Wow, shocking...
Ooooohhhhhh... So cool... Why is this not on Firefox's extension page? Or why did I not see it if it is? Thanks!
I am not a windows bigot, nor am I a fanboy. I use Windows XP and related windows software because it just works, and I'd rather actually use the PC than constantly fight it. I've used Unix in the past (Irix actually) and LOVED it, however I've basically given up or more accurately abandoned the desire to use Linux because XP does pretty everything I need, and the software availability and stability meet or exceed what I need (graphic design, web development, 3D modeling and animation, games). Yes, I know there are "issues", but because I "know what I'm doing" and I'm protected by a firewalled router, as well as ZoneAlarm, SpyBot & TeaTimer, etc. I once again , just don't see the reason to learn a new OS. If I had a free week or two I might try Mandrake or something again. The above spout was just to give background that I'm not an OS freak, nor a complete luser. That said, I've always disliked IE as an application in it's own right (performance, memory utilization, UI, etc.), however after a few iterations of NS being complete crap (rendering , performance, etc.) I resigned to use IE. tried Opera, not really impressed, switched back to IE. Recently installed FireFox and I will NEVER use IE again unless the page requires the active X crap. I love everything about Firefox, and as more extensions become available, I love that I can make it work EXACTLY how I want it to work. My only complaint is that I wish it was lighter weight in terms of system requirements, as I'd love to be able to run it on some REALLY old PC's that are essentially worthless for anything but dumb terminal applications (one example is y Fujitsu Point510 tablet). Anyway, that's my story. I would love to see an extension that spellchecked text boxes in online forms though...
Instead of telling us here about your issues, why don't you use your _*BETA*_ account to tell Google so they can address or improve these areas? Or you could just keep pissing into the wind I suppose, after that's what /. is for.
Odds are in Santa Rosa you'll get an earthquake before lightning... It's been years since I've seen a big lightning storm in the Bay Area.
It seems to me that it's quite poss. that all of these organizations (RIAA, MPAA, etc. etc.) are more interested in using lawsuits as ways to kill off or slow down these issues by the simple fact that they have mountains of cash and piles of lawyers and can afford just to play forever in the courtroom, and all these damned little upstarts that are threatening their cushy way of life are going to have to spend time and resources just to answer the charge. The outcome in court is of secondary importance to them. Having had the opportunity several times to bring civil complaints against people or organizations that very clearly were in the wrong, I just didn't 'cause they had more money than I did, so they could just drag it on, and, on, and on... Even though I knew I was right, everyone said I would win, it's still awfully hard to spend 10's or 100's of thousands of dollars to bring the case to court. It seems to be a similar kind of thing is going on here, except the financial constraint is placed on the defense side of the court. The RIAA et al are just using the court system, and a lot of really poorly thought out "laws", as their intimidation muscle, and they get 80% of the effect they are looking for even if it never gets to court, or even if they lose their case. Plus, if they get a temporary injunction along with the initial filing, then it gives them more time to figure out a way to actually catch up with the rest of the world, and figure out how they can make even more money by doing even less work. How much do you think MP3Board can afford to spend on defending itself? As far as I can tell, they prob. have a bit less cash laying around, and prob. don't have a crack team of entertainment law lawyers sitting around just waiting to put up a good defense. I can't imagine that banner ads are going to be real effective at funding the necessary legal defense fund. First came vinyl. Cost a bundle of money to make an album in production costs and transportation (remember how fragile those things were?), but they were not overly expensive. Around $8 in today's $$$ when they were the "in" format. Then came cassette tapes. Cost quite a bit relatively, due to the time it took to record them, and they actually had a full assembly to deal with to boot (all those moving parts, and the necessary QA that had to go along with them). But a tape only sold for like $8.00-$10.00 in today's $$$. Then came CD's. Amazingly cheap to manufacture. No moving parts, the recording process was very fast, and they were pretty much indestructible compared to the other formats. So, do we get the $$$ saved passed on to us? Hell no! CD's sell for upwards of 2X the price of cassettes! Now that the internet is here, and they can distribute an infinite amount of music for next to nothing in the way of production and distribution costs, I can imagine them coming up with a scheme where an mp3 "album" will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $350... This is all going to end badly for little ol' you and me.