But what, seriously, would make you think it's even marginally okay to come out with a blanket statement like that? It's "News for Nerds", not "News for hippy nerds". Saying that someone is unwelcome due to their political orientation is functionally equivalent to saying that people of a particular religion shouldn't be posting here.
I have not only friends, but family members pretty much all across the political spectrum. If you're so overzealous about your progressive, liberal, uber-tolerant views that you can't stand to be around a 'conservative'. And which flavor of conservative, might I ask?
except, super volcanos have been documented. A moon size object moving at a velocity of several hundred miles per second pretty much makes the earth go away (or totally rearanges the planet into one or more other objects).
I do not understand what the grandparent's, your first, and your second statements really have to do with each other. Earth (or, well, proto-Earth) probably got hit by a Mars-sized object about 4.6 billion years back - that's what created the moon in the first place. Which is about as close to documented as an event that long ago can be, I guess.
I mean, come on, if you've read any of Micheal Crichton's pseudoscience novels, this would be the one to start with. Although it was a meteor, not a comet, that carried it, if I'm remember rightly.
'People like us' are a vast minority, and have little right to impose 'our' culture and values on others, or to expose them to our 'wrath'. That my friend is called racism.
You are kidding, right? I admit, it's been a long day, I'm kinda tired, so maybe I'm not seeing the sarcastic component of this... but, seriously, you are kidding, right? Racism? Racism? Prejudiced on the basis of race? Disliking a particular group, or multiple groups, because of their genetic makeup? So being aware of the conventions, customs & courtesies of the internet is now an ethnicity?
Which brings me to my other point. Even if your entire post is serious... the internet has its own culture, and its own set of norms, customs, and courtesies. Which makes it kind of like a foreign country, to people who've never visited before. So, if you come visit... please take the time to learn the lingo, learn how to hail a cab, and avoid being a n00b. Thank you very much.
It's simple enough to solve Marriot's problem. Pass a law that anyone storing more than 100 credit card numbers must use encryption.
I find it pretty entertaining how the same group of people (not necessarily you in person) who bitches about so many unnecessary laws, like, say, something from Indiana, starts proposing new laws whenever their personal issue is messed with.
There's plenty of other points (including the endless lawyer-bashing) I could pick apart, but I'll start with this one. I'm assuming you're in the US, cause you're talking about social security numbers. Well, at least in this country, you can't copyright a fact, or even a collection of facts (although you can copyright the arrangement of them, provided it's not an obvious one.)
And before you start ranting, no, I'm not a lawyer, I'm actually an electrician. (My sister is a lawyer, though, and was recently involved in a case where the plaintiff attempted to copyright his name & address, and then sue her employers for copyright infringement.)
if everybody bought their grandma an iMac, there would be a lot more exploits on them then there are now. As many as wintel boxes? Probably not. But more than there are now.
The HP Printer/Scanner/Fax/Toaster combo my wife wanted to get for the home office says in the install manual that it needs to be installed by an admin, and anything other than printing needs to be done as an admin. Old scanner worked fine as a regular user.
Different devices, different software & drivers, different requirements.
Forgot to add - a lot of the actual company you'd be sending money to operate outside of the U.S. If the country they're currently in doesn't have laws against this sort of behavior, it would be almost impossible to bring any kind of case against them - they're unlikey to be extradited from the Ukraine for a few thousand USD worth of fraud. (Unless, of course, they defrauded the wrong high-ranking government official, but that's another story.)
This has happened a lot in the spyware world - there's plenty of supposed "Spyware Removers" that either contain or were marketed with spyware, or show false positives in the "demo" version, forcing you to pay for the real version, which then 'clears' it all up for you. Even though plenty of people spent the money & got nothing, I haven't seen any news reports of anyone being charged for fraud in relation to these products...
The CoolWebSearch family of malware has been around forever... one of the major effects of many of the versions is to replace any IE entry of "search.msn.com" or "www.google.com" with "www.coolwebsearch.com", a rather shitty search engine.
Although in my case, I was even dumber... I was surfing with firefox, but the web page that (apparently) had what I needed refused to render, so I grudingly started up IE, and... well, some of what it downloaded set off Norton, luckily. I was already late getting to bed that night, by the time I cleared out everything (including that irritating "Spyware blocker" ad they put on my desktop & kept re-spawning) I pretty much got no sleep that night. So I finally decided to lock out access to IE on my normal XP login, to protect me from my sleep-deprived self.
Slashdot Mirror
I have not only friends, but family members pretty much all across the political spectrum. If you're so overzealous about your progressive, liberal, uber-tolerant views that you can't stand to be around a 'conservative'. And which flavor of conservative, might I ask?
http://www.homestarrunner.com/
Gotta love the two-headed cow.
I mean, come on, if you've read any of Micheal Crichton's pseudoscience novels, this would be the one to start with. Although it was a meteor, not a comet, that carried it, if I'm remember rightly.
Nothing else to say, eh?
Which brings me to my other point. Even if your entire post is serious... the internet has its own culture, and its own set of norms, customs, and courtesies. Which makes it kind of like a foreign country, to people who've never visited before. So, if you come visit... please take the time to learn the lingo, learn how to hail a cab, and avoid being a n00b. Thank you very much.
IRA
Comparing a slashdotting to manual DOS by some high schoolers is like comparing... oh, I don't know... this one to this one.
the submitter... or all of us who loaded that page who are responsible?
I find it pretty entertaining how the same group of people (not necessarily you in person) who bitches about so many unnecessary laws, like, say, something from Indiana, starts proposing new laws whenever their personal issue is messed with.
And, no, you can't copyright your name either.
And before you start ranting, no, I'm not a lawyer, I'm actually an electrician. (My sister is a lawyer, though, and was recently involved in a case where the plaintiff attempted to copyright his name & address, and then sue her employers for copyright infringement.)
What problem do you have with the marlon brando look-alikes?
I assume by greater in this sentence, you mean more powerful, no?
Firefox doesn't natively display WMF files - but if you try to load just the image, IIRC, it will load it through the MS dll.
if everybody bought their grandma an iMac, there would be a lot more exploits on them then there are now. As many as wintel boxes? Probably not. But more than there are now.
I would tell you to get out now, but it's probably about 12 & a half hours late.
Different devices, different software & drivers, different requirements.
What annoys me is that the reporter repeated this line from Microsoft & didn't even think it through...
Although, as someone else said in reply to my original post, what can you expect from reporters, anyway...
Forgot to add - a lot of the actual company you'd be sending money to operate outside of the U.S. If the country they're currently in doesn't have laws against this sort of behavior, it would be almost impossible to bring any kind of case against them - they're unlikey to be extradited from the Ukraine for a few thousand USD worth of fraud. (Unless, of course, they defrauded the wrong high-ranking government official, but that's another story.)
The CoolWebSearch family of malware has been around forever... one of the major effects of many of the versions is to replace any IE entry of "search.msn.com" or "www.google.com" with "www.coolwebsearch.com", a rather shitty search engine.
Although in my case, I was even dumber... I was surfing with firefox, but the web page that (apparently) had what I needed refused to render, so I grudingly started up IE, and... well, some of what it downloaded set off Norton, luckily. I was already late getting to bed that night, by the time I cleared out everything (including that irritating "Spyware blocker" ad they put on my desktop & kept re-spawning) I pretty much got no sleep that night. So I finally decided to lock out access to IE on my normal XP login, to protect me from my sleep-deprived self.