To be clear, I personally could care less about cheating. I don't have time for the game as it is, much less cheating in it. I'm just saying that allowing Blizzard to root your machine is not going to stop people from cheating. All it will do is invade your privacy and make your system even more crash-prone than it already is.
My cell phone contract contained similar language. It stated that cancelling the contract before the term was up would could "cause damage to the Company that is difficult to determine, but is approximately $150". I was ready to pay this (because US Cellular is the absolute worst phone company EVER... I live in Chicago and didn't even get good reception at US Cellular field!), until I read the whole contract and realized that my cell phone company screwed up -- they said my term was "0 months" (not 2 years like I thought). Needless to say, I called them and pointed this out. They said they'd call back, but I haven't heard from them in months. I haven't gotten a bill either, so I guess they just silently admitted defeat.
Funny how the contract can actually screw the company over sometimes:)
Those terms give Blizzard the right to install a rootkit on your computer and communicate the information that the rootkit retrieves (like your bank account information and GPG keys) back to Blizzard. All so that you have the privilege of paying them to play on their servers. Nice, eh.
They're probably not doing this, but without the source code, how can you be sure? (Yeah, I know I sound like a zealot... but it's true.)
And FWIW, I always cheat in games by modifing the packet stream... on another machine that the Blizzard software has no way of knowing exists. These kinds of "protections" only protect against the n00b script kiddies, not people that actually make money data mining and cheating. (If you feel safe, then you are safe, they say.)
I think the focal length begins to be a problem if you use a magnifying glass. It's easy to focus a good spot onto an ant on the ground, but not so easy to focus on a ship quite a distance away. Focused light past its focal point diverges again, so I don't think there would be a net gain here without some complicated (and unwieldy) optics.
I think your observation generalizes to this: The collective power of slashdot with 21st century technology could surely use the power of the sun to obliterate a warship. Could Archimedes have done it, though?
Your two examples are not examples of the same problem.
In the "LED light" example, the most correct terminology would be "LED-based light fixture". However, LED light is not incorrect... the LED is a diode that emits light, while an LED light is a lamp that contains a (few) light-emiting diodes. After all, you wouldn't call an incandescent lamp a "filament" (after it's light-emitting module), right?
In the "ATM machine" example, you are right. You wouldn't call it an "Automated Teller Machine machine". That's clearly redundant.
You could do better, though, by typing your personal PIN number into the automated ATM machine... to get cash to build an redundant RAID array out of inexpensive disks.
BTW, I promise not to sic the metamods on you if you mod this down redundant:)
I figured someone would reply with that link. Not owning a TV is not to say that I don't download TV programs I want to see... I just don't want the ads or a crappy screen to view them on.
Read the post you replied to. It was none of those things. The people writing the software didn't know what the rules for calculating the release date were. So they coded what they thought was right, but it was wrong. This has nothing to do with software -- the software did what it was supposed to. It just so happened that nobody actually knew how to calculate release dates properly.
But who you should really be criticizing is the government! Their lifestyle is to be paid off by media companies to make sure you see ads and continue to SHOP SHOP SHOP. So they're making sure that you have a boob tube to deliver ads right to your house. The media companies win, and then the politicians get more bribes.
All for forcing their lifestyle on you.
(If they want that so badly, why can't they finance this out of their "contribution" fund? I want my taxes to do something good, not make people dumber. I don't even own a TV to begin with...)
I wish fewer people would vote. Imagine what this country would be like if only people who understood the ramifications of their actions voted. I can guarantee that any person with a brain that watched the presidential debates would not have voted for Bush, but he still won. Why? Because people are too fucking stupid to vote.
Shhhh! If you actually think to take care of your iPod you won't be able to sue Apple for scratching it!
Imagine a world where you can sue the manufacturer of a product because you broke it out of negligence. Wow. I hope these whiners get slapped by a judge that still has an ounce of sense... Can I sue Toyota because I scratched my car by driving it into a wall?
FWIW, Apple includes a case with the video iPod. It's pretty nice, actually -- the inside is the same material as a glasses cleaning cloth, so when you insert and remove the iPod, it polishes the fingerprints off. I've had mine for 4 days, and it's not scratched in the least -- looks like it just came out of the box. (And it even went into a pocket with keys in it... but inside its case.)
Exactly. I've never used Exchange, so I would require training to use it. Plus, we don't have any Windows machines around here, so I'm not sure what it would run on.
Needless to say, WebDAV and iCal is as advanced as we need, and that's free.
Block Skype's central server and disallow incoming connections to every machine on your network. Done.
The ISPs have too much control here. It should be made illegal for ISPs to pull crap like this. It's not the Internet when ISPs can pick-n-choose what packets they want to route, and which packets they don't.
Today it's Skype, tomorrow it's other ISPs, next week it's indymedia, then slashdot. See where this is going? That's not the Internet.
This is what TFA recommends --introduce errors and delay into VoIP so that people won't want to use it anymore. Average Joe will notice that Skype sucks, so he'll pay 100 times as much to use the real telco. Sadly, I think the IEEE is in favor of this -- they routinely sell themselves out to the giant corporations and governments. I'll probably continue to renew my membership, but it does get tiring after a while.
(The article read, to me, something like "Some goddamn bastards figured out how to call people for like 1 cent a minute. This is going to put the telcos out of business, which is bad because they have a God-given right to fuck over as many people as they want. Skype should be made illegal, but since we haven't managed to get that bribe written out yet, we'll just block it at the router level. Problem solved." Maybe I'm just in a bad mood, though:)
Anyway, this is a very slippery slope. When ISPs start doing this, the Internet is going to fragment:
"Hello Level 3, this is Cogent. We're randomly dropping packets destined for your customers." "Hello Cogent, this is UUNET. We're randomly delaying packets destined for your customers." "Hello US, this is the UN. We're going to make our own intarweb unless something or other. Haha, then the US will suffer because you can't get to the global intarweb."... etc.
I'm glad I'm in academia where Internet 2 is run by intelligent people who want to do something other than make maximum dollars RIGHT NOW.
Skype is encrypted and P2P. Yet they can still block it.
Also, if your VoIP service ever uses real phone lines, the telco can easily block it.
If this happened in the US, though, it would be an illegal abuse of their monopoly powers. When they start censoring certain data, they lose their common carrier status as well, so they become liable for all the child porn, viruses, illegal movie downloads, etc. that they transfer. Probably not a road they want to go down.
However, I guess cable companies in the US aren't common carriers, so they can (and do) block other VoIP. Someone needs to sue them for this -- it's absolutely ridiculous. When you break part of the Internet, you aren't an ISP anymore. You're a Content That We Cram Up Your Ass Service Provider... just like cable companies are already.
Personally, I use Speakeasy DSL which does nothing but route bits to and from my machine. That's the way the Internet should be!
I think the rationale for downloading music is that since the RIAA is screwing everyone so badly, we're allowed to screw them in return. I haven't found any decent music on P2P for years, though, so I get most of it from iTunes and listen to stuff that's freely available anyway. Once in a while I buy a CD, but it sure as hell isn't a RIAA CD.
As for downloading TV shows, I don't feel bad about that either. It's broadcast directly through my skull 24/7 so I don't see why I can't get it from BitTorrent if I want to. Sure the ads aren't there, but I go the bathroom during ads (with the volume muted), so I don't see them anyway. So I don't see that as "copyright infringement" or "stealing".
I think a lot of slashdotters agree with me.
And the reason they feel that they shouldn't warez quake 4 is because id is making a legitimate effort to HELP us. Don't bite the hand that feeds you, or something. The RIAA is fucking us over, so they deserve to be fucked over too. id is helping us, so they deserve help in return. You reap what you sow.
As for your original comment (and sig), you KNOW that you're just trying to upset people. That's called trolling or flamebaiting, and... it upsets people. I know that's the point, and that's why I wish I could make your posts completely disappear. Make sense now?
A double blind study is usually carried out to test a new drug. Various patients are given either the real drug, or something that looks like the real drug but doesn't contain the active ingredient. The idea is that they are "blind" to whether or not they got the real thing. The double part comes in because the researchers that give out the drugs also don't know which is real and which is a placebo. That's a double-blind test.
Now explain to me how the fuck you would administer a "definitive double-blind study that porn is unhealthy for [everyone]". The researchers showing porn to someone doesn't know that it's porn, and the person watching the porn doesn't know it's porn? That doesn't make any sense. At all.
How do you define harm anyway? I look at porn and have not yet been harmed. While we're on the subject, I thought I might mention that I have had sex with someone that I'm not married to! Oh no, I can feel the flames of hell burning my feet!
> Stop attempting to change our freedoms into license to do what you please - there IS such a thing as right and wrong.
Let's start by calling your ideologies wrong. How's that?
Normally, I would ignore posts like this, but since you posted basically the same thing a few comments up, I have to let you know that you are a fucking moron. Saskatchewan is really the name of a province. Study some geography and learn these things! Stop making all Americans look like they're completely ignorant of anything but America!
M-x calendar serves all of my team's calendaring needs. Check the plain text file into and out of CVS and you have distributed calendaring with revision control.
Oh, but that doesn't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or have a shiny GUI. Boo fucking hoo. Fuck Windows, and fuck Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
To be clear, I personally could care less about cheating. I don't have time for the game as it is, much less cheating in it. I'm just saying that allowing Blizzard to root your machine is not going to stop people from cheating. All it will do is invade your privacy and make your system even more crash-prone than it already is.
My cell phone contract contained similar language. It stated that cancelling the contract before the term was up would could "cause damage to the Company that is difficult to determine, but is approximately $150". I was ready to pay this (because US Cellular is the absolute worst phone company EVER... I live in Chicago and didn't even get good reception at US Cellular field!), until I read the whole contract and realized that my cell phone company screwed up -- they said my term was "0 months" (not 2 years like I thought). Needless to say, I called them and pointed this out. They said they'd call back, but I haven't heard from them in months. I haven't gotten a bill either, so I guess they just silently admitted defeat.
:)
Funny how the contract can actually screw the company over sometimes
Those terms give Blizzard the right to install a rootkit on your computer and communicate the information that the rootkit retrieves (like your bank account information and GPG keys) back to Blizzard. All so that you have the privilege of paying them to play on their servers. Nice, eh.
They're probably not doing this, but without the source code, how can you be sure? (Yeah, I know I sound like a zealot... but it's true.)
And FWIW, I always cheat in games by modifing the packet stream... on another machine that the Blizzard software has no way of knowing exists. These kinds of "protections" only protect against the n00b script kiddies, not people that actually make money data mining and cheating. (If you feel safe, then you are safe, they say.)
I think the focal length begins to be a problem if you use a magnifying glass. It's easy to focus a good spot onto an ant on the ground, but not so easy to focus on a ship quite a distance away. Focused light past its focal point diverges again, so I don't think there would be a net gain here without some complicated (and unwieldy) optics.
I think your observation generalizes to this: The collective power of slashdot with 21st century technology could surely use the power of the sun to obliterate a warship. Could Archimedes have done it, though?
Your two examples are not examples of the same problem.
:)
In the "LED light" example, the most correct terminology would be "LED-based light fixture". However, LED light is not incorrect... the LED is a diode that emits light, while an LED light is a lamp that contains a (few) light-emiting diodes. After all, you wouldn't call an incandescent lamp a "filament" (after it's light-emitting module), right?
In the "ATM machine" example, you are right. You wouldn't call it an "Automated Teller Machine machine". That's clearly redundant.
You could do better, though, by typing your personal PIN number into the automated ATM machine... to get cash to build an redundant RAID array out of inexpensive disks.
BTW, I promise not to sic the metamods on you if you mod this down redundant
> We usually go to BSDM play parties for Halloween.
Do they have LSAER light shows there?
I figured someone would reply with that link. Not owning a TV is not to say that I don't download TV programs I want to see... I just don't want the ads or a crappy screen to view them on.
You remove the colored glass after you're done aiming.
Read the post you replied to. It was none of those things. The people writing the software didn't know what the rules for calculating the release date were. So they coded what they thought was right, but it was wrong. This has nothing to do with software -- the software did what it was supposed to. It just so happened that nobody actually knew how to calculate release dates properly.
> USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
:naked :petrified)
Don't you mean:
use Hot::Grits qw(statue_of_natalie_portman
I think he was being sarcastic.
But who you should really be criticizing is the government! Their lifestyle is to be paid off by media companies to make sure you see ads and continue to SHOP SHOP SHOP. So they're making sure that you have a boob tube to deliver ads right to your house. The media companies win, and then the politicians get more bribes.
All for forcing their lifestyle on you.
(If they want that so badly, why can't they finance this out of their "contribution" fund? I want my taxes to do something good, not make people dumber. I don't even own a TV to begin with...)
Sleeping on the couch tonight, eh Seumas?
I wish fewer people would vote. Imagine what this country would be like if only people who understood the ramifications of their actions voted. I can guarantee that any person with a brain that watched the presidential debates would not have voted for Bush, but he still won. Why? Because people are too fucking stupid to vote.
Shhhh! If you actually think to take care of your iPod you won't be able to sue Apple for scratching it!
Imagine a world where you can sue the manufacturer of a product because you broke it out of negligence. Wow. I hope these whiners get slapped by a judge that still has an ounce of sense... Can I sue Toyota because I scratched my car by driving it into a wall?
FWIW, Apple includes a case with the video iPod. It's pretty nice, actually -- the inside is the same material as a glasses cleaning cloth, so when you insert and remove the iPod, it polishes the fingerprints off. I've had mine for 4 days, and it's not scratched in the least -- looks like it just came out of the box. (And it even went into a pocket with keys in it... but inside its case.)
Exactly. I've never used Exchange, so I would require training to use it. Plus, we don't have any Windows machines around here, so I'm not sure what it would run on.
Needless to say, WebDAV and iCal is as advanced as we need, and that's free.
The developers prefer plain text files, though.
Block Skype's central server and disallow incoming connections to every machine on your network. Done.
The ISPs have too much control here. It should be made illegal for ISPs to pull crap like this. It's not the Internet when ISPs can pick-n-choose what packets they want to route, and which packets they don't.
Today it's Skype, tomorrow it's other ISPs, next week it's indymedia, then slashdot. See where this is going? That's not the Internet.
This is what TFA recommends --introduce errors and delay into VoIP so that people won't want to use it anymore. Average Joe will notice that Skype sucks, so he'll pay 100 times as much to use the real telco. Sadly, I think the IEEE is in favor of this -- they routinely sell themselves out to the giant corporations and governments. I'll probably continue to renew my membership, but it does get tiring after a while.
:)
... etc.
(The article read, to me, something like "Some goddamn bastards figured out how to call people for like 1 cent a minute. This is going to put the telcos out of business, which is bad because they have a God-given right to fuck over as many people as they want. Skype should be made illegal, but since we haven't managed to get that bribe written out yet, we'll just block it at the router level. Problem solved." Maybe I'm just in a bad mood, though
Anyway, this is a very slippery slope. When ISPs start doing this, the Internet is going to fragment:
"Hello Level 3, this is Cogent. We're randomly dropping packets destined for your customers."
"Hello Cogent, this is UUNET. We're randomly delaying packets destined for your customers."
"Hello US, this is the UN. We're going to make our own intarweb unless something or other. Haha, then the US will suffer because you can't get to the global intarweb."
I'm glad I'm in academia where Internet 2 is run by intelligent people who want to do something other than make maximum dollars RIGHT NOW.
Skype is encrypted and P2P. Yet they can still block it.
Also, if your VoIP service ever uses real phone lines, the telco can easily block it.
If this happened in the US, though, it would be an illegal abuse of their monopoly powers. When they start censoring certain data, they lose their common carrier status as well, so they become liable for all the child porn, viruses, illegal movie downloads, etc. that they transfer. Probably not a road they want to go down.
However, I guess cable companies in the US aren't common carriers, so they can (and do) block other VoIP. Someone needs to sue them for this -- it's absolutely ridiculous. When you break part of the Internet, you aren't an ISP anymore. You're a Content That We Cram Up Your Ass Service Provider... just like cable companies are already.
Personally, I use Speakeasy DSL which does nothing but route bits to and from my machine. That's the way the Internet should be!
I think the rationale for downloading music is that since the RIAA is screwing everyone so badly, we're allowed to screw them in return. I haven't found any decent music on P2P for years, though, so I get most of it from iTunes and listen to stuff that's freely available anyway. Once in a while I buy a CD, but it sure as hell isn't a RIAA CD.
... it upsets people. I know that's the point, and that's why I wish I could make your posts completely disappear. Make sense now?
As for downloading TV shows, I don't feel bad about that either. It's broadcast directly through my skull 24/7 so I don't see why I can't get it from BitTorrent if I want to. Sure the ads aren't there, but I go the bathroom during ads (with the volume muted), so I don't see them anyway. So I don't see that as "copyright infringement" or "stealing".
I think a lot of slashdotters agree with me.
And the reason they feel that they shouldn't warez quake 4 is because id is making a legitimate effort to HELP us. Don't bite the hand that feeds you, or something. The RIAA is fucking us over, so they deserve to be fucked over too. id is helping us, so they deserve help in return. You reap what you sow.
As for your original comment (and sig), you KNOW that you're just trying to upset people. That's called trolling or flamebaiting, and
How do you make someone a foe that's already your foe? I mean, if you don't have mod points...
The fact that you posted it more than once makes one wonder. One time it's funny, twice it's stupid, etc.
Also, jokes are supposed to be funny, and yours wasn't.
Double-blind? Excuse me?
A double blind study is usually carried out to test a new drug. Various patients are given either the real drug, or something that looks like the real drug but doesn't contain the active ingredient. The idea is that they are "blind" to whether or not they got the real thing. The double part comes in because the researchers that give out the drugs also don't know which is real and which is a placebo. That's a double-blind test.
Now explain to me how the fuck you would administer a "definitive double-blind study that porn is unhealthy for [everyone]". The researchers showing porn to someone doesn't know that it's porn, and the person watching the porn doesn't know it's porn? That doesn't make any sense. At all.
How do you define harm anyway? I look at porn and have not yet been harmed. While we're on the subject, I thought I might mention that I have had sex with someone that I'm not married to! Oh no, I can feel the flames of hell burning my feet!
> Stop attempting to change our freedoms into license to do what you please - there IS such a thing as right and wrong.
Let's start by calling your ideologies wrong. How's that?
Normally, I would ignore posts like this, but since you posted basically the same thing a few comments up, I have to let you know that you are a fucking moron. Saskatchewan is really the name of a province. Study some geography and learn these things! Stop making all Americans look like they're completely ignorant of anything but America!
God I hope your not serious about this...
I knew someone would point this out :)
What I meant is that for some reason the AC unit doesn't drain like it's supposed to.
M-x calendar serves all of my team's calendaring needs. Check the plain text file into and out of CVS and you have distributed calendaring with revision control.
Oh, but that doesn't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or have a shiny GUI. Boo fucking hoo. Fuck Windows, and fuck Microsoft.