The Amiga had a RAM drive that was always the size of whatever was in it and no bigger. If you copied items to the ram drive, the drive size expanded (until you ran out of RAM), when you deleted items, the RAM drive size decreased.
I used to run a BBS and I would initially load all the executables to the RAM disk, with the message boards saving to floppies. As long as I was only warm-booting the machine (i.e., without turning off the power), the RAM disk would stay intact, and I could boot from RAM, which made everything run lighting fast.
After all, *nothing* is made in the USA anymore. Too expensive.
Yes, all this is, is a slightly improved Apollo capsule. Amazing how much we've advanced in almost 50 years (sarcasm, in case you didn't catch that).
It's a real sad state of affairs if this is the best we can do with all our advances. Maybe we need to get Chuck Yeager to pilot it, because it really seems that all our aeronautical and space advances took place while he was still active.
Either that or we need a war with Germany so we can steal their scientists because it's clear that without them, our guys have exactly zero ability to come up with anything truly groundbreaking.
Used to be the main wiring harness for a car was as thick as your thumb. Now it's bigger than your fist and contains so many wires it's not possible to 'repair' cars any longer, now it's diagnostic computer to tell you what's wrong, pull the part the computer tells you to, and replace it with a spare rather than try to repair the part.
What has been left out of this ENTIRE black box equation is: The first thing to fail on cars (aside from the water pump), is the electrical system. My current car has practically every light on the dash lit up telling me there's 'problems' with the car, check engine, check airbags, check brakes, yadda yadda. But there's nothing actually wrong with the car, I've checked it. It's that the computer isn't getting the right voltages to some of the modules that drive the dash -- my speedometer shows the wrong speed, all my gauges are slightly off, cruise control no longer works, etc.
But the car itself runs and drives, stops great, handles well, passes emissions, etc. But the electrical system itself is screwed up, and it's more to "repair" (i.e. take it to the dealer and have them strip out the whole harness and replace the dash) than the car is worth.
So I drive it as is, and ignore all the lights on the dash. I perform all the regular maintenance to make sure everything's OK, and I'm diligent to make sure none of the lights are registering any REAL problem.
So, this "black box"... How well is that going to work when the electrical system is screwed up? My guess is: not well at all. And any lawyer worth his outrageous fee will be able to challenge any ruling on that basis.
As cars age, they get less and less able to get the right voltages to all the parts that rely on them. This is due to rust adding resistance to the ground, which all run through the body. Unless they are going to re-engineer all cars to have a main ground strap that's NOT the body of the car itself, this system isn't going to work after a car is more than 6 or 7 years old.
I've been hearing about an engine that would use Jet/Rocket hybrid since the mid-70's. I believe it was even proposed for early concepts of the space shuttle. But NASA could never make it work.
NASA couldn't even make the Aerospike work either, and that was supposed to revolutionize space travel in the mid-80's.
So will all the brilliant minds at NASA and our defense contractors, they couldn't make anything work except for some really backwards solid-rocket boosters.
After we lost our German scientists, America went back to black powder and cannon to launch rockets.
And now, while the ESA is moving forward, America is jumping backwards even more, going back to 60's Apollo-era capsules. And that's after a long development schedule while we're piggybacking on the Russians.
*IF* (and that's a big if) the ESA can make this thing work, it will truly put us far behind the Europeans, the Chinese and the Russians. W00T! America Number 4!!!!
Heck, we might even be behind the Indians and the Japanese by then as well.
Our last Shuttle flight is July 8th. I'm marking that day on my calendar, as it marks America's official slide into 3rd world status. We are not the superpower we used to be, and as long as we're internally bickering over healthcare, abortion, and whether god controls the tides, we never will be a superpower again.
Protests are *already* threats to national security.
Remember Dubya's "free speech zones" that were a mile or more from where he was giving a speech, and the protesters were herded into these areas, nowhere near the media or the president?
Or how the FBI infiltrates even the most innocuous groups that band together to discuss freedoms, rights, and how badly run the government is?
And it doesn't matter which "team" they are playing for, all politicians are about power and money. They are all in the pockets of big corps.
In Ray Bradbury's classic Sci-Fi novel, books were outlawed, and forced people to memorize great works of literature, because the only way to carry a book was in your head.
So vagrants would gather in secluded areas, and "copy" the books by teaching a younger generation each book, verbally.
This is direction we are headed, not by the government outlawing books, but by corporations and IP holders making the ownership of books so ridden with copyright hassles that our only recourse may be to memorize a book and verbally pass on the knowledge, since anything else is considered "theft".
Of course, it won't be long before *READING* a book is considered copyright theft since you are copying the book from the printed page to your brain.
Oh what a world we are making for ourselves. When learning is outlawed, only outlaws will learn.
It seems to me that the 13-yr olds that run FARK have a far better security system in place than Sony does. Their people have no plan, no concept, no big picture at all, of what to do.
They are grasping at straws, throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, or whatever tired car analogy you wish to entertain. Point is: I think it's time they gave up and went home.
If they are lucky, they will shut down for 8 months and rebuild from scratch. If they are stupid (most likely scenario), they will continue to prop up a house of cards with a few pieces of sticky tape, and it will come down again and again, until no one is left and they've wasted a great deal of money only to arrive at the conclusion that they should have done the rebuild from scratch in the first place.
Of course by then, management will look at the numbers and get out of the game business entirely, leaving MS and Nintendo.
How is fathering a child out of welock a crime? Maybe it needs to be -- after all, we have weirder laws on the books.
However; here's some REAL CRIME that no one is interested in prosecuting:
With a gun you can rob a bank, with a bank you can rob the world. When a person robs a bank, they should go to jail, but what about when the banks rob people?
- Joseph Cassano â" the former head of AIGâ(TM)s financial products unit. Under his watch the company amassed massive amounts of risk that lead to the biggest bailout in U.S. history. Thereâ(TM)s very little chance of Cassano facing time, however; Federal prosecutors recently dropped their investigation against him.
- Dick Fuld & Joe Gregory â" Lehman Brothers CEO and COO who watched their house of cards come tumbling down, bringing the global financial system to the edge of the collapse.
- Angelo Mozilo â" The Countrywide CEO helped fuel the subprime madness. His companyâ(TM)s lack of due diligence is a prime reason for the foreclosure problem. Mozilo also co-founded IndyMac, the large California bank that was seized by the FDIC in July 2008.
- Stanley Oâ(TM)Neal â" the former Merrill Lynch CEO pushed the firm to aggressively market and trade CDOs. O'Neal left with the firm on the brink of collapse before Bank of America purchased it. For all his good work, Oâ(TM)Neal was fired but left with a golden parachute and options valued at $161.5 million at the time.
- Fabrice âoeFabulous Fabâ Tourre & John Paulson â" the banker and hedge fund manager at the center of the SECâ(TM)s criminal fraud complaint against Goldman Sachs. People need to know the Goldmanâ(TM)s of the world donâ(TM)t have politicians in their pockets and that the American markets are a safe place to put your money.
- The C level executives from the rating companies Moodyâ(TM)s, S&P and Fitch that gave the highest ratings, investment grade - triple A, to all the worthless sub-prime CDOâ(TM)s, SIVâ(TM)s, MBSâ(TM)s. It was their ratings of these worthless pieces of paper that encouraged investors to purchase them and subsequently lose everything. This is out and out fraud!
During the S&L scandal of the 1980s over 1,000 people went to jail. To date only Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, two Bear Stearns hedge fund managers, have even gone on trial. Both were acquitted. I urge all Americans to write their Senator and ask them why these miscreants have not been charged. They did just as much damage to the American economy as the Taliban and the Mafia, its time they are put on trial!
Nothing done about banks, nothing done about oil spill, nothing done to withdraw troops, nothing done to reduce deficit, so far nothing done to reduce healthcare. Man I see a whole lot of nothing getting done in D.C.
But this dude has to pay 1.5 Million and spend 4 years in jail over a few passwords? Give me a break, obviously, when you OWN the country, as the rich do, you can get away with anything - heel, you can bankrupt the country, set it on fire, and we'll give you MORE money rather than throw you in jail.
Meanwhile the former Governator admits that he fathered a child out of wedlock while on the payroll of the state. This is *while* he was railing against Gay Marriage because it would harm the "sanctity" of marriage.
Good job there dude. And will any charges be brought against him? Nope. It won't even affect his attempt at restarting his movie career. Just another day in Hollywoodland.
Meanwhile, Terry Childs is fined $1.5 mill for acting like a douche AND is spending 4 years in jail.
How much you want to bet that if he was a rich and famous dude, he wouldn't be spending one day in jail? Why is it that we live in a "free" and "equal" country where there's one set of laws for the wealthy and powerful, and another set of laws for the commoners?
I don't know how many New Yorkers are on Slashdot, but I was living in Jersey City during 9/11, and the one thing I can tell you is that when there is a disaster, the President is aware of it later than the people suffering the disaster, and by then, the phone network is USELESS.
On 9/11 I was unable to make a phone call for 12 hours. Things started going bad by 8:30am, and it wasn't until almost 9PM that I was able to get through to my family. They knew I took the PATH train through that area and thought I was a dead.
But I was late getting into work that day. Also, my clock radio was set to 1010 WINS (news radio), so I was smart enough to turn on my TV to see the "light commuter aircraft" that might have hit the twin towers...
The rest of the day I caught the entire event live from the rooftop. But the point is: Phones just gave a busy signal. Nothing worked. Actually, that's not true, the internet worked. But my family members didn't have email back then.
When zillions of people clog the phone network, it bogs down from oversaturation - try getting a signal during any major event. I attended the Stewart/Colbert rally in DC, and I was able to get a signal until the crowd started to get really big. After that, nothing worked.
This plan is doomed to failure because there isn't enough infrastructure.
This looks like a move to BLOCK Facebook and/or Google expansion into this area. And when either of these companies move in anyhow, out come the lawsuits.
You may not believe this, but those working conditions are coming to America. It may take 20 years for it to happen, but America is failing while China is exploding. By 2018 they will surpass us as the number one superpower. Their "middle class" is already at 300 million, a number larger than the entire USA population. And it's growing quickly.
As China's middle class grows to about 700 million, they can become a self-sustaining economy, meaning that internally, there's enough people working, and making money to buy enough stuff to keep china's economy moving regardless of exports.
At that point, it's possible the American economy will collapse, as China doesn't need us anymore. And at that point, WE will become the cheap source of labor because America will be broke, building products for the Chinese.
And we'll be happy to work 7-days a week for a 12-hour shift making $1 per hour, because we'll all be trying desperately to pay off our massive debt to China, which at that point, will own all the banks.
There's a great scene in the Kirk Douglas film "Spartacus", where, after the defeat of the slave army led by Spartacus, the Roman general, who still doesn't know him by sight, wants the man or the body identified by the remaining prisoners, or all will be executed.
Spartcus (played by Kirk Douglas) is about to stand up, give himself up and save his men. But two men next to him stand up and shout in unison "I am Spartacus!" And then wave after wave of prisoners stand up and also shout the same. It's a powerful, moving scene because it's no longer about one man, it's about the dream of freedom to everyone there.
It's clear that Sony has no F'ing clue who or what "Anonymous" is, they are just going after a convenient scapegoat so they can sue some random people they might have the IP address of, at the time of the attack.
It's up to all of us to stand up and shout "I am anonymous" (or "Blank is beautiful" to those of us who remember Max Headroom), and join our voices in unison, because it's no longer about one person, it's about freedom for us all.
If you look at this actual website, it becomes more obvious WHY he's using Apple II boards.
#1) He's using discrete components and actual wire and solder to cobble the boards into a single computer. He uses perf-board and socketed chips to build his extra peripherals. YOU CANNOT DO THAT with modern Intel-based mobos. They are all surface mount and pretty much unhackable unless you've got some elYte equipment.
#2) The Apple II board was built by a hacker, for hackers. That makes it the obvious choice in a nutshell. This is exactly the kind of stuff Woz wanted people to do with his creation.
#3) There's no challenge to doing parallel computing with an intel mobo -- they are already coming off the shelf with 8 cores. What's the fun in that?
Really? Then why haven't we seen any massive credit card fraud yet? Sony is claiming at over 10 million CC numbers were "stolen" and that was from a hack done more than 2 weeks ago.
If these were career criminals, why haven't we yet seen the horror stories of millions of dollars of goods shipped to Romania, with average joes holding the bag on the bill?
And why target Sony? Amazon would have far more data, as well as Facebook. Or, hack Microsoft's Xbox network which has more users in the USA. Why wasn't Nintendo targeted?
And if you're going to say that the perpetrators somehow knew that Sony's security was weak, then you're pointing to an inside job.
Sony appears to have been targeted because they are a bunch of douches. And judging by the low level of fraud so far, I'd say that the hackers are showing some restraint about harming the average joe while doing massive damage to Sony's image.
That doesn't sound career criminal to me, that sounds like vengeance from the user community after "Other OS" was removed.
Notice how the PS3 ads are off TV? They need to change their slogan to "It only does nothing".
Sony just wanted your money, they don't give a crap about you, your rights to privacy, or even making an attempt at keeping your data secure.
If you purchased a Sony product in such a way that they've got your credit card number, you're at risk, and it doesn't seem to matter since when; since the beginning of Sony on the Internet. Hopefully, those of you using Sony Online since the days of the Playstation (one), only have expired credit cards to worry about, but anyone who has used Sony recently is at more risk.
Throw out your Playstation 3. NEVER AGAIN purchase a Sony Product, do not buy their records, do not watch their movies, do not buy their headphones, MP3 players, e-book readers, or any of their other trash.
YOU MUST SEND A MESSAGE: I suggest even writing to Sony if you're their customer and TELL THEM that you are boycotting their products and you are advising your family and friends to do the same.
You *can* live without their crap. Surprisingly, there's a world out there. With trees, grass, flowers, and girls. Put down the controller, sir, and step away from the TV.
First of all, you need to remember who's running this country, and it's not us. It's big corporations like Sony. They can essentially screw of all of us with impunity and if they go to far, the government gives them a slap on the wrist as a show of good faith to the people.
Consider the SEC. When they fine some trading company $20million for some illegal trading activities, do you really think that's a big deal? Of course not because they company made $100 or $200 million doing the illegal trade. To them, the fine is a cost of doing business. It's the kickback to their partner in crime, the government.
You're not going to get much out of Sony. And the government won't force much out of Sony. You have only one way of controlling this issue, and that's to vote with your wallet and stop buying *anything* connected to Sony. That means even carefully picking what movies you see this summer.
Only if Sony was to suffer considerable losses by people abandoning them en masse would they ever get the hint. But as long as they are profitable, they can continue to screw their customers, because their customers keep buying their shit. It's like you WANT to be tortured.
So they can apologize in advance for their next fuckup.
Because you *know* it's coming. I mean their entire corporate culture is about how they can screw their customers. They cannot change. From the MP3 player that wouldn't play MP3's to the rootkit to this, it's just once thing after another. They just say 'sorry' and then move on to do it all over again to their customers.
And you idiots that buy their shit are stupid for doing so. You'd think *you* would learn not to trust these pricks, but, whatever. It's your money. Throw it out the window if you like.
I stopped buying Sony products after the "rootkit" incident. trust me when I say that I don't feel that I've missed out on anything by not buying Sony. In fact, I feel like I've gained because I stop myself from getting, what ultimately turns out to be useless junk.
I'm not wasting my money with HD tv and it's associated Blu-Ray crap. I'm not even home enough to justify it. My last TV was given to me (although it is a Sony), as a friend bought a new TV.
The money I would have spent on home theater crap or videogames has instead been spent on a motorcycle, which has given me much more than any videogame or movie. As a bonus, I'm saving gas commuting to work compared to driving the car. And I'll get years more out of the car by not driving it every day.
Every gun nut whines and whines about how the government is trying to take their guns away, and when you ask the gun nut why he needs automatic weapons to go duck hunting, he will inevitably quote the 2nd amendment, and how we *need* to have the people armed so when the government has become totalitarian, we can rise up and shoot our way back to freedom and "take our country back".
Excuse me, but it seems that we are well past that point. Every country on the other side of the planet that ends in "ia" is having a civil war, why aren't we? The country has become corrupted by capitalism gone crazy, and now we are living in state of Fascism.
And yet the gun-nuts who worry about our freedoms seem oblivious to the fact that we don't have any freedoms, except that we still have a right to have guns. As long as we don't try to *do* anything with them.
That's a good point. And since they let someone else "download" your data, and each copy of said data is worth $150,000 per instance, times 77 million....
Isn't Sony part of the people suing Limewire for a Trillion Dollars???
I think the time has come for everyone to sure Sony.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could call up the RIAA and say "stop suing us, it wasn't fire sharing, it was a data-breach!"
Actually the one person who screwed 77million others was the CEO of Sony. You can bet *his* credit card numbers aren't compromised, you can bet his bonus for this year isn't even at risk. And you can bet that Sony will spin this in such as a way as to screw you all, over and over again.
Yeah, can't you wait until your Blu-Ray player stops working too, every time you want to watch a movie? This is why you can't have "server" verification. Because there's no guarantee the server will be there.
Tell your friend to return the game. It's broken. Get his money back. It's designed to fail.
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The Amiga had a RAM drive that was always the size of whatever was in it and no bigger. If you copied items to the ram drive, the drive size expanded (until you ran out of RAM), when you deleted items, the RAM drive size decreased.
I used to run a BBS and I would initially load all the executables to the RAM disk, with the message boards saving to floppies. As long as I was only warm-booting the machine (i.e., without turning off the power), the RAM disk would stay intact, and I could boot from RAM, which made everything run lighting fast.
After all, *nothing* is made in the USA anymore. Too expensive.
Yes, all this is, is a slightly improved Apollo capsule. Amazing how much we've advanced in almost 50 years (sarcasm, in case you didn't catch that).
It's a real sad state of affairs if this is the best we can do with all our advances. Maybe we need to get Chuck Yeager to pilot it, because it really seems that all our aeronautical and space advances took place while he was still active.
Either that or we need a war with Germany so we can steal their scientists because it's clear that without them, our guys have exactly zero ability to come up with anything truly groundbreaking.
Used to be the main wiring harness for a car was as thick as your thumb. Now it's bigger than your fist and contains so many wires it's not possible to 'repair' cars any longer, now it's diagnostic computer to tell you what's wrong, pull the part the computer tells you to, and replace it with a spare rather than try to repair the part.
What has been left out of this ENTIRE black box equation is: The first thing to fail on cars (aside from the water pump), is the electrical system. My current car has practically every light on the dash lit up telling me there's 'problems' with the car, check engine, check airbags, check brakes, yadda yadda. But there's nothing actually wrong with the car, I've checked it. It's that the computer isn't getting the right voltages to some of the modules that drive the dash -- my speedometer shows the wrong speed, all my gauges are slightly off, cruise control no longer works, etc.
But the car itself runs and drives, stops great, handles well, passes emissions, etc. But the electrical system itself is screwed up, and it's more to "repair" (i.e. take it to the dealer and have them strip out the whole harness and replace the dash) than the car is worth.
So I drive it as is, and ignore all the lights on the dash. I perform all the regular maintenance to make sure everything's OK, and I'm diligent to make sure none of the lights are registering any REAL problem.
So, this "black box"... How well is that going to work when the electrical system is screwed up? My guess is: not well at all. And any lawyer worth his outrageous fee will be able to challenge any ruling on that basis.
As cars age, they get less and less able to get the right voltages to all the parts that rely on them. This is due to rust adding resistance to the ground, which all run through the body. Unless they are going to re-engineer all cars to have a main ground strap that's NOT the body of the car itself, this system isn't going to work after a car is more than 6 or 7 years old.
I've been hearing about an engine that would use Jet/Rocket hybrid since the mid-70's. I believe it was even proposed for early concepts of the space shuttle. But NASA could never make it work.
NASA couldn't even make the Aerospike work either, and that was supposed to revolutionize space travel in the mid-80's.
So will all the brilliant minds at NASA and our defense contractors, they couldn't make anything work except for some really backwards solid-rocket boosters.
After we lost our German scientists, America went back to black powder and cannon to launch rockets.
And now, while the ESA is moving forward, America is jumping backwards even more, going back to 60's Apollo-era capsules. And that's after a long development schedule while we're piggybacking on the Russians.
*IF* (and that's a big if) the ESA can make this thing work, it will truly put us far behind the Europeans, the Chinese and the Russians. W00T! America Number 4!!!!
Heck, we might even be behind the Indians and the Japanese by then as well.
Our last Shuttle flight is July 8th. I'm marking that day on my calendar, as it marks America's official slide into 3rd world status. We are not the superpower we used to be, and as long as we're internally bickering over healthcare, abortion, and whether god controls the tides, we never will be a superpower again.
Protests are *already* threats to national security.
Remember Dubya's "free speech zones" that were a mile or more from where he was giving a speech, and the protesters were herded into these areas, nowhere near the media or the president?
Or how the FBI infiltrates even the most innocuous groups that band together to discuss freedoms, rights, and how badly run the government is?
And it doesn't matter which "team" they are playing for, all politicians are about power and money. They are all in the pockets of big corps.
That is...until someone copyrights vowels....
Don't think that's not coming. It is.
In Ray Bradbury's classic Sci-Fi novel, books were outlawed, and forced people to memorize great works of literature, because the only way to carry a book was in your head.
So vagrants would gather in secluded areas, and "copy" the books by teaching a younger generation each book, verbally.
This is direction we are headed, not by the government outlawing books, but by corporations and IP holders making the ownership of books so ridden with copyright hassles that our only recourse may be to memorize a book and verbally pass on the knowledge, since anything else is considered "theft".
Of course, it won't be long before *READING* a book is considered copyright theft since you are copying the book from the printed page to your brain.
Oh what a world we are making for ourselves. When learning is outlawed, only outlaws will learn.
It seems to me that the 13-yr olds that run FARK have a far better security system in place than Sony does. Their people have no plan, no concept, no big picture at all, of what to do.
They are grasping at straws, throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, or whatever tired car analogy you wish to entertain. Point is: I think it's time they gave up and went home.
If they are lucky, they will shut down for 8 months and rebuild from scratch. If they are stupid (most likely scenario), they will continue to prop up a house of cards with a few pieces of sticky tape, and it will come down again and again, until no one is left and they've wasted a great deal of money only to arrive at the conclusion that they should have done the rebuild from scratch in the first place.
Of course by then, management will look at the numbers and get out of the game business entirely, leaving MS and Nintendo.
How is fathering a child out of welock a crime? Maybe it needs to be -- after all, we have weirder laws on the books.
However; here's some REAL CRIME that no one is interested in prosecuting:
With a gun you can rob a bank, with a bank you can rob the world. When a person robs a bank, they should go to jail, but what about when the banks rob people?
- Joseph Cassano â" the former head of AIGâ(TM)s financial products unit. Under his watch the company amassed massive amounts of risk that lead to the biggest bailout in U.S. history. Thereâ(TM)s very little chance of Cassano facing time, however; Federal prosecutors recently dropped their investigation against him.
- Dick Fuld & Joe Gregory â" Lehman Brothers CEO and COO who watched their house of cards come tumbling down, bringing the global financial system to the edge of the collapse.
- Angelo Mozilo â" The Countrywide CEO helped fuel the subprime madness. His companyâ(TM)s lack of due diligence is a prime reason for the foreclosure problem. Mozilo also co-founded IndyMac, the large California bank that was seized by the FDIC in July 2008.
- Stanley Oâ(TM)Neal â" the former Merrill Lynch CEO pushed the firm to aggressively market and trade CDOs. O'Neal left with the firm on the brink of collapse before Bank of America purchased it. For all his good work, Oâ(TM)Neal was fired but left with a golden parachute and options valued at $161.5 million at the time.
- Fabrice âoeFabulous Fabâ Tourre & John Paulson â" the banker and hedge fund manager at the center of the SECâ(TM)s criminal fraud complaint against Goldman Sachs. People need to know the Goldmanâ(TM)s of the world donâ(TM)t have politicians in their pockets and that the American markets are a safe place to put your money.
- The C level executives from the rating companies Moodyâ(TM)s, S&P and Fitch that gave the highest ratings, investment grade - triple A, to all the worthless sub-prime CDOâ(TM)s, SIVâ(TM)s, MBSâ(TM)s. It was their ratings of these worthless pieces of paper that encouraged investors to purchase them and subsequently lose everything. This is out and out fraud!
During the S&L scandal of the 1980s over 1,000 people went to jail. To date only Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, two Bear Stearns hedge fund managers, have even gone on trial. Both were acquitted. I urge all Americans to write their Senator and ask them why these miscreants have not been charged. They did just as much damage to the American economy as the Taliban and the Mafia, its time they are put on trial!
Nothing done about banks, nothing done about oil spill, nothing done to withdraw troops, nothing done to reduce deficit, so far nothing done to reduce healthcare. Man I see a whole lot of nothing getting done in D.C.
But this dude has to pay 1.5 Million and spend 4 years in jail over a few passwords? Give me a break, obviously, when you OWN the country, as the rich do, you can get away with anything - heel, you can bankrupt the country, set it on fire, and we'll give you MORE money rather than throw you in jail.
What a crock. There's no real justice here.
Meanwhile the former Governator admits that he fathered a child out of wedlock while on the payroll of the state. This is *while* he was railing against Gay Marriage because it would harm the "sanctity" of marriage.
Good job there dude. And will any charges be brought against him? Nope. It won't even affect his attempt at restarting his movie career. Just another day in Hollywoodland.
Meanwhile, Terry Childs is fined $1.5 mill for acting like a douche AND is spending 4 years in jail.
How much you want to bet that if he was a rich and famous dude, he wouldn't be spending one day in jail? Why is it that we live in a "free" and "equal" country where there's one set of laws for the wealthy and powerful, and another set of laws for the commoners?
II''mm uussiinngg iitt nnooww..
I don't know how many New Yorkers are on Slashdot, but I was living in Jersey City during 9/11, and the one thing I can tell you is that when there is a disaster, the President is aware of it later than the people suffering the disaster, and by then, the phone network is USELESS.
On 9/11 I was unable to make a phone call for 12 hours. Things started going bad by 8:30am, and it wasn't until almost 9PM that I was able to get through to my family. They knew I took the PATH train through that area and thought I was a dead.
But I was late getting into work that day. Also, my clock radio was set to 1010 WINS (news radio), so I was smart enough to turn on my TV to see the "light commuter aircraft" that might have hit the twin towers...
The rest of the day I caught the entire event live from the rooftop. But the point is: Phones just gave a busy signal. Nothing worked. Actually, that's not true, the internet worked. But my family members didn't have email back then.
When zillions of people clog the phone network, it bogs down from oversaturation - try getting a signal during any major event. I attended the Stewart/Colbert rally in DC, and I was able to get a signal until the crowd started to get really big. After that, nothing worked.
This plan is doomed to failure because there isn't enough infrastructure.
Patent Portfolio.
This looks like a move to BLOCK Facebook and/or Google expansion into this area. And when either of these companies move in anyhow, out come the lawsuits.
You may not believe this, but those working conditions are coming to America. It may take 20 years for it to happen, but America is failing while China is exploding. By 2018 they will surpass us as the number one superpower. Their "middle class" is already at 300 million, a number larger than the entire USA population. And it's growing quickly.
As China's middle class grows to about 700 million, they can become a self-sustaining economy, meaning that internally, there's enough people working, and making money to buy enough stuff to keep china's economy moving regardless of exports.
At that point, it's possible the American economy will collapse, as China doesn't need us anymore. And at that point, WE will become the cheap source of labor because America will be broke, building products for the Chinese.
And we'll be happy to work 7-days a week for a 12-hour shift making $1 per hour, because we'll all be trying desperately to pay off our massive debt to China, which at that point, will own all the banks.
There's a great scene in the Kirk Douglas film "Spartacus", where, after the defeat of the slave army led by Spartacus, the Roman general, who still doesn't know him by sight, wants the man or the body identified by the remaining prisoners, or all will be executed.
Spartcus (played by Kirk Douglas) is about to stand up, give himself up and save his men. But two men next to him stand up and shout in unison "I am Spartacus!" And then wave after wave of prisoners stand up and also shout the same. It's a powerful, moving scene because it's no longer about one man, it's about the dream of freedom to everyone there.
It's clear that Sony has no F'ing clue who or what "Anonymous" is, they are just going after a convenient scapegoat so they can sue some random people they might have the IP address of, at the time of the attack.
It's up to all of us to stand up and shout "I am anonymous" (or "Blank is beautiful" to those of us who remember Max Headroom), and join our voices in unison, because it's no longer about one person, it's about freedom for us all.
If you look at this actual website, it becomes more obvious WHY he's using Apple II boards.
#1) He's using discrete components and actual wire and solder to cobble the boards into a single computer. He uses perf-board and socketed chips to build his extra peripherals. YOU CANNOT DO THAT with modern Intel-based mobos. They are all surface mount and pretty much unhackable unless you've got some elYte equipment.
#2) The Apple II board was built by a hacker, for hackers. That makes it the obvious choice in a nutshell. This is exactly the kind of stuff Woz wanted people to do with his creation.
#3) There's no challenge to doing parallel computing with an intel mobo -- they are already coming off the shelf with 8 cores. What's the fun in that?
Really? Then why haven't we seen any massive credit card fraud yet? Sony is claiming at over 10 million CC numbers were "stolen" and that was from a hack done more than 2 weeks ago.
If these were career criminals, why haven't we yet seen the horror stories of millions of dollars of goods shipped to Romania, with average joes holding the bag on the bill?
And why target Sony? Amazon would have far more data, as well as Facebook. Or, hack Microsoft's Xbox network which has more users in the USA. Why wasn't Nintendo targeted?
And if you're going to say that the perpetrators somehow knew that Sony's security was weak, then you're pointing to an inside job.
Sony appears to have been targeted because they are a bunch of douches. And judging by the low level of fraud so far, I'd say that the hackers are showing some restraint about harming the average joe while doing massive damage to Sony's image.
That doesn't sound career criminal to me, that sounds like vengeance from the user community after "Other OS" was removed.
Notice how the PS3 ads are off TV? They need to change their slogan to "It only does nothing".
So, when are all you losers going to wake up?
Sony just wanted your money, they don't give a crap about you, your rights to privacy, or even making an attempt at keeping your data secure.
If you purchased a Sony product in such a way that they've got your credit card number, you're at risk, and it doesn't seem to matter since when; since the beginning of Sony on the Internet. Hopefully, those of you using Sony Online since the days of the Playstation (one), only have expired credit cards to worry about, but anyone who has used Sony recently is at more risk.
Throw out your Playstation 3. NEVER AGAIN purchase a Sony Product, do not buy their records, do not watch their movies, do not buy their headphones, MP3 players, e-book readers, or any of their other trash.
YOU MUST SEND A MESSAGE: I suggest even writing to Sony if you're their customer and TELL THEM that you are boycotting their products and you are advising your family and friends to do the same.
You *can* live without their crap. Surprisingly, there's a world out there. With trees, grass, flowers, and girls. Put down the controller, sir, and step away from the TV.
First of all, you need to remember who's running this country, and it's not us. It's big corporations like Sony. They can essentially screw of all of us with impunity and if they go to far, the government gives them a slap on the wrist as a show of good faith to the people.
Consider the SEC. When they fine some trading company $20million for some illegal trading activities, do you really think that's a big deal? Of course not because they company made $100 or $200 million doing the illegal trade. To them, the fine is a cost of doing business. It's the kickback to their partner in crime, the government.
You're not going to get much out of Sony. And the government won't force much out of Sony. You have only one way of controlling this issue, and that's to vote with your wallet and stop buying *anything* connected to Sony. That means even carefully picking what movies you see this summer.
Only if Sony was to suffer considerable losses by people abandoning them en masse would they ever get the hint. But as long as they are profitable, they can continue to screw their customers, because their customers keep buying their shit. It's like you WANT to be tortured.
So they can apologize in advance for their next fuckup.
Because you *know* it's coming. I mean their entire corporate culture is about how they can screw their customers. They cannot change. From the MP3 player that wouldn't play MP3's to the rootkit to this, it's just once thing after another. They just say 'sorry' and then move on to do it all over again to their customers.
And you idiots that buy their shit are stupid for doing so. You'd think *you* would learn not to trust these pricks, but, whatever. It's your money. Throw it out the window if you like.
I stopped buying Sony products after the "rootkit" incident. trust me when I say that I don't feel that I've missed out on anything by not buying Sony. In fact, I feel like I've gained because I stop myself from getting, what ultimately turns out to be useless junk.
I'm not wasting my money with HD tv and it's associated Blu-Ray crap. I'm not even home enough to justify it. My last TV was given to me (although it is a Sony), as a friend bought a new TV.
The money I would have spent on home theater crap or videogames has instead been spent on a motorcycle, which has given me much more than any videogame or movie. As a bonus, I'm saving gas commuting to work compared to driving the car. And I'll get years more out of the car by not driving it every day.
Every gun nut whines and whines about how the government is trying to take their guns away, and when you ask the gun nut why he needs automatic weapons to go duck hunting, he will inevitably quote the 2nd amendment, and how we *need* to have the people armed so when the government has become totalitarian, we can rise up and shoot our way back to freedom and "take our country back".
Excuse me, but it seems that we are well past that point. Every country on the other side of the planet that ends in "ia" is having a civil war, why aren't we? The country has become corrupted by capitalism gone crazy, and now we are living in state of Fascism.
And yet the gun-nuts who worry about our freedoms seem oblivious to the fact that we don't have any freedoms, except that we still have a right to have guns. As long as we don't try to *do* anything with them.
Seriously, WTF?
That's a good point. And since they let someone else "download" your data, and each copy of said data is worth $150,000 per instance, times 77 million....
Isn't Sony part of the people suing Limewire for a Trillion Dollars???
I think the time has come for everyone to sure Sony.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could call up the RIAA and say "stop suing us, it wasn't fire sharing, it was a data-breach!"
Actually the one person who screwed 77million others was the CEO of Sony. You can bet *his* credit card numbers aren't compromised, you can bet his bonus for this year isn't even at risk. And you can bet that Sony will spin this in such as a way as to screw you all, over and over again.
Yeah, can't you wait until your Blu-Ray player stops working too, every time you want to watch a movie? This is why you can't have "server" verification. Because there's no guarantee the server will be there.
Tell your friend to return the game. It's broken. Get his money back. It's designed to fail.