I wouldn't mind paying for companies to keep satellites in operation and weather forecasters in a job, but only if I were signing up for that service, just as I would for any other service. However, I would mind very much if the same service is already covered by the taxes that I pay, because that would mean that I'm paying money to receive information that is supposed to belong to the public. I hate businesses that make you pay for something that is already covered and paid for.
The only way I would agree to pay such a fee is if these companies were the only parties paying the government to keep these systems in operation. In other words, pay only once, regardless of who I'm paying...
Just because technology improves to make it unnecessary for people to waste their time doing something doesn't mean that those people are going to lose their jobs. All it means is that their jobs will change.
Just like the factory worker who gets promoted to supervisor, and then to foreman, and then, perhaps, to some higher business management position, people whose jobs are replaced by a machine need to move to a "higher" position within their field, meaning that their job becomes more strategic, requires more thinking and knowledge, and less repetitive or pattern-based action. The human brain is very powerful. The key is to avoid laziness, and use each day to learn something new, to get better at something, and to understand something a little bit better. That allows an individual to keep the brain strong (exercise is the key) and to stay ahead of the game, so that when such a machine comes along, the individual is ready for a more interesting job.
In other words, yes, people who don't want to use their brains are going to be out of a job. That's why the education system needs to teach people how to think, not how to follow directions. (If you can follow directions, so can a machine.)
But "the clearest sign came when he issued the $17m extortion demand, and instructed the company to 'make the check payable to Myron Tereshchuk.'"
I have a book floating around somewhere about the 501 dumbest criminals or something like that.
As the story goes, two gentlemen walked into a convenience store. The storekeeper asked them if they'd like to sign a petition to increase the police force in the city. They both signed the petition, and then proceeded to draw guns, by the means of which they robbed the store and took off. When the po-lice arrived, they thought the two gentlemen must have signed fake names and addresses on the petition, but on a hunch, they decided to go to the address listed. Lo and behold, it was the same two gentlemen, and there was a bunch of stolen money and whatnot.
The moral of the story: Unless you own your own country, with an army and a lot of guns, you don't put your name on a demand for ransom. The rest, as they say, is history.
Now that's a funny thing to see on Slashdot. As it just so happens, I know the guy who serves the Kelley Blue Book site... This dude swears by Windows and all Microsoft products. I bagged on MS a whole bunch and this guy wouldn't hear it at all. I remember how, back in '98 or so, I mentioned to him that one day, MS's bullshit will come back to bite him in the ass, if he doesn't switch to something else. In fact, I was pissed when he told me stories about how many UNIX servers he replaced with Windows ones. What a crock of shit, I thought to myself. But yeah, now he's probably in a world of shit, and maybe he'll take my advice and switch.
Micro$COft. Software for the downtime-happy business.
Clean that stuff up...
on
Reverse Graffiti
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· Score: 2, Insightful
In my opinion, it is perfectly fine to "graffiti" with cleaning materials, if these materials do not damage the surface being cleaned. That would basically urge the owner to finish the job and clean up the whole damn thing.
You know, I believe in people taking initiative and helping out the community, and I also believe in taking responsibilities and powers away from government, so I think it would be wonderful if people would take a little bit of time once in a while and clean some random part of public property. It will only make the community a cleaner place to live. Ooooooh well.
...suspended sanctions against Microsoft stemming from a ruling...
No no no no NO!!!!! What kind of logic is that? They're setting the example that Microsoft can get away with anything by introducing legal fights and making motion after motion to keep the thing in the courts forever. I'd bet Microsoft can afford to put the EC out of commission and/or bankrupt them before the EC will win any case, and when the EC will find that out, they'll let Microsoft have its way just to end the battle.
No, the proper procedure in this case should be to keep the sanctions in effect, plus have Microsoft pay a litigation deposit of, say, ten to twenty times the fee, which will be refunded if and only if Microsoft wins the case, but not right away. The original sanctions would be refunded immediately, but the litigation deposit would be refunded, say, fifty years later. Microsoft could then choose to drop the litigation and not pay the deposit, or pay the deposit and be out that many more millions until fifty years after the case ends.
Plus, the EC should only allow Microsoft to appeal the case if Microsoft pays all of the EC's legal expenses, with a cap of, say, five billion Euros, not including foreign currency exchange costs from U.S. dollars, which would simply be non-refundable. Only then will be know if Microsoft management actually believes they are in the right or wrong, based on whether they decide to continue fighting this.
My opinion on this issue is quite simple: If it will screw Microsoft over, do it. If it won't screw Microsoft over, or if it will be to their advantage, don't do it. Simple indeed.
So the question is, what's the most disadvantageous for Microsoft?
...one that has play areas for kids, serves coffee and popcorn, and has kiosks instead of teller windows...
A friend of mine used to bank at Washington Mutual for a long time. One day, he strolled into the bank and saw, to his horror, that instead of a traditional bank with teller windows and whatnot, there were these retarded kiosks scattered all over the place and rotated every which way.
The outcome of this "innovative" business practice? He immediately closed his accounts and took his money to Wells Fargo, where a bank still looks like a bank.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of other people had similar responses to this change. This is mostly for psychological reasons: When you go to Disney Land, you want the experience to be exciting. On the other hand, when you go to the bank, where you store your financial assets that you work hard to earn, you want the place to be as unexciting as it can be. Excitement means the bank is unstable and is going to lose your money, leaving you in the streets. Lack of excitement shows stability, maturity, confidence, and security. I believe this is what most people want when they choose a bank. Not a bunch of weird kiosks turned every which way.
A play area for children isn't a bad idea, because kids always get restless and start running around, causing all kinds of noise and whatnot.
Oh yeah, and one more rant on Washington Mutual. My mother had a bank account there. One day, she deposited a bunch of checks. The bank took the money, but did not increase her accounts. No matter how much proof she produced, they refused to credit her account, claiming that what she produced was not good enough proof. In effect, the bank had stolen her money: About 300 dollars of it. She closed her accounts there and went to a different bank. Ever since that event, and more so after my friend told me about the kiosks, I have been staying as far away from Washington Mutual as I can.
Ten years in prison for videotaping a movie in a theater... I think the penalty for murder should be reduced to a month in jail, and the penalty for rape should be reduced to an hour of community service. But if you violate someone's intellectual property rights, they should throw you in Abu Ghraib for at least 50 years.
It would be more pragmatic to mount a camera on a model airplane and fly that around. Kites are known for falling when there isn't enough of a breeze to support them.
If you do wish to take the risk and mount a camera on a kite, it would be best to build a small parachute that attaches to the camera. Unless it's really big, it won't bring the camera down slowly, but if made correctly, it might slow it down just enough that the camera will still function. If it falls on something soft, that is.
This post is not to be taken as medical advice, legal advice, financial advice, or any other kind of advice, now known or later developed, nor is the reader intended to rely on its contents. This post is provided on an as-is basis, with no warranty, expressed or implied, blah blah blah.
After several months of endless SCO stories, my ability to resist posting about Scumware Crapware Operation has all but completely worn away. I want to comment on what happened several months ago, when SCO claimed it had evidence of its garbage being misappropriated into something worthwhile...
Blake Stowell, the Director of Public Relations for The SCO Group, told Newsforge in an email:
To clarify, the code we showed in Vegas was Unix System V code that was copied line for line from UNIX into Linux. It was contributed by a UNIX licensee, which was not IBM. It was shown not to build our case against IBM, but it was shown to identify that there are issues with Linux. Linus can have his opinion of Darl McBride and what was shown, but ultimately, we will have to show our proof in a court setting and convince a jury that we have been wronged by IBM, not this other UNIX licensee that we showed the code from. That will be a separate issue.
As the company that owns the UNIX System V source code, we think we're sufficiently qualified to identify this code.
I think his comment should have been more like this:
"I just wanna clarify what's goin' on over here. Over in the casino, after I had those nine beers, I showed this crumpled piece of paper that read:
10 FOR I=1 TO 10
20 PRINT "I AM COOL"
30 NEXT I
The three lines above are source code in our very own UNIX System V. Here are three lines from the Linux kernel:
static u_int
mcclock_tlsb_read(device_t dev, u_int reg)
{
As you can plainly see, these portions of the Linux source code are exactly identical to our UNIX System V code. All of our programmers, Bob and Jim, told me so themselves, and both of them are highly trained MCSE's. We don't appreciate that the community rejects this as evidence of wrongdoing. Linus is obviously an idiot because his coding skills don't match what Bob and Jim can do in VisualBASIC 2003."
Upon reading this post, one realizes that it closely resembles going to dinner with a buddy, asking, "How's business?" and writing it off as a business expense. Further, this post closely resembles a sandwich that appears large but, once eaten, proves unsatisfyingly small. A staid, steadfast comment, it resembles a pantomime of images.
Because this post is supposed to be about SCO, Darl McBribe / McBlackmail / McExtort / McThreaten / McLose / Mc-Go-To-Jail-Do-Not-Pass-Go-Do-Not-Collect-Two-Hu ndred-Billion-Dollars. But the meat of this post is decidedly unsatisfying: SCO is trying to play hard ball with the big boys when SCO, unfit even to be called a little boy, is barely a hole in some dead goat's ass. (See what I mean about "pantomime of images?" And that's a pretty gross image, if you ask me.)
There were all the press releases issued by SCO:
For immediate release:
Smoking Crack Operation (NASCRACK: SCO) announced legal action against Microsoft Corporation for violating SCO intellectual property. The lawsuit comes on the heels of legal action targeting IBM, all the Fortune 500 companies, the governments of two world superpowers and six third world nations, millions of computer users worldwide, and God.
"Microsoft is using underground hacker software called Linux," said SCO CEO Darl McBluff. "They are using Linux to develop operating system software, codenamed Microsoft Windows, which violates our intellectual property rights. Competition from Microsoft and other companies is eating away at our sales," McBluff said. "Die fuckers!!!"
According to an SCO spokesperson, Linux violates SCO copyrights by using code developed, trademarked, copyrighted and patented by IBM. Microsoft Windows violates SCO's self-proclaimed right to eternal, perpetually increasing profits.
Experts from the Gartner Group suggested that all users of Linux, Windows, IRIX, Plan-9, CP/M, Palm OS, OS/390, UNICOS, TOPS-20, Mac OS, DOS and OS/2 immediately pay SCO a nomin
First of all, I think Microsoft should break compatibility with EVERYTHING out there, including all of their own software, and make it impossible to interface with any of that. Secondly, I think they should make the OS so big, bloated, and slow that it will require computers that are still 25 years off. Third, I think they should immediately stop supporting all of their software that's already out there. Fourth, I think Microsoft sucks because they're breaking compatibility.
Microsoft is the suxx0rz!!!!!!!!!1111 Linux ROOLZ!!!!!!!!!!111111
I think Congress should immediately drop whatever they're doing, look into this issue, and immediately make it ILLEGAL for any microprocessor manufacturer to make it difficult to overclock their processor.
For doing this, Intel SUCKS!!!!! AMD rules!!!!!
Get rid of stupid IP laws!
on
Open Source Life?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I have a very simple answer: OUTLAW INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY as we know it. This is nothing more than an artificial way created by the government to charge for something that should be freely distributed in the first place.
Note, this doesn't mean that copyrights would no longer exist, etc., but it does mean that all intellectual property rights would permanently expire, say, five years after applied for. This includes patents and copyrights. I guess it makes sense for trademarks to last as long as the entity that creates them exists. Oooooooooooooooh well.
This is how my perfect office would work. First of all, every employee who has a job to get done has assigned to him at least five women who prance around naked, give him massages as often as he wants, serve him cocktails, etc. Secondly, any equipment requested by any employee would be provided. Management would not be allowed to evaluate the employee's performance or his use of the equipment provided. All employees would work for a salary, but working more than four hours per day or twenty hours per week would entitle the employee to earn by the hour in addition to and separate from the salary which is being paid. All employees would earn at least $100,000 a year, and be entitled to eight weeks of paid vacation time and another eight weeks of paid sick days, plus national holidays and traditional days off. There would be no dress code, code of conduct, code of ethics, or any other rules. No employee may be fired. All employees shall receive any car of their choice as a company car, with any options they request provided, with all expenses, such as maintainance, paid by the company. Gasoline would be reimbursed to the employee. The company would not be allowed to track the use of the vehicle. All of the employee's personal expenses, such as rent, utilities, food, recreation, etc., shall be reimbursed by the company, with compound interest accruing from the date of purchase to the date of reimbursement, even if the employee deliberately holds on to the receipts for a while to accrue interest. All employees shall receive steep discounts on whatever products or services the company provides, and since that falls under the employee's personal expenses, they would be reimbursed by the company. I think that's about it, but I think I could work effectively in that kind of office.
I'm not gonna stop there... everybody knows that only queers hang out at rest stops.
However, I do have to admit that of all the states I've driven around in, Texas does have the nicest rest stops of anywhere. Hell, even the restrooms are clean, don't stink, and the atmosphere (at the rest stop) is neat, clean, and feels good.
Oh yeah, and this post wouldn't be complete if I didn't add the obligatory:
DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS.
(For those of you who don't know, it's not a macho thing; it's simply Texas' way of saying don't litter.)
I don't know about all this port knocking. The other day, my valves were knocking, and that concerned me quite a bit, as I just recently finished a head job, and the knocking tells me that I didn't adjust the valves correctly. The last thing I need now is my ports knocking too... that would totally ruin the engine. You can't find Stage-1 455's in this condition anymore.
I wonder if it isn't possible to download the Microsoft package through your web browser in Linux. Don't they supply a URL?
I'm suggesting this because I am mainly a FreeBSD and Linux user, but I use Windows 98SE, the latest version of that stuff that I will touch, and I do not need to apply patches of any kind as these machines never connect to the 'net. In fact, my firewall rules do not allow any packets to or from the Windows machines, and they are used solely for running specific applications that have no alternative OS replacement. Yeah yeah, Wine and CrossOver Office, Bochs and VMware, yeah yeah yeah...:-)
But seriously, how come you can't download those patches using Linux, and avoid letting that Windows box touch the 'net until it's locked down (as much as possible)?
Finally, I highly recommend getting a hardware firewall like the firewall/NAT/hubs that Linksys sells... They're not foolproof, but they'll make your life much easier.
Well the mess you have is almost nothing compared to what I've done in my house. In another post somewhere, I described a network that I set up between my house and my two barns, and the wires my neighbor and I ran across a 1/4 mile long field between my barns and his, so we could collaborate on our hobbies. (Eventually, he's going to connect his barn to his house, and we're getting the rest of the neighbors, all within 2 miles or so, to add their homes and/or barns, so we will have a small community physically wired together... our own little Internet, if you will. The only stumbling block is how to communicate without running CAT-5e cables across the town, because the city council probably wouldn't like that.)
Currently, the "center" of this network is in my basement, with a smaller "center" in my bigger barn. Think of it as two networks, one in the big barn, one in the house, connected by three CAT-5e cables running down the side of the back yard. The barn contains 9 computers, plus a firewall separating my network from my neighbor's, a firewall separating the house from the barn, and a webserver running Slash, among other things, which I hope will become our community's site when our little mini-Internet is done. (My smaller barn will be the NOC, if you will, when this thing is up and running. The neighbors are excited because most of them, on the other side of the county line, do not have access to DSL or Cablemodem. The talks right now say that everyone on my side of the county line will get a broadband connection, and I will route packets from my small barn...)
But here's the part that's interesting to you with your question: The basement in my house has a small room that I built, a control room, if you will. It's about 5 feet by 8 feet, and contains the controls for everything... the computer networks, the sprinklers, the electrical panels, everything. I have 65 or so CAT-5e cables running into this room. These are the three cables running in from the barn, and 60 or so from all the rooms in the house. That is, I didn't want hubs scattered all over the place, so I ran between 8 and 12 wires to each room, depending on what I thought would be needed. This was actually cheaper than buying a bunch of hubs, and not as unsightly because the wires come to wall connectors. In the control room, the wires all enter a wooden cabinet I built for the purpose, where they are nicely routed into a series of hubs, mounted on the side walls of the cabinet. Each wire is labeled, so I know what's going on. From here, one wire goes to a NAT/firewall box, which goes into the DSL. Another three run to the barn. Surprisingly, the entire thing worked the first time I turned it all on... The ultimate geek wired house, in the middle of the hills of southern Indiana. Now that's what I call fun.
I don't think it will take a tremendous effort to relate MAC addresses to schedules. You could do it by having individual students set up one or more MAC addresses under their account, through an automated process that's required to make their wireless work on each of their computers. Once each student has a list of MAC addresses associated with them, you create, at the beginning of each term, a database that relates these MAC addresses to times of the day. All this occurs through a script. When students add or drop a class, your school will invoke the script that modifies that student's table of times for their MAC addresses. I can see why it would take a bit of effort to program all of that, but afterwards, it would all happen automatically.
"Will we be able to goof off all the time, not get anything done, read Slashdolt all day, work on some esoteric feature of the Linux kernel for our personal pleasure, and take three-hour lunches?"
"No."
"Thank you for your time, Mr. Smith. Don't call us, we'll call you."
For immediate release: Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced today the availability of new technology that allows content providers to deliver compelling images, such as movie trailers and pop-up advertisements for penis enlargement, to consumers. By leveraging innovative technologies, content providers streamline compelling enterprise solutions.
The new technology, dubbed Windows XP, also allows content providers to retrieve information from consumer desktops, such as usage patterns, automated bug reports, and passwords sniffed from the user's keyboard. The technology require only that a consumer plug a computer running the innovative technology into the Internet, and content providers can then locate that computer and send their content, including audio, video, innovative pop-ups, worms, and viruses, to it.
This is why a Libertarian society with pure freedoms is necessary for the safety and protection of individuals, their freedoms, and their safety. If freedom of speech meant, quite simply, that you could say anything you wanted, then Microsoft would not be in the position it's in right now to dictate to nearly the entire world what software to use, despite its being shitty and expensive.
Slashdot Mirror
The only way I would agree to pay such a fee is if these companies were the only parties paying the government to keep these systems in operation. In other words, pay only once, regardless of who I'm paying...
Just like the factory worker who gets promoted to supervisor, and then to foreman, and then, perhaps, to some higher business management position, people whose jobs are replaced by a machine need to move to a "higher" position within their field, meaning that their job becomes more strategic, requires more thinking and knowledge, and less repetitive or pattern-based action. The human brain is very powerful. The key is to avoid laziness, and use each day to learn something new, to get better at something, and to understand something a little bit better. That allows an individual to keep the brain strong (exercise is the key) and to stay ahead of the game, so that when such a machine comes along, the individual is ready for a more interesting job.
In other words, yes, people who don't want to use their brains are going to be out of a job. That's why the education system needs to teach people how to think, not how to follow directions. (If you can follow directions, so can a machine.)
I am voting for Bush in 2004. I hope you will too.
I have a book floating around somewhere about the 501 dumbest criminals or something like that.
As the story goes, two gentlemen walked into a convenience store. The storekeeper asked them if they'd like to sign a petition to increase the police force in the city. They both signed the petition, and then proceeded to draw guns, by the means of which they robbed the store and took off. When the po-lice arrived, they thought the two gentlemen must have signed fake names and addresses on the petition, but on a hunch, they decided to go to the address listed. Lo and behold, it was the same two gentlemen, and there was a bunch of stolen money and whatnot.
The moral of the story: Unless you own your own country, with an army and a lot of guns, you don't put your name on a demand for ransom. The rest, as they say, is history.
Now that's a funny thing to see on Slashdot. As it just so happens, I know the guy who serves the Kelley Blue Book site... This dude swears by Windows and all Microsoft products. I bagged on MS a whole bunch and this guy wouldn't hear it at all. I remember how, back in '98 or so, I mentioned to him that one day, MS's bullshit will come back to bite him in the ass, if he doesn't switch to something else. In fact, I was pissed when he told me stories about how many UNIX servers he replaced with Windows ones. What a crock of shit, I thought to myself. But yeah, now he's probably in a world of shit, and maybe he'll take my advice and switch.
Micro$COft. Software for the downtime-happy business.
You know, I believe in people taking initiative and helping out the community, and I also believe in taking responsibilities and powers away from government, so I think it would be wonderful if people would take a little bit of time once in a while and clean some random part of public property. It will only make the community a cleaner place to live. Ooooooh well.
No no no no NO !!!!! What kind of logic is that? They're setting the example that Microsoft can get away with anything by introducing legal fights and making motion after motion to keep the thing in the courts forever. I'd bet Microsoft can afford to put the EC out of commission and/or bankrupt them before the EC will win any case, and when the EC will find that out, they'll let Microsoft have its way just to end the battle.
No, the proper procedure in this case should be to keep the sanctions in effect, plus have Microsoft pay a litigation deposit of, say, ten to twenty times the fee, which will be refunded if and only if Microsoft wins the case, but not right away. The original sanctions would be refunded immediately, but the litigation deposit would be refunded, say, fifty years later. Microsoft could then choose to drop the litigation and not pay the deposit, or pay the deposit and be out that many more millions until fifty years after the case ends.
Plus, the EC should only allow Microsoft to appeal the case if Microsoft pays all of the EC's legal expenses, with a cap of, say, five billion Euros, not including foreign currency exchange costs from U.S. dollars, which would simply be non-refundable. Only then will be know if Microsoft management actually believes they are in the right or wrong, based on whether they decide to continue fighting this.
So the question is, what's the most disadvantageous for Microsoft?
A friend of mine used to bank at Washington Mutual for a long time. One day, he strolled into the bank and saw, to his horror, that instead of a traditional bank with teller windows and whatnot, there were these retarded kiosks scattered all over the place and rotated every which way.
The outcome of this "innovative" business practice? He immediately closed his accounts and took his money to Wells Fargo, where a bank still looks like a bank.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of other people had similar responses to this change. This is mostly for psychological reasons: When you go to Disney Land, you want the experience to be exciting. On the other hand, when you go to the bank, where you store your financial assets that you work hard to earn, you want the place to be as unexciting as it can be. Excitement means the bank is unstable and is going to lose your money, leaving you in the streets. Lack of excitement shows stability, maturity, confidence, and security. I believe this is what most people want when they choose a bank. Not a bunch of weird kiosks turned every which way.
A play area for children isn't a bad idea, because kids always get restless and start running around, causing all kinds of noise and whatnot.
Oh yeah, and one more rant on Washington Mutual. My mother had a bank account there. One day, she deposited a bunch of checks. The bank took the money, but did not increase her accounts. No matter how much proof she produced, they refused to credit her account, claiming that what she produced was not good enough proof. In effect, the bank had stolen her money: About 300 dollars of it. She closed her accounts there and went to a different bank. Ever since that event, and more so after my friend told me about the kiosks, I have been staying as far away from Washington Mutual as I can.
Ten years in prison for videotaping a movie in a theater... I think the penalty for murder should be reduced to a month in jail, and the penalty for rape should be reduced to an hour of community service. But if you violate someone's intellectual property rights, they should throw you in Abu Ghraib for at least 50 years.
If you do wish to take the risk and mount a camera on a kite, it would be best to build a small parachute that attaches to the camera. Unless it's really big, it won't bring the camera down slowly, but if made correctly, it might slow it down just enough that the camera will still function. If it falls on something soft, that is.
This post is not to be taken as medical advice, legal advice, financial advice, or any other kind of advice, now known or later developed, nor is the reader intended to rely on its contents. This post is provided on an as-is basis, with no warranty, expressed or implied, blah blah blah.
Blake Stowell, the Director of Public Relations for The SCO Group, told Newsforge in an email:
I think his comment should have been more like this:
"I just wanna clarify what's goin' on over here. Over in the casino, after I had those nine beers, I showed this crumpled piece of paper that read:
The three lines above are source code in our very own UNIX System V. Here are three lines from the Linux kernel:
As you can plainly see, these portions of the Linux source code are exactly identical to our UNIX System V code. All of our programmers, Bob and Jim, told me so themselves, and both of them are highly trained MCSE's. We don't appreciate that the community rejects this as evidence of wrongdoing. Linus is obviously an idiot because his coding skills don't match what Bob and Jim can do in VisualBASIC 2003."
Upon reading this post, one realizes that it closely resembles going to dinner with a buddy, asking, "How's business?" and writing it off as a business expense. Further, this post closely resembles a sandwich that appears large but, once eaten, proves unsatisfyingly small. A staid, steadfast comment, it resembles a pantomime of images.
Because this post is supposed to be about SCO, Darl McBribe / McBlackmail / McExtort / McThreaten / McLose / Mc-Go-To-Jail-Do-Not-Pass-Go-Do-Not-Collect-Two-Hu ndred-Billion-Dollars. But the meat of this post is decidedly unsatisfying: SCO is trying to play hard ball with the big boys when SCO, unfit even to be called a little boy, is barely a hole in some dead goat's ass. (See what I mean about "pantomime of images?" And that's a pretty gross image, if you ask me.)
There were all the press releases issued by SCO:
For immediate release:
Smoking Crack Operation (NASCRACK: SCO) announced legal action against Microsoft Corporation for violating SCO intellectual property. The lawsuit comes on the heels of legal action targeting IBM, all the Fortune 500 companies, the governments of two world superpowers and six third world nations, millions of computer users worldwide, and God.
"Microsoft is using underground hacker software called Linux," said SCO CEO Darl McBluff. "They are using Linux to develop operating system software, codenamed Microsoft Windows, which violates our intellectual property rights. Competition from Microsoft and other companies is eating away at our sales," McBluff said. "Die fuckers!!!"
According to an SCO spokesperson, Linux violates SCO copyrights by using code developed, trademarked, copyrighted and patented by IBM. Microsoft Windows violates SCO's self-proclaimed right to eternal, perpetually increasing profits.
Experts from the Gartner Group suggested that all users of Linux, Windows, IRIX, Plan-9, CP/M, Palm OS, OS/390, UNICOS, TOPS-20, Mac OS, DOS and OS/2 immediately pay SCO a nomin
Yeah I got a wearable cell phone. I put it in a pouch which I can wear on my belt. That's wearable, you stupid fock.
Microsoft is the suxx0rz!!!!!!!!!1111 Linux ROOLZ!!!!!!!!!!111111
For doing this, Intel SUCKS!!!!! AMD rules!!!!!
Note, this doesn't mean that copyrights would no longer exist, etc., but it does mean that all intellectual property rights would permanently expire, say, five years after applied for. This includes patents and copyrights. I guess it makes sense for trademarks to last as long as the entity that creates them exists. Oooooooooooooooh well.
This is how my perfect office would work. First of all, every employee who has a job to get done has assigned to him at least five women who prance around naked, give him massages as often as he wants, serve him cocktails, etc. Secondly, any equipment requested by any employee would be provided. Management would not be allowed to evaluate the employee's performance or his use of the equipment provided. All employees would work for a salary, but working more than four hours per day or twenty hours per week would entitle the employee to earn by the hour in addition to and separate from the salary which is being paid. All employees would earn at least $100,000 a year, and be entitled to eight weeks of paid vacation time and another eight weeks of paid sick days, plus national holidays and traditional days off. There would be no dress code, code of conduct, code of ethics, or any other rules. No employee may be fired. All employees shall receive any car of their choice as a company car, with any options they request provided, with all expenses, such as maintainance, paid by the company. Gasoline would be reimbursed to the employee. The company would not be allowed to track the use of the vehicle. All of the employee's personal expenses, such as rent, utilities, food, recreation, etc., shall be reimbursed by the company, with compound interest accruing from the date of purchase to the date of reimbursement, even if the employee deliberately holds on to the receipts for a while to accrue interest. All employees shall receive steep discounts on whatever products or services the company provides, and since that falls under the employee's personal expenses, they would be reimbursed by the company. I think that's about it, but I think I could work effectively in that kind of office.
However, I do have to admit that of all the states I've driven around in, Texas does have the nicest rest stops of anywhere. Hell, even the restrooms are clean, don't stink, and the atmosphere (at the rest stop) is neat, clean, and feels good.
Oh yeah, and this post wouldn't be complete if I didn't add the obligatory:
DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS.
(For those of you who don't know, it's not a macho thing; it's simply Texas' way of saying don't litter.)
I don't know about all this port knocking. The other day, my valves were knocking, and that concerned me quite a bit, as I just recently finished a head job, and the knocking tells me that I didn't adjust the valves correctly. The last thing I need now is my ports knocking too... that would totally ruin the engine. You can't find Stage-1 455's in this condition anymore.
I'm suggesting this because I am mainly a FreeBSD and Linux user, but I use Windows 98SE, the latest version of that stuff that I will touch, and I do not need to apply patches of any kind as these machines never connect to the 'net. In fact, my firewall rules do not allow any packets to or from the Windows machines, and they are used solely for running specific applications that have no alternative OS replacement. Yeah yeah, Wine and CrossOver Office, Bochs and VMware, yeah yeah yeah... :-)
But seriously, how come you can't download those patches using Linux, and avoid letting that Windows box touch the 'net until it's locked down (as much as possible)?
Finally, I highly recommend getting a hardware firewall like the firewall/NAT/hubs that Linksys sells... They're not foolproof, but they'll make your life much easier.
Currently, the "center" of this network is in my basement, with a smaller "center" in my bigger barn. Think of it as two networks, one in the big barn, one in the house, connected by three CAT-5e cables running down the side of the back yard. The barn contains 9 computers, plus a firewall separating my network from my neighbor's, a firewall separating the house from the barn, and a webserver running Slash, among other things, which I hope will become our community's site when our little mini-Internet is done. (My smaller barn will be the NOC, if you will, when this thing is up and running. The neighbors are excited because most of them, on the other side of the county line, do not have access to DSL or Cablemodem. The talks right now say that everyone on my side of the county line will get a broadband connection, and I will route packets from my small barn...)
But here's the part that's interesting to you with your question: The basement in my house has a small room that I built, a control room, if you will. It's about 5 feet by 8 feet, and contains the controls for everything... the computer networks, the sprinklers, the electrical panels, everything. I have 65 or so CAT-5e cables running into this room. These are the three cables running in from the barn, and 60 or so from all the rooms in the house. That is, I didn't want hubs scattered all over the place, so I ran between 8 and 12 wires to each room, depending on what I thought would be needed. This was actually cheaper than buying a bunch of hubs, and not as unsightly because the wires come to wall connectors. In the control room, the wires all enter a wooden cabinet I built for the purpose, where they are nicely routed into a series of hubs, mounted on the side walls of the cabinet. Each wire is labeled, so I know what's going on. From here, one wire goes to a NAT/firewall box, which goes into the DSL. Another three run to the barn. Surprisingly, the entire thing worked the first time I turned it all on... The ultimate geek wired house, in the middle of the hills of southern Indiana. Now that's what I call fun.
I don't think it will take a tremendous effort to relate MAC addresses to schedules. You could do it by having individual students set up one or more MAC addresses under their account, through an automated process that's required to make their wireless work on each of their computers. Once each student has a list of MAC addresses associated with them, you create, at the beginning of each term, a database that relates these MAC addresses to times of the day. All this occurs through a script. When students add or drop a class, your school will invoke the script that modifies that student's table of times for their MAC addresses. I can see why it would take a bit of effort to program all of that, but afterwards, it would all happen automatically.
"No."
"Thank you for your time, Mr. Smith. Don't call us, we'll call you."
The new technology, dubbed Windows XP, also allows content providers to retrieve information from consumer desktops, such as usage patterns, automated bug reports, and passwords sniffed from the user's keyboard. The technology require only that a consumer plug a computer running the innovative technology into the Internet, and content providers can then locate that computer and send their content, including audio, video, innovative pop-ups, worms, and viruses, to it.
Freedom. Pass it on.