The RIAA will not do anything about this, even if it is outright piracy (such as, the band doesn't get paid a dime even if every concertgoer buys ten copies) because this is a corporation. They're only after innocent people, this RIAA.
We should petition the RIAA to lay everyone off and close its doors for good.
This reminds me of my employer, a very intelligent gentleman. One day, a hard disk present in a very expensive industrial computer crashed. Its contents were VERY important and my employer ignored my suggestions, for YEARS, that he should make occasional backups of data around his facility. As there was no other copy of the necessary data, I was about to have it shipped to a data recovery specialist when my employer, not knowing about the possibility of recovery and figuring he had nothing to lose, put the hard drive in the microwave for a minute. There were cool lightning bolts. At that point, I simply threw the thing in the garbage because I didn't even want to waste the time to put the damn thing in a box and to mail it.
*B*E*C*A*U*S*E* of Microsoft's SCAMS: Let it be known that several hours ago, I purchased 16 licenses of Opera's browser, version 7, BECAUSE of Microsoft's scams.
For a little background information: I am a paid user of Opera's browser since version 3, when there were no ads but it only gave you 30 days to try it out as shareware. At the time, I was completely disenchanted with Netscape's offering, Mozilla was in its first stages of development, and Internet Explorer was made by Microsoft, so no way was I going to use that.
A year before, I had begun a migration to a combination of Linux, BeOS and FreeBSD, and used Windows for a steadly decreasing number of purposes. I was definitely on the market for alternative software and I somehow found Opera.
Opera indeed worked MUCH faster than Netscape, as was especially evident on my slowcomotion dial-up connection of the time. Just the mere fact that it started a download while you could choose where to save it made it fully worth the purchase price, and Opera offered SO MUCH MORE. With each new version, I paid full price rather than opting for upgrade pricing, in order to support Opera to the fullest extent that I could. And I advertised Opera to everybody I knew. When the ads appeared and the browser could be used for free, I personally installed it on the computers of my friends and co-workers. Every computer in the office has the free version of Opera, and my co-workers use it almost exclusively.
Today, I started checking some websites for some of the programs I use, like my favorite editor UltraEdit (the only software worth keeping Windows for), and I found a news item on Opera Software's page describing the aforementioned "malfunction" of Opera in relation to the MSN page. It pissed me off so much that I spent something like $640.00 to buy 16 full versions of the browser: 3 for myself and 13 for all the computers at work.
I wanted to send Microsoft an email to tell them that their actions are getting them the OPPOSITE of what they want, but why should I say anything to those evil people that could potentially help them?
CONCLUSION: I firmly believe that Opera's web browser is the best commercial browser on the market. It kicks Mozilla's fat, bloated ass. It kicks Internet Explorer's buggy ass. It certainly kicks the asses of those "built-in" web browsers on free desktop environments, though some of them are pretty good. I have found it to be worth every penny I spent on it. Now, I am especially happy because it works on FreeBSD, my operating system of choice.
A 53 page binder? Oh no! That's SOOOOOOOO long! How could anybody write such a long and cumbersome document? Let me tell you something. I have used computer systems where a single program came with a shelf load of books. I bet the source code to the damn thing wasn't 1/4 the size of the manuals. And this guy is talking about a 53 page binder.
At least he got one thing right: All these stupid techies think that improving software means adding more garbage graphics and TRASH that nobody needs or wants, that take up 101% of processor cycles, making everything slow, contorted and crash prone. If the only improvement you can think to make to a piece of software is to add more junk graphics and sounds, then the software is "finished" and needs not be modified except to repair the occasional bug.
Tell them that you are very private with all your personal and financial information and that you will not disclose the requested information for any reason whatsoever. (And don't, even if it means losing the job. You could piss off some other employee(s) and they can use the aforementioned data against you. Identity theft is also a growing crime.) If I were you, I wouldn't even fill out the W2 form, they would not even get my SSN, and I would ask them to leave the tax accounting to me. As a company, they are under no obligation to the IRS to do any reporting on you. It is your responsibility, and the 99% of employers who do this accounting do it as a "convenience" to their employees. You wish to refuse this and all other "conveniences" because you are RESPONSIBLE with your PRIVATE information.
If any son of a bitch shows up at the door to any property of yours, included but not limited to your business, your home, or any other property, and says they're there to perform an audit of your computer software, you firmly but politely tell them that you will not allow any such thing to take place. If asked why, answer that you cannot let non-company personnel in due to trade secrets and nondisclosure agreements with customers. And show them the door. Nobody can compell you to show them ANYTHING of yours without a search warrant. You're not a public company. You have committed NO crime. And if they claim that you have agreed to such a search in the license agreements of software you have purchased, tell them it's bullshit and good day gentlemen. Let's see these scamming sons of bitches PROVE that you have entered into any such agreement. No warrant. No probable cause. And they don't have your permission. Just like the police: If an officer pulls you over and your entire trunk is full of cocaine with a street value of $1,000,000,000.00 (one billion dollars and 00/100), and the officer says, "May I search your trunk," and you say, "No, thank you," then unless the aforementioned officer can produce a search warrant or prove probable cause, he CANNOT look in the friggen trunk. If a friggen PO-LICE officer can't look in the damn trunk when it's overflowing with cocaine, what makes you think some geeky-faced piece of shit Associate Engineer Fuckup Specialist from the BSA has any right to bring his ugly ass into your fucking business?
Oh, and if any idiot from the BSA has a problem with what I'm saying, my name is Robert Q. Campo, and my address is 881 West Harrisville Lane, Cleveland, OH 64113. Come and get me, asshole.
I live in Indiana. My mother lives in Georgia. My father lives in Arizona. My grandmother lives in Quebec. My aunt lives in Brazil. My brother lives in France. I have put together a datacenter in a closet in each of their houses. Each datacenter consists of two OpenBSD boxes serving as a multihost firewall and six FreeBSD boxes running the services I require. All of my data is mirrored daily to all of these centers. Most of my files are managed with CVS, too. Thus, I am confident that even in a disaster of biblical proportions, such as my toilet overflowing and damaging the hard drive, my data will be safe.
My systems are set up as minimally as possible for efficiency and reliability. For the life of me, I can't figure out how people manage to screw up their computers as badly as they often do.
I have many friends who have enormous hard drives and have filled them to the brim with all kinds of programs and downloads. Their computers, which are some of the fastest around in terms of hardware resources, run more slowly than an old 286 would if it was running Windows XP through a Pentium IV emulator written in Microsoft GW-BASIC, where the emulator's "RAM" and its processor registers reside on a slow tape drive, with each register on opposite ends of the tape. Oh, and did I mention all the graphics, sounds, windows, and other garbage that shows up all the time as they're running their computer? Just so you understand, all they ever do is write emails and write text in a word processor. But their computers are filled to the brim with crap.
I think the xupiter toolbar would be an innovative addition to my friends' highly optimized configuration.
Sincerely,
The Negra Modelo Troll
P.S., I drink Guinness too. I know I've talked smack on its flavor in the past but you have to find a bartender who knows how to pour and serve it. I can't stand the stuff out of bottles.
Who needs the Intel chip when the one manufactured by Fukencomputen in Germany is about 10 times faster and uses less than 1/3 of the power? It seriously doesn't make sense to continue supporting the giant squid Intel while they crush their competitors who make superior products.
Who needs an operating system that can make coffee when you can have one that makes alcoholic drinks?! Too bad it don't serve Negra Modelo. Una mas cerveza por favor!
Can't wait 'till things are a buck for a terabyte, eh? When that day comes to pass, inflation will have made a dollar worth three cents, so a reasonably priced hard drive will run you about $40,000 dollars, the average weekly wage, and will be the size of a dime. We'll all be using the Itanium 6 and 512 GB of RAM, and our monitor's resolution will be 65536x49152, with 64 bit color. Windows will take up a mere 75 terabytes of hard disk space and will take about 45 minutes to start up, and will crash no less than once every six hours (that's over 518,400,000,000,000 instructions executed, a record for Windows!)...
I am OUTRAGED by this garbage. Seriously, I am completely and utterly disgusted with the kind of trash that these organizations have done to our country, from both a political and technological perspective. It's as if they are trying to take away all of the consumer's rights so that in the future, the big multinational conglomerates that produce EVERYTHING we use will basically DICTATE to us what we can do with their products, when, where, how and why. Consider the old story, about a year ago, maybe, of these "smart" chips that would cause small household appliances, such as toasters, to permanently stop functioning if taken outside of a specified region. How convenient. Or how about those printer ink cartridges that refuse to work after their "expiration" date has passed? Or all the garbage "technologies" put into software, music and movies to make them refuse to work unless conditions are as dictated by the producer. What happened to the days when some jack ass's copyright actually EXPIRED after a REASONABLE length of time? Does an electrician who wired a light switch get royalties every time that light switch is flipped? Does a contractor who installs a door get royalties every time that door is opened or closed? Does your locksmith get to decide who you have the priveledge of inviting to your house? And must you pay your locksmith for that SERVICE? NO!!! That's why electricians, contractors, locksmiths, and EVERYBODY ELSE who makes tangible products must CONTINUOUSLY perform their job, or they will not have income. Is that so difficult? Do you hear any electricians complaining that they have too much work? Would it be a worldwide disaster if so-called alleged "content providers" (the people who produce the utter GARBAGE we call movies, music and software) had to continuously make new work to earn a living? So-called "piracy" is a fact of life in these profession, similar to the fact that an electrician's work lasts a good 20 years.
The RIAA is a piece of SHIT.
The MPAA is a piece of SHIT.
Microsoft is a piece of SHIT.
If the above three organizations were forced to close and all the people working for those organizations were on the street begging for beer money, the world would be a MUCH better place.
I didn't get shit. I'm the owner of the company. But I didn't give my employees shit either. They are the ones who fucked up. That's why we didn't make any money and are barely keeping our noses above the water. Anyone who complains can go fuck themselves, because I don't give a shit. If they had done their damn work and not given me excuses all year long, maybe they would have gotten something.
That's why I listen to the RADIO. Forget this alleged "anti-piracy" BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU garbage.
Besides, I don't take any of that garbage. Both of my home networks, which are physically separated for paranoia purposes, must pass through a two-stage firewall system powered by four separate OpenBSD boxen (two for each network's firewall). The configuration of these firewalls has evolved over three years' time, but suffice it to say that I feel relatively comfortable knowing that any site that is not specifically white-listed will NOT get accessed by any of my machines, nor will any whitelisted machines get accessed for protocols which I have not specifically allowed. The advantage here is that NO software is going to report JACK SCHITT about my behavior to NO marketer.
One final note: I am a marketer by profession. B2B, specifically. And I refuse to employ any big-brother techniques in my work. This may be more difficult when marketing to enormous herds of stupid, technologically illiterate masses of IDIOTS, where you need to be stupid like that to make any sales. But I don't give a damn. I'm doing my part to avoid world-wide slavery by not doing that garbage myself.
WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
I refuse to believe this. Mars had an atmosphere and environment and ecosystem EXACTLY like the Earth, only much, much better. There were over a hundred trillion different species of animals and over nine hundred trillion different species of plants. The vegetation was lush and full everywhere except the oceans, which comprised twenty seven and a third percent of the planet's surface. Over a period of twelve thousand years, the people of Mars became incredibly intelligent and had built underground caverns of terrifying proportions in which they constructed enormous cities without damaging any of the plants above ground. All of their actions and technologies fit precisely within the balance of their planet's ecosystem such that no pollution or impurities took place. They began to explore other planets and had arrived at the farthest reaches of the universe. Then, a Martian child saw an interesting stamp on a little Martian girl's school desk and thought it looked cool, so he took it without telling anyone. The girl found this out and a fight broke out between her and the boy. As she could not prove who had done it, she became very angry and involved her parents. The boy's parents thus became involved in the argument and a family feud resulted. This escalated into a citywide riot, which resulted in a war between two neighboring cities, which had further involved their governing states. Within a matter of days after the stamp had been stolen, all of Mars was engulfed in a massive and horrendous world war which caused all the underground caverns to collapse onto the cities they contained, destroying them and the vegetation, and ending the fine balance in the ecosystem which made Mars such a nice place to live. The only remaining Martians alive were three astronauts on a Martian spaceship, a man and two women, who found themselves marooned on Earth when their spacecraft broke down while in orbit of the Earth's moon. They made an emergency landing, expecting that a rescue mission would be launched within a matter of days. That mission never took place. The astronauts thus reproduced into the human population as we know it today. That was approximately fourteen thousand years ago.
what a waste of energy. why generate heat, wasting your battery, only to throw it away. make the processors run cold, by LOWERING clock speeds and whatnot. nobody needs 3000000 gigahertz to run an editor or to email or to whatever. if you need the processing horsepower, put an optional processor that's usually sleeping but that comes on when heavy computations are done. it will heat up but that will get dissipated. oooooooooooh well.
HOWTO: Annoy a spammer, cost them money.
on
HOWTO: Annoy a Spammer
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I get a lot of SPAM snail-mail. It has begun to piss me off. Here is what I do now: Know those postage-paid envelopes that come with offers for magazines, credit cards, and a million other things you don't need or want? I simply stuff the junk mail into those envelopes, seal 'em up and drop 'em in the mail. The company that sent them now has to pay for the postage. In other words, not only did they not make a sale, they had to pay postage and someone in the company is inconvenienced with their own junk mail. Imagine if this type of "fighting back" becomes widespread... Companies will actually waste lots of resources in separating the junk mail from the real reply mail and throwing it away.
Things I have started doing recently include: Mixing up the junk mail so that, for example, Company A receives some junk from Companies B and C in the reply envelope. This way, it's not even useful to them as they cannot simply re-mail the returned items.
One thing I intend to start doing in the future is partially filling out the forms that come with the materials I send back, but, for example, writing VOID where the signature is supposed to go or something. This way, someone will start entering data only to discover that it's bullshit... Or putting X's in all the little boxes and writing "Wasted your time!" Where the signature is supposed to go. Stuff like that. Oh yeah, I always rip my name and address off the documents so they don't know who's doing it. What a waste of time for that company! Hey, they wasted my time. I'm wasting their's back.
(The fine print: I don't actually do any of what I just said I do. It's a joke. Don't take it seriously. Just leave me alone.)
Ironically, I agree somewhat with your opinion of LOTR. It is certainly not the pinnacle of literary achievement. However, I disagree that it sucks badly. In my opinion, it is a rather nice story, and I enjoy reading a chapter at a time as a bedtime sort of thing. It's like an ongoing adventure for me--I feel like I'm "with" the characters. That, I believe, is the best part of the book: The feeling (at least for me) that I am experiencing an adventure first-hand, even though I'm not. It certainly contains enormous detail, which some readers don't like because it bores them, but as for me, I agree with the author's statement in the preface or whatever: That the book is still too short. I know you don't care, but hey, it was worth saying. I think the book is cool, and the movie sucked ass. It should not have been made into a movie. It also upsets me somewhat when I find about 30 different versions of the thing in stores. There's the all-in-one version that I have, which has the picture of the circular city on the cover. There's the identical book with a cover that depicts the characters from the movie. There's the three separate books, the way it was originally published. There is a set of six (or seven, I forget) books bound in black hardback covers. There is the "red book" which costs a fortune (and which I hear isn't worth it, as the printing is not centered and aligned properly as it should be in a book that costs that much). And there are probably ten other ways these books have been distributed. The bookstore has an entire bookcase devoted to different versions of Lord of the Rings. That is simply stupid. I can understand having the red book for people who like to spend their money, and having the all-in-one book for everyone else. No need to have 50 other versions. Honestly, nobody is going to buy The Two Towers and read it by itself simply because IT MAKES NO SENSE BY ITSELF. (It made sense at the time of original publishing because the rest of the book hadn't yet been written. Kind of like the way Great Expectations was published one column at a time, but ultimately became a single coherent book. Nobody is going to buy it in three pieces. Other fiction books come in "series," like Asimov's Foundation, which has six books, but there it DOES make sense to sell them separately because each is a distinct story that stands alone. LOTR is simply one long story.) Oooooooooh well.
One thing about Moby Dick... Patrick Stewart does admittedly look the part of a captain. Maybe that's just because I'm a closet Star Trek fan.
This is a bad thing. I would say it's almost worse than The Lord of the Rings becoming a movie.
The so-called LOTR "Trilogy" has taken a nice piece of literature and turned it into a piece of garbage. Yes, I agree that the eye candy in the movies is top quality, but the way the movie was arranged destroyed it all. I saw part 1 at the theater with a good friend of mine. I had read the book in the past. He had not.
I was disgusted the instant the movie began, when they unfolded the entire history of the ring. This was supposed to unfold throughout the story.
I was disgusted when entire chapters of the book were simply deleted from the movies. The outcome of that deletion is arguable, as I agree that a movie format cannot reproduce each sentence in the book. It is annoying nonetheless.
I could not bear the fact that some characters were removed and/or replaced by other characters. While deletion of "unimportant" scenes may be necessary, rearranging of characters is not.
Overall, I was upset that the order of the story had been changed. (For example, the opening scene which gave away half the story in the first minute of film.)
To make a long story short, two hours into the movie, when Agent Smith in Rivendell got up dressed like a pansy and started speaking, my friend and I got up and left. We demanded our money back, explaining to theater management that we were disgusted with the movie, and actually got our money back. Neither of us will see the remaining two movies.
Thus, turning books into movies is a bad idea. Such a movie capitalizes on the success of a book and changes the story around, giving millions of people an incorrect impression of what takes place in the book. Other examples include:
The Count of Monte Cristo. The movie began well, although the events were heavily modified to fit an impatient audience. Halfway into the movie, it began to devolve into a pile of garbage intended for a stupid audience. The movie was a pile of crap, and there are millions of people who might have read the book who will not, because they think they already know the story and need not read anything.
The Time Machine. This story was changed completely. Nothing resembled anything in the book. I believe the movie could have been made directly from the book, using it as the script, and it would have resulted in an awesome movie. Instead, we have an action movie that doesn't make any sense.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth, both of which turned awesome books into shit. I don't even want to talk about this for fear of smashing my keyboard against the wall in anger.
Moby Dick. Both the original one and the one with Patrick Stewart. They sucked. You want to know about the whale? Read the damn book!
I can't think of any others right now, but I know there are many more. Movies should be their own, original stories. Instead, most movies today are shit, copied from other movies or turning books into shit. Ooooooooooh well.
Ser iously now. DOS-based systems have historically been convenient for embedded and other systems that don't have the power to provide complex services. I say DOS-based because there are many different DOS lookalikes that serve the same purposes. Unfortunately, the design of Windows has built too strongly upon assumptions made in DOS, and even though it is no longer running on DOS in newer versions, certain problems do exist due to the system's background. On the other hand, the design of UNIX has always been a better architecture than the DOS-based operating systems for complex, flexible systems that provide reliable services. Although it has many shortcomings, these are being addressed today so the architecture is changing to support the today's needs. Linux gives business the ability to use an architecture close enough to UNIX that it can be considered the same for discussion purposes. It has the support of programmers and heavyweight companies worldwide. It can be customized by anyone for any purpose. Corporations and governments can be sure that no company will hold them or their data hostage. And there are no per-user licensing costs, regardless of Total Cost of Ownership arguments. I strongly believe that these advantages will eventually displace Windows in such a serious manner that, although it will continue to exist, I think it will become one of many "front-end" systems on the market, and Microsoft will have a very difficult time differentiating it from other products so that they will have a competitive advantage with it. Even if assholes, I mean, Microsoft, tries to compete by releasing code or whatever, it'll never help them because nobody cares. And their code is probably a pile of ugly crap that somehow works only because a hundred zillion programmers are hacking it together so that it works somehow. Although they'll probably be around for a while, I have a feeling Microsoft won't be so powerful anymore, and FINALLY, computing won't be held hostage by them. So there... nanny nanny boo boo. I hope that in 10 years, Microsoft's entire distribution will account for 1% of the entire software market. And I hope they don't spread to other markets. Actually, what I really hope is that they'll go out of business through huge fsck-ups that will leave all Windows-based systems crippled, as they are tied into the existance of the company. That would be cool. Microsoft SUCKS! Linux RULES! Microsoft SUCKS! Free Software RULES! Microsoft SUCKS! Open Source RULES! Microsoft SUCKS! BSD RULES! Microsoft SUCKS! Talking shit on them RULES! Microsoft SUCKS!
At my company, we have a network operations center (NOC) that sports about 100,000 dollars worth of hardware on 8 racks. This is all inside an unmarked brick room with strong metal doors at the center of the main building. The racks are raised 18 inches off the ground in case of flood. They have an angled roof with ducts to drain any water that might spill from above. The room is temperature controlled and kept at a constant 60 degrees. An industrial-strength chemical fire protection system, similar to a fire extinguisher but on a much larger scale, will emit a large amount of foam-like material to put out a fire if one occurs. This exists throughout the building and includes the NOC.
Only the two admins who have the root passwords, and the company CEO, have the keys to this facility.
Three copies of incremental backups are made each day on CD-R discs. Generally, the backup takes up a single disc. If large changes have taken place, a second disc may be required, but this is very rare. The first copy is placed on a shelf located in the room. Its purpose is the fast retrieval of files in the event of deletion. The second copy goes home with one of the sysadmins. (The sysadmins take turns each day.) The third copy goes home with the company CEO. To reduce the number of CD-Rs stored, three copies of full backups are made on the 12th day of each month, or the following business day. (Don't ask me why that day was selected.) Each of these three copies can take up to 17 CD-Rs, and the number is growing slowly. One copy is kept in the NOC. One is placed in a safe-deposit box at a bank. One is taken home by the company CEO.
Additionally, a "backup" system exists at a separate location, also protected, which cost the company approximately $20,000. It is similar to the "real" setup and can perform the same functions but on a smaller scale. If the main system is destroyed for whatever reason, the company can activate the backup system within a matter of minutes to provide interim services while the main system is brought back online. When the main system is taken offline for maintainence, all operations take place through the backup system. Additionally, tests are performed once a month (by switching to the backup system) to ensure that it works properly. The two systems are synchronized before and after each such switch.
Obviously, my company has taken the paranoid approach to protecting data.
In my opinion, sending all the CDs to two guys and counting on them to ship a million is kind of stupid. Instead, whenever you receive an AOL CD, use a hammer and a nail to place a few holes in recorded portions of the data track, such that the CD becomes useless. Write profanity on it with permanent ink. Then, mail it back to AOL. The advantages of this method are:
This method is similar to a DDoS attack. Packets (in this case, CDs) arriving from every source are unstoppable. Packets arriving from one source (two guys with a million CDs) can be
blocked (through some legal procedure that some jerk-off lawyer will conjure up)
or used to AOL's advantage (the shipment of a million CDs arrive and AOL simply reships them or something)
Thrown away (AOL will receive a truckload of CDs and simply send the truck to the landfill).
This method promises that AOL cannot use the arriving CDs to their advantage. They are destroyed, and thus cannot be reused in any way. Speaking of which, since you received them in the mail, they are YOUR property, and you may therefore do with them whatever you wish. You are therefore allowed to destroy them.
If carried out by enough people, this method will inconvenience AOL...
It might let them know how we feel about their environmental damage.
If they receive 1000 copies a day, or even 100, that WILL waste someone's time who is receiving packages.
Besides, it's kind of like Chinese water torture... CDs will arrive at a steady, unstopping flow.
The involvement of many individuals might convince AOL that they're doing the wrong thing.
You know all those junk mailers you receive that offer you junk you don't need? Many of them come with postage-paid envelopes. Simply rip up the materials they sent you, stick them in the postage-paid envelope, and send them back. They will have to pay postage, and it will waste their time. If enough people do this, it may cause a reduction in junk mail.
If this happened to me, I would agree to do the job at consultancy rates. In other words, I'd make it really expensive, and charge by the hour. Then, I would take a long time to get the job done, on purpose. In other words, I'd figure out what the problem is, then play video games for a few days or so, and then, voila, the network is working again! They'll be so greatful to have it working again that I'd mention the possibility of servicing them once a month for a (somewhat) lower rate (like two cents lower), to prevent future catastrophies. Oh yeah, and I'd demand a free case of Negra Modelo.
Slashdot Mirror
We should petition the RIAA to lay everyone off and close its doors for good.
This reminds me of my employer, a very intelligent gentleman. One day, a hard disk present in a very expensive industrial computer crashed. Its contents were VERY important and my employer ignored my suggestions, for YEARS, that he should make occasional backups of data around his facility. As there was no other copy of the necessary data, I was about to have it shipped to a data recovery specialist when my employer, not knowing about the possibility of recovery and figuring he had nothing to lose, put the hard drive in the microwave for a minute. There were cool lightning bolts. At that point, I simply threw the thing in the garbage because I didn't even want to waste the time to put the damn thing in a box and to mail it.
Let it be known that several hours ago, I purchased 16 licenses of Opera's browser, version 7, BECAUSE of Microsoft's scams.
For a little background information: I am a paid user of Opera's browser since version 3, when there were no ads but it only gave you 30 days to try it out as shareware. At the time, I was completely disenchanted with Netscape's offering, Mozilla was in its first stages of development, and Internet Explorer was made by Microsoft, so no way was I going to use that.
A year before, I had begun a migration to a combination of Linux, BeOS and FreeBSD, and used Windows for a steadly decreasing number of purposes. I was definitely on the market for alternative software and I somehow found Opera.
Opera indeed worked MUCH faster than Netscape, as was especially evident on my slowcomotion dial-up connection of the time. Just the mere fact that it started a download while you could choose where to save it made it fully worth the purchase price, and Opera offered SO MUCH MORE. With each new version, I paid full price rather than opting for upgrade pricing, in order to support Opera to the fullest extent that I could. And I advertised Opera to everybody I knew. When the ads appeared and the browser could be used for free, I personally installed it on the computers of my friends and co-workers. Every computer in the office has the free version of Opera, and my co-workers use it almost exclusively.
Today, I started checking some websites for some of the programs I use, like my favorite editor UltraEdit (the only software worth keeping Windows for), and I found a news item on Opera Software's page describing the aforementioned "malfunction" of Opera in relation to the MSN page. It pissed me off so much that I spent something like $640.00 to buy 16 full versions of the browser: 3 for myself and 13 for all the computers at work.
I wanted to send Microsoft an email to tell them that their actions are getting them the OPPOSITE of what they want, but why should I say anything to those evil people that could potentially help them?
CONCLUSION: I firmly believe that Opera's web browser is the best commercial browser on the market. It kicks Mozilla's fat, bloated ass. It kicks Internet Explorer's buggy ass. It certainly kicks the asses of those "built-in" web browsers on free desktop environments, though some of them are pretty good. I have found it to be worth every penny I spent on it. Now, I am especially happy because it works on FreeBSD, my operating system of choice.
At least he got one thing right: All these stupid techies think that improving software means adding more garbage graphics and TRASH that nobody needs or wants, that take up 101% of processor cycles, making everything slow, contorted and crash prone. If the only improvement you can think to make to a piece of software is to add more junk graphics and sounds, then the software is "finished" and needs not be modified except to repair the occasional bug.
Tell them that you are very private with all your personal and financial information and that you will not disclose the requested information for any reason whatsoever. (And don't, even if it means losing the job. You could piss off some other employee(s) and they can use the aforementioned data against you. Identity theft is also a growing crime.) If I were you, I wouldn't even fill out the W2 form, they would not even get my SSN, and I would ask them to leave the tax accounting to me. As a company, they are under no obligation to the IRS to do any reporting on you. It is your responsibility, and the 99% of employers who do this accounting do it as a "convenience" to their employees. You wish to refuse this and all other "conveniences" because you are RESPONSIBLE with your PRIVATE information.
Oh, and if any idiot from the BSA has a problem with what I'm saying, my name is Robert Q. Campo, and my address is 881 West Harrisville Lane, Cleveland, OH 64113. Come and get me, asshole.
Remember that bowl of snot they eat in the matrix? Yeah, it might look like snot, but it tastes just like a 16 oz. sirloin steak.
I live in Indiana. My mother lives in Georgia. My father lives in Arizona. My grandmother lives in Quebec. My aunt lives in Brazil. My brother lives in France. I have put together a datacenter in a closet in each of their houses. Each datacenter consists of two OpenBSD boxes serving as a multihost firewall and six FreeBSD boxes running the services I require. All of my data is mirrored daily to all of these centers. Most of my files are managed with CVS, too. Thus, I am confident that even in a disaster of biblical proportions, such as my toilet overflowing and damaging the hard drive, my data will be safe.
My systems are set up as minimally as possible for efficiency and reliability. For the life of me, I can't figure out how people manage to screw up their computers as badly as they often do.
I have many friends who have enormous hard drives and have filled them to the brim with all kinds of programs and downloads. Their computers, which are some of the fastest around in terms of hardware resources, run more slowly than an old 286 would if it was running Windows XP through a Pentium IV emulator written in Microsoft GW-BASIC, where the emulator's "RAM" and its processor registers reside on a slow tape drive, with each register on opposite ends of the tape. Oh, and did I mention all the graphics, sounds, windows, and other garbage that shows up all the time as they're running their computer? Just so you understand, all they ever do is write emails and write text in a word processor. But their computers are filled to the brim with crap.
I think the xupiter toolbar would be an innovative addition to my friends' highly optimized configuration.
Sincerely,
The Negra Modelo Troll
P.S., I drink Guinness too. I know I've talked smack on its flavor in the past but you have to find a bartender who knows how to pour and serve it. I can't stand the stuff out of bottles.
Who needs the Intel chip when the one manufactured by Fukencomputen in Germany is about 10 times faster and uses less than 1/3 of the power? It seriously doesn't make sense to continue supporting the giant squid Intel while they crush their competitors who make superior products.
Who needs an operating system that can make coffee when you can have one that makes alcoholic drinks?! Too bad it don't serve Negra Modelo. Una mas cerveza por favor!
Can't wait 'till things are a buck for a terabyte, eh? When that day comes to pass, inflation will have made a dollar worth three cents, so a reasonably priced hard drive will run you about $40,000 dollars, the average weekly wage, and will be the size of a dime. We'll all be using the Itanium 6 and 512 GB of RAM, and our monitor's resolution will be 65536x49152, with 64 bit color. Windows will take up a mere 75 terabytes of hard disk space and will take about 45 minutes to start up, and will crash no less than once every six hours (that's over 518,400,000,000,000 instructions executed, a record for Windows!)...
I am OUTRAGED by this garbage. Seriously, I am completely and utterly disgusted with the kind of trash that these organizations have done to our country, from both a political and technological perspective. It's as if they are trying to take away all of the consumer's rights so that in the future, the big multinational conglomerates that produce EVERYTHING we use will basically DICTATE to us what we can do with their products, when, where, how and why. Consider the old story, about a year ago, maybe, of these "smart" chips that would cause small household appliances, such as toasters, to permanently stop functioning if taken outside of a specified region. How convenient. Or how about those printer ink cartridges that refuse to work after their "expiration" date has passed? Or all the garbage "technologies" put into software, music and movies to make them refuse to work unless conditions are as dictated by the producer. What happened to the days when some jack ass's copyright actually EXPIRED after a REASONABLE length of time? Does an electrician who wired a light switch get royalties every time that light switch is flipped? Does a contractor who installs a door get royalties every time that door is opened or closed? Does your locksmith get to decide who you have the priveledge of inviting to your house? And must you pay your locksmith for that SERVICE? NO!!! That's why electricians, contractors, locksmiths, and EVERYBODY ELSE who makes tangible products must CONTINUOUSLY perform their job, or they will not have income. Is that so difficult? Do you hear any electricians complaining that they have too much work? Would it be a worldwide disaster if so-called alleged "content providers" (the people who produce the utter GARBAGE we call movies, music and software) had to continuously make new work to earn a living? So-called "piracy" is a fact of life in these profession, similar to the fact that an electrician's work lasts a good 20 years.
The RIAA is a piece of SHIT.
The MPAA is a piece of SHIT.
Microsoft is a piece of SHIT.
If the above three organizations were forced to close and all the people working for those organizations were on the street begging for beer money, the world would be a MUCH better place.
I didn't get shit. I'm the owner of the company. But I didn't give my employees shit either. They are the ones who fucked up. That's why we didn't make any money and are barely keeping our noses above the water. Anyone who complains can go fuck themselves, because I don't give a shit. If they had done their damn work and not given me excuses all year long, maybe they would have gotten something.
Besides, I don't take any of that garbage. Both of my home networks, which are physically separated for paranoia purposes, must pass through a two-stage firewall system powered by four separate OpenBSD boxen (two for each network's firewall). The configuration of these firewalls has evolved over three years' time, but suffice it to say that I feel relatively comfortable knowing that any site that is not specifically white-listed will NOT get accessed by any of my machines, nor will any whitelisted machines get accessed for protocols which I have not specifically allowed. The advantage here is that NO software is going to report JACK SCHITT about my behavior to NO marketer.
One final note: I am a marketer by profession. B2B, specifically. And I refuse to employ any big-brother techniques in my work. This may be more difficult when marketing to enormous herds of stupid, technologically illiterate masses of IDIOTS, where you need to be stupid like that to make any sales. But I don't give a damn. I'm doing my part to avoid world-wide slavery by not doing that garbage myself.
WAR IS PEACE.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
I refuse to believe this. Mars had an atmosphere and environment and ecosystem EXACTLY like the Earth, only much, much better. There were over a hundred trillion different species of animals and over nine hundred trillion different species of plants. The vegetation was lush and full everywhere except the oceans, which comprised twenty seven and a third percent of the planet's surface. Over a period of twelve thousand years, the people of Mars became incredibly intelligent and had built underground caverns of terrifying proportions in which they constructed enormous cities without damaging any of the plants above ground. All of their actions and technologies fit precisely within the balance of their planet's ecosystem such that no pollution or impurities took place. They began to explore other planets and had arrived at the farthest reaches of the universe. Then, a Martian child saw an interesting stamp on a little Martian girl's school desk and thought it looked cool, so he took it without telling anyone. The girl found this out and a fight broke out between her and the boy. As she could not prove who had done it, she became very angry and involved her parents. The boy's parents thus became involved in the argument and a family feud resulted. This escalated into a citywide riot, which resulted in a war between two neighboring cities, which had further involved their governing states. Within a matter of days after the stamp had been stolen, all of Mars was engulfed in a massive and horrendous world war which caused all the underground caverns to collapse onto the cities they contained, destroying them and the vegetation, and ending the fine balance in the ecosystem which made Mars such a nice place to live. The only remaining Martians alive were three astronauts on a Martian spaceship, a man and two women, who found themselves marooned on Earth when their spacecraft broke down while in orbit of the Earth's moon. They made an emergency landing, expecting that a rescue mission would be launched within a matter of days. That mission never took place. The astronauts thus reproduced into the human population as we know it today. That was approximately fourteen thousand years ago.
what a waste of energy. why generate heat, wasting your battery, only to throw it away. make the processors run cold, by LOWERING clock speeds and whatnot. nobody needs 3000000 gigahertz to run an editor or to email or to whatever. if you need the processing horsepower, put an optional processor that's usually sleeping but that comes on when heavy computations are done. it will heat up but that will get dissipated. oooooooooooh well.
Things I have started doing recently include: Mixing up the junk mail so that, for example, Company A receives some junk from Companies B and C in the reply envelope. This way, it's not even useful to them as they cannot simply re-mail the returned items.
One thing I intend to start doing in the future is partially filling out the forms that come with the materials I send back, but, for example, writing VOID where the signature is supposed to go or something. This way, someone will start entering data only to discover that it's bullshit... Or putting X's in all the little boxes and writing "Wasted your time!" Where the signature is supposed to go. Stuff like that. Oh yeah, I always rip my name and address off the documents so they don't know who's doing it. What a waste of time for that company! Hey, they wasted my time. I'm wasting their's back.
(The fine print: I don't actually do any of what I just said I do. It's a joke. Don't take it seriously. Just leave me alone.)
If Agent Elrond really said Mr. Underhill, then they REALLY screwed up. :) I wouldn't know because I didn't stick around that long. Oooooooh well.
One thing about Moby Dick... Patrick Stewart does admittedly look the part of a captain. Maybe that's just because I'm a closet Star Trek fan.
The so-called LOTR "Trilogy" has taken a nice piece of literature and turned it into a piece of garbage. Yes, I agree that the eye candy in the movies is top quality, but the way the movie was arranged destroyed it all. I saw part 1 at the theater with a good friend of mine. I had read the book in the past. He had not.
- I was disgusted the instant the movie began, when they unfolded the entire history of the ring. This was supposed to unfold throughout the story.
- I was disgusted when entire chapters of the book were simply deleted from the movies. The outcome of that deletion is arguable, as I agree that a movie format cannot reproduce each sentence in the book. It is annoying nonetheless.
- I could not bear the fact that some characters were removed and/or replaced by other characters. While deletion of "unimportant" scenes may be necessary, rearranging of characters is not.
- Overall, I was upset that the order of the story had been changed. (For example, the opening scene which gave away half the story in the first minute of film.)
To make a long story short, two hours into the movie, when Agent Smith in Rivendell got up dressed like a pansy and started speaking, my friend and I got up and left. We demanded our money back, explaining to theater management that we were disgusted with the movie, and actually got our money back. Neither of us will see the remaining two movies.Thus, turning books into movies is a bad idea. Such a movie capitalizes on the success of a book and changes the story around, giving millions of people an incorrect impression of what takes place in the book. Other examples include:
- The Count of Monte Cristo. The movie began well, although the events were heavily modified to fit an impatient audience. Halfway into the movie, it began to devolve into a pile of garbage intended for a stupid audience. The movie was a pile of crap, and there are millions of people who might have read the book who will not, because they think they already know the story and need not read anything.
- The Time Machine. This story was changed completely. Nothing resembled anything in the book. I believe the movie could have been made directly from the book, using it as the script, and it would have resulted in an awesome movie. Instead, we have an action movie that doesn't make any sense.
- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth, both of which turned awesome books into shit. I don't even want to talk about this for fear of smashing my keyboard against the wall in anger.
- Moby Dick. Both the original one and the one with Patrick Stewart. They sucked. You want to know about the whale? Read the damn book!
I can't think of any others right now, but I know there are many more. Movies should be their own, original stories. Instead, most movies today are shit, copied from other movies or turning books into shit. Ooooooooooh well.Microsoft: Nanny nanny boo boo! Bill: Nanny nanny boo boo! Bwaaaaahaaaahaaaahaaahahahaahahahahahahahaha!
Ser iously now. DOS-based systems have historically been convenient for embedded and other systems that don't have the power to provide complex services. I say DOS-based because there are many different DOS lookalikes that serve the same purposes. Unfortunately, the design of Windows has built too strongly upon assumptions made in DOS, and even though it is no longer running on DOS in newer versions, certain problems do exist due to the system's background. On the other hand, the design of UNIX has always been a better architecture than the DOS-based operating systems for complex, flexible systems that provide reliable services. Although it has many shortcomings, these are being addressed today so the architecture is changing to support the today's needs. Linux gives business the ability to use an architecture close enough to UNIX that it can be considered the same for discussion purposes. It has the support of programmers and heavyweight companies worldwide. It can be customized by anyone for any purpose. Corporations and governments can be sure that no company will hold them or their data hostage. And there are no per-user licensing costs, regardless of Total Cost of Ownership arguments. I strongly believe that these advantages will eventually displace Windows in such a serious manner that, although it will continue to exist, I think it will become one of many "front-end" systems on the market, and Microsoft will have a very difficult time differentiating it from other products so that they will have a competitive advantage with it. Even if assholes, I mean, Microsoft, tries to compete by releasing code or whatever, it'll never help them because nobody cares. And their code is probably a pile of ugly crap that somehow works only because a hundred zillion programmers are hacking it together so that it works somehow. Although they'll probably be around for a while, I have a feeling Microsoft won't be so powerful anymore, and FINALLY, computing won't be held hostage by them. So there... nanny nanny boo boo. I hope that in 10 years, Microsoft's entire distribution will account for 1% of the entire software market. And I hope they don't spread to other markets. Actually, what I really hope is that they'll go out of business through huge fsck-ups that will leave all Windows-based systems crippled, as they are tied into the existance of the company. That would be cool. Microsoft SUCKS! Linux RULES! Microsoft SUCKS! Free Software RULES! Microsoft SUCKS! Open Source RULES! Microsoft SUCKS! BSD RULES! Microsoft SUCKS! Talking shit on them RULES! Microsoft SUCKS!
Only the two admins who have the root passwords, and the company CEO, have the keys to this facility.
Three copies of incremental backups are made each day on CD-R discs. Generally, the backup takes up a single disc. If large changes have taken place, a second disc may be required, but this is very rare. The first copy is placed on a shelf located in the room. Its purpose is the fast retrieval of files in the event of deletion. The second copy goes home with one of the sysadmins. (The sysadmins take turns each day.) The third copy goes home with the company CEO. To reduce the number of CD-Rs stored, three copies of full backups are made on the 12th day of each month, or the following business day. (Don't ask me why that day was selected.) Each of these three copies can take up to 17 CD-Rs, and the number is growing slowly. One copy is kept in the NOC. One is placed in a safe-deposit box at a bank. One is taken home by the company CEO.
Additionally, a "backup" system exists at a separate location, also protected, which cost the company approximately $20,000. It is similar to the "real" setup and can perform the same functions but on a smaller scale. If the main system is destroyed for whatever reason, the company can activate the backup system within a matter of minutes to provide interim services while the main system is brought back online. When the main system is taken offline for maintainence, all operations take place through the backup system. Additionally, tests are performed once a month (by switching to the backup system) to ensure that it works properly. The two systems are synchronized before and after each such switch.
Obviously, my company has taken the paranoid approach to protecting data.
In my opinion, sending all the CDs to two guys and counting on them to ship a million is kind of stupid. Instead, whenever you receive an AOL CD, use a hammer and a nail to place a few holes in recorded portions of the data track, such that the CD becomes useless. Write profanity on it with permanent ink. Then, mail it back to AOL. The advantages of this method are:
You know all those junk mailers you receive that offer you junk you don't need? Many of them come with postage-paid envelopes. Simply rip up the materials they sent you, stick them in the postage-paid envelope, and send them back. They will have to pay postage, and it will waste their time. If enough people do this, it may cause a reduction in junk mail.
If this happened to me, I would agree to do the job at consultancy rates. In other words, I'd make it really expensive, and charge by the hour. Then, I would take a long time to get the job done, on purpose. In other words, I'd figure out what the problem is, then play video games for a few days or so, and then, voila, the network is working again! They'll be so greatful to have it working again that I'd mention the possibility of servicing them once a month for a (somewhat) lower rate (like two cents lower), to prevent future catastrophies. Oh yeah, and I'd demand a free case of Negra Modelo.