Do you not think the residents of Baghdad live in terror as we debate this?
Al Qaeda does have a "political aim," it's the removal of the infidels from their Holy Land. They have been unable to achieve this goal via diplomatic channels, largely because they are disenfranchised by the monarchy in Saudi Arabia who prefer the U.S. military presence in their kingdom. Hostilities have been announced for many years now, and several attacks had occcured long before 9/11.
Yes, Osama bin Laden has openly stated his desire for a "holy war" or jihad against America and Americans -- yet you still claim Al Qaeda is not at war with us. (Perhaps if anyone in the State Department had been listening to his repeated calls for the U.S. expulsion from the Holy Land, we could have avoided WTC in the first place. Probably not though.) This is the same double standard that the Pentagon upholds by claiming that captured Taliban and Al Qaeda soldiers are not in fact soldiers, but are "enemy combatants" and thus exempt from the protections of the Geneva Convention. A little bit of hypocrisy that seems to matter so much more now that some of our boys are prisoner.
Ultimately, it is a continuum, not a dichotomy between War and Terrorism as you have put forth. Certain acts blur the line -- one example is the U.S. bombing of Iraq's desalination plants in 1991, a move projected by DIA analysts to lead to massive civilian casualties.
Lastly, you say that "the WTC was not destroyed as a military target." I agree that the target has little military significance (dual use snotty comments aside) but I feel very strongly that its destrucion was part of "a military compain to achieve objectives that cannot be achieved dipolomatically." If you don't believe this, I encourage you to ask yourself why the WTC was bombed. (Hint: It's not because They Hate Our Freedoms.)
My sig is not intended to justify the destruction of the WTC. Rather, its purpose is to point out the ease with which America rationalizes the violence it commits in the rest of the world.
Now, in the war between US and Al Qaeda, I'm kind of on the fence. Clearly I'm not in favor of any more U.S. buildings blowing up, and I tend to wonder why our troops are protecting the Saud family. Then we get off into oil, and it all goes downhill from there...so let's not.
Thank you for your feedback, Jezza. See you around!
Re: By Pentagon standards, the WTC was a dual use target. Please explain:
The AC mentions that financial assets are valid military targets; I hadn't thought of that, but there's probably something to it. There's a difference, though, between siezing assets and blowing up the stock market...
The WTC (at least one of them) had a huge antenna on top, which could be used by the military as part of a communications infrastructure. This was the reason given for bombing a TV tower in Yugoslavia.
Beyond that, the subway stations in the WTC served as a vital transportation hub that could be used to move troops on or off of Manhattan. Destroying the stations cripples the adversary's responsiveness and ability to reposition materiel.
The "dual use" classification is used by the Pentagon as a rationalization for destroying civilian infrastructure. In the first US-Iraq war Iraq's desalination facilities were bombed, with full knowledge that this would inflict great civilian casualties.
The sentiment of my sig is pretty much the same as "War is Terrorism," but that phrase seems a bit amorphous and vague. My statemet attempts to present that same argument with a side-order of reality. As for the financial side, there was a rather large gold reserve in the WTC, which was recovered and removed under heavy guard during the cleanup process.
Thanks for asking, by the way. I was hoping someone would:)
Then you can testify in court how you attempted theft and were robbed in the process. Then, after you win your civil case and receive your settlement the District Attorney can arrest you for the crime you committed
The only way this is still cable theft is if he doesn't pay his bill. After he pays his bill, he has paid for services rendered. The cable company and the Sherriff don't have a problem with this man. He got suckered, but since he paid bill he wasn't stealing cable. I don't think "man indicted for attempted cable theft" is going to make front page headlines in the home town newspaper either.
"The intent to commit a crime" is a LOT different from actually committing one. I know the penalties for cable theft are potentially rather severe, but it's certainly a victimless crime, and "attempted cable theft" just isn't really worth the DAs time.
As an FPS multiplayer addict, I can tell you there is social interaction -- of a sort. There's chatting during the game, and each server usually has a webpage with forums, etc. for more lenghty discussion (such as the 20-page-long "war on iraq" thread at udpviper.com)
You can start a clan with your buddies if you're really into it, and chat away on AIM.
In the game I play, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, you really have to play as a team -- Lieutenants handing out ammo, Medics healing people -- so there is a social thing that happens inside the game itself.
Then there's Roger Wilco, or Ventrilo, etc. that let you chat in realtime with the other people on your team.
I'd say there's plenty of room for social interaction in online gaming.
And, If I could play M.U.L.E. over the Internet, I would. I fire that puppy up on the C64 emulator every now and again. Great fun.
On the other hand, using any number of authentication schemes (including through an LDAP server, behind a firewall), you can lock it down as tightly as you'd like. And yes, it runs over HTTPS as well as HTTP, so even your port 80 crack is laughable.
I dunno...I mean yeah, but the whole point of this sploit is that none of that matters since you have local admin rights on the IIS\Webdav server.
How are you going to not give the local system account of the WebDAV server access rights to the documents you're WebDAVing?
Of course, I still don't know what WebDAV is, but I installed that patch. The threat looks pretty amazingly significant, even without WebDAV's extra features.
anyway, my sister came up with this one to remembet the planets (C) miriam pierce
Mount Vesuvius Erupted Many Juveniles Smoth ered Under Nearby Pompeii
i love her, but only as a sister, okay>?
Imagine a beowulf cluster of rootkits!
on
Windows Rootkits
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
But seriously, I'm asked to "Imagine what a stealthy rootkit could do!"
Having lived thru Melissa and ILOVEYOU, I can't imagine it would get much worse than that. The way security is(n't) done in Windows pretty much obviates the need for a rootkit, almost by design you could say.
People keep talking about the "next" Melissa, but I don't think there will be one -- for basically the same reason there won't be another 4 planes hijacked and crashed into buildings. Microsoft has learned from past mistakes, and Outlook is far far more secure "out of the box" than it once was.
People have learned, too; for example if you buy a new Dell it comes with McAfee Security Center, which gives you antivirus and (hopefully) some basic firewall protection. It took a few good beatdowns, but Joe User is at least aware of the dangers out there. To a degree I think we can thank the spammers; people are less likely to open suspect attachments nowadays because they prolly think it's spam. I'll take the silver lining and be happy.
I'd be far more worried about a rootkit/attack on the Internet itself (e.g. core routers, DNS) than the Next Big Windows Vulnerability. With the increasing trend towards Internet Everything, were I in the mood to break things, I would be hacking DNS and Cisco -- break the mesh and the nodes are useless. Conversely, clueful people weren't affected by SQL Slammer since why would you let your SQL Server talk to the Internet on port 1433 anyway?
You just made my friend list! I think your point is quite valid. For whatever reason (actually, the reason is becuase the rich people rule the pooor people) the rules are "different" when youre a big company. The excuse being -- think of all the people who will be out of work if we punish a large coproration!
The best way to take care of this is to pound the crap out of any nation that harbors terrorists or helps support them. So, after we pummel Iraq...
I wouldn't really say that Iraq is harboring terrorists, nor helping them. While there may, possibly, be some al-Qaeda activity in the nothern parts of Iraq, those are regions that aren't under Saddam Hussein's control.
Part of the reason they're not under Saddam Hussein's control is because of the No-Fly-Zone that's been in place since the end of the Gulf War. Can you imagine the difficulty the US would have rooting out terrorists if we couldn't use airpower?
So, by your logic, perhaps we should bring the niggerstick to the U.K. and the USA, the two nations who patrol the No-Fly-Zone and keep Saddam from ridding his country of Kurds and al-Qaeda bases.
Based on your tone, I've got a hunch you think nothing went wrong at Waco...
Solution - replace employees with AI - become non-airline company.
They tried that. The commercial airlines said they could handle security more cheaply than the Feds. They formed private security companies at each airport, and hired "scrubs" i.e. anyone who showed up to work for $8/hr. The result we all know.
Now, in a classic case of the pendulum swinging too far the other way, we have this stupid govt. system which will not stop any terrorists. Not to mention the obvious fact that a situation like 9.11 will never happen again anyway (at least not in the next ten years) beccause the OTEHR PASSENGERS ON THE PLANE WILL FIGHT BACK!
(duh)
I've always been a big fan of cross-counrty road trips anyway. Hey, maybe we'll see some great vidoeconferencing tech in the next few years as a result!
Serious question: DO you think the government should have any role in capitalism at all?
Should the government make efforts to keep the playing field level (e.g. anti-monopoly laws) or just let the market run its course?
I think the reason the government gets involved in these things is because: Capitalism tends towards monopoly, and monopoly harms the consumer. The government has a stated goal of keeping its citizens from getting harmed, so the government gets involved and tries to keep monopolies from abusing that monopoly power.
It's a messy process, and I'm not so sure that our government really has the "little guy" in mind any more when it intervenes...
The truth here is that people used pirated copies because they didn't want to pay the price Microsoft asked. They're thieves.
What if Microsoft charged an arm and a leg for their software? And had a corner on the market?
Wouldn't that make Microsoft thieves?
Re:NASA needs more people, not LESS
on
More on Columbia
·
· Score: 1
If ONE PERSON had been watching a -live- monitor, the flight could have been aborted safely.
It would have been really really tough to see the puff of smoke, realize it was a "deal-breaker," and give the signal to abort, and have the shuttle actually break away, all within 75 seconds or so.
I was shocked when the Challenger blew up. The Columbia kind of rates a shrug. I don't think NASA has changed that much in the 17 years intervening. Or, maybe they changed for a while, but have gone back to their old ways.
That was a preventable accident that was the fault of not listening to engineers.
This is really the crux of the biscuit. One thing that I remember from the Challenger post-mortem was the stratified bureaucracy in place at NASA, and how hard it was to communicate up and back down the chain of command. The O-rings are the perfect example of this. I remember the morning Challenger blew up, when I heard about it, the first thing I thought was -- It must have exploded on the launch pad because they'd never launch at 29 degrees Fahrenheit. Well, it turns out some people at NASA were pretty much thinking the same thing, but their voices were never heard.
Now, we're faced with what might be a similar "reason" for the Columbia disaster? Did people "know" that there was a real problem with the wing? How strongly were these concerns voiced?
And were the concerns ignored because the Shuttle had survived reentry every time before? Or because the crew will die after a few weeks in space anyway?
We've heard a lot about the anaylsis done on Columbia after launch. I'd like to know more about the analysis that happened on successful shuttle missions. Are there always a few "chicken littles" worried about their particular subsystem?
I think the Shuttle (and NASA's) problem may be more organic than anything else. It may simply not be possible for that many people to effectively communicate the way three guys robbing a bank can. Others have debated whether the private sector is capable of projects on the scale of the Space Shuttle program. I think when things become as gargantuan as the Shuttle program, the technical, engineering challenges might be the least of your worries.
I'm not sure if there is a solution. NASA is saddled to the political realities of our government, moreso than a private company would be. It's a tremendous money pit, too. I wonder which cost more: The Columbia or the crew she was carrying?
Contracts are often vague, complex and confusing, and when different teams of lawyers (or different judges) interpret a contract differently, it usually isn't a sign of any deep conspiracy.
Unless you consider the "conspiracy" to be the system itself, in which the rich, with unlimited access to lawyers, have the resources to fight the battle time and time again (enldless appeals, different venues, Federal circuits and State courts). Meanwhile the poor are stuck with their first helping of justice, because that's all they can afford, and lawyers take half of whatever they might win anyway.
You see trees, but fail to take note of the forest.
You say this site should be a microcosm for the free and open society of the future? Don't you see that it already is? And you wonder why it stinks of shit...
Dude, I know many people who can use "The Internet" just fine... but still prefer AOL, because AOL provides *content*.
Just reading thru this thread so far makes me realize how there could be a market for collecting, organizing, summarizing content.
On the other hand, the alt.binaries.nospam porn newsgroups have also organized their content pretty effectively. But that's the product of a few dedicated individuals' love for pr0n and hatred of spam.
I think with MSN, Yahoo, et. al. working hard to bring the same "portal" experience to non-AOL users, AOL is kinda screwed. I did like the idea of them leveraging their Time-Warner content to AOL subscribers only, but where will that lead? The other media conglomerates will just team with/buy up/get bought by the big Internet start pages. End result: AOL might have a short-term bump but in the long run they're looking rather doomed.
Of course, if they offered broadband in my area, and they were cheap, I might get their service anyway and just use it as an Internet connection, ignoring all the AOL stuff.
They said no refunds on opened boxes, but, they did let me switch it for a brand new copy (unopened) which I dutifully took to another wal-mart and got a refund with.
It may not have made any sense, but that's the truth.
I play a lot of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and every time I try to download some new map from a server hosting that map, it CRAWLS at like 2k/sec. This is on a attbi.com cable modem where I just downloaded mozilla 1.21 at 120 KB/sec.
For some reason, the server just won't open a fat pipe to you so you can download one map that everybody else has. It's probably a feature more than a bug. And the thing in Unreal Tournament 2k3 is an even better feature. I was playing this game at a friend's house and I went to some server with a map he didn't have -- lo and behold it connected me to some ftp site and I had the thing in seconds. The same thing would have taken at least 5 minutes in RtCW.
I guess the downside is -- who know's whats REALLY on that FTP site (or server hosting the map in the first place)?? Well, use antivirus, don't be an idiot, back up important stuff on a floppy. If a bug in UT2k3 is what makes you do this stuff, then you are very very lucky that this is the worst brush with disaster you've had.
Slashdot Mirror
War isn't terrorism? Ever been bombed?
Do you not think the residents of Baghdad live in terror as we debate this?
Al Qaeda does have a "political aim," it's the removal of the infidels from their Holy Land. They have been unable to achieve this goal via diplomatic channels, largely because they are disenfranchised by the monarchy in Saudi Arabia who prefer the U.S. military presence in their kingdom. Hostilities have been announced for many years now, and several attacks had occcured long before 9/11.
Yes, Osama bin Laden has openly stated his desire for a "holy war" or jihad against America and Americans -- yet you still claim Al Qaeda is not at war with us. (Perhaps if anyone in the State Department had been listening to his repeated calls for the U.S. expulsion from the Holy Land, we could have avoided WTC in the first place. Probably not though.) This is the same double standard that the Pentagon upholds by claiming that captured Taliban and Al Qaeda soldiers are not in fact soldiers, but are "enemy combatants" and thus exempt from the protections of the Geneva Convention. A little bit of hypocrisy that seems to matter so much more now that some of our boys are prisoner.
Ultimately, it is a continuum, not a dichotomy between War and Terrorism as you have put forth. Certain acts blur the line -- one example is the U.S. bombing of Iraq's desalination plants in 1991, a move projected by DIA analysts to lead to massive civilian casualties.
Lastly, you say that "the WTC was not destroyed as a military target." I agree that the target has little military significance (dual use snotty comments aside) but I feel very strongly that its destrucion was part of "a military compain to achieve objectives that cannot be achieved dipolomatically." If you don't believe this, I encourage you to ask yourself why the WTC was bombed. (Hint: It's not because They Hate Our Freedoms.)
My sig is not intended to justify the destruction of the WTC. Rather, its purpose is to point out the ease with which America rationalizes the violence it commits in the rest of the world.
Now, in the war between US and Al Qaeda, I'm kind of on the fence. Clearly I'm not in favor of any more U.S. buildings blowing up, and I tend to wonder why our troops are protecting the Saud family. Then we get off into oil, and it all goes downhill from there...so let's not.
Thank you for your feedback, Jezza. See you around!
Re: By Pentagon standards, the WTC was a dual use target. Please explain:
:)
The AC mentions that financial assets are valid military targets; I hadn't thought of that, but there's probably something to it. There's a difference, though, between siezing assets and blowing up the stock market...
The WTC (at least one of them) had a huge antenna on top, which could be used by the military as part of a communications infrastructure. This was the reason given for bombing a TV tower in Yugoslavia.
Beyond that, the subway stations in the WTC served as a vital transportation hub that could be used to move troops on or off of Manhattan. Destroying the stations cripples the adversary's responsiveness and ability to reposition materiel.
The "dual use" classification is used by the Pentagon as a rationalization for destroying civilian infrastructure. In the first US-Iraq war Iraq's desalination facilities were bombed, with full knowledge that this would inflict great civilian casualties.
The sentiment of my sig is pretty much the same as "War is Terrorism," but that phrase seems a bit amorphous and vague. My statemet attempts to present that same argument with a side-order of reality. As for the financial side, there was a rather large gold reserve in the WTC, which was recovered and removed under heavy guard during the cleanup process.
Thanks for asking, by the way. I was hoping someone would
\me gets off soapbox
+1 underrated.
You took a wrong turn here:
Then you can testify in court how you attempted theft and were robbed in the process. Then, after you win your civil case and receive your settlement the District Attorney can arrest you for the crime you committed
The only way this is still cable theft is if he doesn't pay his bill. After he pays his bill, he has paid for services rendered. The cable company and the Sherriff don't have a problem with this man. He got suckered, but since he paid bill he wasn't stealing cable. I don't think "man indicted for attempted cable theft" is going to make front page headlines in the home town newspaper either.
"The intent to commit a crime" is a LOT different from actually committing one. I know the penalties for cable theft are potentially rather severe, but it's certainly a victimless crime, and "attempted cable theft" just isn't really worth the DAs time.
As an FPS multiplayer addict, I can tell you there is social interaction -- of a sort. There's chatting during the game, and each server usually has a webpage with forums, etc. for more lenghty discussion (such as the 20-page-long "war on iraq" thread at udpviper.com)
You can start a clan with your buddies if you're really into it, and chat away on AIM.
In the game I play, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, you really have to play as a team -- Lieutenants handing out ammo, Medics healing people -- so there is a social thing that happens inside the game itself.
Then there's Roger Wilco, or Ventrilo, etc. that let you chat in realtime with the other people on your team.
I'd say there's plenty of room for social interaction in online gaming.
And, If I could play M.U.L.E. over the Internet, I would. I fire that puppy up on the C64 emulator every now and again. Great fun.
Why not just write a 6502 virtual machine in Java?
On the other hand, using any number of authentication schemes (including through an LDAP server, behind a firewall), you can lock it down as tightly as you'd like. And yes, it runs over HTTPS as well as HTTP, so even your port 80 crack is laughable.
I dunno...I mean yeah, but the whole point of this sploit is that none of that matters since you have local admin rights on the IIS\Webdav server.
How are you going to not give the local system account of the WebDAV server access rights to the documents you're WebDAVing?
Of course, I still don't know what WebDAV is, but I installed that patch. The threat looks pretty amazingly significant, even without WebDAV's extra features.
im so drunk i cant even speell
h ered
anyway, my sister came up with this one to remembet the planets (C) miriam pierce
Mount
Vesuvius
Erupted
Many
Juveniles
Smot
Under
Nearby
Pompeii
i love her, but only as a sister, okay>?
But seriously, I'm asked to "Imagine what a stealthy rootkit could do!"
Having lived thru Melissa and ILOVEYOU, I can't imagine it would get much worse than that. The way security is(n't) done in Windows pretty much obviates the need for a rootkit, almost by design you could say.
People keep talking about the "next" Melissa, but I don't think there will be one -- for basically the same reason there won't be another 4 planes hijacked and crashed into buildings. Microsoft has learned from past mistakes, and Outlook is far far more secure "out of the box" than it once was.
People have learned, too; for example if you buy a new Dell it comes with McAfee Security Center, which gives you antivirus and (hopefully) some basic firewall protection. It took a few good beatdowns, but Joe User is at least aware of the dangers out there. To a degree I think we can thank the spammers; people are less likely to open suspect attachments nowadays because they prolly think it's spam. I'll take the silver lining and be happy.
I'd be far more worried about a rootkit/attack on the Internet itself (e.g. core routers, DNS) than the Next Big Windows Vulnerability. With the increasing trend towards Internet Everything, were I in the mood to break things, I would be hacking DNS and Cisco -- break the mesh and the nodes are useless. Conversely, clueful people weren't affected by SQL Slammer since why would you let your SQL Server talk to the Internet on port 1433 anyway?
You just made my friend list! I think your point is quite valid. For whatever reason (actually, the reason is becuase the rich people rule the pooor people) the rules are "different" when youre a big company. The excuse being -- think of all the people who will be out of work if we punish a large coproration!
The best way to take care of this is to pound the crap out of any nation that harbors terrorists or helps support them. So, after we pummel Iraq...
I wouldn't really say that Iraq is harboring terrorists, nor helping them. While there may, possibly, be some al-Qaeda activity in the nothern parts of Iraq, those are regions that aren't under Saddam Hussein's control.
Part of the reason they're not under Saddam Hussein's control is because of the No-Fly-Zone that's been in place since the end of the Gulf War. Can you imagine the difficulty the US would have rooting out terrorists if we couldn't use airpower?
So, by your logic, perhaps we should bring the niggerstick to the U.K. and the USA, the two nations who patrol the No-Fly-Zone and keep Saddam from ridding his country of Kurds and al-Qaeda bases.
Based on your tone, I've got a hunch you think nothing went wrong at Waco...
Solution - replace employees with AI - become non-airline company.
They tried that. The commercial airlines said they could handle security more cheaply than the Feds. They formed private security companies at each airport, and hired "scrubs" i.e. anyone who showed up to work for $8/hr. The result we all know.
Now, in a classic case of the pendulum swinging too far the other way, we have this stupid govt. system which will not stop any terrorists. Not to mention the obvious fact that a situation like 9.11 will never happen again anyway (at least not in the next ten years) beccause the OTEHR PASSENGERS ON THE PLANE WILL FIGHT BACK!
(duh)
I've always been a big fan of cross-counrty road trips anyway. Hey, maybe we'll see some great vidoeconferencing tech in the next few years as a result!
Serious question: DO you think the government should have any role in capitalism at all?
Should the government make efforts to keep the playing field level (e.g. anti-monopoly laws) or just let the market run its course?
I think the reason the government gets involved in these things is because: Capitalism tends towards monopoly, and monopoly harms the consumer. The government has a stated goal of keeping its citizens from getting harmed, so the government gets involved and tries to keep monopolies from abusing that monopoly power.
It's a messy process, and I'm not so sure that our government really has the "little guy" in mind any more when it intervenes...
How can they have a corner on the market?
Perhaps you have not been paying attention...Microsoft has a monopoly.
According to U.S. courts, they not only have a monopoly, they've (ab)used their monopoly to get an unfair advantage over the competition.
If this is news to you, you are either quite ignorant, or a Microsoft shill. Or both.
The truth here is that people used pirated copies because they didn't want to pay the price Microsoft asked. They're thieves.
What if Microsoft charged an arm and a leg for their software? And had a corner on the market?
Wouldn't that make Microsoft thieves?
If ONE PERSON had been watching a -live- monitor, the flight could have been aborted safely.
It would have been really really tough to see the puff of smoke, realize it was a "deal-breaker," and give the signal to abort, and have the shuttle actually break away, all within 75 seconds or so.
I was shocked when the Challenger blew up. The Columbia kind of rates a shrug. I don't think NASA has changed that much in the 17 years intervening. Or, maybe they changed for a while, but have gone back to their old ways.
That was a preventable accident that was the fault of not listening to engineers.
This is really the crux of the biscuit. One thing that I remember from the Challenger post-mortem was the stratified bureaucracy in place at NASA, and how hard it was to communicate up and back down the chain of command. The O-rings are the perfect example of this. I remember the morning Challenger blew up, when I heard about it, the first thing I thought was -- It must have exploded on the launch pad because they'd never launch at 29 degrees Fahrenheit. Well, it turns out some people at NASA were pretty much thinking the same thing, but their voices were never heard.
Now, we're faced with what might be a similar "reason" for the Columbia disaster? Did people "know" that there was a real problem with the wing? How strongly were these concerns voiced?
And were the concerns ignored because the Shuttle had survived reentry every time before? Or because the crew will die after a few weeks in space anyway?
We've heard a lot about the anaylsis done on Columbia after launch. I'd like to know more about the analysis that happened on successful shuttle missions. Are there always a few "chicken littles" worried about their particular subsystem?
I think the Shuttle (and NASA's) problem may be more organic than anything else. It may simply not be possible for that many people to effectively communicate the way three guys robbing a bank can. Others have debated whether the private sector is capable of projects on the scale of the Space Shuttle program. I think when things become as gargantuan as the Shuttle program, the technical, engineering challenges might be the least of your worries.
I'm not sure if there is a solution. NASA is saddled to the political realities of our government, moreso than a private company would be. It's a tremendous money pit, too. I wonder which cost more: The Columbia or the crew she was carrying?
Hee Hee that was the best part. That and Shatner!
Contracts are often vague, complex and confusing, and when different teams of lawyers (or different judges) interpret a contract differently, it usually isn't a sign of any deep conspiracy.
Unless you consider the "conspiracy" to be the system itself, in which the rich, with unlimited access to lawyers, have the resources to fight the battle time and time again (enldless appeals, different venues, Federal circuits and State courts). Meanwhile the poor are stuck with their first helping of justice, because that's all they can afford, and lawyers take half of whatever they might win anyway.
You see trees, but fail to take note of the forest.
You say this site should be a microcosm for the free and open society of the future? Don't you see that it already is? And you wonder why it stinks of shit...
Very good point. Pity it's destined for -1.
half the world lives in a goddam mud hut or under a piece of cardboard. There will never be a singularity.
Dude, I know many people who can use "The Internet" just fine ... but still prefer AOL, because AOL provides *content*.
Just reading thru this thread so far makes me realize how there could be a market for collecting, organizing, summarizing content.
On the other hand, the alt.binaries.nospam porn newsgroups have also organized their content pretty effectively. But that's the product of a few dedicated individuals' love for pr0n and hatred of spam.
I think with MSN, Yahoo, et. al. working hard to bring the same "portal" experience to non-AOL users, AOL is kinda screwed. I did like the idea of them leveraging their Time-Warner content to AOL subscribers only, but where will that lead? The other media conglomerates will just team with/buy up/get bought by the big Internet start pages. End result: AOL might have a short-term bump but in the long run they're looking rather doomed.
Of course, if they offered broadband in my area, and they were cheap, I might get their service anyway and just use it as an Internet connection, ignoring all the AOL stuff.
They said no refunds on opened boxes, but, they did let me switch it for a brand new copy (unopened) which I dutifully took to another wal-mart and got a refund with.
You are my other hero for today.
jackb guppy you are my hero for today.
It may not have made any sense, but that's the truth.
I play a lot of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and every time I try to download some new map from a server hosting that map, it CRAWLS at like 2k/sec. This is on a attbi.com cable modem where I just downloaded mozilla 1.21 at 120 KB/sec.
For some reason, the server just won't open a fat pipe to you so you can download one map that everybody else has. It's probably a feature more than a bug. And the thing in Unreal Tournament 2k3 is an even better feature. I was playing this game at a friend's house and I went to some server with a map he didn't have -- lo and behold it connected me to some ftp site and I had the thing in seconds. The same thing would have taken at least 5 minutes in RtCW.
I guess the downside is -- who know's whats REALLY on that FTP site (or server hosting the map in the first place)?? Well, use antivirus, don't be an idiot, back up important stuff on a floppy. If a bug in UT2k3 is what makes you do this stuff, then you are very very lucky that this is the worst brush with disaster you've had.
Oh, and you're probably a n00b, too!