Seriously, how many people in total have been affected by this? I don't mean "well, Johnny has had his stuff lost 500,000 times total, so it's only 3½ million" - just how many people have been affected, including the redundant ones?
The CIA World Factbook says the UK has a population of 60,943,912 (July 2008 est.) people. In just one year, 6 percent of the total population have been affected by this. That's an insane number!
If that percentage is applicable to the US, that's 18 million people. In the EU it would be almost 30 million!
I suggest we have new laws and regulations put in place with regards to this:
1) Any attempt to cover up losses will result in fines equalling 10$ and 1 day in jail (to be served end to end) per person affected for ALL people involved in the cover up, from regular employee to directors, CEOs, bureaucrats and politicians. 2) Any time there is a breach involving negligence (i.e. not someone physicaly breaking into the building and running off with the equipment), the people involved from employee to directors, CEOs, bureaucrats and politicians will have ALL their data posted in every newspaper in the state they live in. Relevant data of course - if "all" that was lost was SSNs and their names, then that's posted. If it's bankstatements then it'll be that.
Yes, 10$ and 1 day in jail doesn't sound like much for your data. But it's rarely only one person affected. Mostly it's counted in thousands. The average from the article is 2,007 people, meaning a 20,000 dollar fine and 54 years in jail. The smallest incident is "190 people in 5 incidents". That'd be a small fine - 380 dollars, but still 38 days in jail for each incident. Not something to scoff at.
Well, it would be really really really nice if you could point to somewhere OTHER than google/$searchengine
Otherwise we might be tempted to think you're just pulling stuff out of your ass, throwing it on your keyboard and hoping that the resulting characters makes sense insteaad of a mess.
Why go with chaos theory, when you can show the problem in his thinking with a very simple example:
Using a icosahedron (20 sided dice) the chances of you guessing what the next roll of the die will be is 5%. Calling two in a row is 1 in 400 or 0.25%. Three in a row 0.0125%.
If you roll the dice 20,000 times, the chances of guessing the order is (1/20)^20,000 or 2,5e-26019%. A ridicously low number. But I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that you'll have 1,000 20s, 1,000 19s etc and that number will be off by maybe one percent on each number.
But of course, that's all bunk as well. The math isn't the same, but the level of predictability is about the same.
Does that mean we now have h.264 and/or Blu-ray support under Linux?
And I don't mean "I can play my 1080p Batman Begins just fine on my 2.6 GHz Quad Core" crap. I mean something that allows me to build a low power HTPC running Linux with hardware decoding.
Well, going for the feet is pretty ingenious. Take out a few feathers and they can still fly. Bruise its head, and it can still fly. Take out an eye, and it can still fly.
But take out its feet, and it can't ever land again (well, crash land obviously), nor can it take off properly.
I don't know if it was a (or a group of) magpie that was the problem for a friend of mine, but once he started carrying a tennis racket with him, the birds left him alone. Granted, he DID have to serve up a bird once, and it only worked when he had his racket with him.
How many cites have been built by the small tribes in the Amazon? None How much literature have they written? None How many movies have they directed? None
It's ridiculously clear from the video that the face was the "animated" bit.
I assume you mean before they did a lot of overlay things on the face, so I need to ask you - what video were you watching? The one I was watching was low quality and fuzzy, making it difficult to make out a lot of details on the face.
Well, to quote George Carlin to the best of my ability:
"Pre-heated - why the prefix pre? An oven can only be in two states, heated or unheated! Pre-heated is a meaningless fucking word. Pre-recorded. This program was pre-recorded. Well of course it was pre-recorded, when else are you going to record it? Afterwards?!? [...] You know what I tell these people? Pre-suck my genital situation!"
And without the tag screwup - it was the isotopes that made me screw up, I swear those fuckers are out to get me!
Thus, you could make isotopes with it. That's rather scary,
Warning. You are surrounded by large numbers of isotopes at this very minute. As we speak, your body is quite litterally being inundated with mole upon mole of Carbon13, Carbon14, Carbon12, Oxygen16, Oxygen18, Nitrogen14, Nitrogen15 and countless others.
Thus, you could make isotopes with it. That's rather scary,Warning. You are surrounded by large numbers of isotopes at this very minute. As we speak, your body is quite litterally being inundated with mole upon mole of Carbon13, Carbon14, Carbon12, Oxygen16, Oxygen18, Nitrogen14, Nitrogen15 and countless others.
Well, I don't know US patent law - I only had classes dealing with patents in the EU.
One of the questions that were asked to a patent lawyer giving a presentation was how small companies protect themselves against patent suits, if they have invented something themselves. As well of how to get around having to patent everything yourself - not everyone wants to patent stuff.
That's where "sheep shearer magazine" came up.
If company A invents something and posts it somewhere BEFORE company B files for a patent of the same thing, company B cannot be granted a lawful patent. They might be granted one, but once the "sheep shearer magazine" is brought to any lawsuits attention, the patent is easily voided.
Which is how it SHOULD work. You cannot be given a patent on something that I already told the world how to make. Well, I'm sure some people would think that that would be alright, but those people should be hit over the head repeatedly with a soggy meatloaf.
One of the documentaries explained how he had killed a guy in a motel and simply stashed him under the bed. He had been killed with an overdose of something, and it took three or four days before the guy had been found - AFTER the room had be rented out to more than one other guest.
That was ruled an accidental death until he pointed out that 'hey, that was me'.
And if you read a bit further down, you'll notice that one of the reasons they knew they were dealing with something suspect in one of his cases, was because they found a FROZEN body in the middle of summer. That was his modus operandi.
Use one program to select the town of your victim at random. Find a written phonebook from the area and pick a page at random using ten sided dice. And use the same dice to pick a person at random from that page.
Now you have your victim - it could be you (start over), your neighbour, your boss - doesn't matter all that much.
Next you pick a method of execution at random as well.
If you have no modus operandi, they can't really catch you. See Richard Kuklinski
But learn from his mistakes - if you're using a freezer to keep the time of death obscured, thaw them before you dump them.
Company A invents something and posts it somewhere public Company B later reinvents the same thing (even inside of a year)
Since company B has filed for the invention AFTER company A had it posted, company B cannot get that patent. And if they do (we know they'll get it in 75% of all cases), they'll lose it again as soon as company A gets involved or someone else brings up the posting.
Make an anonymous posting somewhere, describing the innovation you came up with. If it has been disseminated before, it cannot be patented.
This is a fairly common process with companies that either cannot afford to patent or don't want to. They put in a 1 page add in some random magazine (Sheep Shearer Magazine, New Zealand) describing the invention and order a copy of the magazine. Then when someone else comes along and threatens a lawsuit because they patented the process, they simply show the magazine again and Bob's your uncle.
Maybe Slashdot could make an "invention" section for just this kind of stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, how many people in total have been affected by this? I don't mean "well, Johnny has had his stuff lost 500,000 times total, so it's only 3½ million" - just how many people have been affected, including the redundant ones?
The CIA World Factbook says the UK has a population of 60,943,912 (July 2008 est.) people. In just one year, 6 percent of the total population have been affected by this. That's an insane number!
If that percentage is applicable to the US, that's 18 million people. In the EU it would be almost 30 million!
I suggest we have new laws and regulations put in place with regards to this:
1) Any attempt to cover up losses will result in fines equalling 10$ and 1 day in jail (to be served end to end) per person affected for ALL people involved in the cover up, from regular employee to directors, CEOs, bureaucrats and politicians.
2) Any time there is a breach involving negligence (i.e. not someone physicaly breaking into the building and running off with the equipment), the people involved from employee to directors, CEOs, bureaucrats and politicians will have ALL their data posted in every newspaper in the state they live in. Relevant data of course - if "all" that was lost was SSNs and their names, then that's posted. If it's bankstatements then it'll be that.
Yes, 10$ and 1 day in jail doesn't sound like much for your data. But it's rarely only one person affected. Mostly it's counted in thousands. The average from the article is 2,007 people, meaning a 20,000 dollar fine and 54 years in jail. The smallest incident is "190 people in 5 incidents". That'd be a small fine - 380 dollars, but still 38 days in jail for each incident. Not something to scoff at.
Well, it would be really really really nice if you could point to somewhere OTHER than google/$searchengine
Otherwise we might be tempted to think you're just pulling stuff out of your ass, throwing it on your keyboard and hoping that the resulting characters makes sense insteaad of a mess.
Why go with chaos theory, when you can show the problem in his thinking with a very simple example:
Using a icosahedron (20 sided dice) the chances of you guessing what the next roll of the die will be is 5%. Calling two in a row is 1 in 400 or 0.25%. Three in a row 0.0125%.
If you roll the dice 20,000 times, the chances of guessing the order is (1/20)^20,000 or 2,5e-26019%. A ridicously low number. But I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that you'll have 1,000 20s, 1,000 19s etc and that number will be off by maybe one percent on each number.
But of course, that's all bunk as well. The math isn't the same, but the level of predictability is about the same.
Does that mean we now have h.264 and/or Blu-ray support under Linux?
And I don't mean "I can play my 1080p Batman Begins just fine on my 2.6 GHz Quad Core" crap. I mean something that allows me to build a low power HTPC running Linux with hardware decoding.
Well, going for the feet is pretty ingenious. Take out a few feathers and they can still fly. Bruise its head, and it can still fly. Take out an eye, and it can still fly.
But take out its feet, and it can't ever land again (well, crash land obviously), nor can it take off properly.
Rarely has a non-sensical signature made so much sense.
I don't know if it was a (or a group of) magpie that was the problem for a friend of mine, but once he started carrying a tennis racket with him, the birds left him alone. Granted, he DID have to serve up a bird once, and it only worked when he had his racket with him.
Damnit, I can't think of a proper way to turn this into a joke/pun.
But it probably just ducked.
How many cites have been built by the small tribes in the Amazon? None
How much literature have they written? None
How many movies have they directed? None
So, by this criterium, they aren't humans.
Step 1) Start sending them bricks anonymously. Make sure you don't put enough postage on the package, so they have to pay to receive it.
Step 2) Make a note that it is a charitable donation and that they cannot and will not be removed from your list.
Step 2a) Convince Slashdot and Digg to do the same
Step 3) Profit? We don't need no stinking profit!
Am I the only one who raised an eyebrow at the image they used in the article?
Headline: NASA: Mars Lander sends most detailed Martian pics yet
Followed by what I suppose is an artists rendition of Mars from far enough away that it only takes up a quater of the image.
That's no speck of dust, that's a fucking planet!
I assume you mean before they did a lot of overlay things on the face, so I need to ask you - what video were you watching? The one I was watching was low quality and fuzzy, making it difficult to make out a lot of details on the face.
Well, to quote George Carlin to the best of my ability:
And without the tag screwup - it was the isotopes that made me screw up, I swear those fuckers are out to get me!
Warning. You are surrounded by large numbers of isotopes at this very minute. As we speak, your body is quite litterally being inundated with mole upon mole of Carbon13, Carbon14, Carbon12, Oxygen16, Oxygen18, Nitrogen14, Nitrogen15 and countless others.
Quick - run!
Shhh - don't tell anyone, but it's actually Santa's secret storage location for the coal he puts in bad children's stockings.
Well, I don't know US patent law - I only had classes dealing with patents in the EU.
One of the questions that were asked to a patent lawyer giving a presentation was how small companies protect themselves against patent suits, if they have invented something themselves. As well of how to get around having to patent everything yourself - not everyone wants to patent stuff.
That's where "sheep shearer magazine" came up.
If company A invents something and posts it somewhere BEFORE company B files for a patent of the same thing, company B cannot be granted a lawful patent. They might be granted one, but once the "sheep shearer magazine" is brought to any lawsuits attention, the patent is easily voided.
Which is how it SHOULD work. You cannot be given a patent on something that I already told the world how to make. Well, I'm sure some people would think that that would be alright, but those people should be hit over the head repeatedly with a soggy meatloaf.
Actually it's not.
One of the documentaries explained how he had killed a guy in a motel and simply stashed him under the bed. He had been killed with an overdose of something, and it took three or four days before the guy had been found - AFTER the room had be rented out to more than one other guest.
That was ruled an accidental death until he pointed out that 'hey, that was me'.
But that way you always end up with someone in the middle of the phonebook.
"Look at this - everyone in these unsolved cases have last names starting with L, M and N. Think he's using a phonebook?"
And if you read a bit further down, you'll notice that one of the reasons they knew they were dealing with something suspect in one of his cases, was because they found a FROZEN body in the middle of summer. That was his modus operandi.
Use one program to select the town of your victim at random.
Find a written phonebook from the area and pick a page at random using ten sided dice.
And use the same dice to pick a person at random from that page.
Now you have your victim - it could be you (start over), your neighbour, your boss - doesn't matter all that much.
Next you pick a method of execution at random as well.
If you have no modus operandi, they can't really catch you. See Richard Kuklinski
But learn from his mistakes - if you're using a freezer to keep the time of death obscured, thaw them before you dump them.
Not what I was saying.
Company A invents something and posts it somewhere public
Company B later reinvents the same thing (even inside of a year)
Since company B has filed for the invention AFTER company A had it posted, company B cannot get that patent. And if they do (we know they'll get it in 75% of all cases), they'll lose it again as soon as company A gets involved or someone else brings up the posting.
There's a very easy fix for this.
Make an anonymous posting somewhere, describing the innovation you came up with. If it has been disseminated before, it cannot be patented.
This is a fairly common process with companies that either cannot afford to patent or don't want to. They put in a 1 page add in some random magazine (Sheep Shearer Magazine, New Zealand) describing the invention and order a copy of the magazine. Then when someone else comes along and threatens a lawsuit because they patented the process, they simply show the magazine again and Bob's your uncle.
Maybe Slashdot could make an "invention" section for just this kind of stuff.
Simple question: What is "masked blit"? What does it do? I've no clue and Google wasn't helpful, nor was Wiki ...
Hrmm ... do you work in bionics? Or maybe you specialize in miniturization of outboard engines?