I swear by my Petzl LED headlamp. Put it on and there's no night in the woods. I burn a set of batteries in it every summer...but I use rechargable alkalines, which are good for about 100 rechargings, so I don't expect to buy batteries in my lifetime.
It's a waste of resources, because it simply does not work and never will.
Last week my buddy says to me, "das, do you have an XP CD key?"
I gave him my shpiel about how, before I switched to Mac, I only used Win2k because I felt XP was a major step backward in terms of usability. He agreed, but since he already had XP installed and 30 days of use before it stopped working for him, it was moot.
"I guess I'll have to go buy a copy of XP," he said. He knows that key generators exist. But he works in a lumber yard, he doesn't know where to look. Buying a copy of XP saves him the trouble of hunting through porn banners and assuades his guilty conscience.
Actually, since physical property only exists because of a series of laws as well, there is no different between physical and intellectual property -- other than that certain assholes like to act that just because you can't hold an idea in their hand they can do whatever they like without without harming anything.
Well, there is such a thing as an unwitting pirate. My mom had an illegal copy of Windows 98 for years; the computer came with a license agreement but it was for Win95!
In that time, she still bought a BUNCH of software, including a number of games from Microsoft (my dad's mental for AOE). That's money they wouldn't have made if she used Linux.
Of course, "pirates" like my mom wouldn't switch to Linux anyway. Obviously, these pirates have the option to use Linux legally, or steal Windows, and they've chosen the latter. If you're willing to commit a crime rather than use Linux, you're not going to switch just because you can't install a service pack.
Sued, yes, but not successfully. You can be sued for any insanity a person can invent, but it'll most probably get thrown out with a bill attached.
Next time you get one of those emails talking about all the crazy lawsuits our corrupt legal system permits, maybe you should google for the RESULTS of those lawsuits. You might be surprised.
Wow that was a mess. But I think I got the gist of it. You're trying to say that, on the AM dial with its coverage radius of hundreds of miles, there's more of a chance that somebody's favorite station is already occupying the same band as my transmitter. And that if you were to draw the Vingt diagram of the radius of my transmission vs somebody else's, there may be a large intersection in which people wouldn't be able to get one station without interference from the other.
Of course, since the problem was how to get an mp3 player to transmit to a car antenna, I wouldn't be too worried about it.
There's probably a ton of toom on the AM dial, where things are less cramped. And with modern AM technology, the sound quality is better that, well, realaudio.
The FCC does exactly what you're talking about. It only regulates stations above a certain wattage, even on the broadcast radio spectrum.
You don't even need a license. Buy one of these and make your own radio station, man. It's easy. And with a few simple modes, you can double the range without irking the FCC. Place your antenna in the right place and you can get up to a mile of broadcast strength for your community station.
Well, one of the rules of microbroadcasting is that you're not supposed to use a channel occupied by, or within.3 MHz of, an existing station.
And it's more than just gentleman's advice...if you try to piggyback your local 50,000W clearchannel station with your 10W community station, you will never be heard, not even in your own house. Your radio will ignore your broadcast as static.
When I do "pirate" broadcasts, I generally use a piece of the spectrum in between our local NPR station and a "dance party" college radio station. Both are low powered, relatively, so I get a good signal. I can broadcast almost all the way down the street! It was a lot more useful in college...where a good, low-powered-but-legal signal could reach the 9000 students or whatever in the dorms.
My first PC was a 386-40. Two years later replaced by a 486-66 (new motherboard needed). Two years later replaced by a 486-120 (new motherboard needed). Next up was a Celeron 166 (new motherboard again), then a K6-233 (new motherboard for EDO ram) and a K6-2 350 after that (new motherboard to support the higher multiplier). I went intel for a little while, dual celeron, and after that a p3. New motherboards for each. Finally, I settled down with a top of the line Athlon thunderbird 1 gig on a top of the line motherboard.
A motherboard which only supports chips up to 1.4 GHz. And whose top-of-the-line clock makes at 200 MHz.
*SIGH*. Each chip upgrade, usually performed at 2 year intervals, has required a new motherboard to take advantage of a higher clock speed or "better" memory or a new graphics system or USB. In fact, i'm beginning to thing that I'd be better served by a PC industry that integrated chips onto motherboards to save costs and improve cooling options. Over and under fans? You got it!
I can't wait to see how they spin this is marketing.
"Say, guys? When we told you that clock speed was the only factor in speed, and that a long pipeline was the only way to go, we were joking! NO NO NO, wait, don't go buy AMD chips or G5s, because -- uh -- they're the suck. Look, a dancing guy in a shiny suit uses our chips!"
I'd like to know who the grandparent poster thinks is paying for all this diamond research.
If I recall, most of it is taking place in small research companies funded by capital from corporations like Intel, who then would have a percentage stake in the technology if and when it comes around.
There's also plenty of interneal research and doctoral work funded by grants from IBM, Intel, etc.0
Really? Seems like a lot of work. Me, I'd let people believe what they wanted, religion wise, so long as it doesn't affect my bottom line nor my security. People would be more grateful and less likely to rebel. Of course, this would mean I couldn't put the plaque of the ten commandments up, as this would be an endorsement of a particular religion and unfair to the others. Besides, freedom of religion is against the first commandment anyway...i'd hate to post anything so hypocritical in MY kingdom.
I would use licensing systems not to enslave people. but to give the illusion of service. After all, if I have granted them a license to do task X, then I must restrict others who aren't as good at it. Licensing would thusly be a form of reimbursed flattery.
Taxation would not be considered theft, but rather a gift. Payment due for tasks rendered. I would make sure that the more desirable, less expensive of these tasks -- such as publically supported welfare and unemployment -- were quite visible and subject to open debate. That way, nobody would much notice the size of defense budget. Money would be backed by the only thing that HAS any value in a world of industrialization and uneven distribution of material goods: it would be based on energy, coal and oil mostly.
Education systems would be very good, but optional, with plenty of choices for those without education. Since the majority will take the easiest route, there will be less cause for complaint.
As for the propaganda...well, people willingly giving up their income for high profile services such as decent public education they don't use and freedoms they don't exercise will no doubt perform their own propaganda. I would hasten the process by subsidizing the cost of vinyl stickers for trucks that read "these colors don't run," feature crying eagles or Calvin urinating on an A-rab.
Remember: people who believe your bullshit will belive their OWN bullshit even more.
I'd like to point out that all terrorist organizations consider themselves benign, or at least justified. Activism by its very definition hopes to overturn the status quo, and that means that any agency interested in maintaining the status quo should consider activism to be suspicious.
This doesn't mean that all activists are terrorists, that's a stupid generalization. Neither does it mean that protecting the status quo is necessarily right. It just means that anybody who tells you that they're willing to fight for their beliefs should be taken at the face value of their words.
I am a member of the ACLU, the Sierra Club and the FSF. I expect that if I'm ever investigated by the FBI, they'll want to know that, same as they'd want to know if I was a communist, an IRA sympathizer, or in the Klan.
Back in high school, I did an honors chemistry paper on the accuracy of information on how to construct explosive devices found on the internet. This was when the internet at our school was run on a 9600 baud modem after school three hours a day. It was mostly gopher, and if you weren't in the internet club, you could get information by putting in a written request.
Believe it or not, I wasn't. So I put in the request. And lo and behold, a few days later I was called into the principal's office. Mostly, I just thought this was funny. And the principal, too, laughed it off, but we agreed he would be remiss not to question me about it. He asked for a copy of the paper when I was done, and I gave him one.
Later, a buddy of mine and I were talking about smoke bombs in the hall. This was shortly after OK City. A techer heard us, and asked us to come to the office so she could take down our names just in case. A bit silly, but I could understand.
Was it annoying that my high school was so picky? Yeah. Was I offended? Not really. My rights weren't being infringed upon...I got the info I requested. I had nothing to hide, so I didn't care.
Privacy is a two way street. If you intend to learn something, you should expect to give up something as well. Otherwise, you're just stalking. Saying "I was curious" is good enough...but he should expect that the people will be curious about his intentions, even if he had a valid, understandable reason for making the request. Anonymity only exists in a vacuum. So long as he's not accused of anything, and the government isn't harrassing him unduly, there's no problem here...this is how things SHOULD work in an open, but vigilent, society.
I dunno. I used to do trivia at the Owl Bar, which has a strict no-cell phones rule. If it's not in your head, it shouldn't go on the paper.
And yet, people sneak their cell phones all the time. They walk outside, hide in the bushes, use text messages, etc.
My team didn't care, because usually the cheaters didn't do that much better than we did. All your really smart friends come with you to trivia anyway:)
Dude, your complains are just as ad-hoc as this guy's. I mean, you probably can't use non-internet sources to find out ANYTHING about Mono, GTK or Multi-Level Outlines. But try to use the internet to find information about your town a hundred years ago, or any other hystorical data. A good library should have this in their periodicals or records section, maybe even on microfiche or some non-internet accessible digital reference.
PS: You're supposed to be listening to the sermon at mass, man. Not futzing around on your phone. Anyhow, a good bible should have a glossary of archaic terms in the back of it...
In college we used to have a group call-in radio trivia show called the "mad trivia party." The panel gives a series of really tough questions; when you call in you can answer up to three of them. For every question you get right, you may ask a new question. You get a point for answering, and a point for stumping the panel, for a max of 6 points per call.
Because the panel were always obscenely up on standard trivia, we had to ask very cunning questions or we'd never win anything. For a while, the studio had no internet connection, so the last three points were almost a lock. Google for some obscure fact, like the number of canals in Antananarivo, and you get the point.
When they finally got a PC, it became tougher. Anything that could be googled for in the time it took to take a call would be caught. So, we started working broken into smaller teams. One team on a PC on google. The other team as runners in the university library. Walkie-talkies connected the two who then passed the answers and new questions along to a dialer who would try and get a position in the phone queue.
Yeah, I know. Crazy set up for a trivia game, eh? But it was worth it. Besides being a very fun way to spend a nerdy evening, the prizes were pretty cool, and the players a fairly unusual breakdown of college goths, high school skatepunks, idie rock losers and retired people with nothing better to do.
"Oh no! He's responding intelligently to a guy who's insulting our little imagined anarchic slashdot paradise! Quick, mod him offtopic!"
Fuck you guys, man. Just for that, I'm posting this one *WITH* my karma bonus. Wasting your mod points if you like, but remember: if it's offtopic, people just won't read it.
I'm intrigued by your opinions and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Seriously, stop posting so many offtopic points along with your valid ones. Stop posting A/C so you can't get to -1 with a single mod. Do this, and you might be surprised how many people agree with you. There *ARE* free-thinkers on slashdot too...we're not all creepy anarchists who listen to j-pop.
Slashdot Mirror
What other kind of Nazi is there?
I swear by my Petzl LED headlamp. Put it on and there's no night in the woods. I burn a set of batteries in it every summer...but I use rechargable alkalines, which are good for about 100 rechargings, so I don't expect to buy batteries in my lifetime.
It's a waste of resources, because it simply does not work and never will.
Last week my buddy says to me, "das, do you have an XP CD key?"
I gave him my shpiel about how, before I switched to Mac, I only used Win2k because I felt XP was a major step backward in terms of usability. He agreed, but since he already had XP installed and 30 days of use before it stopped working for him, it was moot.
"I guess I'll have to go buy a copy of XP," he said. He knows that key generators exist. But he works in a lumber yard, he doesn't know where to look. Buying a copy of XP saves him the trouble of hunting through porn banners and assuades his guilty conscience.
There's one guy the copy-prot worked for.
Actually, since physical property only exists because of a series of laws as well, there is no different between physical and intellectual property -- other than that certain assholes like to act that just because you can't hold an idea in their hand they can do whatever they like without without harming anything.
Well, there is such a thing as an unwitting pirate. My mom had an illegal copy of Windows 98 for years; the computer came with a license agreement but it was for Win95!
In that time, she still bought a BUNCH of software, including a number of games from Microsoft (my dad's mental for AOE). That's money they wouldn't have made if she used Linux.
Of course, "pirates" like my mom wouldn't switch to Linux anyway. Obviously, these pirates have the option to use Linux legally, or steal Windows, and they've chosen the latter. If you're willing to commit a crime rather than use Linux, you're not going to switch just because you can't install a service pack.
Sued, yes, but not successfully. You can be sued for any insanity a person can invent, but it'll most probably get thrown out with a bill attached.
Next time you get one of those emails talking about all the crazy lawsuits our corrupt legal system permits, maybe you should google for the RESULTS of those lawsuits. You might be surprised.
Wow that was a mess. But I think I got the gist of it. You're trying to say that, on the AM dial with its coverage radius of hundreds of miles, there's more of a chance that somebody's favorite station is already occupying the same band as my transmitter. And that if you were to draw the Vingt diagram of the radius of my transmission vs somebody else's, there may be a large intersection in which people wouldn't be able to get one station without interference from the other.
Of course, since the problem was how to get an mp3 player to transmit to a car antenna, I wouldn't be too worried about it.
There's probably a ton of toom on the AM dial, where things are less cramped. And with modern AM technology, the sound quality is better that, well, realaudio.
Uh...
The FCC does exactly what you're talking about. It only regulates stations above a certain wattage, even on the broadcast radio spectrum.
You don't even need a license. Buy one of these and make your own radio station, man. It's easy. And with a few simple modes, you can double the range without irking the FCC. Place your antenna in the right place and you can get up to a mile of broadcast strength for your community station.
Well, one of the rules of microbroadcasting is that you're not supposed to use a channel occupied by, or within .3 MHz of, an existing station.
And it's more than just gentleman's advice...if you try to piggyback your local 50,000W clearchannel station with your 10W community station, you will never be heard, not even in your own house. Your radio will ignore your broadcast as static.
When I do "pirate" broadcasts, I generally use a piece of the spectrum in between our local NPR station and a "dance party" college radio station. Both are low powered, relatively, so I get a good signal. I can broadcast almost all the way down the street! It was a lot more useful in college...where a good, low-powered-but-legal signal could reach the 9000 students or whatever in the dorms.
I don't remember these hypothetical old days!
My first PC was a 386-40. Two years later replaced by a 486-66 (new motherboard needed). Two years later replaced by a 486-120 (new motherboard needed). Next up was a Celeron 166 (new motherboard again), then a K6-233 (new motherboard for EDO ram) and a K6-2 350 after that (new motherboard to support the higher multiplier). I went intel for a little while, dual celeron, and after that a p3. New motherboards for each. Finally, I settled down with a top of the line Athlon thunderbird 1 gig on a top of the line motherboard.
A motherboard which only supports chips up to 1.4 GHz. And whose top-of-the-line clock makes at 200 MHz.
*SIGH*. Each chip upgrade, usually performed at 2 year intervals, has required a new motherboard to take advantage of a higher clock speed or "better" memory or a new graphics system or USB. In fact, i'm beginning to thing that I'd be better served by a PC industry that integrated chips onto motherboards to save costs and improve cooling options. Over and under fans? You got it!
I can't wait to see how they spin this is marketing.
"Say, guys? When we told you that clock speed was the only factor in speed, and that a long pipeline was the only way to go, we were joking! NO NO NO, wait, don't go buy AMD chips or G5s, because -- uh -- they're the suck. Look, a dancing guy in a shiny suit uses our chips!"
I'd like to know who the grandparent poster thinks is paying for all this diamond research.
If I recall, most of it is taking place in small research companies funded by capital from corporations like Intel, who then would have a percentage stake in the technology if and when it comes around.
There's also plenty of interneal research and doctoral work funded by grants from IBM, Intel, etc.0
Different in that you won't be calling tech support?
I agree.
Incidentally, i don't see why you can't automate installing spybot for a thousand boxes. I did it for fifteen, and I'm not even in IT.
Really? Seems like a lot of work. Me, I'd let people believe what they wanted, religion wise, so long as it doesn't affect my bottom line nor my security. People would be more grateful and less likely to rebel. Of course, this would mean I couldn't put the plaque of the ten commandments up, as this would be an endorsement of a particular religion and unfair to the others. Besides, freedom of religion is against the first commandment anyway...i'd hate to post anything so hypocritical in MY kingdom.
I would use licensing systems not to enslave people. but to give the illusion of service. After all, if I have granted them a license to do task X, then I must restrict others who aren't as good at it. Licensing would thusly be a form of reimbursed flattery.
Taxation would not be considered theft, but rather a gift. Payment due for tasks rendered. I would make sure that the more desirable, less expensive of these tasks -- such as publically supported welfare and unemployment -- were quite visible and subject to open debate. That way, nobody would much notice the size of defense budget. Money would be backed by the only thing that HAS any value in a world of industrialization and uneven distribution of material goods: it would be based on energy, coal and oil mostly.
Education systems would be very good, but optional, with plenty of choices for those without education. Since the majority will take the easiest route, there will be less cause for complaint.
As for the propaganda...well, people willingly giving up their income for high profile services such as decent public education they don't use and freedoms they don't exercise will no doubt perform their own propaganda. I would hasten the process by subsidizing the cost of vinyl stickers for trucks that read "these colors don't run," feature crying eagles or Calvin urinating on an A-rab.
Remember: people who believe your bullshit will belive their OWN bullshit even more.
I'd like to point out that all terrorist organizations consider themselves benign, or at least justified. Activism by its very definition hopes to overturn the status quo, and that means that any agency interested in maintaining the status quo should consider activism to be suspicious.
This doesn't mean that all activists are terrorists, that's a stupid generalization. Neither does it mean that protecting the status quo is necessarily right. It just means that anybody who tells you that they're willing to fight for their beliefs should be taken at the face value of their words.
I am a member of the ACLU, the Sierra Club and the FSF. I expect that if I'm ever investigated by the FBI, they'll want to know that, same as they'd want to know if I was a communist, an IRA sympathizer, or in the Klan.
Blah.
Back in high school, I did an honors chemistry paper on the accuracy of information on how to construct explosive devices found on the internet. This was when the internet at our school was run on a 9600 baud modem after school three hours a day. It was mostly gopher, and if you weren't in the internet club, you could get information by putting in a written request.
Believe it or not, I wasn't. So I put in the request. And lo and behold, a few days later I was called into the principal's office. Mostly, I just thought this was funny. And the principal, too, laughed it off, but we agreed he would be remiss not to question me about it. He asked for a copy of the paper when I was done, and I gave him one.
Later, a buddy of mine and I were talking about smoke bombs in the hall. This was shortly after OK City. A techer heard us, and asked us to come to the office so she could take down our names just in case. A bit silly, but I could understand.
Was it annoying that my high school was so picky? Yeah. Was I offended? Not really. My rights weren't being infringed upon...I got the info I requested. I had nothing to hide, so I didn't care.
Privacy is a two way street. If you intend to learn something, you should expect to give up something as well. Otherwise, you're just stalking. Saying "I was curious" is good enough...but he should expect that the people will be curious about his intentions, even if he had a valid, understandable reason for making the request. Anonymity only exists in a vacuum. So long as he's not accused of anything, and the government isn't harrassing him unduly, there's no problem here...this is how things SHOULD work in an open, but vigilent, society.
Moises Vega?
Naw, t'ain't him. This is Doctor Frink from 2000-2002; I played with the Quote Pimp.
I dunno. I used to do trivia at the Owl Bar, which has a strict no-cell phones rule. If it's not in your head, it shouldn't go on the paper.
:)
And yet, people sneak their cell phones all the time. They walk outside, hide in the bushes, use text messages, etc.
My team didn't care, because usually the cheaters didn't do that much better than we did. All your really smart friends come with you to trivia anyway
Dude, your complains are just as ad-hoc as this guy's. I mean, you probably can't use non-internet sources to find out ANYTHING about Mono, GTK or Multi-Level Outlines. But try to use the internet to find information about your town a hundred years ago, or any other hystorical data. A good library should have this in their periodicals or records section, maybe even on microfiche or some non-internet accessible digital reference.
PS: You're supposed to be listening to the sermon at mass, man. Not futzing around on your phone. Anyhow, a good bible should have a glossary of archaic terms in the back of it...
He must work for the Bush administration.
In college we used to have a group call-in radio trivia show called the "mad trivia party." The panel gives a series of really tough questions; when you call in you can answer up to three of them. For every question you get right, you may ask a new question. You get a point for answering, and a point for stumping the panel, for a max of 6 points per call.
Because the panel were always obscenely up on standard trivia, we had to ask very cunning questions or we'd never win anything. For a while, the studio had no internet connection, so the last three points were almost a lock. Google for some obscure fact, like the number of canals in Antananarivo, and you get the point.
When they finally got a PC, it became tougher. Anything that could be googled for in the time it took to take a call would be caught. So, we started working broken into smaller teams. One team on a PC on google. The other team as runners in the university library. Walkie-talkies connected the two who then passed the answers and new questions along to a dialer who would try and get a position in the phone queue.
Yeah, I know. Crazy set up for a trivia game, eh? But it was worth it. Besides being a very fun way to spend a nerdy evening, the prizes were pretty cool, and the players a fairly unusual breakdown of college goths, high school skatepunks, idie rock losers and retired people with nothing better to do.
Dude, is there an impartial thong lingerie review site?
If so, sign me up, and if not, give me ideas for a domain name!
"Oh no! He's responding intelligently to a guy who's insulting our little imagined anarchic slashdot paradise! Quick, mod him offtopic!"
Fuck you guys, man. Just for that, I'm posting this one *WITH* my karma bonus. Wasting your mod points if you like, but remember: if it's offtopic, people just won't read it.
I'm intrigued by your opinions and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Seriously, stop posting so many offtopic points along with your valid ones. Stop posting A/C so you can't get to -1 with a single mod. Do this, and you might be surprised how many people agree with you. There *ARE* free-thinkers on slashdot too...we're not all creepy anarchists who listen to j-pop.