Hey, I'm a stupid A.C. with NO sense of humor!
on
On Hacktivism
·
· Score: 1
Some crack-addled A.C. sez:
cDc offer to help Feds after September 11... by Anonymous Coward on 2002.04.19 16:04 (Score:-1) (#3375602)
The cure [cultdeadcow.com] sounds worse than the disease. As I read this story I thought it was a bad joke.
THE CULT OF THE DEAD COW OFFERS A HELPING HAND IN AMERICA'S TIME OF NEED [cultdeadcow.com]
This hyprocritical line caught my eye:
So we intend to re-architect Back Orifice from the ground up. There will be absolutely no shared code between the two projects, in order to skirt detection by commercial antivirus packages. The code will remain totally secret. The software will never surface publicly. And it will be far more stealthy than anything we have ever released, demoed, or publicly discussed.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we like Open Source for everyone except for us - because we know better. Save it for the newspapers, Oxblood.
---End Text---
That "helping hand" press release was one of the BEST mediapranks cDc has perpetrated in a while. The sheer number of people, who really should have known better, that fell for this was mind-numbing.
Just because you call yourself a leet haxor and can slot a Linux distro CD, that doesn't mean you're not a gullible moron.
As the above-mentioned crack-addled Anonymous Coward so publically proves.
Soon enough, there will be cheap knockoffs of this thing.
Imagine the fun! No more spray painted grafitti, stick one of these hooked to an FM receiver, to a glasswall and remotely broadcast your message to passersby.
Hey, the Attorney General is going to give a speech on campus! A half dozen of these things on the walls, again, with receivers, could turn a speech into a chat with God. "John, this is Yahweh. What's up with all that drapery covering that half nekked statue? Don't you LIKE half-nekked women?"
Oh, yes, these things will be making innocent victims of pranksters miserable for years to come.
OK, I buy a CD from a used CD store. I keep it a year and then get bored with it. I bring it back to the used CD store and hand it to the tatooed and multi-pierced clerk behind the counter and he hands me a few dollars.
I then buy another used CD from that store and bring it home and play it. After a year or so, I bring it back to the used CD store and sell it back to them.
I have obtained the intellectual property of musicians and music companies and they haven't gotten a single cent in royalties.
Since these used CDs are not generating revenue for the musicians and music companies, isn't this somehow akin to pirating their IP, in the eyes of the musicians and music companies?
And what if I rip tracks from these used CDs? Am I twice guilty of IP theft?
Really, I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely curious about the status of used CDs and all this IP & piracy folderol we're hearing from the RIAA, et al.
"So far I've stopped reading Wired.com and the NYT because of incredibly intrusive advertising. I got tired of Wired's ads dropping down over the article text. The NYT sent me packing with a single offensive ad - it filled the screen with a fake story rotated counter-clockwise 90 degrees for 5 seconds before disappearing."
Mate, get a smarter browser or read the FM than came with it.
I'm using an ancient PowerMac and iCab, the Mac only browser, and I've got it all nicely tweaked so that I NEVER see pop up ads or that type of ad mentioned at the NY Times site.
If you're using some damn fool Windows machine or Linux, try Opera. Oooops! You have to pay a modest fee for the advertising free version.
Guess you're screwed, then.
Re:My 1541 drive was a speaker too!
on
Harddrive Speakers
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Ah, memories.
That would be the "1541 Music Machine".
Taking advantage of the onboard 6502 processor and 2k of RAM, it made the venerable Commodore 1541 floppy disk drive play a crude, yet recognizable version of "Bicycle built for two", which was the first piece of music ever sung by a digital computer.
"If you really want to get an honest response from a congressperson, I have a few tips. I'm certain that you followed a few of these, but other readers might enjoyt them as well. First, actually type your letter, and sign it in BLUE ink so that it shows you took the time to write a personal letter. Second, always say that you voted for the individual; and that for the most part you are happy with his/her performance (no one wants to read a hate-letter from some right or left wing zealot). Third, say that you understand that the life of a congressperson is not easy; and that often it is difficult to know everything there is to know about every single issue that Congress will take up. Some people feel that their representatives need to be god-like in their knowledge; but reading mountains of paper and trying to create your own legislation at the same time is darn near impossible. Lastly, bring your concerns up with regard to a SINGLE issue. Explain your reasons in as much detail as possible (without taking up several pages), and never resort to "dirty politics" by threats or other nasties. Congresspersons love to write people off as nuts when 95% of their incomming mail is hate mail from the 5% of their constituents that are loud and obnoxious."
Here! Here!
I quite concur.
The office of every Senator and Representative have a formula they use, regarding mail.
This formula is based upon the population of the state (Senators) or the population of the Representative's district.
Simply put, each handwritten (includes typed and printer output) unique (preprinted form letters/postcards are pretty much ignored) letter represents the thoughts/opinions of X thousands of people in the state/district. In some cases, this number is in the tens of thousands.
Writing to your Senators and Representative is easy. One or two pages a month. Share your thoughts and opinions. Explain why DMCA is a bad idea. Explain why you feel that these new laws diminishing civil rights are wrong and dangerous.
Be friendly and sincere. Ask the Senators and Representitive to contact you if they want to know more. Become a resorce for the Hired Help in D.C.
Register to vote and then vote.
If all the Hired Help hears and knows comes from lobbyists, the White House and the Justice Department, then don't be greatly surprised when they seem to do the bidding of the lobbyists, the White House and the Justice Department.
It's called participatory and representative government for a reason.
For those interested in the whole MIT/Caltech hack/prank scene, this is an excerpt of a review I did some years ago of books from The MIT Press, the Caltech Alumni Association and St. Martin's Press.
First up, Legends of Caltech and More Legends of Caltech.
These two 80 page volumes chronicle technopranking at Caltech from the 1920s
to the late 1980s. Learn about the classic Rose Bowl card section prank
that was broadcast live on NBC, See the HOLLYWOOD sign become the CALTECH
sign before your very eyes. Vicariously enjoy the revenge of Caltech students
upon a greedy police department.
These books MUST be ordered from the Caltech bookstore, as they are privately
published by the Caltech Alumni Association. Ordering info is at the bottom
of this page.
Ah, but what of MIT? For their history we must turn to a pair of books.
The Journal of the Institute for Hacks, TomFoolery
& Pranks at MIT. Published by the MIT Museum, this
is a 158 page book with lots of photos and text concerning the hacks pulled
by MIT men and women over the decades. See The Great Breast of Knowledge,
The Great Pumpkin, the legendary Smoot Marks on the Harvard Bridge. Read
about the chronic humiliation suffered by the inmates at Harvard as MIT
has its way with the statue of John Harvard and the Harvard Stadium.
"Is This The Way To Baker House?" - A Compendium of Hacking
Lore. 165 pages of legends, essays, photographs and stories of and about
hacking at MIT. This book, published in 1996, continues where the Journal
leaves off. The MIT Campus Police car on the Great Dome, arguably one the
greatest hacks in MIT history, graces the cover and several inside pages.
Regrettably, only black and white photographs are used in the body of the
book, as there are several hacks, most notably, the Cathedral of Our Lady
of The All Night Tool (The "stained glass" panels in Lobby 7)
that really should be seen in full color. That minor gripe aside, this is
a fine companion volume to The Journal and shares the same binding dimensions
as The Journal, making them a handsome pair of books to grace the shelves
of any creative malcontent. (The title refers to the canonical reply to
an MIT Campus cop when one is discovered in a spectacularly inappropriate
location, such as the apex of the Great Dome at 4:00AM.)
Our final book is published by St. Martin's Press and should still be available
via any bookstore that will special order books for its customers.
If At All Possible, Involve A Cow - The Book Of College Pranks, is a
240 page history of collegiate pranking in America, beginning with the earliest
colleges in America, and even taking note of some hijinx taking place in
Canada.
This is an excellent companion volume to the preceeding four books, as it
covers collegiate pranking in general, as well as detailing some events
that are NOT covered in either the Caltech or MIT books.
If I were sending a son or daughter off to college, I would certainly include
all five of these books in their "books to bring to school" box.
Start 'em off right!
I have all five books and have enjoyed reading and re-reading them. I trust
that these will be inspirational to all who enjoy a good hack and tweaking
the nose of Authority, be it the State or the School.
Ordering information
Legends of Caltech is $9.00
More Legends of Caltech is $15.00
The mailing address of the Caltech Bookstore is:
Caltech Bookstore Mail Code 1-51 San Pasqual Street Pasadena CA 91125
The website for the Caltech
Bookstore looks like you might be able to order these online.
The toll-free number for the Caltech bookstore is 800/514-2665. For those
of you outside the US, their non-free number is 818/395-6161.
In my case, shipping was $6.00. Call to find out what your charges might
be or to use a credit card.
(Neither book has an ISBN, so ordering via your local bookstore is not recommended
and may very well be nigh-impossible.)
The Journal of The Institute for Hacks, TomFoolery
& Pranks at MIT is $20.00 The ISBN is: 0-917027-03-5
"Is This The Way To Baker House?" - A Compendium of Hacking Lore
is $20.00. The ISBN is: 0-917027-04-3
The address of the MIT Museum is:
The MIT Museum 265 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge MA 02139
The Museum Shop online ordering is now being handled by Tha Harvard/MIT COOP.
The URL for ordering The Journal of The Institute for Hacks, TomFoolery & Pranks at MIT is here and the URL for "Is This The Way To Baker House?" is here
If At All Possible, Involve A Cow - The Book Of College Pranks
by Neil Steinberg
$9.95 St. Martin's Press ISBN 0-312-07810-2
I'm told by Editor Keith at SMP
that as of September 1994, there were about 4000 copies still in the warehouse
and SMP will fulfill orders for the book. St. Martin's Press officially
urges you to order this book from your local bookstore or Amazon.com.
I've just found out that this book has now made it's way to the remainder
tables at some bookstores. If you want a copy, order it NOW from Amazon
or inspect those remainder tables very carefully.
Re:AT&T Broadband cable TV in Boston
by Anonymous Coward on 2001.12.19 18:25 (Score:0)
Boston??? Your complaining because you were disconnected? I got news for ya brother, ATT doesn't HAVE cable access in Boston. Maybe out in the burbs. Us poor saps in Boston proper got nothing. We still have two analog lines going into our homes with with a/b channels. We pay 39 dollars a month for basic *extended* (that is about 40 channels total). AND our rates go up in a month or two with NO new service...oh, wait, we now get nesn. BFD, now I can see the Sox lose again.
-------
I live in Boston, the Mattapan/Hyde Park area.
I wasn't talking about cable modem access, I was talking about the cable TV service. And as for AT&T not having cable access in Boston, then why does my cable bill say, "Make check out to AT&T Broadband"?
I'm sticking with dialup access. That works all the time, regardless of who's buying AT&T, @home, Covad, Rythims, Roadrunner or any other cable modem or DSL service.
It both sucks and blows. They rearranged the diverse public interest channels so they could give us, "AT&T 3 - Wicked Cool TV" Comprised of mainly ancient reruns including Gomer Pyle USMC, college football, a home shopping channel they already have on the cable lineup, and as for their "NEWS" well, it looks as if the high school drama club has made the big time.
This summer, I was disconnected on a Tuesday. I called them and after some hemming and hawing on their part, they finally agreed to reconnect me on Friday. I had to call a relative on the state comission that regulates cable TV to get them to move it up a day. I also had this relative get them to credit me for two weeks as recompense for disconnecting me in error. Yes, that's right, AT&T Broadband cut me off in error.
The picture quality on some channels is bad, the volume varies wildly between the satellite programming and locally inserted commercials.
You wait for at least 30 minutes while trying to get someone to answer a phone, oh, and their phone service! Once you've navigated phone menu hell, you listen to crappy music and hear some dweeb tell you to jot down the emergency phone number.
The emergency phone number presents you with exactly the same phone menu hell you get when you dial the regular phone number. And you still wait forever.
Thank Dobbs that the Boston cable TV system has been bought by a real cable TV company.
iCab, the Macintosh-only browser, has a sophisticated set of filtering options, including a site by site option regarding what a site is permitted to do to your browser via JavaScript.
Much like Opera, iCab is small, fast and the development team understands that it's YOUR browser, YOU decide what a site can and cannot do with your computer and browser.
iCab is currently not commercially available, they're are releasing free, incremental beta upgrades as they progress towards the first commerical release.
When iCab does ship their "for pay" version, I'll be among the first to buy it!
If you are SO OFFENDED by QuickTime, then I suggest that you sit down and write an RMS-Approved & Endorsed version of QT for Linux.
We would, except that it would be illegal, thanks to the wonderful corporate tool of software patents. There already are QuickTime stream decoders, but they aren't allowed to leagally reverse engineer and distribute the patented-protected Sorensen codec so that they could actually view the movie content.
Oh, so you're saying that it's not technologically impossible to do it.
So write the frigging thing, find a server in Russia (for example) and distribute it anonymously.
There, you've foiled the big bad hypercorps. Hiro Protagonist would be SO proud of you.
How would you feel if Slashdot decided tomorrow that it was only available for Linux and BSD users?
No skin off my nose, but all the folks who bitch about Katz would surely be heartbroken.
What if HTTP, TCP, and IP were only available for commercial Unices and BSD, where they originated? I bet you wouldn't like that... but that's the way some corparations now want the world to head. The internet works well today because of open standards and formats. Unfortunately, several companies like the idea of milking open standards while hijacking everything else they can.
DAMN the hypercorps! Damn them! Someone should write a letter. Oh, wait. That's not cyber, like EMAIL. And it uses a closed source, proprietary transportation system. Plus, you would actually have to handle PAPER. How last millennium is THAT? The only reason DMCA and such like is that all the lazy sods who moan and piss about such things DON'T GET INVOLVED with the fiddling small details of participatory democracy. Sending the odd check to EFF does not count as participating in democracy.
Users of open standards can make their data free to the world, and never have to worry about paying royalties to see or share their own work. Those who use closed formats are data format hostages of the companies that control the software.
As I said, ther eare people who don't use Linux or can't use Linux. So all the flipping open source software in the world is useless to them.
So for most people, closed source formats are what they use. And you know, no matter how much RMS hops up and down, closed/proprietary formats are not evil.
This is an old concept that large customized software system vendors learned long ago, which they used for milking their corporate clients. The new revolution is bringing this leverage to the single user. I don't expect you to understand this, but a few more will and many already do. It's a pity you don't see it coming...
Oh, THANK YOU for your condescending lecture! I have seen the light! I am even now wiping all the evil closed source Apple software from my Macintosh, and once that's done, I'm gonna pull out the system ROM and BREAK IT IN TWO! That'll show that greedy bastard Jobs.
Well, for all those folks moaning and pissing about how the evil Sorensen encoded QT movies will not play unless you register with Apple and sell them your soul...
The movies play just fine on my free, unregistered version of QT 4. something or other.
I'm beginning to think we need a new moderation descriptor for the pulldown menu:
"I suggest that slashdot take a stand and not post links to web-pages that can't be viewed using free software. By posting this link and saying ``check this out'' you're encouraging people to use software that doesn't even work with Linux.
I thought slashdot was the one website that understood my computer's needs. "
Gawdamighty! It's not like it was some damn RealPlayer format or WMP.
You know, not everyone uses Linux. Not everyone WANTS to use Linux. Not everyone CAN use Linux.
If you are SO OFFENDED by QuickTime, then I suggest that you sit down and write an RMS-Approved & Endorsed version of QT for Linux.
"I wonder how close they were planning on getting to the comet?
It would be sweet for the group if the pictures of the comet were more impresive than the asteroid ds1 was supposed to fly by for the original mission. "
To quote Steve Collins, a member of the DS1 team at JPL:
---Begin Text---
Even in these very early images, you can see the jet forming
along one side. This is going to be just stunning.
There is nice soft contour. It looks a lot like an asteroid
at this resolution, but with a plume of material on the
sunward side.
Their thinking 14 or 15 km across for nucleus size.
The next snip makes us scream and clap for minutes.
It shows stunning detail across the whole nucleus.
There is detail in shadow areas, presumably because of
light coming back from the coma.
The scientists are saying stuff like "these early nav snips are
10 times better than the only other comet pictures that exist,
the Giotto pictures of Halley.
---End Text---
And these are just the images that the DS1 navigation software used to guide itself. The hires scinece images will be even better!
"What exactly is everyone doing with their handhelds that makes "color" and "multimedia" top priorities?"
Color does make for a more readable display in some instances, and as more and more websites start offering "content" (ugh. I hate that word!) for PDAs, maps, graphics, etc, color is very helpful.
Particularly with maps. The Boston subway system uses colors to designate subway lines. The subway map on a greyscale Palm display is usable, but it's not the easiest thing to decipher.
Of course, all that being said, I'm still not ready to ditch my faithful Palm IIIx for a color Palm or the Visor Prism just yet.
"#include : Once I was working in a customer's building where a programming lab had been hastily installed. A synthetic carpet had been laid over the old hardwood floor. The old heaters were dessicating the air so much our lips hurt. Enter a young, skinny woman wearing three layers of acrylic sweaters, as well as hose and plastic-sole sneakers. She reached down to insert a diskette into the Unix server. We all heard an audible crack when a 10-inch long spark jumped from her hand to the keyswitch. She yelped. We moaned: the server has crashed. Postmortem revealed that the processor detected an ECC failure during memory access. So the massive ESD had scrambled the bus. But it restarted OK. "
I've a friend in Pittsburgh who's using my old Mac Color Classic. I picked up the videoRAM upgrade for it real cheap and sent it to her.
She's savvy enough to understand about static and she wondered about any problems involved in installing it on the mobo.
I advised her that if she could avoid wearing a nylon slip, pantyhose and vigorosly rubbing her cat up and down on her slip, she shouldn't have any real problems with static.
In my own case, whenever I have to mess with the insides of my Macs or the C128, I do it on the kitchen counter. It's well-lit, there's ample power available and I'm standing on linolium. Darn little chance of static there.
And for grounding purposes, I just reach over and touch the faucet in the sink. (and yes, it is a real ground. There's no PVC pipe anywhere between the faucet and the ground.)
The other benefit to using the kitchen counter as a workbench is that I can't leave the computer there and prepare a meal. So I have to get the work done and the machine(s) back in place before I can eat or wash the dishes. So there's no half-finished projects for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Some crack-addled A.C. sez:
cDc offer to help Feds after September 11...
by Anonymous Coward on 2002.04.19 16:04 (Score:-1) (#3375602)
The cure [cultdeadcow.com] sounds worse than the disease. As I read this story I thought it was a bad joke.
THE CULT OF THE DEAD COW OFFERS A HELPING HAND IN AMERICA'S TIME OF NEED [cultdeadcow.com]
This hyprocritical line caught my eye:
So we intend to re-architect Back Orifice
from the ground up. There will be absolutely no
shared code between the two projects,
in order to skirt detection by commercial
antivirus packages. The code will remain
totally secret. The software will never
surface publicly. And it will be far
more stealthy than anything we have ever
released, demoed, or publicly discussed.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we like Open Source for everyone except for us - because we know better. Save it for the newspapers, Oxblood.
---End Text---
That "helping hand" press release was one of the BEST mediapranks cDc has perpetrated in a while. The sheer number of people, who really should have known better, that fell for this was mind-numbing.
Just because you call yourself a leet haxor and can slot a Linux distro CD, that doesn't mean you're not a gullible moron.
As the above-mentioned crack-addled Anonymous Coward so publically proves.
So cscx sez:
(Load of flamebait & poorly composed troll snipped)
Yep, GIMP is certainly not as powerful as Photoshop.
Does the average user really NEED Photoshop?
No.
For the average user, Gimp, Graphic Converter (for the Mac user like myself) or Paint Shop Pro (for the Windows crowd) will suffice.
So (the alleged) PhysicsGenius sez:
"...point-n-drool API." & "I guess that's the downside of Open Source. You can't make everyone learn the CLI like they should. *sigh*"
Proof, yet again, that we urgently need a NEW moderation label added to "flamebait", "troll", "offtopic", etc.
That label would be: "Linux Bigot"
Soon enough, there will be cheap knockoffs of this thing.
Imagine the fun! No more spray painted grafitti, stick one of these hooked to an FM receiver, to a glasswall and remotely broadcast your message to passersby.
Hey, the Attorney General is going to give a speech on campus! A half dozen of these things on the walls, again, with receivers, could turn a speech into a chat with God. "John, this is Yahweh. What's up with all that drapery covering that half nekked statue? Don't you LIKE half-nekked women?"
Oh, yes, these things will be making innocent victims of pranksters miserable for years to come.
OK, I buy a CD from a used CD store. I keep it a year and then get bored with it. I bring it back to the used CD store and hand it to the tatooed and multi-pierced clerk behind the counter and he hands me a few dollars.
I then buy another used CD from that store and bring it home and play it. After a year or so, I bring it back to the used CD store and sell it back to them.
I have obtained the intellectual property of musicians and music companies and they haven't gotten a single cent in royalties.
Since these used CDs are not generating revenue for the musicians and music companies, isn't this somehow akin to pirating their IP, in the eyes of the musicians and music companies?
And what if I rip tracks from these used CDs? Am I twice guilty of IP theft?
Really, I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely curious about the status of used CDs and all this IP & piracy folderol we're hearing from the RIAA, et al.
So then fleener sez:
"So far I've stopped reading Wired.com and the NYT because of incredibly intrusive advertising. I got tired of Wired's ads dropping down over the article text. The NYT sent me packing with a single offensive ad - it filled the screen with a fake story rotated counter-clockwise 90 degrees for 5 seconds before disappearing."
Mate, get a smarter browser or read the FM than came with it.
I'm using an ancient PowerMac and iCab, the Mac only browser, and I've got it all nicely tweaked so that I NEVER see pop up ads or that type of ad mentioned at the NY Times site.
If you're using some damn fool Windows machine or Linux, try Opera. Oooops! You have to pay a modest fee for the advertising free version.
Guess you're screwed, then.
That would be the "1541 Music Machine".
Taking advantage of the onboard 6502 processor and 2k of RAM, it made the venerable Commodore 1541 floppy disk drive play a crude, yet recognizable version of "Bicycle built for two", which was the first piece of music ever sung by a digital computer.
"Streambox VCR turn on!"
(SHOWGIRLS begins streaming)
"Someone set us up the bomb!"
(movies88) "You are already having this movie!"
"What you say!"
(Movies88) "All your Hollywood IP are belong to us!"
And so on and so forth.
So, SirSlud, sez:
"Of course, it goes without saying that North Americans..."
Will you PLEASE stop lumping all "North Americans" together as if we're all some monolithic culture.
The Canadian Inuits in the Arctic, are as different from the Campasinos in Mexico, are as differerent as everyone geographically between them.
I'm sure the French would be upset if someone lumped them in with the Germans, the Spanish and the English as "All you Europeans".
You're just as narrow-minded as the "North Americans" you so excoriate.
How very sad.
Oh, my! What a perfect piece of work that was.
Regarding Mr. Shifman, Marx (Groucho) has a quote for every occasion.
"There's my argument, restrict immigration!"
Whoops! Looks like I'm gonna get sued, now. The firm I keep on retainer, Mako, Basking & White, will handle my defense.
So, charon_on_acheron sez:
"So the ACLU is not always the 'champion' of freedom of speech, which was one of its cornerstones."
"The national ACLU had to step in and force the local group to re-instate the lecture. "
So which is it? The ACLU is not a champion of free speech or the national ACLU reinstates a lecture sponsored by the local ACLU.
You can't have it both ways, and you certainly can't have it both ways in the same paragraph!
So, clark625 sez:
"If you really want to get an honest response from a congressperson, I have a few tips. I'm certain that you followed a few of these, but other readers might enjoyt them as well. First, actually type your letter, and sign it in BLUE ink so that it shows you took the time to write a personal letter. Second, always say that you voted for the individual; and that for the most part you are happy with his/her performance (no one wants to read a hate-letter from some right or left wing zealot). Third, say that you understand that the life of a congressperson is not easy; and that often it is difficult to know everything there is to know about every single issue that Congress will take up. Some people feel that their representatives need to be god-like in their knowledge; but reading mountains of paper and trying to create your own legislation at the same time is darn near impossible. Lastly, bring your concerns up with regard to a SINGLE issue. Explain your reasons in as much detail as possible (without taking up several pages), and never resort to "dirty politics" by threats or other nasties. Congresspersons love to write people off as nuts when 95% of their incomming mail is hate mail from the 5% of their constituents that are loud and obnoxious."
Here! Here!
I quite concur.
The office of every Senator and Representative have a formula they use, regarding mail.
This formula is based upon the population of the state (Senators) or the population of the Representative's district.
Simply put, each handwritten (includes typed and printer output) unique (preprinted form letters/postcards are pretty much ignored) letter represents the thoughts/opinions of X thousands of people in the state/district. In some cases, this number is in the tens of thousands.
Writing to your Senators and Representative is easy. One or two pages a month. Share your thoughts and opinions. Explain why DMCA is a bad idea. Explain why you feel that these new laws diminishing civil rights are wrong and dangerous.
Be friendly and sincere. Ask the Senators and Representitive to contact you if they want to know more. Become a resorce for the Hired Help in D.C.
Register to vote and then vote.
If all the Hired Help hears and knows comes from lobbyists, the White House and the Justice Department, then don't be greatly surprised when they seem to do the bidding of the lobbyists, the White House and the Justice Department.
It's called participatory and representative government for a reason.
For those interested in the whole MIT/Caltech hack/prank scene, this is an excerpt of a review I did some years ago of books from The MIT Press, the Caltech Alumni Association and St. Martin's Press.
First up, Legends of Caltech and More Legends of Caltech. These two 80 page volumes chronicle technopranking at Caltech from the 1920s to the late 1980s. Learn about the classic Rose Bowl card section prank that was broadcast live on NBC, See the HOLLYWOOD sign become the CALTECH sign before your very eyes. Vicariously enjoy the revenge of Caltech students upon a greedy police department.
These books MUST be ordered from the Caltech bookstore, as they are privately published by the Caltech Alumni Association. Ordering info is at the bottom of this page.
Ah, but what of MIT? For their history we must turn to a pair of books.
The Journal of the Institute for Hacks, TomFoolery & Pranks at MIT. Published by the MIT Museum, this is a 158 page book with lots of photos and text concerning the hacks pulled by MIT men and women over the decades. See The Great Breast of Knowledge, The Great Pumpkin, the legendary Smoot Marks on the Harvard Bridge. Read about the chronic humiliation suffered by the inmates at Harvard as MIT has its way with the statue of John Harvard and the Harvard Stadium.
"Is This The Way To Baker House?" - A Compendium of Hacking Lore. 165 pages of legends, essays, photographs and stories of and about hacking at MIT. This book, published in 1996, continues where the Journal leaves off. The MIT Campus Police car on the Great Dome, arguably one the greatest hacks in MIT history, graces the cover and several inside pages. Regrettably, only black and white photographs are used in the body of the book, as there are several hacks, most notably, the Cathedral of Our Lady of The All Night Tool (The "stained glass" panels in Lobby 7) that really should be seen in full color. That minor gripe aside, this is a fine companion volume to The Journal and shares the same binding dimensions as The Journal, making them a handsome pair of books to grace the shelves of any creative malcontent. (The title refers to the canonical reply to an MIT Campus cop when one is discovered in a spectacularly inappropriate location, such as the apex of the Great Dome at 4:00AM.)
Our final book is published by St. Martin's Press and should still be available via any bookstore that will special order books for its customers.
If At All Possible, Involve A Cow - The Book Of College Pranks, is a 240 page history of collegiate pranking in America, beginning with the earliest colleges in America, and even taking note of some hijinx taking place in Canada.
This is an excellent companion volume to the preceeding four books, as it covers collegiate pranking in general, as well as detailing some events that are NOT covered in either the Caltech or MIT books.
If I were sending a son or daughter off to college, I would certainly include all five of these books in their "books to bring to school" box. Start 'em off right!
I have all five books and have enjoyed reading and re-reading them. I trust that these will be inspirational to all who enjoy a good hack and tweaking the nose of Authority, be it the State or the School.
Ordering information
Legends of Caltech is $9.00
More Legends of Caltech is $15.00
The mailing address of the Caltech Bookstore is:
Caltech Bookstore Mail Code 1-51 San Pasqual Street Pasadena CA 91125
The website for the Caltech Bookstore looks like you might be able to order these online.
The toll-free number for the Caltech bookstore is 800/514-2665. For those of you outside the US, their non-free number is 818/395-6161.
In my case, shipping was $6.00. Call to find out what your charges might be or to use a credit card.
(Neither book has an ISBN, so ordering via your local bookstore is not recommended and may very well be nigh-impossible.)
The Journal of The Institute for Hacks, TomFoolery & Pranks at MIT is $20.00 The ISBN is: 0-917027-03-5
"Is This The Way To Baker House?" - A Compendium of Hacking Lore is $20.00. The ISBN is: 0-917027-04-3
The address of the MIT Museum is:
The MIT Museum 265 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge MA 02139
The Museum Shop online ordering is now being handled by Tha Harvard/MIT COOP.
The URL for ordering The Journal of The Institute for Hacks, TomFoolery & Pranks at MIT is here and the URL for "Is This The Way To Baker House?" is here
If At All Possible, Involve A Cow - The Book Of College Pranks
by Neil Steinberg
$9.95 St. Martin's Press ISBN 0-312-07810-2
I'm told by Editor Keith at SMP that as of September 1994, there were about 4000 copies still in the warehouse and SMP will fulfill orders for the book. St. Martin's Press officially urges you to order this book from your local bookstore or Amazon.com.
I've just found out that this book has now made it's way to the remainder tables at some bookstores. If you want a copy, order it NOW from Amazon or inspect those remainder tables very carefully.
Re:AT&T Broadband cable TV in Boston
by Anonymous Coward on 2001.12.19 22:55 (Score:0)
Can your relative wipe your ass too?
-----
No, do you need help wiping YOUR ass? It wouldn't surprise me.
She DID get those lazy bastards to hook me back up a day early and cut my bill in half for a month for my trouble.
That's a win as far as I'm concerned.
A.C. says:
Re:AT&T Broadband cable TV in Boston
by Anonymous Coward on 2001.12.19 18:25 (Score:0)
Boston??? Your complaining because you were disconnected? I got news for ya brother, ATT doesn't HAVE cable access in Boston. Maybe out in the burbs. Us poor saps in Boston proper got nothing. We still have two analog lines going into our homes with with a/b channels. We pay 39 dollars a month for basic *extended* (that is about 40 channels total). AND our rates go up in a month or two with NO new service...oh, wait, we now get nesn. BFD, now I can see the Sox lose again.
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I live in Boston, the Mattapan/Hyde Park area.
I wasn't talking about cable modem access, I was talking about the cable TV service. And as for AT&T not having cable access in Boston, then why does my cable bill say, "Make check out to AT&T Broadband"?
I'm sticking with dialup access. That works all the time, regardless of who's buying AT&T, @home, Covad, Rythims, Roadrunner or any other cable modem or DSL service.
Hey, we're getting TV LAND real soon now. w00t!
It both sucks and blows. They rearranged the diverse public interest channels so they could give us, "AT&T 3 - Wicked Cool TV" Comprised of mainly ancient reruns including Gomer Pyle USMC, college football, a home shopping channel they already have on the cable lineup, and as for their "NEWS" well, it looks as if the high school drama club has made the big time.
This summer, I was disconnected on a Tuesday. I called them and after some hemming and hawing on their part, they finally agreed to reconnect me on Friday. I had to call a relative on the state comission that regulates cable TV to get them to move it up a day. I also had this relative get them to credit me for two weeks as recompense for disconnecting me in error. Yes, that's right, AT&T Broadband cut me off in error.
The picture quality on some channels is bad, the volume varies wildly between the satellite programming and locally inserted commercials.
You wait for at least 30 minutes while trying to get someone to answer a phone, oh, and their phone service! Once you've navigated phone menu hell, you listen to crappy music and hear some dweeb tell you to jot down the emergency phone number.
The emergency phone number presents you with exactly the same phone menu hell you get when you dial the regular phone number. And you still wait forever.
Thank Dobbs that the Boston cable TV system has been bought by a real cable TV company.
Someone else can use this here soapbox now.
And there was much rejoicing!
iCab, the Macintosh-only browser, has a sophisticated set of filtering options, including a site by site option regarding what a site is permitted to do to your browser via JavaScript.
Much like Opera, iCab is small, fast and the development team understands that it's YOUR browser, YOU decide what a site can and cannot do with your computer and browser.
iCab is currently not commercially available, they're are releasing free, incremental beta upgrades as they progress towards the first commerical release.
When iCab does ship their "for pay" version, I'll be among the first to buy it!
Yes, there is a Mac OS X version available, too.
So SnowZero sez
If you are SO OFFENDED by QuickTime, then I suggest that you sit down and write an RMS-Approved & Endorsed version of QT for Linux.
We would, except that it would be illegal, thanks to the wonderful corporate tool of software patents. There already are QuickTime stream decoders, but they aren't allowed to leagally reverse engineer and distribute the patented-protected Sorensen codec so that they could actually view the movie content.
Oh, so you're saying that it's not technologically impossible to do it.
So write the frigging thing, find a server in Russia (for example) and distribute it anonymously.
There, you've foiled the big bad hypercorps. Hiro Protagonist would be SO proud of you.
How would you feel if Slashdot decided tomorrow that it was only available for Linux and BSD users?
No skin off my nose, but all the folks who bitch about Katz would surely be heartbroken.
What if HTTP, TCP, and IP were only available for commercial Unices and BSD, where they originated? I bet you wouldn't like that... but that's the way some corparations now want the world to head. The internet works well today because of open standards and formats. Unfortunately, several companies like the idea of milking open standards while hijacking everything else they can.
DAMN the hypercorps! Damn them! Someone should write a letter. Oh, wait. That's not cyber, like EMAIL. And it uses a closed source, proprietary transportation system. Plus, you would actually have to handle PAPER. How last millennium is THAT? The only reason DMCA and such like is that all the lazy sods who moan and piss about such things DON'T GET INVOLVED with the fiddling small details of participatory democracy. Sending the odd check to EFF does not count as participating in democracy.
Users of open standards can make their data free to the world, and never have to worry about paying royalties to see or share their own work. Those who use closed formats are data format hostages of the companies that control the software.
As I said, ther eare people who don't use Linux or can't use Linux. So all the flipping open source software in the world is useless to them.
So for most people, closed source formats are what they use. And you know, no matter how much RMS hops up and down, closed/proprietary formats are not evil.
This is an old concept that large customized software system vendors learned long ago, which they used for milking their corporate clients. The new revolution is bringing this leverage to the single user. I don't expect you to understand this, but a few more will and many already do. It's a pity you don't see it coming...
Oh, THANK YOU for your condescending lecture! I have seen the light! I am even now wiping all the evil closed source Apple software from my Macintosh, and once that's done, I'm gonna pull out the system ROM and BREAK IT IN TWO! That'll show that greedy bastard Jobs.
Confound you!
You beat me to it!
"Damn alien technology
by rsteele19 on 2001.10.21 7:56 (Score:3)
I guess this means I'm gonna have to buy the White Album again... "
Well, for all those folks moaning and pissing about how the evil Sorensen encoded QT movies will not play unless you register with Apple and sell them your soul...
The movies play just fine on my free, unregistered version of QT 4. something or other.
I'm beginning to think we need a new moderation descriptor for the pulldown menu:
"Linux Bigot"
So, some gutless AC whines:
"I suggest that slashdot take a stand and not post links to web-pages that can't be viewed using free software. By posting this link and saying ``check this out'' you're encouraging people to use software that doesn't even work with Linux.
I thought slashdot was the one website that understood my computer's needs. "
Gawdamighty! It's not like it was some damn RealPlayer format or WMP.
You know, not everyone uses Linux. Not everyone WANTS to use Linux. Not everyone CAN use Linux.
If you are SO OFFENDED by QuickTime, then I suggest that you sit down and write an RMS-Approved & Endorsed version of QT for Linux.
So johann6 sez:
"I wonder how close they were planning on getting to the comet?
It would be sweet for the group if the pictures of the comet were more impresive than the asteroid ds1 was supposed to fly by for the original mission. "
To quote Steve Collins, a member of the DS1 team at JPL:
---Begin Text---
Even in these very early images, you can see the jet forming
along one side. This is going to be just stunning.
There is nice soft contour. It looks a lot like an asteroid
at this resolution, but with a plume of material on the
sunward side.
Their thinking 14 or 15 km across for nucleus size.
The next snip makes us scream and clap for minutes.
It shows stunning detail across the whole nucleus.
There is detail in shadow areas, presumably because of
light coming back from the coma.
The scientists are saying stuff like "these early nav snips are
10 times better than the only other comet pictures that exist,
the Giotto pictures of Halley.
---End Text---
And these are just the images that the DS1 navigation software used to guide itself. The hires scinece images will be even better!
"anyways, right on nasa! "
Roger that, johann6!
So briareus sez:
"What exactly is everyone doing with their handhelds that makes "color" and "multimedia" top priorities?"
Color does make for a more readable display in some instances, and as more and more websites start offering "content" (ugh. I hate that word!) for PDAs, maps, graphics, etc, color is very helpful.
Particularly with maps. The Boston subway system uses colors to designate subway lines. The subway map on a greyscale Palm display is usable, but it's not the easiest thing to decipher.
Of course, all that being said, I'm still not ready to ditch my faithful Palm IIIx for a color Palm or the Visor Prism just yet.
A Robot: "Doctor Calvin, it Hz when I do this!"
Dr. Susan Calvin: "Then don't do that!"
So SysKoll sez:
"#include : Once I was working in a customer's building where a programming lab had been hastily installed. A synthetic carpet had been laid over the old hardwood floor. The old heaters were dessicating the air so much our lips hurt. Enter a young, skinny woman wearing three layers of acrylic sweaters, as well as hose and plastic-sole sneakers. She reached down to insert a diskette into the Unix server. We all heard an audible crack when a 10-inch long spark jumped from her hand to the keyswitch. She yelped. We moaned: the server has crashed. Postmortem revealed that the processor detected an ECC failure during memory access. So the massive ESD had scrambled the bus. But it restarted OK. "
I've a friend in Pittsburgh who's using my old Mac Color Classic. I picked up the videoRAM upgrade for it real cheap and sent it to her.
She's savvy enough to understand about static and she wondered about any problems involved in installing it on the mobo.
I advised her that if she could avoid wearing a nylon slip, pantyhose and vigorosly rubbing her cat up and down on her slip, she shouldn't have any real problems with static.
In my own case, whenever I have to mess with the insides of my Macs or the C128, I do it on the kitchen counter. It's well-lit, there's ample power available and I'm standing on linolium. Darn little chance of static there.
And for grounding purposes, I just reach over and touch the faucet in the sink. (and yes, it is a real ground. There's no PVC pipe anywhere between the faucet and the ground.)
The other benefit to using the kitchen counter as a workbench is that I can't leave the computer there and prepare a meal. So I have to get the work done and the machine(s) back in place before I can eat or wash the dishes. So there's no half-finished projects for me.