Wow. The BBS crowd of my youth ALWAYS used to get together. Many of my friends back in my home area to date either were part of the BBS scene or connected to it somehow. We used to stop by each others' houses, meet up at malls and coffee places, wander around the local univerisities, and occasionally even use computers. The conversations tended to sound quite a bit like geeks in space, actually, lots of trying to be funny by quoting monty python and such, and many unreasoned opinions about things we didn't know much about.
It's probably about the same security-wise to those little locks they used to put on the front of PC cases to disable the keyboard. Once you have physical access to anything, it's just a matter of time until you can compromise it.
'Cause you download 'em, and they say "you don't have a license to listen to this" error message. So I find IP address of moron sharing WMA files and call FBI from payphone leave anonymous tip say WMA files is kiddie porn encoded jpeg* available from this address. ha ha ha hacked by chinese, bitch email copy of ReB!rth ORIOW ! 0wnz J00 13370 Maxx Out gr337z 2 NV4DR Pachinko Boy V!z4rd XTZnU7Z3
* because just as if you cat/dev/urandom long enough eventually all the works of Shakespeare will fly by the screen, some algorithm somewhere will turn any file of any arbitrary length into kiddie porn
I am a McPaint erotic artist by night, and desktop publisher by day. I distribute my McPaint art via FidoNet, my screen is monochrome, and my mouse only has one button, so this maconlinux thing is really relevant to me.
I've always wanted to learn the linux, I hear it runs well on the ibm and compatible clones like the Compaq and the Kaypro. My friend has the Mosaic on his Mac, and he tells me about the linux and WWW all the time. He says the WWW (he's cool, so he calls it the W3), the Archie and the Gopher will be the future, someday we'll have modems that will go almost 4800 baud per second, and the HTML will be the computer language we convert our Pagemaker files to.
Please send me a fax when this is released, I have to go listen to some LP's on my new HiFi and vote for Mondale now.
You know, the oldest natural gas equipment I've seen (50 years old or so) generally closes the gas valve for the pilot if it goes out (it stays open with heat, which is why you have to press a button to light the pilot (or hold a match to it for a while (or a blowtorch like on old pizza ovens (!)))). All that aside, the pilot generally releases such a minute amount of gas (unless you have one of those old pizza ovens in your basement) that unless your house and/or basement is quite airtight, you could probably fire off some Polish fireworks at the pilot and not blow up your house, you'd probably just flash off your hair at worst. If your house is that airtight you probably have a new house and no excuse for having old gas equipment anyway.
The greater danger of combusting gas in your house is carbon monoxide. It doesn't take much to give you a headache, brain damage or kill you.
Most of the gas problems I read about in the local paper are just leaks. Most of the fires are where somebody went looking for a big leak with a lighter. Bonus points if the somebody stores gasoline in their basement for the winter, spilled some and wiped it up with t-shirts that they left in the basement (next to the propane tank for their gas grill) and left them to dry on the discarded furniture that has been down there forever, next to all the old furniture and the rolls of old carpet and cardboard boxes of books and newspapers, and of course had a cigarette lit when they went into their basement. Hyper mega super hazmat bonus points if they keep the 50 lbs of chlorine for their above-ground pool, the 25 lbs of black powder that was in their grandfather's garage when he died and nobody knew what to do with, a few stacks of pallets from when they brought the refrigerators, and the stoves, and the chest freezers, and the oil furnace, and their just topped off for winter pair of 330 gallon slightly leaky indoor oil tanks for the boiler, and that economy pack of 50 roadside emergency flares that used to be in the pickup in close proximity in their basement to the above mentioned items. There goes the neighborhood!
And now, for the cheap karma: "Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You might remember me from such films as: 'One minus two equals negative fun!' and 'Fireworks, the Silent Killer.'"
I read some info about a "dirty" diesel a small group of inventors is working on (it can run on vegetable and animal refuse as well as refined vegetable and animal products). Apparently one of the problems they're trying to overcome is that the smell produced can be unpleasant, obviously, petrolium-based diesel smells pretty bad too, but I guess people have gotten used to that.
Few but politically motivated stoners and true environmentalists know that the original practical "diesel" engine (I believe Rudolf Diesel's third prototype) ran quite well on hemp oil. This is an excellent fuel for diesel engines and other applications, but there's still a considerable prejudice against the plant itself.
At this time, there is a fair amount of biodiesel testing going on, including combining petrol-based diesel and biodiesel. The primary problems appear to be reluctance by many trucking companies to subject diesel engines to testing (engines aren't cheap), the expense of producing, converting to and purchasing biodiesel, and apparently less efficient operation with some types of vegetable oils (soy, for example).
If I get rich someday, one of the first "difficult to make a profit" businesses I'll be starting is converting Volkswagon and other small diesels to run efficiently on biodiesel, converting fuel oil-fired equipment to run on vegetable oils, and figuring out a way to produce that much vegetable oil.
In my now ubiquitous Simpsons reference, I think there'd be a huge energy gap if you tried to power anything other than a pinwheel with that method, unless you have that deal that converts self-satisfaction to motive power.
I saw them years ago when they opened for Iron Maiden. My left ear is a little deaf from that show, learned the hard way to keep a little space between me and the stacks.
It just the computer industry equivalent of Ford firing their Edsel team, or GM firing the Corvair team. You can't keep people on for a project you're not working on anymore, and nobody should be shedding tears for products that suck.
I hope this doesn't have a negative impact...
on
Brian West Update
·
· Score: 1
...on the next Batman movie. I hear he'll be in it, playing a villian. Did he go to his court appearances in the Batmobile? or is that just on the Simpsons?
Freelance a bit. I translated "I send you this file in order to have your advice" to Farsi and emailed it to binladin@aol.com. I hear it pissed him and his followers off off and he changed his email address to an MSN account, I think it's binladin69king@msn.com now.
A little long but good. Stop whining about the "how is it possible for dilithium which has a half-life of 44.82 years to give off radiation 100 years after the Botany Bay crashed" bullshit and get a life, too.
Unbreakable. Ancient. Easy to code. Not technically "encryption" depending on how you define the term, but does the same thing. Add in some arbitrary obfuscation (one if by land, two if by sea) and some steganeganogginagraphitti if so inclined and I'd say you're as secure as with a few passes of DES, a pass of Blowfish, and a UUENCODE-style alpha only conversion followed by 26 passes of ROT-13.
How do y0u k.now thi.s post is..n't a s.3cr.et messa.ge? Ar.e y.o.u pa..ra.n0id? The eagle flies at dawn, leave no stone unturned, and now a message for Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea: the walrus is cold at night.
The backdoor in encryption is sort of like how the GPS satellites are skewed by 3 meters or whatever. If terrorists are using GPS to figure out where they are or to get the bearings to a target, those 3 meters aren't going to mean jack. An idiot with a 286 running msdos 5.0 and qbasic can write a decent one-time-pad implementation, and pass the keys around in wav files and bmps.
Should but it doesn't. My palm pilot was always getting caught between my fingers, slicing my fingertips, and breaking my fingernails off. Or maybe that was my Gerber Woodsman knife. Whatever, they're both good for taking notes.
Hear hear! Behold, a Slashdotter who isn't an unpatriotic coward! Take heed, all you fools who think security is privacy-invading technology and hiding behind the skirts of the nanny state!
Here's a whistle. If there's a revolution, blow on it, and we'll come save you.
Damn, and here I was thinking that space wasn't good for anything except satellites and satellite accessories. Just think, this potentially has applications for everything from homebrewing to commercial zymurgy! Boy, keep on funding the space program, it's paying for itself EVERY GoDDAMNED DAY!
It's like the ants and tiny screws, that had applications for everything from watchmaking to watch repair!
Slashdot Mirror
If it's involving Yahoo Serious, the comedy levels will be astoundingly low.
Wow. The BBS crowd of my youth ALWAYS used to get together. Many of my friends back in my home area to date either were part of the BBS scene or connected to it somehow. We used to stop by each others' houses, meet up at malls and coffee places, wander around the local univerisities, and occasionally even use computers. The conversations tended to sound quite a bit like geeks in space, actually, lots of trying to be funny by quoting monty python and such, and many unreasoned opinions about things we didn't know much about.
It's probably about the same security-wise to those little locks they used to put on the front of PC cases to disable the keyboard. Once you have physical access to anything, it's just a matter of time until you can compromise it.
'Cause you download 'em, and they say "you don't have a license to listen to this" error message. So I find IP address of moron sharing WMA files and call FBI from payphone leave anonymous tip say WMA files is kiddie porn encoded jpeg* available from this address. ha ha ha hacked by chinese, bitch email copy of ReB!rth ORIOW ! 0wnz J00 13370 Maxx Out gr337z 2 NV4DR Pachinko Boy V!z4rd XTZnU7Z3
/dev/urandom long enough eventually all the works of Shakespeare will fly by the screen, some algorithm somewhere will turn any file of any arbitrary length into kiddie porn
* because just as if you cat
You gots to reboot ya sense of humah, brah.
Best post ever.
How do you know the UK hasn't just imposed a backdoor to the Enigma encryption algorithm to protect us from terrorists?
I am a McPaint erotic artist by night, and desktop publisher by day. I distribute my McPaint art via FidoNet, my screen is monochrome, and my mouse only has one button, so this maconlinux thing is really relevant to me.
I've always wanted to learn the linux, I hear it runs well on the ibm and compatible clones like the Compaq and the Kaypro. My friend has the Mosaic on his Mac, and he tells me about the linux and WWW all the time. He says the WWW (he's cool, so he calls it the W3), the Archie and the Gopher will be the future, someday we'll have modems that will go almost 4800 baud per second, and the HTML will be the computer language we convert our Pagemaker files to.
Please send me a fax when this is released, I have to go listen to some LP's on my new HiFi and vote for Mondale now.
You know, the oldest natural gas equipment I've seen (50 years old or so) generally closes the gas valve for the pilot if it goes out (it stays open with heat, which is why you have to press a button to light the pilot (or hold a match to it for a while (or a blowtorch like on old pizza ovens (!)))). All that aside, the pilot generally releases such a minute amount of gas (unless you have one of those old pizza ovens in your basement) that unless your house and/or basement is quite airtight, you could probably fire off some Polish fireworks at the pilot and not blow up your house, you'd probably just flash off your hair at worst. If your house is that airtight you probably have a new house and no excuse for having old gas equipment anyway.
The greater danger of combusting gas in your house is carbon monoxide. It doesn't take much to give you a headache, brain damage or kill you.
Most of the gas problems I read about in the local paper are just leaks. Most of the fires are where somebody went looking for a big leak with a lighter. Bonus points if the somebody stores gasoline in their basement for the winter, spilled some and wiped it up with t-shirts that they left in the basement (next to the propane tank for their gas grill) and left them to dry on the discarded furniture that has been down there forever, next to all the old furniture and the rolls of old carpet and cardboard boxes of books and newspapers, and of course had a cigarette lit when they went into their basement. Hyper mega super hazmat bonus points if they keep the 50 lbs of chlorine for their above-ground pool, the 25 lbs of black powder that was in their grandfather's garage when he died and nobody knew what to do with, a few stacks of pallets from when they brought the refrigerators, and the stoves, and the chest freezers, and the oil furnace, and their just topped off for winter pair of 330 gallon slightly leaky indoor oil tanks for the boiler, and that economy pack of 50 roadside emergency flares that used to be in the pickup in close proximity in their basement to the above mentioned items. There goes the neighborhood!
And now, for the cheap karma: "Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You might remember me from such films as: 'One minus two equals negative fun!' and 'Fireworks, the Silent Killer.'"
I read some info about a "dirty" diesel a small group of inventors is working on (it can run on vegetable and animal refuse as well as refined vegetable and animal products). Apparently one of the problems they're trying to overcome is that the smell produced can be unpleasant, obviously, petrolium-based diesel smells pretty bad too, but I guess people have gotten used to that.
Few but politically motivated stoners and true environmentalists know that the original practical "diesel" engine (I believe Rudolf Diesel's third prototype) ran quite well on hemp oil. This is an excellent fuel for diesel engines and other applications, but there's still a considerable prejudice against the plant itself.
At this time, there is a fair amount of biodiesel testing going on, including combining petrol-based diesel and biodiesel. The primary problems appear to be reluctance by many trucking companies to subject diesel engines to testing (engines aren't cheap), the expense of producing, converting to and purchasing biodiesel, and apparently less efficient operation with some types of vegetable oils (soy, for example).
If I get rich someday, one of the first "difficult to make a profit" businesses I'll be starting is converting Volkswagon and other small diesels to run efficiently on biodiesel, converting fuel oil-fired equipment to run on vegetable oils, and figuring out a way to produce that much vegetable oil.
In my now ubiquitous Simpsons reference, I think there'd be a huge energy gap if you tried to power anything other than a pinwheel with that method, unless you have that deal that converts self-satisfaction to motive power.
I saw them years ago when they opened for Iron Maiden. My left ear is a little deaf from that show, learned the hard way to keep a little space between me and the stacks.
It just the computer industry equivalent of Ford firing their Edsel team, or GM firing the Corvair team. You can't keep people on for a project you're not working on anymore, and nobody should be shedding tears for products that suck.
...on the next Batman movie. I hear he'll be in it, playing a villian. Did he go to his court appearances in the Batmobile? or is that just on the Simpsons?
Simpsons reference == instant karma, pay up.
Freelance a bit. I translated "I send you this file in order to have your advice" to Farsi and emailed it to binladin@aol.com. I hear it pissed him and his followers off off and he changed his email address to an MSN account, I think it's binladin69king@msn.com now.
A little long but good. Stop whining about the "how is it possible for dilithium which has a half-life of 44.82 years to give off radiation 100 years after the Botany Bay crashed" bullshit and get a life, too.
Unbreakable. Ancient. Easy to code. Not technically "encryption" depending on how you define the term, but does the same thing. Add in some arbitrary obfuscation (one if by land, two if by sea) and some steganeganogginagraphitti if so inclined and I'd say you're as secure as with a few passes of DES, a pass of Blowfish, and a UUENCODE-style alpha only conversion followed by 26 passes of ROT-13.
How do y0u k.now thi.s post is..n't a s.3cr.et messa.ge? Ar.e y.o.u pa..ra.n0id? The eagle flies at dawn, leave no stone unturned, and now a message for Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea: the walrus is cold at night.
14 23 27 19 10 12 88
research indicates the terrorists could not have been armed, as airport security prevents any weapons from being brought on board planes.
The backdoor in encryption is sort of like how the GPS satellites are skewed by 3 meters or whatever. If terrorists are using GPS to figure out where they are or to get the bearings to a target, those 3 meters aren't going to mean jack. An idiot with a 286 running msdos 5.0 and qbasic can write a decent one-time-pad implementation, and pass the keys around in wav files and bmps.
I haven't read the last book, is this Sirius the same one that becomes Sirius Cybernetics, makers of Marvin, the Paranoid Android?
Should but it doesn't. My palm pilot was always getting caught between my fingers, slicing my fingertips, and breaking my fingernails off. Or maybe that was my Gerber Woodsman knife. Whatever, they're both good for taking notes.
That means it will fit in your palm with little modification.
Hear hear! Behold, a Slashdotter who isn't an unpatriotic coward! Take heed, all you fools who think security is privacy-invading technology and hiding behind the skirts of the nanny state!
Here's a whistle. If there's a revolution, blow on it, and we'll come save you.
Optional, eh? Like optional to show ID before boarding a flight? Or "voluntary" like "voluntary income tax." Sure.
Damn, and here I was thinking that space wasn't good for anything except satellites and satellite accessories. Just think, this potentially has applications for everything from homebrewing to commercial zymurgy! Boy, keep on funding the space program, it's paying for itself EVERY GoDDAMNED DAY!
It's like the ants and tiny screws, that had applications for everything from watchmaking to watch repair!
Remember kids, Simpsons references == karma!