Why he got away with it for so long.
on
The Magic Box Hoax
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· Score: 5, Insightful
First of all, notice that there were actual experts that quoted that the invention was "implausable, but not impossible". At the same time, dsl, while not in widespread use, was definitely on the marketing tip of many a phone company. Broadband over regular phone lines was definitely possible, this guy just happened to be doing it faster. The experts weren't going to outright denounce it without at least LOOKING at the technology first.
Secondly, this was the heyday of the dotcom era. Everyone was getting rich, and there seemed to be no end in sight. However, there were a lot of investors with a sizeable amount of cash that simply hadn't gotten their piece of the preverbial dotcom pie yet. And seeing how the phone companies were developing competing technology, the sense of urgency was real.
As for criminal records, people are surprisingly lax about that sort of thing. Especially today, its so easy to run a criminal background check on someone, everyone assumes that someone has already done it, and doesn't bother. When other people are dumping multiple millions of $$$ into a company, and those people are well respected, intellegent people, it simply doesn't occur not to take the guy at his word. The only concern is getting in on it before its too late.
Scam artists, despite the vulgarity of their profession, are actually very talented and very good at what they do. They are literally experts in the art of social engineering. Anyone can scam a gullible nobody. Just send them a flyer in the mail and you'll have checks flying into your PO box. But to convince someone who's worth millions to give you a blank check with no verification that you can actually do what you say you can do. That's genius. Or it speaks very poorly for the competancy of the multimillionaires, which might just go to show that you don't need to necessarily be smart to be rich. And you don't have to be honest to get rich. And people might be too embarrased to get back at you once you're done fleecing them. Its a strange world indeed.
The constant pointing out of MS's own contradictions, as well as the mention of the fact that since MS claims there is a huge amount of piracy going on in the government of Peru ANYWAYS, it shouldn't make much difference to MS if they go with OS or not.:)
But if every extremely vocal teenybopper with a cellphone and unlimited minutes suddenly develops cancer and DIES.... I'm supposed to feel SAD about that... right?
It was nicer back in the day when it cost 30 cents per minute to use your cell, and thats if you were only making a local call. A lot of people had them, but nobody used them unless they HAD to, and even then they kept the conversations short and to the point. There was no fear of idle chitchat while in a movie theatre.
And no offense to women, but they're abusive phone users. This is nothing new. But before cheap cell phones, they were isolated to their own homes and didn't seem too compelled to share their hours long conversations with the rest of the world. But now, go into any large grocery store and I can almost certainly guarantee you that there will be at least ONE woman in there gossiping up a storm with someone over the cell, almost completely oblivious to the world around her. Its worse when they drive.
So hey, I'm all in favor. LET the phones cause cancer. Hell, make them even MORE dangerous. And the louder the user speaks, make it emit more radiation. Its the perfect way to rid the world of the people that seem to dedicate their lives to annoying others.
Belo is the same company that partially funded the braindead CueCat concept back the the dot-com boom "flush money down the toilet, its the way of life" days. And likewise, therefore pushed the lawsuits to stop those evil hackers who are opening our precious free product that you don't really own just because we gave it to you.
Just like preventing deep linking has a simple technical solution, so does keeping links out of search engines. A one line robots.txt file will prevent search engines from archiving any of your site. If you refuse to make that simple 30 second effort to solve the "problem" and instead choose an expensive legal solution, then someone really needs to be fired and committed.
Search engines are not spammers. If you tell them to go away, they're more than happy to oblige you.
Did you not read anything or are you just attempting to invoke class envy where it doesn't even exist?
NOBODY is saying ANYTHING about the fact that a $60K per year person is making too much, only that they SHOULD be able to save adaquately over a period of time to afford a down month.
And by the way, proper nutrition can be achieved for a family for significantly less than $600 a month. Its the prepared meals and the dining out that jacks the price up significantly.
Go read what you just wrote. The example you have provided results in $1400 EXTRA every single month above and beyond the minimal expenses. Yet for some strange reason, you're UNABLE to save ANY of it for a rainy day. You are thinking in terms that every penny you make should be spent immediately, but history shows that this is NEVER a wise move. If just for one month someone saved half of their disposable income, they would be able to survive the month they're getting cut (according to your numbers).
The employees of Devine, along with everyone else in the country, are aware that the economy isn't in really gung-ho shape right now. They've also heard about Enron, along with numerous dot-com companies that basically have gone belly-up overnight. They might very well be faced with the possibility of losing their job in a moment's notice.
Yet in spite of all that, those making over $60K a year somehow are unable to save enough to pay HALF the bills for one month? What would happen if they got fired? Is cost of living so horribly expensive in Chicago that 60K might as well be minimum wage?
"We can't estimate how much piracy is on the net but in one day we found a million sites under a search for one of the codenames for pirated software," said a BSA spokesperson.
I assume here they are referring to "warez". And yes, you will get a LOT of hits if you put that into a search engine. However, before you get TOO excited about it, understand that 99 times out of 100, you're more likely to find porn than pirated software if you actually visit any of those sites. Its a completely meaningless association.
The majority of "warez" trading is done through IRC or usenet. Yet those who are striving to rid the internet of piracy rarely mention these treasure troves. Certainly they get mentioned as the breeding ground for evil "hackers" and for child porn distribution, but as far as piracy goes, they tend to stay rather mum about it.
Could it be that their only real mission is one of sensationalism? They know for a fact that the average clueless newbie will do a hunt for pirated software on the web (because as far as they know, the web IS the internet), and will be disillusioned by all the porn websites, banners, and popups that they will figure its more trouble than its worth. They might trade with their friends and download some mp3's off Morpheus, but that will be the limit of their piracy activities.
However, if lots of news articles spent a great deal of time complaining about the rampant piracy on IRC and usenet and other places, then that clueless newbie might actually decide for once that a clue isn't such a bad thing and venture into that world. "What do you mean that IE can't go there???" But once entrenched in that world, they'll be very difficult to "retrain".
The public at large has been convinced by and large that child pornography and hacking are indeed "Bad things (tm)" and will probably avoid those places that distribute them. But software piracy hasn't reached that degree of evil in most people's eyes. So they will to some small degree actually seek it out. And deep down, there's probably an even bigger fear. Their preverbial sheep might stumble across something dangerous. "What's this here linux thing all about???"
And don't forget about timely visits from the BSA. This sounds like a prime target for them. The city clearly has issues when it comes to being organized.
Depending on what options you have in your area...
Set up your own servers, and get a broadband ISP with an account that has no restrictions. I pay $200 a month for a 1.54m/768k dsl account with 16 static ip addy's and NO restrictions. I can resell the bandwidth if I want to and its permitted, the TOS even says so. The law is my only restriction.
Then you run your own servers. You put whatever you want on them, and you can use all the bandwidth you need, up to the physical limits your service allows. I'd imagine that any company will offer comparable services. Where people get caught and start whining is they believe the $39 a month rate they pay for the same bandwidth should offer unrestricted services for that price.
Now, if you can find a host, you'll probably be better off in the long run, at least for the amount of money you'll be spending. More than likely, you'll get either a total bytes transfered limit, or a bandwidth cap rate. Any service that offers unlimited on both always has a disclaimer in there somewhere.
If the parents involved actually PARENT their children, and do their job of monitoring and controlling what their children see and do, then this is completely unnecessary.
Of course, government seems to be under the impression that parents can't do thier job and must therefore restrict the children from purchasing these violent sexually explicit video games. Of course, if the parents aren't watching their children anyways, how are they going to prevent them from pirating it? Same goes with movies these days. Blockbuster might not rent the movie to a 12 yr old, but he can download it for free off the internet anyways, so what difference does it make.
All the government is doing is putting a huge target on the games. The kids will now know exactly WHICH games to go after first.
"I will gladly stand tall against the companies that do wrong, just so long as it doesn't inconvienence me". And hey, thats fine. Nobody's making you take a stand. If you want to use adobe and blizzard products, then go ahead. Nobody will frown on you for doing so.
Or if you choose, give them up completely and take a stand against those companies. If necessary, change your line of work if those products are required for your specific profession. Put some of your efforts into developing free competing solutions that meet your criteria for a "convienent" professional life.
But don't whine because you can't have it both ways. Nobody can expect to stand strong against the giant and not make a few sacrifices. This might not be your fight. But if it is, remember, Adobe, Blizzard, Microsoft, they will survive without you. They will survive without all of us. That is not the ultimate goal here. We're not trying to deprive them of a paying customer, so much that we put the money we WOULD have spent on them into a company or a dontation bin of a project we feel is more in tune with our cause.
Meaning, we spend our resources, be it money, time, or sweat equity on those that we WANT to succeed so there WILL be alternatives in the future. That way, the next time some corportation does something dishonorable, the spineless among us will have somewhere else they can go. In fact, the very existance of viable sufficent competition might prevent them from doing extremely stupid things, which will be equally beneficial for all.
I like blizzard games. I spent many hours playing starcraft. And from all I've heard, war3 is a great game, and I'm sure I would have enjoyed it. But I'm not going to play it. MY money is better spent elsewhere.
In most places, if you stick your computer out on the sidewalk, it will disappear NOW. And it doesn't even require a fee. The problem goes away ALL BY ITSELF.
This method also works well with disposing of TV sets, stereos, VCR's, and unopened alcoholic beverages.
Even if you're REALLY good at something, if you play against someone whom you consider or assume to be considerably inferior to you, you will tend to unconsiously dumb down your strategy, and then even if you're a grandmaster, anyone of relatively decent skill will be able to beat you.
The people playing the Turk weren't really playing to win. They were playing to see if this machine could play the game. They were too amazed by its ability to play AT ALL to bother much with trying to beat it. They might even intentionally make stupid "I wonder if he'll catch this" mistakes which ultimately sacrifice the game for them, no matter HOW good they might be.
Probably the only time it got beat was the one time that someone actually paid attention to the game itself, rather than the opposing player.
The article states that the patent office is underfunded. What exactly, then, is that patent fee for?
Yes, I understand when there are millions upon millions of patents issued, it can take a lot of time to go through them, even if there's a smart search engine available. But $1000 per patent buys a LOT of time to hunt.
The first stage should be: Does the person working in the patent office, yes, your average federal employee, think that the patent is obvious or that prior work exists. This is about as close to a "layman" as you're going to get. If THEY think its obvious, then it fails immediately. Swinging on a swing, in ANY direction, should have failed. Maybe I have too much faith in federal employees. I don't have much as it is.
Second, the exact text of the patent is cross-referenced against a database of all patents ever issued. Any more than 3 words match, they get marked for review. And then they're REVIEWED. BY MORE THAN ONE PERSON.
Once again, I feel it is important to mention that this is a federal organization, with federal employees. I realize that has NO significance here, but for some odd reason I feel the need to mention it again.
Peer review. A patent gets issued on a 30 day contingency period. Anyone who thinks that the patent has significant prior art will have the opportunity to submit proposals for its dismissal, and those proposals will be taken seriously. Yes, I know, they're "underfunded". But I'm sorry. There's no reasonable way that it cost $1000 to grant a patent for swinging sideways. And if 95% of the fees really do go to fund the beuracracy to support the office, then it probably would be better for everyone if it didn't exist at all.
Why can't I put hidden cameras in my house? Granted, placing cameras in the bathrooms/bedrooms has some illnatured consequenses, but a hidden camera in my living room to watch the babysitter or to record burglars shouldn't be illegal. It is after all MY house.
Of course, I have cameras all over the place anyways, and they're all clearly visible. Its not like anyone entering my house has the illusion of things being private. If I added a few hidden cameras amongst all the visible ones, I doubt anyone could claim ignorance.
Just like with weapons in schools. Sure, nobody wants people bringing guns to school. Yet the guy who accidently leaves a butterknife in his truck doesn't need to get expelled. Yet it happens. Because its much easier to follow simple zero tolerance policies than to actually think.
And it appears that this is being applied to cheating as well. If a line of code is similiar to someone else's, then we must take the stand that this must be cheating and go forth with guns blazing.
The article said that 30 lines out of a hundreds of lines long program "were similar". Since its not any more specific than that, I can only assume they mean that more than one person had x=0; x++ etc.. I mean... seriously.. Its VERY possible to have similar individual lines without it being considered cheating. If the entire programs match line for line, thats a different story.
And yes, tests should be the way you grade. Homework should be for practice. Sure, you can count it if you want to, but if people want to collaborate on it, LET THEM. That's how you learn. Geez.
I know this was written somewhat in jest, but should the creator of the rm command be held liable because someone got careless with the -rf option?
Some programs by design can, if used improperly, cause a great deal of damage. Certainly, someone using a program to delete files can't exactly claim ignorance if the program actually DELETES the files they told it to.
So what if I download a program, and the eula specifically warns met that running the program will spread itself to 100 people and promptly wipe all accessible harddrives. That's what the program was SUPPOSED to do, and it specifically stated that in a document that by default almost nobody reads.
Outlook, or any email program for that matter, has features that allow you to forward messages to other people. So when someone receives a message, if an executable attachment is automatically run (because the email program allows that function), a message pops up explaining that the user's computer "will now send 100 copies of the current message to anyone/everyone it can find, then wipe the disk, press ok to continue"... and the idiot user presses ok without ever reading the message, who's to blame here?
Yes its a virus (or a worm if you would). Yes, its intent is malicious. But the user gave permission to execute it, just as if the user gave permission to erase his computer by using deltree/y \ instead.
What's truely sad here, is a virus based on the previous model would probably spread just as well as your typical covert variety.
If the author of a webpage doesn't want that webpage cached or linked on google, then the appropriate entry in robots.txt will take care of that problem. End of story.
As for delinking by the author's request/demand, I imagine its a process they deal with daily. They have a straightforward method for removing links, and respond quickly the one time a stray link resulted in them caching files I didn't want them to.
Someone might utilize a USEFUL tool in such a way that might entail malace. Among other things, IRC is useful for the following things:
Trading porn including child pornography (tm). Trading illegal mp3's. Trading illegal movies. Trading illegal books. Trading illegal software. Trading illegal TV shows. Stalking. Preying grounds for Child Molesters (tm). Learning BAD english "31337 anyone???" Discussing illegal activity. DOS zombie gathering points. Trojan access gathering points.
Oh, and of course, its primary purpose, so that large groups of people can easily gather online in a user friendly way to discuss various topics of interest to them.
People, its a tool, nothing more. You can use it legally or illegally. I can cut butter or stab someone with a knife. I can buy food or drugs with money. I can use a telephone to call my friends to say hi, or I can prank call someone and threaten to have them killed. And yes, if I really wanted to, I could use IRC illegally. As could I with AIM, or yahoo's chat/forums, or anywhere else that I wanted to.
Yes CNN, Chat rooms are most likely havens for hackers (tm). Its not so much an issue of debate, but an issue of declaring the obvoius. I'll bet they use phones too. And Email. And websites. I mean, if there wasn't an internet, there would still be hackers even though all the reasons you think they're bad would be null and void. Hackers pre-date the internet, even those inflicted with malice. Although, script kiddies are a rather recent breed.
But warping space will make travel into the future possible. Well, technically you don't travel into the future, time just passes much faster than it normally does, at least from your perspective.
However, unless he can find a way to produce negative mass or negative energy, this isn't going to happen. Even a singularity, at infinite mass, does not cause space to warp backwards. And even if it did, the best he could hope for is a wormhole.
That's the beautiful thing about a site that doesn't fund themselves through the use of banner ads. It doesn't MATTER if you access their content through the main website, an affiliate like yahoo, or an api interface.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, notice that there were actual experts that quoted that the invention was "implausable, but not impossible". At the same time, dsl, while not in widespread use, was definitely on the marketing tip of many a phone company. Broadband over regular phone lines was definitely possible, this guy just happened to be doing it faster. The experts weren't going to outright denounce it without at least LOOKING at the technology first.
Secondly, this was the heyday of the dotcom era. Everyone was getting rich, and there seemed to be no end in sight. However, there were a lot of investors with a sizeable amount of cash that simply hadn't gotten their piece of the preverbial dotcom pie yet. And seeing how the phone companies were developing competing technology, the sense of urgency was real.
As for criminal records, people are surprisingly lax about that sort of thing. Especially today, its so easy to run a criminal background check on someone, everyone assumes that someone has already done it, and doesn't bother. When other people are dumping multiple millions of $$$ into a company, and those people are well respected, intellegent people, it simply doesn't occur not to take the guy at his word. The only concern is getting in on it before its too late.
Scam artists, despite the vulgarity of their profession, are actually very talented and very good at what they do. They are literally experts in the art of social engineering. Anyone can scam a gullible nobody. Just send them a flyer in the mail and you'll have checks flying into your PO box. But to convince someone who's worth millions to give you a blank check with no verification that you can actually do what you say you can do. That's genius. Or it speaks very poorly for the competancy of the multimillionaires, which might just go to show that you don't need to necessarily be smart to be rich. And you don't have to be honest to get rich. And people might be too embarrased to get back at you once you're done fleecing them. Its a strange world indeed.
-Restil
I'm sure that everyone notices the subtle irony of releasing this report using a proprietary format from a company that has abused the DMCA.
*sigh*
-Restil
The constant pointing out of MS's own contradictions, as well as the mention of the fact that since MS claims there is a huge amount of piracy going on in the government of Peru ANYWAYS, it shouldn't make much difference to MS if they go with OS or not. :)
God I love it!
-Restil
But if every extremely vocal teenybopper with a cellphone and unlimited minutes suddenly develops cancer and DIES.... I'm supposed to feel SAD about that... right?
It was nicer back in the day when it cost 30 cents per minute to use your cell, and thats if you were only making a local call. A lot of people had them, but nobody used them unless they HAD to, and even then they kept the conversations short and to the point. There was no fear of idle chitchat while in a movie theatre.
And no offense to women, but they're abusive phone users. This is nothing new. But before cheap cell phones, they were isolated to their own homes and didn't seem too compelled to share their hours long conversations with the rest of the world. But now, go into any large grocery store and I can almost certainly guarantee you that there will be at least ONE woman in there gossiping up a storm with someone over the cell, almost completely oblivious to the world around her. Its worse when they drive.
So hey, I'm all in favor. LET the phones cause cancer. Hell, make them even MORE dangerous. And the louder the user speaks, make it emit more radiation. Its the perfect way to rid the world of the people that seem to dedicate their lives to annoying others.
-Restil
Belo is the same company that partially funded the braindead CueCat concept back the the dot-com boom "flush money down the toilet, its the way of life" days. And likewise, therefore pushed the lawsuits to stop those evil hackers who are opening our precious free product that you don't really own just because we gave it to you.
-Restil
Just like preventing deep linking has a simple technical solution, so does keeping links out of search engines. A one line robots.txt file will prevent search engines from archiving any of your site. If you refuse to make that simple 30 second effort to solve the "problem" and instead choose an expensive legal solution, then someone really needs to be fired and committed.
Search engines are not spammers. If you tell them to go away, they're more than happy to oblige you.
-Restil
Did you not read anything or are you just attempting to invoke class envy where it doesn't even exist?
NOBODY is saying ANYTHING about the fact that a $60K per year person is making too much, only that they SHOULD be able to save adaquately over a period of time to afford a down month.
And by the way, proper nutrition can be achieved for a family for significantly less than $600 a month. Its the prepared meals and the dining out that jacks the price up significantly.
-Restil
Go read what you just wrote. The example you have provided results in $1400 EXTRA every single month above and beyond the minimal expenses. Yet for some strange reason, you're UNABLE to save ANY of it for a rainy day. You are thinking in terms that every penny you make should be spent immediately, but history shows that this is NEVER a wise move. If just for one month someone saved half of their disposable income, they would be able to survive the month they're getting cut (according to your numbers).
I don't feel much pity.
-Restil
The employees of Devine, along with everyone else in the country, are aware that the economy isn't in really gung-ho shape right now. They've also heard about Enron, along with numerous dot-com companies that basically have gone belly-up overnight. They might very well be faced with the possibility of losing their job in a moment's notice.
Yet in spite of all that, those making over $60K a year somehow are unable to save enough to pay HALF the bills for one month? What would happen if they got fired? Is cost of living so horribly expensive in Chicago that 60K might as well be minimum wage?
-Restil
"We can't estimate how much piracy is on the net but in one day we found a million sites under a search for one of the codenames for pirated software," said a BSA spokesperson.
:)
I assume here they are referring to "warez". And yes, you will get a LOT of hits if you put that into a search engine. However, before you get TOO excited about it, understand that 99 times out of 100, you're more likely to find porn than pirated software if you actually visit any of those sites. Its a completely meaningless association.
The majority of "warez" trading is done through IRC or usenet. Yet those who are striving to rid the internet of piracy rarely mention these treasure troves. Certainly they get mentioned as the breeding ground for evil "hackers" and for child porn distribution, but as far as piracy goes, they tend to stay rather mum about it.
Could it be that their only real mission is one of sensationalism? They know for a fact that the average clueless newbie will do a hunt for pirated software on the web (because as far as they know, the web IS the internet), and will be disillusioned by all the porn websites, banners, and popups that they will figure its more trouble than its worth. They might trade with their friends and download some mp3's off Morpheus, but that will be the limit of their piracy activities.
However, if lots of news articles spent a great deal of time complaining about the rampant piracy on IRC and usenet and other places, then that clueless newbie might actually decide for once that a clue isn't such a bad thing and venture into that world. "What do you mean that IE can't go there???" But once entrenched in that world, they'll be very difficult to "retrain".
The public at large has been convinced by and large that child pornography and hacking are indeed "Bad things (tm)" and will probably avoid those places that distribute them. But software piracy hasn't reached that degree of evil in most people's eyes. So they will to some small degree actually seek it out. And deep down, there's probably an even bigger fear. Their preverbial sheep might stumble across something dangerous. "What's this here linux thing all about???"
ok. Fine. Mod me down.
-Restil
And don't forget about timely visits from the BSA.
This sounds like a prime target for them. The city clearly has issues when it comes to being organized.
-Restil
Depending on what options you have in your area...
Set up your own servers, and get a broadband ISP with an account that has no restrictions. I pay $200 a month for a 1.54m/768k dsl account with 16 static ip addy's and NO restrictions. I can resell the bandwidth if I want to and its permitted, the TOS even says so. The law is my only restriction.
Then you run your own servers. You put whatever you want on them, and you can use all the bandwidth you need, up to the physical limits your service allows. I'd imagine that any company will offer comparable services. Where people get caught and start whining is they believe the $39 a month rate they pay for the same bandwidth should offer unrestricted services for that price.
Now, if you can find a host, you'll probably be better off in the long run, at least for the amount of money you'll be spending. More than likely, you'll get either a total bytes transfered limit, or a bandwidth cap rate. Any service that offers unlimited on both always has a disclaimer in there somewhere.
-Restil
The ruling is useless. Here is why.
If the parents involved actually PARENT their children, and do their job of monitoring and controlling what their children see and do, then this is completely unnecessary.
Of course, government seems to be under the impression that parents can't do thier job and must therefore restrict the children from purchasing these violent sexually explicit video games. Of course, if the parents aren't watching their children anyways, how are they going to prevent them from pirating it? Same goes with movies these days. Blockbuster might not rent the movie to a 12 yr old, but he can download it for free off the internet anyways, so what difference does it make.
All the government is doing is putting a huge target on the games. The kids will now know exactly WHICH games to go after first.
-Restil
What you are effectively saying here is:
"I will gladly stand tall against the companies that do wrong, just so long as it doesn't inconvienence me". And hey, thats fine. Nobody's making you take a stand. If you want to use adobe and blizzard products, then go ahead. Nobody will frown on you for doing so.
Or if you choose, give them up completely and take a stand against those companies. If necessary, change your line of work if those products are required for your specific profession. Put some of your efforts into developing free competing solutions that meet your criteria for a "convienent" professional life.
But don't whine because you can't have it both ways. Nobody can expect to stand strong against the giant and not make a few sacrifices. This might not be your fight. But if it is, remember, Adobe, Blizzard, Microsoft, they will survive without you. They will survive without all of us. That is not the ultimate goal here. We're not trying to deprive them of a paying customer, so much that we put the money we WOULD have spent on them into a company or a dontation bin of a project we feel is more in tune with our cause.
Meaning, we spend our resources, be it money, time, or sweat equity on those that we WANT to succeed so there WILL be alternatives in the future. That way, the next time some corportation does something dishonorable, the spineless among us will have somewhere else they can go. In fact, the very existance of viable sufficent competition might prevent them from doing extremely stupid things, which will be equally beneficial for all.
I like blizzard games. I spent many hours playing starcraft. And from all I've heard, war3 is a great game, and I'm sure I would have enjoyed it. But I'm not going to play it. MY money is better spent elsewhere.
-Restil
In most places, if you stick your computer out on the sidewalk, it will disappear NOW. And it doesn't even require a fee. The problem goes away ALL BY ITSELF.
This method also works well with disposing of TV sets, stereos, VCR's, and unopened alcoholic beverages.
-Restil
Even if you're REALLY good at something, if you play against someone whom you consider or assume to be considerably inferior to you, you will tend to unconsiously dumb down your strategy, and then even if you're a grandmaster, anyone of relatively decent skill will be able to beat you.
The people playing the Turk weren't really playing to win. They were playing to see if this machine could play the game. They were too amazed by its ability to play AT ALL to bother much with trying to beat it. They might even intentionally make stupid "I wonder if he'll catch this" mistakes which ultimately sacrifice the game for them, no matter HOW good they might be.
Probably the only time it got beat was the one time that someone actually paid attention to the game itself, rather than the opposing player.
-Restil
The article states that the patent office is underfunded. What exactly, then, is that patent fee for?
Yes, I understand when there are millions upon millions of patents issued, it can take a lot of time to go through them, even if there's a smart search engine available. But $1000 per patent buys a LOT of time to hunt.
The first stage should be: Does the person working in the patent office, yes, your average federal employee, think that the patent is obvious or that prior work exists. This is about as close to a "layman" as you're going to get. If THEY think its obvious, then it fails immediately. Swinging on a swing, in ANY direction, should have failed. Maybe I have too much faith in federal employees. I don't have much as it is.
Second, the exact text of the patent is cross-referenced against a database of all patents ever issued. Any more than 3 words match, they get marked for review. And then they're REVIEWED. BY MORE THAN ONE PERSON.
Once again, I feel it is important to mention that this is a federal organization, with federal employees. I realize that has NO significance here, but for some odd reason I feel the need to mention it again.
Peer review. A patent gets issued on a 30 day contingency period. Anyone who thinks that the patent has significant prior art will have the opportunity to submit proposals for its dismissal, and those proposals will be taken seriously. Yes, I know, they're "underfunded".
But I'm sorry. There's no reasonable way that it cost $1000 to grant a patent for swinging sideways. And if 95% of the fees really do go to fund the beuracracy to support the office, then it probably would be better for everyone if it didn't exist at all.
-Restil
Why can't I put hidden cameras in my house? Granted, placing cameras in the bathrooms/bedrooms has some illnatured consequenses, but a hidden camera in my living room to watch the babysitter or to record burglars shouldn't be illegal. It is after all MY house.
Of course, I have cameras all over the place anyways, and they're all clearly visible. Its not like anyone entering my house has the illusion of things being private. If I added a few hidden cameras amongst all the visible ones, I doubt anyone could claim ignorance.
-Restil
Just like with weapons in schools. Sure, nobody wants people bringing guns to school. Yet the guy who accidently leaves a butterknife in his truck doesn't need to get expelled. Yet it happens. Because its much easier to follow simple zero tolerance policies than to actually think.
And it appears that this is being applied to cheating as well. If a line of code is similiar to someone else's, then we must take the stand that this must be cheating and go forth with guns blazing.
The article said that 30 lines out of a hundreds of lines long program "were similar". Since its not any more specific than that, I can only assume they mean that more than one person had
x=0;
x++
etc..
I mean... seriously.. Its VERY possible to have similar individual lines without it being considered cheating. If the entire programs match line for line, thats a different story.
And yes, tests should be the way you grade. Homework should be for practice. Sure, you can count it if you want to, but if people want to collaborate on it, LET THEM. That's how you learn. Geez.
-Restil
I know this was written somewhat in jest, but should the creator of the rm command be held liable because someone got careless with the -rf option?
/y \ instead.
Some programs by design can, if used improperly, cause a great deal of damage. Certainly, someone using a program to delete files can't exactly claim ignorance if the program actually DELETES the files they told it to.
So what if I download a program, and the eula specifically warns met that running the program will spread itself to 100 people and promptly wipe all accessible harddrives. That's what the program was SUPPOSED to do, and it specifically stated that in a document that by default almost nobody reads.
Outlook, or any email program for that matter, has features that allow you to forward messages to other people. So when someone receives a message, if an executable attachment is automatically run (because the email program allows that function), a message pops up explaining that the user's computer "will now send 100 copies of the current message to anyone/everyone it can find, then wipe the disk, press ok to continue"... and the idiot user presses ok without ever reading the message, who's to blame here?
Yes its a virus (or a worm if you would). Yes, its intent is malicious. But the user gave permission to execute it, just as if the user gave permission to erase his computer by using deltree
What's truely sad here, is a virus based on the previous model would probably spread just as well as your typical covert variety.
-Restil
If the author of a webpage doesn't want that webpage cached or linked on google, then the appropriate entry in robots.txt will take care of that problem. End of story.
As for delinking by the author's request/demand, I imagine its a process they deal with daily. They have a straightforward method for removing links, and respond quickly the one time a stray link resulted in them caching files I didn't want them to.
-Restil
Someone might utilize a USEFUL tool in such a way that might entail malace. Among other things, IRC is useful for the following things:
Trading porn including child pornography (tm).
Trading illegal mp3's.
Trading illegal movies.
Trading illegal books.
Trading illegal software.
Trading illegal TV shows.
Stalking.
Preying grounds for Child Molesters (tm).
Learning BAD english "31337 anyone???"
Discussing illegal activity.
DOS zombie gathering points.
Trojan access gathering points.
Oh, and of course, its primary purpose, so that large groups of people can easily gather online in a user friendly way to discuss various topics of interest to them.
People, its a tool, nothing more. You can use it legally or illegally. I can cut butter or stab someone with a knife. I can buy food or drugs with money. I can use a telephone to call my friends to say hi, or I can prank call someone and threaten to have them killed. And yes, if I really wanted to, I could use IRC illegally. As could I with AIM, or yahoo's chat/forums, or anywhere else that I wanted to.
Yes CNN, Chat rooms are most likely havens for hackers (tm). Its not so much an issue of debate, but an issue of declaring the obvoius. I'll bet they use phones too. And Email. And websites. I mean, if there wasn't an internet, there would still be hackers even though all the reasons you think they're bad would be null and void. Hackers pre-date the internet, even those inflicted with malice. Although, script kiddies are a rather recent breed.
-Restil
Again.
Oh well.
But warping space will make travel into the future possible. Well, technically you don't travel into the future, time just passes much faster than it normally does, at least from your perspective.
However, unless he can find a way to produce negative mass or negative energy, this isn't going to happen. Even a singularity, at infinite mass, does not cause space to warp backwards.
And even if it did, the best he could hope for is a wormhole.
-Restil
That's the beautiful thing about a site that doesn't fund themselves through the use of banner ads. It doesn't MATTER if you access their content through the main website, an affiliate like yahoo, or an api interface.
-Restil