Of course it was a satire. I picked up on that in the first 2 minutes of the movie. But satire alone doesn't make something funny or entertaining. "Scary Movie" accomplished this MUCH better, even if it only addressed one genre of movies.
You in fact seem more entertained by the reviews you percieve to be false than by the movie itself. I don't personally look to critics for my entertainment, although thats not to say they can't be entertaining in their own special way. But reviews should be utilized to determine if its worth my time and money to see the movie in the first place, and afterwards to see if others agree with my point of view.
Therefore, anyone who wants to see a dry movie full of top named actors(resses) weakly poke fun a the very industry they stake their livelihoods on, by all means, go see American Sweethearts. However, if you're just bored on a Saturday night, watching grass grow or paint dry will probably be more entertaining and certainly far less expensive.
Not all movies. I'm sure there are some good ones out right now, as there have always been bad ones over the years. The problem is, while sitting through a bad movie, I can usually pick up (during the 20 minutes of previews) a few good candidates for GOOD movies.
I was dragged to see America's Sweethearts last night (I had a couple female companions..... what was I to do? say NO!?!?:). There was not ONE preview that screamed at me "You have to see this!" Thats what previews are for anyways, to take the only good 1 minute worth of footage from a movie and make it out to be the best movie ever produced in the history of movie making. If the content of the movies is so bad they can't even pull THAT off, I've come to realize there might be an actual REASON I haven't been to a theatre more than 3 times since Phantom Meanace was released.
So what's the deal? Do movies suck more now than they used to, or am I just changing and finding that movies tend to pander to the less neurologically active audience?
Tell the officer he's being recorded. You don't have to show him the recording device, nor do you actually have to have one. In fact, you can put a notice on the driver's side window that says something to the effect "Traffic stops may be monitored or recorded for quality assurance." or some BS like that. Then that whole "I didn't know I was being recorded bit" doesn't apply. Of course, if you actually SAY you're being recorded, then its on the recording as well, and they'll have a REALLY hard time dening that they knew about it.
The problem with is, is the fact that the whole REASON for recording police encounters is to have later evidence of police wrongdoing. If the police KNOW they're being recorded and they commit said act of wrongdoing, they will probably attempt to confiscate or destroy any recording devices. The way around this is to not HAVE any recording devices in the car. Use a cell phone to transmit the encounter and have a recorder on the other end.
In fact, if you're recording the conversation over the phone, you might not even have to disclose that fact. It HAS been proven in court that only one participant in a phone conversation has to know they're being recorded. I wonder....
I'll admit, the site is sneaky. They don't outright say that they are the primary developers of MYSQL, but they certainly don't go out of their way to draw attention to that fact. They have a single link on the home page to the primary mysql.com site, but they don't make a distinction that is what it is.
They require registration to download anything on the site, and they have opt-in spam requests by default, but they do seem to offer the source for download, so even if they were charging money for downloads, they're still not in violation of the GPL.
I can see the confusion issue over the name. They SHOULD at least change it, or at the very least they should put a big notice on the front page that they are not the trademark holders of MySQL and are only using the name.
As far as I can see, whats been done is what can be done. The MySQL people have put out a press release about it, warning people of the possible confusion. I suppose in the future, if you're planning to use a potentially popular name, get all 3 of the domains, and if any of the 3 are already taken, by all means, find yourself another name, thereby avoiding trademark issues yourself.
Of course, in 3 billion years, this might not much matter, but for two colliding galaxies, its quite possible for both of them to pass through each other without any stars colliding. However, its extremely likely that one or two stars will come within a light year of Earth. What will happen is a lot of the debris in the Oort cloud which usually remains in long period orbits way way out there can be flung into the inner solar system (the same effect happens every 60 million years or so when the solar system passes through one of the spiral arms.
When this happens, there are suddenly a lot more big rocks roaming around the inner solar system, and the chances of Earth getting hit by one of them increases dramatically.
Of course, I personally don't plan to lose any sleep over this.:)
Ok.. here goes.
Just a few stats and other numbers. On an extremely expensive T1 line, assuming that 100% of the bandwidth is utilized, it would cost one cent to transmit 4 megs of data. Electricity costs, equipment costs, etc contribute to the cost of owning and operating a high volume website. We'll consider low volume websites run off of DSL lines are not in need of funding their existance.
For a 28.8 modem user that spends 4 solid hours a day downloading data, over a month they will cost content providers a collective total of about $4. Someone with a high bandwidth connection that downloads 300 megs a day will cost a total of a little more than $22.
What could be done, is the ISP, or even the user depending on the arrangement, would take a flat rate total based on the average user bandwidth and charge that much extra a month. This money would then be stored with a trusted central repository. When the user connects to a site, that site has the option of drawing from this central repository a fraction of a cent based on the bandwidth consumed by that user. At the end of the month, the site will recieve a check for the bandwidth consumed, averaged out over the total amount of money available.
This would be primarily for sites that have no interest in making a profit, but don't want to have to pay through the nose for the privilage of simply existing. ISP's and/or users would not be required to do this, but the sites could always excersize the option of not allowing non-member users access to the page.
Sites that rely on banner ads or subscriptions
would be ineligible, and any site could opt not
to take advantage of the service, as it would likely probably incur additional headaches. However, it is an option that would solve the thorny problem of sites that can't exist due to the bandwidth requirements.
-Restil
I can tell you HOW to comprimise a system.
I can even write you a program to do it.
Then I can also write a program that after you've comprimised a system, you can proceed to modify that system in such a way that you can participate in continuous illegal access of it.
Should they be liable? No, not unless they used the utilities themselves. But they really shouldn't be doing it anyways. BO actually COULD serve a legitimate purpose, but rootkits really don't. Their very existance gives script kiddies fuel they need without even the justification of providing a useful resource to someone else.
What REALLY needs to be done is to catch some of those damn script kiddies and make an example out of them. The FBI won't even attempt to pursue them until the amount of damage caused exceeds a certain point. Its this attitude that causes these problems to perpetuate.
As an example, if some kid were to shoplift a candy bar from a convience store, and he was not caught, the owner of that store hasn't lost much. If he catches the kid and the kid gets prosecuted, then the community will know about it and at the very least, his friends might think twice about trying it themselves.
But if the police and everyone else involved simply looked the other way when this occured, saying it wasn't worth the effort to pursue them, two things will happen. First, there will be a LOT more missing candy bars. And second, that kid will be encouraged to attempt more risky endevours. He'll never have the opportunity to learn responsibility and respect, just abuse through the inactivity of others, he will consider to be ok and beyond reproach from those in authority.
And thus, the kiddies will continue to thrive. We will have DOS's, comprimised boxes, and a lot of annoying idiots on IRC bragging about how 'leet' they are. The unfortunate (depending on your point of view) consequence of this will be that someone will eventually be driven to the point to take vigilante action against some of these idiots. That's when law enforcement will finally get involved, but believe me, it WON'T be to our benefit.
We can't stop the kiddies, we can't make people secure their systems. The only real chokepoints we have to this flood are the rootkits and exploit tools. A very VERY few of us have the ability to stem this tide. Sure, there will always be the occasional script kiddie with actual coding skills, but occasionally someone will take a backhoe to a fibre line too. We can deal with the rarities when they occur.
Civil liability shouldn't even come into play here. We need to take responsibility for our actions. We can still create provide information on security holes and write legitimate remote monitoring programs without at the same time creating tools for the idiots who have nothing better to do than make other's lives miserable.
I like the VR glasses he was mentioning. You
walk around hallways and the computer superimposes images of monsters into your reality, basically turning your entire life into a game. I don't know if this would be addictive or annoying, but it would sure be cool.:)
I'd imagine the porn industry would find this product useful as well.:)
If they REALLY wanted to, every bill has a unique serial number. This just seems like another glorified way to detect counterfiet bills. And besides, if you REALLY wanted to avoid this problem, I'm sure it would be rather difficult to protect the tiny little chip from a huge static discharge.:)
Ok. I'm going to spill all his secrets. This is how you start and operate your very own fly by night porn site. Take notes, there will be a quiz sometime maybe.
First, you need something to offer on your porn site. Most porn sites involve to some degree pictures of naked women (there are exceptions, I know). There are various ways to accomplish this. You can buy yourself a camera, go up to random women and offer them a wad of cash to take their clothes off, and repeat until you find one that doesn't slap you and run away screaming. This is your porn star.
Take a bunch of pictures of her and now you have content. But wait.. This takes too much work, and besides, it will actually COST YOU MONEY!!! We wouldn't want to actually invest anything in this. The 4 hours you're going to spend setting it up and all that time you're going to spend depositing money in the bank is going to take too much of your time, spending extra money on it just seems like a waste.
Thankfully, there is no need. Just go to Usenet. There is a treasure trove of prescanned pictures available in every variety you would ever need. Of course, most of these pictures are copyrighted, but thats not your problem. You're here to make money in the porn industry, and don't let laws, morals, ethics, or your standing in the community slow you down. Simply stea... err.. aquire as many pictures as you think you will need. Now its time to set up your web page!!!
You can invest in a server at a porn friendly ISP, pay a premium for bandwidth because they know you will have the most popular site they host (except for all the other porn sites). Pay through the nose and watch the orders trickle in...
WAIT!!! What am I saying!! No.. don't bother spending money on that expensive crap. Do what all the other thriving porn sites do. USE GEOCITIES!! Don't mind any disclaimers you see that prohibit exactly your site. This is not your concern. You're here to make money. Don't let guilt of abusing a free service get in the way!
Now you've got a place for your site, and you've uploaded all your pictures. Now you need a flashy front page. Exactly the page that no man with properly functioning anatomy will be able to look away from. This means you need LOTS of BIG WORDS IN CAPS that declare that you are offering not just any regular old porn, but the most nasty wet obscene and most likely illegal porn that has ever existed. And its only available on your site!
Make sure you mention that there are hot teen bitches that want you now, and other phrases that nobody can possibly refuse. All over this front page, you need lots of pictures of exciting beautiful girls (that you walked out on the street and took pictures of) and claim that all of them are naked inside. It doesn't matter if they're not, by the time the suckers find out, YOU WILL ALREADY HAVE THEIR MONEY! Of course, you don't want any children in your nasty porn site, so you better get one of their age verification passwords, or two or three of them just to be on the safe side, since this is a REALLY nasty site. Of course, unknown to the 3 new people that joined the internet this week, age verification systems are just a kickback scheme and do nothing to actually prevent minors, but thats not really your concern. You've done your part.
Now, while your site is the very best there ever was, its possible that you might not appeal to absolutely everyone. For this reason, you should make several front pages, each with a slightly different theme. Just in case some people enjoy men in leather rather than hot teen bitches. No matter. Simply set up a javascript function so when they close the window, it will automatically bring up the next page. I mean, these people intentionally went to your porn site, they're gonna get some porn, no matter what. We'll just keep rotating pages until they find one that they like.
And last but not least, you'll need visitors. The best and least expensive way to do this is sending email to everyone on the internet telling them all about it. People want you to do this. They all want to get into your porn site, I mean... who wouldn't? They've just been unfortunate enough not to hear about it yet, and most of them will be extremely happy you dropped them a short 100k email to tell them about it. A few of these people might send you email back telling you to remove them from your list. Of course, they're just probably doing that because their wife or girlfriend was hovering over them and made them write it. Secretly they want to get into your site, so you might as well send them more email so they'll be able to catch it the second time around. Don't forget to post about your site in every newsgroup on usenet too, and on web page forums, and anywhere else you can find. Just make sure you don't spend any actual money on it. That would cut into your profits, and we wouldn't want that.
Ok. Thats it. You now have a fully functional high volume popular porn site. I don't think I left anything out, but if I did, I'm sure its not important. That'll be $140. Cash please.
What part of plano? I got ADSL service here 1.54m/768k with no major problems. I'll agree the phone lines have MUCH to be desired, but dsl and isdn both work fine. I'm just northwest of Spring Creek and Custer.
Ok... I agree its wrong to charge someone for a service they're not using. However, thats about the only point in that article that makes any sense.
The point about them not stating that they would require a monthly payment is more or less meaningless. At some point, somebody had to sign something to authorize that. Someone had to fork over a credit card number. I can see this engagement happening at the checkout stand and a confused potential customer finding out at that time, but that customer has the option to tell the clerk something uncivilized and leave without singing into the contract.
Secondly, what exactly is "full internet functionality?" From a technical point of view, I have full "internet" functionality if I'm able to open a tcp socket to another computer on the internet. We are now functional. Granted, the iopener's basic design did not allow EVERY conceivable internet service to run. How exactly is this a problem? You can't play any of the pc or mac games on it. does this mean its lacking functionality? Its simply not an option it supports, but there's nothing that precludes such an option from being available, should someone port such a game to that platform and find a way to flash it on there. Yes.. not all iopeners have hard drives.... yet.:)
I wonder how many of these issues aren't just thrown in as padding to make the lawsuit seem more legitimate? Does it improve their chances of winning the suit on SOME ground even if its not the issue they were actually trying to go after? I wonder.
And what of the consumers who bought into it anyways? Its really sad that the average human being looks at a pretty box on a shelf in a store, and just plops down some money and walks out with it without ever thinking about what they've got. Then when its not everything they hoped for (and probably nothing ever is), they get upset about it. I wonder what would happen if they bought a discount TV set and discovered, after getting it home and unpacked, that it DIDN'T come with a remote control. I mean.. every OTHER TV set has a remote control, how can we reasonably expect that this model wouldn't?
So what was advertised anyways? did they say it had multimedia support? did it? Did it play ONE file format of some kind? Then it has it. It doesnt' play real? It doesn't play asf? Oh.. it plays mpeg.. its got multimedia support people. The fact that 99.9% of the content on the internet doesnt' support it, DOESN'T MATTER. Educate yourself if you want to know what you're getting. Otherwise, you'll always be disappointed. (DISCLIAMER.. I dont' know WHAT the iopener supports, and I dont' intend to find out, so if my hypethetical situations here are wrong, please don't sue me:)
Well, I still use some old 486's with 8 meg of ram around here, mostly for controllers. Since I don't even have a monitor on these systems, let alone X, I don't require a significant portion of the distribution. I've gotten a functional 3.6 slackware installation on one of these systems with an 85 meg HD, and I still have enough room left over for some small programs and to do a kernel compile.
Of course, since that release meets my needs in that case 100%, I've never even considered installing anything later. I've got 7.0 installed on my main box though.
GUI install routines are pretty to look at, but they are much less likely to work. Any VGA-compatible system can run Slackware's setup.
First time I installed slackware on one of my computers, I didn't even have VGA. All the equipment I had to spare was a 386-40 and a CGA card with an EGA monitor. Needless to say, I wasn't running X. But I was able to install slack 3.0 on it without a fuss and promptly purchased some newer hardware to take advantage of the OS. This was early 1998.
There are many ways to aprehend someone who has a warrant out for them. You pick them up at home, you pick them up at work, you wait till they get pulled over for having a tailight out. Most of the people with warrants out for them are for traffic offenses or other minor crimes. Even if this works as well as they claim, its not going to be instantanious. By the time you've got a "potential" match, the mark will be long gone. Sure, you can attempt to establish a pattern, but frankly as a law abiding tax paying public citizen, I'm willing to wait until he gets pulled over before you call out the swat team for that $200 ticket.
The potential for misuse is too great here. Technology is not infallible. It can be 99.9%, but that means nothing in the grande scheme of things. There will be LOTS of false positives in a system like this. Even if the prospect of getting picked up for someone else's crime doesn't bother you (after all, subsequent validation will vindicate you from this incident), if you ARE attempting to develop a pattern, then false positives will make for an extremely diverse pattern, one that can't be relied on for much.
At first when I read the summary of the article, I was thinking that he was going to somehow use those telescopes to actually DO the networking instead of just using them to find a house.
In fact, I kept thinking this beyond the point where he was talking about street lights and stop lights.
I wonder, how feasible could such a system be? If I had a high powered light bulb (or some other convienent light source) that could switch on and off very rapidly, then at the other end of the "network" have a telescope with a CCD camera watching the light, as long as the telescope never moved, data could be sent at a rate equal to the speed at which the light could be toggled.
I can see a great number of potential obstacles to this which would make it difficult to use in a production environment. But it would be a cool hack nevertheless.:)
You implied it was an accidental link, but the fact of the matter is, thats not YOUR image. Sure, you could copy it to your page and then it WOULD be your image, but as long as that image was hosted on someone else's site, it is theirs to do so as they please. If they want to change some random image on their site to a porno image, well, thats their business. If it causes you a problem, you shouldn't have been stealing it anyways.
Of course, its not really a bandwidth drain on them, of course not. Its just a puny 900 bytes. Why would anyone care? Of course, if you weren't the ONLY one doing it, it might add up after a while. The owner did something that made it clear what his position on the issue was. Sure, he could have just changed the name or something benign like that, but instead he felt like making a point.
He did not deface YOUR webpage. He changed HIS. The fact that you were lifing images off his site realtime and he decided to change one of those images to inflict you is besides the point.
Some of the descriptions are mine. The program I wrote, upon receiving a UPC code its not familiar with, query's the Internet UPC database to see if there's a match there, and if so, downloads the name, otherwise it prompts for the name at that time, along with cost and other information.
I'll post the source someday when its actually in a semi-functional state.
Well Duh. I suppose I shouldn't have generalized so quickly. Not everything is kept in the fridge. I keep a catalog of everything I buy, including the non-food stuff.
I have a barcode scanner set up next to my fridge so I can keep an inventory of whats in there. Its still quite buggy, but thats what a work in progress is, after all.:)
If you want to see, check it out at
http://206.54.177.105/cgi-bin/barcodehtml.cgi
Need to upgrade the mud based shell as well. Anybody who's anybody does their work in FPS mode these days. After all, its the only truely intuitive process. I mean seriously.. whats more likely? Someone entering the workforce that "intuitively" understands the concept of files and directories, and double clicking, or would they more likely understand roaming around with a shotgun and shooting monsters to erase files.
Lets get cracking people.. Until we can fully emulate everything we do in full 3D, then we might as well just do it in reality since it would be more efficient that way.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Thankfully, with you posting, I don't feel that need. :)
-Restil
Of course it was a satire. I picked up on that in the first 2 minutes of the movie. But satire alone doesn't make something funny or entertaining. "Scary Movie" accomplished this MUCH better, even if it only addressed one genre of movies.
You in fact seem more entertained by the reviews you percieve to be false than by the movie itself. I don't personally look to critics for my entertainment, although thats not to say they can't be entertaining in their own special way. But reviews should be utilized to determine if its worth my time and money to see the movie in the first place, and afterwards to see if others agree with my point of view.
Therefore, anyone who wants to see a dry movie full of top named actors(resses) weakly poke fun a the very industry they stake their livelihoods on, by all means, go see American Sweethearts. However, if you're just bored on a Saturday night, watching grass grow or paint dry will probably be more entertaining and certainly far less expensive.
-Restil
Not all movies. I'm sure there are some good ones out right now, as there have always been bad ones over the years. The problem is, while sitting through a bad movie, I can usually pick up (during the 20 minutes of previews) a few good candidates for GOOD movies.
:). There was not ONE preview that screamed at me "You have to see this!" Thats what previews are for anyways, to take the only good 1 minute worth of footage from a movie and make it out to be the best movie ever produced in the history of movie making. If the content of the movies is so bad they can't even pull THAT off, I've come to realize there might be an actual REASON I haven't been to a theatre more than 3 times since Phantom Meanace was released.
I was dragged to see America's Sweethearts last night (I had a couple female companions..... what was I to do? say NO!?!?
So what's the deal? Do movies suck more now than they used to, or am I just changing and finding that movies tend to pander to the less neurologically active audience?
-Restil
Tell the officer he's being recorded. You don't have to show him the recording device, nor do you actually have to have one. In fact, you can put a notice on the driver's side window that says something to the effect "Traffic stops may be monitored or recorded for quality assurance." or some BS like that. Then that whole "I didn't know I was being recorded bit" doesn't apply. Of course, if you actually SAY you're being recorded, then its on the recording as well, and they'll have a REALLY hard time dening that they knew about it.
The problem with is, is the fact that the whole REASON for recording police encounters is to have later evidence of police wrongdoing. If the police KNOW they're being recorded and they commit said act of wrongdoing, they will probably attempt to confiscate or destroy any recording devices. The way around this is to not HAVE any recording devices in the car. Use a cell phone to transmit the encounter and have a recorder on the other end.
In fact, if you're recording the conversation over the phone, you might not even have to disclose that fact. It HAS been proven in court that only one participant in a phone conversation has to know they're being recorded. I wonder....
-Restil
I'll admit, the site is sneaky. They don't outright say that they are the primary developers of MYSQL, but they certainly don't go out of their way to draw attention to that fact. They have a single link on the home page to the primary mysql.com site, but they don't make a distinction that is what it is.
They require registration to download anything on the site, and they have opt-in spam requests by default, but they do seem to offer the source for download, so even if they were charging money for downloads, they're still not in violation of the GPL.
I can see the confusion issue over the name. They SHOULD at least change it, or at the very least they should put a big notice on the front page that they are not the trademark holders of MySQL and are only using the name.
As far as I can see, whats been done is what can be done. The MySQL people have put out a press release about it, warning people of the possible confusion. I suppose in the future, if you're planning to use a potentially popular name, get all 3 of the domains, and if any of the 3 are already taken, by all means, find yourself another name, thereby avoiding trademark issues yourself.
-Restil
Of course, in 3 billion years, this might not much matter, but for two colliding galaxies, its quite possible for both of them to pass through each other without any stars colliding. However, its extremely likely that one or two stars will come within a light year of Earth. What will happen is a lot of the debris in the Oort cloud which usually remains in long period orbits way way out there can be flung into the inner solar system (the same effect happens every 60 million years or so when the solar system passes through one of the spiral arms.
:)
When this happens, there are suddenly a lot more big rocks roaming around the inner solar system, and the chances of Earth getting hit by one of them increases dramatically.
Of course, I personally don't plan to lose any sleep over this.
-Restil
Ok.. here goes. Just a few stats and other numbers. On an extremely expensive T1 line, assuming that 100% of the bandwidth is utilized, it would cost one cent to transmit 4 megs of data. Electricity costs, equipment costs, etc contribute to the cost of owning and operating a high volume website. We'll consider low volume websites run off of DSL lines are not in need of funding their existance. For a 28.8 modem user that spends 4 solid hours a day downloading data, over a month they will cost content providers a collective total of about $4. Someone with a high bandwidth connection that downloads 300 megs a day will cost a total of a little more than $22. What could be done, is the ISP, or even the user depending on the arrangement, would take a flat rate total based on the average user bandwidth and charge that much extra a month. This money would then be stored with a trusted central repository. When the user connects to a site, that site has the option of drawing from this central repository a fraction of a cent based on the bandwidth consumed by that user. At the end of the month, the site will recieve a check for the bandwidth consumed, averaged out over the total amount of money available. This would be primarily for sites that have no interest in making a profit, but don't want to have to pay through the nose for the privilage of simply existing. ISP's and/or users would not be required to do this, but the sites could always excersize the option of not allowing non-member users access to the page. Sites that rely on banner ads or subscriptions would be ineligible, and any site could opt not to take advantage of the service, as it would likely probably incur additional headaches. However, it is an option that would solve the thorny problem of sites that can't exist due to the bandwidth requirements. -Restil
I can tell you HOW to comprimise a system.
I can even write you a program to do it.
Then I can also write a program that after you've comprimised a system, you can proceed to modify that system in such a way that you can participate in continuous illegal access of it.
Should they be liable? No, not unless they used the utilities themselves. But they really shouldn't be doing it anyways. BO actually COULD serve a legitimate purpose, but rootkits really don't. Their very existance gives script kiddies fuel they need without even the justification of providing a useful resource to someone else.
What REALLY needs to be done is to catch some of those damn script kiddies and make an example out of them. The FBI won't even attempt to pursue them until the amount of damage caused exceeds a certain point. Its this attitude that causes these problems to perpetuate.
As an example, if some kid were to shoplift a candy bar from a convience store, and he was not caught, the owner of that store hasn't lost much. If he catches the kid and the kid gets prosecuted, then the community will know about it and at the very least, his friends might think twice about trying it themselves.
But if the police and everyone else involved simply looked the other way when this occured, saying it wasn't worth the effort to pursue them, two things will happen. First, there will be a LOT more missing candy bars. And second, that kid will be encouraged to attempt more risky endevours. He'll never have the opportunity to learn responsibility and respect, just abuse through the inactivity of others, he will consider to be ok and beyond reproach from those in authority.
And thus, the kiddies will continue to thrive. We will have DOS's, comprimised boxes, and a lot of annoying idiots on IRC bragging about how 'leet' they are. The unfortunate (depending on your point of view) consequence of this will be that someone will eventually be driven to the point to take vigilante action against some of these idiots. That's when law enforcement will finally get involved, but believe me, it WON'T be to our benefit.
We can't stop the kiddies, we can't make people secure their systems. The only real chokepoints we have to this flood are the rootkits and exploit tools. A very VERY few of us have the ability to stem this tide. Sure, there will always be the occasional script kiddie with actual coding skills, but occasionally someone will take a backhoe to a fibre line too. We can deal with the rarities when they occur.
Civil liability shouldn't even come into play here. We need to take responsibility for our actions. We can still create provide information on security holes and write legitimate remote monitoring programs without at the same time creating tools for the idiots who have nothing better to do than make other's lives miserable.
-Restil
I like the VR glasses he was mentioning. You :)
:)
walk around hallways and the computer superimposes images of monsters into your reality, basically turning your entire life into a game. I don't know if this would be addictive or annoying, but it would sure be cool.
I'd imagine the porn industry would find this product useful as well.
-Restil
If they REALLY wanted to, every bill has a unique serial number. This just seems like another glorified way to detect counterfiet bills. And besides, if you REALLY wanted to avoid this problem, I'm sure it would be rather difficult to protect the tiny little chip from a huge static discharge. :)
-Restil
Ok. I'm going to spill all his secrets. This is how you start and operate your very own fly by night porn site. Take notes, there will be a quiz sometime maybe.
First, you need something to offer on your porn site. Most porn sites involve to some degree pictures of naked women (there are exceptions, I know). There are various ways to accomplish this. You can buy yourself a camera, go up to random women and offer them a wad of cash to take their clothes off, and repeat until you find one that doesn't slap you and run away screaming. This is your porn star.
Take a bunch of pictures of her and now you have content. But wait.. This takes too much work, and besides, it will actually COST YOU MONEY!!! We wouldn't want to actually invest anything in this. The 4 hours you're going to spend setting it up and all that time you're going to spend depositing money in the bank is going to take too much of your time, spending extra money on it just seems like a waste.
Thankfully, there is no need. Just go to Usenet. There is a treasure trove of prescanned pictures available in every variety you would ever need. Of course, most of these pictures are copyrighted, but thats not your problem. You're here to make money in the porn industry, and don't let laws, morals, ethics, or your standing in the community slow you down. Simply stea... err.. aquire as many pictures as you think you will need. Now its time to set up your web page!!!
You can invest in a server at a porn friendly ISP, pay a premium for bandwidth because they know you will have the most popular site they host (except for all the other porn sites). Pay through the nose and watch the orders trickle in...
WAIT!!! What am I saying!! No.. don't bother spending money on that expensive crap. Do what all the other thriving porn sites do. USE GEOCITIES!! Don't mind any disclaimers you see that prohibit exactly your site. This is not your concern. You're here to make money. Don't let guilt of abusing a free service get in the way!
Now you've got a place for your site, and you've uploaded all your pictures. Now you need a flashy front page. Exactly the page that no man with properly functioning anatomy will be able to look away from. This means you need LOTS of BIG WORDS IN CAPS that declare that you are offering not just any regular old porn, but the most nasty wet obscene and most likely illegal porn that has ever existed. And its only available on your site!
Make sure you mention that there are hot teen bitches that want you now, and other phrases that nobody can possibly refuse. All over this front page, you need lots of pictures of exciting beautiful girls (that you walked out on the street and took pictures of) and claim that all of them are naked inside. It doesn't matter if they're not, by the time the suckers find out, YOU WILL ALREADY HAVE THEIR MONEY! Of course, you don't want any children in your nasty porn site, so you better get one of their age verification passwords, or two or three of them just to be on the safe side, since this is a REALLY nasty site. Of course, unknown to the 3 new people that joined the internet this week, age verification systems are just a kickback scheme and do nothing to actually prevent minors, but thats not really your concern. You've done your part.
Now, while your site is the very best there ever was, its possible that you might not appeal to absolutely everyone. For this reason, you should make several front pages, each with a slightly different theme. Just in case some people enjoy men in leather rather than hot teen bitches. No matter. Simply set up a javascript function so when they close the window, it will automatically bring up the next page. I mean, these people intentionally went to your porn site, they're gonna get some porn, no matter what. We'll just keep rotating pages until they find one that they like.
And last but not least, you'll need visitors. The best and least expensive way to do this is sending email to everyone on the internet telling them all about it. People want you to do this. They all want to get into your porn site, I mean... who wouldn't? They've just been unfortunate enough not to hear about it yet, and most of them will be extremely happy you dropped them a short 100k email to tell them about it. A few of these people might send you email back telling you to remove them from your list. Of course, they're just probably doing that because their wife or girlfriend was hovering over them and made them write it. Secretly they want to get into your site, so you might as well send them more email so they'll be able to catch it the second time around. Don't forget to post about your site in every newsgroup on usenet too, and on web page forums, and anywhere else you can find. Just make sure you don't spend any actual money on it. That would cut into your profits, and we wouldn't want that.
Ok. Thats it. You now have a fully functional high volume popular porn site. I don't think I left anything out, but if I did, I'm sure its not important. That'll be $140. Cash please.
-Restil
:)
What part of plano? I got ADSL service here 1.54m/768k with no major problems. I'll agree the phone lines have MUCH to be desired, but dsl and isdn both work fine. I'm just northwest of Spring Creek and Custer.
-Restil
Ok... I agree its wrong to charge someone for a service they're not using. However, thats about the only point in that article that makes any sense.
:)
:)
The point about them not stating that they would require a monthly payment is more or less meaningless. At some point, somebody had to sign something to authorize that. Someone had to fork over a credit card number. I can see this engagement happening at the checkout stand and a confused potential customer finding out at that time, but that customer has the option to tell the clerk something uncivilized and leave without singing into the contract.
Secondly, what exactly is "full internet functionality?" From a technical point of view, I have full "internet" functionality if I'm able to open a tcp socket to another computer on the internet. We are now functional. Granted, the iopener's basic design did not allow EVERY conceivable internet service to run. How exactly is this a problem? You can't play any of the pc or mac games on it. does this mean its lacking functionality? Its simply not an option it supports, but there's nothing that precludes such an option from being available, should someone port such a game to that platform and find a way to flash it on there. Yes.. not all iopeners have hard drives.... yet.
I wonder how many of these issues aren't just thrown in as padding to make the lawsuit seem more legitimate? Does it improve their chances of winning the suit on SOME ground even if its not the issue they were actually trying to go after? I wonder.
And what of the consumers who bought into it anyways? Its really sad that the average human being looks at a pretty box on a shelf in a store, and just plops down some money and walks out with it without ever thinking about what they've got. Then when its not everything they hoped for (and probably nothing ever is), they get upset about it. I wonder what would happen if they bought a discount TV set and discovered, after getting it home and unpacked, that it DIDN'T come with a remote control. I mean.. every OTHER TV set has a remote control, how can we reasonably expect that this model wouldn't?
So what was advertised anyways? did they say it had multimedia support? did it? Did it play ONE file format of some kind? Then it has it. It doesnt' play real? It doesn't play asf? Oh.. it plays mpeg.. its got multimedia support people. The fact that 99.9% of the content on the internet doesnt' support it, DOESN'T MATTER. Educate yourself if you want to know what you're getting. Otherwise, you'll always be disappointed. (DISCLIAMER.. I dont' know WHAT the iopener supports, and I dont' intend to find out, so if my hypethetical situations here are wrong, please don't sue me
-Restil
Well, I still use some old 486's with 8 meg of ram around here, mostly for controllers. Since I don't even have a monitor on these systems, let alone X, I don't require a significant portion of the distribution. I've gotten a functional 3.6 slackware installation on one of these systems with an 85 meg HD, and I still have enough room left over for some small programs and to do a kernel compile.
Of course, since that release meets my needs in that case 100%, I've never even considered installing anything later. I've got 7.0 installed on my main box though.
-Restil
GUI install routines are pretty to look at, but they are much less likely to work. Any VGA-compatible system can run Slackware's setup.
First time I installed slackware on one of my computers, I didn't even have VGA. All the equipment I had to spare was a 386-40 and a CGA card with an EGA monitor. Needless to say, I wasn't running X. But I was able to install slack 3.0 on it without a fuss and promptly purchased some newer hardware to take advantage of the OS. This was early 1998.
-Restil
Ok... was it REALLY released this time or is this just another overreaction to a directory name on an ftp server? :)
-Restil
There are many ways to aprehend someone who has a warrant out for them. You pick them up at home, you pick them up at work, you wait till they get pulled over for having a tailight out. Most of the people with warrants out for them are for traffic offenses or other minor crimes. Even if this works as well as they claim, its not going to be instantanious. By the time you've got a "potential" match, the mark will be long gone. Sure, you can attempt to establish a pattern, but frankly as a law abiding tax paying public citizen, I'm willing to wait until he gets pulled over before you call out the swat team for that $200 ticket.
The potential for misuse is too great here. Technology is not infallible. It can be 99.9%, but that means nothing in the grande scheme of things. There will be LOTS of false positives in a system like this. Even if the prospect of getting picked up for someone else's crime doesn't bother you (after all, subsequent validation will vindicate you from this incident), if you ARE attempting to develop a pattern, then false positives will make for an extremely diverse pattern, one that can't be relied on for much.
-Restil
At first when I read the summary of the article, I was thinking that he was going to somehow use those telescopes to actually DO the networking instead of just using them to find a house.
:)
In fact, I kept thinking this beyond the point where he was talking about street lights and stop lights.
I wonder, how feasible could such a system be? If I had a high powered light bulb (or some other convienent light source) that could switch on and off very rapidly, then at the other end of the "network" have a telescope with a CCD camera watching the light, as long as the telescope never moved, data could be sent at a rate equal to the speed at which the light could be toggled.
I can see a great number of potential obstacles to this which would make it difficult to use in a production environment. But it would be a cool hack nevertheless.
-Restil
You implied it was an accidental link, but the fact of the matter is, thats not YOUR image. Sure, you could copy it to your page and then it WOULD be your image, but as long as that image was hosted on someone else's site, it is theirs to do so as they please. If they want to change some random image on their site to a porno image, well, thats their business. If it causes you a problem, you shouldn't have been stealing it anyways.
Of course, its not really a bandwidth drain on them, of course not. Its just a puny 900 bytes. Why would anyone care? Of course, if you weren't the ONLY one doing it, it might add up after a while. The owner did something that made it clear what his position on the issue was. Sure, he could have just changed the name or something benign like that, but instead he felt like making a point.
He did not deface YOUR webpage. He changed HIS. The fact that you were lifing images off his site realtime and he decided to change one of those images to inflict you is besides the point.
-Restil
Yes, I have to admit. That was rather entertaining. Can't replace slashdot, but it was a decent temporary alternative, and almost as fulfilling. :)
+1 Pimp (those that were there will know.... )
-Restil
Some of the descriptions are mine. The program I wrote, upon receiving a UPC code its not familiar with, query's the Internet UPC database to see if there's a match there, and if so, downloads the name, otherwise it prompts for the name at that time, along with cost and other information.
I'll post the source someday when its actually in a semi-functional state.
-Restil
Well Duh. I suppose I shouldn't have generalized so quickly. Not everything is kept in the fridge. I keep a catalog of everything I buy, including the non-food stuff.
:)
Sorry for the confusion.
-Restil
I have a barcode scanner set up next to my fridge so I can keep an inventory of whats in there. Its still quite buggy, but thats what a work in progress is, after all. :)
If you want to see, check it out at
http://206.54.177.105/cgi-bin/barcodehtml.cgi
-Restil
We now need a FPS kernel configuration routine.
:)
Need to upgrade the mud based shell as well. Anybody who's anybody does their work in FPS mode these days. After all, its the only truely intuitive process. I mean seriously.. whats more likely? Someone entering the workforce that "intuitively" understands the concept of files and directories, and double clicking, or would they more likely understand roaming around with a shotgun and shooting monsters to erase files.
Lets get cracking people.. Until we can fully emulate everything we do in full 3D, then we might as well just do it in reality since it would be more efficient that way.
-Restil
Don't have to speak spanish.
Hell, you don't even have to speak english.
You just have to show up everyday.
-Restil