Has anyone else noticed that the last 10 weeks or so have been pretty poor?
Actually, i thought last week's (week of February 9), was pretty damn funny. The Oxygen Network Infographic("Does This Top Go With This Show?"), "Why do all these Homosexuals..." and the "Valentine's Day Kids Page" were inspired humor, IMHO
So I figured, in the interest of discussion, that I'd post a general reply to a few of the points brought up in response to mine.
I'm sick of this crap. Not the/. discussion crap, I'm sick of people thinking that anything Net-connected is theirs to screw with as they please. Got a chat with the Prez? Hey, don't use it for useful info, or to ask questions - crack something and talk about porn. Bored? Launch a DOS attack against a few targets. School out for the day? Hack some innocent guy's Linux box.
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. I've never bought this idea that security problems need to be "demonstrated". I don't understand the mentality that thinks that breaking into someone's property is the best way to help them feel safe. (Note: Minor topic drift here)
Not to mention that this wasn't even particularly funny. "I like porn."? Yeah, that's a classic.
So, CNN decides to try something new. Online interview. Sounds neat. They even get President Clinton. It's a good way to help the acceptance of the Internet as a daily part of life along.
And then, some dip decides that now is a great time to make his little statement about .
Good work, genius. Why didn't you drop an email to CNN's people, letting them know about this problem?
Of course not, because that wouldn't give you a chance to put up a "Look how cool I am!" web page.
Heck, the guy practically praises the event at the beginning of the article, calling it "a reasonable attempt to integrate two media".
So, if it was so reasonable, why did you feel the need to screw around with it?
Christ, people, if we ever want to stop this idea that all computer people are "hacker doodz", then we need to stop acting like five year olds whenever the chance might present itself.
True, this is a funny story, but I always gotta wonder - how legal is stuff like this? Are they getting remarried "outside" just to be sure, or did they get a dispensation from someone, or what?
....nothing. No mention of Crusoe anywhere in the article, no mention that the Transmeta announcement had anything to do with Intel rushing this product to ship..
In other words,/. has Transmeta on the brain. ANy announcement of a new chip wil be couched as a "response to the Crusoe", which as everyone knows, must be the do-all, be-all, and end-all chip.
Just observing: McGrath pointed out that the students themselves are not paying for their Internet connection. Therefore they would not have a say in the matter, as the taxpayers are the ones who pay for the connection.
McGrath is wrong. A good portion of school funding comes from tuition, room/board, and the like. WHen you factor in that the students pay taxes and tuition/room/board, then they probably pay an appreciable fraction overall.
Also, at almost every university I've heard of, students pay for the in-room connection. As far as I'm concerned, that's close to ISP status.
As both a computer science student and a Resident Assistant, I fall on both sides of this edict - those affected by it, and those who would(if in Arizona) be required to enforce it.
Although RA's, in general, get a lot of flak for not "letting people have any fun", there is one thing that RA's generally have in common - we don't want to enforce more regulations then necessary.
In this case, I have a whole lotta problems with this. In effect, a regulation like the one dealing with inter-gender dorm visitation would require me to stop people from having sex.
I won't be doing that.
Mind you, this isn't a moral judgement. If you want to have extramarital sex, so long as it's legal for you to do so(i.e., age of consent), I'm not planning to stop you. That's your choice. I'm not planning to pigeonhole residents who live for me just because some state senator decides that Sex Is Dirty.
The network restriction is even more ludicrous. Porn viewers don't really hurt anyone. True, they take up shared bandwidth, but I doubt enough porn is shoved through ANY school's machines to make a noticeable difference in network traffic or available bandwidth. Second, this idea of filtering cuts to the very heart of free speech - in effect, you are preventing legitimate adults from using services that they have paid for in ways that are perfectly legal and don't hurt anyone. Some schools decide that they don't want porn on a school-by-school basis. While I may not agree with the decision, it's something that each school needs to decide. Personally, i don't see many schools deciding that monitoring porn habits is a good use of employee time.
Finally, I don't think that filtering enhances "education" any more. Is Slashdot eduicational? Well, I don't have any classes that talk about it, so not really. Same with the Weather Channel Online, CNN Interactive, etc. Where do we draw the line between educational and non?
The answer: Don't regulate it. If a school has a bandwidth problem, and they want to regulate, fine. But, don't regulate me because you have a "moral" problem with what I do, and because you're a state senator.
Re:It's a much harder problem.
on
GPL for Books?
·
· Score: 2
Will we face "umb-teen billion" (a technical term) different help documents all of which are missing the information you're looking for?
In a way, this already happens. For instance, right now I got a problem with my Samba browsing stuff. For some reason, I can't get it to show up on my local WINS server. Now, I can find tons and tons of info on how to set up browsing, but zero troubleshooting information. That information just isn't out there, at least that I can find.
I've run into the same problem with various other things, too. As it is, I'm gonna probably write some docs of my own, just to cover the stuff that I had to figure out how to do.
It's a much harder problem.
on
GPL for Books?
·
· Score: 2
By GPL'ing(or an equivalent) the written word, more problems pop up then in the OPen Source world.
For one, I think it'd be REAL tough to get a publisher to print an Open Content licensed piece. Publishers generally work on volume - that's the nature of their business. If they've got something that can be freely copied and passed out legally, then a publisher probably won't wanna handle it.
Two, it's a lot harder to team0work on a book. Most source code can be effectiveluy black-bpxed - input goes in, output goes out. What's in between doesn't matter a ton. However, with books, not only is the middle really the meat, but there are thousand of ways to say it. I could rewrite parts of books to be more technical, but if the book is going for a more laid back look, well.....
Finally, thee's the option not to p[ublish at all. What about distributable CD-ROM's or something? That way, you could straddly the distance between OPen Content and Open Source.
As a recent victim of credit card fraud(from a "legit" company), I gotta say that this scares me a little. However, it is the price I pay for convenience. The time that I spent working out my last credit card fraud problem is nothing compared to the time I save by not having to stop for cash, not having to write a check, etc. The convenience of being able to whip out my card is nice. In addition, it's nice to be able to order things online/over the phone without having to mail them a check of some sort.
However, I must ask - why now? We've seen two stories like this in the last week, and they both seem to have been planned for a while. Is there some sort of reason this is suddenly more prevalent?
Do you think that science will ever discover the Grand Unified Field Theory, or that it even exists? Along the same line, do you think that it is worth the time and money to investigate, or could it be better spent elsewhere?
This may seem scary, but the same thing happens almost daily in the real world. Hell, the same thing happened to me - a company I had had problems with in the past decided that they wanted me to have e 300 dollar DVD player, so they charged my card. Problem was, I neither wanted or needed it, and they couldn't/wouldn't cancel the order. Took me two months of wrangling to get it sorted out.
And I never touched a computer while making my original order with said Giant_Bastard_Company. It was all done over the phone.
I tend to worry more about the company on the other end than anyone in the middle or hacking.
These cases do look kinda neat, but I gotta ask - do these work nice with standard components? For instance, my gateway Linux box is a Gateway 2000(Yes, I am aware of the irony) which has an internal IDE cdrom drive with the fancy bezel. The case looks very cool, but the only other CDROMS I can fit in that space must fit that particular bezel. I' like to get a case without that problem.
Also - as an aside, what's up with the "call for prices". Does market value really fluctuate that much from day to day?
Logical. I would probably register as something if I wanted to vote in the primaries. I say if because I don't know where I will be living when the election rolls around, and since primary voting differs from state to state, I can't really say one way or the other.
B: No Vote, No Bitch.
Of course, this is AMerica, and everyone has enough free speech to be able to bitch about anything. However, if you can vote, and don't, as far as I am concerned, shut up. You had your chance to express your real opinion, and you didn't. If you don't have the chance, then that's different.
C: None of the Above.
Perfect. I would love a None Of THe Above vote. I probably wouldn't use it real often, but options are nice.
D: Extra Thoughts.
One other thought. Let's lose this one-on-one crap. Democrats and Republicans each pick one candidate, and they run against each other. Heck, let's float everyone who can afford to. Chances are, everything would end up the same anyways, but at least in this case, we could still vote for Bradley over GOre, if we wanted to.
I shudder when I hear people talk of the Geek Ticket, or the Republican Ticket, or the Democratic Ticket.
I am proud to say that I don't belong to a single political party. Why? Because I make my own decisions. I support the candidate that best fits me, not the candidate with my favorite letter after their name.
I urge all of oyu to engage in some good political discussion and debate, but in the end, make your own choice. Don't let anyone shame you into a choice, and dont be a one-issue voter. Vote for more then just the guy who's best for the Net, because the Net is just a small piece of our world. No one is perfect. Make your choice on the best candidate. And for God's sake, vote. If you don't vote, don't bitch.
I can think of a couple of reasons that MS/Hotmail would want Linux/BSD people.
1. They wish to port various tools (Office, Encarta, FrontPage) to Linux or BSD. This is most definetly not a bad thing, and is, IMHO, good. The plethora of tools for LInux/BSD can only be a good thing.
2. They recognize the value of BSD(in Hotmail's case) and are willing to hire people to keep it going. This is also a good thing. If they recognize that BSD works well enough not to replace it with NT or some such, that can only be a good thing.
3. They plan to use it as a FUD generator. Inthis case, I don't think they would hire people with Linux/BSD experience, because generally, those people wouldn't find faults, only differences. IMHO, the most clued computer people are those who see things more as differences, and not faults.
4. They want to make Windows/Linux integration easier. SOunds good to me.
5. They want to make a Linux distro. Neither good nor bad, really - thanks to GPL, they can't possibly take over the market, and another distro probably wouldn't hurt anything.
Basically, I see this as a win-win situation all around. I hope we see more of this sort of thing coming out of Redmond soon.
and I'd say that's having a tiny impact on todays society.
As would I. In retrospect, I'm not terribly surprised that some e-commerce/Internet/Web guy got it. But, you're right - in the grand scheme of things, e-commerce hasn;t changed a whole lot of anything.
OK, So Bezos gets POTY(Person of the Year) while his company, never having made a profit, is 300 million dollars in the hole for this year. Can I just spend all of my salaray next year and be Person of the Year?
Of course, there is also the fact that POTY has always been about influence, not "likeability". Yeah, Hitler was POTY in the 30's, but the man did have an influence, no doubt about it. Probably were better choices, but I bet Bezos was picked becasue Amazon is famous. It's not like they are gonna pick Redhat's CEO. Most people don't recognize the name. Bezos is an e-commerce symbol, nothing more nothing less.
I don't know if the poster of this article bothered reading the link, but the summary is not accurate. Corel is suing the Department of Labor because they believe that DOL made it easier for MS to win the contract then Corel. This is significantly different then what the summary posts, which basically states that COrel is suing because they are sore losers. In this case, Corel may or may not have a case - the court system will figure it out. If it's true, DOL should be smacked - especially because a large portion of their machines had WOrdPerfect licenses already. I hate money wasters.
Are you talking no mouse, or no pointing device at all? A friend of mine has a keyboard with a pretty decent touchpad built in. Since the touchpad and the keyboard have separate plugs, I don't see why it shouldn't work under Linux. If however, you're going for no pointing devices whatsoever, you're still going to have to drag something somewhere, no matter which WM you use - and likely, it'll be more repetitive and stressful on the hands then just grabbing the mouse.
There is one more thing I did want to pass along. I found that one thing that helps my wrists after a long day of various computer things is making sure that all my input hardware is good stuff. I'll probably get knee-jerk flamed for this, but Microsoft makes some of the best input hardware out there. This summer, I needed a new keyboard and mouse, and I picked up a Microsoft Natural and an Intellimouse, as well as a Sidewinder for gaming. Since then, no matter how many lines of code I;ve written, I can't think of a time when my wrists have even hurt. It's worth the money, trust me.
You've gotta wonder....why was the above marked troll? The AC is right - it would be Spam. Bigtime spam. It doesn't matter if the spam is for a so-called "good cause" or if it's Canter and Siegel again - it'd pretty much be spam.
As much as I usualy dislike MS OS's, I must admit their input hardware rocks. Currently, I use a MS Natural Elit, an Intellimouse with Wheel, and a Sidewinder pad for games. They are all comfortable, durable, clean up well(sticky fingers and the like), and have nice long cords. ALl in all, I plan to buy more MS input hardware in the near future.
When I really need to concentrate, I put on Dire Strait's Greatest Hits. However, when I'm coding something fun, or really need to stay awake, I toss on the Greatest Hits of George Clinton and Pariliament. YMMV.
OK, it's the buddylist trojan deal again. We've seen this before - sometimes it's a trojan, sometimes a damaging virus, but it's almost always "buddylist.exe" or "buddylist.zip". So, they're sending from OperaMaiL? Big deal, it's happened before from Yahoo, Hotmail, and seemingly every other freemail service. Finally, you don't get it just by opening email - as usual, you have to open the attachment, which they've been warned a thousand times not to do.
So, where exactly is the news in this? We've got idiots senidng mail to morons who open programs as attachments from people they don't know, and someone makes a federal case out of it. Crap, it's mostly Darwinized computing - maybe this'll keep the idiots off the net.
Slashdot Mirror
Has anyone else noticed that the last 10 weeks or so have been pretty poor?
Actually, i thought last week's (week of February 9), was pretty damn funny. The Oxygen Network Infographic("Does This Top Go With This Show?"), "Why do all these Homosexuals..." and the "Valentine's Day Kids Page" were inspired humor, IMHO
So I figured, in the interest of discussion, that I'd post a general reply to a few of the points brought up in response to mine.
/. discussion crap, I'm sick of people thinking that anything Net-connected is theirs to screw with as they please. Got a chat with the Prez? Hey, don't use it for useful info, or to ask questions - crack something and talk about porn. Bored? Launch a DOS attack against a few targets. School out for the day? Hack some innocent guy's Linux box.
I'm sick of this crap. Not the
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. I've never bought this idea that security problems need to be "demonstrated". I don't understand the mentality that thinks that breaking into someone's property is the best way to help them feel safe. (Note: Minor topic drift here)
Not to mention that this wasn't even particularly funny. "I like porn."? Yeah, that's a classic.
So, CNN decides to try something new. Online interview. Sounds neat. They even get President Clinton. It's a good way to help the acceptance of the Internet as a daily part of life along.
And then, some dip decides that now is a great time to make his little statement about .
Good work, genius. Why didn't you drop an email to CNN's people, letting them know about this problem?
Of course not, because that wouldn't give you a chance to put up a "Look how cool I am!" web page.
Heck, the guy practically praises the event at the beginning of the article, calling it "a reasonable attempt to integrate two media".
So, if it was so reasonable, why did you feel the need to screw around with it?
Christ, people, if we ever want to stop this idea that all computer people are "hacker doodz", then we need to stop acting like five year olds whenever the chance might present itself.
True, this is a funny story, but I always gotta wonder - how legal is stuff like this? Are they getting remarried "outside" just to be sure, or did they get a dispensation from someone, or what?
....nothing. No mention of Crusoe anywhere in the article, no mention that the Transmeta announcement had anything to do with Intel rushing this product to ship..
/. has Transmeta on the brain. ANy announcement of a new chip wil be couched as a "response to the Crusoe", which as everyone knows, must be the do-all, be-all, and end-all chip.
In other words,
Sheesh.
Just observing: McGrath pointed out that the students themselves are not paying for their Internet connection. Therefore they would not have a say in the matter, as the taxpayers are the ones who pay for the connection.
McGrath is wrong. A good portion of school funding comes from tuition, room/board, and the like. WHen you factor in that the students pay taxes and tuition/room/board, then they probably pay an appreciable fraction overall.
Also, at almost every university I've heard of, students pay for the in-room connection. As far as I'm concerned, that's close to ISP status.
As both a computer science student and a Resident Assistant, I fall on both sides of this edict - those affected by it, and those who would(if in Arizona) be required to enforce it.
Although RA's, in general, get a lot of flak for not "letting people have any fun", there is one thing that RA's generally have in common - we don't want to enforce more regulations then necessary.
In this case, I have a whole lotta problems with this. In effect, a regulation like the one dealing with inter-gender dorm visitation would require me to stop people from having sex.
I won't be doing that.
Mind you, this isn't a moral judgement. If you want to have extramarital sex, so long as it's legal for you to do so(i.e., age of consent), I'm not planning to stop you. That's your choice. I'm not planning to pigeonhole residents who live for me just because some state senator decides that Sex Is Dirty.
The network restriction is even more ludicrous. Porn viewers don't really hurt anyone. True, they take up shared bandwidth, but I doubt enough porn is shoved through ANY school's machines to make a noticeable difference in network traffic or available bandwidth. Second, this idea of filtering cuts to the very heart of free speech - in effect, you are preventing legitimate adults from using services that they have paid for in ways that are perfectly legal and don't hurt anyone. Some schools decide that they don't want porn on a school-by-school basis. While I may not agree with the decision, it's something that each school needs to decide. Personally, i don't see many schools deciding that monitoring porn habits is a good use of employee time.
Finally, I don't think that filtering enhances "education" any more. Is Slashdot eduicational? Well, I don't have any classes that talk about it, so not really. Same with the Weather Channel Online, CNN Interactive, etc. Where do we draw the line between educational and non?
The answer: Don't regulate it. If a school has a bandwidth problem, and they want to regulate, fine. But, don't regulate me because you have a "moral" problem with what I do, and because you're a state senator.
Will we face "umb-teen billion" (a technical
term) different help documents all of which are missing the information you're looking for?
In a way, this already happens. For instance, right now I got a problem with my Samba browsing stuff. For some reason, I can't get it to show up on my local WINS server. Now, I can find tons and tons of info on how to set up browsing, but zero troubleshooting information. That information just isn't out there, at least that I can find.
I've run into the same problem with various other things, too. As it is, I'm gonna probably write some docs of my own, just to cover the stuff that I had to figure out how to do.
By GPL'ing(or an equivalent) the written word, more problems pop up then in the OPen Source world.
For one, I think it'd be REAL tough to get a publisher to print an Open Content licensed piece. Publishers generally work on volume - that's the nature of their business. If they've got something that can be freely copied and passed out legally, then a publisher probably won't wanna handle it.
Two, it's a lot harder to team0work on a book. Most source code can be effectiveluy black-bpxed - input goes in, output goes out. What's in between doesn't matter a ton. However, with books, not only is the middle really the meat, but there are thousand of ways to say it. I could rewrite parts of books to be more technical, but if the book is going for a more laid back look, well.....
Finally, thee's the option not to p[ublish at all. What about distributable CD-ROM's or something? That way, you could straddly the distance between OPen Content and Open Source.
As a recent victim of credit card fraud(from a "legit" company), I gotta say that this scares me a little. However, it is the price I pay for convenience. The time that I spent working out my last credit card fraud problem is nothing compared to the time I save by not having to stop for cash, not having to write a check, etc. The convenience of being able to whip out my card is nice. In addition, it's nice to be able to order things online/over the phone without having to mail them a check of some sort.
However, I must ask - why now? We've seen two stories like this in the last week, and they both seem to have been planned for a while. Is there some sort of reason this is suddenly more prevalent?
Do you think that science will ever discover the Grand Unified Field Theory, or that it even exists? Along the same line, do you think that it is worth the time and money to investigate, or could it be better spent elsewhere?
This may seem scary, but the same thing happens almost daily in the real world. Hell, the same thing happened to me - a company I had had problems with in the past decided that they wanted me to have e 300 dollar DVD player, so they charged my card. Problem was, I neither wanted or needed it, and they couldn't/wouldn't cancel the order. Took me two months of wrangling to get it sorted out.
And I never touched a computer while making my original order with said Giant_Bastard_Company. It was all done over the phone.
I tend to worry more about the company on the other end than anyone in the middle or hacking.
These cases do look kinda neat, but I gotta ask - do these work nice with standard components? For instance, my gateway Linux box is a Gateway 2000(Yes, I am aware of the irony) which has an internal IDE cdrom drive with the fancy bezel. The case looks very cool, but the only other CDROMS I can fit in that space must fit that particular bezel. I' like to get a case without that problem.
Also - as an aside, what's up with the "call for prices". Does market value really fluctuate that much from day to day?
Lucas is a major proponent of digital filmmaking - getting away from actual film, and turning to movies stored as data.
Which makes me wonder - why is he such a big hater of DVD, when it is the realization of his goals?
Few minor followups to points others have raised:
A: Political Party Affiliation for Primaries.
Logical. I would probably register as something if I wanted to vote in the primaries. I say if because I don't know where I will be living when the election rolls around, and since primary voting differs from state to state, I can't really say one way or the other.
B: No Vote, No Bitch.
Of course, this is AMerica, and everyone has enough free speech to be able to bitch about anything. However, if you can vote, and don't, as far as I am concerned, shut up. You had your chance to express your real opinion, and you didn't. If you don't have the chance, then that's different.
C: None of the Above.
Perfect. I would love a None Of THe Above vote. I probably wouldn't use it real often, but options are nice.
D: Extra Thoughts.
One other thought. Let's lose this one-on-one crap. Democrats and Republicans each pick one candidate, and they run against each other. Heck, let's float everyone who can afford to. Chances are, everything would end up the same anyways, but at least in this case, we could still vote for Bradley over GOre, if we wanted to.
I shudder when I hear people talk of the Geek Ticket, or the Republican Ticket, or the Democratic Ticket.
I am proud to say that I don't belong to a single political party. Why? Because I make my own decisions. I support the candidate that best fits me, not the candidate with my favorite letter after their name.
I urge all of oyu to engage in some good political discussion and debate, but in the end, make your own choice. Don't let anyone shame you into a choice, and dont be a one-issue voter. Vote for more then just the guy who's best for the Net, because the Net is just a small piece of our world. No one is perfect. Make your choice on the best candidate. And for God's sake, vote. If you don't vote, don't bitch.
I can think of a couple of reasons that MS/Hotmail would want Linux/BSD people.
1. They wish to port various tools (Office, Encarta, FrontPage) to Linux or BSD. This is most definetly not a bad thing, and is, IMHO, good. The plethora of tools for LInux/BSD can only be a good thing.
2. They recognize the value of BSD(in Hotmail's case) and are willing to hire people to keep it going. This is also a good thing. If they recognize that BSD works well enough not to replace it with NT or some such, that can only be a good thing.
3. They plan to use it as a FUD generator. Inthis case, I don't think they would hire people with Linux/BSD experience, because generally, those people wouldn't find faults, only differences. IMHO, the most clued computer people are those who see things more as differences, and not faults.
4. They want to make Windows/Linux integration easier. SOunds good to me.
5. They want to make a Linux distro. Neither good nor bad, really - thanks to GPL, they can't possibly take over the market, and another distro probably wouldn't hurt anything.
Basically, I see this as a win-win situation all around. I hope we see more of this sort of thing coming out of Redmond soon.
and I'd say that's having a tiny impact on todays society.
As would I. In retrospect, I'm not terribly surprised that some e-commerce/Internet/Web guy got it. But, you're right - in the grand scheme of things, e-commerce hasn;t changed a whole lot of anything.
OK, So Bezos gets POTY(Person of the Year) while his company, never having made a profit, is 300 million dollars in the hole for this year. Can I just spend all of my salaray next year and be Person of the Year?
Of course, there is also the fact that POTY has always been about influence, not "likeability". Yeah, Hitler was POTY in the 30's, but the man did have an influence, no doubt about it. Probably were better choices, but I bet Bezos was picked becasue Amazon is famous. It's not like they are gonna pick Redhat's CEO. Most people don't recognize the name. Bezos is an e-commerce symbol, nothing more nothing less.
I don't know if the poster of this article bothered reading the link, but the summary is not accurate. Corel is suing the Department of Labor because they believe that DOL made it easier for MS to win the contract then Corel. This is significantly different then what the summary posts, which basically states that COrel is suing because they are sore losers. In this case, Corel may or may not have a case - the court system will figure it out. If it's true, DOL should be smacked - especially because a large portion of their machines had WOrdPerfect licenses already. I hate money wasters.
Are you talking no mouse, or no pointing device at all? A friend of mine has a keyboard with a pretty decent touchpad built in. Since the touchpad and the keyboard have separate plugs, I don't see why it shouldn't work under Linux. If however, you're going for no pointing devices whatsoever, you're still going to have to drag something somewhere, no matter which WM you use - and likely, it'll be more repetitive and stressful on the hands then just grabbing the mouse.
There is one more thing I did want to pass along. I found that one thing that helps my wrists after a long day of various computer things is making sure that all my input hardware is good stuff. I'll probably get knee-jerk flamed for this, but Microsoft makes some of the best input hardware out there. This summer, I needed a new keyboard and mouse, and I picked up a Microsoft Natural and an Intellimouse, as well as a Sidewinder for gaming. Since then, no matter how many lines of code I;ve written, I can't think of a time when my wrists have even hurt. It's worth the money, trust me.
You've gotta wonder....why was the above marked troll? The AC is right - it would be Spam. Bigtime spam. It doesn't matter if the spam is for a so-called "good cause" or if it's Canter and Siegel again - it'd pretty much be spam.
As much as I usualy dislike MS OS's, I must admit their input hardware rocks. Currently, I use a MS Natural Elit, an Intellimouse with Wheel, and a Sidewinder pad for games. They are all comfortable, durable, clean up well(sticky fingers and the like), and have nice long cords. ALl in all, I plan to buy more MS input hardware in the near future.
When I really need to concentrate, I put on Dire Strait's Greatest Hits. However, when I'm coding something fun, or really need to stay awake, I toss on the Greatest Hits of George Clinton and Pariliament. YMMV.
OK, it's the buddylist trojan deal again. We've seen this before - sometimes it's a trojan, sometimes a damaging virus, but it's almost always "buddylist.exe" or "buddylist.zip". So, they're sending from OperaMaiL? Big deal, it's happened before from Yahoo, Hotmail, and seemingly every other freemail service. Finally, you don't get it just by opening email - as usual, you have to open the attachment, which they've been warned a thousand times not to do.
So, where exactly is the news in this? We've got idiots senidng mail to morons who open programs as attachments from people they don't know, and someone makes a federal case out of it. Crap, it's mostly Darwinized computing - maybe this'll keep the idiots off the net.