hit ctrl-alt-F[1-6] to get out of the current X session to a virtual terminal
login with other user
xinit --:1
Now you have two completely separate X sessions running at the same time. I've no idea if there's a point-and-click (x|k|g)dm way to do this, but the capability is there.
I'm the admin of www.cloudmakers.org. The article here doesn't really give a very good explanation of why one of the members of Cloudmakers has created the brute force script, so here's a little background...
A couple of weeks ago, the game makers organized "anti-robot rallies" (see http://www.unite-and-resist.org) in LA, Chicago, and New York. One of the puzzles were given at these rallies were jigsaw puzzles (one for each city). LA and New York were able to keep their puzzles until they were completed and we translated the missing pieces into binary (thus hex) code that is seen on the puzzle page linked on slashdot. However, Chicago was not allowed to keep their puzzle and they only completed enough of it to give us one of the 4 digit hex fields. So we have 8 hex digits to figure out. While this is still pretty daunting, there have been no clues to tell help us out. We've successfully brute forced other pages in the game before, so perhaps the game makers _want_ us to do this, even though some people think it's against the "rules" of the game. But we've never been told the rules, so who knows?
I think it's important to say that there's much, much more to this game than this brute force script. Read the Trail and Guide to get up to speed. If you want to try to play the game yourself without spoilers, check out the Journey. And if you're really into it after that, join our mailing lists which are linked on the main page of cloudmakers.org.
---
Brian Seitz (praying to the slashdot effect gods)
I think this article unfairly points the finger at Yahoo!. You can still get a certain amount of mail service for free (something like 5 Megs storage). So, yes, some of the idiot dot-coms with "we will give you free things for branding purposes and then plan to screw you over when you depend on us, but oops, we ran out of money" as their motto have died. But I think Yahoo's committment to free stuff is alive and well. For the time being anyway.
These Helix Code (er, Ximian) guys aren't very good at picking a name the first time around, eh?
--
Re:Been done here for ages, and it works.
on
The Unblinking Eye
·
· Score: 2
I would really love to see the software that is capable of determining that I am breaking into a car rather than, say, wiping birdshit off the windshield before entering it. This makes the facial recognition thing look like ELIZA for the TRS-80 by comparison.
The program probably can't distinguish between those two things, which is why it simply alerts a _human operator_. I'll be worried when the computer determines someone is breaking into a car, fires a stun gun at him, collects his body, puts it in prison, and releases it 6 months later without human interaction.
Most of the CDs I own have songs published by the artist's own publishing company. Although I'm mostly talking about more established musicans who write their own songs (Lou Reed, David Bowie). I don't know what's the norm for pop artists of the moment (Britney Spears, etc.)
Will this battle ever stop? Companies give away free hardware and then expect some sort of loyalty from the people getting the hardware. Giving things away for free used to be a marketing ploy and a _risk_, not a contract. Unfortunately, the government and the people of the US too easily sign away their rights for free hardware. You've to say one good thing about AOL, however, they never complained about people copying over their free disks or using their CD-ROMS as frisbees/coasters.
There's a difference between lawless and free. Last time I checked, members of the Russian media were being arrested and the state was taking over control of television stations and newspapers.
Although I lost my warez connections around the same time I was old enough to get a driver's license, I imagine it's pretty easy to get Windows 2000 for free on the net. And no MS lawyers on your back! This point he makes doesn't really make any sense. People buy Windows 2000, either by itself or as part of a machine, because of the support (either documentation or pre-installation) that is provided with it. If it's a college hacker, it's likely he got his copy for free, because he's poor. If it's an older hacker, he may have bought his copy simply for the convenience of not sucking up to 14 year olds on IRC. Does anyone see the RIAA backing down? This comparison just doesn't make any sense.
Information wants to be convenient. For many people, it's more convenient to get music from Napster and listen to it on their computer. If the RIAA offered a reasonably priced, legal, Napster-like online service that didn't have Napster's inconsistencies, I think it would do incredible business. www.emusic.com is trying this out (a subscription service with unlimited downloads for $9.99 to $19.99 a month), however it has a limited number of artists (some of them are quite excellent, though, They Might Be Giants, Elvis Costello, Frank Black, along with hundreds of bands you've never heard of). Hopefully this model will be successful and become more mainstream.
The inaccurate pointing of blame in the media about these email worms is absolutely ridiculous. The solution to these worms is not to have better virus protection programs nor punish every malicious VB script master, it's to not use Outlook Express. Any suggestion of Microsoft's fault in the matter in major articles is always followed by a quote from some Microsoft exec saying "Well, it only happens to us because we have so many features and everyone uses our software, so _of course_ someone is going to choose exploit us to get the most coverage." No, they exploit Microsoft products because it's _so_ damn _easy_. No worm or virus has ever been so easy to avoid. Just get rid of Outlook Express. But I suppose that's just too painful of an option to recommend.
Re:MP3 radio stations? Digital broadcasts happen n
on
MP3.com Loses In Court
·
· Score: 1
Although they use Real Audio and not mp3, http://www.spinner.com plays mainstream (and not-so mainstream) artists. It has a plethora of categories and I find it the only "radio" I can stand listening to.
I tried to use sonicnet.com's "me music," but they unfortunately decided my Linux machine was a Macintosh and thus not supported. blah. if (OS != windows) { OS = MacOS; }. When will this logic cease?
Do you remember how Microsoft beat Netscape? They decided to develop Internet Explorer and give it away for free, when Netscape was selling their browser. If Microsoft had been two different companies then, the Internet one may not have been able to withstand giving away their product for free, because it wouldn't have the profit from the operating system. While the three companies could certainly still cooperate, they couldn't use their power in one aspect of the software business to take over another part. A broken off Internet department of Microsoft couldn't legally make itself totally unprofitable to be OS Microsoft's puppy dog, since it is a publically held company.
If anything, this fits right into a "GPL World." While this is certainly not a definitive legal metaphor, I'll give it a shot...
Author writes a comment and posts it on Slashdot.
Hellmouth book takes comment and sells it along with other comments, taking out the less-than-outstanding ones, making it more convenient.
All originals comments (aside from ones lost due to moderation, but presumably these comments aren't in the book either) are still available for free in Slashdot archives.
This is certainly in the spirit of freedom, open source, blah, blah.
I personally _hate_ how IE goes to the current page when you open up a new window. What if you currently happen to be on the result page of submitting an credit card order or something? There are some sites, such as moviefone.com, which will sit there for up to 2 minutes waiting to contact the theater you're buying a ticket for and finally will add to the page that the order has been finalized. While presumably an already loaded result page will simply be passed over to the new window without reloading, what would happen in the case of pages similar to this moviefone.com page where the page is not yet complete? I know it's possible for this to work safely, but I don't necessarily trust that it will be implement correctly, and I don't really see the point. Why would you want two copies of the same page, anyway? Opening links in a new window performs this function better.
Then again, I hate when a web browser goes to any page at all by default. I've always used "start with a blank page" in Netscape and Mozilla. I'm a bit annoyed when programs do things for me automatically that usually aren't correct. For the same reason, I don't like automatic name completion.
If anything, these should be configurable, _easily_ (yeah, yeah, "go edit the source you lazy ass!").
It's the _principle_ of it! "We" don't like Windows, for another example, but it should still be open source!
More seriously, the problem with capitalism and copyrighted "art"work is that there is no opportunity for another company to offer the same product and the theory of competition fails, allowing a monopoly. Ideally, someone else should be able to compete directly with Lucasfilm and release PM on DVD, because that is what the customers demand. However, given how copyrights work, we can only watch the Star Trek with the damned whale as a substitute. Or the Matrix. Whatever.
Perhaps the most ludicrous thing about the PM release, aside from the lack of DVD, is that the "special" wide-screen version cost about twice as much and was limited in copies. Why should you have to pay more to get the whole movie? In fact, it actually costs money to edit something for pan-and-scan so that it doesn't look horrible.
While watching the "regular" VHS copy, I noticed a few silly little pans to have a close up on the face that is talking and it really detracts from the experience, I think so anyway.
The story summary here overstates the problem a bit, implying that you can get _any_ site pulled. But the cases listed in the article refer only to sites where there is apparently defamatory things said about _yourself_. Now, of course, this isn't good, but it is also hardly anything new. This happens all the time in the United States, as well. There've been a few incidents where a student has posted obviously absurd things about teachers/other students (he is the antichrist, I want to kill him, etc.) and the site has been pulled, along with the student being suspended.
The sample site they used is hilarious, though. I can never get enough Simpsons references. "This is the largest automobile I could afford."
in my computer science class in high school, there was this one guy who inserted assembly into his pascal programs for no reason other than to show off. of course, the teacher was really a math person and didn't even understand pointers very well, so she wasn't very hip to that. i would say that was going a bit too far with style perhaps, but as long as the program works with any input data, you can't really complain.
i happened to find a new york post on the subway on the way to school and read an article about the simpsons movie which can be found here: http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/1251.htm.
in any case, i'd love a simpsons movie. this is the last season, so it's a good time for it, etc, etc. i'm quite disappointed with how fox is giving futurama the timeslot shaft for malcolm in the middle.
Slashdot Mirror
This is already available in Linux:
Now you have two completely separate X sessions running at the same time. I've no idea if there's a point-and-click (x|k|g)dm way to do this, but the capability is there.
I'm the admin of www.cloudmakers.org. The article here doesn't really give a very good explanation of why one of the members of Cloudmakers has created the brute force script, so here's a little background...
A couple of weeks ago, the game makers organized "anti-robot rallies" (see http://www.unite-and-resist.org) in LA, Chicago, and New York. One of the puzzles were given at these rallies were jigsaw puzzles (one for each city). LA and New York were able to keep their puzzles until they were completed and we translated the missing pieces into binary (thus hex) code that is seen on the puzzle page linked on slashdot. However, Chicago was not allowed to keep their puzzle and they only completed enough of it to give us one of the 4 digit hex fields. So we have 8 hex digits to figure out. While this is still pretty daunting, there have been no clues to tell help us out. We've successfully brute forced other pages in the game before, so perhaps the game makers _want_ us to do this, even though some people think it's against the "rules" of the game. But we've never been told the rules, so who knows?
I think it's important to say that there's much, much more to this game than this brute force script. Read the Trail and Guide to get up to speed. If you want to try to play the game yourself without spoilers, check out the Journey. And if you're really into it after that, join our mailing lists which are linked on the main page of cloudmakers.org.
---
Brian Seitz (praying to the slashdot effect gods)
I think this article unfairly points the finger at Yahoo!. You can still get a certain amount of mail service for free (something like 5 Megs storage). So, yes, some of the idiot dot-coms with "we will give you free things for branding purposes and then plan to screw you over when you depend on us, but oops, we ran out of money" as their motto have died. But I think Yahoo's committment to free stuff is alive and well. For the time being anyway.
--
Yeah, but that's a Catholic thing, who are very much a minority in the US.
--
These Helix Code (er, Ximian) guys aren't very good at picking a name the first time around, eh?
--
I would really love to see the software that is capable of determining that I am breaking into a car rather than, say, wiping birdshit off the windshield before entering it. This makes the facial recognition thing look like ELIZA for the TRS-80 by comparison.
The program probably can't distinguish between those two things, which is why it simply alerts a _human operator_. I'll be worried when the computer determines someone is breaking into a car, fires a stun gun at him, collects his body, puts it in prison, and releases it 6 months later without human interaction.
Most of the CDs I own have songs published by the artist's own publishing company. Although I'm mostly talking about more established musicans who write their own songs (Lou Reed, David Bowie). I don't know what's the norm for pop artists of the moment (Britney Spears, etc.)
Of course, you'd need to get your hands on actual Playstation 2 to play it, but I really like the looks of Starfighter from Lucas Arts.
For the Quicktime deficient, there are some mpg videos at gamespot .
_Finally_, portable pornography that doesn't rely on MS software. Geeks rejoice!
Will this battle ever stop? Companies give away free hardware and then expect some sort of loyalty from the people getting the hardware. Giving things away for free used to be a marketing ploy and a _risk_, not a contract. Unfortunately, the government and the people of the US too easily sign away their rights for free hardware. You've to say one good thing about AOL, however, they never complained about people copying over their free disks or using their CD-ROMS as frisbees/coasters.
hey wait. that's not goatse.cx! i am absolutely fascinated with this twist on the usual misleading link.
note: this is a forced test post. please excuse its stupidity.
There's a difference between lawless and free. Last time I checked, members of the Russian media were being arrested and the state was taking over control of television stations and newspapers.
Although I lost my warez connections around the same time I was old enough to get a driver's license, I imagine it's pretty easy to get Windows 2000 for free on the net. And no MS lawyers on your back! This point he makes doesn't really make any sense. People buy Windows 2000, either by itself or as part of a machine, because of the support (either documentation or pre-installation) that is provided with it. If it's a college hacker, it's likely he got his copy for free, because he's poor. If it's an older hacker, he may have bought his copy simply for the convenience of not sucking up to 14 year olds on IRC. Does anyone see the RIAA backing down? This comparison just doesn't make any sense.
Information wants to be convenient. For many people, it's more convenient to get music from Napster and listen to it on their computer. If the RIAA offered a reasonably priced, legal, Napster-like online service that didn't have Napster's inconsistencies, I think it would do incredible business. www.emusic.com is trying this out (a subscription service with unlimited downloads for $9.99 to $19.99 a month), however it has a limited number of artists (some of them are quite excellent, though, They Might Be Giants, Elvis Costello, Frank Black, along with hundreds of bands you've never heard of). Hopefully this model will be successful and become more mainstream.
This really is Windows for Linux, it wants me to reboot after I install, because:
You do not appear to be running a standard supported kernel.
You will need to manually PATCH your kernel.
After downloading a bunch of stuff, it then tells me:
Start Installation (y/n)?y
After installing the kernel, the system will reboot.
Whatever happened to loadable modules? Oh well, I may install it at sometime, but I'm not up for a new kernel and a reboot today.
The inaccurate pointing of blame in the media about these email worms is absolutely ridiculous. The solution to these worms is not to have better virus protection programs nor punish every malicious VB script master, it's to not use Outlook Express. Any suggestion of Microsoft's fault in the matter in major articles is always followed by a quote from some Microsoft exec saying "Well, it only happens to us because we have so many features and everyone uses our software, so _of course_ someone is going to choose exploit us to get the most coverage." No, they exploit Microsoft products because it's _so_ damn _easy_. No worm or virus has ever been so easy to avoid. Just get rid of Outlook Express. But I suppose that's just too painful of an option to recommend.
Although they use Real Audio and not mp3, http://www.spinner.com plays mainstream (and not-so mainstream) artists. It has a plethora of categories and I find it the only "radio" I can stand listening to.
I tried to use sonicnet.com's "me music," but they unfortunately decided my Linux machine was a Macintosh and thus not supported. blah. if (OS != windows) { OS = MacOS; }. When will this logic cease?
Do you remember how Microsoft beat Netscape? They decided to develop Internet Explorer and give it away for free, when Netscape was selling their browser. If Microsoft had been two different companies then, the Internet one may not have been able to withstand giving away their product for free, because it wouldn't have the profit from the operating system. While the three companies could certainly still cooperate, they couldn't use their power in one aspect of the software business to take over another part. A broken off Internet department of Microsoft couldn't legally make itself totally unprofitable to be OS Microsoft's puppy dog, since it is a publically held company.
If anything, this fits right into a "GPL World." While this is certainly not a definitive legal metaphor, I'll give it a shot...
Author writes a comment and posts it on Slashdot.
Hellmouth book takes comment and sells it along with other comments, taking out the less-than-outstanding ones, making it more convenient.
All originals comments (aside from ones lost due to moderation, but presumably these comments aren't in the book either) are still available for free in Slashdot archives.
This is certainly in the spirit of freedom, open source, blah, blah.
I personally _hate_ how IE goes to the current page when you open up a new window. What if you currently happen to be on the result page of submitting an credit card order or something? There are some sites, such as moviefone.com, which will sit there for up to 2 minutes waiting to contact the theater you're buying a ticket for and finally will add to the page that the order has been finalized. While presumably an already loaded result page will simply be passed over to the new window without reloading, what would happen in the case of pages similar to this moviefone.com page where the page is not yet complete? I know it's possible for this to work safely, but I don't necessarily trust that it will be implement correctly, and I don't really see the point. Why would you want two copies of the same page, anyway? Opening links in a new window performs this function better.
Then again, I hate when a web browser goes to any page at all by default. I've always used "start with a blank page" in Netscape and Mozilla. I'm a bit annoyed when programs do things for me automatically that usually aren't correct. For the same reason, I don't like automatic name completion.
If anything, these should be configurable, _easily_ (yeah, yeah, "go edit the source you lazy ass!").
It's the _principle_ of it! "We" don't like Windows, for another example, but it should still be open source!
More seriously, the problem with capitalism and copyrighted "art"work is that there is no opportunity for another company to offer the same product and the theory of competition fails, allowing a monopoly. Ideally, someone else should be able to compete directly with Lucasfilm and release PM on DVD, because that is what the customers demand. However, given how copyrights work, we can only watch the Star Trek with the damned whale as a substitute. Or the Matrix. Whatever.
Perhaps the most ludicrous thing about the PM release, aside from the lack of DVD, is that the "special" wide-screen version cost about twice as much and was limited in copies. Why should you have to pay more to get the whole movie? In fact, it actually costs money to edit something for pan-and-scan so that it doesn't look horrible.
While watching the "regular" VHS copy, I noticed a few silly little pans to have a close up on the face that is talking and it really detracts from the experience, I think so anyway.
How did Sir Alec get on the cover? Not to mention the X and Y wings. It makes for a pretty montage, though.
The story summary here overstates the problem a bit, implying that you can get _any_ site pulled. But the cases listed in the article refer only to sites where there is apparently defamatory things said about _yourself_. Now, of course, this isn't good, but it is also hardly anything new. This happens all the time in the United States, as well. There've been a few incidents where a student has posted obviously absurd things about teachers/other students (he is the antichrist, I want to kill him, etc.) and the site has been pulled, along with the student being suspended.
The sample site they used is hilarious, though. I can never get enough Simpsons references. "This is the largest automobile I could afford."
in my computer science class in high school, there was this one guy who inserted assembly into his pascal programs for no reason other than to show off. of course, the teacher was really a math person and didn't even understand pointers very well, so she wasn't very hip to that. i would say that was going a bit too far with style perhaps, but as long as the program works with any input data, you can't really complain.
i happened to find a new york post on the subway on the way to school and read an article about the simpsons movie which can be found here: http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/1251 .htm.
in any case, i'd love a simpsons movie. this is the last season, so it's a good time for it, etc, etc. i'm quite disappointed with how fox is giving futurama the timeslot shaft for malcolm in the middle.