Considering the BBC's track record, I don't think the BBC's support of this opinion is very helpful.
I think most of us can see the general public views violent video images and violent actions as being linked. One way to sell papers is to wave around a controvertial opinion, like disagreeing with "known facts."
I remember in 1999, the famous modeling agency Elite (press release) announced that they would have the first virtual runway model, made by Illusion2K and named Webby Tookay. I saw the demo reels, and I recognized the art style from a well-known 3Dstudio artist Steven Stahlberg (who had Tookay modeling some victorian clothes in a bodice-ripping adventure scenes before).
Nothing ever came of Elite's project, and the only other comparitive software, the "Cosmo Home MakeOver" died out after a year on the shelves. Call me a cranky old man, but I don't see this idea going very far either.
Shouldn't that be "trademark" infringement? I didn't know Microsoft had exclusive distribution rights to the series of sounds in their name.
I'd bet a nickel the reporter who wrote the first story and editor never looked up the difference between "copyright infringement" and "trademark infringement," and then the story was duplicated to other news services without anyone bothering to double-check it.
Unfortunately dividends have been legislated out of usefulness, at least in Canada. You get taxed once for capital gains, and you get taxed again for income, so that 5% dividend payment gets reduced by 15%, and (assuming the government thinks you're weatlhy) the remainder by another 35%. Your 5% becomes 2.8%. I believe the company can't completely write of a divedend payout either, so that's money lost by the corporation too.
However, if you sell your shares instead, you only get taxed once: 5% becomes 3.8%, and the corporation isn't part of money changing hands so they don't have to report it to the taxman at all.
So: most investors and corporations recognize that taxes on dividends makes paying out dividends a mug's game; so to their shareholder's delight, they don't do it.
As a matter of fact, I did use a C=64 emulator to rescue an old "teenage angst poetry generator" written in BASIC over a decade ago. Ah, that and good old Eliza written in not-Lisp.
Great. I can't see the screenshots because the flash animation ign forces me to watch is broken. Broken flash -> no magic cookie -> sent back to watch advert again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Our CEO uses a Macintosh. The engineers all run Linux on our desks.
When the CEO got infected email and kept opening the attachments, he beamed with pride: "well, it was a good idea of me to be using a Macintosh, isn't it?" I was stunned, and left his office without saying a word.
Religions are recognized on a provincial (== state in America) level, not federal (== national). I was told I had to have a congregation of at least 30 that meets once a week, certification by the religious order, and the religion has to be established for at least 20 years outside of the province. There was more, but that's for starters.
Without these qualifcations and the rubber-stamp-of-approval from the province, I'm not allowed to officiate for marriages nor for funeral rites.
Scanning messages for spam and rejecting at the SMTP level is a very bad idea. I'm the sysadmin for a company where about 25% of our email message traffic is spam. However, we also have a hard-working sales department who actually need commercial and sales messages. If a message from a client is marked as 'spam' because they're negotiating a sales deal, the sales staff still need to see this message. If a client's counter-offer is rejected at the mail server with a "you sent us SPAM" message, you can kiss that potential income goodbye.
False positives can be more harmful than messages getting through the spam filter.
Something I like about UNIX is that it is experienced-user-friendly, even if at the expense of new-user-friendly. I really value the fact that I don't have warm-and-fuzzy interfaces (command line or GUI) to weigh me down six months after I started using Unix.
_I_ thought that many of the commands and pathnames weren't short because of small memory space, but because it's easier to type fewer characters for common commands and paths. If I have to type/settings or/program\ files every time, I'll just start typing/progra~1.
I beg to differ. Lucasfilm's Habitat was not only George Lucas's first foray into video games, but it was also the first graphical MUD. You could participate with your Commodore 64 by dialing into the QuantumLink network (at a screaming 1200 baud). Lucasfilm used some of the Habitat code and design to make their first adventure game: Maniac Mansion.
QuantumLink later decided to move from supporting C=64 machines to the slightly more popular IBM AT (that's an Intel 286 to you whippersnappers), and also changed it's name to something grandiose; "America Online," I think it was.
Americans are a funny breed. They get up in arms about national ID numbers, when they've already had them for generations: just try getting a job without a Soc. Security number, and *technically* a landlord can't ask for it, but if you refuse the landlord will find some other tenant more 'suitable.'
Back when there was the big bru-ha-ha about Goldberg breaking the Netscape https encryption, I related the story to a friend in England and he laughed. "Why on Earth do you people in North America care about 56bit or 128bit encryption for your ecommerce, when you are quite willing to give your credit card number over the telephone to order a pizza?"
Cripes. Doesn't every sysadmin monitor their network for new ethernet devices? I mean, all it takes is: #/usr/bin/nmap -sP 192.168.0.0/24;/usr/sbin/arp
Save it to a file, and check frequently for changes.
I'm a bit stunned that something like this isn't ubiquitous.
The discovery that blind people can draw (and use techniques like obscuring and perspective) wasn't discovered here. I'd rather give credit to John M. Kennedy at the University of Toronto, a Cognitive Psychology prof who's been working with blind children for years.
He's published at least one book, "Drawing and the Blind" (Yale Press, 1993), and there's a course at Scarbourough College on the subject: PSYCH54S. The link will take you to the course notes, which includes excerpts from his book.
Microsoft's most desired flaw
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Read the Fine Print
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Microsoft's most desired flaw is that they do exactly what they're asked to do. The complaint around here is that what they're asked to do isn't the right thing to do -- which you can distill to "users are stupid."
I'm a sysadmin at a small company -- 60 employees, few million dollars is revenue. A reoccuring problem I have is employees who open file attachments from strangers. I've written policy; I've had meetings and presentations. Hell, the CEO said to me once "good thing I use a Macintosh because I double-clicked on that gone.scr attatchment, eh?"
Updating virus protection, and applying patches on every desktop machine is a must. After a particularily scary security announcement about IExplorer.exe, I got the patch off of Microsoft, posted it to our local file server and sent out a letter to the entire staff [insert something here about office politics and loosing face for scaring people] saying "install this patch immediately." Little did I realize that the patch was broken and replaced later the same day on the website with a functioning one. So, I expected everyone would come to me and say "I tried but it did _this_ instead."
Two people came to me to complain. Two people of 59, when I said it was important to install this patch. Of the two people, one of them is a suit who hates using email (kudos to him for reading it).
Some sysadmin, as frustrated as I am, must have asked for this 'MS will upload patches to you whether you ask for it or not' feature. Hell, I've had suits whine to me about "can't you just update my virus software for me, automatically?" and I think to myself "I guess I should, since when I say 'DO THIS, it's very important,' you ignore me."
I used to go into computer shops and ask if they had any Linux games, just to watch 'em squirm ("duuh, leenucks?"). If I get a condescending look, I'll ask about Macintosh games, and then I'm asked to leave.
I know of one place that had Loki Games on their shelves; this was before I made the switch from Win32. That place was on Yonge Street, Toronto, and it turned into a shoe store over one weekend with no warning.
I've been looking for a copy of Quake3 for Linux -- I can't get it from iD software, and the only place I've seen it for sale via web is canux.com, but they (he?) hasn't responded to any questions about buying or pointing out that the 'purchase' button in his catalogs doesn't actually link to anything.
Okay, harddrive bad. Desktop good, but not good enough. We need to make the desktop larger, multiple desktops... more surfaces to put things on. Tables, desks, little shelves.
I've got it! A study! You've got books over here for your reference material, your desktop with pen and ink for writing a new document, a window (glass-window) for viewing the rest of the world with a webbrowser, a light switch for shutting down the system, a utility closet for the control panel items... add a little mousehole with a rat that offers some helpful advice...
Aw poop. This looks exactly like Microsoft Bob. Well, let's start small.
Silly person. Read it again -- or better yet, I'll translate:
"You might notice we didn't put some words on our list that you think is important (such as 'grok', 'dalek' and 'robot'). We aren't asking for information about these words because we already know everything we need to know."
I could also add the inferrance:
"Please don't send us info about 'grok'. We don't need to get flooded with emails about 'grok'. We've already read "Stranger in a Strange Land"; please give us data we can use."
The idea of using video games to lose weight is not new. Step into your local video arcade and you'll see quite a few games for the carpal-tunnel imparied. The most popular (spawning four versions and imitators) is "Dance Dance Revolution," and there's website testimonials of pudgy nerds getting into shape by trying for the high score. Even the Hawaiian Press picked up the story: http://www.msoe.edu/ingenium/?2084&71&2 .
"Any artist you talk to will tell you that the best way to 'get big' is to give your music away, getting it into the most hands and ears possible. There are dozens and dozens of examples I could cite here."
You're not looking far enough. I'll relate to you a story from a relative who 'finds' talent.
He's found three good bands who are still playing clubs (one group actually has a busker's license and plays in subway stations). He approches the company and says "hey, great new talent, they're fresh --"
"Are they black?"
"... pardon me?"
"Unless they have a black singer, or they're singing black music, it's not going to sell, so I don't want to hear about it."
Now this was unheard of. After some nosing around and asking some of the big city music retailers, he finds out it's true: so-called "black" music (hip-hop, R&B, rap, house) is still selling, but retail sales for rock, pop and alternative have sunk. I'll admit it's a bit of a jump, but a simple solution is because people affluent enough to own computers and net connections listen to rock, pop and alternative but not hip-hop, R&B, rap and house.
The anecdote made it easy to see the feedback signals: Music you like gets on Napster, you download it, the money that you'd use for buying it stays home. Music producers notice the sales for your taste in music is dropping, and divert resources to music you don't like because it's better sales. The agents that find this music (for distribution by the producers) pass over the musicians you like, leaving them in the subway stations, the cafes and busking on street corners -- nowhere near you, and they certainly won't appear on Napster or Napster-a-likes.
The pursuit of immediate gratification is a mistake that we (western culture) never seem to learn from. Legislating away P2P filesharing is *not* a solution; it's in the same vein of immediate gratification that has made this a problem (not to mention the can-of-worms or Pandora's Box nature of technology).
You need volunteers to tune their machines and put 250 user accounts on their machines in seven hours, and you DID'T put contact info in your request? I went to the webpage, and there isn't so much as an email address or even a phone number.
How am I supposed to volunteer when I can't communicate with you?
There's a rumour-that-will-never-die about Disney following the artists involved in Heavy Metal, and offering to 'help out' the studios they went to. This story is usually tied to Canada's Nelvana, many of whom were imported to the States to work on Heavy Metal (along with Paul Shaffer and John Candy).
Caveat: If you're a lawyer, the following is a work of fiction. Not saying anything bad about Disney here, no sir.
The full-length feature film they wanted to produce was called Rock & Rule, aka Ring of Power (I don't know why, it had nothing to do with rings). The production nearly bankrupted Nelvana Studios. Disney approached them and said "we'll handle distribution, just sign here." So they did, and Disney distributed it to their closets to make sure the public never thought of 'feature length animation' without thinking 'Disney' in the same sentence. After some fast talk, another deal was squared with United Artists, but UA demanded some script changes (but they couldn't get one of the lead voice actors back, so they had to hire someone else and redub the entire movie). The damage was already done by this time: Nelvana studios had to take on children's merchandizing gigs, like "The Care Bears," and "Ewoks" in order to pay the bills.
Damn shame. The original Nelvana studios had enough clout from their participation in Heavy Metal to get original music from Debbie Harry, Cheap Trick, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop just for the movie. (this was 1983).
Isn't .mars a bit of an Ameriocentric name?
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The Dot in .mars
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· Score: 4
*shudder* I apologize for the word "Ameriocentric."
When domain names were drawn up for nations, we used ISO 3166, which was agreed upon by people who don't only speak English. Germany isn't.ge, it's.de for Deutchland.
Granted, we don't know the Latin spelling of what Martians call their home planet (nevermind their native tounge), but I find it hard to believe that "Mars" is the only name for that particular moving star in the sky.
Italian, Spanish, Romanian: "Marte"
Czech: "Smrtonos"
Arabic (the language that many stars are named in) "Merrikh"
Hebrew: "Ma'adim"
Mandarin: "Huoxing"
Japaneese: "Kasei"
Most languages seem to agree on using an "M" sound to start the word. Perhaps we should use the.ma domain? or would that suggest that residents of Massachusetts, USA, are not of this Earth?
http://www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/days .h tml for further reading.
[ This message does not state or imply an accusation of misconduct by the man dubbed 'bofh', so put those lawyers away. This is an opinion piece -- the events as I remember them. ]
Heh. I guess we all have these stories. I didn't know the whole story of what happened to me until two years later.
First, I was a student at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Very respected place, top-notch mathematics faculty that actually gives out Bachelors of Mathematics. The Computer Science Club is actually quite famous too. Anywho, U of Waterloo has a co-op program and thru co-op I got a job as a Unix Sysadmin at the Univesrity of Western Ontario, an hour's drive away. Four month contract, then back to school. I fell ill during my work term, and I had to telecommute for the last two months, but I still got stellar marks and a glowing evaluation in the end. During my time there, I spent ten minutes getting help with an SMTP server with a man reputed to be an RCMP (Americans: read FBI) toadie I'll call 'bofh' for reasons that will later become apparent.
Back at Waterloo, I was going thru a bad episode (breaking up with live-in girlfriend), and during spring break I faked a USENET posting. Not a spoof, because I wasn't pretending to be anyone, just a faked "From:" header line. I did it (in the "let's see if I can do it" fashion) by telnetting to a mail server at U of Western Ontario, faking a mail message to be sent to U Waterloo's mail-to-news gateway. The message itself was a public announcement that some newsgroups were going to be banned due to high traffic -- Waterloo had a recent big stink about newsgroups being banned because of a feminist student group complaining about objectionable content (alt.sex.fetish.lolitas somehow escaping their scrutiny). I was successful, even though I misspelled "displatch", so I went back to slouching and playing too much Xpilot.
Next morning, I get a call at home. It's bofh (I still don't know how he got my home number).
bofh: "This is bofh. Did you telnet to port 25 on machine xxxx.uwo.ca yesterday?"
me: "Uh... yes."
bofh: "You'll never touch another machine at Western again. *click*" (that's the exact quote)
Phone rings again.
Peter (of the CompSci Club): "Moses? This is Peter. The Math Department sysadmins are bloodhounding you, but Ian [a friend] found you first. Why are they tracking you down?"
So I told Peter about the mail-to-news business yesterday.
Peter: "Oh Moses, Moses, Moses.... you got caught."
So there was the ritual dragging me out in front of an authority figure, some tounge lashing, and a formal request to have me ousted from the CompSci Club because I was their sysadmin and couldn't be trusted (that was on the record -- off the record, nobody expected me to get kicked out over something so trivial). The CompSci Club said no, the Math Department made a politically safe "no comment," and life continued.
A week later, I'm summoned before the Asst. Dean of Mathematics, whom I'll call W. Seems the U of Western is raising a big stink, and 'something' must be done. I assume he's talking about the "displatch" event. W tells me that I can't return for a second work term at Western, and my marks will be changed to a failure for the term that just went by. I protest that this isn't fair (but actually my knees were shaking like Jell-O). He says he has to think about it. I take the chance to talk to a student ombudsman, who knows about the "displatch" event and he's surprised W. is overreacting. He suggests I approach the Student Disciplinary Committee. When next I'm summoned before W, he suggests that I be failed for the upcoming term; I protest again that I shouldn't fail something that hasn't happened yet, and it will unduely affect my chances at getting a work term somewhere else. I suggest the SD Commitee should get involved, and W threatens to expell me if I talk to the SD Commitee. I break, sorry, I was really scared. I plead that he merely suspend me for the upcoming term. He says he'll think about it. A week later when I meet with him, he tells me that he's come up with a better idea: he'll suspend me for the upcoming term. Can I agree? I point out that I gave him that idea, and I agree. I'm to be taken off the list of eligiable students for job interviews.
A week later I found out I wasn't taken off the list, and I missed three interviews. I was almost punished for not showing up to these interviews, but I badgered and pushed my way thru the department (we called it "Needless Hall") until I met a director. I told him my story to date, and he laughed and agreed to sort things out. So, I was suspended, I accepted a job offer in Toronto (which was bogus, but that's another story), and didn't have enough money to return to school for years. I got a letter from my former employer at U of Western Ontario, saying he was disappointed in me for what I've done. That kinda hurt.
Now... 2 years later, I'm working at a Toronto company, and I'm recognized as that kid who was a sysadmin at the U of Western Ontario. He says he heard what happened, so I tell him my story. He's quiet for a while, and says "That's not what I heard. Everyone at UWO was told that you were using Western computers to steal credit card numbers through the Internet."
Jumping Jehosaphat. No wonder W overreacted. And this must be what bofh ment by "You'll never touch another machine at Western again." It still burns my buns to know that W was ready to expell me when he had not even circumstantial evidence, and he wouldn't tell me what I was accused of nor listen to my side of the story. I won't return to U of Waterloo until W is no longer employed there, but I will still speak highly of it as an educational institution.
It's a frame job that changed my life forever. Thank goodness I turned it into a positive change. My friends still refer to it as the "displatch" event. I'd rather not chase after bofh for justice, beacuse I'm certain he could create some evidence against me (like the firewall logs mentioned above) and the RCMP are likely to believe him because of rumoured student-expelling 'favours' he's done them in the past. Besides, I think the false 'hacker' reputation actually helped in one job interview.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering the BBC's track record, I don't think the BBC's support of this opinion is very helpful.
I think most of us can see the general public views violent video images and violent actions as being linked. One way to sell papers is to wave around a controvertial opinion, like disagreeing with "known facts."
I remember in 1999, the famous modeling agency Elite (press release) announced that they would have the first virtual runway model, made by Illusion2K and named Webby Tookay. I saw the demo reels, and I recognized the art style from a well-known 3Dstudio artist Steven Stahlberg (who had Tookay modeling some victorian clothes in a bodice-ripping adventure scenes before).
Nothing ever came of Elite's project, and the only other comparitive software, the "Cosmo Home MakeOver" died out after a year on the shelves. Call me a cranky old man, but I don't see this idea going very far either.
Shouldn't that be "trademark" infringement? I didn't know Microsoft had exclusive distribution rights to the series of sounds in their name.
I'd bet a nickel the reporter who wrote the first story and editor never looked up the difference between "copyright infringement" and "trademark infringement," and then the story was duplicated to other news services without anyone bothering to double-check it.
Unfortunately dividends have been legislated out of usefulness, at least in Canada. You get taxed once for capital gains, and you get taxed again for income, so that 5% dividend payment gets reduced by 15%, and (assuming the government thinks you're weatlhy) the remainder by another 35%. Your 5% becomes 2.8%. I believe the company can't completely write of a divedend payout either, so that's money lost by the corporation too.
However, if you sell your shares instead, you only get taxed once: 5% becomes 3.8%, and the corporation isn't part of money changing hands so they don't have to report it to the taxman at all.
So: most investors and corporations recognize that taxes on dividends makes paying out dividends a mug's game; so to their shareholder's delight, they don't do it.
As a matter of fact, I did use a C=64 emulator to rescue an old "teenage angst poetry generator" written in BASIC over a decade ago. Ah, that and good old Eliza written in not-Lisp.
Great. I can't see the screenshots because the flash animation ign forces me to watch is broken.
Broken flash -> no magic cookie -> sent back to watch advert again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
We solved that problem a long time ago.
Our CEO uses a Macintosh. The engineers all run Linux on our desks.
When the CEO got infected email and kept opening the attachments, he beamed with pride: "well, it was a good idea of me to be using a Macintosh, isn't it?" I was stunned, and left his office without saying a word.
I 0wNz
I looked into this for the Universal Life Church.
Religions are recognized on a provincial (== state in America) level, not federal (== national). I was told I had to have a congregation of at least 30 that meets once a week, certification by the religious order, and the religion has to be established for at least 20 years outside of the province. There was more, but that's for starters.
Without these qualifcations and the rubber-stamp-of-approval from the province, I'm not allowed to officiate for marriages nor for funeral rites.
Scanning messages for spam and rejecting at the SMTP level is a very bad idea. I'm the sysadmin for a company where about 25% of our email message traffic is spam. However, we also have a hard-working sales department who actually need commercial and sales messages. If a message from a client is marked as 'spam' because they're negotiating a sales deal, the sales staff still need to see this message. If a client's counter-offer is rejected at the mail server with a "you sent us SPAM" message, you can kiss that potential income goodbye.
False positives can be more harmful than messages getting through the spam filter.
Something I like about UNIX is that it is experienced-user-friendly, even if at the expense of new-user-friendly. I really value the fact that I don't have warm-and-fuzzy interfaces (command line or GUI) to weigh me down six months after I started using Unix.
/settings or /program\ files every time, I'll just start typing /progra~1 .
_I_ thought that many of the commands and pathnames weren't short because of small memory space, but because it's easier to type fewer characters for common commands and paths. If I have to type
Ultima Online? The first graphical mmorpg?
I beg to differ. Lucasfilm's Habitat was not only George Lucas's first foray into video games, but it was also the first graphical MUD. You could participate with your Commodore 64 by dialing into the QuantumLink network (at a screaming 1200 baud). Lucasfilm used some of the Habitat code and design to make their first adventure game: Maniac Mansion.
QuantumLink later decided to move from supporting C=64 machines to the slightly more popular IBM AT (that's an Intel 286 to you whippersnappers), and also changed it's name to something grandiose; "America Online," I think it was.
Americans are a funny breed. They get up in arms about national ID numbers, when they've already had them for generations: just try getting a job without a Soc. Security number, and *technically* a landlord can't ask for it, but if you refuse the landlord will find some other tenant more 'suitable.'
Back when there was the big bru-ha-ha about Goldberg breaking the Netscape https encryption, I related the story to a friend in England and he laughed. "Why on Earth do you people in North America care about 56bit or 128bit encryption for your ecommerce, when you are quite willing to give your credit card number over the telephone to order a pizza?"
Cripes. Doesn't every sysadmin monitor their network for new ethernet devices? I mean, all it takes is: /usr/bin/nmap -sP 192.168.0.0/24; /usr/sbin/arp
#
Save it to a file, and check frequently for changes.
I'm a bit stunned that something like this isn't ubiquitous.
The discovery that blind people can draw (and use techniques like obscuring and perspective) wasn't discovered here. I'd rather give credit to John M. Kennedy at the University of Toronto, a Cognitive Psychology prof who's been working with blind children for years.
He's published at least one book, "Drawing and the Blind" (Yale Press, 1993), and there's a course at Scarbourough College on the subject: PSYCH54S. The link will take you to the course notes, which includes excerpts from his book.
Microsoft's most desired flaw is that they do exactly what they're asked to do. The complaint around here is that what they're asked to do isn't the right thing to do -- which you can distill to "users are stupid."
I'm a sysadmin at a small company -- 60 employees, few million dollars is revenue. A reoccuring problem I have is employees who open file attachments from strangers. I've written policy; I've had meetings and presentations. Hell, the CEO said to me once "good thing I use a Macintosh because I double-clicked on that gone.scr attatchment, eh?"
Updating virus protection, and applying patches on every desktop machine is a must. After a particularily scary security announcement about IExplorer.exe, I got the patch off of Microsoft, posted it to our local file server and sent out a letter to the entire staff [insert something here about office politics and loosing face for scaring people] saying "install this patch immediately." Little did I realize that the patch was broken and replaced later the same day on the website with a functioning one. So, I expected everyone would come to me and say "I tried but it did _this_ instead."
Two people came to me to complain. Two people of 59, when I said it was important to install this patch. Of the two people, one of them is a suit who hates using email (kudos to him for reading it).
Some sysadmin, as frustrated as I am, must have asked for this 'MS will upload patches to you whether you ask for it or not' feature. Hell, I've had suits whine to me about "can't you just update my virus software for me, automatically?" and I think to myself "I guess I should, since when I say 'DO THIS, it's very important,' you ignore me."
Sold in stores nationwide?
I used to go into computer shops and ask if they had any Linux games, just to watch 'em squirm ("duuh, leenucks?"). If I get a condescending look, I'll ask about Macintosh games, and then I'm asked to leave.
I know of one place that had Loki Games on their shelves; this was before I made the switch from Win32. That place was on Yonge Street, Toronto, and it turned into a shoe store over one weekend with no warning.
I've been looking for a copy of Quake3 for Linux -- I can't get it from iD software, and the only place I've seen it for sale via web is canux.com, but they (he?) hasn't responded to any questions about buying or pointing out that the 'purchase' button in his catalogs doesn't actually link to anything.
Okay, harddrive bad. Desktop good, but not good enough. We need to make the desktop larger, multiple desktops... more surfaces to put things on. Tables, desks, little shelves.
I've got it! A study! You've got books over here for your reference material, your desktop with pen and ink for writing a new document, a window (glass-window) for viewing the rest of the world with a webbrowser, a light switch for shutting down the system, a utility closet for the control panel items... add a little mousehole with a rat that offers some helpful advice...
Aw poop. This looks exactly like Microsoft Bob. Well, let's start small.
Silly person. Read it again -- or better yet, I'll translate:
"You might notice we didn't put some words on our list that you think is important (such as 'grok', 'dalek' and 'robot'). We aren't asking for information about these words because we already know everything we need to know."
I could also add the inferrance:
"Please don't send us info about 'grok'. We don't need to get flooded with emails about 'grok'. We've already read "Stranger in a Strange Land"; please give us data we can use."
The idea of using video games to lose weight is not new. Step into your local video arcade and you'll see quite a few games for the carpal-tunnel imparied. The most popular (spawning four versions and imitators) is "Dance Dance Revolution," and there's website testimonials of pudgy nerds getting into shape by trying for the high score. Even the Hawaiian Press picked up the story: http://www.msoe.edu/ingenium/?2084&71&2 .
"Any artist you talk to will tell you that the best way to 'get big' is to give your music away, getting it into the most hands and ears possible. There are dozens and dozens of examples I could cite here."
You're not looking far enough. I'll relate to you a story from a relative who 'finds' talent.
He's found three good bands who are still playing clubs (one group actually has a busker's license and plays in subway stations). He approches the company and says "hey, great new talent, they're fresh --"
"Are they black?"
"... pardon me?"
"Unless they have a black singer, or they're singing black music, it's not going to sell, so I don't want to hear about it."
Now this was unheard of. After some nosing around and asking some of the big city music retailers, he finds out it's true: so-called "black" music (hip-hop, R&B, rap, house) is still selling, but retail sales for rock, pop and alternative have sunk. I'll admit it's a bit of a jump, but a simple solution is because people affluent enough to own computers and net connections listen to rock, pop and alternative but not hip-hop, R&B, rap and house.
The anecdote made it easy to see the feedback signals: Music you like gets on Napster, you download it, the money that you'd use for buying it stays home. Music producers notice the sales for your taste in music is dropping, and divert resources to music you don't like because it's better sales. The agents that find this music (for distribution by the producers) pass over the musicians you like, leaving them in the subway stations, the cafes and busking on street corners -- nowhere near you, and they certainly won't appear on Napster or Napster-a-likes.
The pursuit of immediate gratification is a mistake that we (western culture) never seem to learn from. Legislating away P2P filesharing is *not* a solution; it's in the same vein of immediate gratification that has made this a problem (not to mention the can-of-worms or Pandora's Box nature of technology).
You need volunteers to tune their machines and put 250 user accounts on their machines in seven hours, and you DID'T put contact info in your request? I went to the webpage, and there isn't so much as an email address or even a phone number.
How am I supposed to volunteer when I can't communicate with you?
There's a rumour-that-will-never-die about Disney following the artists involved in Heavy Metal, and offering to 'help out' the studios they went to. This story is usually tied to Canada's Nelvana, many of whom were imported to the States to work on Heavy Metal (along with Paul Shaffer and John Candy).
Caveat: If you're a lawyer, the following is a work of fiction. Not saying anything bad about Disney here, no sir.
The full-length feature film they wanted to produce was called Rock & Rule, aka Ring of Power (I don't know why, it had nothing to do with rings). The production nearly bankrupted Nelvana Studios. Disney approached them and said "we'll handle distribution, just sign here." So they did, and Disney distributed it to their closets to make sure the public never thought of 'feature length animation' without thinking 'Disney' in the same sentence. After some fast talk, another deal was squared with United Artists, but UA demanded some script changes (but they couldn't get one of the lead voice actors back, so they had to hire someone else and redub the entire movie). The damage was already done by this time: Nelvana studios had to take on children's merchandizing gigs, like "The Care Bears," and "Ewoks" in order to pay the bills.
Damn shame. The original Nelvana studios had enough clout from their participation in Heavy Metal to get original music from Debbie Harry, Cheap Trick, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop just for the movie. (this was 1983).
*shudder* I apologize for the word "Ameriocentric."
.ge, it's .de for Deutchland.
.ma domain? or would that suggest that residents of Massachusetts, USA, are not of this Earth?
s .h tml for further reading.
When domain names were drawn up for nations, we used ISO 3166, which was agreed upon by people who don't only speak English. Germany isn't
Granted, we don't know the Latin spelling of what Martians call their home planet (nevermind their native tounge), but I find it hard to believe that "Mars" is the only name for that particular moving star in the sky.
Italian, Spanish, Romanian: "Marte"
Czech: "Smrtonos"
Arabic (the language that many stars are named in) "Merrikh"
Hebrew: "Ma'adim"
Mandarin: "Huoxing"
Japaneese: "Kasei"
Most languages seem to agree on using an "M" sound to start the word. Perhaps we should use the
http://www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/day
[ This message does not state or imply an accusation of misconduct by the man dubbed 'bofh', so put those lawyers away. This is an opinion piece -- the events as I remember them. ]
... you got caught."
Heh. I guess we all have these stories. I didn't know the whole story of what happened to me until two years later.
First, I was a student at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Very respected place, top-notch mathematics faculty that actually gives out Bachelors of Mathematics. The Computer Science Club is actually quite famous too. Anywho, U of Waterloo has a co-op program and thru co-op I got a job as a Unix Sysadmin at the Univesrity of Western Ontario, an hour's drive away. Four month contract, then back to school. I fell ill during my work term, and I had to telecommute for the last two months, but I still got stellar marks and a glowing evaluation in the end. During my time there, I spent ten minutes getting help with an SMTP server with a man reputed to be an RCMP (Americans: read FBI) toadie I'll call 'bofh' for reasons that will later become apparent.
Back at Waterloo, I was going thru a bad episode (breaking up with live-in girlfriend), and during spring break I faked a USENET posting. Not a spoof, because I wasn't pretending to be anyone, just a faked "From:" header line. I did it (in the "let's see if I can do it" fashion) by telnetting to a mail server at U of Western Ontario, faking a mail message to be sent to U Waterloo's mail-to-news gateway. The message itself was a public announcement that some newsgroups were going to be banned due to high traffic -- Waterloo had a recent big stink about newsgroups being banned because of a feminist student group complaining about objectionable content (alt.sex.fetish.lolitas somehow escaping their scrutiny). I was successful, even though I misspelled "displatch", so I went back to slouching and playing too much Xpilot.
Next morning, I get a call at home. It's bofh (I still don't know how he got my home number).
bofh: "This is bofh. Did you telnet to port 25 on machine xxxx.uwo.ca yesterday?"
me: "Uh... yes."
bofh: "You'll never touch another machine at Western again. *click*" (that's the exact quote)
Phone rings again.
Peter (of the CompSci Club): "Moses? This is Peter. The Math Department sysadmins are bloodhounding you, but Ian [a friend] found you first. Why are they tracking you down?"
So I told Peter about the mail-to-news business yesterday.
Peter: "Oh Moses, Moses, Moses.
So there was the ritual dragging me out in front of an authority figure, some tounge lashing, and a formal request to have me ousted from the CompSci Club because I was their sysadmin and couldn't be trusted (that was on the record -- off the record, nobody expected me to get kicked out over something so trivial). The CompSci Club said no, the Math Department made a politically safe "no comment," and life continued.
A week later, I'm summoned before the Asst. Dean of Mathematics, whom I'll call W. Seems the U of Western is raising a big stink, and 'something' must be done. I assume he's talking about the "displatch" event. W tells me that I can't return for a second work term at Western, and my marks will be changed to a failure for the term that just went by. I protest that this isn't fair (but actually my knees were shaking like Jell-O). He says he has to think about it. I take the chance to talk to a student ombudsman, who knows about the "displatch" event and he's surprised W. is overreacting. He suggests I approach the Student Disciplinary Committee. When next I'm summoned before W, he suggests that I be failed for the upcoming term; I protest again that I shouldn't fail something that hasn't happened yet, and it will unduely affect my chances at getting a work term somewhere else. I suggest the SD Commitee should get involved, and W threatens to expell me if I talk to the SD Commitee. I break, sorry, I was really scared. I plead that he merely suspend me for the upcoming term. He says he'll think about it. A week later when I meet with him, he tells me that he's come up with a better idea: he'll suspend me for the upcoming term. Can I agree? I point out that I gave him that idea, and I agree. I'm to be taken off the list of eligiable students for job interviews.
A week later I found out I wasn't taken off the list, and I missed three interviews. I was almost punished for not showing up to these interviews, but I badgered and pushed my way thru the department (we called it "Needless Hall") until I met a director. I told him my story to date, and he laughed and agreed to sort things out. So, I was suspended, I accepted a job offer in Toronto (which was bogus, but that's another story), and didn't have enough money to return to school for years. I got a letter from my former employer at U of Western Ontario, saying he was disappointed in me for what I've done. That kinda hurt.
Now... 2 years later, I'm working at a Toronto company, and I'm recognized as that kid who was a sysadmin at the U of Western Ontario. He says he heard what happened, so I tell him my story. He's quiet for a while, and says "That's not what I heard. Everyone at UWO was told that you were using Western computers to steal credit card numbers through the Internet."
Jumping Jehosaphat. No wonder W overreacted. And this must be what bofh ment by "You'll never touch another machine at Western again." It still burns my buns to know that W was ready to expell me when he had not even circumstantial evidence, and he wouldn't tell me what I was accused of nor listen to my side of the story. I won't return to U of Waterloo until W is no longer employed there, but I will still speak highly of it as an educational institution.
It's a frame job that changed my life forever. Thank goodness I turned it into a positive change. My friends still refer to it as the "displatch" event. I'd rather not chase after bofh for justice, beacuse I'm certain he could create some evidence against me (like the firewall logs mentioned above) and the RCMP are likely to believe him because of rumoured student-expelling 'favours' he's done them in the past. Besides, I think the false 'hacker' reputation actually helped in one job interview.