Typeosquatting is bad, but what's even worse is when porn/advertising takes a site that is in reference to something that's popular - say, descent.com. I've not tried going there in quite a long time, but back when I played Descent almost exclusively (man, what a while ago!) The site was a porn site. Looking for a patch/map/mod and finding porn is not fun.
No, Penn State isn't the only school banning napster... it's 'banned' from my school, Juniata College, as well - smaller, and about an hour or so from Penn State. All the IP's of the napster servers have been blocked - but not because of any legal reasons. Mainly because it caused bandwidth to be near unusable proportions, worse than dialup at times. So in effect, they're not blocking napster - there's always OpenNap - but bandwidth offending sites. It makes to QoS unsuitable for everyone else on the network. There's still scour, as far as I can tell, and the traditional method of searching HTTP and FTP... that gets rid of the lasy people.
I think a worse thing would be banning/blocking something like Half-Life from the network - it's a revenue model for Valve, and actually could possibly damage the company, given enough blockings, unlike napster's situation.
Power is the ability to conform the will of others to your own. The Romans did this by killing their opponents, and by the threat of such things. These sites don't have such power - anything that people submit to are submitted to out of free will. Unless, of course, you count thinks like the ability to sell personal information.:)
Not meaning to sound all philosophical, but hear me out.:) it's 2:30AM and I've been up for a while.;)~
You don't need to have a house pre-wired, or even put wires in the walls yourselves - it's the people who make a house geeky. My previous house, before leaving for college, was quite 'geeky'. My brother and I lived in the basement of my parents' house, which was connected to the upstairs by a stairwell that joined near the garage door - so naturally, that was our means of entrance. We had a fridge where we kept our Dew and other assorted perishables, and a bathroom that was 'ours.' (Two guys, mind you. This room could get raw, but there's always bleach.)
My computer was approximately 40 feet, as the wolf runs, to my brother's box. I know this, since the 50' strand I had barely reached to the ceiling, to his room, and down from the ceiling. (I'd like to take this opportunity to say that 'false ceilings' - the things they have in offices - are every geeks dream. You can easily stash things up there, and wires are quite easily hidden.)
My bedroom was 11'x22' feet, with a small alcove off in the corner where my computer was, which was about 10x5. Outside my room, to one side was the steps, to the other the 'living room' - call it whatever you want, it's what we used for our geekfests.:) This room was approximately 2.5-3x the size of my bedroom. My brother's room could be entered from the opposite side of the 'living room'.
Quite frequently, especially over this past summer, we would have 1, 2, 3 - as many as 6 geeks, besides ourselves, in our geekcave. Having no patience to wire walls, we would string the RJ45 across the rooms to the computers, and back to my hub. We came one port short of filling an 8-port once - the hub's name is Mailman.:)
We had tables and chairs set about for us to sit at and play. A couch provided a place for weakling geeks to sleep, if needed, and possible sit.
The Geek collective and I would walk about in that basement with only the black light and the glow of our monitors, talking about who fragged whom between levels, and asking who had seen the chips last. We had many a fun morning/night clicking away at each other with our mice.
All in all, I think my nostalgic representation shows that your geek abode doesn't make the geek house.:) A square room with desks back to back, and alcoves that stem off into sleeping quarters would have been highly preferable - especially when we had multi-nighters. Ideally, I think that a large central room, with minimal kitchen, bedrooms, and a bathroom would be ideal. Possibly another room, where chairs could easily be placed as well. Windows, lights, and fresh air would be remotely optional.
I think he hit upon a solution to the whole napster situation without realizing it.
Why not require all napster programs to keep logs of what songs are downloaded, and at the same time display banner ads? Then, connect to a server (anon) and tell it what was downloaded. The money gained from the banner ads is divided amongst the artists, thus napsterites don't have to pay for their precious music, and the artists get money.
This is incredibly easy - I'm surprised it hasn't been instigated yet. And a very marginal percentage -.1 percent? - goest to the napster people. That still would ammount to a very large amount.
On another note, I'm sick of napster. It's sucking all the bandwidth on my campus college, and I'm quite looking forward for it to be banned. We've got 2 T1's with about 1300 students. At times, I get -bytes- of data. Not even kilobytes... Even at 5AM on Sunday night, I don't get too terribly much 50k/s - because the fools leave napster running. While napster shoudln't be banned, it's being WAY over used and abused. You better believe these same people would start to complain if a group of people started to routinely download multiple distro ISO's at a time, repeatedly.
Yes, but what if the file is only downloaded partially? IE, a napsterphiliac doesn't get the last 3K of a song so that it doesn't have the fingerprint?
Of course, there will always be programs to strip such fingerprints.
Why not release the open--sourced portion of the drivers as open source, and then have the 'sensitive' part of the drivers on a closed-source license, so as to keep it confidential and link them?
There are several things I missed in this movie. First, why didn't Wolverine have the trademark quippy smooth talk that is so incredibly standard in the comics and even the animated TV show, such as his frequent "doll", "bub", etc.
Also, didn't they forget Gambit in there somewhere? he was just as major as Storm or Cyclops. And definately cooler. (maybe I'm wrong, but wasn't it Rouge and Gambit, not Wolverine?)
And why didn't we have more flying around? Supposedly, Rouge, Storm, and Jean Grey can all fly - only Storm did, and only slightly. I think the characters were all downplayed, other than Prof. X and Magneto, just because they were 'minor actors/actresses'.
I might say, though - Mystique was probably not (IMO) a good choice of an opponent. I'd personally prefered to see someone a little more challenging - say, Blob. But I'm guessing that Mystique was put in the movie for basically one reason - skin. I mean, c'mon, she had virtually nothing on there. Cheap shot at the average American teenage guy. Pashaw.
Here in South Dakota, USA, driving age is (or was, when I got my license) 14. Drinking age is 21.
And of course, people are usually drinking and driving a good while before that point. Thus, one of the reasons that the minimal age for driving was upped a year, and SD has one of the highest driving accident fatality rate.
It seems like to me that UI enhancement and progress has been in leaps and bounds, not a steady jog. First we had the terminal/prompt. Then we went to a basic 2d GUI. From there, we started getting a little more advanced - we were able to run 3d items on top of the 2d environment. Now, we're developing 3d window managers and the like, and there is new monitor technology allowing for 3d monitors. So I don't think innovation has stopped. New technology has always required the latest hardware - look at enlightenment, the 3d window managers, and windows2k, for starters.
That's bull. Tell my girlfriend that. She's going into it. She doesn't care much about salary - she does it for the love of geekdom. She's every bit as good at what she does as I am at what I do. And in many cases, better.
That, and since she likes me.:)
Anyone that goes into the field for any other reason isn't a geek.
Kinda scary how a man without any type of degree and little flight experience is able to legally gather materials and build a rocket that, only a few years ago, was only feasable by several large governments. Granted, he's not done it yet, but consider the cost that went into the government launches, and how much this man might spend....
It's a great cause and all to save penguins - you gotta love them. However, why do we concern ourselves with things like this, spending millions to save animals, while there are people in India and many 3rd world countries that are starving. Many children haven't had a decent meal in weeks, even months.
Or if not over sea, there are many people in the US that need help.
While I'm not saying "dont' help the penguins", I am saying that it disturbs me that people are very frequently more interested in "save the whales" or "save the penguins" as is the case here, than helping fellow humans.
Counting to 10, ten times,doesn't get you to 100. If in a simple counting program, you tell it to count to 10, a million times even, you'd still not get to 100.:)
Why do people always make the assumption that water is a precursor to life? Or more accurately, that water symbolizes that there is life somewhere?
Just because someone can count to 10, doesn't mean they can necessarily count to 100. Water is a very simple compount - two molecules of hydrogen, and one of oxygen. A single celled life form, on the other hand, has many many more elements combined together to make a larger whole.
When one thinks about life, and physical materials in general as a whole, it's hard to not see the parallels between it and programming. There are the base elements - atoms and say, assembly. These things build up to make something more complex - but still composed of the smaller elements - say, elements and any construction language.
Makes one wonder if the physical world was programmed by Someone.
To me, this looks like they're trying to make a user-intervention free computer while raking in the big bucks and violating our rights. Basically, the OS (if it could be called that) would be installed from the factory, with all the drivers intact. You wouldn't be able to update your drivers when a bug fix or a performance boost was instigated - you'd be locked into shoddy programmed drivers until you purchased something else from MS or the company that sold you the computer. We're not talking just shrink wrapped software, we're talking shrink wrapped computers as well.
What are geeks supposed to do, then? MS obviously won't be able to release a non-bastardized version of the OS, because everyone and their brother would jump on the opportunity to copy the CD onto their own system, since their version was crippled by the vendor, and people will see it as the same product. Geeks who custom build systems won't be able to install MS products, because the OS doesn't come configured for the certain hardware they purchase, and it's impossible to install drivers.
Can you imagine paying for computer software subscriptions like you do to a magazine, you ISP, or cable? That's insane. Systems will probably be completely proprietarized, so that the MS software can't be removed either, IMO. Who knows? Maybe they'll slap a ROM disk onto all new hard drives, where the OS will be hardwired. (How many times have YOU had to reinstall windows on a computer, due to crappy MS programming, or some other reason?)
The public's opinion often has a lot more sway than a corporation's influence. Take for instance MS. If (or when) ppl started to migrate to linux, it would have more of an effect than the current legal battle is on their power realm.
See, it is our corp, in a round-about sort of way. We view slashdot in large numbers, and generally in mass quantities. This produces a croud which produces an advertising market for Andover/Slashdot (And whatever company baught Andover - wasn't there one? - I forget). They then have advertisers place adds on their site. (Basically) Andover gets money for having the ads on their site, which woudln't be there without us - the customers. A corporation isn't a corporation without customers.
Or something like that. If we ceased to exist, so would Slashdot. (Andover even? Who knows.) My point was, anyway, that the/. community could possibly do something about it.
Slashdot Mirror
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CAIMLAS
I think a worse thing would be banning/blocking something like Half-Life from the network - it's a revenue model for Valve, and actually could possibly damage the company, given enough blockings, unlike napster's situation.
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
You don't need to have a house pre-wired, or even put wires in the walls yourselves - it's the people who make a house geeky. My previous house, before leaving for college, was quite 'geeky'. My brother and I lived in the basement of my parents' house, which was connected to the upstairs by a stairwell that joined near the garage door - so naturally, that was our means of entrance. We had a fridge where we kept our Dew and other assorted perishables, and a bathroom that was 'ours.' (Two guys, mind you. This room could get raw, but there's always bleach.)
My computer was approximately 40 feet, as the wolf runs, to my brother's box. I know this, since the 50' strand I had barely reached to the ceiling, to his room, and down from the ceiling. (I'd like to take this opportunity to say that 'false ceilings' - the things they have in offices - are every geeks dream. You can easily stash things up there, and wires are quite easily hidden.)
My bedroom was 11'x22' feet, with a small alcove off in the corner where my computer was, which was about 10x5. Outside my room, to one side was the steps, to the other the 'living room' - call it whatever you want, it's what we used for our geekfests. :) This room was approximately 2.5-3x the size of my bedroom. My brother's room could be entered from the opposite side of the 'living room'.
Quite frequently, especially over this past summer, we would have 1, 2, 3 - as many as 6 geeks, besides ourselves, in our geekcave. Having no patience to wire walls, we would string the RJ45 across the rooms to the computers, and back to my hub. We came one port short of filling an 8-port once - the hub's name is Mailman. :)
We had tables and chairs set about for us to sit at and play. A couch provided a place for weakling geeks to sleep, if needed, and possible sit.
The Geek collective and I would walk about in that basement with only the black light and the glow of our monitors, talking about who fragged whom between levels, and asking who had seen the chips last. We had many a fun morning/night clicking away at each other with our mice.
All in all, I think my nostalgic representation shows that your geek abode doesn't make the geek house. :) A square room with desks back to back, and alcoves that stem off into sleeping quarters would have been highly preferable - especially when we had multi-nighters. Ideally, I think that a large central room, with minimal kitchen, bedrooms, and a bathroom would be ideal. Possibly another room, where chairs could easily be placed as well. Windows, lights, and fresh air would be remotely optional.
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CAIMLAS
Why not require all napster programs to keep logs of what songs are downloaded, and at the same time display banner ads? Then, connect to a server (anon) and tell it what was downloaded. The money gained from the banner ads is divided amongst the artists, thus napsterites don't have to pay for their precious music, and the artists get money.
This is incredibly easy - I'm surprised it hasn't been instigated yet. And a very marginal percentage - .1 percent? - goest to the napster people. That still would ammount to a very large amount.
On another note, I'm sick of napster. It's sucking all the bandwidth on my campus college, and I'm quite looking forward for it to be banned. We've got 2 T1's with about 1300 students. At times, I get -bytes- of data. Not even kilobytes... Even at 5AM on Sunday night, I don't get too terribly much 50k/s - because the fools leave napster running. While napster shoudln't be banned, it's being WAY over used and abused. You better believe these same people would start to complain if a group of people started to routinely download multiple distro ISO's at a time, repeatedly.
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CAIMLAS
Of course, there will always be programs to strip such fingerprints.
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CAIMLAS
I wonder what it would take to get the bill to cover just parts. :) I'm not the type to buy a pre-built system with some good, some cheap components.
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
Also, didn't they forget Gambit in there somewhere? he was just as major as Storm or Cyclops. And definately cooler. (maybe I'm wrong, but wasn't it Rouge and Gambit, not Wolverine?)
And why didn't we have more flying around? Supposedly, Rouge, Storm, and Jean Grey can all fly - only Storm did, and only slightly. I think the characters were all downplayed, other than Prof. X and Magneto, just because they were 'minor actors/actresses'.
I might say, though - Mystique was probably not (IMO) a good choice of an opponent. I'd personally prefered to see someone a little more challenging - say, Blob. But I'm guessing that Mystique was put in the movie for basically one reason - skin. I mean, c'mon, she had virtually nothing on there. Cheap shot at the average American teenage guy. Pashaw.
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CAIMLAS
And of course, people are usually drinking and driving a good while before that point. Thus, one of the reasons that the minimal age for driving was upped a year, and SD has one of the highest driving accident fatality rate.
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
That, and since she likes me. :)
Anyone that goes into the field for any other reason isn't a geek.
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
Or if not over sea, there are many people in the US that need help.
While I'm not saying "dont' help the penguins", I am saying that it disturbs me that people are very frequently more interested in "save the whales" or "save the penguins" as is the case here, than helping fellow humans.
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
Just because someone can count to 10, doesn't mean they can necessarily count to 100. Water is a very simple compount - two molecules of hydrogen, and one of oxygen. A single celled life form, on the other hand, has many many more elements combined together to make a larger whole.
When one thinks about life, and physical materials in general as a whole, it's hard to not see the parallels between it and programming. There are the base elements - atoms and say, assembly. These things build up to make something more complex - but still composed of the smaller elements - say, elements and any construction language.
Makes one wonder if the physical world was programmed by Someone.
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CAIMLAS
What are geeks supposed to do, then? MS obviously won't be able to release a non-bastardized version of the OS, because everyone and their brother would jump on the opportunity to copy the CD onto their own system, since their version was crippled by the vendor, and people will see it as the same product. Geeks who custom build systems won't be able to install MS products, because the OS doesn't come configured for the certain hardware they purchase, and it's impossible to install drivers.
Can you imagine paying for computer software subscriptions like you do to a magazine, you ISP, or cable? That's insane. Systems will probably be completely proprietarized, so that the MS software can't be removed either, IMO. Who knows? Maybe they'll slap a ROM disk onto all new hard drives, where the OS will be hardwired. (How many times have YOU had to reinstall windows on a computer, due to crappy MS programming, or some other reason?)
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
This leads one to wonder about things like DirectX - is it part of the operating system, or is it actually an application all on it's own?
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CAIMLAS
It seemed to me to either be a very similar situation, or a fairly blatant rip of the story.
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CAIMLAS
And the slashdot effect can be devistating.
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CAIMLAS
Or something like that. If we ceased to exist, so would Slashdot. (Andover even? Who knows.) My point was, anyway, that the /. community could possibly do something about it.
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS