"RIAA files suit against Microsoft" -- Besides, isn't most of all piracy done using Microsoft operating systems? Boy, would that be a kicker. Most of Slashdot's population would be confused as to whether to support Microsoft or the RIAA, since they're BOTH evil.
Well I guess it depends. Regular Fox, yes, since they tend to only run syndicated reruns of other shows (at least I can catch up on the 4 seasons of DS9 that I missed). Fox News, on the other hand, is the only thing worth watching, since CNN and MSNBC are unquestionably full of crap.
...we'll never find out if there is intelligent life out there or not.
While SETI and NASA are jumping the gun and declaring a fake packet to be a sign of "intelligent life out there" and awarding some loser a lot of money for making the find, any real signals that for no apparent reason which are aimed specifically at us, won't be processed because the SETI@Home project will have achieved its goal.
Now if only CounterStrike games could end so vividly.
Personally, the only thing I find rather amazing is the fact that 80% of the community has voted "No". I suppose either the CounterStrike community, which fancies itself for its inane usage of the words "fuck", "you", and "cheater", doesn't care about the poll or doesn't know how to vote.
Or maybe they just don't read Slashdot. Damn cheaters.;)
In my middle school tech class the Macs had FoolProof set up with a "hint" system, to get people to shout out the question so the teacher would know what happened. The teacher pulled me aside on the first day and gave me the password, since I had volunteered to get an easy A in the class (this was 6th grade, mind you) by putting together old computers for the class to use. Anyways, the password came with the ability to pretty much screw with everything, which I did when the teacher was on sick leave. One particular instance involved me on the teacher's laptop running every graphics program over the network such that the stupid application sharing setup wouldn't allow the local user to access that program. Much fun was to be had when the others would whine about not being able to run KidPix.
"Damnit, KidPix won't run on any of these machines."
"It's running fine here. Maybe the Macs don't like you."
Hmm. When I got busted for taking down my school's network servers (twice before the teacher noticed), all I got was a Saturday school. There were a couple of things that kept them from seriously screwing over my life:
1. In order to find the problem I exploited, they had to use a port scanner on the network. The teacher who caught me told me that using port scanners are illegal, so I pretty much had it going that since they used a port scanner, they couldn't bust me for running a port scanner on the network (which I didn't do, by the way, I already knew which port to use).
2. When the teacher "caught" me, it was only because my first two attempts at letting him know that there was a problem with the server didn't get any attention. Considering I always complained about the configurations they used, my warning was simply shrugged off by the teacher until during a class presentation I announced "the network server is down, again, hint hint hint" just as the presentation froze.
3. The school just had the network "upgraded", so fixing a slew of problems with relation to the network server would've resulted in a lot of money wasted, money they didn't have in their budget.
As a result, my "punishment" was docked down from expulsion to a simple Saturday School, and the reputation of being a convicted (by the school) "hacker" for the rest of my high school life.
Ahem. Doesn't part of the traditional LAN party involve showing off one's rig and comparing it to others? I mean, I remember something on GameSpy where they actually had a contest (with prizes, apparently) for who had the most unique PC case. Now, 3000 identical machines in one area. Doesn't leave a whole lot for bragging.
"Hey, check this out, I got the same crappy machine as the guys to the right, left, front, and back of me!"
Not very enjoyable.
Even with that possibility gone, who would ditch their own computer to use someone else's for a LAN party? I mean besides the people (like me, ironically), that have glued together towers of Jolt cans around the PC to make it look cooler or something. If I didn't have this situation, I sure as hell wouldn't go to one of those LAN parties just to use a configuration that someone else dictated was "standard" and "fair" for me. What if the computers they use have substandard graphics hardware and my computer doesn't? Not to brag, but if everyone is limited to thirty frames per second at 640x480 16-bit color, that isn't going to be really enjoyable for many people. Hell, I know of a couple people that can kick major amounts of ass at fifteen frames per second on a dialup, yet they can't hit the broad side of a barn at 80 frames per second at 1024x768x32.
This sort of situation is essentially requiring people to conform to a set of standards that most will find inconvenient or simply unthinkable, others may not have a problem with them. Personally, I won't touch any mouse that isn't optical if I have to play games on it, but that's just me. When I play a game on an optical mouse, my sensitivity (in Quake engine games) HAS to be 10.5. The color depth HAS to be 32-bit, mostly to prevent me from standing up and announcing "dude, this color banding SUCKS!" every five minutes. I tried playing Quake on a standard keyboard, but found that I had much better control on a wavy keyboard.
I suppose the point of my rant is this: The majority of gamers are used to using a certain custom configuration, usually their own, for gaming. Yes, some of these people include "OpenGL invisible wall hacks" or "autoaim proxies" into their configs. I think that's obvious. Forcing people to conform to a set of standards to reduce the chances of cheating is lame.
What constitutes a "top-level match"? I sure hope they aren't going to use the technology such that thousands of people can watch a bunch of thirteen-year-old llamas accuse eachother of cheating 80% of the time. Valve oughta at least wait on the technology demo until the CounterStrike community matures a bit, although at the current rate, that'll never happen.
I suppose I should've left the U in updates capitalized. I wasn't referring to changes in the version numbering, I was referring to those stupid little patches they release to plug holes in the system.
How about this:
"Microsoft to charge for future DirectX revisions."
It's nothing really special, and I assume it's been done before. All my home network really consists of is four computers all tied into a hub connected to the cable modem.
The first computer on the hub, the one I'm posting off of, is essentially right next to the hub. Actually, it's more like the hub is on top of my machine. The hub is a Linksys 4-port Cable/xDSL router. The second computer, my Mandrake box, sits to the right of my chair (so I can switch between using my Windoze gaming box (this one) and my Mandrake server box (to my right)).
The third computer, my sister's Windoze box, is in her room. I had a bit of trouble wiring this one, because my calculations were a bit off, and I bought a 25' Ethernet cable instead of a 50' one. I was off by about a few feet when I ran the cable through the ceiling, so one end was connected to the hub and the other was hanging a few feet away from her NIC. I had to do a bit more drilling, but since my Windoze box (and the hub) reside in my closet, I drilled a hole at the bottom of my closet and ran the cable along the ground instead of the ceiling. The 25' cable now works.
The fourth computer, my mom's Windoze P166 (mainly used for word processing and web browsing) box, is out on the far end of the living room, about 50' walking distance from my current position (equidistant from both Windoze and Mandrake boxes). Again, a miscalculation forced me into a situation I didn't really want, only with this one, I overshot the distance and bought a 100' Ethernet cable. I now have about thirty feet of Ethernet slack sitting on the carpet behind my desk. Heh. The P166 is wired through the ceiling.
I don't have the Mandrake box doing anything important other than eating up CPU cycles for SETI@Home (it's a P2-350). I would be running a HTTPd except I've been getting nasty letters from @Home's abuse centers whenever I run one. Seems those fascists don't like giving a 5-year customer a bit of slack. All it really does is house four hard drives which I use for backup whenever any of the Windoze machines decide to take a crap.
Re:The aliens have left the phones off the hook
on
Explaining SETI
·
· Score: 1
Or too dangerous. I mean given the delay time for radio signals to reach distant star sectors, if there's an alien civilization out there picking this stuff up, depending on the distance, they could just be finding out right now about our use of the atomic bomb. Or if they're really advanced, they already know about our use of the atomic bomb. The latter is more likely, and they're simply not directing anything our way until we can prove ourselves to be less dangerous than we already are.
Besides, in the current state of world affairs, if aliens visited us, they'd probably be the catalyst for a third world war.
I suppose by that logic, every Linux user is a socialist. No, I'm not a spammer. Just because I take a rather simplistic approach to it instead of getting all whiny and bitchy about it doesn't mean I support it.
Well, then, I sympathize with his friend just out of the fact that I'd hate to have to put up with that sort of crap as well.
As for the thing above, that wasn't really what I was getting at. I understand the correlation, but it would've been nicer if it was stated more precisely than "...your ISP bills -- which are higher as a result of spam?". That right there implies a number of possibilities. I figured his ISP was/is crazy enough to charge him per email received to his account.
On the converse, however, with the point you got at, most larger ISPs don't particularly care about spam in the first place. If his ISP is one of those Mom 'n' Pop operations, they'd be more inclined to prevent spam from infiltrating their networks in the first place, or they'd at least be a bit more receptive to a user's complaints rather than leaving it in the hands of the user to fix it himself.
But yes, I see what you're getting at.
Well, this tactic works for me IRL, though I don't know if it'd work the same online.
Usually, when I get snail mail spam, they come with business reply envelopes. Stuff them full of anything that's heavy, and send them back. Sooner or later they'll get tired of paying the postage on the brick you sent back to them.
I dunno if a similar tactic would work online, though. I should try it though, send a 3 meg file back the way the spam came (might work as a great substitute for my Delete key, too) and see if I continue getting crap from these people...
It's already been established that the Pentium 4 has problems. It's already been established that the only thing it could possibly have going for it is its expensive-as-fsck Rambus memory. Now what? They slash prices 50%? So what? I'm not even going to pay half for a crappy processor when I could still pay 25% the full price of one for an AMD processor that kicks the crap out of it.
Slashdot Mirror
Tapes? Nah. What about burnt CDs?
"RIAA files suit against Microsoft" -- Besides, isn't most of all piracy done using Microsoft operating systems? Boy, would that be a kicker. Most of Slashdot's population would be confused as to whether to support Microsoft or the RIAA, since they're BOTH evil.
Well I guess it depends. Regular Fox, yes, since they tend to only run syndicated reruns of other shows (at least I can catch up on the 4 seasons of DS9 that I missed). Fox News, on the other hand, is the only thing worth watching, since CNN and MSNBC are unquestionably full of crap.
...we'll never find out if there is intelligent life out there or not.
While SETI and NASA are jumping the gun and declaring a fake packet to be a sign of "intelligent life out there" and awarding some loser a lot of money for making the find, any real signals that for no apparent reason which are aimed specifically at us, won't be processed because the SETI@Home project will have achieved its goal.
Now if only CounterStrike games could end so vividly.
"Cheater detected, cheater wins, GAME OVER."
Heh.
...and if I remember correctly, the news report generated alongside the accident would be alongside the lines of...
"Oops."
Personally, the only thing I find rather amazing is the fact that 80% of the community has voted "No". I suppose either the CounterStrike community, which fancies itself for its inane usage of the words "fuck", "you", and "cheater", doesn't care about the poll or doesn't know how to vote.
;)
Or maybe they just don't read Slashdot. Damn cheaters.
In my middle school tech class the Macs had FoolProof set up with a "hint" system, to get people to shout out the question so the teacher would know what happened. The teacher pulled me aside on the first day and gave me the password, since I had volunteered to get an easy A in the class (this was 6th grade, mind you) by putting together old computers for the class to use. Anyways, the password came with the ability to pretty much screw with everything, which I did when the teacher was on sick leave. One particular instance involved me on the teacher's laptop running every graphics program over the network such that the stupid application sharing setup wouldn't allow the local user to access that program. Much fun was to be had when the others would whine about not being able to run KidPix.
"Damnit, KidPix won't run on any of these machines."
"It's running fine here. Maybe the Macs don't like you."
Hmm. When I got busted for taking down my school's network servers (twice before the teacher noticed), all I got was a Saturday school. There were a couple of things that kept them from seriously screwing over my life:
1. In order to find the problem I exploited, they had to use a port scanner on the network. The teacher who caught me told me that using port scanners are illegal, so I pretty much had it going that since they used a port scanner, they couldn't bust me for running a port scanner on the network (which I didn't do, by the way, I already knew which port to use).
2. When the teacher "caught" me, it was only because my first two attempts at letting him know that there was a problem with the server didn't get any attention. Considering I always complained about the configurations they used, my warning was simply shrugged off by the teacher until during a class presentation I announced "the network server is down, again, hint hint hint" just as the presentation froze.
3. The school just had the network "upgraded", so fixing a slew of problems with relation to the network server would've resulted in a lot of money wasted, money they didn't have in their budget.
As a result, my "punishment" was docked down from expulsion to a simple Saturday School, and the reputation of being a convicted (by the school) "hacker" for the rest of my high school life.
That's just wonderful. You waste four years and perhaps $50-60K on them, and their response is yet another way for them to spam you.
Oh well, just another email account to add to my list of six or seven.
Look here.
And here.
Actually they're more like advertisements, but I thought they were a pretty good look for getting an idea as to what the guy is working with.
"Metro Link wants to be shown the money, is shown the door instead."
Heh.
Ahem. Doesn't part of the traditional LAN party involve showing off one's rig and comparing it to others? I mean, I remember something on GameSpy where they actually had a contest (with prizes, apparently) for who had the most unique PC case. Now, 3000 identical machines in one area. Doesn't leave a whole lot for bragging.
"Hey, check this out, I got the same crappy machine as the guys to the right, left, front, and back of me!"
Not very enjoyable.
Even with that possibility gone, who would ditch their own computer to use someone else's for a LAN party? I mean besides the people (like me, ironically), that have glued together towers of Jolt cans around the PC to make it look cooler or something. If I didn't have this situation, I sure as hell wouldn't go to one of those LAN parties just to use a configuration that someone else dictated was "standard" and "fair" for me. What if the computers they use have substandard graphics hardware and my computer doesn't? Not to brag, but if everyone is limited to thirty frames per second at 640x480 16-bit color, that isn't going to be really enjoyable for many people. Hell, I know of a couple people that can kick major amounts of ass at fifteen frames per second on a dialup, yet they can't hit the broad side of a barn at 80 frames per second at 1024x768x32.
This sort of situation is essentially requiring people to conform to a set of standards that most will find inconvenient or simply unthinkable, others may not have a problem with them. Personally, I won't touch any mouse that isn't optical if I have to play games on it, but that's just me. When I play a game on an optical mouse, my sensitivity (in Quake engine games) HAS to be 10.5. The color depth HAS to be 32-bit, mostly to prevent me from standing up and announcing "dude, this color banding SUCKS!" every five minutes. I tried playing Quake on a standard keyboard, but found that I had much better control on a wavy keyboard.
I suppose the point of my rant is this: The majority of gamers are used to using a certain custom configuration, usually their own, for gaming. Yes, some of these people include "OpenGL invisible wall hacks" or "autoaim proxies" into their configs. I think that's obvious. Forcing people to conform to a set of standards to reduce the chances of cheating is lame.
What constitutes a "top-level match"? I sure hope they aren't going to use the technology such that thousands of people can watch a bunch of thirteen-year-old llamas accuse eachother of cheating 80% of the time. Valve oughta at least wait on the technology demo until the CounterStrike community matures a bit, although at the current rate, that'll never happen.
I suppose I should've left the U in updates capitalized. I wasn't referring to changes in the version numbering, I was referring to those stupid little patches they release to plug holes in the system. How about this: "Microsoft to charge for future DirectX revisions."
The way this is going, what bright idea are we going to see next?
I can see it now...
"Microsoft to charge for Windows updates."
"Dynamix/Sierra to charge for Tribes 2 patches."
"DoubleClick to charge for banner ads."
It's nothing really special, and I assume it's been done before. All my home network really consists of is four computers all tied into a hub connected to the cable modem.
The first computer on the hub, the one I'm posting off of, is essentially right next to the hub. Actually, it's more like the hub is on top of my machine. The hub is a Linksys 4-port Cable/xDSL router. The second computer, my Mandrake box, sits to the right of my chair (so I can switch between using my Windoze gaming box (this one) and my Mandrake server box (to my right)).
The third computer, my sister's Windoze box, is in her room. I had a bit of trouble wiring this one, because my calculations were a bit off, and I bought a 25' Ethernet cable instead of a 50' one. I was off by about a few feet when I ran the cable through the ceiling, so one end was connected to the hub and the other was hanging a few feet away from her NIC. I had to do a bit more drilling, but since my Windoze box (and the hub) reside in my closet, I drilled a hole at the bottom of my closet and ran the cable along the ground instead of the ceiling. The 25' cable now works.
The fourth computer, my mom's Windoze P166 (mainly used for word processing and web browsing) box, is out on the far end of the living room, about 50' walking distance from my current position (equidistant from both Windoze and Mandrake boxes). Again, a miscalculation forced me into a situation I didn't really want, only with this one, I overshot the distance and bought a 100' Ethernet cable. I now have about thirty feet of Ethernet slack sitting on the carpet behind my desk. Heh. The P166 is wired through the ceiling.
I don't have the Mandrake box doing anything important other than eating up CPU cycles for SETI@Home (it's a P2-350). I would be running a HTTPd except I've been getting nasty letters from @Home's abuse centers whenever I run one. Seems those fascists don't like giving a 5-year customer a bit of slack. All it really does is house four hard drives which I use for backup whenever any of the Windoze machines decide to take a crap.
Or too dangerous. I mean given the delay time for radio signals to reach distant star sectors, if there's an alien civilization out there picking this stuff up, depending on the distance, they could just be finding out right now about our use of the atomic bomb. Or if they're really advanced, they already know about our use of the atomic bomb. The latter is more likely, and they're simply not directing anything our way until we can prove ourselves to be less dangerous than we already are.
Besides, in the current state of world affairs, if aliens visited us, they'd probably be the catalyst for a third world war.
Hehe, I realized that right after I posted.
I suppose by that logic, every Linux user is a socialist. No, I'm not a spammer. Just because I take a rather simplistic approach to it instead of getting all whiny and bitchy about it doesn't mean I support it.
Well, then, I sympathize with his friend just out of the fact that I'd hate to have to put up with that sort of crap as well. As for the thing above, that wasn't really what I was getting at. I understand the correlation, but it would've been nicer if it was stated more precisely than "...your ISP bills -- which are higher as a result of spam?". That right there implies a number of possibilities. I figured his ISP was/is crazy enough to charge him per email received to his account. On the converse, however, with the point you got at, most larger ISPs don't particularly care about spam in the first place. If his ISP is one of those Mom 'n' Pop operations, they'd be more inclined to prevent spam from infiltrating their networks in the first place, or they'd at least be a bit more receptive to a user's complaints rather than leaving it in the hands of the user to fix it himself. But yes, I see what you're getting at.
Well, this tactic works for me IRL, though I don't know if it'd work the same online.
Usually, when I get snail mail spam, they come with business reply envelopes. Stuff them full of anything that's heavy, and send them back. Sooner or later they'll get tired of paying the postage on the brick you sent back to them.
I dunno if a similar tactic would work online, though. I should try it though, send a 3 meg file back the way the spam came (might work as a great substitute for my Delete key, too) and see if I continue getting crap from these people...
ISP bills higher as a result of spam? You mean to tell me your ISP charges you per email stored on their servers?
I'm tempted to respond with "Get a clue. Get a better ISP."
As for your friend, hasn't he ever considered turning his pager OFF before he goes to sleep?
Doesn't it get monotonous after about the first fifty reports of spam sent out?
It's already been established that the Pentium 4 has problems. It's already been established that the only thing it could possibly have going for it is its expensive-as-fsck Rambus memory. Now what? They slash prices 50%? So what? I'm not even going to pay half for a crappy processor when I could still pay 25% the full price of one for an AMD processor that kicks the crap out of it.
Why only a hockey puck? Why not rip the drive apart to the point that you can use the platters as coasters?
I know, it's uneconomical compared to using AOL CDs or CD-R's your drive spat out with buffer underruns, but it works.