You ask what can be done with information about someone other than their SSN. First off, the SSN should only be released to the US Goverment. Anyone else asking for it is technically breaking the law. Let's run through a few use cases here.
1) I can call your bank, get your debit card reissued, and change the PIN number. Your checking account is now empty because I have your name, address, phone #, account #, and last three withdrawals. I don't have an SSN.
2) I've just called the electric company and told them that you've moved. Your power is cut off and you come home to a nicely defrosted freezer. No SSN required.
3) Let's say I'm someone you know - an ex-boy or girl friend with a grudge. I can send spoofed emails to your work place, pretending to be from you, about your co-workers.
4) I can go and obtain identification that says I am you. Once I get the identification that says I am you, I can probably get your SSN from someplace like one of the credit bureaus.
Any piece of information that's leaked to me will allow me to obtain other bits that I don't already have in my possession. I don't understand why this question got asked in the first place. It's terribly basic.
Why are we worried about hybrids? They're expensive and now we're talking about using up our potable water to power vehicles. Water is a more precious resource than petrochemicals. I can walk, if I have to. I cannot not drink water. Most places in the world, potable water is the single most precious resource. Yeah...that's what I want - Water Wars.
Gasoline engines will combust ethanol just as easily as fossil fuels. For those of you in colder climes, you might have to give it a bit of a spray to get the engine running and let it warm up, but it will work.
Diesel engines will run biodiesel just as easily. Biodiesel is just a fancy name of a mixture of oil and either ethanol, kerosene, or petro-diesel.
DUH! All we really need to do is change what's the fuel pump. Brazil did it.
My experience with biodiesel has been limited to tractors and farm equipment, so take what I have to say with that mind. We never once modified the engines to use biodiesel. We just filled up the tank with a mixture of peanut oil, canola oil or what ever happened to be a cheap bulk purchase and ethanol. Turn the key and voila! You now have a biodiesel vehicle. Mind you, the ethanol was there mostly to make it easier to start, but you can run on pure vegetable oil with some modifications. That said we used an 80/20 mix of oil to ethanol and ran it. Perhaps your car would run on the same or similar formulation?
I have napster, sattelite radio, an iPod, a laptop, and a Treo650 which are all perfectly capable of playing MP3's. Now they're going to make you buy a special phone in order to get their songs. I guess if people are stupid enough to pay $2.50 for a ring tone that evaporates in 90 days, it will be a resounding success. Napster is still $9.99 a month for all you can download. I can have 4 songs on my cell phone or 400 on laptop which synchs with my cell phone....Hmmmm....golly, I can't decide....
Problem #1 - Mr. Spyware Programmer in Nigeria where such things aren't illegal.
Problem #2 - Mr. Identity Theif in wierd 3rd world country where such things are illegal but are tactitly condoned by local authority as long as its not someone from their country
Problem #3 - Mr Corporate Lobbyist - RIAA & MPAA ring any bells????
Problem #4 - Your privacy has been dead for decades. The sad part is that people are just now starting to smell the rotting corpse.
Passing a bill here in the USA will only do what CAN-SPAM did - drive them off shore to less regulated places. What's really needed is the ability to establish peering points that co-incide with national borders. Then we can pass a law that says that if we don't like your data integrity laws, we don't pass traffic to/from you.
See if that doesn't actually accomplish what you're looking for.
Frankly, most of the talented musicians are well...ugly. As one wit put it, rock and roll was created so that ugly guys could get laid. Given the postulation that talented musicians are ugly, why would I pay extra to get the video to go with the sound?
2 cents,
Queen B
Buy the Game and Pay Again to Play It - NOT!!!!
on
Blizzcon Writeup
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
My qualms arise from the fact that game makes expect me to pay $50 for their game (give or take a few dollars depending on the title) and then pay to play it every month. Frankly, I flatly refuse to do it. If you want me to pay by the month, fine - sell me the game for cheap. It should cost well under $20 and the monthly fee should be reasonable. While the monthly fee to pay WoW is fairly reasonable (about $15/month), paying $50 for the game so that I turn around and pay another $15/month to play my game isn't.
How hard is it to do the math? Charge me $20 for the game and $18/month to play. Over the course of 18 months, you've actually made an extra $4 per player and you likely have more players.
Unfortunately the video game industry and the TV industry are hung up on focus groups. The only thing to ever come out of a focus group is bland. All it takes one in-duh-vidiual who has negative responses and is outspoken about them and magically the marketing wonks tell the TV or game produces, "The focus group hated that." In fact, that's not the case. Only one person in the focus group with a forceful personality hated it. The real story is that the rest of the people in the focus group were either too polite or too non-confrontational to deal with the loudmouth.
If you want a baloney sandwich, hire a focus group. If you want a gourmet meal, hire a chef with some flair and vision to create you a masterpiece. Admitted the gourmet meal costs more, but it's also infinitely more satifying. For those who say that the one hour format simply won't support "good TV", I'd like to point out the following, "The Sopranos", "Southpark", "The Dave Chapell Show", "Deadwood", "The Man Show" (original), "Dead Like Me", "Carnivale", and "Rome". The only thing these shows have in common is that they were produced by and air on cable TV channels. They are not beholden to the network executives and their thrice-dammned focus groups.
For those that say that video games are not good entertainment, I would offer up a few of the rather inventive RPG's I've seen lately, "I of the Dragon" and "Fable". I'd also offer the whole "SIM City" series , as well as the "SIMS" and "SIMS2" since they pretty much redefined the "Simulation" category. The direction that some of the MMORG's are going in is becoming interesting because the players have the ability to revamp the world around them as well as interact with the other players, becoming sort of a group consentual hallucination. Given that some of the religious elements have been "forcing" conversions to their faith in on-line games by threatening lower level players with virtual violence, can you imagine what would happen if you got one of those yahoos in a focus group on say, "City of Villans" or GTA?
If you want to protect students from on-line predators, have some adults that hang out in the online chat rooms. Just one lurking, trusted adult can put an end to a lot of crap in a chat room. Chat rooms aren't the only places to talk to kids on line though. Most on line games have a chat/messaging component. Because of some of the things that we've observed, our gaming clan has enacted really strict rules about this for our "junior league" members. Have adults that are privvy to all the conversations during on-line game play. Tell parents not to put the computer in the kid's bedroom. Have the parent install monitoring software and check up on what junior's up to on-line.
Major Super-Important Point - THE COMPUTER IS NOT A BABYSITTER. YOU MUST INTERACT WITH YOUR CHILD.
There are dozens of way more effective steps than taking down a blog or two. Explain to kids that real names and real places don't get used in blogs. Using someone's real name, or telling where they live, etc. should be cause for suspension.
Given that "tinfoil" is really aluminium, it will conduct electricity. If I'm understanding this correctly, won't putting a "second layer on the tinfoil hat" have...ummm...an undesirable outcome? Now, if you were to ground the hat, you might have something. Perhaps if you made sure that you were always standing in a puddle of saltwater?
As for getting people to wear the "required headware", outfit it so that it will just shove a big mac or a krispy kreme in their mouth at the push of a button. That'll get about 90% of the overweight American population to willingly don the thing, no matter what else it does to them.
I'm writing this as an end-user of Wikipedia, not a contributor. If the ads are Google-esque, who really cares? I don't mind browsing past an ad or two if I can actually find what I'm looking for. My issue with the Wikipedia is that many times I come upon "a stub" that needs to be expanded. Now, the Wikipedia politely asks me if I'd like to add to the stub. The problem with that is if I knew the answer, I certainly would NOT be browsing the f&*^%$# Wikipedia looking for the answer. Given the inflow of dollars to fund more entries, this might make the Wikipedia more useful to everyone. I'm all in favor of that.
Wanna guess what I'm gonna do if I can get a patent on that? <start evil laughter> All of you will be my slaves and I will rule the world!!! <end evil laughter>
What happens when a coder uses a pre-defined function in a language that turns out later to have say a buffer overflow? Is the software coder responsible for it, since he used? Is the language coder that wrote the language responsbile for it?
As an additional question - why not apply the standard legal definition of "negligence"? The test for negligence is 1) was this a forseeable consequence of a given action? and 2) what would a prudent man do?
Thirdly, we have this nifty piece of legistation already in place called the Uniform Commercial Code, which stipulates that a product must be fit for the purpose for which it is intended. All that needs to happen is that the EULA's need to be disregarded and the UCC enforced against software makers. It's completely ridiculous that we have software that can completely wreck your computer/server/network being sold to people who are completely unaccountable for their actions. Once they cash your check, they have no incentive to fix anything.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong,but isn't the IEEE supposed to be overseeing stuff like this. Given the fact that most BIOS is horribly outdated for the hardware it's operating and the whole concept of a 33mhz PCI slot is on a motherboard that otherwise capable of running at well over 500mhz is completely laughable, you'd think they'd remove their heads from their behinds. The IEEE needs to get cracking on a new standard for a LOT of things. They were formed to take care of this and seem to be rather inattentive to their responsiblities.
Given the fact that those who are supposed to be handling them are ignoring them, someone must step in to fill the gap. However, my expereince in working groups where "The Borg" have membership is that they either get booted from the group for bad behaviour or the standard comes out skewed in favor of "The Collective". My concern here is that "The Borg" will attempt to divert any efforts at an open standard that any OS can use into something that only M$ products will work well on.
Now, gentle reader, one must understand that this depends on the level of revenge desired.
1) Acquire a large farm animal (cow, horse, etc.), feed it several loaves of bread, leave it in the offending parties domicile. Note, do not leave out the step of feeding it several loaves of bread as this has interesting effects on the digestive system but is otherwise not harmful to the creature of your choice.
Pro: Quite interesting Con: Hard to get up the elevator
2) Sneak up on the slumbering victim with the handy tube of Crest toothpase. Squeeze the tube until empty up the offending party's nostrils.
Pro: Cheap and Simple and victim is minty fresh for weeks, has been known to solve some halitosis problems Con: Usually requires chemical intervention to keep subject still during the process. Coaxing subject into injesting large quantities of cheap booze is the preferred method;)
3) Anything involving superglue. A few drops in a door lock can be priceless. Gluing specific artifacts to an immovable surface in a natural looking position. Briefcases to the floor. Keys to the counter. You get the idea.
Pro: Cheap and simple Con: Can be hard to pull off and can end up with fingers glued to tube which is dead giveaway
4) Shaving cream can be useful. Find the largest plastic bag you can. Fill with shaving cream. Insert the top of the bag under the door. Secure an item to hold the back of the bag in place.
Pro: Cheap and Simple Con: Wierd looks from the check out lady when you purchase 37 cans of shaving cream
5) Take photos of their vehicle or some other prize possession. Post ad on ebay offering to sell item. Arrange for victim to find ad.
Pro: Also cheap and simple Con: Waste of all that good feedback when you don't actually sell item
6) Take a few photoshop tutorials and strip victims head into embarassing/compromising photo. Mail to significant other.
Pro: Cheap and simple Con: Can be very destructive to personal relationships
7) Variation on #6 - print photo and post with victim's pager or cell phone # at local gay bar.
Pro: Cheap and Simple Con: Same as above
8) Learn Unix. Write cron job that will randomly message victim's cell phone with various requests to call things Dial-A-Prayer, Ask-A-Nurse, etc.
Pro: Cheap Con: Can be traced
9) Obtain some sticky paper or platic which you can print on. Create a custom bumper sticker and apply to victims car. "Ask me about my penis enlargement" is my favorite.
Pro: Simple to do and can be attractive with the addition of some appropriate art work - like the Enzyte logo Con: Relation is to be expected
While in theory this will work, the only thing I've ever known it to do is to cause a rainbow-colored explosion of sticky notes with user name and password information on them to be applied to the upper right corner. It makes the cube farm look like a paririe after a rain - all the little flowers blossoming....
We've good luck and a nice response from Lunar Pages. We've been through simlar web hosting nightmares in the past and have been using Lunar Pages for almost a year now and have been quite pleased.
Their email comes with a nice selection of spam and virus filtering options which can be user controlled from their control panel.
What these people have totally failed to consider is that all mammals (and most non-mammals) have a unique set of viruses and bacteria that are unique to their species. These things live in the digestive tract, blood stream, organs, etc. of every creature and they are typically unique to that species of critter. We humans have our own. Mixing our "cooties" with their "cooties" is disasterous.
The "Bird Flu" is one example. People were exposed to an avian virus that was supposed to be begnin but which does what all viruses do, mutated. Then the people got very ill and many died from the "begnin virus".
There is more than a small amount of evidence that AIDS was a gift to the world from the WHO. It seems that the WHO sent a bunch of Belgian doctors and scientents to what was at the time the Belgian Congo to vaccinate the locals against polio and small pox. The doctors and scientists were overwhelmed by the numbers and soon ran out of vaccine. Since they knew how to make the vaccine and there were a nice handy supply of local monkeys available, they started making and administering their own home grown vaccine. The only problem with that was the local monkey population was the Green Monkey, which carries SIV. In the process of vaccinating people for polio and small pox, they were inadvertently given SIV as well. The SIV virus does what any good virus does and mutates. Instead of SIV, now we have HIV.
Growing the cells together doesn't help this process. In many organisms, the bacteria and viruses have a co-dependent relationship with the host. Oral bacteria is another example. We humans have a whole host of particulary nasty bacteria that live in our mouths. Let them become unbalanced and you see conditions like thrush and other oral diseases. However, these organisms aid in the digestion processes. Scientists aren't really sure how they are acquired. Same goes for the extensive list of little friends living in our digestive tract.
Now you want to start mixing animal and human? Scientists have found species-specific bacteria and viruses in cloned animals and even when the clone is implanted in a host species, many of these things are still present. They appear to be quite integrated with the actual organism. The exact method of acquision is as yet unknown. Until this can be seperated, which may not be possible, we're playing with some serious juju.
Man, we have go to get our selves off this rock before some l4m3r breeds a superbug that wipes the place clean.
As part of an experiment in political science in college, we hand copied the Declaration of Independence on to notebook paper and took it to a local mall and tried to get people to sign it. The really sad part is that no one would sign it. We were called "Communists", "Anarchists", "Socalists", "Wierdos", and a variety of other epithets. Mall security ended up having to resecue us from a very physically threatening mob.
All in all, it was quite educational as to people's stance and understanding of their rights. If you don't know what your rights are, will you know if someone is violating them?
Slashdot Mirror
You ask what can be done with information about someone other than their SSN. First off, the SSN should only be released to the US Goverment. Anyone else asking for it is technically breaking the law. Let's run through a few use cases here.
1) I can call your bank, get your debit card reissued, and change the PIN number. Your checking account is now empty because I have your name, address, phone #, account #, and last three withdrawals.
I don't have an SSN.
2) I've just called the electric company and told them that you've moved. Your power is cut off and you come home to a nicely defrosted freezer. No SSN required.
3) Let's say I'm someone you know - an ex-boy or girl friend with a grudge. I can send spoofed emails to your work place, pretending to be from you, about your co-workers.
4) I can go and obtain identification that says I am you. Once I get the identification that says I am you, I can probably get your SSN from someplace like one of the credit bureaus.
Any piece of information that's leaked to me will allow me to obtain other bits that I don't already have in my possession. I don't understand why this question got asked in the first place. It's terribly basic.
2 cents,
Queen B
Sun and IBM sittin' in a tree
k - i - s - s - i - n - g
First comes love and then comes marriage
Then comes IBM pushing a baby carriage
Guess this is the baby carriage???
2 cents,
Queen B
Why are we worried about hybrids? They're expensive and now we're talking about using up our potable water to power vehicles. Water is a more precious resource than petrochemicals. I can walk, if I have to. I cannot not drink water. Most places in the world, potable water is the single most precious resource. Yeah...that's what I want - Water Wars.
Gasoline engines will combust ethanol just as easily as fossil fuels. For those of you in colder climes, you might have to give it a bit of a spray to get the engine running and let it warm up, but it will work.
Diesel engines will run biodiesel just as easily. Biodiesel is just a fancy name of a mixture of oil and either ethanol, kerosene, or petro-diesel.
DUH! All we really need to do is change what's the fuel pump. Brazil did it.
2 cents,
Queen B
My experience with biodiesel has been limited to tractors and farm equipment, so take what I have to say with that mind. We never once modified the engines to use biodiesel. We just filled up the tank with a mixture of peanut oil, canola oil or what ever happened to be a cheap bulk purchase and ethanol. Turn the key and voila! You now have a biodiesel vehicle. Mind you, the ethanol was there mostly to make it easier to start, but you can run on pure vegetable oil with some modifications. That said we used an 80/20 mix of oil to ethanol and ran it. Perhaps your car would run on the same or similar formulation?
2 cents,
Queen B
Ok,
I have napster, sattelite radio, an iPod, a laptop, and a Treo650 which are all perfectly capable of playing MP3's. Now they're going to make you buy a special phone in order to get their songs. I guess if people are stupid enough to pay $2.50 for a ring tone that evaporates in 90 days, it will be a resounding success. Napster is still $9.99 a month for all you can download. I can have 4 songs on my cell phone or 400 on laptop which synchs with my cell phone....Hmmmm....golly, I can't decide....
2 cents,
Queen B
Problem #1 - Mr. Spyware Programmer in Nigeria where such things aren't illegal.
Problem #2 - Mr. Identity Theif in wierd 3rd world country where such things are illegal but are tactitly condoned by local authority as long as its not someone from their country
Problem #3 - Mr Corporate Lobbyist - RIAA & MPAA ring any bells????
Problem #4 - Your privacy has been dead for decades. The sad part is that people are just now starting to smell the rotting corpse.
Passing a bill here in the USA will only do what CAN-SPAM did - drive them off shore to less regulated places. What's really needed is the ability to establish peering points that co-incide with national borders. Then we can pass a law that says that if we don't like your data integrity laws, we don't pass traffic to/from you.
See if that doesn't actually accomplish what you're looking for.
2 cents,
Queen B
Frankly, most of the talented musicians are well...ugly. As one wit put it, rock and roll was created so that ugly guys could get laid. Given the postulation that talented musicians are ugly, why would I pay extra to get the video to go with the sound?
2 cents,
Queen B
My qualms arise from the fact that game makes expect me to pay $50 for their game (give or take a few dollars depending on the title) and then pay to play it every month. Frankly, I flatly refuse to do it. If you want me to pay by the month, fine - sell me the game for cheap. It should cost well under $20 and the monthly fee should be reasonable. While the monthly fee to pay WoW is fairly reasonable (about $15/month), paying $50 for the game so that I turn around and pay another $15/month to play my game isn't.
How hard is it to do the math? Charge me $20 for the game and $18/month to play. Over the course of 18 months, you've actually made an extra $4 per player and you likely have more players.
2 cents,
Queen B
What about all the apache instances that serve up multiple URL's too? We have four apache instances here that serve well over 100 URL's.
Is that 4 or5 100????
Inquiring minds want to know....
2 cents,
Queen B
Unfortunately the video game industry and the TV industry are hung up on focus groups. The only thing to ever come out of a focus group is bland. All it takes one in-duh-vidiual who has negative responses and is outspoken about them and magically the marketing wonks tell the TV or game produces, "The focus group hated that." In fact, that's not the case. Only one person in the focus group with a forceful personality hated it. The real story is that the rest of the people in the focus group were either too polite or too non-confrontational to deal with the loudmouth.
If you want a baloney sandwich, hire a focus group. If you want a gourmet meal, hire a chef with some flair and vision to create you a masterpiece. Admitted the gourmet meal costs more, but it's also infinitely more satifying. For those who say that the one hour format simply won't support "good TV", I'd like to point out the following, "The Sopranos", "Southpark", "The Dave Chapell Show", "Deadwood", "The Man Show" (original), "Dead Like Me", "Carnivale", and "Rome". The only thing these shows have in common is that they were produced by and air on cable TV channels. They are not beholden to the network executives and their thrice-dammned focus groups.
For those that say that video games are not good entertainment, I would offer up a few of the rather inventive RPG's I've seen lately, "I of the Dragon" and "Fable". I'd also offer the whole "SIM City" series , as well as the "SIMS" and "SIMS2" since they pretty much redefined the "Simulation" category. The direction that some of the MMORG's are going in is becoming interesting because the players have the ability to revamp the world around them as well as interact with the other players, becoming sort of a group consentual hallucination. Given that some of the religious elements have been "forcing" conversions to their faith in on-line games by threatening lower level players with virtual violence, can you imagine what would happen if you got one of those yahoos in a focus group on say, "City of Villans" or GTA?
2 cents,
Queen B
I don't know about you guys, but I've got a 37 1/2 KVA UPS along with the Liebert running....
Yikes....I'm glad we don't have our own power meter!
2 cents,
Queen B
If you want to protect students from on-line predators, have some adults that hang out in the online chat rooms. Just one lurking, trusted adult can put an end to a lot of crap in a chat room. Chat rooms aren't the only places to talk to kids on line though. Most on line games have a chat/messaging component. Because of some of the things that we've observed, our gaming clan has enacted really strict rules about this for our "junior league" members. Have adults that are privvy to all the conversations during on-line game play. Tell parents not to put the computer in the kid's bedroom. Have the parent install monitoring software and check up on what junior's up to on-line.
Major Super-Important Point - THE COMPUTER IS NOT A BABYSITTER. YOU MUST INTERACT WITH YOUR CHILD.
There are dozens of way more effective steps than taking down a blog or two. Explain to kids that real names and real places don't get used in blogs. Using someone's real name, or telling where they live, etc. should be cause for suspension.
2 cents,
Queen B
My grandfather used to say that it's better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.
2 cents,
Queen B
Given that "tinfoil" is really aluminium, it will conduct electricity. If I'm understanding this correctly, won't putting a "second layer on the tinfoil hat" have...ummm...an undesirable outcome? Now, if you were to ground the hat, you might have something. Perhaps if you made sure that you were always standing in a puddle of saltwater?
As for getting people to wear the "required headware", outfit it so that it will just shove a big mac or a krispy kreme in their mouth at the push of a button. That'll get about 90% of the overweight American population to willingly don the thing, no matter what else it does to them.
2 rather cynical cents,
Queen B
You see, the thing is that if I could find the info elsewhere, I wouldn't be browsing the Wikipeidia...
I'm writing this as an end-user of Wikipedia, not a contributor. If the ads are Google-esque, who really cares? I don't mind browsing past an ad or two if I can actually find what I'm looking for. My issue with the Wikipedia is that many times I come upon "a stub" that needs to be expanded. Now, the Wikipedia politely asks me if I'd like to add to the stub. The problem with that is if I knew the answer, I certainly would NOT be browsing the f&*^%$# Wikipedia looking for the answer. Given the inflow of dollars to fund more entries, this might make the Wikipedia more useful to everyone. I'm all in favor of that.
2 cents,
Queen B
Let's apply for a patent for a netural gas with the following composition:
.03% .002% .0002% .0005% .0001% .00005% .000009%
Nitrogen - 78%
Oxygen - 21%
Argon - 1%
Carbon Dioxide -
Neon -
Methane -
Helium -
Krypton -
Hydrogen -
Xenon -
Wanna guess what I'm gonna do if I can get a patent on that?
<start evil laughter>
All of you will be my slaves and I will rule the world!!!
<end evil laughter>
Queen B
What happens when a coder uses a pre-defined function in a language that turns out later to have say a buffer overflow? Is the software coder responsible for it, since he used? Is the language coder that wrote the language responsbile for it?
As an additional question - why not apply the standard legal definition of "negligence"? The test for negligence is 1) was this a forseeable consequence of a given action? and 2) what would a prudent man do?
Thirdly, we have this nifty piece of legistation already in place called the Uniform Commercial Code, which stipulates that a product must be fit for the purpose for which it is intended. All that needs to happen is that the EULA's need to be disregarded and the UCC enforced against software makers. It's completely ridiculous that we have software that can completely wreck your computer/server/network being sold to people who are completely unaccountable for their actions. Once they cash your check, they have no incentive to fix anything.
2 cents,
Queen B
Someone correct me if I'm wrong,but isn't the IEEE supposed to be overseeing stuff like this. Given the fact that most BIOS is horribly outdated for the hardware it's operating and the whole concept of a 33mhz PCI slot is on a motherboard that otherwise capable of running at well over 500mhz is completely laughable, you'd think they'd remove their heads from their behinds. The IEEE needs to get cracking on a new standard for a LOT of things. They were formed to take care of this and seem to be rather inattentive to their responsiblities.
Given the fact that those who are supposed to be handling them are ignoring them, someone must step in to fill the gap. However, my expereince in working groups where "The Borg" have membership is that they either get booted from the group for bad behaviour or the standard comes out skewed in favor of "The Collective".
My concern here is that "The Borg" will attempt to divert any efforts at an open standard that any OS can use into something that only M$ products will work well on.
2 cents,
Queen B
Now, gentle reader, one must understand that this depends on the level of revenge desired.
;)
1) Acquire a large farm animal (cow, horse, etc.), feed it several loaves of bread, leave it in the offending parties domicile. Note, do not leave out the step of feeding it several loaves of bread as this has interesting effects on the digestive system but is otherwise not harmful to the creature of your choice.
Pro: Quite interesting
Con: Hard to get up the elevator
2) Sneak up on the slumbering victim with the handy tube of Crest toothpase. Squeeze the tube until empty up the offending party's nostrils.
Pro: Cheap and Simple and victim is minty fresh for weeks, has been known to solve some halitosis problems
Con: Usually requires chemical intervention to keep subject still during the process. Coaxing subject into injesting large quantities of cheap booze is the preferred method
3) Anything involving superglue. A few drops in a door lock can be priceless. Gluing specific artifacts to an immovable surface in a natural looking position. Briefcases to the floor. Keys to the counter. You get the idea.
Pro: Cheap and simple
Con: Can be hard to pull off and can end up with fingers glued to tube which is dead giveaway
4) Shaving cream can be useful. Find the largest plastic bag you can. Fill with shaving cream. Insert the top of the bag under the door. Secure an item to hold the back of the bag in place.
Pro: Cheap and Simple
Con: Wierd looks from the check out lady when you purchase 37 cans of shaving cream
5) Take photos of their vehicle or some other prize possession. Post ad on ebay offering to sell item. Arrange for victim to find ad.
Pro: Also cheap and simple
Con: Waste of all that good feedback when you don't actually sell item
6) Take a few photoshop tutorials and strip victims head into embarassing/compromising photo. Mail to significant other.
Pro: Cheap and simple
Con: Can be very destructive to personal relationships
7) Variation on #6 - print photo and post with victim's pager or cell phone # at local gay bar.
Pro: Cheap and Simple
Con: Same as above
8) Learn Unix. Write cron job that will randomly message victim's cell phone with various requests to call things Dial-A-Prayer, Ask-A-Nurse, etc.
Pro: Cheap
Con: Can be traced
9) Obtain some sticky paper or platic which you can print on. Create a custom bumper sticker and apply to victims car. "Ask me about my penis enlargement" is my favorite.
Pro: Simple to do and can be attractive with the addition of some appropriate art work - like the Enzyte logo
Con: Relation is to be expected
That's all I can think of for now.
Queen B
While in theory this will work, the only thing I've ever known it to do is to cause a rainbow-colored explosion of sticky notes with user name and password information on them to be applied to the upper right corner. It makes the cube farm look like a paririe after a rain - all the little flowers blossoming....
2 cents,
Queen B
We've good luck and a nice response from Lunar Pages. We've been through simlar web hosting nightmares in the past and have been using Lunar Pages for almost a year now and have been quite pleased.
Their email comes with a nice selection of spam and virus filtering options which can be user controlled from their control panel.
2 cents,
Queen B
Well, either they've taken their site down, or the "Slashdot Effect" has kicked in. They're gone.
;)
Rats! I wanted to see how this works - suprise my boyfriend by etching the fenders on his 69 Mustang
2 cents,
Queen B
What these people have totally failed to consider is that all mammals (and most non-mammals) have a unique set of viruses and bacteria that are unique to their species. These things live in the digestive tract, blood stream, organs, etc. of every creature and they are typically unique to that species of critter. We humans have our own. Mixing our "cooties" with their "cooties" is disasterous.
The "Bird Flu" is one example. People were exposed to an avian virus that was supposed to be begnin but which does what all viruses do, mutated. Then the people got very ill and many died from the "begnin virus".
There is more than a small amount of evidence that AIDS was a gift to the world from the WHO. It seems that the WHO sent a bunch of Belgian doctors and scientents to what was at the time the Belgian Congo to vaccinate the locals against polio and small pox. The doctors and scientists were overwhelmed by the numbers and soon ran out of vaccine. Since they knew how to make the vaccine and there were a nice handy supply of local monkeys available, they started making and administering their own home grown vaccine. The only problem with that was the local monkey population was the Green Monkey, which carries SIV. In the process of vaccinating people for polio and small pox, they were inadvertently given SIV as well. The SIV virus does what any good virus does and mutates. Instead of SIV, now we have HIV.
Growing the cells together doesn't help this process. In many organisms, the bacteria and viruses have a co-dependent relationship with the host. Oral bacteria is another example. We humans have a whole host of particulary nasty bacteria that live in our mouths. Let them become unbalanced and you see conditions like thrush and other oral diseases. However, these organisms aid in the digestion processes. Scientists aren't really sure how they are acquired. Same goes for the extensive list of little friends living in our digestive tract.
Now you want to start mixing animal and human? Scientists have found species-specific bacteria and viruses in cloned animals and even when the clone is implanted in a host species, many of these things are still present. They appear to be quite integrated with the actual organism. The exact method of acquision is as yet unknown. Until this can be seperated, which may not be possible, we're playing with some serious juju.
Man, we have go to get our selves off this rock before some l4m3r breeds a superbug that wipes the place clean.
2 cents,
Queen B
As part of an experiment in political science in college, we hand copied the Declaration of Independence on to notebook paper and took it to a local mall and tried to get people to sign it. The really sad part is that no one would sign it. We were called "Communists", "Anarchists", "Socalists", "Wierdos", and a variety of other epithets. Mall security ended up having to resecue us from a very physically threatening mob.
All in all, it was quite educational as to people's stance and understanding of their rights. If you don't know what your rights are, will you know if someone is violating them?
2 cents,
Queen B