but there are plenty of better/more important games in the works that/. isn't paying attention to, like Doom3, DN4, and EV Nova. I demand articles about them!:)
When will the conservatives in Australia learn that just because you might want your kids seeing something, doesn't mean you have the right to stop everyone in the country from seeing it? Let parents make their own decisions about censorship, instead of having the government decide what to censor and force it on everyone.
It's obvious that the reason they are keeping the blacklist secret is because they are afraid of public scrutiny and backlash against it. No doubt, like virtually all censorware, they have censored many sites that clearly oughtn't be censored. Australia is not as bad as China, but is certainly working in the same direction.
Censorship accomplishes nothing, and does so at a very high cost: your freedom. Regardless, the government can't stop you from viewing what you want on the net, and there are countless ways to circumvent any censorship. The average computer literate 10 year old could probably bypass australia's censorshp.
While nice in theory, this attitude doesn't work in real life. That's why we (in the USA, anyway) have agencies like the FDA [fda.com].
The FDA does not regulate herbals. That is why they are all required to have a disclaimer that says "These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to prevent, diagnose, treat, or cure any disease" Someone sould sell ground up acorns and say it reduces the risk of cancer, and the FDA wouldn't do anything about it. In fact, most popular herbals are BS scams like that.
The problem with eBay is that the morons get into these insane bidding wars days before the auction closes, which invariably raises the price to ridiculous levels. I stopped buying from eBay for that very reason.
Some auctions get bid above retail price, but it isn't very common. I have recently found plenty of games way below retail prices after shipping. The whole point of the proxy bidding system is that you just set the maximum price you are willing to pay, and it doesn't matter when you do it. When the auction ends you only have to pay the second highest maximum bid, which is what you would have had to beat anyway if it were a standard auction. People can of course outbid you, but if they do, so what? You lose nothing. If you can never find good deals on eBay, you're either lazy or blind. If an auction gets bid up to high, just abandon it and find another auction of the same item. Eventually you'll find a good deal. One good tactic is to bid on items that don't contain the proper keywords and are therefore less likely to be found in searches, and less likely to get bid up.
No, it's not bad for the economy in general. It's bad for the stupid venture capitalists, and good for the consumers. It all evens out. There are so many idiots with lots of money out there, maybe I should start selling miraculous "herbal medicine" (aka grass) on eBay. There's nothing wrong with exploiting morons. They're morons, it's their own fault for buying that crap. A fool and his money are soon parted.:)
I never ran into people like that on ebay. Granted, one guy took 3 weeks to ship me Civilization 3, but at least I got it for $35 including shipping. Retail is $50. If you're not stupid and you comparison shop, you can get used games on ebay that work as good as new and cost a third less than retail.
That explains everything. There are too many idiots on Ebay, and people too lazy to comparison shop.
Why does NYT require free registration anyway?
on
NY Times on Anime
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Maybe just so they can get the email addresses of people who are too stupid to give them a fake one, and sell their email to spammers? What the heck else can free registration accomplish?
Just remember: Whenever any registration asks for personal info, just lie for the sake of screwing up the bastards' database. Like the mp3 by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie. here Oh, dammit, there's free registration required. Just tell them your name is Homer Simpson and your email is nospam@FuckSpammers.com
To play many baught DVDs on a linux system, you have to crack it, and under the DMCA you could go to jail for several years for that.
And IMO, the federal government should make laws to stop the states from making laws against various victimless crimes, like same sex sex. It should have been in the bill of rights. Most politicians need to read John Stuart Mill.
The problem is that the electoral system basically precludes the possibility of anyone other than the two main parties getting elected to any important office, and therefore it's usually a matter of choosing between the lesser of two evils.
I think the Dems, Republicans, Libertarians, and Greens are all bad. The Dems don't allow enough economic freedom, the republicans are too authoritarian in personal matters (like laws against sodomy, abortion, etc.), the Greens are just a more extreme version of the Dems, and the Libertarians are too anarchistic in economic matters. There isn't any major or minor party that represents left-libertarians like me.
The problem is that Lucas was able to stop sales for a month without having any merit to his case. This same kind of thing has happened in countless other frivolous lawsuits, and sometimes the defendants just settle with the extortionist plaintiffs because it's cheaper than losing a month of sales waiting for the trial. It's way too easy to get a preliminary restraining order. Also, if the plaintiffs lose the lawsuit, they should have to pay for all the legal expenses of the defendants
The perception among many people, both in Asia and here, is that software corporations are mostly run by greedy bastards who don't deserve your money. And IMO, people have good reasons to think that. If people actually respect a software company, they will be more likely to actually pay for its products. That's why Linux sells decently over there compared to Windows.
Here in the USA, the main reason most people pay for Windows is because they can't avoid paying for it.
The bacteria would give you all kinds of false positives by eating other common organic compounds. The current chemistry-based detection techniques are already better and more reliable than that would be after a ton of painstaking genetic engineering.
Phillips could argue that companies who do not clearly label copy protected disks are violating their copyright by fooling consumers into thinking they are buying real CDs when, in fact, they are buying copy protected discs that won't work for half of the legal, non-infringing uses a consumer might have for it.
In fact, the consumers might be able to win a class action suit against the record companies to that effect. The content companies are intentionally trying to hide copy protection so that the consumers don't know what they are really getting, and if they did know, most of them wouldn't buy the copy-protected CDs.
IANAL, but I am sure there are laws against decieving the customer about what he is really buying.
It is very unlikely that life could exist on mars because temperatures on the surface vary between -120 and -20 degrees C, as I recall, plus it has low atmospheric pressure. Life requires some kind of liquid solvent to exist. Ammonia boils at -33C in 1atm pressure, but with Mars' pressure, it's probably more like -60C. There aren't any common chemicals that would be viable solvents for life in Mars' environment. Conditions below the surface might allow liquid water, but there would be no replenishable food resource, so life couldn't exist there very long. Mars has minimal volcanic activity, so there aren't hydrothermal vents to be used by chemosynthesizing bacteria. If there ever was life on mars, it's dead now.
USCL is better than ICC, and free for all US Chess Federation members.
Re:The Solution: email protocol that stops spoofin
on
Lawsuits Against Spammers
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Block quoth the poster: That would just force spammers to use their own servers to spam, and there is enough of that going on already...
No, I mean the destination server. When you send an email to "user@domain.com", the email goes to the "domain.com" server and is stored there until the user downloads it. The spammers would have to either control your ISP, or somehow intercept the packet with the conformation code to be able to spam without revealing their IP address. A bit of cryptography would make it prohibitively difficult to send mass spam the latter way.
Most colleges' dorm rooms are all connected to a T1 or better via a 10/100 network, and the students have unlimited access free of charge, but the bandwidth for individual users is limited during peak times so that people using it for ligitimate purposes (which accounts for what, 0.01% of the total usage?) can get enough bandwidth.
I'm going to look up the bandwith to student ratios before I decide which colleges/universities to apply to.
Anyway, you can get plenty of porn on a 56k unless you want long porno movies. Warez requires a lot more bandwidth than porn. Most mp3s are encoded at 128kilobits/sec, so you can download them faster than you can listen to them with less bandwith than cable or DSL.
Actually, it's not a typo. UV lithography will make silicone breast implants obsolete, because it will allow computers to get good enough to render full 3d holographic porn at a zillion frames per second.
The Solution: email protocol that stops spoofing i
on
Lawsuits Against Spammers
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Block quoth the poster: I still think its fairly hopeless, but I also believe forging SMTP headers should be legally punishable by castration.
There is a realistic protocol change that would make it impossible to spam without getting caught.
When the message arrives at the destination server, a confirmation packet is sent back to the alleged source with a checksum of the content of the message and a confirmation code. If the source has sent an email to the server that matches the checksum, it sends the confirmation code back to the server. If the server never recieves a reply with the confirmation code it sent out (in other words, if the alleged sender doesn't exist), it automatically deletes the email after 30 seconds. The whole cycle would last less than a second, depending on lag, so you wouldn't have to worry about losing email that you have sent unless you turn off your computer very quickly. This protocol would make it impossible to spoof IP/email addresses, etc, when sending email. Then the spammers could be tracked down easily and thrown in jail.
Slashdot Mirror
but there are plenty of better/more important games in the works that /. isn't paying attention to, like Doom3, DN4, and EV Nova. I demand articles about them! :)
When will the conservatives in Australia learn that just because you might want your kids seeing something, doesn't mean you have the right to stop everyone in the country from seeing it? Let parents make their own decisions about censorship, instead of having the government decide what to censor and force it on everyone.
It's obvious that the reason they are keeping the blacklist secret is because they are afraid of public scrutiny and backlash against it. No doubt, like virtually all censorware, they have censored many sites that clearly oughtn't be censored. Australia is not as bad as China, but is certainly working in the same direction.
Censorship accomplishes nothing, and does so at a very high cost: your freedom. Regardless, the government can't stop you from viewing what you want on the net, and there are countless ways to circumvent any censorship. The average computer literate 10 year old could probably bypass australia's censorshp.
-Tuxinatorium
While nice in theory, this attitude doesn't work in real life. That's why we (in the USA, anyway) have agencies like the FDA [fda.com].
The FDA does not regulate herbals. That is why they are all required to have a disclaimer that says "These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to prevent, diagnose, treat, or cure any disease"
Someone sould sell ground up acorns and say it reduces the risk of cancer, and the FDA wouldn't do anything about it. In fact, most popular herbals are BS scams like that.
that would be warez, and warez is illegal. And many warez programs are defective in various ways.
Am I the only one here who has never heard of any of the animes the /. editors keep talking about?
I'm suing you for $10 to replace it, and $100,000 for the medical bills from literally laughing my ass off
The problem with eBay is that the morons get into these insane bidding wars days before the auction closes, which invariably raises the price to ridiculous levels. I stopped buying from eBay for that very reason.
Some auctions get bid above retail price, but it isn't very common. I have recently found plenty of games way below retail prices after shipping. The whole point of the proxy bidding system is that you just set the maximum price you are willing to pay, and it doesn't matter when you do it. When the auction ends you only have to pay the second highest maximum bid, which is what you would have had to beat anyway if it were a standard auction. People can of course outbid you, but if they do, so what? You lose nothing. If you can never find good deals on eBay, you're either lazy or blind. If an auction gets bid up to high, just abandon it and find another auction of the same item. Eventually you'll find a good deal. One good tactic is to bid on items that don't contain the proper keywords and are therefore less likely to be found in searches, and less likely to get bid up.
No, it's not bad for the economy in general. It's bad for the stupid venture capitalists, and good for the consumers. It all evens out. There are so many idiots with lots of money out there, maybe I should start selling miraculous "herbal medicine" (aka grass) on eBay. There's nothing wrong with exploiting morons. They're morons, it's their own fault for buying that crap. A fool and his money are soon parted. :)
I never ran into people like that on ebay. Granted, one guy took 3 weeks to ship me Civilization 3, but at least I got it for $35 including shipping. Retail is $50. If you're not stupid and you comparison shop, you can get used games on ebay that work as good as new and cost a third less than retail.
That explains everything. There are too many idiots on Ebay, and people too lazy to comparison shop.
Maybe just so they can get the email addresses of people who are too stupid to give them a fake one, and sell their email to spammers? What the heck else can free registration accomplish?
Just remember: Whenever any registration asks for personal info, just lie for the sake of screwing up the bastards' database. Like the mp3 by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie. here Oh, dammit, there's free registration required. Just tell them your name is Homer Simpson and your email is nospam@FuckSpammers.com
Watching a bought DVD on a Linux system.
Not illegal
To play many baught DVDs on a linux system, you have to crack it, and under the DMCA you could go to jail for several years for that.
And IMO, the federal government should make laws to stop the states from making laws against various victimless crimes, like same sex sex. It should have been in the bill of rights. Most politicians need to read John Stuart Mill.
The problem is that the electoral system basically precludes the possibility of anyone other than the two main parties getting elected to any important office, and therefore it's usually a matter of choosing between the lesser of two evils.
I think the Dems, Republicans, Libertarians, and Greens are all bad. The Dems don't allow enough economic freedom, the republicans are too authoritarian in personal matters (like laws against sodomy, abortion, etc.), the Greens are just a more extreme version of the Dems, and the Libertarians are too anarchistic in economic matters. There isn't any major or minor party that represents left-libertarians like me.
The problem is that Lucas was able to stop sales for a month without having any merit to his case. This same kind of thing has happened in countless other frivolous lawsuits, and sometimes the defendants just settle with the extortionist plaintiffs because it's cheaper than losing a month of sales waiting for the trial. It's way too easy to get a preliminary restraining order. Also, if the plaintiffs lose the lawsuit, they should have to pay for all the legal expenses of the defendants
The perception among many people, both in Asia and here, is that software corporations are mostly run by greedy bastards who don't deserve your money. And IMO, people have good reasons to think that. If people actually respect a software company, they will be more likely to actually pay for its products. That's why Linux sells decently over there compared to Windows.
Here in the USA, the main reason most people pay for Windows is because they can't avoid paying for it.
The bacteria would give you all kinds of false positives by eating other common organic compounds. The current chemistry-based detection techniques are already better and more reliable than that would be after a ton of painstaking genetic engineering.
Phillips could argue that companies who do not clearly label copy protected disks are violating their copyright by fooling consumers into thinking they are buying real CDs when, in fact, they are buying copy protected discs that won't work for half of the legal, non-infringing uses a consumer might have for it.
In fact, the consumers might be able to win a class action suit against the record companies to that effect. The content companies are intentionally trying to hide copy protection so that the consumers don't know what they are really getting, and if they did know, most of them wouldn't buy the copy-protected CDs.
IANAL, but I am sure there are laws against decieving the customer about what he is really buying.
It is very unlikely that life could exist on mars because temperatures on the surface vary between -120 and -20 degrees C, as I recall, plus it has low atmospheric pressure. Life requires some kind of liquid solvent to exist. Ammonia boils at -33C in 1atm pressure, but with Mars' pressure, it's probably more like -60C. There aren't any common chemicals that would be viable solvents for life in Mars' environment. Conditions below the surface might allow liquid water, but there would be no replenishable food resource, so life couldn't exist there very long. Mars has minimal volcanic activity, so there aren't hydrothermal vents to be used by chemosynthesizing bacteria. If there ever was life on mars, it's dead now.
USCL is better than ICC, and free for all US Chess Federation members.
Block quoth the poster:
That would just force spammers to use their own servers to spam, and there is enough of that going on already...
No, I mean the destination server. When you send an email to "user@domain.com", the email goes to the "domain.com" server and is stored there until the user downloads it. The spammers would have to either control your ISP, or somehow intercept the packet with the conformation code to be able to spam without revealing their IP address. A bit of cryptography would make it prohibitively difficult to send mass spam the latter way.
Most colleges' dorm rooms are all connected to a T1 or better via a 10/100 network, and the students have unlimited access free of charge, but the bandwidth for individual users is limited during peak times so that people using it for ligitimate purposes (which accounts for what, 0.01% of the total usage?) can get enough bandwidth.
I'm going to look up the bandwith to student ratios before I decide which colleges/universities to apply to.
Anyway, you can get plenty of porn on a 56k unless you want long porno movies. Warez requires a lot more bandwidth than porn. Most mp3s are encoded at 128kilobits/sec, so you can download them faster than you can listen to them with less bandwith than cable or DSL.
Free mail systems could log the IPs of all their users and stop spoofs with a similar system.
Actually, it's not a typo. UV lithography will make silicone breast implants obsolete, because it will allow computers to get good enough to render full 3d holographic porn at a zillion frames per second.
Block quoth the poster:
I still think its fairly hopeless, but I also believe forging SMTP headers should be legally punishable by castration.
There is a realistic protocol change that would make it impossible to spam without getting caught.
When the message arrives at the destination server, a confirmation packet is sent back to the alleged source with a checksum of the content of the message and a confirmation code. If the source has sent an email to the server that matches the checksum, it sends the confirmation code back to the server. If the server never recieves a reply with the confirmation code it sent out (in other words, if the alleged sender doesn't exist), it automatically deletes the email after 30 seconds. The whole cycle would last less than a second, depending on lag, so you wouldn't have to worry about losing email that you have sent unless you turn off your computer very quickly. This protocol would make it impossible to spoof IP/email addresses, etc, when sending email. Then the spammers could be tracked down easily and thrown in jail.
North or South? There is no "Korea". Unless your map is over 50 years old.