What language is it, anyway? It kinda looks like Italian, with all the -i words, but then again it might also be Finnish or Dutch. I'm completely baffled, and I usually have a pretty good eye for identifying languages, even if I can't understand them....
It is a sad, sad day when "r0x0rs j00r b0x0rs" is the only recognizable part of a post.
Funny, but when I bought a camera in July, the model I chose-- a Kodak Advantix T30 APS-- was priced cheaply enough for me to consider APS over standard 35mm. If the APS cameras are comparable in price and quality to traditional 35mm cameras, then I'd say that APS has a pretty good thing going. Might not be as universally embraced as 35mm, but it's by no means a terminally small market.
It has as much to say about religion and spirituality as, I dunno, Martian Successor Nadeisco.
Funny you mention Nadesico, considering the blatant mockery of anime fandom that show has.
A good friend of mine says that everyone should be required to watch Eva at least once every ten years. I'll add to that by saying yes, as long as they watch Nadesico immediately afterwards.
My point is, I agree with you. We take our entertainment too seriously sometimes.
For any such system to work, it would have to basically be the greatest code-cracking machine on the face of the planet. More than that, though, would be the implications of false-positives. Let's say I send a photoshopped picture of, oh, I don't know, Natalie Portman to a buddy who works for the Air Force. The system, working under the operating parameters it's set to work with, picks up on a specific pattern of bits in the picture and determines that it's a coded message. The coded message is decoded to, inexplicably, reveal GPS coordinates, a date/timestamp, and the phrase "Free XXXXXX" (or some equally suspect verbiage). What would YOU think the "message" meant?
Given enough processing power, even/dev/rand can produce terrorist messages. It's the million-monkey problem, except with thermonuclear weapons.
This is probably a troll, but to be honest it got me thinking about two things. First, you're taking a slippery slope view of the IP "problem". The computer is, at this point, not integrated with the mind, and probably won't be within our lifetime. And, AFAIK, until the Supreme Court says that copying, sharing, and distributing music files is legal, it remains nominally illegal in the U.S. Moral is another story, but it is as of yet illegal. I don't expect a ruling on this in my lifetime, either.
However the way things are going necessitates a paradigm shift. I agree somewhat that there's nothing wrong with digitally replicating a work-- everybody wins, more or less (at least, everyone who I feel is entitled to win from such a transaction-- the artist wins because word of mouth will lead to more sales, etc., etc.; we've done that argument to death). However to do so in a one-sided manner (aka leeching) is wrong. You're sucking up another's bandwidth and offering nothing in return. Rather than charging for the right to "own" the music, why not charge for the right to download it from the server or provider? On a peer-to-peer network, shut down anyone who's used the service for >x days and still isn't sharing >y percent of what they downloaded, so that they can repay the community. On a one-way network (like MP3.com (ha ha)), a charge of maybe z cents per song for bandwidth and operating costs plus w cents going to the artist. Popular downloads could even drop the bandwidth charge and offer "you may also like these artists" songs at normal prices on the same page.
Of course, this doesn't seem likely until the aforementioned ruling happens. But it should.
On a related note, I'd love to see two studies on how much it REALLY costs to make a CD-- one by an independent source and one published by a record label. Comparing the two might be an interesting project for an economist (which I sadly am not).
To the best of my knowledge, only Gamespot and DDRFreak have covered this, but Konami also unveiled the next DDR game for the U.S. region, DDR Extreme. Here's the official site, and GameSpot's coverage. I first saw the news on DDRFreak.
For those of you about to lament the unfortunate use of "Extreme", it should be noted that this is more of a "greatest hits" collection of the best, most challenging, or most popular DDR tracks throughout the series' seven-game lifespan, as well as imports from other Bemani series such as Guitar Freaks and Pop'n Music. The game should also introduce new gameplay mechanics such as "mission mode", but details are as of yet unknown.
Don't look at me like that, somebody here must want to know this.
It's not just the gameplay that needs to be simplified, it's the control schemes more than anything. Let's take a look at a couple recent games-- Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, and Sonic Battle. Same platform (GBA), same controller (obviously), but different genres. M&L is an RPG, known for having very simple controls (d-pad for menus, OK, and Cancel), but M&L's controls seem needlessly complex and somewhat overdone. Does the game really need separate buttons for Mario and Luigi each? In battle, it's a neat concept, but outside of battle it's really irritating.
Contrast that to Sonic Battle, a fighting game. Fighters are known for overly complex combo moves and unforgiving command sequences, but SB manages to avoid all of this. One button for attack, one for defense, one for jumping, and one for a super move. Much easier to pick up and play than, say, Mortal Kombat Eleventy-Billion.
I spent WAY too much time last night playing Enigma, a game that's included in the most recent Knoppix distro (+1 Linux Karma Whoring). Simple game-- use the mouse to control a marble, or several marbles. Very easy to learn and frustrating as hell (in a good way).
You can have a simple game, or a simple control scheme, or both. If you have a complex game, it might necessitate complex controls, but that doesn't mean the manual PDF must be larger than the size of the actual game.
Granted, they should post a notice on the doors saying "Warning, chips protected by RFID"...
Uh... why should they? I'm serious, here. It's one thing to say that a house is protected by BS&S Security; that's a deterrent to thieves. It would be phenomenally stupid for a casino to post on its doors that they're using a technology that is widely disfavored for the sole reason you bring up in your post-- people will skip that casino and go down the strip.
I'm looking at it on the other coast, actually-- Buffalo/Niagara. Three casinos in this area, but they're spread out in a 100-mile or so radius. (Casino Niagara, Seneca Niagara, and the new one they're building near me in Salamanca-- not to mention Turning Stone over near Syracuse.) Let's say Seneca Niagara (the one on the U.S. side) decides to put RFID tags in its chips. The smart thing to do would be to shut up and take the white man's money (to be racially insensitive about it), because the whole point of building the casino on the U.S. side was to keep U.S. money in the U.S. and not off to Canada (Casino Niagara). Posting the "We use RFID here" sign on the Seneca Niagara door means the smart people in Western and Upstate New York (can you say IBM?) go to Canada.
Not that big of a deal, really. But Las Vegas is only a stone's throw away from Silicon Valley. How many smart people live there, do you think? And there are plenty of casinos on the strip-- or even in Reno-- who would be very willing to take your money and not tell you they're using a technology which, though its use may be very legal and actually (gasp!) beneficial to everyone involved, leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Personally, I like the idea, because I have this phobia about having stuff stolen from me. Granted, this means I realistically shouldn't even think of setting foot in a casino, but hey.
Actually, it's a step up from the "cursed basement of their parents' house" that most gamers might be familiar with......and yes, I do realize that, karmically speaking, I just pointed a loaded flak cannon at my face.
This technical limitation didn't seem to stop the guys who developed PS2 Red Faction...?
Right, and I'll give you that. But the fact is that Red Faction is a different style of game than GTA. In Red Faction, you move from level to level, and the terrain that you blew up in Mission One has no bearing on the terrain you could blow up in Mission Five, because they use different maps. GTA uses the same map the entire game, so if you blow up say, the Golden Gate Bridge, you damn well want to make sure that when you load the game-- or even that area-- again, the bridge stays blown up. Thus, you need a HUGE amount of storage-- 500K or even a full memory card (8 MB) probably won't cut it. I'd personally like to see the ability to blow up anything and everything, but it simply isn't feasible in this generation's PS2. Though, come to think of it, forcing the use of the PS2 HD in the next GTA might be just what Sony needs to build up demand for the device, which (AFAIK and so far) is only used by FFXI.
Blowing up the wrong buildings could seriously screw with missions, and actually would be an easy way to cheat. Don't want cops? Blow up the stations!
Though, technically, the reason you won't see deformable terrain in GTA is because the series is PS2-centric, and the PS2 doesn't have a hard drive (yet) to store the city data in addition to the 500K of game data. Because what good is deformable terrain if all you have to do is drive around the block, and the building's back?
On a completely unrelated note, the last two sentences of the first paragraph emitted pings in at least five dozen government anti-terrorist databases. Hell, it'll be the most attention my website's gotten in months.
I noticed this last night, too, but I believe SE fixed it with the latest PlayOnline update. I haven't been conscious long enough to check, but we'll see.
OK, so I underestimated the population of exactly how many people can analyze DNA. I'll admit to that. Great. I'll even go to the hospital and swab my own cheek to give to the lab tech. The only condition is that the lab tech must, and this is an absolute requirement, be able to tell me exactly where the "terrorist" gene is and if it exists in the sample of DNA that I provided.
My point was that given existing DNA testing procedures-- not given existing numbers of people who know how to use it-- the primary use of DNA in law-enforcement situations is solely as a more advanced fingerprint. It remains a token, a tag that is left behind and used as evidence of someone being somewhere. Likewise it can be used to cross-reference into existing databases of information on a particular subject matching the token. The DNA itself does not say that a man is going to blow up a bus full of children. It does say that he is person X, and the investigators can then look up person X to see if he has a criminal history.
By the way, thank you for noticing that my sig is supposed to be taken as part of my posts. Usually I have to make it blind-stupidly obvious.
I totally missed the last line of your post, so let me add this. DNA holds a lot more information, yes, but right now-- outside of about maybe 1,000 biochemists-- who can really use it? DNA is basically used as a token these days. Hang on to my tinfoil hat for a few decades while I provide a DNA sample.
The fingerprint itself holds no information about who the fingerprint belongs to, it's just a token.
A token that, short of being gross, is always attached to one individual-- obviously the person to whom the fingerprint belongs. By itself it can help identify if someone touched something. In conjunction with FBI/CIA/NSA/USDA files, Interpol reports, military and civil records, and other databases, the "fact with no meaning", the "token" becomes VERY valuable indeed.
Let's take a quick walk down Hypothetical Lane. Johnny Evilguy, a suspected terrorist who has been posting inflammatory anti-skyscraper messages on/., attempts to board Air Potato. Air Potato's staff takes Johnny's fingerprints as he's checking in, and they board him on the plane. Johnny looks fairly ordinary but a stewardess notices a weird, chemical smell about him as she shows him the oxygen mask. She alerts the captain, the captain radios the tower, and tower control calls Air Potato. Air Potato then hands over the fingerprint to the airport authorities, who cross-reference the fingerprint they got at check-in against FBI/Echelon/G.W./whatever. Bingo, they match him bigtime. Airport cops and possibly the resident FBI goons board the Air Potato flight, notice Johnny looking very nervous, and take him in; and the flight takes off without him and the ten pounds of chemical explosive he had ready to detonate under his baggy trenchcoat.
That's, ideally, how it should work. In practice, anyone whose last name starts with "Al" will probably find themselves noticing that the flights they board always get longer and longer delays.
(Stupid joke that will erase all credibility to the above: That just means that in five years, airplanes will be totally safe because all the terrorists will be hijacking buses instead.)
Until someone makes a mod for GTA3 where you can drive around killing [...] small furry animals...
I use a small fictional furry animal as my online avatar. I am deeply shocked, offended, and appalled that you would even suggest the senseless murder of a member of a minority; not to mention the gross lack of racial sensitivity that would allow you to even conceive of such a horrific act. On behalf of nerds who use small furry animals as their online avatars, friends of people with small furry animals as their avatars, small furry animals, and the Democratic Party, I am hereby condemning you and the sum total of your posts, regardless of content, as filth, smut, and any other negative word I can think of, and I will be petitioning the State of Florida Judicial System (motto: "Insanity isn't a defense, it's the way we do things down here") to have your Slashdot posts removed from the record immediately and irrevocably.
...
(I shouldn't have to say this, but that was sarcasm.)
A (l)user doesn't have to even DO anything today to get a scumware instaleld on their PC, all they need to do is visit a web site.
Thanks to the magic of Windows XP, they don't even have to visit a web site. There are exploits that can install crapware without ever opening a browser; the computer just needs to be on an unfirewalled broadband connection. Yay for remote access, boo for not bothering to protect it in any way.
As long as it doesn't look like a plastic taco......actually, come to think of it, I can't see myself buying something I'd already have (ie another cell phone). I'll take my Mini-iPod and be happy, thank you very much.
Maybe I'm just being speculatively retarded here, but how difficult would it be to code an anti-spam agent bot? This bot would run on one machine somewhere, doesn't matter where, and monitor your POP3/IMAP/whatever account(s) every x minutes (let's say 30). At that time, the bot reads all the mail in the inbox, use a bayes filter/rules/whatever to determine spam, and sort/delete messages accordingly? Seems like an interesting solution, and it would be platform- and client-independent since the email client doesn't have to do anything besides collect what's left over. Feel free to flame me if this has been done before or is simply a stupid idea, but I think it might work. Hell, you could probably code it in VBasicrap if you knew the protocols necessary.
I use Knop-STD and it flat-out refuses to recognize my laptop's built-in wifi card. (Broadcom 802.11g) No problem with anything else-- and it runs beautifully-- but the wifi is what I'd really like.
Slashdot Mirror
What language is it, anyway? It kinda looks like Italian, with all the -i words, but then again it might also be Finnish or Dutch. I'm completely baffled, and I usually have a pretty good eye for identifying languages, even if I can't understand them....
It is a sad, sad day when "r0x0rs j00r b0x0rs" is the only recognizable part of a post.
Funny, but when I bought a camera in July, the model I chose-- a Kodak Advantix T30 APS-- was priced cheaply enough for me to consider APS over standard 35mm. If the APS cameras are comparable in price and quality to traditional 35mm cameras, then I'd say that APS has a pretty good thing going. Might not be as universally embraced as 35mm, but it's by no means a terminally small market.
It has as much to say about religion and spirituality as, I dunno, Martian Successor Nadeisco.
Funny you mention Nadesico, considering the blatant mockery of anime fandom that show has.
A good friend of mine says that everyone should be required to watch Eva at least once every ten years. I'll add to that by saying yes, as long as they watch Nadesico immediately afterwards.
My point is, I agree with you. We take our entertainment too seriously sometimes.
I'm not 14, but I am insane enough to pretend I am at times.
Sign me up.
For any such system to work, it would have to basically be the greatest code-cracking machine on the face of the planet. More than that, though, would be the implications of false-positives. Let's say I send a photoshopped picture of, oh, I don't know, Natalie Portman to a buddy who works for the Air Force. The system, working under the operating parameters it's set to work with, picks up on a specific pattern of bits in the picture and determines that it's a coded message. The coded message is decoded to, inexplicably, reveal GPS coordinates, a date/timestamp, and the phrase "Free XXXXXX" (or some equally suspect verbiage). What would YOU think the "message" meant?
/dev/rand can produce terrorist messages. It's the million-monkey problem, except with thermonuclear weapons.
Given enough processing power, even
This is probably a troll, but to be honest it got me thinking about two things. First, you're taking a slippery slope view of the IP "problem". The computer is, at this point, not integrated with the mind, and probably won't be within our lifetime. And, AFAIK, until the Supreme Court says that copying, sharing, and distributing music files is legal, it remains nominally illegal in the U.S. Moral is another story, but it is as of yet illegal. I don't expect a ruling on this in my lifetime, either.
However the way things are going necessitates a paradigm shift. I agree somewhat that there's nothing wrong with digitally replicating a work-- everybody wins, more or less (at least, everyone who I feel is entitled to win from such a transaction-- the artist wins because word of mouth will lead to more sales, etc., etc.; we've done that argument to death). However to do so in a one-sided manner (aka leeching) is wrong. You're sucking up another's bandwidth and offering nothing in return. Rather than charging for the right to "own" the music, why not charge for the right to download it from the server or provider? On a peer-to-peer network, shut down anyone who's used the service for >x days and still isn't sharing >y percent of what they downloaded, so that they can repay the community. On a one-way network (like MP3.com (ha ha)), a charge of maybe z cents per song for bandwidth and operating costs plus w cents going to the artist. Popular downloads could even drop the bandwidth charge and offer "you may also like these artists" songs at normal prices on the same page.
Of course, this doesn't seem likely until the aforementioned ruling happens. But it should.
On a related note, I'd love to see two studies on how much it REALLY costs to make a CD-- one by an independent source and one published by a record label. Comparing the two might be an interesting project for an economist (which I sadly am not).
You can copy, share, or burn it, but please don't lose my cash.
So your girlfriend has an iPod
leeching stuff she found on Tripod...
(yeah, that second part should go before the parent post, but...)
To the best of my knowledge, only Gamespot and DDRFreak have covered this, but Konami also unveiled the next DDR game for the U.S. region, DDR Extreme. Here's the official site, and GameSpot's coverage. I first saw the news on DDRFreak.
For those of you about to lament the unfortunate use of "Extreme", it should be noted that this is more of a "greatest hits" collection of the best, most challenging, or most popular DDR tracks throughout the series' seven-game lifespan, as well as imports from other Bemani series such as Guitar Freaks and Pop'n Music. The game should also introduce new gameplay mechanics such as "mission mode", but details are as of yet unknown.
Don't look at me like that, somebody here must want to know this.
It's not just the gameplay that needs to be simplified, it's the control schemes more than anything. Let's take a look at a couple recent games-- Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, and Sonic Battle. Same platform (GBA), same controller (obviously), but different genres. M&L is an RPG, known for having very simple controls (d-pad for menus, OK, and Cancel), but M&L's controls seem needlessly complex and somewhat overdone. Does the game really need separate buttons for Mario and Luigi each? In battle, it's a neat concept, but outside of battle it's really irritating.
Contrast that to Sonic Battle, a fighting game. Fighters are known for overly complex combo moves and unforgiving command sequences, but SB manages to avoid all of this. One button for attack, one for defense, one for jumping, and one for a super move. Much easier to pick up and play than, say, Mortal Kombat Eleventy-Billion.
I spent WAY too much time last night playing Enigma, a game that's included in the most recent Knoppix distro (+1 Linux Karma Whoring). Simple game-- use the mouse to control a marble, or several marbles. Very easy to learn and frustrating as hell (in a good way).
You can have a simple game, or a simple control scheme, or both. If you have a complex game, it might necessitate complex controls, but that doesn't mean the manual PDF must be larger than the size of the actual game.
Granted, they should post a notice on the doors saying "Warning, chips protected by RFID"...
Uh... why should they? I'm serious, here. It's one thing to say that a house is protected by BS&S Security; that's a deterrent to thieves. It would be phenomenally stupid for a casino to post on its doors that they're using a technology that is widely disfavored for the sole reason you bring up in your post-- people will skip that casino and go down the strip.
I'm looking at it on the other coast, actually-- Buffalo/Niagara. Three casinos in this area, but they're spread out in a 100-mile or so radius. (Casino Niagara, Seneca Niagara, and the new one they're building near me in Salamanca-- not to mention Turning Stone over near Syracuse.) Let's say Seneca Niagara (the one on the U.S. side) decides to put RFID tags in its chips. The smart thing to do would be to shut up and take the white man's money (to be racially insensitive about it), because the whole point of building the casino on the U.S. side was to keep U.S. money in the U.S. and not off to Canada (Casino Niagara). Posting the "We use RFID here" sign on the Seneca Niagara door means the smart people in Western and Upstate New York (can you say IBM?) go to Canada.
Not that big of a deal, really. But Las Vegas is only a stone's throw away from Silicon Valley. How many smart people live there, do you think? And there are plenty of casinos on the strip-- or even in Reno-- who would be very willing to take your money and not tell you they're using a technology which, though its use may be very legal and actually (gasp!) beneficial to everyone involved, leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Personally, I like the idea, because I have this phobia about having stuff stolen from me. Granted, this means I realistically shouldn't even think of setting foot in a casino, but hey.
...I want a new Gradius game. Let the children of today learn the ways of Old-Fu, I say.
Actually, it's a step up from the "cursed basement of their parents' house" that most gamers might be familiar with... ...and yes, I do realize that, karmically speaking, I just pointed a loaded flak cannon at my face.
This technical limitation didn't seem to stop the guys who developed PS2 Red Faction...?
Right, and I'll give you that. But the fact is that Red Faction is a different style of game than GTA. In Red Faction, you move from level to level, and the terrain that you blew up in Mission One has no bearing on the terrain you could blow up in Mission Five, because they use different maps. GTA uses the same map the entire game, so if you blow up say, the Golden Gate Bridge, you damn well want to make sure that when you load the game-- or even that area-- again, the bridge stays blown up. Thus, you need a HUGE amount of storage-- 500K or even a full memory card (8 MB) probably won't cut it. I'd personally like to see the ability to blow up anything and everything, but it simply isn't feasible in this generation's PS2. Though, come to think of it, forcing the use of the PS2 HD in the next GTA might be just what Sony needs to build up demand for the device, which (AFAIK and so far) is only used by FFXI.
Blowing up the wrong buildings could seriously screw with missions, and actually would be an easy way to cheat. Don't want cops? Blow up the stations!
Though, technically, the reason you won't see deformable terrain in GTA is because the series is PS2-centric, and the PS2 doesn't have a hard drive (yet) to store the city data in addition to the 500K of game data. Because what good is deformable terrain if all you have to do is drive around the block, and the building's back?
On a completely unrelated note, the last two sentences of the first paragraph emitted pings in at least five dozen government anti-terrorist databases. Hell, it'll be the most attention my website's gotten in months.
I noticed this last night, too, but I believe SE fixed it with the latest PlayOnline update. I haven't been conscious long enough to check, but we'll see.
But do those who unveil and launch their consoles first always get the advantage?
No. For references, please see entries for Sega Saturn and Dreamcast. Next question.
OK, so I underestimated the population of exactly how many people can analyze DNA. I'll admit to that. Great. I'll even go to the hospital and swab my own cheek to give to the lab tech. The only condition is that the lab tech must, and this is an absolute requirement, be able to tell me exactly where the "terrorist" gene is and if it exists in the sample of DNA that I provided.
My point was that given existing DNA testing procedures-- not given existing numbers of people who know how to use it-- the primary use of DNA in law-enforcement situations is solely as a more advanced fingerprint. It remains a token, a tag that is left behind and used as evidence of someone being somewhere. Likewise it can be used to cross-reference into existing databases of information on a particular subject matching the token. The DNA itself does not say that a man is going to blow up a bus full of children. It does say that he is person X, and the investigators can then look up person X to see if he has a criminal history.
By the way, thank you for noticing that my sig is supposed to be taken as part of my posts. Usually I have to make it blind-stupidly obvious.
I totally missed the last line of your post, so let me add this. DNA holds a lot more information, yes, but right now-- outside of about maybe 1,000 biochemists-- who can really use it? DNA is basically used as a token these days. Hang on to my tinfoil hat for a few decades while I provide a DNA sample.
The fingerprint itself holds no information about who the fingerprint belongs to, it's just a token.
/., attempts to board Air Potato. Air Potato's staff takes Johnny's fingerprints as he's checking in, and they board him on the plane. Johnny looks fairly ordinary but a stewardess notices a weird, chemical smell about him as she shows him the oxygen mask. She alerts the captain, the captain radios the tower, and tower control calls Air Potato. Air Potato then hands over the fingerprint to the airport authorities, who cross-reference the fingerprint they got at check-in against FBI/Echelon/G.W./whatever. Bingo, they match him bigtime. Airport cops and possibly the resident FBI goons board the Air Potato flight, notice Johnny looking very nervous, and take him in; and the flight takes off without him and the ten pounds of chemical explosive he had ready to detonate under his baggy trenchcoat.
A token that, short of being gross, is always attached to one individual-- obviously the person to whom the fingerprint belongs. By itself it can help identify if someone touched something. In conjunction with FBI/CIA/NSA/USDA files, Interpol reports, military and civil records, and other databases, the "fact with no meaning", the "token" becomes VERY valuable indeed.
Let's take a quick walk down Hypothetical Lane. Johnny Evilguy, a suspected terrorist who has been posting inflammatory anti-skyscraper messages on
That's, ideally, how it should work. In practice, anyone whose last name starts with "Al" will probably find themselves noticing that the flights they board always get longer and longer delays.
(Stupid joke that will erase all credibility to the above: That just means that in five years, airplanes will be totally safe because all the terrorists will be hijacking buses instead.)
It's not even really a skill. At best it's a learned ability that some people can pick up more easily than others.
I get where you're coming from, but to be honest, that describes race car driving, dancing, music playing, writing, cooking... the list goes on.
I find it a lot easier just to say "gamer" and be done with it than say "someone who plays video games but isn't usually a psycho".
I use a small fictional furry animal as my online avatar. I am deeply shocked, offended, and appalled that you would even suggest the senseless murder of a member of a minority; not to mention the gross lack of racial sensitivity that would allow you to even conceive of such a horrific act. On behalf of nerds who use small furry animals as their online avatars, friends of people with small furry animals as their avatars, small furry animals, and the Democratic Party, I am hereby condemning you and the sum total of your posts, regardless of content, as filth, smut, and any other negative word I can think of, and I will be petitioning the State of Florida Judicial System (motto: "Insanity isn't a defense, it's the way we do things down here") to have your Slashdot posts removed from the record immediately and irrevocably.
(I shouldn't have to say this, but that was sarcasm.)
A (l)user doesn't have to even DO anything today to get a scumware instaleld on their PC, all they need to do is visit a web site.
Thanks to the magic of Windows XP, they don't even have to visit a web site. There are exploits that can install crapware without ever opening a browser; the computer just needs to be on an unfirewalled broadband connection. Yay for remote access, boo for not bothering to protect it in any way.
As long as it doesn't look like a plastic taco... ...actually, come to think of it, I can't see myself buying something I'd already have (ie another cell phone). I'll take my Mini-iPod and be happy, thank you very much.
Maybe I'm just being speculatively retarded here, but how difficult would it be to code an anti-spam agent bot? This bot would run on one machine somewhere, doesn't matter where, and monitor your POP3/IMAP/whatever account(s) every x minutes (let's say 30). At that time, the bot reads all the mail in the inbox, use a bayes filter/rules/whatever to determine spam, and sort/delete messages accordingly? Seems like an interesting solution, and it would be platform- and client-independent since the email client doesn't have to do anything besides collect what's left over. Feel free to flame me if this has been done before or is simply a stupid idea, but I think it might work. Hell, you could probably code it in VBasicrap if you knew the protocols necessary.
I use Knop-STD and it flat-out refuses to recognize my laptop's built-in wifi card. (Broadcom 802.11g) No problem with anything else-- and it runs beautifully-- but the wifi is what I'd really like.