At some point, the decent folk at ColumbiaHouse and similar outfits, annoyed that their no-postage-necessary return envelopes were being used to throw their junk in their faces, took to printing on them in red letters something to the effect "if you try and send us stuff in this envelope anonymously, we're gonna get you".
and so are DRM programmers (though it may be hard to believe). They also click through EULAs without looking. Even supposing that someone actually gave them this completely fictitious use case of "imagine someone selecting 'No' at this point", that still doesn't mean the programmer is going to implement it, much less to actually test it.
If I were working for the Japanese analog of FTC, my ears would be so-o-o pricked for an sweet inside deal somewhere in the middle of all this exciting stuff right now.
A Homeland Security honcho saying that all our computer are not belong to them?! Wow. Just... wow. Was Baker somehow shown the right end of a cluestick, or is this a temporary fluctuation in the collective subconscious?
"...and does not compromise security" and keep a straight face? It's a rootkit. It is concealing certain files from the OS. The hole is now known to every script kiddie and his baby brother. Countdown to the next virus/piece of spyware on the market which has a name starting with $sys$ - 5... 4...
Oh well. Yes, most people run Windows with "Hide protected operating system files" checked anyway. But from now on a geek would be well advised to look at the CD collection of every PC owner running in for help with an infected system.
SBC: Pay us money. Google: We don't want to. SBC: But we really think you should. Pay us. Google: Or what? SBC: See that foot in his mouth? Well, if you don't, he's going to chew it clean off! Google: That we'd pay to see. Ten bucks? SBC: Or how about we enhance value for our customers by stopping all packets originating from 64.233.161.99? And 72.14.207.99? In fact, that whole block. Oh, yeah, and... Google: (gets bored and leaves)
It's an investment into your future
on
The H-1B Swindle
·
· Score: 1
So? Supply and demand, they call it. For many, this is the only way they can legally migrate into this country. I am not any good at working with anything except my head. Where I come from, this wouldn't have provided me with anything except a deadest of the dead end research jobs (I'm a physicist by trade). When I was hired at my first software engineer position for the company which agreed to sponsor the adjustment from visitor visa to H1B, I was getting 25K (granted, it was more than 10 years ago), and I wasn't complaining.
Complying with a government (local or from Brussels) order to switch the DNS to these servers, under the penalty of a revoked ISP license, doesn't require a right mind.
I am not sure they care that much. French press (pun unintended), including AFP, is heavily subsidized in various ways, including direct cash from the government (not entirely like BBC, but still). They'll survive. And there's the additional benefit of sticking it to the evil American corporations, even if the nose comes off in the process of spiting the face.
I remember reading as a kid (say, in the early 80s) of curious space launches on the last page in the official daily. They would crop up about every month or so, and say in small print that a whole bunch of satellites (they were all designated "Kosmos", that is, "Space", so it would be "Kosmos-2754", "Kosmos-2755" and so on - 10 of them) had been launched at the same time. Didn't strike me as odd at the time, except that I thought "Why would they need this many satellites?" Of course, those were the old 10-warhead ICBMs which were near the end of their usefulness and needed to be disposed of.
They can prosecute this guy, and everyone he sold the list to, and everyone they sold the list to, and so on, nine ways from Sunday - won't make any difference for the spammed masses now that the list is out. Nor will AOL's privacy policy (or whatever goes for it over there). The safeguards that are in place are (and always will be) inadequate against a motivated individual who doesn't understand consequences of his/her actions, or doesn't give a whistle about them, or both. AOL? MSN? Yahoo? Ne-ext!
That worked so well with that deal Billy had with BestBuy and some other retailers, where you got $400 worth of hardware for indentured servi^H^H^H^H^H subscription to MSN...
It is definitely not free for a person who is sitting on a modem with a clock ticking. Not everyone's access is unlimited, not even the broadband (which is often billed for volume, not bandwidth - all right, probably not in the US, but in other countries). Therefore, the analogy is valid: there is not qualitative difference, only quantitative. What if the copy machine in the library ran $.005/page, not $.05? The only way to get rid of the comparison is to declare that as soon as some fixed cost per page is reached, the poor beaten-up Xerox becomes a piracy-enabling device.
This has already been done some years ago in Canada, where the translation system was fed the complete text of parliamentary debates for umpteen years (required by law to be translated by humans into French, if originally in English, and vice versa). I don't know how it fares when presented with a sample of parliament-speak (I concede, this is not a fair approximation of human language), but it fails miserably on a simple rhyme. Read your Hofstadter, guys.
The post-modern look at Russian Space Program
on
Soviet Moon Rocket
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· Score: 1
Can't help plugging my own work. Check out my translation of a short novel by one of the best young Russian-language writers, dealing exactly with the subject being discussed. http://lib.ru/lat/PELEWIN/omon_engl.tx t
Slashdot Mirror
At some point, the decent folk at ColumbiaHouse and similar outfits, annoyed that their no-postage-necessary return envelopes were being used to throw their junk in their faces, took to printing on them in red letters something to the effect "if you try and send us stuff in this envelope anonymously, we're gonna get you".
and so are DRM programmers (though it may be hard to believe). They also click through EULAs without looking. Even supposing that someone actually gave them this completely fictitious use case of "imagine someone selecting 'No' at this point", that still doesn't mean the programmer is going to implement it, much less to actually test it.
Talk about synergy! "Please wait for the custom price individually selected just for you, while we run up a quick check of your credit history..."
How's that funny? What is it that tickles the moderators - the tradition or the act itself?
If I were working for the Japanese analog of FTC, my ears would be so-o-o pricked for an sweet inside deal somewhere in the middle of all this exciting stuff right now.
A Homeland Security honcho saying that all our computer are not belong to them?! Wow. Just... wow. Was Baker somehow shown the right end of a cluestick, or is this a temporary fluctuation in the collective subconscious?
"...and does not compromise security" and keep a straight face? It's a rootkit. It is concealing certain files from the OS. The hole is now known to every script kiddie and his baby brother. Countdown to the next virus/piece of spyware on the market which has a name starting with $sys$ - 5... 4...
Oh well. Yes, most people run Windows with "Hide protected operating system files" checked anyway. But from now on a geek would be well advised to look at the CD collection of every PC owner running in for help with an infected system.
SBC: Pay us money.
Google: We don't want to.
SBC: But we really think you should. Pay us.
Google: Or what?
SBC: See that foot in his mouth? Well, if you don't, he's going to chew it clean off!
Google: That we'd pay to see. Ten bucks?
SBC: Or how about we enhance value for our customers by stopping all packets originating from 64.233.161.99? And 72.14.207.99? In fact, that whole block. Oh, yeah, and...
Google: (gets bored and leaves)
So? Supply and demand, they call it. For many, this is the only way they can legally migrate into this country. I am not any good at working with anything except my head. Where I come from, this wouldn't have provided me with anything except a deadest of the dead end research jobs (I'm a physicist by trade). When I was hired at my first software engineer position for the company which agreed to sponsor the adjustment from visitor visa to H1B, I was getting 25K (granted, it was more than 10 years ago), and I wasn't complaining.
Three scientists are walking across countryside when they see a cow.
"It is a Bos taurus," - says the biologist.
"It is black," - says the physicist.
"It is black on not less than one side," - says the mathematician.
Complying with a government (local or from Brussels) order to switch the DNS to these servers, under the penalty of a revoked ISP license, doesn't require a right mind.
"Band of America"?
What do you call "thier" then?
The enemy gate is down.
I am not sure they care that much. French press (pun unintended), including AFP, is heavily subsidized in various ways, including direct cash from the government (not entirely like BBC, but still). They'll survive. And there's the additional benefit of sticking it to the evil American corporations, even if the nose comes off in the process of spiting the face.
True. However, most of the people use it from work (as do we with /.), and on weekends the volume falls aproximately fivefold.
It's so not funny.
Nice sig. Only, the way it shapes up, it's "Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush, Clinton and Clinton".
I remember reading as a kid (say, in the early 80s) of curious space launches on the last page in the official daily. They would crop up about every month or so, and say in small print that a whole bunch of satellites (they were all designated "Kosmos", that is, "Space", so it would be "Kosmos-2754", "Kosmos-2755" and so on - 10 of them) had been launched at the same time. Didn't strike me as odd at the time, except that I thought "Why would they need this many satellites?" Of course, those were the old 10-warhead ICBMs which were near the end of their usefulness and needed to be disposed of.
Massive quantities of hardware-based DRM, of severely crappy quality, which breaks in a couple of days. But at least it's going to be cheap.
They can prosecute this guy, and everyone he sold the list to, and everyone they sold the list to, and so on, nine ways from Sunday - won't make any difference for the spammed masses now that the list is out. Nor will AOL's privacy policy (or whatever goes for it over there). The safeguards that are in place are (and always will be) inadequate against a motivated individual who doesn't understand consequences of his/her actions, or doesn't give a whistle about them, or both. AOL? MSN? Yahoo? Ne-ext!
That worked so well with that deal Billy had with BestBuy and some other retailers, where you got $400 worth of hardware for indentured servi^H^H^H^H^H subscription to MSN...
It is definitely not free for a person who is sitting on a modem with a clock ticking. Not everyone's access is unlimited, not even the broadband (which is often billed for volume, not bandwidth - all right, probably not in the US, but in other countries). Therefore, the analogy is valid: there is not qualitative difference, only quantitative. What if the copy machine in the library ran $.005/page, not $.05? The only way to get rid of the comparison is to declare that as soon as some fixed cost per page is reached, the poor beaten-up Xerox becomes a piracy-enabling device.
This has already been done some years ago in Canada, where the translation system was fed the complete text of parliamentary debates for umpteen years (required by law to be translated by humans into French, if originally in English, and vice versa). I don't know how it fares when presented with a sample of parliament-speak (I concede, this is not a fair approximation of human language), but it fails miserably on a simple rhyme. Read your Hofstadter, guys.
Can't help plugging my own work. Check out my translation of a short novel by one of the best young Russian-language writers, dealing exactly with the subject being discussed.x t
http://lib.ru/lat/PELEWIN/omon_engl.t