In other news, McDonald's is entering the consumer diet market with its new McDiet diuretic pill offer.
Buy three McGrease Sliders (TM) and get a free trial of the new Pee-a-Bucket chewy tablet. Comes in three flavors. After a few months, the McDiet pills will be charged separately.
Unimaginative, grumpy consumer associations have derided the new offer, saying that McDonald's should reduce the high sugar, grease, salt and cholesterol content of their food in the first place.
From the article: was talking recently to a friend who works for a big newspaper. He thought the print media were in serious trouble, and that they were still mostly in denial about it. "They think the decline is cyclic," he said. "Actually it's structural."
In other words, the readers are leaving, and they're not coming back.
Well, consider this: 1. Increasingly, people watch DVD and timeshifted TV instead of the straight boob tube, which means that they skip the commercials. 2. Most magazine's revenue comes from advertizers rather than from readers.
From item 1, I'd say that advertizers will start moving ad money away from run-of-the-mill TV (to the exception of big sports events and the like, which people will watch unshifted). Less money for TV means more money for magazine-based ad campaign (it means also less shitty sitcoms designed only to suck in ad dollars, yay!)
From item 2, this means that the financial health of magazines would improve overnight with more ad pages. The mags will be once again able to afford spending $300 to buy each subscriber (which was once the going rate), often by giving the subscriber a somptuous gift for a $15/year subscription.
Notice that I never said the mags would actually start investigating stories or cross-checking their facts. I did a 3-year stunt as a free lance writer for a computer mag, and it ain't a pretty sight. But that would not stop them from getting back on their feet.
If I was a magazine publisher, I'd heavily invest in TiVo and I'd print tutorials about fitting your PC with MythTV and a tuner card. Each skipped TV commercial is good news for the press.
A defunct company named Panda used to propose something pretty much like this to change modules without replacing the whole computer.
The custom connectors they developped alone were horribly expensive. And with the price of motherboards and peripherals constantly dropping, there was little point in replacing just the CPU of a machine.
Unless the prices come down dramatically, I see little incentive in adopting this technology.
Thanks for your reply. Let me clarify: I didn't suggest that France (or other countries) should turn into police state.
I did say, however, that in the case of France at least, security policies are broken by design, and a new ID card gadget is not going to fix anything. The French government has announced its intent to curbe illegal immigration (RTFA), hence the shiny new gadget... But for the reasons I stated, the ID card will not achieve this goal. It will, however, increase the burden of people living in France. Call it an advance in pointless Big-Brotherization.
In the US, there are a lot of people who hope for a miracle technological cure to political and sociological ills. The French porposition is a perfect example of why this cannot work. If you believe you have a security loophole, fix the policy. Don't impose a new "security improvement" gadget that will be a burden to honest people and will do nothing to achieve its stated objectives.
Oh yeah, let's solve all security problems with a new widget. There are terrorists in France, a problem that will be solved with a new expensive, mandatory card.
Riiiight.
Unfortunately, France routinely gives new IDs to illegal immigrants who have purposefully destroyed their IDs and passports in order to avoid deportation (if the French police doesn't know which country you're from and you don't tell them, then they can't deport you!)
Moreover, once, in Paris, I saw a protest in which hundreds of illegal aliens were marching and chanting to demand regularization of their status! Meanwhile, the cops were watching.
So since the spineless French government gave up on even pretending to enforce its immigration laws, I fail to see how this new pose would increase domestic security.
It's all a pretense.
A country cannot solve its lack of courage and its indecisiveness by mandating a new widget. Especially when history shows that this new widget will be distributed to every warm pibedian who forcefully asks for it.
Unfortunately, companies of this size comprise the bulk of American business.
A side remark: "comprise" is a synonym of "include". The author means "companies of this size compose the bulk etc.". These latinates are not equivalent.
You can say:
A set is composed of elements
A set comprises elements
A set is made of elements
Don't say "is comprised of", which is to English what "Microsoft security" is decency.:-)
France has no free speech rights anywhere in its constitution or laws. Actually, the French "Law on the Freedom of the Press" is regularly amended to increasingly restrict -- you guessed it -- the freedom of the press.
The US have it so good. This only proves that Americans who are hyping the European institutions are totally clueless about Europe.
Do I have a crystal ball? Nope, I am just a cynical bastard. Hence I have a good idea of how the EU work. When it comes to the EU's parody of democracy, the most cynical bastards often turn out to be way too optimistic.
Some people say that watching the EU in action is like watching sausage being made. That's wildly optimistic: sausages taste good. The result of the EU "process" does not.
I see... It might be workable, provided, again, that the gouvernment part of the equation works.
Britain's example show that even a problem as simple as upgrading the ID system cannot be entrusted to carreer politicians, who'll attach their side agendas to what should be a strictly technical affair. See this
for instance.
Are the Continentals more serious? Hardly.
This article talks about how tens of thousands of blank Belgian passports are routinely stolen every years and turn up as "real" fakes in the hands of fraudsters. And such a passport is valid accross all of the EU, mind you.
As for France, an authentic blank passport is worth
about $2000 in the street. Grab one and put your prefered ID on it.
So, with such a track record, I am afraid you cannot trust the government to certify ID. It would cost you a few thousands to produce an official document certifying your fake ID, which would then be use to defeat your scheme.
Regarding ChoicePoint, I hope they are sent to jail because they are irresponsible and unaccountable. But irresposability and unaccountability are the defining trait of most government-run administrations (can't be fired, no big raise to expect, few incentives), so replacing these rotten apples by other rotten apples won't fix the problem.
I am always amazed at people who propose miraculous cure-all solutions without ever bothering to check if someone, somewhere, attempted to implement them and how them fared.
In your case, this system exists in France. It's called "Banque de France", and it's a clearinghouse for credit info and check account status.
It is not very satisfying. BdF maintains a list of people who are barred to emit checks by their bank because they bounce a check or they exceed their credit limits. Unfortunately, that means that if a bank screws up, or if they just lower your authorized credit line while you're overdrawn, you're going to be barred from writing checks nationwide. Most check-barred people aren't professional fraudsters by any measure, they are just unlucky or impoverished consumers. Most of them don't have credit cards. Thanks to BdF, they are quickly deprived of their checkbook too. Bloody poors, server them well, right?
Also, BdF is known in France for screwing up badly at times, and also to be regularly on strike (BdF employees were all, until recently, civil servants who couldn't be fired). It means that you can remain for years on the black list, and good luck to sort things out!
Finally, data protection laws are very strict in most of Europe... But there are countries where they aren't. So companies from strict-privacy countries outsource their data mining to low-privacy countries. Surprise, surprise: you cannot break down your national borders and enforce your privacy laws, shock, horror!:-)
So in this instance, entrusting the Government to Do The Right Thing did not work. Lack of accountability, as usual with state-run operations.
And you want the same system? I really don't recommand it.
However the paper admits that the only way to be sure that you have killed a kernel rootkit is to completely erase an infected hard drive and reinstall the operating system from scratch.
Yeah, and make that OS a Linux or *BSD* OS! Otherwise, if these rootkits are around, it's rince and repeat every other day...
Slightly OT story: I was doing tech support for my father-in-law. Due to Windows spyware and instability, I was almost going to give up, with predictable consequences over the mood whenever we visited my wife's family. So I told him I would install Linux on his PC and support him. Since then, the only tech support intervention he has needed was when his HD died. He knows he shouldn't use the root password ever.
Linux: The only way to cut on tech support for family PCs. (Another in-law is a Mac person, never a complaint either!)
It's geek humor, it's weird, it's a free web comic! www.surliness.com
Believe it or not, I am familiar with the proposed EU Constitution. It carries the hallmark (some say the stigma) of Mr. Giscard d'Estaing, former president of France and an elite bureaucrat himself, who was one of the main authors.
This document has a lot of problems and I don't think it would improve things. It thick, verbose, technocratic jargon is full of loopholes that would quickly allow the commissars to re-establish their grip on the EU, albeit with different forms.
Brussels bureaucrats and lobbyists would just have to slightly adapt, not reform.
Another problem is that this document is full of good intents dripping with voter-soothing empty, grandiloquent phrases. Frankly, it reads like the authors tried to camouflage their shrewdness behind nice but empty verbiage. A constitution's intro shouldn't read like a politician's campaign brochure. When it does, you know that they are trying to sell you BS.
At this stage, I have no doubt the EU will adopt this constitution in spite of voters' rejection in several countries, aggravating the total disrespect for democracy, a concept that Brussels is always babbling about but less and less practicing.
The sad thing is that the elected Parliament is having debates over mostly minor matters while the unelected Commission dictates the major part of EU "directives" which are later on transmitted for application to each member nation's lawmaking institutions. No further debate is necessary: The Commission has ruled.
This was fine as long as the Commission wa only issuing directives on standardizing the sizes of windshield wipers and the percentage of synthetic fiber in wool carpet. But increasingly, the Commission is taking over larger and larger issues. Now it's issuing directives on very important, far-ranging matters without any kind of debate.
Thus, EU voters end up electing representatives who have no choice but to stamp "YES" on bills passed down by the unelected EU Commission...
Which is why I believe democracy is a mockery in the EU.
If you weren't so busy insulting everyone, you would have noticed that anyone can install the spamgourmet software (which is open-source) on their own intranet web server. This allows large and small companies alike to deploy their own spamgourmet instance.
Just because you don't understand something doesn't make it false. Somtimes, people more clever than you have actually already looked at the problem.
Too bad spamgourmet wasn't reviewed. It's free, it's open-source, it works.
Not only does it allow you to cut off spam, it gives you traceable addresses that can be used to see who leaked email to spammers. And it's perfect against phishing attempts.
Out of principles, I tend to avoid getting my technical info from articles by John Markoff. After all, he has a
rather dubious track record. Markoff has been caught
ridiculously overhyping things he clearly
didn't understand. Markoff was interviewed in the documentary
"Freedom Downtime" and he appeared to be completely clueless.
12000 Km/h is Kelvin times meter per hour. A Kevin is centigrages counted from the absolute zero. For laymen, the association of a temperature with a speed unit is a bit baffling, so let me explain.
Km/h is a unit used exclusively to measure the speed reached by those people that run around at high speed while yelling "AAAAARGH! MY UNDERWEAR IS ON FIRE!!!". That's right, the dreaded Underwear Spontaneous Combustion Syndrome, often caused in young guys oogling all these hot chicks in Californian campuses. Witnesses of an USCS occurence generally scramble for water buckets.
An USCS episode can be dramatic, depending on the Km/h value. At high Km/h values, the victim is running so fast that the bucket carriers cannot catch him. On top of that, the wind of his frantic run vents the fire, which of course burns even hotter, quickening his race. After a certain threshold, the poor guy's genitals burns to a crisp. The critical speed is called "Mach speed" (pronounced Mack), after an early victim.
So unless you are referring to these sad but uncomon accidents, the metric unit you want to use is km/h, with a small k meaning kilo, not the capital K of Kelvin.
Thank you for trying the IBM PGP key recovery service. Your are entitled to a free 6-month trial period.
As per your request, we analyzed your PGP-signed posts and deduced your passphare. Your current PGP passphrase is:
My b3st computer for a g1rlfriend! (Strength: 38%)
We suggest you pick a less obvious PGP passphrase in the future.
As someone posted before, yes, class-action lawsuits make very little money for the plaintiffs, but boo-queue (boo-koo?) bucks for the lawyers involved.
That's beaucoup (pronounce "boh-coo"), French for "a lot". One should say "beaucoup de bucks" or "beaucoup of bucks" just like you say "a lot of bucks".
And you are absolutely right, class-action lawsuits make very little money for the plaintiffs. Typically, such class-action lawsuits end up with a multimillion settlement, of which the lawyers keep 33%. The rest is divided between the X million people who joined as co-plaintiffs in the class action bandwagon. They will be able to download a 50 cent coupon off Halo 3 or something. Whoohoo.
Class-action lawsuits only exist for the trial lawyers. They are not benefiting consumers. Consumers are slapped with the cost of manufacturers having to apply stickers saying "don't bang with head" on every brick.
Well, you now know the simple condition for your fav team to win: just have a lunar eclipse the night of the game.
In other news, the FAA has decided to allocate a tail number to every pig and teach them the basic airport approach procedures, due to the sudden increase in flying pigs.
Slashdot Mirror
Buy three McGrease Sliders (TM) and get a free trial of the new Pee-a-Bucket chewy tablet. Comes in three flavors. After a few months, the McDiet pills will be charged separately.
Unimaginative, grumpy consumer associations have derided the new offer, saying that McDonald's should reduce the high sugar, grease, salt and cholesterol content of their food in the first place.
Cmdr Taco, you should learn your own freakin' langwich. Your stumbling babble is a disgrace even to the resilient ears of non-native speakers.
Well, consider this: 1. Increasingly, people watch DVD and timeshifted TV instead of the straight boob tube, which means that they skip the commercials. 2. Most magazine's revenue comes from advertizers rather than from readers.
From item 1, I'd say that advertizers will start moving ad money away from run-of-the-mill TV (to the exception of big sports events and the like, which people will watch unshifted). Less money for TV means more money for magazine-based ad campaign (it means also less shitty sitcoms designed only to suck in ad dollars, yay!)
From item 2, this means that the financial health of magazines would improve overnight with more ad pages. The mags will be once again able to afford spending $300 to buy each subscriber (which was once the going rate), often by giving the subscriber a somptuous gift for a $15/year subscription.
Notice that I never said the mags would actually start investigating stories or cross-checking their facts. I did a 3-year stunt as a free lance writer for a computer mag, and it ain't a pretty sight. But that would not stop them from getting back on their feet.
If I was a magazine publisher, I'd heavily invest in TiVo and I'd print tutorials about fitting your PC with MythTV and a tuner card. Each skipped TV commercial is good news for the press.
The custom connectors they developped alone were horribly expensive. And with the price of motherboards and peripherals constantly dropping, there was little point in replacing just the CPU of a machine.
Unless the prices come down dramatically, I see little incentive in adopting this technology.
I did say, however, that in the case of France at least, security policies are broken by design, and a new ID card gadget is not going to fix anything. The French government has announced its intent to curbe illegal immigration (RTFA), hence the shiny new gadget... But for the reasons I stated, the ID card will not achieve this goal. It will, however, increase the burden of people living in France. Call it an advance in pointless Big-Brotherization.
In the US, there are a lot of people who hope for a miracle technological cure to political and sociological ills. The French porposition is a perfect example of why this cannot work. If you believe you have a security loophole, fix the policy. Don't impose a new "security improvement" gadget that will be a burden to honest people and will do nothing to achieve its stated objectives.
There, is that clearer?
Riiiight.
Unfortunately, France routinely gives new IDs to illegal immigrants who have purposefully destroyed their IDs and passports in order to avoid deportation (if the French police doesn't know which country you're from and you don't tell them, then they can't deport you!)
Moreover, once, in Paris, I saw a protest in which hundreds of illegal aliens were marching and chanting to demand regularization of their status! Meanwhile, the cops were watching.
So since the spineless French government gave up on even pretending to enforce its immigration laws, I fail to see how this new pose would increase domestic security. It's all a pretense.
A country cannot solve its lack of courage and its indecisiveness by mandating a new widget. Especially when history shows that this new widget will be distributed to every warm pibedian who forcefully asks for it.
A side remark: "comprise" is a synonym of "include". The author means "companies of this size compose the bulk etc.". These latinates are not equivalent.
You can say:
Don't say "is comprised of", which is to English what "Microsoft security" is decency. :-)
The US have it so good. This only proves that Americans who are hyping the European institutions are totally clueless about Europe.
You shouldn't take the 1st Amendment as granted.
Do I have a crystal ball? Nope, I am just a cynical bastard. Hence I have a good idea of how the EU work. When it comes to the EU's parody of democracy, the most cynical bastards often turn out to be way too optimistic.
Some people say that watching the EU in action is like watching sausage being made. That's wildly optimistic: sausages taste good. The result of the EU "process" does not.
Britain's example show that even a problem as simple as upgrading the ID system cannot be entrusted to carreer politicians, who'll attach their side agendas to what should be a strictly technical affair. See this for instance.
Are the Continentals more serious? Hardly. This article talks about how tens of thousands of blank Belgian passports are routinely stolen every years and turn up as "real" fakes in the hands of fraudsters. And such a passport is valid accross all of the EU, mind you.
As for France, an authentic blank passport is worth about $2000 in the street. Grab one and put your prefered ID on it.
So, with such a track record, I am afraid you cannot trust the government to certify ID. It would cost you a few thousands to produce an official document certifying your fake ID, which would then be use to defeat your scheme.
Regarding ChoicePoint, I hope they are sent to jail because they are irresponsible and unaccountable. But irresposability and unaccountability are the defining trait of most government-run administrations (can't be fired, no big raise to expect, few incentives), so replacing these rotten apples by other rotten apples won't fix the problem.
In your case, this system exists in France. It's called "Banque de France", and it's a clearinghouse for credit info and check account status.
It is not very satisfying. BdF maintains a list of people who are barred to emit checks by their bank because they bounce a check or they exceed their credit limits. Unfortunately, that means that if a bank screws up, or if they just lower your authorized credit line while you're overdrawn, you're going to be barred from writing checks nationwide. Most check-barred people aren't professional fraudsters by any measure, they are just unlucky or impoverished consumers. Most of them don't have credit cards. Thanks to BdF, they are quickly deprived of their checkbook too. Bloody poors, server them well, right?
Also, BdF is known in France for screwing up badly at times, and also to be regularly on strike (BdF employees were all, until recently, civil servants who couldn't be fired). It means that you can remain for years on the black list, and good luck to sort things out!
Finally, data protection laws are very strict in most of Europe ... But there are countries where they aren't. So companies from strict-privacy countries outsource their data mining to low-privacy countries. Surprise, surprise: you cannot break down your national borders and enforce your privacy laws, shock, horror! :-)
So in this instance, entrusting the Government to Do The Right Thing did not work. Lack of accountability, as usual with state-run operations.
And you want the same system? I really don't recommand it.
Yeah, and make that OS a Linux or *BSD* OS! Otherwise, if these rootkits are around, it's rince and repeat every other day...
Slightly OT story: I was doing tech support for my father-in-law. Due to Windows spyware and instability, I was almost going to give up, with predictable consequences over the mood whenever we visited my wife's family. So I told him I would install Linux on his PC and support him. Since then, the only tech support intervention he has needed was when his HD died. He knows he shouldn't use the root password ever.
Linux: The only way to cut on tech support for family PCs. (Another in-law is a Mac person, never a complaint either!)
It's geek humor, it's weird, it's a free web comic! www.surliness.com
This document has a lot of problems and I don't think it would improve things. It thick, verbose, technocratic jargon is full of loopholes that would quickly allow the commissars to re-establish their grip on the EU, albeit with different forms. Brussels bureaucrats and lobbyists would just have to slightly adapt, not reform.
Another problem is that this document is full of good intents dripping with voter-soothing empty, grandiloquent phrases. Frankly, it reads like the authors tried to camouflage their shrewdness behind nice but empty verbiage. A constitution's intro shouldn't read like a politician's campaign brochure. When it does, you know that they are trying to sell you BS.
At this stage, I have no doubt the EU will adopt this constitution in spite of voters' rejection in several countries, aggravating the total disrespect for democracy, a concept that Brussels is always babbling about but less and less practicing.
The sad thing is that the elected Parliament is having debates over mostly minor matters while the unelected Commission dictates the major part of EU "directives" which are later on transmitted for application to each member nation's lawmaking institutions. No further debate is necessary: The Commission has ruled.
This was fine as long as the Commission wa only issuing directives on standardizing the sizes of windshield wipers and the percentage of synthetic fiber in wool carpet. But increasingly, the Commission is taking over larger and larger issues. Now it's issuing directives on very important, far-ranging matters without any kind of debate.
Thus, EU voters end up electing representatives who have no choice but to stamp "YES" on bills passed down by the unelected EU Commission...
Which is why I believe democracy is a mockery in the EU.
Anytime now...
He will, I'm sure...
Ahem *Cough* huh, folks? Can someone page him or something? Like, NOW?
Just because you don't understand something doesn't make it false. Somtimes, people more clever than you have actually already looked at the problem.
Not only does it allow you to cut off spam, it gives you traceable addresses that can be used to see who leaked email to spammers. And it's perfect against phishing attempts.
Stay away from this guy's drivel.
An USCS episode can be dramatic, depending on the Km/h value. At high Km/h values, the victim is running so fast that the bucket carriers cannot catch him. On top of that, the wind of his frantic run vents the fire, which of course burns even hotter, quickening his race. After a certain threshold, the poor guy's genitals burns to a crisp. The critical speed is called "Mach speed" (pronounced Mack), after an early victim.
So unless you are referring to these sad but uncomon accidents, the metric unit you want to use is km/h, with a small k meaning kilo, not the capital K of Kelvin.
Thank you for trying the IBM PGP key recovery service. Your are entitled to a free 6-month trial period.
As per your request, we analyzed your PGP-signed posts and deduced your passphare. Your current PGP passphrase is:
My b3st computer for a g1rlfriend!
(Strength: 38%)
We suggest you pick a less obvious PGP passphrase in the future.
Thank you,
-- The IBM BlueGene team.
That's beaucoup (pronounce "boh-coo"), French for "a lot". One should say "beaucoup de bucks" or "beaucoup of bucks" just like you say "a lot of bucks".
And you are absolutely right, class-action lawsuits make very little money for the plaintiffs. Typically, such class-action lawsuits end up with a multimillion settlement, of which the lawyers keep 33%. The rest is divided between the X million people who joined as co-plaintiffs in the class action bandwagon. They will be able to download a 50 cent coupon off Halo 3 or something. Whoohoo.
Class-action lawsuits only exist for the trial lawyers. They are not benefiting consumers. Consumers are slapped with the cost of manufacturers having to apply stickers saying "don't bang with head" on every brick.
Reading your http://www.ka9q.net/worm/ write-up. Nice.
Mod the parent up. Where are mod points when you need them? You need to add that to LinuxQuestions.org in the FAQ section.
In other news, the FAA has decided to allocate a tail number to every pig and teach them the basic airport approach procedures, due to the sudden increase in flying pigs.
You shouldn't complain. Given that it took you prolly 2 mins to post your message, the .asp server lasted 8 full minutes.
From Netcraft:
http://www22.verizon.com was running Microsoft-IIS on Linux when last queried at 27-Oct-2004 00:22:46 GMT
I didn't even know you could run IIS on Linux. See? It's the fault of Linux! This thing is not robust, I tell ya! [Asbestos Suit = On]