But sometimes it's better to have a little fun with them if you've got time to waste. If someone calls and asks to speak to the head of the household, there are a number of ways to dispose of the obvious telemarketer. My favorite: wait for them to stop speaking, then say the following in a clear, confident voice:
"Anteeksi, mutta emme puhu englantia ta:ma:ssa talossa."
That's Finnish, or my best approximation of it, for "I'm sorry, but we don't speak English in this house" - I think it's correct if you replace "a:" with an "a" with a dieresis over it, pronounce those vowels like the "a" in "hat", and pronounce the other letters as you would in, say, Spanish. And even if it's slightly wrong, how many USian telemarketers are going to speak _that_ language, anyway (especially compared to Spanish, for example)? Wait for an awkward silence, let them hang up when they realize they probably won't be getting anything out of you, and then see if they call back.
No empty space? I can end the search right here:
s/\s//g
I knew I should have been writing denser code. Time to stop writing Python code and go back to programming in something more properly formatted, like Brainf*ck...
You know, all it would take for you to sound like a troll or one of those people who like to whine at one of this site's occasional lapses would be a simple s/// command or two:
"I have been reading Slashdot for about five years. It was interesting at first, but then they started repeating stories!"
As someone who has worked for MITRE, I know there's a reason that it "has been tight with the government since just about the dawn of time:" That's the company's purpose. It's a private company whose mission is to provide independent contracting for the government, so it has all the benefits of being able to do cool scientific research for DoD, DoE, the military, etc. with all the benefits of not actually being a government agency.
What this means is that a large number of its employees have advanced degrees - especially Ph.Ds - in scientific fields, so they have probably done their share of academic research in various *nices. They're used to it, and it's definitely pervasive throughout the company - plenty of Linux machines as well as Solaris and others - because they know they can use it for research and they don't have to worry about government licensing and other paperwork when buying their own equipment. They're free to push these systems all they want because they know they work and they have plenty of freedoms that a normal government agency might not have.
My family used to use AOL despite vocal protests from me and my brother because it was free. Every month or so, we'd reregister for a new account under a different credit card using one of their free CDs, and the changing usernames weren't a problem because Hotmail hadn't been bought by M$ yet, so it was still morally okay to have an account there.
After a while, my parents tried to move to another ISP, probably because they were sick of hearing our whining. My father's call to AOL went something like this:
Dad: "I'd like to cancel my account." AOL: "Why?" Dad: "We want to use another service." AOL: "What if we give you another month for free?" Dad: "Okay."
So we were stuck with AOL for another month. At the end of that month, he tried cancelling again only to end up having the same conversation. And this happened yet again another month later. We finally moved to another ISP because, left with no other alternatives, I asked my parents to switch to something better as a "birthday present."
Maybe Jon Katz didn't speak to the same representatives at AOL, or maybe they've changed this policy. I find that hard to believe, though, when all you have to do for 1000 free hours is pick up a CD at 7-11 or wait for one to arrive in the mail. AOL gets their money from aggressive advertising - requiring people to see an ad and click "No Thanks" every time they sign on, for instance, and (as a/. story pointed out a few weeks ago) occasionally billing them for the products anyway - and they really couldn't care less about whether people pay for their service or not.
I just stopped checking my old Hotmail address regularly within the past month, then at all this week, because I was sick of all the spam I had to keep deleting (a quick login showed 87 in the last 4 days, and that's without having given out this address to anyone in years) and because my school address was in general much more reliable. I also got mine before M$ bought the company, and I distinctly remember them promising when they bought it that they would always keep Hotmail a free service.
Now, I'm not saying Hotmail isn't free anymore, because I've never paid a cent for it. But here's what they've done to allow that:
Spam its users regularly about how they can get better service for $19.95.
Replace the old policy of warning you when your account was full and eventually deleting older messages with a new policy of freezing all incoming and outgoing mail without notification as soon as you hit 2 MB if you don't pay.
Give away users' email addresses to virtually anyone who asks for them.
Given these steps, which have occurred at fairly regular intervals, does it surprise you at all that they've progressed on to this? I can only imagine that next they'll replace those check boxes with bulleted lists, so that you can't opt out unless you become a paid subscriber... My advice to you is to change your name and address info immediately to something fake, clear out your Hotmail address book (because they're probably selling that too), and then to switch to a more reliable email provider. There are plenty of services that actively guard you against spam, so it shouldn't be too hard to find one you like.
n. creating legal business by stirring up disputes and quarrels, generally for the benefit of the lawyer who sees fees in the matter. Barratry is illegal in all states and subject to criminal punishment and/or discipline by the state bar, but there must be a showing that the resulting lawsuit was totally groundless. There is a lot of border-line barratry in which attorneys, in the name of being tough or protecting the client, fail to seek avenues for settlement of disputes or will not tell the client he/she has no legitimate claim.
If this PanIP company is seriously pursuing this sort of patent, this seems like good grounds for a countersuit...
The Supreme Court has ruled on obscenity laws several times before. In Roth v. United States (1957), it ruled that obscenity is not protected as free speech and appealed to community standards to determine what is obscene. In Miller v. California (1973), it defined obscene material as that which "appeals to the prurient interest" of the average person and has no "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."
And more recently, there was the case whose name I don't remember of the Michigan man who was convicted of cursing in front of women and children - his canoe had tipped over and he just screamed as many obscenities as he could. IIRC, he was fined some trivial amount, but he appealed and his conviction was upheld everywhere because his speech wasn't considered meaningful. This only happened within the last year or so, so the idea that speech must have some value to be protected probably isn't going to be refuted any time soon.
You want to argue this in terms of constitutional rights? Fine. Go read the Supreme Court's decision in Schenck v. United States (1919), a case where an American Socialist party official was arrested for violating the recently passed Espionage Act. Schenck's crime was the distribution of anti-WWI pamphlets that had the potential to encourage people to evade the draft.
The Supreme Court upheld both the Espionage Act and Schenck's conviction because national security was at stake. The majority opinion was the source of the famous line about shouting "fire" in a crowded theater - you don't have the right to do that because it could cause a panic and result in injuries and other damage. The Court has upheld several times since then (especially in obscenity cases) the idea that speech is only protected when it is meaningful.
When an essay incites rioting, the damage is voluntary: You don't have to read the essay, you can stop any time you want to, and there's nobody with a gun to your head forcing you to run outside and loot other people's homes. You don't get to stop executing a virus once you've started, and (admittedly thanks to poor security on the part of Microsoft) sometimes it can even start itself without warning you. This is why writing and distributing viruses is illegal: It forcibly causes damage to others. You have the right to swing a baseball bat as much as you want around your own computer, but once you walk up to another person's computer and swing it into his monitor (after all, would you be able to stop someone with a bat?) you've just destroyed his property and made yourself liable for the damages.
Seriously, since the Industrial Revolution there has not been a single example of a scientific discovery that affected human life more than superficially.
How about the transistor? Maybe it was developed in an R&D type of environment, but do you really think people knew enough about semiconductors in, say, 1800 to come up with a device like that? Your laptop computer wouldn't be so easy to carry around if it was filled with bulky, overheated vacuum tubes.
Did nuclear physics only affect human life superficially? I think there are a few people in Hiroshima that might disagree with you.
What about vaccines for polio, the eradication of smallpox, and all of the scientific work that went into devices to detect and prevent diseases? Roentgen wasn't working in some pharmaceutical lab when he discovered X-rays.
You're right - a lot of scientific work doesn't affect human life more than superficially. And maybe to a lot of people it doesn't matter whether the Earth revolves around the Sun once a year or vice versa or maybe they just sit there motionless. But this list is far from complete - plenty of post-Industrial Revolution science has had a pretty massive impact on human life, and without a lot of relatively new scientific theory almost none of that important R&D could possibly take place. There's a reason that people still regard scientists higher than they do the garbage men you mentioned, even if they don't understand what those people do.
I propose that we go ahead with a national database, make it open to the public, and have it all administered by Oracle. Only I don't mean Larry Ellison's Oracle.
That's right, all queries will have to be answered by the Usenet Oracle. We can't ensure that the information in this "database" will all be accurate, but at least we'll be able to share a hearty laugh as we vote any congressmen who try to implement this idea out of office...
Be careful how you phrase that last sentence - your carefree use of the word "obvious" in reference to math calls to mind an old joke:
Two mathematicians were talking one day about some recent work they'd done. One described a proof to the other but quickly glossed over a complicated step. The second one said, "Wait a minute - you didn't prove your last assertion." The reply: "It's obvious."
So the second mathematician wordlessly took a piece of chalk, went to the nearby blackboard, and began to fill it with long statements full of obscure symbols. Nearly half an hour later, he stopped writing, turned around, and said, "You're right. It is obvious."
It should be the other way around (BSD:Linux), since BSD is supposed to be more stable than Linux while Celine Dion is about as unstable as Windows 95.
I'm guessing it'll get prolonged unintentionally for a few more days. Does anyone want to guess when the first repeated story shows up? (My guess is Thursday evening.)
Wouldn't it be nice of CmdrTaco to give a little prize in the form of karma to whoever's closest?
Actually, the DMCA might be kinda useless here - Google caches sites on the bottom of the pigeons' cages, so the copyrighted works certainly aren't in their original form anymore.
So if I put my old Win95 CD in my microwave oven and interactively set it to bake for half an hour, at least I can be secure in the knowledge that it won't be getting copied at the same time. That's one less copy of Windoze to worry about!
And here's the next/. poll so CmdrTaco knows what to write for the contest:
Google program?
1) A spider that finds and caches sites right before they get slashdotted
2) Run StegDetect to find hidden "M$ is evil" messages
3) Find real Britney Spears porn
4) Anything running on a Beowulf cluster
5) system("grep -r \"CowboyNeal\" *");
I doubt they'll get their $10,000 worth of code that easily...
Slashdot Mirror
But sometimes it's better to have a little fun with them if you've got time to waste. If someone calls and asks to speak to the head of the household, there are a number of ways to dispose of the obvious telemarketer. My favorite: wait for them to stop speaking, then say the following in a clear, confident voice:
"Anteeksi, mutta emme puhu englantia ta:ma:ssa talossa."
That's Finnish, or my best approximation of it, for "I'm sorry, but we don't speak English in this house" - I think it's correct if you replace "a:" with an "a" with a dieresis over it, pronounce those vowels like the "a" in "hat", and pronounce the other letters as you would in, say, Spanish. And even if it's slightly wrong, how many USian telemarketers are going to speak _that_ language, anyway (especially compared to Spanish, for example)? Wait for an awkward silence, let them hang up when they realize they probably won't be getting anything out of you, and then see if they call back.
Or we could just forget ICANN et. al. and start using OpenNIC - wouldn't we all like to use the .geek TLD anyway?
No empty space? I can end the search right here: s/\s//g
I knew I should have been writing denser code. Time to stop writing Python code and go back to programming in something more properly formatted, like Brainf*ck...
You know, all it would take for you to sound like a troll or one of those people who like to whine at one of this site's occasional lapses would be a simple s/// command or two:
"I have been reading Slashdot for about five years. It was interesting at first, but then they started repeating stories!"
As someone who has worked for MITRE, I know there's a reason that it "has been tight with the government since just about the dawn of time:" That's the company's purpose. It's a private company whose mission is to provide independent contracting for the government, so it has all the benefits of being able to do cool scientific research for DoD, DoE, the military, etc. with all the benefits of not actually being a government agency.
What this means is that a large number of its employees have advanced degrees - especially Ph.Ds - in scientific fields, so they have probably done their share of academic research in various *nices. They're used to it, and it's definitely pervasive throughout the company - plenty of Linux machines as well as Solaris and others - because they know they can use it for research and they don't have to worry about government licensing and other paperwork when buying their own equipment. They're free to push these systems all they want because they know they work and they have plenty of freedoms that a normal government agency might not have.
My family used to use AOL despite vocal protests from me and my brother because it was free. Every month or so, we'd reregister for a new account under a different credit card using one of their free CDs, and the changing usernames weren't a problem because Hotmail hadn't been bought by M$ yet, so it was still morally okay to have an account there.
/. story pointed out a few weeks ago) occasionally billing them for the products anyway - and they really couldn't care less about whether people pay for their service or not.
After a while, my parents tried to move to another ISP, probably because they were sick of hearing our whining. My father's call to AOL went something like this:
Dad: "I'd like to cancel my account."
AOL: "Why?"
Dad: "We want to use another service."
AOL: "What if we give you another month for free?"
Dad: "Okay."
So we were stuck with AOL for another month. At the end of that month, he tried cancelling again only to end up having the same conversation. And this happened yet again another month later. We finally moved to another ISP because, left with no other alternatives, I asked my parents to switch to something better as a "birthday present."
Maybe Jon Katz didn't speak to the same representatives at AOL, or maybe they've changed this policy. I find that hard to believe, though, when all you have to do for 1000 free hours is pick up a CD at 7-11 or wait for one to arrive in the mail. AOL gets their money from aggressive advertising - requiring people to see an ad and click "No Thanks" every time they sign on, for instance, and (as a
I just stopped checking my old Hotmail address regularly within the past month, then at all this week, because I was sick of all the spam I had to keep deleting (a quick login showed 87 in the last 4 days, and that's without having given out this address to anyone in years) and because my school address was in general much more reliable. I also got mine before M$ bought the company, and I distinctly remember them promising when they bought it that they would always keep Hotmail a free service.
Now, I'm not saying Hotmail isn't free anymore, because I've never paid a cent for it. But here's what they've done to allow that:
Given these steps, which have occurred at fairly regular intervals, does it surprise you at all that they've progressed on to this? I can only imagine that next they'll replace those check boxes with bulleted lists, so that you can't opt out unless you become a paid subscriber... My advice to you is to change your name and address info immediately to something fake, clear out your Hotmail address book (because they're probably selling that too), and then to switch to a more reliable email provider. There are plenty of services that actively guard you against spam, so it shouldn't be too hard to find one you like.
there's a term to describe this: barratry.
Here's a definition from the Bernard Shifman is a Moron Spammer (I know, but it was the first reference that came to mind):
If this PanIP company is seriously pursuing this sort of patent, this seems like good grounds for a countersuit...
Now that we've seen this, I think it's time the ACs actually submit the following "rumor" as a story and see if it makes the front page:
"Stephen King, author, dead at 64"
Maybe then at least it won't get posted quite so often...
The Supreme Court has ruled on obscenity laws several times before. In Roth v. United States (1957), it ruled that obscenity is not protected as free speech and appealed to community standards to determine what is obscene. In Miller v. California (1973), it defined obscene material as that which "appeals to the prurient interest" of the average person and has no "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."
And more recently, there was the case whose name I don't remember of the Michigan man who was convicted of cursing in front of women and children - his canoe had tipped over and he just screamed as many obscenities as he could. IIRC, he was fined some trivial amount, but he appealed and his conviction was upheld everywhere because his speech wasn't considered meaningful. This only happened within the last year or so, so the idea that speech must have some value to be protected probably isn't going to be refuted any time soon.
You want to argue this in terms of constitutional rights? Fine. Go read the Supreme Court's decision in Schenck v. United States (1919), a case where an American Socialist party official was arrested for violating the recently passed Espionage Act. Schenck's crime was the distribution of anti-WWI pamphlets that had the potential to encourage people to evade the draft.
The Supreme Court upheld both the Espionage Act and Schenck's conviction because national security was at stake. The majority opinion was the source of the famous line about shouting "fire" in a crowded theater - you don't have the right to do that because it could cause a panic and result in injuries and other damage. The Court has upheld several times since then (especially in obscenity cases) the idea that speech is only protected when it is meaningful.
When an essay incites rioting, the damage is voluntary: You don't have to read the essay, you can stop any time you want to, and there's nobody with a gun to your head forcing you to run outside and loot other people's homes. You don't get to stop executing a virus once you've started, and (admittedly thanks to poor security on the part of Microsoft) sometimes it can even start itself without warning you. This is why writing and distributing viruses is illegal: It forcibly causes damage to others. You have the right to swing a baseball bat as much as you want around your own computer, but once you walk up to another person's computer and swing it into his monitor (after all, would you be able to stop someone with a bat?) you've just destroyed his property and made yourself liable for the damages.
How about the transistor? Maybe it was developed in an R&D type of environment, but do you really think people knew enough about semiconductors in, say, 1800 to come up with a device like that? Your laptop computer wouldn't be so easy to carry around if it was filled with bulky, overheated vacuum tubes.
Did nuclear physics only affect human life superficially? I think there are a few people in Hiroshima that might disagree with you.
What about vaccines for polio, the eradication of smallpox, and all of the scientific work that went into devices to detect and prevent diseases? Roentgen wasn't working in some pharmaceutical lab when he discovered X-rays.
You're right - a lot of scientific work doesn't affect human life more than superficially. And maybe to a lot of people it doesn't matter whether the Earth revolves around the Sun once a year or vice versa or maybe they just sit there motionless. But this list is far from complete - plenty of post-Industrial Revolution science has had a pretty massive impact on human life, and without a lot of relatively new scientific theory almost none of that important R&D could possibly take place. There's a reason that people still regard scientists higher than they do the garbage men you mentioned, even if they don't understand what those people do.
I propose that we go ahead with a national database, make it open to the public, and have it all administered by Oracle. Only I don't mean Larry Ellison's Oracle.
That's right, all queries will have to be answered by the Usenet Oracle. We can't ensure that the information in this "database" will all be accurate, but at least we'll be able to share a hearty laugh as we vote any congressmen who try to implement this idea out of office...
Be careful how you phrase that last sentence - your carefree use of the word "obvious" in reference to math calls to mind an old joke:
Two mathematicians were talking one day about some recent work they'd done. One described a proof to the other but quickly glossed over a complicated step. The second one said, "Wait a minute - you didn't prove your last assertion." The reply: "It's obvious."
So the second mathematician wordlessly took a piece of chalk, went to the nearby blackboard, and began to fill it with long statements full of obscure symbols. Nearly half an hour later, he stopped writing, turned around, and said, "You're right. It is obvious."
It should be the other way around (BSD:Linux), since BSD is supposed to be more stable than Linux while Celine Dion is about as unstable as Windows 95.
I'm guessing it'll get prolonged unintentionally for a few more days. Does anyone want to guess when the first repeated story shows up? (My guess is Thursday evening.)
Wouldn't it be nice of CmdrTaco to give a little prize in the form of karma to whoever's closest?
Are you kidding? With Nature's Harmonic Simultaneous 4-Day Time Cube, Gene Ray could write kernel code four times as fast!
Actually, the DMCA might be kinda useless here - Google caches sites on the bottom of the pigeons' cages, so the copyrighted works certainly aren't in their original form anymore.
Actually, the "the" comes from the Greek word theos, meaning "god." The fact that it's also a definite article in English is just a coincidence.
A Beowulf cluster of DNA?
I think it's called the human body...
Since this is Microsoft we're talking about, I think you mean:
Step 1: Steal code.
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Profit!
Though step 1 should be more like "Destroy competition"...
So if I put my old Win95 CD in my microwave oven and interactively set it to bake for half an hour, at least I can be secure in the knowledge that it won't be getting copied at the same time. That's one less copy of Windoze to worry about!
"Go To http://www.goatse.cx NoW !!!"
Imagine if your friends suddenly knew not only that you were gullible enough to fall for a virus like that, but that you had seen that site...
And here's the next /. poll so CmdrTaco knows what to write for the contest:
Google program?
1) A spider that finds and caches sites right before they get slashdotted
2) Run StegDetect to find hidden "M$ is evil" messages
3) Find real Britney Spears porn
4) Anything running on a Beowulf cluster
5) system("grep -r \"CowboyNeal\" *");
I doubt they'll get their $10,000 worth of code that easily...
Now that this is happening to commercial films, I bet Taiwanese politician Chu Mei-Feng wants to file for copyright herself...