"I am waiting for the moment when it occurs to these people that it's too easy to use the USA road system for criminal or terrorist activity."
Well that's the plan behind digital traffic cameras in London. One of the police-chiefs involved was quoted as "with this, we'll be able to deny use of the roads to known criminals" [by being notified whenever a numberplate on the wanted list passes a traffic camera]
Of course, if they had more than 3 police officers per city, it would help them to do something useful with this information...
Is it normal to consider imprisonment as one of the primary industries in a country? Perhaps if people weren't put into prison for 3 counts of jaywalking, there'd be enough money left over for schools to afford curriculums not provided by McDonalds?
I don't mean this as a personal rebuff, but the US has better things to spend its money on than lining the pockets of prison contractors.
"Please look at that listing again, and if you don't believe the "nosrc" part, unpack the SRPMS and see for yourself."
So they're guilty of 8 million counts of copyright infringement, one from each author whose copyrighted code they're illegally distributing without permission.
"Most universities have well published an Acceptable Use Policy. Before making any disclosures, become intimately familiar with this document."
Nice plan.
Witch-hunt script, line 1: "Get the logs of everyone who's taken an unusual interest in the JANET AUP recently."
Probably best to take advice from here, and just keep the code for your own use. You'll get screwed if you report it, so if that's the system the schools want to implement, let them live by it.
"Own use" of course, translated as "for the use of freenet readers"
"Have you ever voted absentee? There are two envelopes, one goes in the other... the inside envelope face is blank and has no information about you and holds your vote."
What does that have to do with postal vote fraud? Just because it's possible for the vote to be separated from the name after it's received, doesn't stop me from forcing someone to vote a particular way before the vote is put in the envelope, then seal and post it for them.
This will hardly get any less of a problem as we have 20 immigrants "staying" (so far as the electoral register is concerned) in the house of each benefits-fraudster who is collecting housing benefit on behalf all of these people, and probably voting a few times from that address too...
"Will Internet Users Pay for Content? Yes, they will when they have to. When they start logging on to sites that just arn't there anymore."
Just like we all pay for our microsoft software, otherwise we'd end up loading a program that just wasn't there any more?
Correct response to removal of some shared resource is to create a replacement. Why spend thousands of dollars propping up some crap like mirriam-webster when you can just create a WikiPedia to replace it? Why spend money to prop-up download.com when you can create a RPMFind to replace it? Why spend money to prop-up shareware when you can create some GNU to replace it?
Would you spend all your money buying water from your neighbour's well, or dig your own?
"I know what I am doing next election... Voting via absentee ballot. At least there is a greater chance of my vote not being screwed up or changed."
You could also force your wife, tenants and neighbours to vote by post too, that way you can check how they vote rather than letting them into those pesky secret ballots.
Useful things, postal and home electronic votes. Wonder if anyone's realised how they let-down the system yet?
"But very quickly I had to spend a couple of hours doing things like learning how to set up header files in order to re-compile my kernal to support NVIDIA drivers."
You download a binary and run it, just like you would for Windows.
Then you reboot, just like you would for Windows.
Then it works, which doesn't happen in Windows.
Why would you need to recompile the kernel? That would only be if you had odd hardware (supercomputers or such like) which Windows doesn't support anyway.
Unless you meant "make KDE look the same as Gnome", which is kind'a like saying "make windowsXP and MacOs the same"... different products for different people.
"Um, that's it, unless you count system tray popups that alert you to things like low disk space, which is a damned good idea anyway."
"Click here to start" (pointing to the start menu) on every new WindowsOS you install, refuses to go away even as you're trying to run things, you MUST click the start menu before you're allowed to use WindowsXP.
"Click here to register/activate/submit". Again, always on top, always there in a default install, and with a RealPlayer-like attitude of "you can't kill it, only delay it". Does the phrase "stick your data collection where..." mean nothing to the Windows development team?
"This idea is stupid. He clearly does not understand how music is consumed. Sales of a CD normally peak right after initial release when lots of people want to listen to the album. Over time, people start listening to other things and the amount of time they spend listening to the album slowly tapers off"
Perhaps you're confusing teenage girls, who act as you describe, and real music-listeners, who probably won't buy anything less than two years old, just to see if it stands the test of time as anything not still popular by then isn't worth buying. (proportional + integral control)
There's no particular reason why this needs a critical mass to work, simply because when one person joins, their favourite albums are guaranteed to be there (you put them there). The main problem would be: if only people with music you didn't like joined, you'd have no use for the system. But assuming that mostly musicphiles would join such a scheme (brittney fans sticking to iMesh instead), then you'd get the chance to sample some music you hadn't tried before.
One key feature of the scheme would be that you'd have to *guarantee* that anybody could always get their CDs back, otherwise they'd be unlikely to risk the project. Having a distributed system where people keep hold of their own CDs would solve this, and also mean that if they wanted to take the CDs out (on holiday, or if they wanted their own ones to listen to) then they could take them out of the collection, and they'd not be available for the community to use. Nobody wants to send their prized CDs to a repositary with the risk that they could be siezed by brownshirt^Dlawyers.
As to people going on about all the DRM and stuff needed, remember that you can still copy the CD *before* you share it, with any library, physical or electronic. Cringely's scheme seems to be aimed at honest, mature people, so there's an assumption of honesty anyway. you could almost say that such a scheme could work without any digital enforcement, as anybody without the token would have no rights to own the music...
"Why stop there? We need as many languages as we can get"
Three Rippers for the Java-kings compiling on-the-fly, Seven for the Mac-lords in their cases of gemstone, Nine for Mortal Windows doomed to die, One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne In the Land of POSIX where the Programmers lie. One Ripper to rule them all, One Ripper to cut them, One Ripper to encode them all and in the darkness tag them In the Land of POSIX where the Programmers lie.
Until 1835 the Freedom of the City - together with membership of one of the ancient guilds which were the forerunners of today's Livery Companies - was essential to anyone who wished to exercise a trade in the City.
A number of ancient privileges are associated with the Freedom - although they are more a product of collective memory than of documented evidence. They include the right to herd sheep over London bridge, to go about the City with a drawn sword, and if convicted of a capital offence, to be hung with a silken rope. Other advantages are said to have included the right to avoid being press-ganged, to be married in St Paul's Cathedral, buried in the City and to be drunk and disorderly without fear of arrest.
When I moved house, they started sending the letters again, which I signed and returned. A week or two later a poster went up on the billboard across the road saying "3 addresses at Himalayan Way do not have Television Licenses. We know who they are."
Those posters did seem rather odd, chastising people in public for not owning a television. Granted, some of those named might have been using a television without a license, but given the ease of detecting such things, it seems unlikely.
For those not in the UK, the television licensing authority is an office of clueless twats, who spend their life threatening people with prosecution if they don't pay their television tax. Theoretically the tax is optional, but the TV licensing authority don't seem to have been told this yet. They claim to have sophisticated equipment to track unauthorised televisions, but the most sophisticated tactic they have is to just write to any address without a TV license on the assumption that they're criminal bastards using a TV without permission. Rarely is their assumption given any sort of sanity-check, hence those of us without televisions end up with piles of red printed letters in bold capitals.
"Not! you think they can't design a keyboard wedge which logs the numlock-flashing pattern to a built-in memory? And it could even detect Morse and decode it."
Slashdot Mirror
"I am waiting for the moment when it occurs to these people that it's too easy to use the USA road system for criminal or terrorist activity."
Well that's the plan behind digital traffic cameras in London. One of the police-chiefs involved was quoted as "with this, we'll be able to deny use of the roads to known criminals" [by being notified whenever a numberplate on the wanted list passes a traffic camera]
Of course, if they had more than 3 police officers per city, it would help them to do something useful with this information...
"on things we need less than more prisons and better schools."
really?
Is it normal to consider imprisonment as one of the primary industries in a country? Perhaps if people weren't put into prison for 3 counts of jaywalking, there'd be enough money left over for schools to afford curriculums not provided by McDonalds?
I don't mean this as a personal rebuff, but the US has better things to spend its money on than lining the pockets of prison contractors.
"I personally handled 25,000 letters a day, and I wasn't in automation, which does 50,000 letters per station per hour."
Presumably it doesn't take as long to stamp on an "orginating post office" code as it does to recognise (perhaps type) the address and sort it.
"Please look at that listing again, and if you don't believe the "nosrc" part, unpack the SRPMS and see for yourself."
So they're guilty of 8 million counts of copyright infringement, one from each author whose copyrighted code they're illegally distributing without permission.
How does that help them?
"Most universities have well published an Acceptable Use Policy. Before making any disclosures, become intimately familiar with this document."
Nice plan.
Witch-hunt script, line 1: "Get the logs of everyone who's taken an unusual interest in the JANET AUP recently."
Probably best to take advice from here, and just keep the code for your own use. You'll get screwed if you report it, so if that's the system the schools want to implement, let them live by it.
"Own use" of course, translated as "for the use of freenet readers"
"Have you ever voted absentee? There are two envelopes, one goes in the other... the inside envelope face is blank and has no information about you and holds your vote."
What does that have to do with postal vote fraud? Just because it's possible for the vote to be separated from the name after it's received, doesn't stop me from forcing someone to vote a particular way before the vote is put in the envelope, then seal and post it for them.
This will hardly get any less of a problem as we have 20 immigrants "staying" (so far as the electoral register is concerned) in the house of each benefits-fraudster who is collecting housing benefit on behalf all of these people, and probably voting a few times from that address too...
"Will Internet Users Pay for Content? Yes, they will when they have to. When they start logging on to sites that just arn't there anymore."
Just like we all pay for our microsoft software, otherwise we'd end up loading a program that just wasn't there any more?
Correct response to removal of some shared resource is to create a replacement. Why spend thousands of dollars propping up some crap like mirriam-webster when you can just create a WikiPedia to replace it? Why spend money to prop-up download.com when you can create a RPMFind to replace it? Why spend money to prop-up shareware when you can create some GNU to replace it?
Would you spend all your money buying water from your neighbour's well, or dig your own?
"I know what I am doing next election... Voting via absentee ballot. At least there is a greater chance of my vote not being screwed up or changed."
You could also force your wife, tenants and neighbours to vote by post too, that way you can check how they vote rather than letting them into those pesky secret ballots.
Useful things, postal and home electronic votes. Wonder if anyone's realised how they let-down the system yet?
"Although its legal status is unclear, Sealand lies within the territorial boundary of 10 miles claimed by England"
Similarly, England (or part thereof) lies within the territorial boundary of 10 miles claimed by Sealand.
Not that it matters
"JUST AFTER congress passed the PATRIOT act which equated:
Politically Motivated Hacking = Terrorism "
That'll be an assignment, rather than a test of equality
"But very quickly I had to spend a couple of hours doing things like learning how to set up header files in order to re-compile my kernal to support NVIDIA drivers."
You download a binary and run it, just like you would for Windows.
Then you reboot, just like you would for Windows.
Then it works, which doesn't happen in Windows.
Why would you need to recompile the kernel? That would only be if you had odd hardware (supercomputers or such like) which Windows doesn't support anyway.
"yet no one is seemingly able to get the GUI geeks to come together to for some sort of Linux UI standards consortium"
User interface standards for free software
Unless you meant "make KDE look the same as Gnome", which is kind'a like saying "make windowsXP and MacOs the same"... different products for different people.
"Um, that's it, unless you count system tray popups that alert you to things like low disk space, which is a damned good idea anyway."
"Click here to start" (pointing to the start menu) on every new WindowsOS you install, refuses to go away even as you're trying to run things, you MUST click the start menu before you're allowed to use WindowsXP.
"Click here to register/activate/submit". Again, always on top, always there in a default install, and with a RealPlayer-like attitude of "you can't kill it, only delay it". Does the phrase "stick your data collection where..." mean nothing to the Windows development team?
Hmmm.
blank page...
blank page...
ah yes, slashdot banner ads.
"Unblock images from this server"
If you ever want to hide portions of an email from Outlook users, you can simply use the "begin " line on its own
"I quit flying that day and will never step foot on another plane for the rest of my life."
Oh the bright side, this'll cut the aviation pollution problem, and it'll completely screw the (aerospace-based parts of) the US economy.
Way to go, guys. Who needed a free country anyway?
"I wonder if modern day pilots are going to need a way to signal their opponent that their computers are rebooting?"
A "Designed for Windows98" sticker?
"and would be totally unacceptable if it were say, a navigation computer on a 737 with a hundred civilians on-board."
Or indeed, a hundred people of any type.
"This idea is stupid. He clearly does not understand how music is consumed. Sales of a CD normally peak right after initial release when lots of people want to listen to the album. Over time, people start listening to other things and the amount of time they spend listening to the album slowly tapers off"
Perhaps you're confusing teenage girls, who act as you describe, and real music-listeners, who probably won't buy anything less than two years old, just to see if it stands the test of time as anything not still popular by then isn't worth buying. (proportional + integral control)
There's no particular reason why this needs a critical mass to work, simply because when one person joins, their favourite albums are guaranteed to be there (you put them there). The main problem would be: if only people with music you didn't like joined, you'd have no use for the system. But assuming that mostly musicphiles would join such a scheme (brittney fans sticking to iMesh instead), then you'd get the chance to sample some music you hadn't tried before.
One key feature of the scheme would be that you'd have to *guarantee* that anybody could always get their CDs back, otherwise they'd be unlikely to risk the project. Having a distributed system where people keep hold of their own CDs would solve this, and also mean that if they wanted to take the CDs out (on holiday, or if they wanted their own ones to listen to) then they could take them out of the collection, and they'd not be available for the community to use. Nobody wants to send their prized CDs to a repositary with the risk that they could be siezed by brownshirt^Dlawyers.
As to people going on about all the DRM and stuff needed, remember that you can still copy the CD *before* you share it, with any library, physical or electronic. Cringely's scheme seems to be aimed at honest, mature people, so there's an assumption of honesty anyway. you could almost say that such a scheme could work without any digital enforcement, as anybody without the token would have no rights to own the music...
"Why stop there? We need as many languages as we can get"
Three Rippers for the Java-kings compiling on-the-fly,
Seven for the Mac-lords in their cases of gemstone,
Nine for Mortal Windows doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of POSIX where the Programmers lie.
One Ripper to rule them all, One Ripper to cut them,
One Ripper to encode them all and in the darkness tag them
In the Land of POSIX where the Programmers lie.
"I get much of my news from the BBC's website."
Oh yeah, and good luck with the RealPlayer [spit!] video clips on the BBC website...
When I moved house, they started sending the letters again, which I signed and returned. A week or two later a poster went up on the billboard across the road saying "3 addresses at Himalayan Way do not have Television Licenses. We know who they are."
Those posters did seem rather odd, chastising people in public for not owning a television. Granted, some of those named might have been using a television without a license, but given the ease of detecting such things, it seems unlikely.
For those not in the UK, the television licensing authority is an office of clueless twats, who spend their life threatening people with prosecution if they don't pay their television tax. Theoretically the tax is optional, but the TV licensing authority don't seem to have been told this yet. They claim to have sophisticated equipment to track unauthorised televisions, but the most sophisticated tactic they have is to just write to any address without a TV license on the assumption that they're criminal bastards using a TV without permission. Rarely is their assumption given any sort of sanity-check, hence those of us without televisions end up with piles of red printed letters in bold capitals.
"Not! you think they can't design a keyboard wedge which logs the numlock-flashing pattern to a built-in memory? And it could even detect Morse and decode it."
Well, you can't buy that sort for $90