Headline: Today the RIAA confirmed it's belief that the entire world was composed of pirates, as 37 million americans answered their phone with a slurred "Arrh?", and started their team-meetings with the phrase "Avast, me hearties, ye have no business for me?". Darth Vadress herself was quoted as saying "this is the proof we need to start building our detainment facility for 12-year-old pirates"
"when a telesales person calls you just put the phone on speaker with volume down and put the handset down... they can talk as much as they like, to themselves."
To extend the fun, you should try the magical phrase before putting the phone down:
Yeah, like anything non-trolling of mine is going to get modded up. It's a useful link though, just for emailing to people when they start discussing ISO9K+x at work: "Read about ISO9000, the company-killer"
"Second, if this gets implemented and than a couple days of no sun pop up wouldn't it stress out the grid a bit more than normal"
Slashdot engineers: planning for a day when the sun doesn't rise, since 1992
"We have to consider all possibilities" said one designer. "just because it's risen every day in 20,000 years of recorded history, doesn't mean we can rely on it. A good engineer always has a backup plan"
Trolls were quick to point out that if the sun didn't rise, it would not by definition, be a "day"
"how we're going to get the carbon to the geosynchronous point, or alternatively how much rocket fuel it'll take us to launch all this carbon up to the geosynchronous point?"
Bootstrapping, apparently...
Take enough mass up to support the raising of one small object, then use that as a counterweight whilst raising a slightly bigger object. etc. etc. until there's lots of stuff at the top, at which point it can be used to raise and release heavy things.
"(Quick conspirisary theory: If you assume MS could have come up with prior art, they might 'agree' to loose, if it meant they would have 'minor' license fees but there would be no other licenses, thereby driving out all their competition. Slightly over-paranoid, but it is MS...)"
Given that (a) Free Software can't (by definition) pay patent-licensing fees for anything (b) Microsoft's main competition is from Free Software
Home Office minister Caroline Flint said: "These proposals are about vital investigatory tools being used now to prevent and detect crime and, in some cases, save lives."
F.F.S., sheer luck saves more lives than all the snooping they could ever do, combined. Increase the amber-light time on traffic lights if you want to save lives, Ms Flint. Illuminate road junctions and pay your traffic cops. Hell, even consider paying for railways and underground railways that don't break and cause major "accidents" every year and a half. But reading email? Get a clue.
"So, by your logic, if a woman gets gang raped and beaten to death..."
Could we declare an ancillary to Godwin's law (let's call it SafetyCap's law) which states: any slashdot discussion of significant length will eventually contain a really, really bad analogy, at which point the discussion will serve no further use.
For example, comparing a virus checker to a gang rape.
"the programmers are in a better position to fix these problems rather than trying to distribute the responsibility to users"
Exactly. As much as some people would like a government-approved "way to use your computer" training course, how useful can it really be?
Lycoris recently included a virus-checker in their GNU/Linux distribution, despite the fact that there are no known viruses which propogate on such a system, and their virus definition file was empty. Their reason? "The IT departments won't let us buy a computer unless it comes with a virus checker"
Now if even IT departments can demand a microsoft-centric view of how you should run your computer, then can we expect anything better from a government? "don't run binary executables, but if you get one from windows update, run it without question..."
Would anybody here even be able to sit through an exam writing "I run MS-Office Update every day [on my BSD machine]" without walking out, or swapping nasty words with whoever set the test?
I can see health insurance on tongue-biting injuries increasing significantly.
"So I put down the phone and then it suddenly hits me that I have no idea way to verify that the other side was the credit card company."
My bank, HSBC, does this routinely: if you phone up the insurance company associated with them, they'll ask for details of security codes to access your bank account even though you're not talking to your bank at this point
It's just a way of training their customers. If HSBC people on the phone go blue and start stuttering when you try to get insurance without giving them access to your bank account, then customers will simply get used to giving out their banking passwords to any "official authority" on the phone, making a mockery of the banking contract "thou shalt not reveal your password, save to the bank"
GBP12 per year to protect yourself from problems which are entirely caused by the company you're paying to insure yourself against?
"That's a nice identity you have, wouldn't want anything... bad to happen to it, would we?" [imagine equifax putting together enough documents to destroy your life, and then offering a $12 'insurance' to stop it being used by criminals]
If anyone's interested, I wrote to the Information Commissioner (formerly the data protection office) in the UK about this, since our data protection laws forbid sharing information with countries with incompatible data protection laws
Their response summarised: (a) We don't care (b) We don't care (c) Domain registration is done in america anyway, where they don't have data-protection law (d) It's not up to Nominet to inform its customers of their lack of data protection
I could probably find the actual letter somewhere...
(Nominet should have got into trouble because (a) they unilaterally changed their terms and conditions, leaving people with a choice of publishing their home address, or losing their domain name, (b) they have monopoly on UK domain names, (c) anybody who's running a business is obliged by business law to publish their address anyway, and (d) any accusation of illegal activity associated with the domain should wait upon a court-order to disclose a person's home address.
Information commissioner doesn't seem to think so. Some might wonder what he does do.
Mixmaster / cypherpunk remailers make your blogs anonymous, while still listing them in order by person. Not even the website knows the IP address where a blog came from.
Re:A Financial analyst who recommends SCOX
on
Back To SCO
·
· Score: 2, Informative
"Jonathan Cohen of JHC Capital Management recommends SCOX and thinks that "The company has the ability to earn in excess of $3 a share over the next couple of years"
Slashdot Mirror
"Perhaps they'd like some junk mail too.
American Teleservices Association
1666 K Street NW Suite 1200 "
As if, even an office-junior at the catalog-mailing company isn't going to spot that one! At least address your catalog requests to the right person:
"Dave, ATA, 1666 K street 1200"
"Jeremy, ATA, 1666 K street 1200"
"Lisa, ATA, 1666 K street 1200"
"September 19th: Talk like a pirate day"
Let the anti-piracy companies sort that one out.
Headline: Today the RIAA confirmed it's belief that the entire world was composed of pirates, as 37 million americans answered their phone with a slurred "Arrh?", and started their team-meetings with the phrase "Avast, me hearties, ye have no business for me?". Darth Vadress herself was quoted as saying "this is the proof we need to start building our detainment facility for 12-year-old pirates"
"when a telesales person calls you just put the phone on speaker with volume down and put the handset down ... they can talk as much as they like, to themselves."
To extend the fun, you should try the magical phrase before putting the phone down:
"Jester? Yes, I'll just get him for you..."
"Not just that, IBM can go after SCO for intentional interference, abuse of process, and malicious prosecution."
Uh, when exactly is a prosecution not malicious?
"Very informative....mod parent up."
Yeah, like anything non-trolling of mine is going to get modded up. It's a useful link though, just for emailing to people when they start discussing ISO9K+x at work: "Read about ISO9000, the company-killer"
Just store the links somewhere
"Employees might become sick because they will get sunlight devoid of energy."
You've not seen our office, have you? One day somebody opened one of the window-blinds to discover a blank wall behind it.
"Second, if this gets implemented and than a couple days of no sun pop up wouldn't it stress out the grid a bit more than normal"
Slashdot engineers: planning for a day when the sun doesn't rise, since 1992
"We have to consider all possibilities" said one designer. "just because it's risen every day in 20,000 years of recorded history, doesn't mean we can rely on it. A good engineer always has a backup plan"
Trolls were quick to point out that if the sun didn't rise, it would not by definition, be a "day"
ISO9000
Uh, so they've done the equivalent of increasing British tea-drinking by 13%?
Doesn't sound like a small change to me
"how we're going to get the carbon to the geosynchronous point, or alternatively how much rocket fuel it'll take us to launch all this carbon up to the geosynchronous point?"
Bootstrapping, apparently...
Take enough mass up to support the raising of one small object, then use that as a counterweight whilst raising a slightly bigger object. etc. etc. until there's lots of stuff at the top, at which point it can be used to raise and release heavy things.
"(Quick conspirisary theory: If you assume MS could have come up with prior art, they might 'agree' to loose, if it meant they would have 'minor' license fees but there would be no other licenses, thereby driving out all their competition. Slightly over-paranoid, but it is MS...)"
Given that
(a) Free Software can't (by definition) pay patent-licensing fees for anything
(b) Microsoft's main competition is from Free Software
doesn't seem so unlikely, eh?
Yes, we run linux. Cost about GBP 23000 per year for a graduate, and loads more for someone who knows stuff ;-)
Home Office minister Caroline Flint said: "These proposals are about vital investigatory tools being used now to prevent and detect crime and, in some cases, save lives."
F.F.S., sheer luck saves more lives than all the snooping they could ever do, combined. Increase the amber-light time on traffic lights if you want to save lives, Ms Flint. Illuminate road junctions and pay your traffic cops. Hell, even consider paying for railways and underground railways that don't break and cause major "accidents" every year and a half. But reading email? Get a clue.
"Can somone recomend a country I could move to which protects the civil liberties of its citizens; prefrebaly?? English speaking? Thanks in advance."
You're welcome:
http://www.sealandgov.com/
"So, by your logic, if a woman gets gang raped and beaten to death..."
Could we declare an ancillary to Godwin's law (let's call it SafetyCap's law) which states: any slashdot discussion of significant length will eventually contain a really, really bad analogy, at which point the discussion will serve no further use.
For example, comparing a virus checker to a gang rape.
"the programmers are in a better position to fix these problems rather than trying to distribute the responsibility to users"
Exactly. As much as some people would like a government-approved "way to use your computer" training course, how useful can it really be?
Lycoris recently included a virus-checker in their GNU/Linux distribution, despite the fact that there are no known viruses which propogate on such a system, and their virus definition file was empty. Their reason? "The IT departments won't let us buy a computer unless it comes with a virus checker"
Now if even IT departments can demand a microsoft-centric view of how you should run your computer, then can we expect anything better from a government? "don't run binary executables, but if you get one from windows update, run it without question..."
Would anybody here even be able to sit through an exam writing "I run MS-Office Update every day [on my BSD machine]" without walking out, or swapping nasty words with whoever set the test?
I can see health insurance on tongue-biting injuries increasing significantly.
"disney can now do for dali what it did for the hunchback of notre dame!"
Don't care, I'm not doing business with any company which has fucked up US copyright law as badly as Disney has.
"So I put down the phone and then it suddenly hits me that I have no idea way to verify that the other side was the credit card company."
My bank, HSBC, does this routinely: if you phone up the insurance company associated with them, they'll ask for details of security codes to access your bank account even though you're not talking to your bank at this point
It's just a way of training their customers. If HSBC people on the phone go blue and start stuttering when you try to get insurance without giving them access to your bank account, then customers will simply get used to giving out their banking passwords to any "official authority" on the phone, making a mockery of the banking contract "thou shalt not reveal your password, save to the bank"
"Registration costs 12 quid for 12 months."
GBP12 per year to protect yourself from problems which are entirely caused by the company you're paying to insure yourself against?
"That's a nice identity you have, wouldn't want anything... bad to happen to it, would we?" [imagine equifax putting together enough documents to destroy your life, and then offering a $12 'insurance' to stop it being used by criminals]
Do we have extortion laws in the UK?
"If I were Cringely, I would have sold those names and now be the proud new owner of Microsoft. Free the source!"
We'd need a bloody big paper-shredder to do anything appropriate with the Microsoft Windows source...
"One of the reasons I use Linux is to avoid ads and spyware. Now if I choose to use Mandrake, I can only avoid spyware."
The boxed version of Mandrake comes with RealPlayer, so it's debatable whether you can avoid spyware.
If anyone's interested, I wrote to the Information Commissioner (formerly the data protection office) in the UK about this, since our data protection laws forbid sharing information with countries with incompatible data protection laws
Their response summarised:
(a) We don't care
(b) We don't care
(c) Domain registration is done in america anyway, where they don't have data-protection law
(d) It's not up to Nominet to inform its customers of their lack of data protection
I could probably find the actual letter somewhere...
(Nominet should have got into trouble because (a) they unilaterally changed their terms and conditions, leaving people with a choice of publishing their home address, or losing their domain name, (b) they have monopoly on UK domain names, (c) anybody who's running a business is obliged by business law to publish their address anyway, and (d) any accusation of illegal activity associated with the domain should wait upon a court-order to disclose a person's home address.
Information commissioner doesn't seem to think so. Some might wonder what he does do.
Underreported stories?
probably the best resource is FAIR anyway, just to check-up on the 'actual' newspapers
This would probably be a good time to mention the real blogging website:
http://www.invisiblog.com/
Mixmaster / cypherpunk remailers make your blogs anonymous, while still listing them in order by person. Not even the website knows the IP address where a blog came from.
"Jonathan Cohen of JHC Capital Management recommends SCOX and thinks that "The company has the ability to earn in excess of $3 a share over the next couple of years"
This Jonathan Cohen?