NNTP is very easy to police if you're running the server, you select what feeds you want from your provider.
BT could simply deny nntp traffic to servers that arn't theirs and selectivly subscribe.
Almost anyone who uses Usenet, especially binaries, subscribes to a "premium" news server. And aside from these, there are many companies that run their own news servers to provide support (such as Opera, news://news.opera.no/, Corel, news://cnews.corel.com/, etc). And as for selectively blocking groups, that just spreads the problem, as people just start using random groups to exchange porn, etc.
usenet, p2p, ftp, irc...
Why do the newspapers and others think of the internet as only www?
Funnily enough, the article has a screenshot showing "...ictures.erotica.teen...", clearly a Usnet binaries group; but I doubt these are blocked -- no mention of NNTP.
Also was flabbergasted by the statement: Home Office minister Paul Goggins... told the Today programme: "Every image of a child that appears on the internet is an image of a child that's abused." -- WTF??? I really hope that he was misquoted, or is this the same mentality that bans parents taking photos at school pantomimes because it might excite paedophiles?
And it's rather disturbing that "anyone trying to access such a site would be presented with a message reading 'Website not found'." Why not be honest about it -- "this website blocked as illegal to view under blah blah blah. If you believe this is in error, please fill out this form anonymously if you wish it to be reviewed."
Strangely, we don't see many people shouting "save the corn!".
You might find people shouting Save the Prairies though. Also tree plantations, while better than clearfelling, are pretty sterile and support much less wildlife than a natural forest.
There are many, many people who think they have a right to own copyrighted material regardless of whether or not it's in print -- "I can't buy it anywhere, so it's OK to download it!" -- which is absolutely absurd.
Just why is this absurd? Yes, it's illegal under the current regime, but I don't see what is wrong with the idea. How is anyone advantaged, economically or otherwise, if a work which is out of print remains so indefinitely? I can only think of artists who have become embarrassed by early works and wish the world to forget them (like George Lucas' endless revisionism of his old movies, putting the original ones out of print). Quite often also we're talking about artists long dead, such as the recent fluff about how Elvis' first record was going out of copyright. He's been dead for about 30 years, what's the problem with that?
cordless phones, fax machines, and combo phone/answering machines that require a seperate power source to operate
Of the several of these devices I've used, the phone still worked without power, except for the cordless part of a cordless (though the handset on the base station did work without power).
the rise of China as an economic power is going to have consequences. Either they learn English, or we learn Chinese (besides I've been told that some parts of Chinese are quite easy - not the writing of course...)
That's what they said about Japanese in the 80s. And it's not going to happen -- CJK (Chinese/Japanese/Korean) requires you to learn a minimum of 2000 characters -- which is really, really hard work even for Chinese children. It's much worse once you're an adult. I speak as someone who's tried -- I learnt written Thai in a month (64 or so letters, pretty phonetic), but after 12 years in Taiwan and Hong Kong remain illiterate. The rest of the world is not going to learn Chinese (aside from some basic spken pidgin, perhaps) --- in fact literacy in China is pretty low.
Set up a localized site, e.g. www.orkut.br where everything's in Portuguese
If I go to "www.Google.cm", becasue I'm in Hong Kong I'm immediately bounced to "www.google.com.hk", which is in Chinese by default. You may gather that I'm not Chinese, speak little and read less. Even if I go to the English version of this site, I rarely want to find Hong Kong sites at the top of the list (and when I do, I know how to do that). Another site that used to guess my language preferences from my IP was Distrowatch that also gave me a Chinese version of their site, with no way to change to English (Language selection reverted after selection)-- this bug has apparently been fixed, just checked it while getting the URL and saw English there for the first time.
time to move to britan and start recording elvis remakes i say
There's never been anything stopping you from covering Elvis's songs. For a start, I don't think he actually wrote any of them. If the songs themselves are still in copyright, you'd have to pay a small fee to use the arrangement. But you can mimic every tone of any singer's voice and release it as your own if you performed it.
One makes a top1 single and dies next week. Should the estate have the right to decide what happens to the track (licensing to compilations etc) or should it be public domain?
The consequences are not just for "No 1 singles", though that's all anyone talks about. Like books, there are thousands of released but forgotten tracks. If they were public domain after a reasonable period, someone (anyone who wanted to) could collect and republish them, bringing them to a new audience. The current state, in the US, means that it's just an immense amount of detective work to find out just who now owns the rights, then to negotiate with them, most likely someone who had no idea they "owned" said copyright material.
Probably a good compromise would be to allow copyright owners to extend their rights for another period, at a small, cost, which would also ensure that they were in a freely available database. Something not in that of a sufficient vintage thus would be fair game, and incidentally not condemned to the limbo of being perpetually "protected" but out of print/never heard.
"Microsoft Wins $3.95 from Spammer" Darn those cheap spammers!
Probably that's closer to what they'll actually collect. If the spammer has a brain, he's put his money out of reach. Maybe he could lose his house or car, but that's easily put in the name of a spouse or relative. OJ Simpson had a $30 m + judgement against him but has barely paid any, while still enjoying golf in Florida.
Why is that surprising? He is a smart guy and puts a lot of effort into his work.
I expected him to be hyping it as an action blockbuster, that's what drags the crowds in. And Asimov's stories, especially the robot ones, are decidedly geeky, not obviously his style.
Well, if you mean he never declared war, yes. I don't think America has bothered to formalise its wars since WWII. But in Kennedy's brief time:
Vietnam
Cuba (Bay of Pigs)
Russia (Berlin, Cuban Missile Crisis) and probably lots of other little wars that are forgotten today, except by the victims.
Another interesting note about the Lander Flight computer is the fact that it was WIRE-WRAPPED !!!.. I don't know about the rest of you but of all the embedded systems i've worked on that were built this way i would Never trust such critical piece if flight hardware to a fabrication method that is known for reliablity issues.
I'm pretty sure they tested the hell out of them.
"The Mean Time to Failure (MTBF) of the machine in a space environment was calculated at 50,000 hours -- almost 6 years, and it never failed in flight operations."
many people take the three laws of robotics as if they were actual laws. I've seen movies, television shows and even real people purport those laws to be true.
Will Smith was on Letterman a few days ago promoting the movie. I was amazed that he mentioned Asimov several times, actually seemed familiar with the stories, and could recite the Three Laws.
And the best story about the Three Laws is one Asimov used to tell: he went to see 2001 and as HAL began to go psycho, Asimov says he got more and more agitated, finally jumping up and declaring to all around that: "HAL is breaking First Law!" to which his companion (sometimes supposed to be Carl Sagan, but it's surely apocryphal)replied: "So strike him with lightning Isaac." But actually, HAL was indeed in the same kind of dilemma that many of Asimov's robots were (and I suspect in the movie), that what they see as the best thing for humanity as a whole requires them to do something that apparently breaks the "Laws" on a smaller scale.
I'd really like a way to eliminate the pay/registration sites from my searches all together,
Most search engines have a way to exclude information. In Google, use "-" before what you don't want. See the Advanced Search page, under "without the words".
There was quite a famous case involving a group of gay guys who were into BDSM. They made videos of themselves nailing one anothers foreskins to a coffee table (I'm not making this up!). The tape fell into the hands of the police, who arrested them and charged them with assault. Even_though_they_had_consented.
That was the defence used by the German cannibal who escaped a murder conviction, so it worked to an extent.
KASSEL, GERMANY - A 42-year-old German man who confessed to killing, dismembering and eating another man who he said agreed to the grisly act was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison. A German court convicted Armin Meiwes of manslaughter on Friday, ruling he had no "base motives" in the crime and sparing him a murder conviction.
The prosecution, who had been looking for a murder conviction and a life sentence, said they would appeal the verdict.Prosecutors had argued that Meiwes, who met his victim over the internet, was satisfying a sexual impulse. They said he filmed himself dismembering the victim before he ate him so he could "admire himself as a human butcher."
But Meiwes' lawyer argued that the slaying was a "homicide on demand." He said it was a form of mercy killing - because the victim gave his consent to be killed and eaten.
In his trial, Meiwes confessed in detail to the March 2001 killing of 43-year-old Bernd Juergen Brandes at his home in the nearby town of Rotenburg.
In my experience, most fans outlast the useful life of the PC, so I don't bother to replace them unless they die. But if they do die, there's a pretty good chance something is going to overheat and be damaged.
My mobo has a thermometer, at a given temperature it shuts down the PC. I think this is quite standard, look in your BIOS settings.
Any Turing equivalent machine can, in principle, emulate any other Turing equivalent machine.
For an entertaining SF novel based on this, see Greg Egan's Permutation City. (And though entertaining, it has very serious philosophical points to make.)
You can't worry about your software working for that long until your hardware can last that long.
I'm using software that orignally ran on an 8086, then a 286, the a 486, then two or three generations of Pentiums. The whole point is that hardware dies, software doesn't. Not to mention the bunch of Unix-derived software that I run as DOS or Linux apps, essentially unchanged for almost 30 years, though the hardware on my desk is more powerful than the whole server room at the university I learnt it on, and I doubt has a single commmon piece of hardware.
If you'd RTFA: "Today, hardware is capable enough that software can be written that will continue to run unmodified as hardware is changed." Consider, perhaps, all the games people play in emulators like MAME.
If terrorists figure out the pattern of outages, they could attack during a peak collapsing the cell networks, and that would be bad,
If terrorists figure out the pattern of outages, they could sell this information to the phone companies for a lot of money. Then the terrorists could use the money to buy bombs.
Armed with an almanac? The FBI has its eye on you
The FBI is warning police officials across the United States to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books -- covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends -- could be used for terrorist planning. In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, the FBI said terrorists might use almanacs ''to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning.'' It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways. ''The practice of researching potential targets is consistent with known methods of Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations that seek to maximize the likelihood of operational success through careful planning,'' the FBI wrote. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the bulletin this week and verified its authenticity. The FBI noted that use of almanacs or maps may be innocent, ''the product of legitimate recreational or commercial activities.'' But it warned that when combined with suspicious behavior -- such as apparent surveillance -- a person with an almanac ''may point to possible terrorist planning.'' The publisher for ''The Old Farmers Almanac'' said Monday that terrorists would probably find statistical reference books more useful than the collections of Americana in his famous publication of weather predictions and witticisms. ''While we doubt that our editorial content would be of particular interest to people who would wish to do us harm, we will certainly cooperate to the fullest with national authorities at any level they deem appropriate,'' said John Pierce, the almanac's publisher. The FBI said information typically found in almanacs that could be useful for terrorists includes profiles of cities and states and information about waterways, bridges, dams, reservoirs, tunnels, buildings and landmarks. It said this information is often accompanied by photographs and maps. The FBI urged police officers to report such discoveries to the local U.S. Joint Terrorism Task Force.
>Besides, what could terrorists do with the knowledge that cell overage was out?
Working cellphones allowed the passengers of a certain flight on 9/11/2001 to realize that their hijackers intended to kill them, they fought back, and the mission of that particular plane failed.
Sorry, don't see the connection. Terrorists are going to wait till a plane is going through a no-signal area before hijacking the plane? I don't think so. The pilot's radio is connected regardless.
Besides, the reports in question aren't online current status, but post mortems of outages, probably weeks to months after the event. As for cell phones on planes or other hostage situations; well if the terrprists are concerned about them, they can just say: "Throw your cell phones in the aisle," or just: "If anyone uses a cell phone this kid dies."
Slashdot Mirror
Almost anyone who uses Usenet, especially binaries, subscribes to a "premium" news server. And aside from these, there are many companies that run their own news servers to provide support (such as Opera, news://news.opera.no/, Corel, news://cnews.corel.com/, etc). And as for selectively blocking groups, that just spreads the problem, as people just start using random groups to exchange porn, etc.
Funnily enough, the article has a screenshot showing "...ictures.erotica.teen...", clearly a Usnet binaries group; but I doubt these are blocked -- no mention of NNTP.
Also was flabbergasted by the statement: ... told the Today programme: "Every image of a child that appears on the internet is an image of a child that's abused." -- WTF??? I really hope that he was misquoted, or is this the same mentality that bans parents taking photos at school pantomimes because it might excite paedophiles?
Home Office minister Paul Goggins
And it's rather disturbing that "anyone trying to access such a site would be presented with a message reading 'Website not found'." Why not be honest about it -- "this website blocked as illegal to view under blah blah blah. If you believe this is in error, please fill out this form anonymously if you wish it to be reviewed."
You might find people shouting Save the Prairies though. Also tree plantations, while better than clearfelling, are pretty sterile and support much less wildlife than a natural forest.
Just why is this absurd? Yes, it's illegal under the current regime, but I don't see what is wrong with the idea. How is anyone advantaged, economically or otherwise, if a work which is out of print remains so indefinitely? I can only think of artists who have become embarrassed by early works and wish the world to forget them (like George Lucas' endless revisionism of his old movies, putting the original ones out of print). Quite often also we're talking about artists long dead, such as the recent fluff about how Elvis' first record was going out of copyright. He's been dead for about 30 years, what's the problem with that?
Of the several of these devices I've used, the phone still worked without power, except for the cordless part of a cordless (though the handset on the base station did work without power).
That's what they said about Japanese in the 80s. And it's not going to happen -- CJK (Chinese/Japanese/Korean) requires you to learn a minimum of 2000 characters -- which is really, really hard work even for Chinese children. It's much worse once you're an adult. I speak as someone who's tried -- I learnt written Thai in a month (64 or so letters, pretty phonetic), but after 12 years in Taiwan and Hong Kong remain illiterate. The rest of the world is not going to learn Chinese (aside from some basic spken pidgin, perhaps) --- in fact literacy in China is pretty low.
If I go to "www.Google.cm", becasue I'm in Hong Kong I'm immediately bounced to "www.google.com.hk", which is in Chinese by default. You may gather that I'm not Chinese, speak little and read less. Even if I go to the English version of this site, I rarely want to find Hong Kong sites at the top of the list (and when I do, I know how to do that). Another site that used to guess my language preferences from my IP was Distrowatch that also gave me a Chinese version of their site, with no way to change to English (Language selection reverted after selection)-- this bug has apparently been fixed, just checked it while getting the URL and saw English there for the first time.
There's never been anything stopping you from covering Elvis's songs. For a start, I don't think he actually wrote any of them. If the songs themselves are still in copyright, you'd have to pay a small fee to use the arrangement. But you can mimic every tone of any singer's voice and release it as your own if you performed it.
The consequences are not just for "No 1 singles", though that's all anyone talks about. Like books, there are thousands of released but forgotten tracks. If they were public domain after a reasonable period, someone (anyone who wanted to) could collect and republish them, bringing them to a new audience. The current state, in the US, means that it's just an immense amount of detective work to find out just who now owns the rights, then to negotiate with them, most likely someone who had no idea they "owned" said copyright material.
Probably a good compromise would be to allow copyright owners to extend their rights for another period, at a small, cost, which would also ensure that they were in a freely available database. Something not in that of a sufficient vintage thus would be fair game, and incidentally not condemned to the limbo of being perpetually "protected" but out of print/never heard.
Probably that's closer to what they'll actually collect. If the spammer has a brain, he's put his money out of reach. Maybe he could lose his house or car, but that's easily put in the name of a spouse or relative. OJ Simpson had a $30 m + judgement against him but has barely paid any, while still enjoying golf in Florida.
IANA | .kp - Korea, Democratic People's Republic .kp - Korea, Democratic People's Republic
Root-Zone Whois Information
Sponsoring Organization: Not assigned
Administrative Contact: Not assigned
Technical Contact: Not assigned
URL for registration services: None listed.
Whois server: None listed.
North Korea has the "kp" TLD, but apparently this is "dormant". A Google search turns up a dozen .kp domains, but none seem to be online:
marketing.kp/
mori2.kiy.kp/
tk2nd.dip.kp/
winny3.co.kp/
www.adtek.co.kp/
www.flycretanchics.gr.kp/
www.jestem.b.kp/
www.kirin.co.kp/
www.kt.rim.or.kp/
www.nhk.or.kp/
www.portopialand.co.kp/
www.sagawa-exp.co.kp/
www.smt.city.sendai.kp/
www.taiyogo.co.kp/
WTF??
I expected him to be hyping it as an action blockbuster, that's what drags the crowds in. And Asimov's stories, especially the robot ones, are decidedly geeky, not obviously his style.
Well, if you mean he never declared war, yes. I don't think America has bothered to formalise its wars since WWII. But in Kennedy's brief time:
Vietnam
Cuba (Bay of Pigs)
Russia (Berlin, Cuban Missile Crisis)
and probably lots of other little wars that are forgotten today, except by the victims.
I'm pretty sure they tested the hell out of them.
"The Mean Time to Failure (MTBF) of the machine in a space environment was calculated at 50,000 hours -- almost 6 years, and it never failed in flight operations."
Will Smith was on Letterman a few days ago promoting the movie. I was amazed that he mentioned Asimov several times, actually seemed familiar with the stories, and could recite the Three Laws.
And the best story about the Three Laws is one Asimov used to tell: he went to see 2001 and as HAL began to go psycho, Asimov says he got more and more agitated, finally jumping up and declaring to all around that: "HAL is breaking First Law!" to which his companion (sometimes supposed to be Carl Sagan, but it's surely apocryphal)replied: "So strike him with lightning Isaac." But actually, HAL was indeed in the same kind of dilemma that many of Asimov's robots were (and I suspect in the movie), that what they see as the best thing for humanity as a whole requires them to do something that apparently breaks the "Laws" on a smaller scale.
Most search engines have a way to exclude information. In Google, use "-" before what you don't want. See the Advanced Search page, under "without the words".
That was the defence used by the German cannibal who escaped a murder conviction, so it worked to an extent.
My mobo has a thermometer, at a given temperature it shuts down the PC. I think this is quite standard, look in your BIOS settings.
For an entertaining SF novel based on this, see Greg Egan's Permutation City. (And though entertaining, it has very serious philosophical points to make.)
I'm using software that orignally ran on an 8086, then a 286, the a 486, then two or three generations of Pentiums. The whole point is that hardware dies, software doesn't. Not to mention the bunch of Unix-derived software that I run as DOS or Linux apps, essentially unchanged for almost 30 years, though the hardware on my desk is more powerful than the whole server room at the university I learnt it on, and I doubt has a single commmon piece of hardware.
If you'd RTFA: "Today, hardware is capable enough that software can be written that will continue to run unmodified as hardware is changed." Consider, perhaps, all the games people play in emulators like MAME.
If terrorists figure out the pattern of outages, they could sell this information to the phone companies for a lot of money. Then the terrorists could use the money to buy bombs.
Police, military etc don't depend on cell phones.
Working cellphones allowed the passengers of a certain flight on 9/11/2001 to realize that their hijackers intended to kill them, they fought back, and the mission of that particular plane failed.
Sorry, don't see the connection. Terrorists are going to wait till a plane is going through a no-signal area before hijacking the plane? I don't think so. The pilot's radio is connected regardless.
Besides, the reports in question aren't online current status, but post mortems of outages, probably weeks to months after the event. As for cell phones on planes or other hostage situations; well if the terrprists are concerned about them, they can just say: "Throw your cell phones in the aisle," or just: "If anyone uses a cell phone this kid dies."