> For my edification, who was the Guthrie after which the cards were named? When I first saw the article I thought "Why the hell would Woody be involved in something like that?"
Well, we got there and we had a warrant, and we figured one big pile of DNA samples on Guthrie cards was better than 5000 little piles of DNA samples at each hospital, so rather than send ours down, we decided we'd bring everybode else's up. That's what we did.
Drove back to the police station, had a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep and didn't get up until the next morning, when we got a phone call from ABC's Catalyst show. He said "Officer, we found your name on a box containing half a ton of Guthrie cards and we just wanted to know if you had any information about it!"
You can get anything you want from the hospital's DNA.
You can get anything you want from the hospital's DNA.
Walk right in, they're around the back,
Underneath the floor by the server rack,
You can get anything you want from the hospital's DNA...
As a Westerner, I'd prefer that the first lunar colony be American.
As a Westerner who sadly recognizes the fact that his society has abandoned space exploration and colonization, I'm more than happy for the Chinese lunar colonists. At least some members of homo sapiens will get to leave the rock.
But as a Westerner who's read Heinlein, I'm pretty sure that sooner or later, those guys are going to end up more free and more happy than their government could ever imagine possible, even in its worst nightmares.
You go, Chinese guys. More power to ya.
Heinlein was a starry-eyed optimist to think it could ever happen on Earth, but he had a valid point on Luna - any resource-rich, low-population, but otherwise harsh environment practically necessitates the development of certain cultural norms.
> Linus could end up owning SCO. Now *that* would [be] justice. -rick
"Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen a angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had."
- Linus Torvalds.
"Darl McBride, I'm pleased to have you as my new employee. Mr. McBride, could you please move two feet to the left. Yes, there. Perfect. No, you don't have to do anything else, just stand there."
- What I imagine Linus' first words would be at the shareholders' meeting after he becomes the new majority shareholder of SCO.
> The assertion from nuclear industry insiders in the article seems to indicate that all the rad waste generated by all the worlds power plants could fit in a basketball court sized, 2 story building. If so, then why did us taxpayers get stuck with a $58 billion basketball court called Yucca Mountain? I know government can be innefficient, but...
...government also has to be re-elected.
And when the sheeple are ingorant enough about the physics involved that they can be swayed by "Not In My Back Yard" types and hysterical appeals to "oh no, it's nyuookyular, we're all gonna die!", politicians that want to get re-elected have to put up with it.
For the record, I support Yucca Mountain. If they'd let me, I'd be happy to buy land right on top of the damn thing.
So "Yes. In my back yard."
With Yucca, it's not gonna be in anybody's back yard; for obvious security reasons, the nearest home is gonna be miles away. Of course, to the "we're all gonna die!" crowd, 10 miles, 20 miles, 100 miles, 500 miles, is still "their back yard".
There's no negotiation with the more radical end of the environmental spectrum, because their real goal is the curtailment of human activity in general - stopping nuclear power is merely a means to that end. If oil's banned for greenhouse gases (that haven't been conclusively shown to increase global temperatures), and nuclear power is banned for radioactivity (that hasn't been shown to leak from sites like Yucca), it'll be solar (dangerous chemicals used in the manufacture of solar cells) and wind (slaughter of migratory birds) next.
I'll stop there before I go into full-bore rant mode and conclude by saying that if Yucca does go through, I'll bet there'll be an initial hysteria about it that'll cause property values near the site will drop. At that time I'll be giving serious thought to putting my money where my mouth is. A geek could do worse than to end up owning a ranch in Nevada with acres of land, beautiful mountain and desert scenery, no state taxes, and only a couple hours' drive to the wackiness that is Vegas.
> How about we stop when we've corrected as many of our f*ck ups as we can?
Yo, mphroqimwroa, what is with you and that chlorophyll shit you keep fuckin' around with? Oh, sure, you get your sugar out of sunlight, but fer Mowrqff's sake, don't you know that oxygen shit's fucking poisonous?! Someday we're gonna have to undo your mess, and may Mowrqff have mercy on your soul when we do.
> I do run my own SMTP server on leased machine. However, my home DSL provider BLOCKS outgoing port 25 to prevent spam so I have to route e-mail through their SMTP server.
*GOOD*.
Yes, it sucks for you, because you're one of the 0.01% of home users who run their own SMTP servers.
But guess what? If you can get your ISP to remove the block for you, I might actually see your email. Because I'm not gonna be getting 50 spams a day from the other 99.99% of your ISP's customers with open proxies who are running SMTP servers without knowing it. (read: 12.0.0.0/8, 24.0.0.0/8, 4.0.0.0/8, and 200.0.0.0/7.)
As it stands, if you're in those netblocks, I don't care if you're running your own MTA or not. Because of your providers gross negligence in dealing with the open proxy problem, you can talk to the 550, because my Sendmail ain't listening.
NYSE: PLA - Playboy Enterprises
NASDAQ: PRVT - Private Media Group
(Honest, I just read it for the 10-Q!)
Alas, neither company appears terribly healthy to me. (WTF, WAP pr0n?! That's so 1999!) RIAA's business model was also b0rken by cheap broadband. Looks like sex and rock 'n' roll are out, but at least we still have pharmaceuticals and tobacco stocks!:)
Seriously... you go, Burt - and all the other X-Prize teams, too.
On behalf of all of us cubicle-bound geeks looking at the stars, may you all show NASA what teams of dedicated engineers can do if given an environment in which... well, an environment in which dedicated engineers can do what dedicated engineers have always done in such an environment.
> G) Massive technical difficulties, including its tendancy to drive away while plugged in if it's raining. Oh, and lawsuits.
H) Costing $15,000 due to economies of scale.
The Sparrow looks cool, but with a 60 mile range and a 4-year battery lifespan, we're talking golf cart cool, not car cool, and we're talking $2000 cool, not $15,000 cool.
> I guess it's just me, but I have no problem going into an Adults Only Video and renting a porn in broad daylight, or buying a porno mag off the magazine rack at my local store.
I'm missing something here. What's this "store" thing of which you speak, and while I'm at it, why does money have to change hands for something as ubiquitous as pr0n?
It just sounds like a more time-consuming and expensive way to solve a problem Al Gore solved 20 years ago by taking the initiative in inventing the Internet.
> The Dalai Lama, IIRC, has said that if it comes to pass that a finding of science were to contradict a Buddhism teaching, Buddhism would have to change.
I've long suspected that the Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs! You've clinched it.:)
> Another obscenity is this bit towards the end: > > He said agencies have been working to develop a new definition of applicant for the past three years and could have one by the end of next month.
I produce stuff that people pay my employer money for. If I don't produce enough stuff quickly enough, my employer doesn't get paid, and neither do I. This is a great incentive for my employer and I to figure out what kind of stuff needs to be produced, and to try and produce that stuff as quickly as we can.
Elsewhere, there are people who can get paid for thirty-seven months to come up with a definition for the word "applicant".
My employer and I are clearly in the wrong line of work. At least I know where my next resume's going.
Re:HERE HE IS, the bastard
on
I, Spammer
·
· Score: 2, Funny
> The problem is you have to be REALLY sure this is him. What if an innocent person who shares
the same name is targetted.
Oh, that's easy!
Dirty Harry: Well, punk, you've gotta ask yourself a question.
What do you think of receiving exciting offe
rs about products, as long as you can opt out at any time?
Punk: What the fuck? I don't care if you've got a.45 Magnum pointed at my face! Fuck you, spammer!
Dirty Harry: Oh, sorry, I got the wrong guy. You're free to go, son. Real sorry 'bout that. [puts gun away, pulls out wallet, hands punk $100 for a new pair of pants]
...
Dirty Harry: Well, punk, you've gotta ask yourself a question. What do you think of receiving exciting offers about products, as long as you can opt out at any time?
Punk: Fuck you, you spah... spuh... y-you ethical e-bidniz purfessnul!
Dirty Harry: *BLAM* *BLAM* *BLAM* *BLAM* *BLAM* *BLAM* [walks back to the office, turns in his badge, and tells the Chief that it's cool, because even if the DA charges him with using excessive force against a suspect, no jury would ever convict]
Re:Where's the personal info, it's been 20 minutes
on
I, Spammer
·
· Score: 2, Funny
> Amy H........ [wife/sister?]
It's Slidell, Louisiana, and we're talking about a spammer's family. Why not both?
Re:In the tradition of Gonzo Journalism
on
I, Spammer
·
· Score: 1
> Mr. Scelson is a fucking liar.
Hello. I am writing on behalf of FLADL, the Fucking Liar Anti-Defamation League. In the past, FLADL has defended the reputations of fucking liars such as William Jefferson Clinton, Gary Condit, Kenneth Lay, Bernie Ebbers, half the staff of Arthur Andersen, and most recently, the Iraqi Minister of Information.
Please retract your defamatory comments about fucking liars at once!
> This sort of confirms that most spam is sent by a small group. Take this sucker out, and a massive amount of spam drops off the planet. Do it with enough prejudice, just to make sure nobody takes over the vacancy.
Two-word solution: "Asset Forfeiture".
Every county has schools and police departments. All of those police departments have guns (means). Most of those schools and police departments need computers (motive).
All that's missing is the method. Tweaking the federal or state laws to allow for asset forfeiture from spammers could be the missing link that gets the DA and the cops interested in enforcement.
It works for drugs in the sense of getting cops interested in enforcement (hey, free cars!), but not in terms of getting drugs off the street because there's massive consumer demand for drugs. There's a virtually unlimited supply end-users and dealers to replenish the pool even after the cars are stolen.
Unlike drugs, asset forfeiture for spammers probably would work in terms of getting spam off your inbox -- because there's no consumer demand for it, and only the few hundred bigtime spammers at the top of their respective pyramids would actually need to be burninated.
This is the sort of thing asset forfeiture laws were originally designed for - racketeering. If spam ain't a racket, I don't know what is.
Re:Spamming != bulk mailings
on
I, Spammer
·
· Score: 1
> Even with only a single cent per email, I can afford that easily. I don't think Mr Scelson can afford 18 million cents per day. And the LL Bean's of this world will still be able to send their marketing stuff. It will only cost them some money. Which they won't mind probably.
So lemme see - I get to pay for something that used to be free-as-in-beer.
And I still have to delete all the spam from the mainsleazers. Instead of h0t t33n slut5 and v14g4r4, it'll be 11 b34n, but it'll still be spam.
I can see what the DMA gets out of this - less competition. But could someone explain what I get out of this scheme of yours?
More succinctly: Fuck that.
Hell Freezes Over
on
I, Spammer
·
· Score: 5, Funny
> "I'm probably the most hated person in this room," said an unapologetic Scelson,
and several dimensions away, Satan scraped the icicles from his beard and once more begged God to turn the heat back up. "Okay, so a spammer told the truth, but it only happened once, and it was an accident, it's not my fault, can I please have some frickin' heat down here already?!?!"
> Analog by definition is ALWAYS readable. It is the SINGLE format that is by definiton OPEN, can always be understood by anyone, and can stan the test of time. Aliens could discover an analog recording 50 billion years from now and decode it without knowing ANYTHING else about our culture. But right now, data encoded 25 years ago in an open digital format is often incredibally hard to translate to a usable form.
Hey Glortzotnik! Check this out! These humans, they used lasers to inscribe little hills and valleys in aluminum discs 12" in diameter for video, then smaller hills and valleys in aluminum discs 5" in diameter for audio, and then they used lasers to start chemical reactions that changed the color of a dye later in big sloppy round holes with lots of fuzziness around the edges for video again.
Okay, nothing wrong with that, but the funny part - get this - they called the laser paintings and the chemical dyes "digital", as if it were somehow different from scratching clay with a stick or a wax cylinder with a needle. Laugh riot, these humans!
> While no one's making any promises, what if such a system had been able to prevent 9-11? What about the next time?
If it had prevented 9/11, we wouldn't have known about it, and as for the next attack(s), increased surveillance may have already prevented it(them) and we don't know about it.
> Do you really think that the 9-11 attacks will be the last by terrorists on US soil? How many more people will be killed when a biological or dirty bomb goes off? When doing a cost-benefit analysis, there's really no question.
On that basis, let it go off. Why waste 1% of GDP to save 100,000 peasants? There's 300,000,000 of us and we breed like rabbits, fer chrissakes.
But on the basis that actually matters - you're absolutely right. A repeat of 9/11 would result in a catastrophic loss of credibility for whatever party was in power, and would almost guarantee the loss of the next election. There are other scenarios that could result in loss of power for both parties (simultaneously), which are consequently viewed as even more catastrophic from their point of view.
Therefore, you can rest assured that on a cost-benefit basis, our elected officials are indeed doing everything in their power to prevent further attacks. Just because their motivation (remaining in power) differs from mine (I don't wanna get killed in it, nor do I wanna see the economic aftershocks take down an already shaky economic recovery) doesn't mean they're not motivated, which is the important thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, we got there and we had a warrant, and we figured one big pile of DNA samples on Guthrie cards was better than 5000 little piles of DNA samples at each hospital, so rather than send ours down, we decided we'd bring everybode else's up. That's what we did.
Drove back to the police station, had a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep and didn't get up until the next morning, when we got a phone call from ABC's Catalyst show. He said "Officer, we found your name on a box containing half a ton of Guthrie cards and we just wanted to know if you had any information about it!"
You can get anything you want from the hospital's DNA.
You can get anything you want from the hospital's DNA.
Walk right in, they're around the back,
Underneath the floor by the server rack,
You can get anything you want from the hospital's DNA...
As a Westerner who sadly recognizes the fact that his society has abandoned space exploration and colonization, I'm more than happy for the Chinese lunar colonists. At least some members of homo sapiens will get to leave the rock.
But as a Westerner who's read Heinlein, I'm pretty sure that sooner or later, those guys are going to end up more free and more happy than their government could ever imagine possible, even in its worst nightmares.
You go, Chinese guys. More power to ya.
Heinlein was a starry-eyed optimist to think it could ever happen on Earth, but he had a valid point on Luna - any resource-rich, low-population, but otherwise harsh environment practically necessitates the development of certain cultural norms.
A.D. 2001: War was beginning!
P.S.: Best. Troll. Ever.
"Darl McBride, I'm pleased to have you as my new employee. Mr. McBride, could you please move two feet to the left. Yes, there. Perfect. No, you don't have to do anything else, just stand there."
- What I imagine Linus' first words would be at the shareholders' meeting after he becomes the new majority shareholder of SCO.
And when the sheeple are ingorant enough about the physics involved that they can be swayed by "Not In My Back Yard" types and hysterical appeals to "oh no, it's nyuookyular, we're all gonna die!", politicians that want to get re-elected have to put up with it.
For the record, I support Yucca Mountain. If they'd let me, I'd be happy to buy land right on top of the damn thing.
So "Yes. In my back yard."
With Yucca, it's not gonna be in anybody's back yard; for obvious security reasons, the nearest home is gonna be miles away. Of course, to the "we're all gonna die!" crowd, 10 miles, 20 miles, 100 miles, 500 miles, is still "their back yard".
There's no negotiation with the more radical end of the environmental spectrum, because their real goal is the curtailment of human activity in general - stopping nuclear power is merely a means to that end. If oil's banned for greenhouse gases (that haven't been conclusively shown to increase global temperatures), and nuclear power is banned for radioactivity (that hasn't been shown to leak from sites like Yucca), it'll be solar (dangerous chemicals used in the manufacture of solar cells) and wind (slaughter of migratory birds) next.
I'll stop there before I go into full-bore rant mode and conclude by saying that if Yucca does go through, I'll bet there'll be an initial hysteria about it that'll cause property values near the site will drop. At that time I'll be giving serious thought to putting my money where my mouth is. A geek could do worse than to end up owning a ranch in Nevada with acres of land, beautiful mountain and desert scenery, no state taxes, and only a couple hours' drive to the wackiness that is Vegas.
Yo, mphroqimwroa, what is with you and that chlorophyll shit you keep fuckin' around with? Oh, sure, you get your sugar out of sunlight, but fer Mowrqff's sake, don't you know that oxygen shit's fucking poisonous?! Someday we're gonna have to undo your mess, and may Mowrqff have mercy on your soul when we do.
- some methanogenic dude
*GOOD*.
Yes, it sucks for you, because you're one of the 0.01% of home users who run their own SMTP servers.
But guess what? If you can get your ISP to remove the block for you, I might actually see your email. Because I'm not gonna be getting 50 spams a day from the other 99.99% of your ISP's customers with open proxies who are running SMTP servers without knowing it. (read: 12.0.0.0/8, 24.0.0.0/8, 4.0.0.0/8, and 200.0.0.0/7.)
As it stands, if you're in those netblocks, I don't care if you're running your own MTA or not. Because of your providers gross negligence in dealing with the open proxy problem, you can talk to the 550, because my Sendmail ain't listening.
NYSE: PLA - Playboy Enterprises
NASDAQ: PRVT - Private Media Group
(Honest, I just read it for the 10-Q!)
Alas, neither company appears terribly healthy to me. (WTF, WAP pr0n?! That's so 1999!) RIAA's business model was also b0rken by cheap broadband. Looks like sex and rock 'n' roll are out, but at least we still have pharmaceuticals and tobacco stocks! :)
Seriously... you go, Burt - and all the other X-Prize teams, too.
On behalf of all of us cubicle-bound geeks looking at the stars, may you all show NASA what teams of dedicated engineers can do if given an environment in which... well, an environment in which dedicated engineers can do what dedicated engineers have always done in such an environment.
H) Costing $15,000 due to economies of scale.
The Sparrow looks cool, but with a 60 mile range and a 4-year battery lifespan, we're talking golf cart cool, not car cool, and we're talking $2000 cool, not $15,000 cool.
High Epopt of Sales and Living Slack Master, Church of the SubGenius.
If you meet the Buddha on the road to enlightenment, sell something to him, and then kill him!
I'm missing something here. What's this "store" thing of which you speak, and while I'm at it, why does money have to change hands for something as ubiquitous as pr0n?
It just sounds like a more time-consuming and expensive way to solve a problem Al Gore solved 20 years ago by taking the initiative in inventing the Internet.
You're saying Tux is the reincarnation of the Buddha?
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face forever."
Cool!
I've long suspected that the Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs! You've clinched it. :)
>
> He said agencies have been working to develop a new definition of applicant for the past three years and could have one by the end of next month.
I produce stuff that people pay my employer money for. If I don't produce enough stuff quickly enough, my employer doesn't get paid, and neither do I. This is a great incentive for my employer and I to figure out what kind of stuff needs to be produced, and to try and produce that stuff as quickly as we can.
Elsewhere, there are people who can get paid for thirty-seven months to come up with a definition for the word "applicant".
My employer and I are clearly in the wrong line of work. At least I know where my next resume's going.
Oh, that's easy!
Dirty Harry: Well, punk, you've gotta ask yourself a question. What do you think of receiving exciting offe rs about products, as long as you can opt out at any time? .45 Magnum pointed at my face! Fuck you, spammer!
Punk: What the fuck? I don't care if you've got a
Dirty Harry: Oh, sorry, I got the wrong guy. You're free to go, son. Real sorry 'bout that. [puts gun away, pulls out wallet, hands punk $100 for a new pair of pants]
Punk: Fuck you, you spah... spuh... y-you ethical e-bidniz purfessnul!
Dirty Harry: *BLAM* *BLAM* *BLAM* *BLAM* *BLAM* *BLAM* [walks back to the office, turns in his badge, and tells the Chief that it's cool, because even if the DA charges him with using excessive force against a suspect, no jury would ever convict]
It's Slidell, Louisiana, and we're talking about a spammer's family. Why not both?
Hello. I am writing on behalf of FLADL, the Fucking Liar Anti-Defamation League. In the past, FLADL has defended the reputations of fucking liars such as William Jefferson Clinton, Gary Condit, Kenneth Lay, Bernie Ebbers, half the staff of Arthur Andersen, and most recently, the Iraqi Minister of Information. Please retract your defamatory comments about fucking liars at once!
Two-word solution: "Asset Forfeiture".
Every county has schools and police departments. All of those police departments have guns (means). Most of those schools and police departments need computers (motive).
All that's missing is the method. Tweaking the federal or state laws to allow for asset forfeiture from spammers could be the missing link that gets the DA and the cops interested in enforcement.
It works for drugs in the sense of getting cops interested in enforcement (hey, free cars!), but not in terms of getting drugs off the street because there's massive consumer demand for drugs. There's a virtually unlimited supply end-users and dealers to replenish the pool even after the cars are stolen.
Unlike drugs, asset forfeiture for spammers probably would work in terms of getting spam off your inbox -- because there's no consumer demand for it, and only the few hundred bigtime spammers at the top of their respective pyramids would actually need to be burninated.
This is the sort of thing asset forfeiture laws were originally designed for - racketeering. If spam ain't a racket, I don't know what is.
So lemme see - I get to pay for something that used to be free-as-in-beer.
And I still have to delete all the spam from the mainsleazers. Instead of h0t t33n slut5 and v14g4r4, it'll be 11 b34n, but it'll still be spam.
I can see what the DMA gets out of this - less competition. But could someone explain what I get out of this scheme of yours?
More succinctly: Fuck that.
and several dimensions away, Satan scraped the icicles from his beard and once more begged God to turn the heat back up. "Okay, so a spammer told the truth, but it only happened once, and it was an accident, it's not my fault, can I please have some frickin' heat down here already?!?!"
Hey Glortzotnik! Check this out! These humans, they used lasers to inscribe little hills and valleys in aluminum discs 12" in diameter for video, then smaller hills and valleys in aluminum discs 5" in diameter for audio, and then they used lasers to start chemical reactions that changed the color of a dye later in big sloppy round holes with lots of fuzziness around the edges for video again.
Okay, nothing wrong with that, but the funny part - get this - they called the laser paintings and the chemical dyes "digital", as if it were somehow different from scratching clay with a stick or a wax cylinder with a needle. Laugh riot, these humans!
To a DSP engineer, everything is analog.
If it had prevented 9/11, we wouldn't have known about it, and as for the next attack(s), increased surveillance may have already prevented it(them) and we don't know about it.
> Do you really think that the 9-11 attacks will be the last by terrorists on US soil? How many more people will be killed when a biological or dirty bomb goes off? When doing a cost-benefit analysis, there's really no question.
On that basis, let it go off. Why waste 1% of GDP to save 100,000 peasants? There's 300,000,000 of us and we breed like rabbits, fer chrissakes.
But on the basis that actually matters - you're absolutely right. A repeat of 9/11 would result in a catastrophic loss of credibility for whatever party was in power, and would almost guarantee the loss of the next election. There are other scenarios that could result in loss of power for both parties (simultaneously), which are consequently viewed as even more catastrophic from their point of view.
Therefore, you can rest assured that on a cost-benefit basis, our elected officials are indeed doing everything in their power to prevent further attacks. Just because their motivation (remaining in power) differs from mine (I don't wanna get killed in it, nor do I wanna see the economic aftershocks take down an already shaky economic recovery) doesn't mean they're not motivated, which is the important thing.