> Q: [another expert] said his theory was "D3" - "declassify, demystify and diversify (software)." All three of those things are not things associated with Microsoft. Is that a policy you'd take issue with?
> > A: I think any time we find any security vulnerability, we're one of the best in the industry to notify people of the details of them and give them the details to get it fixed.
Conspicuously absent is any description of Microsoft's response when someone else finds the security vulnerability in their products.
> Instead of punishing the people who are responisible, lets punish the people who
know them.
You misunderstand me.
At this level, the people responsible for spam are the ISPs who don't terminate their spamming customers.
By refusing their traffic, sysadmins protect their own users, and encourage rogue ISPs to either (a) get legit, or (b) go bankrupt, as their legitimate customers desert them, or (c) stay in business, with no legitimate customers, serving spammers only, as part of a very large LAN. Either way, your users are protected from having to deal with the spam.
Perhaps another analogy might help.
The Taliban are not Al Queda. They did, however, in their role as the admins of Afghanistan, harbor Al Queda, by letting Osama, Inc "spam" the world with bombs and anthrax in exchange for his opium money. They repeatedly ignored abuse@ reports (diplomatic requests to turn him over, or stop executing their women in the soccer stadiums we built for them, or blowing up historical landmarks), because they decided that servicing their abusive customer was more important than servicing (say, by feeding, instead of shooting) their legitimate customers (the rest of the Afghani people).
One day, Osama sent one too many spams, abuse@afghanistan said "no, world, we won't terminate him, but here's an ignorebot ticket number" once too many times.
And the rest of the world decided it had had enough of this crap, and we stopped politely asking abuse@afghanistan to clean up its mess (because they were clearly unwilling to do so), and started dropped all their packets on the floor until we got a new abuse@afghanistan in charge, who would take care of the problem. There's collateral damage to the @afghanistan userbase - right now, it must suck more than usual to be a user there - but shit happens. The message is that if you're a government, you ignore abuse reports at your peril.
Likewise, if you're an ISP, there comes a time when you have to decide who your customers are. If your customers aren't spammers, that's fine. Just get rid of your spammers, like the rest of the civilized 'net.
If you decide that your customers are spammers, that's fine too. Just don't expect to be able to deliver any mail to my users. They're my users, on my system, and your desire to support your spamming customer base in no way obliges me to cooperate by carrying your traffic. If you're an ISP, you ignore abuse reports at your peril.
And if you still don't get it - replace the word "spam" with "DOS attack". If you got nothing but Code Red probes and DDOS attacks from a netblock, and repeated reports to their ISP did nothing to make it stop (indeed, you told them it was coming in on 999.999.999.123, they said "We killed.123", and the next morning, you saw the same traffic on.124 -- all they'd done is move him by one IP address in order to protect him), wouldn't you be justified in saying "Screw it, I'm blocking the 999.999.999.0/24. Any legitimate customers in that netblock will just have to deal with it, or better yet, get a new ISP that isn't harboring network abusers."
> Spammers are very adept at finding poorly protected sendmail servers
True, but I find that only about 30% of my relayed spam comes from anonymizing open relays.
A 70% drop would be a good start. (And of course, there's no reason why you have to accept incoming mail from machines running, say, Sendmail 8.6;-)
Re:Hey, let's build a prison just for them
on
Crazy Stats on Spam
·
· Score: 5, Funny
> Yeah, make them read their own spam mail once for each person they sent it to. Or let's say twice. There has to be some
punishment involved.;-)
1) Jail spammer in special spammer's prison.
2) Give spammer an email address.
3) Publish spammer's address on USENET, preferably in an MLM or pr0n newsgroup.
4) Mail spammer, three times a day, an email message telling him his meal is ready, which he can print out to requisition his meal.
5) Deny spammer the use of filtering tools. If the spammer starves to death because he can't find his meal tickets among the spam, that's his problem.
I mean, why should he need a filter for his mail? Every spammer I've talked to - from trailer-trash to DMA executive - says it's easy to Just Hit Delete, right? It only takes a few seconds a day!
And I'm sure there are so many interesting offers in his mailbox, if he's not interested, he can always Just Hit Delete, right?
Ah, what I wouldn't give to be a warden in such a prison.
> One would think that spam should be tracable back to the source. Email server keeping track of the IP and time, server
giving out the IP keeping track of who used the IP at the time. Then it would be likely that people could complain and get the
IP to block said person.
In many cases, it's easy to trace the spam back to the ISP from which it was sent, or to the ISP that's hosting the spamvertized website.
The problem comes when the spammer's ISP is unresponsive, either because they don't give a fsck about the problem, or because they're being paid well enough by the spammer.
SPEWS presents an interesting solution to the problem. In a nutshell, networks that harbor spammers get listed, and you can configure your mail server to use that list to refuse traffic from spam-harboring network providers.
The more people that use services such as SPEWS, the more likely it is that large, unresponsive ISPs (you know who you are) who also happen to have legitimate customers will receive mail from those customers saying "Hey! Clean up your act so people stop rejecting all mail from your customers! You've got real customers to service, not just spammers, you know!" and will be forced by market necessity to take their network abuse problem seriously.
If you're a user of one of these networks, and don't like the fact that some of your mail now bounces, look at it this way. You're living in a crackhouse, and your landlord is doing nothing to solve the problem. We're tired of dealing with your neighbors' rusty needles and used condoms. If your landlord won't clean up the building because he'd rather have a crack dealer's protection money than your rent, maybe it's time you moved somewhere civilized.
> It's like a law that says, "It will not be considered murder if self-defense can be proved."
I think that what scared the original poster with the "fair use is a defense against the charge of infringement, not a right" quotation is that, just as with your murder example, even if you shoot someone in self-defense, you still get the fun (a) arrested for shooting somone, (b) tried for murder/manslaughter, and (c) drained of your finances in the process, whether you are convicted or not.
(It also implies that the defence of fair use may legally be taken away from you, either indirectly through DMCA - which is silent on fair use per se, but since you have to violate the DMCA to get your fair-use snippet of video, you still go to jail. Or directly, by whatever they do in SSSCA.)
The industry's goal is to make "fair use" a right -- in the sense that both Bill Gates and that homeless bum down the street have the same right to sleep under a highway overpass.
> I'll send an E-mail
to Apple saying that iTunes and my iPod is now useless for me because it won't let me use any new cd's.
> >
After all, hell hath no fury like a pissed-off Steve.
Good point.
Why the fuck is our government paying more heed to the desires of a puny $15B industry (movies, music) than the $100s-of-Bs industry (technology).
If we had a real "one dollar, one vote" state (for the anticapitalist crybabies), or a government that was interested in what delivers the greatest good to the economy (for the libertarian uber-optimists), MPAA and RIAA would be in the trashcan of history where they belong.
Think about it. What affects your life, and the economy more? Some pop band or cheezy movie, or the dozens of computers on your desk, and the networks that connect them? Who's the real driving force behind economic growth?
About the only explanation I can think of is that MPAA/RIAA have more coke and better access to hookers with bigger breast implants than the technology industry.
Quoth Wired: "Jack Valenti predicts that Congress will require copy-protection controls in nearly all consumer electronic devices and
PCs."
Quoth Tackhead: "Jack Valenti can take a long, hard suck on my arse."
The scary part is the article's title: "A Call to End Copyright Confusion". I don't see any confusion. I'm sure Jack isn't confused either.
Right now, ripping is legal. Distributing ripped MP3s isn't. Jack wants to make sure that ripping is also illegal, so he can sell us the same movie twice - once on DVD, and once on our PC. Just like Hilary wants to sell us the same music twice - once on copy-crippled CD, and once-per-listen on our PCs.
The other scary quote from the Wired article: "'I am openly, unabashedly in support of the government stepping in to set standards,' said Preston Padden, head of government
relations for Disney."
1) Head of government relations. Nice title for your business card. That's right. Walt Disney, the cute little mouse company, has a position that might as well be called "Ambassador". No fucking wonder they get the copyrights on the Rat extended on demand. They've fucking got an embassy.
2) The word "standards", and all that implies.
I think we can see the spin for SSSCA right now. Existing copyright laws are somehow confusing. Existing copy control technologies are broken because they're not standardized across all devices. We therefore resolve the "confusion" by having the government adopt Jack and Hilary and Mickey's "standard" in all devices.
If you make hardware that doesn't meet the standard, you're guilty of making things "confusing" for the consumer, and nobody will buy your product. (And men with guns, "empowered" by the new law, will "protect the consumer" by taking your hardware off the market.)
Re:Where the hell is Microsoft's PR agency?
on
al Qaeda Hacks XP?
·
· Score: 5, Funny
> That may be the Al-qeada plan to destroy America. make sure all MS products stop working after a certain date
Huh? Last time I checked, Al Queda wanted to destroy the technological world, not save it!
>/takes a 1.6Ghz Althon with 512MB of ram to 1990, installs DOS (5.5 was the top version in '90 right?) >/gives it to a magazine to review, but doesn't give them any clue to the specifications
Just for shits and giggles, I tried running an old benchmark on a P3-800. Here's what I got.
SI-System Information, Advanced Edition 4.50, (C) Copr 1987-88, Peter Norton
Computer Name: IBM AT
Operating System: DOS 7.10
Built-in BIOS dated: Thursday, April 26, 1900
Main Processor: Intel 80386 Serial Ports: 2
Co-Processor: Intel 80387 Parallel Ports: 3
Video Display Adapter: Video Graphics Array (VGA)
Current Video Mode: Text, 80 x 25 Color
Available Disk Drives: 6, A: - F:
DOS reports 640 K-bytes of memory:
80 K-bytes used by DOS and resident programs
560 K-bytes available for application programs
[... ]
Computing Index (CI), relative to IBM/XT: Not computed. Clock inactive.
Disk Index (DI), relative to IBM/XT: Only hard disks can be tested.
Performance Index (PI), relative to IBM/XT: Not computed.
So it looks like they'd say
"For a '386 without a clock, it suuuuuuuure is fast! Dunno where it puts all that data, though, must be some sort of solid-state RAMdrive, 'cuz there ain't no way it fits all that into 640K, and Norton sez it ain't got no hard drive!"
Analysis:
CPU: Looks like it finished the busy-wait-with-some-x87-instructions used to evalute the "computing index" in less than 1/18 of a second from the internal system clock, and concluded there was no clock, rather than trying to divide by zero. Mad propz to Peter Norton for thinking ahead.)
Hard Drive: it probably looked at the partition table, saw how many gigs it was, or that it was FAT32, and said "Fucked if I know! Hard drives aren't supposed to be over 30M per partition!" (So I guess we know that GMR wasn't that great an innovation, 'cuz, hey, all these gigabytes, and I don't have a hard drive:-)
I ran it a few times and finally got "lucky" and got a number for "computing index" - 62,910 on an 800 MHz P3. (The whole benchmark fits in cache, so it's not surprising that it's over 60000 times faster than a 4.77 MHz XT. I suppose I'd have to run the benchmark 100 times and figure out how many of those runs straddled a 1/18th of a second boundary to derive, statistically, just how much faster than "60000 times faster than an XT" it is...;-)
Thanks for the walk down memory lane, dude. Running old benchmarks on new hardware is fun!
> Excuse me, I think I'm going to go enroll myself in consumer therapy now. I just calculated the cost of my own music collection
over time at slightly higher than $12.99 per CD.
Naaw, that just means you need to download more MP3z of CDs you don't own, until you no longer feel like Hilary Rosen's bitch;-)
> I know from experience with X10 that it isn't that difficult to turn on all of the lights in your neighbor's house down the street at 2
am. Now, with Networking Over Power you can scan their network.
> People living in the UK know that reports from government sponsored bodies of this type can be subject to extensive political interference and should generally be taken with more than a pinch of salt.
Quacksign #23: They claim they are being persecuted by orthodox medicine and that their work is being suppressed because it's controversial.
That is, nebulous accusations of general government fuckuppery do not imply that chelation is effective, or that MMR shots cause autism.
> he interference by high-level politicians and civil-servants is why we have had an epidemic of BSE and vCJD which successive governments covered up for many years.
Quacksign #23/24 again: Raises specific, but irrelevant (as regards the efficacy of chelation therapy) cases of government fuckuppery in an effort to tar all "government-approved" medicine with the same brush.
> The UK managed to create a completely new incurable brain-destroying disease, [... ]
Quacksign #24: A Vast Conspiracy, no doubt, to...create?!? Yes, he said create CJD. Umm, but what does this have to do with chelation therapy? Or MMR?
> Basically, don't believe any medical research which comes from the UK government and don't eat any
beef products from the UK (it's still dangerous).
More #24. Attempt to direct our fear of CJD into a mistrust of all medical research as somehow "tainted" by the Evil Conspiracy.
Guess I'd better get myself some snake oil now, because my doctor is part of the Conspiracy!
> On the vaccine issue specifically [... ] If there is an overall
cost-saving for a treatment as there is with MMR (1 single shot vs 3 separate shots at different
times) then the pressure will be to use that, and if a few children die or get autism well that's just bad
luck for them because the government does not pay compensation and you cannot sue them.
More of the Conspiracy. But absolutely. no. evidence that the MMR shot causes autism.
Just the same ubstantiated allegation, this time with a different Conspiracy - the one by the Commie Pinko Bureacuratic Socialists that kill children with dangerous vaccines to save taxpayer dollars.
I suppose that's a step up from the US version of the Conspiracy, in which Evil Capitalists in Big Pharma kill kids with dangerous vaccines to make money for their shareholders, but it still doesn't explain to my why I should believe that there's any link between MMR shots and autism.
Synopsis: basically a rant about "Don't trust any medical research funded by the Evil Government Who Created CJD! They 0wn J00!"
Rating: Tinfoil Hat.
Recommendations for Improvement: How 'bout use the word "toxins" a few times, and provide a picture of a cute kid rocking back and forth and drooling on a T-shirt that reads "The Conspiracy Vaccinated Me Against MMR and All I Got Was Autism ism ism ism ism...." and a bit about how chelation will also save you from the mercury in your dental fillings? That'd at least get your score up into the 5-6 range.
> If you search the web you'll find plenty of people who say they have had success
with heavy-metal chelation using DMSA+lipoic-acid as a treatment for autism.
> Might like to also ask why thimerosal, which is a mercury compound, is only now being banned from childhood vaccines.
Might also want to realize that autism, as it's typically diagnosed in early childhood, if it's gonna show up, is likely to show up shortly after vaccination. Nothing to do with the vaccination, of course, just dumb luck and a bit of post hoc ergo propter hoc scaremongering from the quacks.
> Anyway, some people say the SR-71 would never
have been decomissioned if there wasn't something new [google.com] to replace it...
You Know You've Been Reading/. Too Long When...
...you don't click on the URL, but just read it and think that someone trawled terraserver.com's database and posted it to USENET in order to make google.com a viable replacement for high-resolution imagery;-)
> Ah, you didn't buy the one with the cognital interface? The version of the books that I read had a very nice
interface which enabled me to somehow view the scenes from the book within my head while reading it.
> >
I was quite amazed and I still haven't figured out how they did it...
I think the cognitive interface used code from the old Infocom games... (Old Infocom ad from Byte magazine: "We stick our graphics where the sun doesn't shine", accompanied by an illustration of a human brain...)
But I'd still prefer to make some other son of a bitch die for his country.
Those who beat their swords into plowshares will till the fields of those who didn't.
Re:Another game I suggest
on
Uplink
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
> > It's called "Internet". My friend came over and installed it on my computer. It's amazing! It's like a virtual
copy of our world in the computer. For example you type cnn.com, and you get plausible computer
generated news, like if there were a mirror copy of the world inside the computer! >
> I tried that game. In my version, the World Trade Center got blown up by terrorists, starting a war in
Afghanistan. Pretty far out, huh?
Shit, I must have made the same fuckup you did back in the '80s. The walkthrough even warned me about using cheat codes in Afghanistan-80s, but did I listen? Nope.
Ah well, blow 'em to hell. Pretty kewl graphics when those 15000-pounders go off at the mouths of their caves!
> > The best are these "chat" areas where you can
talk to AI programs. Also, there are weblogs that detail the daily life of some simulated people. Much more
convincing than the SIMS! But it doesn't show you the people inside the computer as often as the SIMS. Very
cool stuff! Am I supposed to tell you guys that you're only AI programs running on my P3 800MHz?
Shyeaaaah, right.
I tried the chat rooms, and the game's AI sucks goat ass. My 4.77 MHz 8086 could outthink the AIs in the chat rooms.
> Or what would you call President Bush's fiat about using military
tribunals,
Since you asked, something that's pretty routine during times of war and you're dealing with unlawful combatants.
Everyone who is accused has a lawyer.
Everyone will be entitled to a trial that is full and fair. If it is
not full and fair, civil courts will overturn the conviction. The Supreme Court has asserted its supreme
authority since the Jeffersonian days of Marbury v. Madison to review
the decisions of lower courts and the constitutionality of government edicts.
> Of course, if the grocery store sells only one brand of stuff, and/or there is only one grocery store in town, (ie monopoly) then the
whole theory gets ugly, quickly.
Whew! You had me worried. It's a good thing that never happens in telecom, cable TV, or products with "Microsoft" on the label.
Slashdot Mirror
>
> A: I think any time we find any security vulnerability, we're one of the best in the industry to notify people of the details of them and give them the details to get it fixed.
Conspicuously absent is any description of Microsoft's response when someone else finds the security vulnerability in their products.
You misunderstand me.
At this level, the people responsible for spam are the ISPs who don't terminate their spamming customers.
By refusing their traffic, sysadmins protect their own users, and encourage rogue ISPs to either (a) get legit, or (b) go bankrupt, as their legitimate customers desert them, or (c) stay in business, with no legitimate customers, serving spammers only, as part of a very large LAN. Either way, your users are protected from having to deal with the spam.
Perhaps another analogy might help.
The Taliban are not Al Queda. They did, however, in their role as the admins of Afghanistan, harbor Al Queda, by letting Osama, Inc "spam" the world with bombs and anthrax in exchange for his opium money. They repeatedly ignored abuse@ reports (diplomatic requests to turn him over, or stop executing their women in the soccer stadiums we built for them, or blowing up historical landmarks), because they decided that servicing their abusive customer was more important than servicing (say, by feeding, instead of shooting) their legitimate customers (the rest of the Afghani people).
One day, Osama sent one too many spams, abuse@afghanistan said "no, world, we won't terminate him, but here's an ignorebot ticket number" once too many times. And the rest of the world decided it had had enough of this crap, and we stopped politely asking abuse@afghanistan to clean up its mess (because they were clearly unwilling to do so), and started dropped all their packets on the floor until we got a new abuse@afghanistan in charge, who would take care of the problem. There's collateral damage to the @afghanistan userbase - right now, it must suck more than usual to be a user there - but shit happens. The message is that if you're a government, you ignore abuse reports at your peril.
Likewise, if you're an ISP, there comes a time when you have to decide who your customers are. If your customers aren't spammers, that's fine. Just get rid of your spammers, like the rest of the civilized 'net.
If you decide that your customers are spammers, that's fine too. Just don't expect to be able to deliver any mail to my users. They're my users, on my system, and your desire to support your spamming customer base in no way obliges me to cooperate by carrying your traffic. If you're an ISP, you ignore abuse reports at your peril.
And if you still don't get it - replace the word "spam" with "DOS attack". If you got nothing but Code Red probes and DDOS attacks from a netblock, and repeated reports to their ISP did nothing to make it stop (indeed, you told them it was coming in on 999.999.999.123, they said "We killed .123", and the next morning, you saw the same traffic on .124 -- all they'd done is move him by one IP address in order to protect him), wouldn't you be justified in saying "Screw it, I'm blocking the 999.999.999.0/24. Any legitimate customers in that netblock will just have to deal with it, or better yet, get a new ISP that isn't harboring network abusers."
I went that route, but I think you're right.
Look at a 19" monitor from a couple of feet away.
Look at a 33" TV from 10 feet away.
About the same angle (field of view) in your eyes. Hellaciously more pixels on the 19". Better sound with a good pair of headphones and a 19".
A TV tuner on your video card makes having a TV obsolete. (And the rest of your computer can then obsolete your VCR and DVD-player.)
True, but I find that only about 30% of my relayed spam comes from anonymizing open relays.
A 70% drop would be a good start. (And of course, there's no reason why you have to accept incoming mail from machines running, say, Sendmail 8.6 ;-)
1) Jail spammer in special spammer's prison.
2) Give spammer an email address.
3) Publish spammer's address on USENET, preferably in an MLM or pr0n newsgroup.
4) Mail spammer, three times a day, an email message telling him his meal is ready, which he can print out to requisition his meal.
5) Deny spammer the use of filtering tools. If the spammer starves to death because he can't find his meal tickets among the spam, that's his problem.
I mean, why should he need a filter for his mail? Every spammer I've talked to - from trailer-trash to DMA executive - says it's easy to Just Hit Delete, right? It only takes a few seconds a day!
And I'm sure there are so many interesting offers in his mailbox, if he's not interested, he can always Just Hit Delete, right?
Ah, what I wouldn't give to be a warden in such a prison.
In many cases, it's easy to trace the spam back to the ISP from which it was sent, or to the ISP that's hosting the spamvertized website.
The problem comes when the spammer's ISP is unresponsive, either because they don't give a fsck about the problem, or because they're being paid well enough by the spammer.
SPEWS presents an interesting solution to the problem. In a nutshell, networks that harbor spammers get listed, and you can configure your mail server to use that list to refuse traffic from spam-harboring network providers.
The more people that use services such as SPEWS, the more likely it is that large, unresponsive ISPs (you know who you are) who also happen to have legitimate customers will receive mail from those customers saying "Hey! Clean up your act so people stop rejecting all mail from your customers! You've got real customers to service, not just spammers, you know!" and will be forced by market necessity to take their network abuse problem seriously.
If you're a user of one of these networks, and don't like the fact that some of your mail now bounces, look at it this way. You're living in a crackhouse, and your landlord is doing nothing to solve the problem. We're tired of dealing with your neighbors' rusty needles and used condoms. If your landlord won't clean up the building because he'd rather have a crack dealer's protection money than your rent, maybe it's time you moved somewhere civilized.
I think that what scared the original poster with the "fair use is a defense against the charge of infringement, not a right" quotation is that, just as with your murder example, even if you shoot someone in self-defense, you still get the fun (a) arrested for shooting somone, (b) tried for murder/manslaughter, and (c) drained of your finances in the process, whether you are convicted or not.
(It also implies that the defence of fair use may legally be taken away from you, either indirectly through DMCA - which is silent on fair use per se, but since you have to violate the DMCA to get your fair-use snippet of video, you still go to jail. Or directly, by whatever they do in SSSCA.)
The industry's goal is to make "fair use" a right -- in the sense that both Bill Gates and that homeless bum down the street have the same right to sleep under a highway overpass.
"You are receiving this email because you are on our opt-in list".
(P.S. Your time is running out, Mr. Ralsky. Fscking with Intel was a big mistake.)
Yeah, but she's chunky enough that even with a 7-inch schnozz, she still can't go fuck herself, as we'd all so dearly like her to.
>
> After all, hell hath no fury like a pissed-off Steve.
Good point.
Why the fuck is our government paying more heed to the desires of a puny $15B industry (movies, music) than the $100s-of-Bs industry (technology).
If we had a real "one dollar, one vote" state (for the anticapitalist crybabies), or a government that was interested in what delivers the greatest good to the economy (for the libertarian uber-optimists), MPAA and RIAA would be in the trashcan of history where they belong.
Think about it. What affects your life, and the economy more? Some pop band or cheezy movie, or the dozens of computers on your desk, and the networks that connect them? Who's the real driving force behind economic growth?
About the only explanation I can think of is that MPAA/RIAA have more coke and better access to hookers with bigger breast implants than the technology industry.
If Disney has a "Head of Government Relations", you can bet your sweet ass that Micros~1 has one too.
Funny you should mention that.
Quoth Wired: "Jack Valenti predicts that Congress will require copy-protection controls in nearly all consumer electronic devices and PCs."
Quoth Tackhead: "Jack Valenti can take a long, hard suck on my arse."
The scary part is the article's title: "A Call to End Copyright Confusion". I don't see any confusion. I'm sure Jack isn't confused either.
Right now, ripping is legal. Distributing ripped MP3s isn't. Jack wants to make sure that ripping is also illegal, so he can sell us the same movie twice - once on DVD, and once on our PC. Just like Hilary wants to sell us the same music twice - once on copy-crippled CD, and once-per-listen on our PCs.
The other scary quote from the Wired article: "'I am openly, unabashedly in support of the government stepping in to set standards,' said Preston Padden, head of government relations for Disney."
1) Head of government relations. Nice title for your business card. That's right. Walt Disney, the cute little mouse company, has a position that might as well be called "Ambassador". No fucking wonder they get the copyrights on the Rat extended on demand. They've fucking got an embassy.
2) The word "standards", and all that implies.
I think we can see the spin for SSSCA right now. Existing copyright laws are somehow confusing. Existing copy control technologies are broken because they're not standardized across all devices. We therefore resolve the "confusion" by having the government adopt Jack and Hilary and Mickey's "standard" in all devices.
If you make hardware that doesn't meet the standard, you're guilty of making things "confusing" for the consumer, and nobody will buy your product. (And men with guns, "empowered" by the new law, will "protect the consumer" by taking your hardware off the market.)
Huh? Last time I checked, Al Queda wanted to destroy the technological world, not save it!
>
Just for shits and giggles, I tried running an old benchmark on a P3-800. Here's what I got.
SI-System Information, Advanced Edition 4.50, (C) Copr 1987-88, Peter Norton
Computer Name: IBM AT
Operating System: DOS 7.10
Built-in BIOS dated: Thursday, April 26, 1900
Main Processor: Intel 80386 Serial Ports: 2
Co-Processor: Intel 80387 Parallel Ports: 3
Video Display Adapter: Video Graphics Array (VGA)
Current Video Mode: Text, 80 x 25 Color
Available Disk Drives: 6, A: - F:
DOS reports 640 K-bytes of memory:
80 K-bytes used by DOS and resident programs
560 K-bytes available for application programs
[
Computing Index (CI), relative to IBM/XT: Not computed. Clock inactive.
Disk Index (DI), relative to IBM/XT: Only hard disks can be tested.
Performance Index (PI), relative to IBM/XT: Not computed.
So it looks like they'd say
"For a '386 without a clock, it suuuuuuuure is fast! Dunno where it puts all that data, though, must be some sort of solid-state RAMdrive, 'cuz there ain't no way it fits all that into 640K, and Norton sez it ain't got no hard drive!"
Analysis:
CPU: Looks like it finished the busy-wait-with-some-x87-instructions used to evalute the "computing index" in less than 1/18 of a second from the internal system clock, and concluded there was no clock, rather than trying to divide by zero. Mad propz to Peter Norton for thinking ahead.)
Hard Drive: it probably looked at the partition table, saw how many gigs it was, or that it was FAT32, and said "Fucked if I know! Hard drives aren't supposed to be over 30M per partition!" (So I guess we know that GMR wasn't that great an innovation, 'cuz, hey, all these gigabytes, and I don't have a hard drive
I ran it a few times and finally got "lucky" and got a number for "computing index" - 62,910 on an 800 MHz P3. (The whole benchmark fits in cache, so it's not surprising that it's over 60000 times faster than a 4.77 MHz XT. I suppose I'd have to run the benchmark 100 times and figure out how many of those runs straddled a 1/18th of a second boundary to derive, statistically, just how much faster than "60000 times faster than an XT" it is...
Thanks for the walk down memory lane, dude. Running old benchmarks on new hardware is fun!
Naaw, that just means you need to download more MP3z of CDs you don't own, until you no longer feel like Hilary Rosen's bitch ;-)
"Drive-by h4x0r1ng... without the drive-by!"
Yahoo! Let's play Spot The Quack!
Quacksign #23: They claim they are being persecuted by orthodox medicine and that their work is being suppressed because it's controversial.
That is, nebulous accusations of general government fuckuppery do not imply that chelation is effective, or that MMR shots cause autism.
> he interference by high-level politicians and civil-servants is why we have had an epidemic of BSE and vCJD which successive governments covered up for many years.
Quacksign #23/24 again: Raises specific, but irrelevant (as regards the efficacy of chelation therapy) cases of government fuckuppery in an effort to tar all "government-approved" medicine with the same brush.
> The UK managed to create a completely new incurable brain-destroying disease, [ ... ]
Quacksign #24: A Vast Conspiracy, no doubt, to ...create?!? Yes, he said create CJD. Umm, but what does this have to do with chelation therapy? Or MMR?
> Basically, don't believe any medical research which comes from the UK government and don't eat any beef products from the UK (it's still dangerous).
More #24. Attempt to direct our fear of CJD into a mistrust of all medical research as somehow "tainted" by the Evil Conspiracy.
Guess I'd better get myself some snake oil now, because my doctor is part of the Conspiracy!
> On the vaccine issue specifically [ ... ] If there is an overall
cost-saving for a treatment as there is with MMR (1 single shot vs 3 separate shots at different
times) then the pressure will be to use that, and if a few children die or get autism well that's just bad
luck for them because the government does not pay compensation and you cannot sue them.
More of the Conspiracy. But absolutely. no. evidence that the MMR shot causes autism.
Just the same ubstantiated allegation, this time with a different Conspiracy - the one by the Commie Pinko Bureacuratic Socialists that kill children with dangerous vaccines to save taxpayer dollars.
I suppose that's a step up from the US version of the Conspiracy, in which Evil Capitalists in Big Pharma kill kids with dangerous vaccines to make money for their shareholders, but it still doesn't explain to my why I should believe that there's any link between MMR shots and autism.
Score: 2 out of 25, (Or on This Top-10 list, 2/10).
Synopsis: basically a rant about "Don't trust any medical research funded by the Evil Government Who Created CJD! They 0wn J00!"
Rating: Tinfoil Hat.
Recommendations for Improvement: How 'bout use the word "toxins" a few times, and provide a picture of a cute kid rocking back and forth and drooling on a T-shirt that reads "The Conspiracy Vaccinated Me Against MMR and All I Got Was Autism ism ism ism ism...." and a bit about how chelation will also save you from the mercury in your dental fillings? That'd at least get your score up into the 5-6 range.
Nobody move! He's got a Chomskybot and he's not afraid to use it!
You mean chelation therapy: Unproven Claims and Unsound Theories?
> Might like to also ask why thimerosal, which is a mercury compound, is only now being banned from childhood vaccines.
Might also want to realize that autism, as it's typically diagnosed in early childhood, if it's gonna show up, is likely to show up shortly after vaccination. Nothing to do with the vaccination, of course, just dumb luck and a bit of post hoc ergo propter hoc scaremongering from the quacks.
Misconceptions about Immunization: #9 - Vaccicnes Cause Autism
Props once again to Stephen Barrett for the debunking.
You Know You've Been Reading /. Too Long When...
>
> I was quite amazed and I still haven't figured out how they did it...
I think the cognitive interface used code from the old Infocom games... (Old Infocom ad from Byte magazine: "We stick our graphics where the sun doesn't shine", accompanied by an illustration of a human brain...)
> Pro patria mori.
But I'd still prefer to make some other son of a bitch die for his country.
Those who beat their swords into plowshares will till the fields of those who didn't.
>
> I tried that game. In my version, the World Trade Center got blown up by terrorists, starting a war in Afghanistan. Pretty far out, huh?
Shit, I must have made the same fuckup you did back in the '80s. The walkthrough even warned me about using cheat codes in Afghanistan-80s, but did I listen? Nope.
Ah well, blow 'em to hell. Pretty kewl graphics when those 15000-pounders go off at the mouths of their caves!
> > The best are these "chat" areas where you can talk to AI programs. Also, there are weblogs that detail the daily life of some simulated people. Much more convincing than the SIMS! But it doesn't show you the people inside the computer as often as the SIMS. Very cool stuff! Am I supposed to tell you guys that you're only AI programs running on my P3 800MHz?
Shyeaaaah, right. I tried the chat rooms, and the game's AI sucks goat ass. My 4.77 MHz 8086 could outthink the AIs in the chat rooms.
Since you asked, something that's pretty routine during times of war and you're dealing with unlawful combatants.
Everyone who is accused has a lawyer. Everyone will be entitled to a trial that is full and fair. If it is not full and fair, civil courts will overturn the conviction. The Supreme Court has asserted its supreme authority since the Jeffersonian days of Marbury v. Madison to review the decisions of lower courts and the constitutionality of government edicts.
Whew! You had me worried. It's a good thing that never happens in telecom, cable TV, or products with "Microsoft" on the label.