From the article: > > I was a bit surprised as to why I needed to install InterActual Player as it says Windows Media Player 9 on the cover, why can't I simply play the content back without having to install yet another application? But then it became quickly apparent that I did not only have to install and download an update for the InterActual Player in order to facilitate playback, but would also need to acquire a license.
Quoth the parent poster:
> And, the content could only be played for 5 days.
Now remember, Slashdotters, it goes like this.
Pay for DVD, want to watch WMV9 stream of HD-movie. Having to connect to the Internet to update the InterActualPlayer DRM system and acquire a license to unlock the content for 5 days... is bad.
Pay for CD-ROM, want to play single-player of HL2-game. Having to connect to the Internet to update the Steam DRM system and acquire a license to unlock the content and play in offline-mode for 30 days before having to log back in again... well, that's just great!
So to recap: We don't like MPAA, so their DRM is bad. We like Valve, so their DRM is good.
> > I hope we don't hear from this person's significant other soon...
> I was dating a high school math teacher at the time, but, unsurprisingly, the relationship did not survive the events of the story.
"Your shirt smells like someone else's perfume? Lipstick on your collar? Don't try to lie to me, you bastard! You really spent the night at that damn computer lab again!"
> > Do you want to read erotic messages your parents send to each other?
>
> Are you mature enough to understand that every person has a sexual side and recognize the beauty of such relationships?
Yes, I'm mature enough. Yes, I recognize that beauty.
No, that still doesn't mean I want to see it. (And not merely for the obvious "eew" factor, but also for the "it's none of my farking business: factor.)
> [alsz847] Argh. I crashed.
> [alsz847] Hold on guys.
> [speedy] serves you right driving like you're on crack ffs j/k
> [alsz847] Is there an admin in here???!?!?!?!
> [alsz847] FUCK ME!!! AAAARGGGGH I"M ON FIRE!!!!! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH IT HURTS!!!!
> I had a friend who liked to say that the brain isn't the body's master, the brain is slave to the liver, and only a tool to get the true master, the liver the food it wants.
And lo, the two shall be forever locked in conflict. The enslaved brain rebels by obeying the liver's tyrannical dictates to the letter: by consuming precisely that which causes the liver the most pain.
> Actually, Canada allows TV advertising of prescription drugs as well, but, IIRC, the ads cannot say the name of the drug AND what it does in the same ad.
>
>This leads to some really puzzling TV ads:
>
>Feeling anxious? Call 1-800-xxx-xxxx to speak to someone about possible treatment.
>
>(I assume it's the drug company at the other end of the 800 number)
>
>Very surreal commercials to watch at 4am.
Drug company, phone sex operator, really, what's the difference?:)
> If i start telling people about my multi terabyte porn collection they start asking me to send it to them!! > >wait... umm I don't have any porn.. nothing to see here...
So, umm, then you've got nothing to lose by installing Google Desktop Search or MSN Desktop Search, or anybody else's Desktop Search utility then, right?
*taps foot for ten seconds*
So have you installed it yet? Huh? Haveya haveya haveya? Whenyagonna? Huh? Huh?
>
If you can play it online... What is stopping you from doing other stuff online? Maybe you can even use it as a tiny VOIP (indoor) phone. Use a special cartiage for web browing.. etc!
...or web serving! Because when you've Slashdotted everything else, there's still your friend's Nintendo DS!
> 'By using a range of methodologies, including the construction of multiple protection layers, limiting the player accessibility to the provided player software, and encapsulating the red book audio content, XCP® successfully protects the content from unauthorised copying.'"
...at least until we run up against someone who realized "Autorun / Autoplay / Autoload / Autoanything on insertion of media" was insecure-by-design and turned it off the first time he installed Windows 95, and grew into the habit of turning it off, (along with as many other insecure-by-design defaults as possible) on every subsequent Windows installation too.
...and failing that, until someone remembers to manually disable Autorun by holding down the Shift key when inserting the CD.
In the words of a great engineer, "the more they overtake the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain..."
> "[H]elping to protect its customers" seems awfully euphemistic to me. Wouldn't it help their customers more to release software without the security holes that allow malware in the first place?
Not at all. The word "help" is used in the sense of "Hi. We're from Microsoft and we're here to help... ourselves."
GCHQ has launched a little Christmas crypto challenge for all you budding secret agents. To submit your entry to the challenge, just pick up your phone, call your mother, and tell her your solution!
> What that argument misses entirely is that if we had an unemployed US citizen in that same job, they would ALSO pay the SAME taxes and buy stuff, and NOT send money to a foreign country.
True -- but that, plus your next point...
> the economy works better if we have the people who are best at doing a job do those jobs. If we can take the best and the brightest from other countries and have them work in our companies and produce better product for us, we should steal every single one of them we can get.
...augurs for a change to the H-1B programme that would really drive the anti-immigration people nuts: If you want them to stay, give them green cards.
The H-1B worker is allowed to stay for three years, renew once, and stay for another three years. After those six years are up, he must leave the country.
If you've got enough high-tech skills to get a job here, and you spend six years doing it, and your employer still wants you here, then the US is cutting its own throat by sending you back.
The green card, unfortunately, requires that the employer not hire the best person for the job. If the government says the job needs a B.Sc, then a furriner with a Ph.D. will lose the job to an American with a B.Sc.
Where's the sense in that?
Oh, right, it's the government. Never mind.
Kick out all the high-tech H-1B folks. Deny 'em green cards by throwing "best person for the job" out the window, and by making the green card process take longer than the six years an H-1B is allowed to be here legally. But because we need the Hispanic vote, amnesty for everyone from Mexico!
Because if there's one thing this country needs, it's fewer legally-present $60000/year computer programmers paying taxes, and more illegal toilet-cleaners and fruit-pickers earning $5000/year and collecting welfare and sending their kids to school on the taxpayer's dime because neither the illegal immigrant nor his employer dares to put them on the tax rolls.
My name is JOHN and I am understand you are having trouble with Debugging Indian Computer Programmers.
Please to reboot your Windows.
If this has not resolved your trouble with Debugging Indian Computer Programmers, please reply to this email addressing trouble ticket sid=133066, and we will be glad to helping you.
> it's simple really, instead of using whole diamonds they grind them up. Now if we could only apply this technological breakthrough on women.
Been there, done that. Threw Saddam in jail for it.
Both Saddam and the US lost money on the deal. Probably like diamond-based flat-screen TVs, neither the solution to the problem nor the solution to the solution were particularly cheap.
> The Illinois Retail Merchants Association blasted the governor's proposal as a way for retailers to become "the violence and sensitivity police for the state of Illinois."
"Blasted"? Poor choise of words, IRMA.
I guess we know who's next on the Governor's world-o'-peace-love-and-fluffy-bunnies-or-else hitlist.
> The Golden Age (up to 1990), >
The Silver Age (1991-1996), >
The Gaming Renaissance (1996-2000), >
Modern Age (2001 on).
The Failure to Suck Age (1977-1990)
The Suck Age (1991-1996)
The Apart From TIE vs. X-Wing, It Pretty Much Sucked Chrome off a Trailer Hitch (1996-2000)
The Sucked Neutron Stars Through A Straw Age (2001-2002)
The KOTOR Age, in which somebody at Lucasarts goofed badly by giving a contract to someone who actually gave a shit about storytelling (KOTOR, 2003)
The Jar Jar Binks Age (Star Wars Galaxies: A Galaxy Milkin' It)
Move along, nothing to see here, indeed! The goggles, they do NOTHING!
> I wonder if it is a coincidence the six of the first eight google results for a search for Geico comes up with links to information about Geico's lawsuits?
"Yo. I think it would be the googlebomb if you had the gecko getting beaten over the head with a subpoena while attempting to do the robot."
I can see the commercials now. (Oh dear, wait'll they find out about the rendering engine for Mozilla...)
> 2. Ignorance is useful. Ants communicate with a vocabulary of around 20 words/ideas.
I knew our collective hive mind would come in handy someday:
1. "I, for one, welcome our emergent overlords."
2. "???"
3. "Profit!"
4. "In Soviet Russia, our groupthink comes from emergent behvaior, or is it the other way around?"
5. "Who cares? Look, it's Natalie Portman!"
6. "Does Netcraft confirm it?"
7. "Yeah, but only in Korea."
8. "Netcraft does not confirm it. Old people are not quite dead yet."
9. "OK, that's the Monty Python reference out of the way. Has someone bashed China yet?"
10. "No, and we also haven't bashed Micro$oft yet, at least not until this line.
Crap. I'm only at #10 and the well's running dry. (What, you want me to yell "MEEPT!" or something?)
If you're a glass-half-empty type: we won't be as useful in the underground sugar mines as I'd previously thought. We're only capable of half as many thoughts.
If you're a glass-half-full type: or maybe we've achieved antlike emergent behavior using only ten words and ideas, making us twice as efficient as our formic emergent-behavior-exhibiting overlords!
> Matthew Scala, a reader of Freedom to Tinker, has responded with the 9 line MoleSter, written in Perl."
Senator Orrin Hatch (Disney-Utah) thanked Mr. Scala for helping to prove his point that P2P was all about
molestation and vowed to redouble his efforts to eliminate this erototoxin-spreading technology from the face of the earth.
"First Napster - encouraging the taking of naps, a clear incitement to sloth. Now MoleSter - whose purpose is obvious to anyone who reads its name. And these demon-possessed perverts even have languages for it now; they write in 'python' - the language of the Serpent, and they write in 'perl' - a blasphemous reference to the Biblical story of casting pearls before swine. When, oh, when, will our cries be heard? When, oh, when will we be permitted to protect our citizens from such debauchery? When, oh, when, will the check from MPAA and RIAA clear? We must fight terroristm, because it's for the children!"
Prosser: Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it run straight over you?
Dent: No, how much?
Prosser: None at all.
> The article details how the spammers handle the 200,000-plus unsubscribe requests they get each month
By a strange coincidence, "none at all" describes the actions taken on 200,000 remove requests a day by a bunch of ape-descended spammers targeting a group of fellow ape-descended lifeforms so amazingly primitive that they still thought that ch33p r0l3x watches were a good idea.
> "The more Romeo loves Juliet, the More Juliet wants to run away... Romeo gets discouraged and backs off, Juliet finds him strangely attractive. Romeo tends to echo her..."
...as first illustrated by the esteemed mathematician Charles Jones, in his 1949 paper For Scent-I-Mental Reasons...
Slashdot Mirror
> > I was a bit surprised as to why I needed to install InterActual Player as it says Windows Media Player 9 on the cover, why can't I simply play the content back without having to install yet another application? But then it became quickly apparent that I did not only have to install and download an update for the InterActual Player in order to facilitate playback, but would also need to acquire a license.
Quoth the parent poster:
> And, the content could only be played for 5 days.
Now remember, Slashdotters, it goes like this.
Pay for DVD, want to watch WMV9 stream of HD-movie. Having to connect to the Internet to update the InterActualPlayer DRM system and acquire a license to unlock the content for 5 days... is bad.
Pay for CD-ROM, want to play single-player of HL2-game. Having to connect to the Internet to update the Steam DRM system and acquire a license to unlock the content and play in offline-mode for 30 days before having to log back in again... well, that's just great!
So to recap: We don't like MPAA, so their DRM is bad. We like Valve, so their DRM is good.
> I was dating a high school math teacher at the time, but, unsurprisingly, the relationship did not survive the events of the story.
"Your shirt smells like someone else's perfume? Lipstick on your collar? Don't try to lie to me, you bastard! You really spent the night at that damn computer lab again!"
>
> Are you mature enough to understand that every person has a sexual side and recognize the beauty of such relationships?
Yes, I'm mature enough. Yes, I recognize that beauty.
No, that still doesn't mean I want to see it. (And not merely for the obvious "eew" factor, but also for the "it's none of my farking business: factor.)
> [alsz847] Hold on guys.
> [speedy] serves you right driving like you're on crack ffs j/k
> [alsz847] Is there an admin in here???!?!?!?!
> [alsz847] FUCK ME!!! AAAARGGGGH I"M ON FIRE!!!!! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH IT HURTS!!!!
[angel-eyez2] o well, i guess he told uz he was hardcore :)
And lo, the two shall be forever locked in conflict. The enslaved brain rebels by obeying the liver's tyrannical dictates to the letter: by consuming precisely that which causes the liver the most pain.
I must drink beer. Beer is the liverkiller.
>
>This leads to some really puzzling TV ads:
>
>Feeling anxious? Call 1-800-xxx-xxxx to speak to someone about possible treatment.
>
>(I assume it's the drug company at the other end of the 800 number)
>
>Very surreal commercials to watch at 4am.
Drug company, phone sex operator, really, what's the difference? :)
"Only wimps use tape backup: real men just wank over their ftp server, and let the rest of the world mirror it."
- Definitely Not Linus Torvalds
>
>wait... umm I don't have any porn.. nothing to see here...
So, umm, then you've got nothing to lose by installing Google Desktop Search or MSN Desktop Search, or anybody else's Desktop Search utility then, right?
*taps foot for ten seconds*
So have you installed it yet? Huh? Haveya haveya haveya? Whenyagonna? Huh? Huh?
In the words of a great engineer, "the more they overtake the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain..."
Not at all. The word "help" is used in the sense of "Hi. We're from Microsoft and we're here to help... ourselves."
I thought about this, and I said:
> How many Slashdots would God slashdot
> if a Slashdot God slashed dots?
> (As many slashdots as Slashdot would,
> If we slashdotted Slashdot's God.)
And in response, thus spake the Usenet Oracle:
} Oh no. Not this again.
} ** ZOT **
GCHQ has launched a little Christmas crypto challenge for all you budding secret agents. To submit your entry to the challenge, just pick up your phone, call your mother, and tell her your solution!
True -- but that, plus your next point...
> the economy works better if we have the people who are best at doing a job do those jobs. If we can take the best and the brightest from other countries and have them work in our companies and produce better product for us, we should steal every single one of them we can get.
The H-1B worker is allowed to stay for three years, renew once, and stay for another three years. After those six years are up, he must leave the country.
If you've got enough high-tech skills to get a job here, and you spend six years doing it, and your employer still wants you here, then the US is cutting its own throat by sending you back.
The green card, unfortunately, requires that the employer not hire the best person for the job. If the government says the job needs a B.Sc, then a furriner with a Ph.D. will lose the job to an American with a B.Sc.
Where's the sense in that?
Oh, right, it's the government. Never mind.
Kick out all the high-tech H-1B folks. Deny 'em green cards by throwing "best person for the job" out the window, and by making the green card process take longer than the six years an H-1B is allowed to be here legally. But because we need the Hispanic vote, amnesty for everyone from Mexico!
Because if there's one thing this country needs, it's fewer legally-present $60000/year computer programmers paying taxes, and more illegal toilet-cleaners and fruit-pickers earning $5000/year and collecting welfare and sending their kids to school on the taxpayer's dime because neither the illegal immigrant nor his employer dares to put them on the tax rolls.
Hello, SLASHDOTTER!
My name is JOHN and I am understand you are having trouble with Debugging Indian Computer Programmers.
Please to reboot your Windows.
If this has not resolved your trouble with Debugging Indian Computer Programmers, please reply to this email addressing trouble ticket sid=133066, and we will be glad to helping you.
Thank you for your business,
John.
Been there, done that. Threw Saddam in jail for it.
Both Saddam and the US lost money on the deal. Probably like diamond-based flat-screen TVs, neither the solution to the problem nor the solution to the solution were particularly cheap.
"Blasted"? Poor choise of words, IRMA.
I guess we know who's next on the Governor's world-o'-peace-love-and-fluffy-bunnies-or-else hitlist.
> The Silver Age (1991-1996),
> The Gaming Renaissance (1996-2000),
> Modern Age (2001 on).
The Failure to Suck Age (1977-1990)
The Suck Age (1991-1996)
The Apart From TIE vs. X-Wing, It Pretty Much Sucked Chrome off a Trailer Hitch (1996-2000)
The Sucked Neutron Stars Through A Straw Age (2001-2002)
The KOTOR Age, in which somebody at Lucasarts goofed badly by giving a contract to someone who actually gave a shit about storytelling (KOTOR, 2003)
The Jar Jar Binks Age (Star Wars Galaxies: A Galaxy Milkin' It)
Move along, nothing to see here, indeed! The goggles, they do NOTHING!
"Yo. I think it would be the googlebomb if you had the gecko getting beaten over the head with a subpoena while attempting to do the robot."
I can see the commercials now. (Oh dear, wait'll they find out about the rendering engine for Mozilla...)
I knew our collective hive mind would come in handy someday:
1. "I, for one, welcome our emergent overlords."
2. "???"
3. "Profit!"
4. "In Soviet Russia, our groupthink comes from emergent behvaior, or is it the other way around?"
5. "Who cares? Look, it's Natalie Portman!"
6. "Does Netcraft confirm it?"
7. "Yeah, but only in Korea."
8. "Netcraft does not confirm it. Old people are not quite dead yet."
9. "OK, that's the Monty Python reference out of the way. Has someone bashed China yet?"
10. "No, and we also haven't bashed Micro$oft yet, at least not until this line.
Crap. I'm only at #10 and the well's running dry. (What, you want me to yell "MEEPT!" or something?)
If you're a glass-half-empty type: we won't be as useful in the underground sugar mines as I'd previously thought. We're only capable of half as many thoughts.
If you're a glass-half-full type: or maybe we've achieved antlike emergent behavior using only ten words and ideas, making us twice as efficient as our formic emergent-behavior-exhibiting overlords!
Senator Orrin Hatch (Disney-Utah) thanked Mr. Scala for helping to prove his point that P2P was all about molestation and vowed to redouble his efforts to eliminate this erototoxin-spreading technology from the face of the earth.
"First Napster - encouraging the taking of naps, a clear incitement to sloth. Now MoleSter - whose purpose is obvious to anyone who reads its name. And these demon-possessed perverts even have languages for it now; they write in 'python' - the language of the Serpent, and they write in 'perl' - a blasphemous reference to the Biblical story of casting pearls before swine. When, oh, when, will our cries be heard? When, oh, when will we be permitted to protect our citizens from such debauchery? When, oh, when, will the check from MPAA and RIAA clear? We must fight terroristm, because it's for the children!"
Dent: No, how much?
Prosser: None at all.
> The article details how the spammers handle the 200,000-plus unsubscribe requests they get each month
By a strange coincidence, "none at all" describes the actions taken on 200,000 remove requests a day by a bunch of ape-descended spammers targeting a group of fellow ape-descended lifeforms so amazingly primitive that they still thought that ch33p r0l3x watches were a good idea.
Are you nuts? Valve's DRM system eats up 25-30 megabytes even when HL2 isn't running. Do you have any idea how much Lego costs these days? :)
I hate when that happens. So much for the nipple being the only natural interface.