> I suspect that if this technology has actually been around for 20 years, it has gotten good enough to be nearly impossible to bypass.
This technology has been around a lot more than 20 years.
In Soviet Romania, a sample page from every typewriter had to be registered with the police, so that any samizdat produced could be quickly traced back to the typewriter's owner. Use your imagination as to what happened to the owner, or Google for it.
In Romania every typewriter had to be registered with a local magistrate. Samples of letters typed on these machines had to be produced under the observation of the secret police so they could trace underground publishing activity.
- G. Davey, Christian Publishing: Before and After the Communist Collapse
In Soviet Russia, all photocopiers were registered with the KGB and kept in secure rooms, to which physical access was restricted.
Some samizdat works, mostly magazines, were typed on typewriter. The copies were indistinct and hard to read. I realized that the movement against violating human rights was doomed to be an eternal amusement of the few intellectuals without proper copyprinters. But where could one find a copyprinting machine in the country, where all the copiers were affixed with seals at night and placed in the special rooms where only proved KGB members could work on it. There was the only decision - to make the machine ourselves. It had to be easy to make and quite efficient.
- A. A. Bolonkin, Memoirs of Soviet Political Prisoner
The West is probably still playing catch-up.
We need a Steam For Non-Steam-Fans FAQ
on
Review: Half-Life 2
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
> Steam doesn't need to talk to the servers except during initial install. You can run it for years in disconnected mode, and it doesn't need to run on every boot. You can, if you'd like, connect just once and never again. Your game keeps working.
Thanks. That's the first interesting thing I've heard during the past week. I can tolerate software activation in the case of a title as strong as HL2, but anything that regularly phones home (or even tries to) is a dealbreaker for me and others.
What Valve really needed to do to defuse some of this antipathy was write a "Steam FAQ for People Who Hate Steam" (aka "for people who hate spyware" - because "online content distribution system" are pretty much synonymous with spyware these days).
As long as I'm dreaming in technicolor, the "Steam FAQ For People Who Hate Steam" should outline exactly what Steam does and doesn't do, how it's architected, the relationship between the Steam.exe, the game.DLL/.GCF, and the rest of your drive, and define in CompSci terms, what "online mode", "offline mode", "remember", "backup", "encrypt", "unlock", and "purchase" mean, and how they differ from each other.
No marketing person ("Steam means you never have to remember where you put the CD! And you can use it to preload 6 gigabytes of encrypted/locked Valve stuff onto your friend's computer if you want to play at his house! Just don't be anywhere near him when he finds out you've busted his bandwidth cap! Buy anything we have to sell with a single mouse click, because your credit card's registered with us! And we'll pop up new and exciting information about new and exciting CONTENT through the Steam Netwurk!") should be allowed anywhere near the technical people writing the FAQ.
Re:Steam-like online distrubtion is inevitable
on
Review: Half-Life 2
·
· Score: 1
. Steam works fine in a disconnected mode after you've authenticated, for one thing.
Does that hold through reboots? Do I have to have this Steam thingy running (even in "offline") mode every time I boot, even if I have no intention of playing HL2 on that session?
Or do I have to reconnect to the 'net and let Steam re-phone home after every reboot of the machine? (My gaming rig is a power-hungry Windows box. As should come as no surprise to the Slashdot crowd, it gets rebooted a lot, I like to keep it off teh Intarweb for obvious reasons, and the fact that it's a noisy power-hog are two reasons why I prefer not to run it 24/7.)
> And for another, it's completely braindead easy for them to push out a small patch to Steam users that removes Steam as a requirement for unlocking/playing/whatever if they decide to shutdown the service. All installed and future copies can easily be un-Steamed.
Which would be awful nice of 'em, and I hope they do so. But doesn't that give the lie to whole "But Steam's part of the HL2 engine!" rhetoric?:)
> The reason is that Steam is an integral part of the engine (for example, you can access your friends list while playing). However, once activated, you do not need an internet connection.
Hello? Since when has a "friends list" been an integral part of an FPS engine? This isn't a fucking MMORPG.
> For the most part these problems seem to primarily be reported by individuals who purchased the game in a retail store in a box. I purchased the game via Steam and downloaded it in the space of about three hours. I have experienced no problems in playing the game.
Can any CD owners confirm, for instance, the rumor that you have to install CS if you try to install HL2? (Because the HL2 intstaller looks for hl2.ico on the 5th CD, but the only thing on the 5th CD is CS?)
That's a mistake that's so blindingly stupid that I'd question whether or not it was a deliberate attempt Valve's part to further sabotage the retail release to drive users to Steam. (Compounded by equally blindingly-stupid negligence Vivendi's part not to catch it during QA.)
Re:Steam-like online distrubtion is inevitable
on
Review: Half-Life 2
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
> = We get better games if Steam is a success*
> >= If it's not, we'll see retail prices rise to $60-80 in the near future to compensate.
I'd gladly pay $60-80 for a non-steam version of HL2.
> Long live Steam!
Because the day Steam's authentication servers go away, your $40 boxed retail version and your $30 pile of GCF files become worthless.
> [...] unless penguins [emperor-penguin.com] have an elaborate advanced social structure with some weird hangups about perpetuating behaviors that are counterproductive to their own survival [...]
> Who invented the steam machine powered by coal? >
Who invented the internal combustion engine? >Who invented the CFC's which destroy the ozone layer? >
Who invented the non-biodegradable plastic wrap which created gigantic garbage dumps? >
Who began to anihilate species on masse just to get economical advantage? >
Who invented the dangerous chemicals that are poured onto rivers and oceans? > >Well the developed nations, of course. DOH!
Who invented the power source that made slavery no longer economically viable when compared with industrialism?
Who invented the internal combustion engine, without which our streets would now be chest-deep in horseshit?
Who invented the CFCs which made refrigeration safe and affordable to the middle class?
Who invented the plastics which made deforestation for wood pulp no longer necessary?
Who began to use newfound advantages to expand into new ecological niches, I mean, aside from what every other species on this ball of rock has done for the past 4.5 billion years?
Who invented the dangerous chemicals that fight disease and doubled the human lifespan relative to where it was just 500 years ago?
Well, the developed nations, of course. DOH!
And therefore, I think the developed nations are pretty cool, and forcing them to deindustrialize back to third-world shithole standards of living would make life suck for the rest of humanity as well.
> The American lifestyle is not sustainable.
> >Wish all you want. We live on a planet with finite resources. Unless we develop energy-to-matter conversion devices (replicators) we will have to fall in line and ratchet back our standards of living. Sooner or later, you're going to have to scale back all the luxuries you enjoy now.
It's a free country. You can live like a third-worlder if you want to. Me? I'm choosing "later".
> No, Kyoto does NOT place higher standards on the U.S. Any country that polluted as much as the U.S. would be held to the sane standards. There only happens to be one country causing like 40% of the world's pollution.
Because the "standards" were drawn up by... who, again?
Kyoto is three wolves and a sheep voting on nutritional standards.
> OK. On the one hand, we have stories of techies not finding jobs; and on the other, we have stories from businesses which claim that lack of H1s is killing their business,
Pretty consistent. There may be an oversupply of techies in the economy at large, but the H-1B supply is not constant, regardless of demand.
US immigration law "caps" H-1B immigration at a set number. During the boom, it was once 65,000 - high demand and low supply meant that employers couldn't hire enough people, and they bri^H^H^Hpetitioned Congress for a law that would raise the cap. That law said that in 2000, it was to be 115,000, and in 2001-2-3, it was to be 195,000.
As you can see, any time a politician attempts to choose a number for supply and demand and slam it into the market with the fist of legislation, he'll fuck it up, which is precisely what happened. The H-1B cap kept going up, long after the economic bubble that actually made these new employees useful had burst.
So what's the situation now? Well, just like in the last paragraph -- when politicians attempt to legislate the economy, they invariably fuck it up. The law that was passed to increase the cap came with an expiry date. So what happens - after the cap goes up to 195,000 during the recession? Why, it's Fiscal Year 2004 (starting on October 1, 2003)... and now that the economy's picking up, and demand is growing we... well, there's increased demand so let's... let the law expire and cut the H-1B quota from 195,000 back to 65,000! Cut the supply by 2/3! Yay!
And we wonder why our economy's fucked up?
Because even the most cynical of us would never believe our government would be this stupid, a link.
So in the grand scheme of things, the H-1B cap manipulations that seem to be legislatively timed for maximum negative economic effect, are pretty small potatoes.
> > > Dolphins don't make me cry. They make me vomit! > > > Dolphins aren't "always smiling". That's just an optical illusion[...] > > > Dolphins don't use radar. It's sonar. > > > If dolphins are that smart, why haven't they built cities? > > > Finally, why does every can of tuna say on it "Dolphin friendly" ? > > >
They aren't beautiful, they're overrated. Dolphin-worship culture is merely an excuse for whiney new-age types {who probably believe in aliens as well} to make their own miserable existences seem a little less pointless. {And for people to make a quick buck selling tat decorated with dolphins to gullible people.}
I work at an aquarium, and I've the liberty of preserving the rest of the reply to this thread.
clik-k-reeeeeek-klik-rDELPHINE TRANSLATOR ACTIVE
> > "Tee-hee! You're an orca, aren't you? Got the cute little eye patch thing goin' on, but we warned you about the primates and their looking-boxes. The primates, especially the ones on Slashdot, are really protective of their mascot. Silly Orcas, always thinkin' with your stomach, not your brain. > > > >VOTE LEVIATHAN-2008! THE ILLUMINATED CHOICE!!!k!ik!"
vrooooop-wooooaSPECIES TRANSITION DETECTED
> "Yeah, yeah, yeah... So Shamfoo ate one fuckin' penguin in front of a National Geographic expedition, and we never hear the end of it. Fuck you, fin-boy, and your blowhole end up lookin' like that guy on tunase-cx. Oh, and Leviathan's a pussy. > >CTHULHU-2008, YOU COMMIE FINBERAL WUSS!!!wo!o!!oo!!oo!o!"
Then again, they didn't hear us the first time Internet1 laughed in their face of their business model, reached down its throat, cut through its esophagus, pulled out its still-beating heart, seasoned it, grilled it, ate it, shat it back out through a million fileservers, and shoved it back down its still-steaming gullet.
So it's not too surprising they didn't hear it the first time on Internet2.
Slashdot, geeky internetting
And your server don't know what your server is getting
(The creme de la creme of the geek world
In a show with everything but Natalie Portman.)
Time flies, doesn't seem a minute
Since your hosting company had your web site in it?
All change, don't you know that when you
play at this level, there's no ordinary venue
It's on somebody's blog, then Fark... or... or this place!
One night on Slashdot and the world's your oyster,
The blades are temples, but the bits ain't free,
You'll find a God in every cached site pointer,
If you're unlucky it goes to goat-se.
(He can fit an angel - and the Christmas tree.)
One box's very like another,
When your server's fallen to pieces, brother.
(It's a drag, I'm a whore, it's really such a pity
To see a site 404, not lookin' at the piccies)
"Whaddya mean? You've seen one set of polished BNC connectors..."
(T-1 lines, smokin' with heat - heat!
Some are set up in the server room's bomb suite)
"Get farked, you're talkin' to a tourist,
whose every click's among the purest.
I get my hits above the bandwidth limit, sunshine..."
One night on Slashdot makes your host site humble,
Not much between hot grits and ecstasy,
One night on Slashdot and your server crumbles,
Can't be too careful with your company.
(I can feel Ms. Portman walkin' next to me.)
Chessboard's gonna be the witness
To the ultimate test of server room fitness
This grips me more than would a Slashvertisement or duplicate posting.
Thank God I'm only posting on here, trolling it.
I don't see you guys rating
The kind of posts I'm contemplating.
I'd let you mod, I would invite you,
But the links we use would not excite you.
So you'd better go back to your Fark, your Onion, your BBSpot, your autopr0n...
One night on Slashdot and the world's your oyster,
The blades are temples, but the bits ain't free,
You'll find a God in every cached site pointer,
A little chess, a little history.
(I can get the hot grits, where's my Natalie?)
One night on Slashdot makes your host site humble,
Not much between hot grits and ecstasy,
One night on Slashdot and your server crumbles,
Can't be too careful with your company.
(I can feel Ms. Portman trollin' next to me.)
> The game doesn't demand you be on-line after activation. It does require Steam, but Steam is a PART of Half-Life 2. It's the foundation the game is built upon.
Uh huh. And WeSpy4U2.33 is part of Kazaa. ("See, the product doesn't work if you try to bypass the spyware component! We're just trying to enhance your Kazaa experience and make sure you have the latest and greatest we have to offer!")
What happens next, when EA writes its own clone of Steam, without which no EA titles will run? And when Activision writes its clone? And Sony writes its clone? And the MPAA writes its clone and bundles it with Windows Media Player 16.666? And RIAA writes its clone as a part of theyTunes 2.0?
How many of these "online content delivery services" will we have to be running, simultaneously, hoping that none of them conflict with each other, cursing the pop-up ads that come as marketeers decide to "monetize" the desktop, and taking "self help measures" when they see us doing something they don't like?
And how many of them will be as "honest" about not being spyware as Steam might be?
> Valve is the first company to really do something like this and they did it with one of the most anticipated releases in the world.
Because if it weren't the most anticipated release of 2002, 2003, and 2004 combined, none of us would put up with this bullshit to play a single-player game offline, and sales would be zero.
Hmm. "cool"? So that's how they spell "asstastic" at Creative Labs these days!
Let's see. The iPod wins hands-down in functionality, usability, and appearance. So who cares if the Zen sounds cooler? We're only talking about audio output devic---hmm, that didn't come out quite right.
*backpedaling furiously* Umm, I mean, they're both solid-state, so they all sound cool! And it's winter! So gimme a nice warm set of vaccuum tubes powered by a backpack-mounted car battery or give me death, man!
> Why not just report your odometer reading each year? It could even by done by the service station that performs your annual inspection.
California is only entitled to tax you for miles you drive in the state of California. The minute you cross the border into Nevada, Oregon, or Mexico, you can't be taxed.
Therefore - if you're going to tax by the mile, you must use a GPS tracking device to ensure that only miles taxable within your jurisdiction are taxed. Otherwise you're one judge's gavel away from having your tax law thrown out. Don't fuck with the Interstate Commerce Clause.
Of course, taxing by the mile is an asstastic idea to begin with - but even in the "green" People's Republic of Kalifornia, it doesn't matter how green the idea of "tax the H2 more than the Prius" might be... the only green that matters to a politician is the color of his subjects' money. (and/or the money of the GPS device manufacturers' lobby:)
Submitter: I fixed your headline for you. (Don't like it? Gimme a break, I've only got so many characters to describe how hard it's gonna suck.)
The interesting question for the next 5 years: Now that PIXR is free from the creative and financial shackles of DIS, will they be able to get their movies shown?
Or will DIS be able to use its distribution muscle to keep it out of theaters long enough to starve PIXR of revenue, and to serve as a warning to current "partners" that You Don't Fuck With The Mouse.
> How am I supposed to help? >With TFA slashdotted, I don't know exactly what he wants. How do I know if I can help?
TFA has already been cut-and-pasted into the Slashdot thread. To summarize:
If you are an infectious disease specialist who can prescribe high doses of antibiotics (presumably penicillin-based, delivered by IV), and/or admit him to a hospital, you're supposed to call him or email him, and that goes double if you have experience treating Actinomycosis.
> They point out that well understood HCI principles aren't finding their way into relatively new languages like Java and C#."
Well, duh! That's because if, according to the article...
> The goal is to make it possible for people to express their ideas in the same way they think about them.
...most ideas just don't work that way.
#include// Do What I Mean
thingy main (thingy list) {
Sort thingy
No, like this
With the guy's name on the right
No, I guess the middle initial deserves its own column. No, I didn't think of that.
But don't print the middle initial.
No, not like that.
Eew, that font sucks.
Yeah, like that.
No, like it was before.
Yeah, no--wait. I gotta talk to my boss.
He said to do it like this.// wave hands
But he didnt like it.
Fuck this, I'll pay some guy in India to do it.
}
> "It's an off switch. He'll get years for that." > >
20 Minutes Into the Future...and getting closer every second.
20 minutes into the future -- 17 years into the past.
From the Max Headroom Episode Guide, we have 14 episodes. Of those 14, I can classify only THREE as "fiction", meaning "requires technology that doesn't exist today."
Episode 1: Blipverts. Check. (Ad agencies are designing ads to look "good" even if you're fast-forwarding them at 30x on a DVR).
Episode 2: Rakers. 75% there. ("Ultimate Fighting Championships", "COPS" - it'll be official when we have a reality TV series in which serious bodily harm and/or death is part of the show.)
Episode 3: Body Banks. Check. (Harvesting of Brazilian street youth, Chinese execution market.)
Episode 4: Security Systems. Check. ("Credit fraud! That's worse than murder!" - and now 3 years for skipping commercials.)
Episode 5: War. Check. (Bringing you the opening 72 hours of Operation Iraqi Freedom, live and direct!)
Episode 6: The Blanks. 50% there. (HomeSec, national ID card, Safe Travel programme, MATRIX database, Supreme Court decisions regarding citizens' obligation to reveal or provide identity on demand, all clearly pointing towards the criminalization of anonymity and development of systems and technologies to make the "roundup" option more practical.)
Episode 7: Academy. Check. ("Captain Midnight" was a real-life "zipper", and was likely the inspiration for this episode. This was the only "current events" episode in the series.)
Episode 8: Deities. 75% there. (We already have "online churches", it's only a matter of time before some huckster starts charging for diskspace for the soul. All the technology is now in place, all we need is the huckster and some suckers.:)
Episode 9: Grossberg's Return. Check. ("Watch while you sleep" devices in the episode are basically like auto-clickers for those stupid dotcom pyramid schemes like AllAdvantage, used to artificially boost clickthrough ratings.)
Episode 11: Whacketts. 0% there. (Finally, another fiction episode:)
Episode 12: Neurostim. 25% there. ("Neuromarketing" is the buzzword -- advertisers are doing active brain scans to see how effective their campaigns are. Long way from being able to induce brain states to drive product, but it's a start.)
Episode 13. Lessons. Check. (Any teacher using showing taped from the TV in the classroom without paying a license fee is eligible for the DMCA smackdown. In 1987, the smackdown was dystopian science fiction. Today, the surprising thing would be if they didn't get the smackdown.)
Episode 14. Baby Growbags. 0% (OK, three episodes out of 14, fiction.)
> When you look at the design of a CRT [wikipedia.org], with a stream of electrons and radiation being shot directly at a peice of glass with your eyeballs directly on the other side, is it so hard to believe it could cause damage to the eyes?
When you look at the alternative -- going into a room with a blue ceiling and a gigantic fusion reactor that pumps a flux of 1.4 kW/m^2 of radiation directly into your eyeballs -- pulling the shades, dimming the lights, and firing up HL2 on the CRT is a welcome relief!
> More is sometimes less, less is sometimes more. The danger is that by trying to be more, agencies like the FCC end up having their authority weakened. People will not take their policies, and other policies seriously. The more they do to try to crack down, the less effective they become. This is a proven fact, at least in theory.
Because in theory, nobody takes a word DEA says seriously. In fact, we continue to take their guns very seriously.
It is always better to be feared than loved. Or even respected. And remember, the eighth layer of the stack is always "Political".
Slashdot Mirror
This technology has been around a lot more than 20 years.
In Soviet Romania, a sample page from every typewriter had to be registered with the police, so that any samizdat produced could be quickly traced back to the typewriter's owner. Use your imagination as to what happened to the owner, or Google for it.
In Soviet Russia, all photocopiers were registered with the KGB and kept in secure rooms, to which physical access was restricted.
The West is probably still playing catch-up.
Thanks. That's the first interesting thing I've heard during the past week. I can tolerate software activation in the case of a title as strong as HL2, but anything that regularly phones home (or even tries to) is a dealbreaker for me and others.
What Valve really needed to do to defuse some of this antipathy was write a "Steam FAQ for People Who Hate Steam" (aka "for people who hate spyware" - because "online content distribution system" are pretty much synonymous with spyware these days).
As long as I'm dreaming in technicolor, the "Steam FAQ For People Who Hate Steam" should outline exactly what Steam does and doesn't do, how it's architected, the relationship between the Steam .exe, the game .DLL/.GCF, and the rest of your drive, and define in CompSci terms, what "online mode", "offline mode", "remember", "backup", "encrypt", "unlock", and "purchase" mean, and how they differ from each other.
No marketing person ("Steam means you never have to remember where you put the CD! And you can use it to preload 6 gigabytes of encrypted/locked Valve stuff onto your friend's computer if you want to play at his house! Just don't be anywhere near him when he finds out you've busted his bandwidth cap! Buy anything we have to sell with a single mouse click, because your credit card's registered with us! And we'll pop up new and exciting information about new and exciting CONTENT through the Steam Netwurk!") should be allowed anywhere near the technical people writing the FAQ.
Does that hold through reboots? Do I have to have this Steam thingy running (even in "offline") mode every time I boot, even if I have no intention of playing HL2 on that session?
Or do I have to reconnect to the 'net and let Steam re-phone home after every reboot of the machine? (My gaming rig is a power-hungry Windows box. As should come as no surprise to the Slashdot crowd, it gets rebooted a lot, I like to keep it off teh Intarweb for obvious reasons, and the fact that it's a noisy power-hog are two reasons why I prefer not to run it 24/7.)
> And for another, it's completely braindead easy for them to push out a small patch to Steam users that removes Steam as a requirement for unlocking/playing/whatever if they decide to shutdown the service. All installed and future copies can easily be un-Steamed.
Which would be awful nice of 'em, and I hope they do so. But doesn't that give the lie to whole "But Steam's part of the HL2 engine!" rhetoric? :)
Hello? Since when has a "friends list" been an integral part of an FPS engine? This isn't a fucking MMORPG.
> For the most part these problems seem to primarily be reported by individuals who purchased the game in a retail store in a box. I purchased the game via Steam and downloaded it in the space of about three hours. I have experienced no problems in playing the game.
Can any CD owners confirm, for instance, the rumor that you have to install CS if you try to install HL2? (Because the HL2 intstaller looks for hl2.ico on the 5th CD, but the only thing on the 5th CD is CS?)
That's a mistake that's so blindingly stupid that I'd question whether or not it was a deliberate attempt Valve's part to further sabotage the retail release to drive users to Steam. (Compounded by equally blindingly-stupid negligence Vivendi's part not to catch it during QA.)
>
>= If it's not, we'll see retail prices rise to $60-80 in the near future to compensate.
I'd gladly pay $60-80 for a non-steam version of HL2.
> Long live Steam!
Because the day Steam's authentication servers go away, your $40 boxed retail version and your $30 pile of GCF files become worthless.
The Linux threads are over that-a-way. :)
> Who invented the internal combustion engine?
>Who invented the CFC's which destroy the ozone layer?
> Who invented the non-biodegradable plastic wrap which created gigantic garbage dumps?
> Who began to anihilate species on masse just to get economical advantage?
> Who invented the dangerous chemicals that are poured onto rivers and oceans?
>
>Well the developed nations, of course. DOH!
Who invented the power source that made slavery no longer economically viable when compared with industrialism?
Who invented the internal combustion engine, without which our streets would now be chest-deep in horseshit?
Who invented the CFCs which made refrigeration safe and affordable to the middle class?
Who invented the plastics which made deforestation for wood pulp no longer necessary?
Who began to use newfound advantages to expand into new ecological niches, I mean, aside from what every other species on this ball of rock has done for the past 4.5 billion years?
Who invented the dangerous chemicals that fight disease and doubled the human lifespan relative to where it was just 500 years ago?
Well, the developed nations, of course. DOH!
And therefore, I think the developed nations are pretty cool, and forcing them to deindustrialize back to third-world shithole standards of living would make life suck for the rest of humanity as well.
>
>Wish all you want. We live on a planet with finite resources. Unless we develop energy-to-matter conversion devices (replicators) we will have to fall in line and ratchet back our standards of living. Sooner or later, you're going to have to scale back all the luxuries you enjoy now.
It's a free country. You can live like a third-worlder if you want to. Me? I'm choosing "later".
Because the "standards" were drawn up by... who, again?
Kyoto is three wolves and a sheep voting on nutritional standards.
Pretty consistent. There may be an oversupply of techies in the economy at large, but the H-1B supply is not constant, regardless of demand.
US immigration law "caps" H-1B immigration at a set number. During the boom, it was once 65,000 - high demand and low supply meant that employers couldn't hire enough people, and they bri^H^H^Hpetitioned Congress for a law that would raise the cap. That law said that in 2000, it was to be 115,000, and in 2001-2-3, it was to be 195,000.
As you can see, any time a politician attempts to choose a number for supply and demand and slam it into the market with the fist of legislation, he'll fuck it up, which is precisely what happened. The H-1B cap kept going up, long after the economic bubble that actually made these new employees useful had burst.
So what's the situation now? Well, just like in the last paragraph -- when politicians attempt to legislate the economy, they invariably fuck it up. The law that was passed to increase the cap came with an expiry date. So what happens - after the cap goes up to 195,000 during the recession? Why, it's Fiscal Year 2004 (starting on October 1, 2003)... and now that the economy's picking up, and demand is growing we... well, there's increased demand so let's... let the law expire and cut the H-1B quota from 195,000 back to 65,000! Cut the supply by 2/3! Yay!
And we wonder why our economy's fucked up?
Because even the most cynical of us would never believe our government would be this stupid, a link.
If you think that's fucking retarded, remember that this is the INS (now BCIS) we're talking about. These are the same folks that, approved the 9/11 hijackers their flight school visas SIX MONTHS AFTER THE ATTACK.
So in the grand scheme of things, the H-1B cap manipulations that seem to be legislatively timed for maximum negative economic effect, are pretty small potatoes.
Not exactly a feature I look for in games. So in the case of Half-Life 2, how would anyone notice?
> > > Dolphins aren't "always smiling". That's just an optical illusion[...]
> > > Dolphins don't use radar. It's sonar.
> > > If dolphins are that smart, why haven't they built cities?
> > > Finally, why does every can of tuna say on it "Dolphin friendly" ?
> > > They aren't beautiful, they're overrated. Dolphin-worship culture is merely an excuse for whiney new-age types {who probably believe in aliens as well} to make their own miserable existences seem a little less pointless. {And for people to make a quick buck selling tat decorated with dolphins to gullible people.}
I work at an aquarium, and I've the liberty of preserving the rest of the reply to this thread.
clik-k-reeeeeek-klik-rDELPHINE TRANSLATOR ACTIVE
> > "Tee-hee! You're an orca, aren't you? Got the cute little eye patch thing goin' on, but we warned you about the primates and their looking-boxes. The primates, especially the ones on Slashdot, are really protective of their mascot. Silly Orcas, always thinkin' with your stomach, not your brain.
> >
> >VOTE LEVIATHAN-2008! THE ILLUMINATED CHOICE!!!k!ik!"
vrooooop-wooooaSPECIES TRANSITION DETECTED
> "Yeah, yeah, yeah... So Shamfoo ate one fuckin' penguin in front of a National Geographic expedition, and we never hear the end of it. Fuck you, fin-boy, and your blowhole end up lookin' like that guy on tunase-cx. Oh, and Leviathan's a pussy.
>
>CTHULHU-2008, YOU COMMIE FINBERAL WUSS!!!wo!o!!oo!!oo!o!"
They didn't quite hear it the first time.
Then again, they didn't hear us the first time Internet1 laughed in their face of their business model, reached down its throat, cut through its esophagus, pulled out its still-beating heart, seasoned it, grilled it, ate it, shat it back out through a million fileservers, and shoved it back down its still-steaming gullet.
So it's not too surprising they didn't hear it the first time on Internet2.
And your server don't know what your server is getting
(The creme de la creme of the geek world
In a show with everything but Natalie Portman.)
Time flies, doesn't seem a minute
Since your hosting company had your web site in it?
All change, don't you know that when you
play at this level, there's no ordinary venue
It's on somebody's blog, then Fark... or... or this place!
One night on Slashdot and the world's your oyster,
The blades are temples, but the bits ain't free,
You'll find a God in every cached site pointer,
If you're unlucky it goes to goat-se.
(He can fit an angel - and the Christmas tree.)
One box's very like another,
When your server's fallen to pieces, brother.
(It's a drag, I'm a whore, it's really such a pity
To see a site 404, not lookin' at the piccies)
"Whaddya mean? You've seen one set of polished BNC connectors..."
(T-1 lines, smokin' with heat - heat!
Some are set up in the server room's bomb suite)
"Get farked, you're talkin' to a tourist,
whose every click's among the purest.
I get my hits above the bandwidth limit, sunshine..."
One night on Slashdot makes your host site humble,
Not much between hot grits and ecstasy,
One night on Slashdot and your server crumbles,
Can't be too careful with your company.
(I can feel Ms. Portman walkin' next to me.)
Chessboard's gonna be the witness
To the ultimate test of server room fitness
This grips me more than would a Slashvertisement or duplicate posting.
Thank God I'm only posting on here, trolling it.
I don't see you guys rating
The kind of posts I'm contemplating.
I'd let you mod, I would invite you,
But the links we use would not excite you.
So you'd better go back to your Fark, your Onion, your BBSpot, your autopr0n...
One night on Slashdot and the world's your oyster,
The blades are temples, but the bits ain't free,
You'll find a God in every cached site pointer,
A little chess, a little history.
(I can get the hot grits, where's my Natalie?)
One night on Slashdot makes your host site humble,
Not much between hot grits and ecstasy,
One night on Slashdot and your server crumbles,
Can't be too careful with your company.
(I can feel Ms. Portman trollin' next to me.)
Uh huh. And WeSpy4U2.33 is part of Kazaa. ("See, the product doesn't work if you try to bypass the spyware component! We're just trying to enhance your Kazaa experience and make sure you have the latest and greatest we have to offer!")
What happens next, when EA writes its own clone of Steam, without which no EA titles will run? And when Activision writes its clone? And Sony writes its clone? And the MPAA writes its clone and bundles it with Windows Media Player 16.666? And RIAA writes its clone as a part of theyTunes 2.0?
How many of these "online content delivery services" will we have to be running, simultaneously, hoping that none of them conflict with each other, cursing the pop-up ads that come as marketeers decide to "monetize" the desktop, and taking "self help measures" when they see us doing something they don't like?
And how many of them will be as "honest" about not being spyware as Steam might be?
Because if it weren't the most anticipated release of 2002, 2003, and 2004 combined, none of us would put up with this bullshit to play a single-player game offline, and sales would be zero.
Hmm. "cool"? So that's how they spell "asstastic" at Creative Labs these days!
Let's see. The iPod wins hands-down in functionality, usability, and appearance. So who cares if the Zen sounds cooler? We're only talking about audio output devic---hmm, that didn't come out quite right.
*backpedaling furiously* Umm, I mean, they're both solid-state, so they all sound cool! And it's winter! So gimme a nice warm set of vaccuum tubes powered by a backpack-mounted car battery or give me death, man!
California is only entitled to tax you for miles you drive in the state of California. The minute you cross the border into Nevada, Oregon, or Mexico, you can't be taxed.
Therefore - if you're going to tax by the mile, you must use a GPS tracking device to ensure that only miles taxable within your jurisdiction are taxed. Otherwise you're one judge's gavel away from having your tax law thrown out. Don't fuck with the Interstate Commerce Clause.
Of course, taxing by the mile is an asstastic idea to begin with - but even in the "green" People's Republic of Kalifornia, it doesn't matter how green the idea of "tax the H2 more than the Prius" might be... the only green that matters to a politician is the color of his subjects' money. (and/or the money of the GPS device manufacturers' lobby :)
The interesting question for the next 5 years: Now that PIXR is free from the creative and financial shackles of DIS, will they be able to get their movies shown?
Or will DIS be able to use its distribution muscle to keep it out of theaters long enough to starve PIXR of revenue, and to serve as a warning to current "partners" that You Don't Fuck With The Mouse.
>With TFA slashdotted, I don't know exactly what he wants. How do I know if I can help?
TFA has already been cut-and-pasted into the Slashdot thread. To summarize:
If you are an infectious disease specialist who can prescribe high doses of antibiotics (presumably penicillin-based, delivered by IV), and/or admit him to a hospital, you're supposed to call him or email him, and that goes double if you have experience treating Actinomycosis.
Well, duh! That's because if, according to the article...
> The goal is to make it possible for people to express their ideas in the same way they think about them.
#include // Do What I Mean
thingy main (thingy list) { Sort thingy // wave hands
No, like this
With the guy's name on the right
No, I guess the middle initial deserves its own column. No, I didn't think of that.
But don't print the middle initial.
No, not like that.
Eew, that font sucks.
Yeah, like that.
No, like it was before.
Yeah, no--wait. I gotta talk to my boss.
He said to do it like this.
But he didnt like it.
Fuck this, I'll pay some guy in India to do it.
}
>
> 20 Minutes Into the Future...and getting closer every second.
20 minutes into the future -- 17 years into the past.
From the Max Headroom Episode Guide, we have 14 episodes. Of those 14, I can classify only THREE as "fiction", meaning "requires technology that doesn't exist today."
Episode 1: Blipverts. Check. (Ad agencies are designing ads to look "good" even if you're fast-forwarding them at 30x on a DVR).
Episode 2: Rakers. 75% there. ("Ultimate Fighting Championships", "COPS" - it'll be official when we have a reality TV series in which serious bodily harm and/or death is part of the show.)
Episode 3: Body Banks. Check. (Harvesting of Brazilian street youth, Chinese execution market.)
Episode 4: Security Systems. Check. ("Credit fraud! That's worse than murder!" - and now 3 years for skipping commercials.)
Episode 5: War. Check. (Bringing you the opening 72 hours of Operation Iraqi Freedom, live and direct!)
Episode 6: The Blanks. 50% there. (HomeSec, national ID card, Safe Travel programme, MATRIX database, Supreme Court decisions regarding citizens' obligation to reveal or provide identity on demand, all clearly pointing towards the criminalization of anonymity and development of systems and technologies to make the "roundup" option more practical.)
Episode 7: Academy. Check. ("Captain Midnight" was a real-life "zipper", and was likely the inspiration for this episode. This was the only "current events" episode in the series.)
Episode 8: Deities. 75% there. (We already have "online churches", it's only a matter of time before some huckster starts charging for diskspace for the soul. All the technology is now in place, all we need is the huckster and some suckers. :)
Episode 9: Grossberg's Return. Check. ("Watch while you sleep" devices in the episode are basically like auto-clickers for those stupid dotcom pyramid schemes like AllAdvantage, used to artificially boost clickthrough ratings.)
Episode 10: Dream Thieves. 0% there. (Finally, something that's just science fiction!)
Episode 11: Whacketts. 0% there. (Finally, another fiction episode :)
Episode 12: Neurostim. 25% there. ("Neuromarketing" is the buzzword -- advertisers are doing active brain scans to see how effective their campaigns are. Long way from being able to induce brain states to drive product, but it's a start.)
Episode 13. Lessons. Check. (Any teacher using showing taped from the TV in the classroom without paying a license fee is eligible for the DMCA smackdown. In 1987, the smackdown was dystopian science fiction. Today, the surprising thing would be if they didn't get the smackdown.)
Episode 14. Baby Growbags. 0% (OK, three episodes out of 14, fiction.)
When you look at the alternative -- going into a room with a blue ceiling and a gigantic fusion reactor that pumps a flux of 1.4 kW/m^2 of radiation directly into your eyeballs -- pulling the shades, dimming the lights, and firing up HL2 on the CRT is a welcome relief!
Because in theory, nobody takes a word DEA says seriously. In fact, we continue to take their guns very seriously.
It is always better to be feared than loved. Or even respected. And remember, the eighth layer of the stack is always "Political".