The list uses most of the same standards that are used by any major college or university in the us. Here, I'll help you see which ones I'm referring to, since my previous comments about some not applying fell upon deaf ears.
Look at: 1, 2, 5, 6, 7 ("or their own message to members? "), 8, 9, 12, 14, 15 (although I'd change "bible" to 'religious scriptures'), 16 (the latter half), 17, 18, 19, and 20.
Those are all the ones not specific to 'christian' groups, and guess what; they all apply.
Read Xenu.net and tell me those don't apply perfectly.
When a "church" endorses or causes harm to members and critics, I say to you, they deserve zero protection from the government. I'm a major fan of free speech and seperation of church and state, but their free expression ends when it causes harm to another.
Talk to a few ex-scientology 'church' members and you'll find some of them fear for their lives. The US government is in the business of protecting its citizens, even if from themselves and against their will. I fully support investigation of any illegal activities by any "religious" organization, regardless of its name or popularity. All citizens are equal under the law and therefore deserve the same protections, whether from a sadistic killer, or from a "church" member/leader. Calling yourself a church does not give you an impeneratrable shield with which to beat your members, even if they ask for and accept it.
"I think if they want to get people's cooperation, then they should refute Operation Clambake's information in an orderly and intelligent manner. "
What you fail to realize is that there's no information in the entire church which can be presented in an orderly, intelligent manner. They're claiming that we humans are Gods and that a cosmic warlord has fooled us all into thinking we're not. But we have a science fiction writer (Hubbard) to the rescue, as he's recently discovered the truth and is battling the evil warlord from his plush multi-million dollar mansion, while his followers learn to use their mystical powers.
If you could, please show me how that can be presented in an orderly, intelligent manner. I would suggest a comic book for guidance, but I don't think you'll be able to make it work.
Seeing as Scientology fits all the classic signs of a cult, why has it not been properly labled and dealt with? Simply reclassifying it properly would give law enforcement agencies much greater access to investigate and prosecute abuses within the "church" of Scientology and would serve to protect the members from themselves.
The only people who lose when you call Scientology what it is - a cult - are the profiteering people who run it.
Oddly enough, the only service I seem to be blocked from is the web search. Every other google page appears to work fine, and I can browse/search groups and catalogs etc. All I've found so far is that I can't search with the main search or the advanced search (which really just uses the main search but does all the syntax for you.)
Although I submitted a story (since rejected) about this, I'm looking for more info. Apparently, Comcast.net customers who try searching Google get the following message...
403 Forbidden Your client does not have permission to get URL/search?hl=en&q=slashdot from this server. (Client IP address: *snip*)
Unfortunately, Google has received a significant amount of abuse from your network. Because some person or people on your network have violated our Terms of Service (http://www.google.com/terms_of_service.html) and sent us numerous automated search queries, we have been forced to shut off access to Google's services from your network.
Note that we are not accusing you personally of having violated our Terms of Service; you are most likely an innocent victim of someone else's bad behavior. We're really sorry to have had to take this action.
We very much want to be able to work this problem out with your sysadmin or your ISP's network and/or abuse department. Unfortunately, so far, we have not been able to do so. Please contact your sysadmin or your ISP's network and/or abuse department and request that they track down who is causing this problem with Google. Please don't complain to Google about this problem (since there's nothing we can do until the problem on your network has been identified and stopped). Instead, please complain to your sysadmin or your ISP's network and/or abuse department. Letting them know that they need to take immediate action so that you can enjoy full access to the Internet (including Google) is the quickest way for you to regain your Google service.
We wholeheartedly apologize for the inconvenience to you, and with your help, we expect that we'll soon be able provide search results to you once more.
This has been confirmed by myself and 3 friends on Comcast.net. Anyone have more information? Please share with the class.
Alright, I'm not hosting these on my own comp because it'd be slow and painful for all of us (Comcast's lousy 128k up) and I'm not tryin' to get soood by Chipzilla.
Anyway, if anyone wants to be kind enough to host the pics, feel free as I'm giving anyone who wants to the rights to use these pics on another site so long as credit is given to Loki_1929. Also feel free to copy all the original HTML if it floats your boat. (there's nothing fancy on there anyway)
So here's your last shot from me, if you haven't seen them yet, try: Here Here and Here
Just thought I'd point out that the NSA has been running similar programs for a while. I actually looked into them when I was in college, but then I realized I was looking at Big Brother and asking for a part in the book 1984... on the wrong side.
Ok, with all this fuss from Intel about "Intel inside" and the mystical powers it endows upon Intel that allow it to sue innocent companies, I decided to check it out.
"Check what out?" you might ask. Well, in short, I wanted to check out what's 'inside'. So I did.
Now, to do this with a Pentium 4 would be silly. It's an expensive chip and I don't like the idea of supporting Intel's legal BS with my purchases. I found a couple of 486's laying around (33MHz if you're curious) and decided I should immediately set out to find out what's 'inside'.
Noticing the top is one piece told me to focus my efforts on relieving the chips of their bottom plate which I theorized (having neither the time nor the inclination to actually find out) were simply either glued or soldered on. Working under this theory, I tried using a small straighthead scewdriver to scrape away whatever was holding it in place on the outside and try to pry under the plate.
After realizing this was going nowhere fast, I looked around and decided the best way in was to reverse the process by which it was assembled. Keep in mind I had no intention of trying to actually do anything with what I found, nor do I have the expertise to figure out how any of it worked. I just wanted to see what the hell is 'inside'. I therefore decided to use a small butaine torch. This should, I theorized, heat up the glue or whatever enough to allow me to get into the plate.
I'm going to say this once and I hope everyone listens... DO NOT TRY THIS YOURSELF WITHOUT GLOVES, LONG SLEEVES, LONG PANTS, AND GOGGLES! Also make sure someone is very nearby (within talking distance) in case something goes wrong. I STRONGLY recommend you NOT try this AT ALL.
Ok, now torch in one hand, vice grips in the other, I proceeded to heat the plate up as much as possible. Pins were glowing, popping and crackling sounds were easily heart, and I started smelling a rather odd burning smell. Eventually the plate came off (dropped off the first one, was pryed off the second one) and I got my first look at what's 'inside'.
Take it from me Intel, this ain't worth suing over. Fire your lawyers and go back to making stuff. It's basically a little rectangular piece of material held into place by a bunch of small gold traces (one for each pin). It looks like the hologram cards from the old Marvel X-men cards. Well, I figured I should investigate further, so I lit up my investigation tool (torch) and went back to work. After maybe 10 minutes of torching various places, the chip pretty much exploded. I have to hand it to Intel, their die held up pretty well until the chip blew apart. Basically, there was a loud 'pop' and about half the cpu flew off to my right about 4 or 5 feet. Pieces of the die went all over and it was altogether really cool.
So anyway, that's the basic story, second CPU didn't explode, and by then I had taken out goggles and gloves to protect myself in case it did. So without further adu, I send you off here so you can see the pictures of what's 'inside'. Trademarks have been edited out for my continued enjoyment of not getting tossed in an 8x10 foot cell with "Bubba".
I'd like to take this opportunity to inform all of you that you'll soon be getting the paperwork in the mail from my lawyers (that's right, I have a team of them) for trademark infringement. I own a company called "The Inc." and over time I've noticed almost all of you using my trademarked company name in various posts/stories/journals etc. Being the reasonable, understanding person that I am, I shall settle for a small fine of say $1000 per infringement? After all, I really dislike court battles, so just pay me every time you want to use the word, 'the' and there won't be any trouble.:)
This satirical comment brought to you by Intel: Assholes Inside
Basically the video starts out with a kid flying in the air, with music playing that sounds like the M$ flying commercials music. An M$ employee sits there watching this on his workstation with a big smile on his face. All of a sudden, the flying kid starts falling for a second and the music sounds like it's an old record that hit a scratch. This happens over and over for like 3 seconds and then it shows an "illegal operation" in a WinXP style error box on one of the screens the guy is looking at. He furiously hits the enter key and the kid keeps going for a moment. Then the guy's jaw drops and the camera zooms in on a familiar BSOD, at which point the kid falls flat on his face. Then it fades out and it says, "For servers that only go down when they're brought down... Novell".
It ends with the guy saying into a telephone in a very irritated phone "Well you can tell Mr Bill Gates to get down here to sublevel 6 and he can kiss my a" at which point the music starts up again, cutting off the last half of that word and the Novell logo pops up.
It's very funny, go watch it at the library or something.
Yeah, I'm sure we can believe DC's word on this one, as they've been so helpful and honest in the past. Lawyer: So we need to comply with this agreement as soon as possible.
DC VP: Sure, no problem. Hey Phil, delete the database, ok?
Tech: Alright, here we go...
*clickety click*
Tech: OK, it's all wiped out boss.
Later that afternoon... DC VP: Got that backup of the DB restored yet Phil?
Not that I'm a big fan of their software solutions, but Novell has a new video which may or may not (I don't know for sure either way) become a running commercial ad. It's very amusing and carries the sentiment of virtually every geek out there. Might be a nice thing to mention to the bosses next time they come up with the "great idea" of digging themselves further into Microsoft products.
The only way it becomes unfair is if the regulation gets mixed in with the competition; ie. the local government puts regulations into effect that directly limits how each company can do business. So long as the regulation serves only to ensure compliance with anti-trust laws, and the government's competitive companies do not themselves violate anti-trust laws, I can't see how this is the least bit unfair. I think oversight is a must, obviously, but this shows excellent potential for a model of how the rest of the country could push broadband to each person's doorstep at an affordable price. Real competition has always forced each company involved to push forward as hard and fast as possible. Look at the difference in browser quality when M$ had competition from Netscape. IE 2 -> IE 3, and up through 5. I like 5 very much, but with no competition anymore from Netscape, 6 is nothing more than 5 with teletubby icons.
Right now, the broadband field had a few, large dominating companies. Verizon and Comcast are huge. Their service sucks, but what other choice is there? 56k modem? I make my living using computers and the internet, and I can't do that effectively on a modem. I hope and pray for something like what Los Angeles is doing to come to my area. Perhaps then my Comcast cable modem wouldn't go down for 2 minutes at a time 20 times a day. Right now it's (high quality | high speed | low cost) -- pick two.
You know, the first time I heard comedian George Carlin say during a performance that "this country was bought and sold a long time ago", I laughed it off as no big deal; an idea from an individual trying to entertain. When the DMCA came around, I thought, "well it's ok, it'll have amendments attatched to it to ensure nothing like the original actually makes it to law". The DMCA is now used to prosecute law-abiding people now. Now we come to the CBDTPA.
By this point, I've lost virtually all hope for the government of my great country. I've watched as my rights have been stripped away at an unbelievable rate in the last 5 years, and it leads me to believe that all we've fought for since breaking away from Brittain in the 18th century is almost gone. In the wake of Sept 11th, our privacy has been ripped away, our innermost secrets about our supposedly private lives demanded by our government. Communications are snooped, our own spies have turned their eyes and ears on us, and our government, while becoming more secretive, has simultaneously informed us all that we, as of now, are no longer allowed secrets; at least not from them.
And now we come to the CBDTPA, formerly known as the SSSCA. Assuming this bill makes it into law without serious modifications, we will soon see the end to entertainment as we know it. But much, much worse, we will finally know for certain that our government has been purchased from us while we weren't looking - sold to a few large corporations who will, from now on, dictate when, how, why, and if (yes if) we may lead our lives.
This sounds so outrageously apocolyptic that many reading this will have already dismissed my posting as meaningless. However, consider this for a moment - if I told you 5 years ago that you could be jailed for informing an audience of people about a security vulnerability without ever having helped to or supplied the tools to exploit that vulnerability, would you have laughed? For anyone who works in law, if I had told you 5 years ago that making a speech that was neither slanderous nor the cause of (in the words of the Supreme Court) 'clear and present danger' (such as yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre) would cause a person to be arrested, would you not have pointed out all the reasons why this could never happen in America? How about this - if I told you 10, 20, 50 years ago that a person could be arrested and jailed for nearly four years without a trial, would you have not been outraged? (Regardless of whether he was right or wrong or whatever, he is supposed to be protected under the Constitution, and therefore is supposed to have the right to a "speedy trial".)
Now what really concerns me here is the fact that when you look at the people in Congress who are the most supportive of the CBDTPA, you find that they are the same people who receive the most money from the entertainment industry. "This makes sense" you say, but my question is simply this - when an elected official passes bills contrary to the public interest and desire to serve the ends of his campaign contributors, how is this any different than a judge taking money from a defendant in exchange for a lighter sentence? Are they not both saying, "if you give me alot of money, I will use my power in office to ensure your interests are furthered, regardless of the public interest."? In this case, the CBDTPA continues where the DMCA left off, stripping away at what has been declared by the courts to be 'fair use'. This serves only to maintain the profit margains of the entertainment industry, while forcing yet more money out of the pockets of consumers. This most certainly doesn't help more than a few people in all of South Carolina, and certainly helps almost no minorities anywhere. Yet a democratic (democrats generally champion the rights of minorities and individuals) Senator from SC has been attempting to force this bill into law, even threatening to use his position on the appropriations and budget committees to kill funding for anyone who stands in his way. Why would a democrat from SC want to throw every bit of weight he has into such an anti-individual, pro-corporation bill? Money. The entertainment industry has, year after year, been one of Senator Ernest Fritz Hollings biggest campaign contributors. This is a simple equation folks, money for laws. You give me money, I give you laws. If a group of people raised more money for Hollings' next campaign than the entertainment industry, we could get the DMCA repealed in no time and be on our way to getting whatever laws we want on the books. This, ladies and gents, is completely pathetic. Someone ought to make an Ebay user name EFHollings and start auctioning off laws in a dutch auction; as it's what he does every day.
While this annoyed me when I first realized it, it didn't really hit me nearly so hard as when I read this latest article, and others like it, outlining the support for this bill throughout Congress. When you look at the people pushing this bill, one by one you see they're getting most if not nearly all of their money from the entertainment industry. Carlin was right, this country is being bought and sold. The worst part is, the average person is either too stupid, too ignorant, or too apathetic to see where all this is heading, and just how far it's come in the last 5 years.
It doesn't get much better when you look elsewhere either. In the wake of the absolute horror of September 11th, I see something even worse washing up behind it. They won. That's right, I mean the terrorists; they won. What could possibly make an American who loves his country and wants to see it become the greatest unified nation in history say such a thing? Policies, laws, etc, etc, etc. It's not the war, mind you; I'm all for wiping out all who had anything to do with what happened that day or would like to see things like it happen in the future. And I'm certainly all for turning bin Laden over to the Israelies so they can have fun with him. (Our laws just don't allow the things I want to see happen to him; they on the other hand, have no problem turning his existance into the closest thing to hell on Earth any twisted imagination could possibly come up with... gotta love Israeli intelligence;) ) No, the war is fine. The support for the war and the President has been great. But they still won, in that they managed to allow our most basic freedoms to be either taken away or put up for review.
Who would have objected to a strip search every time you walk into the airport 5 years ago? My goodness, such an idea would have brought outrage and shock. But since September 11th, people want to feel warm and cozy and safe, and they seem to think all this new security, like this x-ray machine that allows screeners to do a virtual strip search of you. Most people seem to be under the dillusion that in 10 years it'll all be back to normal and we'll all go about like we do now. I can only hope so, but once this technology is widely available and fairly cheap, I can see everyone from government to corporations, to schools putting this in and refining it further. Personally, I'm extremely offended by the idea of any fool off the street (yes, the security personnel at airports are usually but not always lacking in the mental dept.) being able to get a pretty graphic shot of my entire body. Why? Well, invasion of privacy is the easy one. But how about this one? In this country, we work under a system that you are innocent until proven guilty. Now, in this situation, I fully understand that increased security must allow for a bit of elasticity here. In this case, feel free to xray the hell out of my luggage until my underwear bakes if it makes you happy. As for me, I'll happily go through your metal detector if it makes you happy; it'll certainly make me a little happier to see everyone else going through it. And feel free to run my name against a list of known terrorists. If something comes up funny, pull me aside and we'll have a chat. With none of this do I have a problem. Want to put armed air marshals on every flight? By all means, hell, I'll pay a little extra on my ticket if it ensures there's a couple on my plane. Just make sure they're not psychotic, stupid, incapable or unwilling to perform as needed, and not themselves terrorists. I'm sure there are many other wonderful security ideas we can come up with that don't involve Sgt Ricky and Officer Mickey staring at my unclothed body when all I want to do is go to Cali for a holiday trip.
Other examples of this include carnivore, which was pushed up after Sept 11th, and this stuff I keep hearing about the government using trojans to extract (or possibly inject) incriminating evidence from computers of US citizens. I'm reasonably confident that my paranoid security setup will insulate me fairly well from this silly toy (I hear it could have been better coded by a 12yo) but for all the clueless users out there (5 9's of them.. ie. 99.999%) I feel it's an outrageous violation of their right to privacy and their presumed innocence. Not to mention the fact that the potential for abuse is so extreme, it boggles the mind as to how in the world this wouldn't get all FBI/CIA/NSA folks having anything to do with this arrested immediately. You can hack into my computer and plant evidence and I'll go to jail for 10+ years, but if I hack into your computers and do nothing more than type ls/dir for 6 hours over and over, I'll go to jail for 10+ years. Hmm... do as I say, not as I do?
So in the last 5 or so years, we've seen fair use, freedom of speech, presumed innocence, privacy, and many, many other basic Constitutionally guaranteed rights disappear. And now it looks like our government officials could be spending half their time in eBay private auctions to see who gets the laws they wanted for christmas.
I think I'll move to Holland now. Dutch people are pretty cool.
This is wonderful news! It'll give me another expensive product tiny enough to be lost in hours having not yet been in my possession long enough to me to get my full use (playing with it) out of it.
Seti@home searchs a fairly insignificant portion of the sky for a completely insignificant number of signals with an un-optimized application which does little more than make pretty color pictures on the screen.
Cancer research? I've yet to see a viable distributed project for cancer research. By that, I mean an organized effort with real data, a complete and concise goal, and a clean method for reaching that goal. Distributed raytracing? More pretty pictures on the computer screen.
You want to draw pretty pictures, I want to brute force an encrypted message to prove current laws regarding encryption are draconian and need to be changed immediately. Gee, I can't imagine why anyone would think dnet is more usefull than raytracing....
Slashdot Mirror
The list uses most of the same standards that are used by any major college or university in the us. Here, I'll help you see which ones I'm referring to, since my previous comments about some not applying fell upon deaf ears.
Look at: 1, 2, 5, 6, 7 ("or their own message to members? "), 8, 9, 12, 14, 15 (although I'd change "bible" to 'religious scriptures'), 16 (the latter half), 17, 18, 19, and 20.
Those are all the ones not specific to 'christian' groups, and guess what; they all apply.
Read Xenu.net and tell me those don't apply perfectly.
When a "church" endorses or causes harm to members and critics, I say to you, they deserve zero protection from the government. I'm a major fan of free speech and seperation of church and state, but their free expression ends when it causes harm to another.
Talk to a few ex-scientology 'church' members and you'll find some of them fear for their lives. The US government is in the business of protecting its citizens, even if from themselves and against their will. I fully support investigation of any illegal activities by any "religious" organization, regardless of its name or popularity. All citizens are equal under the law and therefore deserve the same protections, whether from a sadistic killer, or from a "church" member/leader. Calling yourself a church does not give you an impeneratrable shield with which to beat your members, even if they ask for and accept it.
Well, seeing as I'm at work and lack the time to list everything I was told while in college, I think this link here pretty much sums it up.
:( today isn't a good day for me. :/
A couple don't apply (as it's not a "christian" group), but almost all the others hit right on.
Time is also forcing me to use danlging prepositions.
"I think if they want to get people's cooperation, then they should refute Operation Clambake's information in an orderly and intelligent manner. "
What you fail to realize is that there's no information in the entire church which can be presented in an orderly, intelligent manner. They're claiming that we humans are Gods and that a cosmic warlord has fooled us all into thinking we're not. But we have a science fiction writer (Hubbard) to the rescue, as he's recently discovered the truth and is battling the evil warlord from his plush multi-million dollar mansion, while his followers learn to use their mystical powers.
If you could, please show me how that can be presented in an orderly, intelligent manner. I would suggest a comic book for guidance, but I don't think you'll be able to make it work.
Seeing as Scientology fits all the classic signs of a cult, why has it not been properly labled and dealt with? Simply reclassifying it properly would give law enforcement agencies much greater access to investigate and prosecute abuses within the "church" of Scientology and would serve to protect the members from themselves.
The only people who lose when you call Scientology what it is - a cult - are the profiteering people who run it.
Good,
Then by Xeno's Paradox, you'll never lose all your customers! This should be an investor's dream company.
But can it run Windows fast?
It's a hole in the internet you throw money into.
Oddly enough, the only service I seem to be blocked from is the web search. Every other google page appears to work fine, and I can browse/search groups and catalogs etc. All I've found so far is that I can't search with the main search or the advanced search (which really just uses the main search but does all the syntax for you.)
As of this writing, I'm still blocked.
Although I submitted a story (since rejected) about this, I'm looking for more info. Apparently, Comcast.net customers who try searching Google get the following message...
/search?hl=en&q=slashdot from this server. (Client IP address: *snip*)
403 Forbidden
Your client does not have permission to get URL
Unfortunately, Google has received a significant amount of abuse from your network. Because some person or people on your network have violated our Terms of Service (http://www.google.com/terms_of_service.html) and sent us numerous automated search queries, we have been forced to shut off access to Google's services from your network.
Note that we are not accusing you personally of having violated our Terms of Service; you are most likely an innocent victim of someone else's bad behavior. We're really sorry to have had to take this action.
We very much want to be able to work this problem out with your sysadmin or your ISP's network and/or abuse department. Unfortunately, so far, we have not been able to do so. Please contact your sysadmin or your ISP's network and/or abuse department and request that they track down who is causing this problem with Google. Please don't complain to Google about this problem (since there's nothing we can do until the problem on your network has been identified and stopped). Instead, please complain to your sysadmin or your ISP's network and/or abuse department. Letting them know that they need to take immediate action so that you can enjoy full access to the Internet (including Google) is the quickest way for you to regain your Google service.
We wholeheartedly apologize for the inconvenience to you, and with your help, we expect that we'll soon be able provide search results to you once more.
This has been confirmed by myself and 3 friends on Comcast.net. Anyone have more information? Please share with the class.
Naaa, Windows has been crashing my PC for yeeaarrs and I've never had anyone tell me I should sue them.
Alright, I'm not hosting these on my own comp because it'd be slow and painful for all of us (Comcast's lousy 128k up) and I'm not tryin' to get soood by Chipzilla.
Anyway, if anyone wants to be kind enough to host the pics, feel free as I'm giving anyone who wants to the rights to use these pics on another site so long as credit is given to Loki_1929. Also feel free to copy all the original HTML if it floats your boat. (there's nothing fancy on there anyway)
So here's your last shot from me, if you haven't seen them yet, try:
Here
Here
and Here
Since you guys nailed that one...
Try this one.
Just thought I'd point out that the NSA has been running similar programs for a while. I actually looked into them when I was in college, but then I realized I was looking at Big Brother and asking for a part in the book 1984... on the wrong side.
On a lighter note, after hearing that Intel is trying to claim the word 'inside' as its own, I decided to do a little investigating as to exactly what is inside. Take a look.
Ok, with all this fuss from Intel about "Intel inside" and the mystical powers it endows upon Intel that allow it to sue innocent companies, I decided to check it out.
"Check what out?" you might ask. Well, in short, I wanted to check out what's 'inside'. So I did.
Now, to do this with a Pentium 4 would be silly. It's an expensive chip and I don't like the idea of supporting Intel's legal BS with my purchases. I found a couple of 486's laying around (33MHz if you're curious) and decided I should immediately set out to find out what's 'inside'.
Noticing the top is one piece told me to focus my efforts on relieving the chips of their bottom plate which I theorized (having neither the time nor the inclination to actually find out) were simply either glued or soldered on. Working under this theory, I tried using a small straighthead scewdriver to scrape away whatever was holding it in place on the outside and try to pry under the plate.
After realizing this was going nowhere fast, I looked around and decided the best way in was to reverse the process by which it was assembled. Keep in mind I had no intention of trying to actually do anything with what I found, nor do I have the expertise to figure out how any of it worked. I just wanted to see what the hell is 'inside'. I therefore decided to use a small butaine torch. This should, I theorized, heat up the glue or whatever enough to allow me to get into the plate.
I'm going to say this once and I hope everyone listens... DO NOT TRY THIS YOURSELF WITHOUT GLOVES, LONG SLEEVES, LONG PANTS, AND GOGGLES! Also make sure someone is very nearby (within talking distance) in case something goes wrong. I STRONGLY recommend you NOT try this AT ALL.
Ok, now torch in one hand, vice grips in the other, I proceeded to heat the plate up as much as possible. Pins were glowing, popping and crackling sounds were easily heart, and I started smelling a rather odd burning smell. Eventually the plate came off (dropped off the first one, was pryed off the second one) and I got my first look at what's 'inside'.
Take it from me Intel, this ain't worth suing over. Fire your lawyers and go back to making stuff. It's basically a little rectangular piece of material held into place by a bunch of small gold traces (one for each pin). It looks like the hologram cards from the old Marvel X-men cards. Well, I figured I should investigate further, so I lit up my investigation tool (torch) and went back to work. After maybe 10 minutes of torching various places, the chip pretty much exploded. I have to hand it to Intel, their die held up pretty well until the chip blew apart. Basically, there was a loud 'pop' and about half the cpu flew off to my right about 4 or 5 feet. Pieces of the die went all over and it was altogether really cool.
So anyway, that's the basic story, second CPU didn't explode, and by then I had taken out goggles and gloves to protect myself in case it did. So without further adu, I send you off here so you can see the pictures of what's 'inside'. Trademarks have been edited out for my continued enjoyment of not getting tossed in an 8x10 foot cell with "Bubba".
Enjoy.
I'd like to take this opportunity to inform all of you that you'll soon be getting the paperwork in the mail from my lawyers (that's right, I have a team of them) for trademark infringement. I own a company called "The Inc." and over time I've noticed almost all of you using my trademarked company name in various posts/stories/journals etc. Being the reasonable, understanding person that I am, I shall settle for a small fine of say $1000 per infringement? After all, I really dislike court battles, so just pay me every time you want to use the word, 'the' and there won't be any trouble. :)
This satirical comment brought to you by Intel: Assholes Inside
Ok, ok... since no one else will do it, I will.
... Novell".
Basically the video starts out with a kid flying in the air, with music playing that sounds like the M$ flying commercials music. An M$ employee sits there watching this on his workstation with a big smile on his face. All of a sudden, the flying kid starts falling for a second and the music sounds like it's an old record that hit a scratch. This happens over and over for like 3 seconds and then it shows an "illegal operation" in a WinXP style error box on one of the screens the guy is looking at. He furiously hits the enter key and the kid keeps going for a moment. Then the guy's jaw drops and the camera zooms in on a familiar BSOD, at which point the kid falls flat on his face. Then it fades out and it says, "For servers that only go down when they're brought down
It ends with the guy saying into a telephone in a very irritated phone "Well you can tell Mr Bill Gates to get down here to sublevel 6 and he can kiss my a" at which point the music starts up again, cutting off the last half of that word and the Novell logo pops up.
It's very funny, go watch it at the library or something.
You mean this?
Yeah, I'm sure we can believe DC's word on this one, as they've been so helpful and honest in the past.
Lawyer: So we need to comply with this agreement as soon as possible.
DC VP: Sure, no problem. Hey Phil, delete the database, ok?
Tech: Alright, here we go...
*clickety click*
Tech: OK, it's all wiped out boss.
Later that afternoon...
DC VP: Got that backup of the DB restored yet Phil?
Tech: Almost done, just another GB to go...
I guess this means people who "tag" buildings with this stuff can send out electric bills to the people who's buildings they tag?
Not that I'm a big fan of their software solutions, but Novell has a new video which may or may not (I don't know for sure either way) become a running commercial ad. It's very amusing and carries the sentiment of virtually every geek out there. Might be a nice thing to mention to the bosses next time they come up with the "great idea" of digging themselves further into Microsoft products.
The only way it becomes unfair is if the regulation gets mixed in with the competition; ie. the local government puts regulations into effect that directly limits how each company can do business. So long as the regulation serves only to ensure compliance with anti-trust laws, and the government's competitive companies do not themselves violate anti-trust laws, I can't see how this is the least bit unfair. I think oversight is a must, obviously, but this shows excellent potential for a model of how the rest of the country could push broadband to each person's doorstep at an affordable price. Real competition has always forced each company involved to push forward as hard and fast as possible. Look at the difference in browser quality when M$ had competition from Netscape. IE 2 -> IE 3, and up through 5. I like 5 very much, but with no competition anymore from Netscape, 6 is nothing more than 5 with teletubby icons.
Right now, the broadband field had a few, large dominating companies. Verizon and Comcast are huge. Their service sucks, but what other choice is there? 56k modem? I make my living using computers and the internet, and I can't do that effectively on a modem. I hope and pray for something like what Los Angeles is doing to come to my area. Perhaps then my Comcast cable modem wouldn't go down for 2 minutes at a time 20 times a day. Right now it's (high quality | high speed | low cost) -- pick two.
You know, the first time I heard comedian George Carlin say during a performance that "this country was bought and sold a long time ago", I laughed it off as no big deal; an idea from an individual trying to entertain. When the DMCA came around, I thought, "well it's ok, it'll have amendments attatched to it to ensure nothing like the original actually makes it to law". The DMCA is now used to prosecute law-abiding people now. Now we come to the CBDTPA.
;) ) No, the war is fine. The support for the war and the President has been great. But they still won, in that they managed to allow our most basic freedoms to be either taken away or put up for review.
By this point, I've lost virtually all hope for the government of my great country. I've watched as my rights have been stripped away at an unbelievable rate in the last 5 years, and it leads me to believe that all we've fought for since breaking away from Brittain in the 18th century is almost gone. In the wake of Sept 11th, our privacy has been ripped away, our innermost secrets about our supposedly private lives demanded by our government. Communications are snooped, our own spies have turned their eyes and ears on us, and our government, while becoming more secretive, has simultaneously informed us all that we, as of now, are no longer allowed secrets; at least not from them.
And now we come to the CBDTPA, formerly known as the SSSCA. Assuming this bill makes it into law without serious modifications, we will soon see the end to entertainment as we know it. But much, much worse, we will finally know for certain that our government has been purchased from us while we weren't looking - sold to a few large corporations who will, from now on, dictate when, how, why, and if (yes if) we may lead our lives.
This sounds so outrageously apocolyptic that many reading this will have already dismissed my posting as meaningless. However, consider this for a moment - if I told you 5 years ago that you could be jailed for informing an audience of people about a security vulnerability without ever having helped to or supplied the tools to exploit that vulnerability, would you have laughed? For anyone who works in law, if I had told you 5 years ago that making a speech that was neither slanderous nor the cause of (in the words of the Supreme Court) 'clear and present danger' (such as yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre) would cause a person to be arrested, would you not have pointed out all the reasons why this could never happen in America? How about this - if I told you 10, 20, 50 years ago that a person could be arrested and jailed for nearly four years without a trial, would you have not been outraged? (Regardless of whether he was right or wrong or whatever, he is supposed to be protected under the Constitution, and therefore is supposed to have the right to a "speedy trial".)
Now what really concerns me here is the fact that when you look at the people in Congress who are the most supportive of the CBDTPA, you find that they are the same people who receive the most money from the entertainment industry. "This makes sense" you say, but my question is simply this - when an elected official passes bills contrary to the public interest and desire to serve the ends of his campaign contributors, how is this any different than a judge taking money from a defendant in exchange for a lighter sentence? Are they not both saying, "if you give me alot of money, I will use my power in office to ensure your interests are furthered, regardless of the public interest."? In this case, the CBDTPA continues where the DMCA left off, stripping away at what has been declared by the courts to be 'fair use'. This serves only to maintain the profit margains of the entertainment industry, while forcing yet more money out of the pockets of consumers. This most certainly doesn't help more than a few people in all of South Carolina, and certainly helps almost no minorities anywhere. Yet a democratic (democrats generally champion the rights of minorities and individuals) Senator from SC has been attempting to force this bill into law, even threatening to use his position on the appropriations and budget committees to kill funding for anyone who stands in his way. Why would a democrat from SC want to throw every bit of weight he has into such an anti-individual, pro-corporation bill? Money. The entertainment industry has, year after year, been one of Senator Ernest Fritz Hollings biggest campaign contributors. This is a simple equation folks, money for laws. You give me money, I give you laws. If a group of people raised more money for Hollings' next campaign than the entertainment industry, we could get the DMCA repealed in no time and be on our way to getting whatever laws we want on the books. This, ladies and gents, is completely pathetic. Someone ought to make an Ebay user name EFHollings and start auctioning off laws in a dutch auction; as it's what he does every day.
While this annoyed me when I first realized it, it didn't really hit me nearly so hard as when I read this latest article, and others like it, outlining the support for this bill throughout Congress. When you look at the people pushing this bill, one by one you see they're getting most if not nearly all of their money from the entertainment industry. Carlin was right, this country is being bought and sold. The worst part is, the average person is either too stupid, too ignorant, or too apathetic to see where all this is heading, and just how far it's come in the last 5 years.
It doesn't get much better when you look elsewhere either. In the wake of the absolute horror of September 11th, I see something even worse washing up behind it. They won. That's right, I mean the terrorists; they won. What could possibly make an American who loves his country and wants to see it become the greatest unified nation in history say such a thing? Policies, laws, etc, etc, etc. It's not the war, mind you; I'm all for wiping out all who had anything to do with what happened that day or would like to see things like it happen in the future. And I'm certainly all for turning bin Laden over to the Israelies so they can have fun with him. (Our laws just don't allow the things I want to see happen to him; they on the other hand, have no problem turning his existance into the closest thing to hell on Earth any twisted imagination could possibly come up with... gotta love Israeli intelligence
Who would have objected to a strip search every time you walk into the airport 5 years ago? My goodness, such an idea would have brought outrage and shock. But since September 11th, people want to feel warm and cozy and safe, and they seem to think all this new security, like this x-ray machine that allows screeners to do a virtual strip search of you. Most people seem to be under the dillusion that in 10 years it'll all be back to normal and we'll all go about like we do now. I can only hope so, but once this technology is widely available and fairly cheap, I can see everyone from government to corporations, to schools putting this in and refining it further. Personally, I'm extremely offended by the idea of any fool off the street (yes, the security personnel at airports are usually but not always lacking in the mental dept.) being able to get a pretty graphic shot of my entire body. Why? Well, invasion of privacy is the easy one. But how about this one? In this country, we work under a system that you are innocent until proven guilty. Now, in this situation, I fully understand that increased security must allow for a bit of elasticity here. In this case, feel free to xray the hell out of my luggage until my underwear bakes if it makes you happy. As for me, I'll happily go through your metal detector if it makes you happy; it'll certainly make me a little happier to see everyone else going through it. And feel free to run my name against a list of known terrorists. If something comes up funny, pull me aside and we'll have a chat. With none of this do I have a problem. Want to put armed air marshals on every flight? By all means, hell, I'll pay a little extra on my ticket if it ensures there's a couple on my plane. Just make sure they're not psychotic, stupid, incapable or unwilling to perform as needed, and not themselves terrorists. I'm sure there are many other wonderful security ideas we can come up with that don't involve Sgt Ricky and Officer Mickey staring at my unclothed body when all I want to do is go to Cali for a holiday trip.
Other examples of this include carnivore, which was pushed up after Sept 11th, and this stuff I keep hearing about the government using trojans to extract (or possibly inject) incriminating evidence from computers of US citizens. I'm reasonably confident that my paranoid security setup will insulate me fairly well from this silly toy (I hear it could have been better coded by a 12yo) but for all the clueless users out there (5 9's of them.. ie. 99.999%) I feel it's an outrageous violation of their right to privacy and their presumed innocence. Not to mention the fact that the potential for abuse is so extreme, it boggles the mind as to how in the world this wouldn't get all FBI/CIA/NSA folks having anything to do with this arrested immediately. You can hack into my computer and plant evidence and I'll go to jail for 10+ years, but if I hack into your computers and do nothing more than type ls/dir for 6 hours over and over, I'll go to jail for 10+ years. Hmm... do as I say, not as I do?
So in the last 5 or so years, we've seen fair use, freedom of speech, presumed innocence, privacy, and many, many other basic Constitutionally guaranteed rights disappear. And now it looks like our government officials could be spending half their time in eBay private auctions to see who gets the laws they wanted for christmas.
I think I'll move to Holland now. Dutch people are pretty cool.
This is wonderful news! It'll give me another expensive product tiny enough to be lost in hours having not yet been in my possession long enough to me to get my full use (playing with it) out of it.
Seti@home searchs a fairly insignificant portion of the sky for a completely insignificant number of signals with an un-optimized application which does little more than make pretty color pictures on the screen.
Cancer research? I've yet to see a viable distributed project for cancer research. By that, I mean an organized effort with real data, a complete and concise goal, and a clean method for reaching that goal. Distributed raytracing? More pretty pictures on the computer screen.
You want to draw pretty pictures, I want to brute force an encrypted message to prove current laws regarding encryption are draconian and need to be changed immediately. Gee, I can't imagine why anyone would think dnet is more usefull than raytracing....