Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the outfit which is concerned with breaking low-grade crypto?
If you consider 56/64/128-bit RC5 low-grade, yes.
How's that going to improve my daily life?
I have no idea what your daily life is like, but if it involves encrypting things you'd prefer stayed private, it should eventually help you in that aspect. Not to mention your boost of confidence as you follow your daily stats and see yourself advancing past others every day.
But breaking crypto? Why?
Because if a few thousand unspecialized computers can brute force the best encryption allowed by law with minimal optimization and research, then we have some good reasons to push for the law to be changed. Personally, I don't like the idea of the best encryption available to me being useful for all of 3 seconds while it's being broken. I don't usually have anything worth decrypting, but I like to think that when I do, it'll be worth my time to encrypt it.
There are numerous things you just couldn't "distribute." The keys have to be served from somewhere, they must be tracked in real-time from somewhere, and they must be accepted/processed somewhere. Stats must be compiled and then put into a single database. To distribute this to multiple computers would cause the amount of bandwidth used to rise to an extreme level, far beyond what it is now. (ie. send out the info, let each node process it, receive the data from each node, hope to Christ it's right)
Next, the integrity of the project gets called into question the moment you begin allowing clients to check processed blocks. The number of fals positives could easily shoot through the roof. Also, a computer with bad memory or simply running a faulty OS (such as Win9x/ME) could overlook a true positive, thereby virtually obliterating the project (ie. "we're at 100% completion with no result, guess we start over?")
As stated above, stats would be impossible to do in this manner, and the same applies for key distrobution. One could argue that the total keys be distributed amoung thousands of nodes and handed out from there, but you create more problems then you solve. You still need a centralized management location to keep track of keys that have or have not been tested. Imagine a node going offline permanently or simply losing the keys it was handed. Suddenly, a large block of keys is missing. As it stands now, the keymaster simply re-issues the keys to someone else after a couple of weeks of no response from the client it sent the original blocks to. Under a distributed format, the keymaster would have to keep track of which keys went to which key distributor, which of those came back, which of those need to be redistributed, where they... (you get the message.)
Next you run into another problem of integrity. What's to stop each distributed keymaster from claiming it's own client is the one that completed all blocks submitted to it. Consider this example, central keymaster sends out 200,000 blocks of keys to keymaster node 101. Keymaster node 101 distributes these keys to a bunch of clients which process the blocks, then send them back to keymaster node 101. Keymaster node 101, which has been modded slightly, then modifies each data block, changing the user id to that of the keymaster's owner, thereby making it appear that any block coming back from keymaster 101 was processed by keymaster 101. It might be easy to spot, but then how to you find out who to give credit to?
The webpage doesn't attract the majority of the bandwidth; the projects do. Distributing the projects would be disasterous, as many have already tried taking advantage of the current system to increase their block yields through modded clients. Luckily, this is easy to spot for now. Under a distributed system, this would be next to impossible. All this, and I've yet to make mention of the fact that the code would have to be completely re-written to work alongside a custom P2P application, which would add months of development to a project that probably only has weeks or months left in it.
Where do you put the cost of black projetcs into the equation?
Their cost IS factored in; why do you think we have to convert to government dollars? If it weren't for projects that require millions in funding that can't be named (for legal or other reasons) in public documents, a hammer wouldn't cost $50,000.
For those who are already bored with this (as you know exactly what I'm talking about) you can leave now. For the rest of the class, read on.
Example A:
General Johnny needs to build a large laboratory for studying potential biological weapons for use in the next major war. The problem is, General Johnny knows he'll never get funding for an obviously illegal project. So General Johnny tells everyone he just bought this shiny new hammer for $50,000. Mind you, the hammer cost him about $8, but this now gives him $48,992 to fund his project. Now this is going to be a large lab, so he'll need lots of hammers to build it. General Johnny orders 1,000 hammers, giving him $48,992,000 in undocumented cash to use. He then orders a bunch of other stuff at the same insanely high price and before you know it, General Johnny has the several billion dollars he needs to build the illegal lab.
Example B:
Agent Ricky needs to assassinate the leader of a country that has been naughty. Now, agent Ricky knows this won't look good to ohh... the rest of the world? (ie Geneva Convention) So agent Ricky needs cash fast for his plane ticket, guns, escape route, etc. Lucky for agent Ricky, his boss, the CIA, has a nice big pocket of money that no one knows about. How did they get this money? Well, aside from drug and arms sales (from drugs/guns confiscated around the world), they've been buying toilet seats for $75,000 each for years. Why hasn't anyone said anything? Well, for one thing, who cares how much the CIA spent on toilet seats in fiscal year 1984? Also, for those who do know about it, it's more or less a big joke. "Hey, did you guys see that the government is spending like $75,000 for a toilet seat? Ha Ha Ha."
As a side note, Agent Ricky's mission was an utter failure (would you expect anything less of the CIA?) and he was arrested the second he stepped off the plane, then laughed at by the guards of his new home - a big, smelly prison.
That leaves us with repair, the most reasonable option. Send up some guys on the next shuttle mission with Duct Tape (about $1.50 a roll, depending on store and brand).
No, no, no... This is the US government here. Hammers generally run about $50,000 each, a couch runs several hundred thousand dollars, etc. You have to convert to government dollars. Last I checked, the going conversion rate is something like ((N/I) * Pi^8) where N is the normal price, and I is the importance of the item (scale of 1 to 10, duct tape being a 1, nuclear weapon being a 10).
Therefore, that $1.50 per roll duct tape would actually cost about $14,175 US government dollars.
1) Fire all the satellite's rockets to bring it screaming into the atmosphere on the 4th of July for one hell of a fireworks show.
2) Get Tommy Lee Jones and the rest of the crew from Space Cowboys to give it a good kick.
3) Replace the leaking fuel cell with a new one filled with Nitro Glycerin.
4) Mass-produce the same satellite and sell it in hobby shops under the name, "My First Satellite Set".
5) Sell it to the US Miltary as a target for the new missle shield.
6) "Fuck it, we're going to Mars now."
7) Call AAA for a tow. (or at least a jump-start)
8) Tell the monkey inside it to peddle faster.
9) Make up some ridiculous excuse to explain why you've wasted several million dollars on something that doesn't work - like a fuel leak from a damag... wait a minute...
"OEMs generally don't sell systems to the enthusiast market (The group most likely to leave systems running all day)."
Oh please, probably 80% of the drives sold online (where most enthusiasts get their drives) are OEM. The average person buys a retail Maxtor at CompUSA, whereas most people who have some idea of what it is they're buying (aka enthusiasts) get the drive without all the extra cardboard/paperwork from either a local computer shop or from the internet. The drives purchased seperately as OEM are the workhorses. All my drives (6 of them) are OEM and they spin full speed 24/7 with maybe an hour of maintenance downtime every 3 months.
Actually, considering the budget a mission to Mars would have to work under, "holding your breath for a mission to Mars" might be precisely what is necessary. Although with the amount of money spent on fixing the Hubble, why can't we just teach an astronaught to breathe carbon dioxide? I should think the best solution here is to get one guy breathing O2 and exhaling CO2, and another guy breathing CO2 and exhaling O2. Wouldn't that be a pretty big budget savings right there?
Several hours later it was discovered that the software used by the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories had a slight flaw, and the corrected simulations show that the nuclear explosions were in fact beige.
In a related story, the updated software was found to contain massive amounts of spyware.
I can just see Rumsfeld now after getting wind of this discovery...
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld charges in to brief reporters breathing heavily smelling of whiskey and sporting a wiked grin...
"This morning at 9am EST... *froth* *drool*... I ordered all US personnel out of Afghanistan in preparation for "testing" of a new... *froth* *snarl*... fusion bomb which will reduce most of Afghanistan far past the stone-age to sometime near the middle of the Precambrian era. *snarl* *spit*... That is all.
It occurs to me that Microsoft might actually be pleased by this never-ending legal "battle". Besides the nearly constant news coverage which is easy advertising that comes with the relatively marginal cost of the lawyers fees (from a multi-billion dollar corporation's standpoint), it also allows them to continue doing as they please without anything such as an injunction to prevent them from continuing to expand their monopoly and snuff out would-be competitors. During the past 6 some-odd years of high-gear courtroom battles, Microsoft has only had to contend with a single injuction (circa '97) which was later thrown out on appeal. This means they've had plenty of time to virtually wipe out Netscape, Be, and a slew of other companies by using the same illegal tactics they continue using today.
It's been shown for years that Internet Explorer can be removed safely from Windows with only a minimal loss in functionality, yet it remains. Participants have been after the Window's source code for years, yet it remains safely locked behind Redmond's doors. Illegal, anti-competitive practices have been on-going, if not accelerating over the course of the lawsuit. The simple fact is that this on-going court battle has yet to solve a single problem with the software giant, and has probably only helped it. Let's not forget that were some sort of settlement reached with the Federal government some time this year, (don't hold your breath) it would almost certainly have absolutely no real consequences, and if the initial settlement proposal is any indication, may only serve to allow Microsoft to further force its products into the marketplace, giving it further penetration in such areas as schools where it has been lacking.
Then one may look at the other nine states, who appear to be seeking a much better legal settlement against Softzilla. They want the source, they want IE out, and they want other versions of Windows available at a lesser cost without the unwanted "features" Windows buyers pay for. Well first of all, this would probably drag on for years, meaning no changes would take place. Were there to be a settlement, I doubt Microsoft would aggree to anything which does not eventually come out to their benefit; ie. selling a stripped-down version of Windows at a cheaper price would probably increase rather than decrease their sales figures. Were there a judgement issued against them, they would most certainly appeal time and time again, adding yet many more years to the total length of this litigation, by which time, any possible good coming forth from the judgement would have long since lost any tangible meaning.
In all this, I've come to the conclusion that perhaps we should be trying Microsoft and large corporations like it in a tribunal much like the ones being used around the world for war crimes. A swifter, more final form of judicial proceeding is obviously needed for a company who's resources allow it to drag on court battles for year apon year, thereby pretty much defeating the judicial system in place. Draconian laws obviously had to be updated to deal with high tech companies, perhaps the courts should take a note from the legislators and realize you can't treat M$ like Standard Oil.
I should think that by now we would have seen the emergence of a new application/service to bridge the gnutella/kazaa P2P networks perhaps along with some other, smaller networks much like how Jabber did with Instant messenging.
I'd be surprised if no one had as of yet reverse-engineered the Kazaa-developed protocols, and moving from there to a unified application appears on face to be simple. I was thinking about this as I was about to download Kazaa (having already downloaded the new morpheus and being less than impressed with it) and wondering how affected the Kazaa P2P network is since the morpheus user base departure.
A single, unified P2P application would obviously have a huge number of advantages (hopefully no spyware/trojans/etc) and with luck, would be GPL'd for added amusement. If anyone's interested in building the lagest P2P network in history (and making porn easier to find and download) please feel free; but don't expect it from me anytime soon, as my time is currently about as limited as my intellect.
The fact that they showed them off with Linux isn't nearly as entertaining as the fact that they were showing them off just a few blocks from the Intel Developer Forum.
(Dad): Happy birthday little Johnny, I got you that Xbox you wanted so bad. (LJ): Gee, thanks dad! You're the best! (Dad): I had to go up north to Canada to get the Xbox, but I was lucky enough to find the controllers right here in Seattle.
Later that night...
(Dad): What the !&#* do you mean it doesn't work?? After I spent over $400 on it and it doesn't even work?
"Man stabs wife 37 times, sued by Ginsu for unauthorized use."
"Hardware store sued for circumventing copy protection; ignoring words 'Do not duplicate' on keys."
"Man wipes ass with Windows XP EULA; exclaims, 'How's this for fair use?!'"
"Mechanic sued by Ford for reverse engineering break system after taking it apart to check for problems."
I'm thinking Bill Gates is just trying to get a nice fat list of popular DVDs so he can run and download them from DALnet.
<BillGates> Gee fellas, could you please help me download good pornographic films? <@Antel> lol, get out of here you l0ser <BillGates> But wait, I'm really desperate here. I gotta OC-48 and a 12TB IBM RAID storage tower. *** Antel sets mode +b BGates@microsoft.com *** BillGates was kicked from #pr0n by Antel (get lost you geek!)
Seeing as my previous job was working at a popular fast food place, this job (working at a PC repair shop) is pretty cool. I sit around all day and build/repair computers and laptops, and I can take a break whenever to surf the web on a very nice high speed line that puts my cable modem to shame. My boss is great, has never once gotten pissy with me and always speaks highly of me, and the customers respect me (unlike at my last job). It's rather nice when you have them by the balls.;) The best part is the fact that every day I'm given the chance to learn new things that actually interest me. When I see something that I want to play with (such as a dualie Xeon server), he orders it, we play with it, and then it sits there along with all the previous toys. Now that we're working on setting up a Linux/FreeBSD domain for web hosting and remote backup, I'm learning even more about networking, *nix's, security, etc. I get paid decent (enough to get me by for now) and I get great discounts on fun toys like my Panasonic PrivateID Iris scanner.:) So I'd have to say yes, I really do like my job, and I realize how lucky I am to be among the few folks who can honestly say that.
This shouldn't be an issue.
I have a Panasonic BM-ET 100US Authenticam (retinal scanner) and I usually sit about 20" away while authenticating. It takes roughly a second to three seconds to find and capture my retina, and I'm never anywhere near it.
Slashdot Mirror
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the outfit which is concerned with breaking low-grade crypto?
If you consider 56/64/128-bit RC5 low-grade, yes.
How's that going to improve my daily life?
I have no idea what your daily life is like, but if it involves encrypting things you'd prefer stayed private, it should eventually help you in that aspect. Not to mention your boost of confidence as you follow your daily stats and see yourself advancing past others every day.
But breaking crypto? Why?
Because if a few thousand unspecialized computers can brute force the best encryption allowed by law with minimal optimization and research, then we have some good reasons to push for the law to be changed. Personally, I don't like the idea of the best encryption available to me being useful for all of 3 seconds while it's being broken. I don't usually have anything worth decrypting, but I like to think that when I do, it'll be worth my time to encrypt it.
There are numerous things you just couldn't "distribute." The keys have to be served from somewhere, they must be tracked in real-time from somewhere, and they must be accepted/processed somewhere. Stats must be compiled and then put into a single database. To distribute this to multiple computers would cause the amount of bandwidth used to rise to an extreme level, far beyond what it is now. (ie. send out the info, let each node process it, receive the data from each node, hope to Christ it's right)
:)
Next, the integrity of the project gets called into question the moment you begin allowing clients to check processed blocks. The number of fals positives could easily shoot through the roof. Also, a computer with bad memory or simply running a faulty OS (such as Win9x/ME) could overlook a true positive, thereby virtually obliterating the project (ie. "we're at 100% completion with no result, guess we start over?")
As stated above, stats would be impossible to do in this manner, and the same applies for key distrobution. One could argue that the total keys be distributed amoung thousands of nodes and handed out from there, but you create more problems then you solve. You still need a centralized management location to keep track of keys that have or have not been tested. Imagine a node going offline permanently or simply losing the keys it was handed. Suddenly, a large block of keys is missing. As it stands now, the keymaster simply re-issues the keys to someone else after a couple of weeks of no response from the client it sent the original blocks to. Under a distributed format, the keymaster would have to keep track of which keys went to which key distributor, which of those came back, which of those need to be redistributed, where they... (you get the message.)
Next you run into another problem of integrity. What's to stop each distributed keymaster from claiming it's own client is the one that completed all blocks submitted to it. Consider this example, central keymaster sends out 200,000 blocks of keys to keymaster node 101. Keymaster node 101 distributes these keys to a bunch of clients which process the blocks, then send them back to keymaster node 101. Keymaster node 101, which has been modded slightly, then modifies each data block, changing the user id to that of the keymaster's owner, thereby making it appear that any block coming back from keymaster 101 was processed by keymaster 101. It might be easy to spot, but then how to you find out who to give credit to?
The webpage doesn't attract the majority of the bandwidth; the projects do. Distributing the projects would be disasterous, as many have already tried taking advantage of the current system to increase their block yields through modded clients. Luckily, this is easy to spot for now. Under a distributed system, this would be next to impossible. All this, and I've yet to make mention of the fact that the code would have to be completely re-written to work alongside a custom P2P application, which would add months of development to a project that probably only has weeks or months left in it.
In short, someone host the damn thing, k?
No, they can't shut down yet! I have to break 10,000 in the rankings!
:(
Good Lord, what shall I do?
Where do you put the cost of black projetcs into the equation?
Their cost IS factored in; why do you think we have to convert to government dollars? If it weren't for projects that require millions in funding that can't be named (for legal or other reasons) in public documents, a hammer wouldn't cost $50,000.
For those who are already bored with this (as you know exactly what I'm talking about) you can leave now. For the rest of the class, read on.
Example A:
General Johnny needs to build a large laboratory for studying potential biological weapons for use in the next major war. The problem is, General Johnny knows he'll never get funding for an obviously illegal project. So General Johnny tells everyone he just bought this shiny new hammer for $50,000. Mind you, the hammer cost him about $8, but this now gives him $48,992 to fund his project. Now this is going to be a large lab, so he'll need lots of hammers to build it. General Johnny orders 1,000 hammers, giving him $48,992,000 in undocumented cash to use. He then orders a bunch of other stuff at the same insanely high price and before you know it, General Johnny has the several billion dollars he needs to build the illegal lab.
Example B:
Agent Ricky needs to assassinate the leader of a country that has been naughty. Now, agent Ricky knows this won't look good to ohh... the rest of the world? (ie Geneva Convention) So agent Ricky needs cash fast for his plane ticket, guns, escape route, etc. Lucky for agent Ricky, his boss, the CIA, has a nice big pocket of money that no one knows about. How did they get this money? Well, aside from drug and arms sales (from drugs/guns confiscated around the world), they've been buying toilet seats for $75,000 each for years. Why hasn't anyone said anything? Well, for one thing, who cares how much the CIA spent on toilet seats in fiscal year 1984? Also, for those who do know about it, it's more or less a big joke. "Hey, did you guys see that the government is spending like $75,000 for a toilet seat? Ha Ha Ha."
As a side note, Agent Ricky's mission was an utter failure (would you expect anything less of the CIA?) and he was arrested the second he stepped off the plane, then laughed at by the guards of his new home - a big, smelly prison.
That leaves us with repair, the most reasonable option. Send up some guys on the next shuttle mission with Duct Tape (about $1.50 a roll, depending on store and brand).
No, no, no... This is the US government here. Hammers generally run about $50,000 each, a couch runs several hundred thousand dollars, etc. You have to convert to government dollars. Last I checked, the going conversion rate is something like ((N/I) * Pi^8) where N is the normal price, and I is the importance of the item (scale of 1 to 10, duct tape being a 1, nuclear weapon being a 10).
Therefore, that $1.50 per roll duct tape would actually cost about $14,175 US government dollars.
1) Fire all the satellite's rockets to bring it screaming into the atmosphere on the 4th of July for one hell of a fireworks show.
2) Get Tommy Lee Jones and the rest of the crew from Space Cowboys to give it a good kick.
3) Replace the leaking fuel cell with a new one filled with Nitro Glycerin.
4) Mass-produce the same satellite and sell it in hobby shops under the name, "My First Satellite Set".
5) Sell it to the US Miltary as a target for the new missle shield.
6) "Fuck it, we're going to Mars now."
7) Call AAA for a tow. (or at least a jump-start)
8) Tell the monkey inside it to peddle faster.
9) Make up some ridiculous excuse to explain why you've wasted several million dollars on something that doesn't work - like a fuel leak from a damag... wait a minute...
10) Pretend everything's going as planned.
"OEMs generally don't sell systems to the enthusiast market (The group most likely to leave systems running all day)."
Oh please, probably 80% of the drives sold online (where most enthusiasts get their drives) are OEM. The average person buys a retail Maxtor at CompUSA, whereas most people who have some idea of what it is they're buying (aka enthusiasts) get the drive without all the extra cardboard/paperwork from either a local computer shop or from the internet. The drives purchased seperately as OEM are the workhorses. All my drives (6 of them) are OEM and they spin full speed 24/7 with maybe an hour of maintenance downtime every 3 months.
Boy, that just rings of quality; doesn't it?
Sorry, it's late at night and I'm pretty toasted (coming back from a party). :)
...come up with something that's essentially duplicated effort?
Hmm.. duplicated effort... duplicated effort...
Oh yeah, now I remember...
Mac 1981 --> Windows 95 -> Windows 98 -> Windows ME etc..
Judging by the rust on that thing, I'd say this guy's life expectancy is somewhere around (now + 4 rides).
That was quite the fast slashdotting...
We're getting better at it as time goes by.
As they say, "practice makes perfect."
Actually, considering the budget a mission to Mars would have to work under, "holding your breath for a mission to Mars" might be precisely what is necessary. Although with the amount of money spent on fixing the Hubble, why can't we just teach an astronaught to breathe carbon dioxide? I should think the best solution here is to get one guy breathing O2 and exhaling CO2, and another guy breathing CO2 and exhaling O2. Wouldn't that be a pretty big budget savings right there?
Several hours later it was discovered that the software used by the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories had a slight flaw, and the corrected simulations show that the nuclear explosions were in fact beige.
In a related story, the updated software was found to contain massive amounts of spyware.
This must be the innovation Gates and Ballmer keep talking about trying to preserve; yes! I finally understand!
I can just see Rumsfeld now after getting wind of this discovery...
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld charges in to brief reporters breathing heavily smelling of whiskey and sporting a wiked grin...
"This morning at 9am EST... *froth* *drool*... I ordered all US personnel out of Afghanistan in preparation for "testing" of a new... *froth* *snarl*... fusion bomb which will reduce most of Afghanistan far past the stone-age to sometime near the middle of the Precambrian era. *snarl* *spit*... That is all.
It occurs to me that Microsoft might actually be pleased by this never-ending legal "battle". Besides the nearly constant news coverage which is easy advertising that comes with the relatively marginal cost of the lawyers fees (from a multi-billion dollar corporation's standpoint), it also allows them to continue doing as they please without anything such as an injunction to prevent them from continuing to expand their monopoly and snuff out would-be competitors. During the past 6 some-odd years of high-gear courtroom battles, Microsoft has only had to contend with a single injuction (circa '97) which was later thrown out on appeal. This means they've had plenty of time to virtually wipe out Netscape, Be, and a slew of other companies by using the same illegal tactics they continue using today.
It's been shown for years that Internet Explorer can be removed safely from Windows with only a minimal loss in functionality, yet it remains. Participants have been after the Window's source code for years, yet it remains safely locked behind Redmond's doors. Illegal, anti-competitive practices have been on-going, if not accelerating over the course of the lawsuit. The simple fact is that this on-going court battle has yet to solve a single problem with the software giant, and has probably only helped it. Let's not forget that were some sort of settlement reached with the Federal government some time this year, (don't hold your breath) it would almost certainly have absolutely no real consequences, and if the initial settlement proposal is any indication, may only serve to allow Microsoft to further force its products into the marketplace, giving it further penetration in such areas as schools where it has been lacking.
Then one may look at the other nine states, who appear to be seeking a much better legal settlement against Softzilla. They want the source, they want IE out, and they want other versions of Windows available at a lesser cost without the unwanted "features" Windows buyers pay for. Well first of all, this would probably drag on for years, meaning no changes would take place. Were there to be a settlement, I doubt Microsoft would aggree to anything which does not eventually come out to their benefit; ie. selling a stripped-down version of Windows at a cheaper price would probably increase rather than decrease their sales figures. Were there a judgement issued against them, they would most certainly appeal time and time again, adding yet many more years to the total length of this litigation, by which time, any possible good coming forth from the judgement would have long since lost any tangible meaning.
In all this, I've come to the conclusion that perhaps we should be trying Microsoft and large corporations like it in a tribunal much like the ones being used around the world for war crimes. A swifter, more final form of judicial proceeding is obviously needed for a company who's resources allow it to drag on court battles for year apon year, thereby pretty much defeating the judicial system in place. Draconian laws obviously had to be updated to deal with high tech companies, perhaps the courts should take a note from the legislators and realize you can't treat M$ like Standard Oil.
I should think that by now we would have seen the emergence of a new application/service to bridge the gnutella/kazaa P2P networks perhaps along with some other, smaller networks much like how Jabber did with Instant messenging.
I'd be surprised if no one had as of yet reverse-engineered the Kazaa-developed protocols, and moving from there to a unified application appears on face to be simple. I was thinking about this as I was about to download Kazaa (having already downloaded the new morpheus and being less than impressed with it) and wondering how affected the Kazaa P2P network is since the morpheus user base departure.
A single, unified P2P application would obviously have a huge number of advantages (hopefully no spyware/trojans/etc) and with luck, would be GPL'd for added amusement. If anyone's interested in building the lagest P2P network in history (and making porn easier to find and download) please feel free; but don't expect it from me anytime soon, as my time is currently about as limited as my intellect.
----
The fact that they showed them off with Linux isn't nearly as entertaining as the fact that they were showing them off just a few blocks from the Intel Developer Forum.
AMD: Hey Intel..
Intel: Yes?
AMD: EAT ME!
:)
It started in the early 1980's.
It ended in the early 1990's.
(Dad): Happy birthday little Johnny, I got you that Xbox you wanted so bad.
(LJ): Gee, thanks dad! You're the best!
(Dad): I had to go up north to Canada to get the Xbox, but I was lucky enough to find the controllers right here in Seattle.
Later that night...
(Dad): What the !&#* do you mean it doesn't work?? After I spent over $400 on it and it doesn't even work?
To be continued...
Headlines:
"Man stabs wife 37 times, sued by Ginsu for unauthorized use."
"Hardware store sued for circumventing copy protection; ignoring words 'Do not duplicate' on keys."
"Man wipes ass with Windows XP EULA; exclaims, 'How's this for fair use?!'"
"Mechanic sued by Ford for reverse engineering break system after taking it apart to check for problems."
I'm thinking Bill Gates is just trying to get a nice fat list of popular DVDs so he can run and download them from DALnet.
<BillGates> Gee fellas, could you please help me download good pornographic films?
<@Antel> lol, get out of here you l0ser
<BillGates> But wait, I'm really desperate here. I gotta OC-48 and a 12TB IBM RAID storage tower.
*** Antel sets mode +b BGates@microsoft.com
*** BillGates was kicked from #pr0n by Antel (get lost you geek!)
Seeing as my previous job was working at a popular fast food place, this job (working at a PC repair shop) is pretty cool. I sit around all day and build/repair computers and laptops, and I can take a break whenever to surf the web on a very nice high speed line that puts my cable modem to shame. My boss is great, has never once gotten pissy with me and always speaks highly of me, and the customers respect me (unlike at my last job). It's rather nice when you have them by the balls. ;) The best part is the fact that every day I'm given the chance to learn new things that actually interest me. When I see something that I want to play with (such as a dualie Xeon server), he orders it, we play with it, and then it sits there along with all the previous toys. Now that we're working on setting up a Linux/FreeBSD domain for web hosting and remote backup, I'm learning even more about networking, *nix's, security, etc. I get paid decent (enough to get me by for now) and I get great discounts on fun toys like my Panasonic PrivateID Iris scanner. :) So I'd have to say yes, I really do like my job, and I realize how lucky I am to be among the few folks who can honestly say that.
This shouldn't be an issue. I have a Panasonic BM-ET 100US Authenticam (retinal scanner) and I usually sit about 20" away while authenticating. It takes roughly a second to three seconds to find and capture my retina, and I'm never anywhere near it.