Look, I am all for censorship... as long as it is done at the individual level! Don't tell me what I can or can not watch, let me decide for myself.
At the same time, let me setup v-chips and filters so that I don't have to see nudity, listen to cursing, see graphic violence if I do not want to.
There are a lot of great movies that are "right on the line" for what we want our kids to see. Many of these films would be great if only this couple of lines were removed and these one or two scenes were cut/editted. I looked into CleanFlix, but what they edit out versus what I want edited out tended to differ.
With all the technology we have at our disposal, I would like to see each scene rated instead of just the whole film, and I would like the ratings to be enhanced. If the movie has 250 scenes where only 1 scene has nudity and only 2 scenes have "naughty words", why should I not be able to cut the nude scene and censor the sound on the naughty words?
I am already ticked off about them showing previews for PG and PG-13 movies at G movies I take the kids to. And that does not even mention the commercials for TV-MA shows during shows that at rated much lower. My kids do not need to see the "sex sells" part of the commercial for an adult show while watching a kids show.
Long story short (too late), give me, the user, have all the information about the film at as granular a level as possible and give me all the control.
In a couple of months, you will be able to get a sport pilot's license with only 20 hours of training. Instead of a one seat ultralight, you will now have a vehicle with two seats, a maximum gross takeoff weight of 1,232 pounds, and a maximum speed in level flight of 132 mph!
I currently commute 16 miles each way. This takes me about 1 hour each way.
With a gyroplane capable of going 60 miles an hour, I can cut this commute to under 15 minutes each way (only 11 miles as the crow flies). Since gyroplanes as short takeoff and landing, this should be feasible. Now, if only I can get my employer to go for me landing and taking off on the property...
I have been asking this one since the day I saw my first Knoppix CD.
Why can't we build games where everything you need to run the game is right on the CD?
There are already Linux distros out there that boot into MAME. Why can't we create some type of standard that is the "whole package" answer to DirectX?
As long as your hardware is compatible, you just work. You boot from the CD and play that game and that game only. We can create a standard bootable game distro and port games inside that distro.
Once you have it running in a "fixed environment" of a bootable CD (you know every piece of code on the CD and its version, so you are in total control of compatibility and run environment), you can expand to get the same game to run in a general Linux environment.
Would it be a PITA to reboot my PC just to play a game? Yeah. Don't I already do something similar with console games? Yeah. Aren't I basically just turning my PC into a fixed environment like a console? Yes, but it is an environment where the developer has total control over the run environmnet.
Am I smoking crack here or does this make at least some sense?
You obviously are using the standard scale in your judgement of acting and not the weighted SciFi scale.
In non-scifi works, actors are expected to have emotional range and be capable of pulling the audience into the plot for the plot's sake. Their ability to project the suspension of disbelief is key into the audience feeling that they are part of an actual event instead of simply an observer.
The SciFi sliding scale, however, is broken into several sub-categories of attributes that are appealing to your typical SlashDot reader. This attributes include such qualities as bust size, scruffiness, ability to immediately represent a given stereotype, bust size, how they look sitting naked on a rock on a desert planet, how they look in a form fitting uniform, bust size, and how they look shooting a ray gun. Occasionally, if they are not female, thus making bust size irrelevant, their acting ability may come into play unless they can show documented proof of being on such hits as "The Scarecrow and Mrs. King".
FireFly is the answer. You have a kick-ass writer/director who is more than willing and able and actors who have already put in some amazing acting. You have a plotline that grabs you by the gut and pulls you along for a ride.
I warn everyone who has not seen Firefly yet -- if you get the DVDs and start watching them, you will go one half of the best ride of your life. It will be like getting on the world's greatest rollercoaster (with 10 loops!), making through the first 3 loops and having the rollercoaster stop in the middle of the ride. You will love what you get and be disgusted that there is not more.
Still, if people continue to buy the DVDs and word of mouth continues to spread, there is still the movie in the works and hope for SciFi or someone else to pick it up. Fox should be smart enough to put it into production again as long as they are getting paid.
Dude, if you join and invite me, I will paypal you $1. Then, when I go to work tomorrow, I will be all like, "Yeah, I'm on Orkut" and all the geeks at work will be like, "Dude, you are the alpha geek. Let us in!" and I will be all like "No way! You guys are lame!" and they will be all like, "Dude, you totally suck, now let us in" and I will be like... well, you, like, get the point. 'Cause cliques are like, totally.
It will make my Friday. I'd buy that for a dollar!;=)
Obviously this is going to allow for some level of interaction between your TiVo and equipment on your LAN, be it your router, your PC and/or your Mac. This could lead to an interface betweeen your TiVo and iTunes using Java. Maybe it is about pulling down content over broadband to your TiVo, though DRM concerns immediately come to mind. Maybe it is both.
We had one place near us that was run by some college students. They rented a two-story auto center that had empty for about two years. The owner was willing to get anybody in there at that point.
They put folding tables in rows in what was the showroom area. Half of these tables were filled with gaming PCs. The other half of the tables had networking run to them and were left empty for BYOC gaming.
They turned the counter into a snack/coffee bar and sold geeks drinks like Jolt Cola. They put a couple racks in to sell gamer crack, oops, I mean Magic cards, and gaming books (D&D, Vampire, etc.). They also put more folding tables downstairs in the autobays and put used partitions up between the bays.
They charged three different hourly rates: 1) you could rent a place for your PC at one of the open tables. 2) You could rent one of their PCs. 3) You could rent one of the gaming rooms downstairs for role-playing or collectible card games. You got a discount if you paid a month at a time.
They also had monthly membership where you got unlimited play on one of their PCs for one monthly price.
They did very well for a year and the owner seriously jacked up the rent. About six months later, they graduated and closed shop.
I can't remember their pricing for the gaming (I went for RPG downstairs, not computer gaming), but I seem to remember $6 an hour? The gaming tables downstairs were $15-25 for a four hour block depending on the size of the area. The $25 area was usually used by the Warhammer guys.
As a former FidoNet node SysOp, I have had a similar idea for a couple of years. I have messed around with the code but never been happy with it to a point of putting it on SourceForge.
The idea goes like this:
If you want to host a RSS feed, you run a program that is basically a peer cache. People hit your IP and "subscribe" to the feed. You give them a list of other subscribers' IPs and the public key for the feed. The client then hits these peers and checks to see who has faster bandwidth. If the peer is faster than you, you ask to become a leaf under it. It will either accept you as a leaf or pass you on to any leaves it thinks are still faster than you.
When you have an update to your RSS, you sign it with a digital signature to prove the authenticity of the RSS file. The fastest peers actually poll the RSS publisher. Whenever they get a new RSS file, they push it to the leaves under them. The RSS file continues to flow downstream until every node has the RSS feed.
Files under a certain size are just automatically grabbed by the top nodes whenever they become aware of them. Leaf nodes ask their parent node for the file, so again, the small files flow down the tree.
For larger files, everyone uses BT pretty much as it exists today.
Using a system like this, you could even go beyond digital signatures and include public key encryption so that you had to have the public key for the feed to even be able to read the messages. The feed owner could choose who would be allowed to have the private key, thus controlling who could post while at the same time keeping the traffic unreadable to any sniffing the wire.
Integrate this into an encrypted peer-to-peer app like WASTE and you might have something worth using. So who wants to start developing code?
So, if you post a movie before it hits the theaters, you go to jail. If you release it the same day it hits the theaters, you just get fined? This whole bill is just stupid.
IANAL, but I have to wonder here. We all know that SCO was giving away under the GPL what they are now claiming should never have been given away. Furthermore, they are claiming the GPL is unconstitutional.
So why did they enter into OpenLinux?
I think they are now damned if they do, damned if they don't. *IF* everything they claim is true, then they mislead their business partners in the OpenLinux effort. These partners contributed additional development effort, money and other resources to an endevour that SCO now claims they own in its entirety. Wouldn't that be fraud?
... during Desert Storm, we had a laptop based system that was brand new, that means untested in the field. They told us how it was going to change the whole front-line concept of ELINT (electronics intelligence) and really talked it up.
First, we had to get rid of the floppies. Sand and floppies do not mix. So out into the desert we go and for a few hours it worked great... until the temp got up over 120 and the laptops started overheating. We soon realized that we could not sit them on top of the encryptiion devices (which got hot) and that bought us a few more hours. Finally, we started wetting our "sandstorm scarves" and putting them on top of the laptop to allow evaporation to buy us the rest of the daytime hours.
Now this is just the hardware. I will not even get into the issues we had doing manual database changes in the field. No floppies, remember. Well, we found a way, but it was ugly.
So while defense contractors and government civilians might have designed this crap, it is the men (and now women too) in green (or desert camo) who have to actually make it work by any means possible. This is not something you learn in a class... it is something you learn on your own while under fire (sometimes literally).
I joined the Army in 1988. At that time, I had already worked 2 years in IT for a consultant building PCs and servers and installing LANs. I had also taught myself Turbo Pascal and worked with 6 other people to write a BBS for the PC. So I joined the Army thinking I would get some great communications training working with satelites and computers.
Well, here is what happened. I left on Feb 1st. Basic Training was, well, physically hard but I made it through. Next, I go to AIT (Advanced Individual Training) at Fort Gordon, Ga. By week 3 of training, they had me take a test and quickly bumped me up to the last 4 weeks of training because I was correcting some of the instructors (and turned out to be right).
Having gotten done with AIT in 7 weeks instead of 6 months, I got to go to Airborne School and earn my jumpwings. So, there it was, Labor Day and I was showing up at Fort Bragg, NC assigned to the 82nd Airborne. They found out what I could do with computers and immediately sent me to headquarters. I ended up a database programmer for a year. I sat at a desk writing code for $15k a year while I had to work with (and often provide instruction to) government employees earning three or even five times as much.
Finally, in 1990, I got sent down to the 313th MI Bn and got to actually do stuff in the field that involved computers, radios, etc. with the intelligence guys and gals. Desert Storm was a hoot and I felt like I made a difference.
But when it came time to re-enlist, I realized that I had learned NOTHING in the Army that I had not: (1) brought in with me and (2) improved on my own by self-learning.
I left the military, got a civilian job and was soon making 4 times as much money and I never had to salute anyone. =)
If you know absolutely nothing about IT, you will learn something in the Army. You will also leave the military with some experience on your resume and possibly a security clearance (very valuable right now).
But since you are already reading Slashdot, there is probably nothing in terms of IT skills or money to be gained in the military (though I enjoy knowing that I can kill out to 200+ meters with almost any decent rifle with a good caliber).
That having been said, I still am proud that I helped pay for the price of Freedom in America (even if John Ashcroft is taking it away) and that I served something bigger than myself in my formative years. So while I learned very little in terms of IT, the experience I gained in life has been priceless.
This is actually a very interesting move on the political front. Palestine is not recognized as a self-ruling nation, put is viewed as an occupied state. The RIAA/MPAA have no legal recourse, but then again no one would likely say boo if they unleash mercenary hackers to take BS5 out of commission.
Of course, if the United States were to formally recognize Palestine as a free and independent state, they could sign a treaty that would let the RIAA/MPAA go get these guys.
So are the RIAA/MPAA bought members of congress going to suddenly start calling for the recognition of Palestine? Hmmm....
Please help save my soul. Contact your state attorney general and tell them you will not stand for this extortion from SCO. Contact the SEC and put in a stock price manipulation complaint against SCO.
Please! Linux is the only hope for me being able to buy my soul back from Micro$oft! Help me!
Women were meant to look like women. I have never understood men who like the "twiggy" look. I look at those women and think, "Eat a cheeseburger!" Women were not meant to look like 12 year old boys.
I want (and have for that matter) a woman with breats and a shapely woman's rearend. Yes, the shape has changed some with our 3 kids, but that just makes her sexier knowing that she has moved from sex kitten to a fertility Godess! =) Besides, it is a whole different level of love to look into the eyes of your kids and see their mom's loving eyes looking back it you.
Long story short, I will take a woman with a shapely figure but a tummy that is not perfectly flat over a stick figure woman anyday.
You know, we keep moaning about the great strides in hardware and the bloat of software when the real impact in my opinion seems to be on the social side. Maybe its me but 10 years ago computers were still a big social thing.
In 1993, I was one of the main FidoNet nodes for the Pinellas County, Florida. I ran a three line BBS with one of the lines a subscriber only line. I knew all the other FidoNet SysOps in the area. We got together at a state park once a month, grilled stuff, drank some beer and geeked out. Being online was about discussion and the exchange of ideas.
Jump ahead to 2003. My BBS is long dead. I am one of a million strangers on/. Being online rarely involves echanging ideas anymore. Most people online seem to be all about gaming, e-commerce and/or porn.
Even gaming has changed. About the only time I game anymore is the once a month LAN parties I have with a couple friends and most of the conversation there is along the lines of "OH, the had to hurt!" Most "gamers" I know are really just running the hack/slash/up stats treadmill with nameless strangers on this weeks version of Ultima Online.
I used to be so excited about being online and the whole concept of the Internet because I saw a world growing up around me where people broke down barriers, spoke from their heart and judged people by what they wrote instead of physical appearance. Instead, the Internet has been twisted into some mutated creation that speaks to the lowest parts of our person.
And the worst part is that I can't really blame it on the technology. We, as individuals, are guilty of letting *OUR* Internet get corrupted. I am just as much to blame as anyone else.
Well, maybe this post is one small step back in the right direction.
Maybe they thought it was more prudent to put their money into lawyers right now instead of the 10,000 security guards it would have taken to try to keep the riot from starting.
OK, maybe it is time to put my tinfoil hat on and start looking out the window for black helicopters, but what if this is all a nod-and-wink kind of scheme.
IBM and SCO make it known that IBM is thinking of buying SCO. Instead, SCO sues IBM. SCO's stock price goes up. SCO's owners dump stock (getting rich) and SCO uses the inflated stock price to buy up small companies. Once SCO has all the pieces in place, IBM suddenly forces things into court and SCO is blown away. SCO stock plummets. *THEN* IBM buys them for a basement bargin price.
This does multiple things for IBM. (1) Publicity. (2) Good PR with the Linux crowd as IBM "saves the day". (3) They get more stuff in the SCO buyout. (4) It places IBM's competitors in the Linux arena on shaking ground while all this is happeneing, possibly forcing some out of business.
Suddenly, in the end, IBM has a Linux distro, AIX for the high-end, lots of other IP, and a rep as being the big champion for Linux that is willing to put its money where its mouth is.
Right about that time, IBM would be ready to take on Microsoft again for the servers and desktops. IBM gives away the desktop OS just to have an in and starts recapturing the mid-level servers. As IBM becomes the "leader" of Linux, why would you not go with IBM and AIX on the big iron since IBM makes it one smooth continuum of *nix?
Man, I have got to stop drinking 10 diet cherry cokes while on medicine for a head cold before I post. =)
Who are we kidding?!? The only reason Linux is not under the same virii attacks as Windows is a matter of numbers -- you get more "kills" for the effort on Windows. If Linux was the most popular operating system, people would attack it.
The problem is a user problem as much as it is a technology problem. Firewalls are great, but if you don't use one, they do you little good. Every single user needs to be held accountable for their machine. You need to run patches. You need to have a firewall. You need to lockdown unused ports, etc.
If someone drove around a car with no brakes, we would hold them accountable for the injuries they caused. It should be no different with computers and virii.
It is only a matter of time before cyberterrorism moves beyond pranks, crude hacks and immature political statements and moves into the realm of real damage.
Imagine a worm that looked for email addresses and actually had a working attachment payload to do the infection (it really showed a naked tennis star as it infected your system). Imagine a virus that looked for any SQL database it could see and tried to login in with 'SA' and no password. Imagine if it randomly transposed digits for every numeric field for a random number of records. Imagine if it infected NT services like Anti-virus, IIS, etc. Imagine if it moved slow enough not to be noticed (only 1 scan a second?) and was able to be triggered for a coordinated DDOS attack remotely.
Yeah, brute force port scans with buffer overruns and cute little messages might look scary, but this is the pipebomb when the ability to release the anthrax is out there.
The biggest difference between Steampunk and Cyberpunk at their roots is internal versus external. Steampunk is not just about new concepts with old technology, it is about hacking the world around you. Cyberpunk is about hacking yourself as a means towards the ends of changing the world around you.
I am doing the exact same thing at our 2 story home with am unfinished basement.
I am running drops to each downstairs room by coming up from the basement to each room. These cables all run to a patch panel in the wiring closet I have built out under the stairs. I am running a piece of conduit from under the stairs all the way up to the attic.
From the attic, I am coming down into the closet of the home office on the second floor. This is the upstairs computer closet which will house another patch panel and 10/100 switch. I am going to connect the upstairs 10/100 switch with the basement 10/100 switch using Gigabit.
My wife's PC and my work PC sit in the home office. The kid's PC is on the first floor in the home school room. I am modding an xBox to hook up to the a/v receiver in the den on the first floor. When the basement is finished, it will have a Home Theater room with a HTPC and my MAME cabinet.
DVDs and CDs have been ripped to the file server. They are played on the xBox using Media Player. Video Extraction off the DirecTiVo can also add content to the file server.
Note that there is no wireless anywhere in my plan. I have *A LOT* of 2.4 interference in my area, so that combined with security concerns have completely turned me away from 802.11... for now. I am sure I will add it in a couple of years when tablets are under $250.
My wife also wanted audio and, if possible, video feeds to be able to listen in / look in on the baby when she is sleeping. I looked at X.10 devices, priced things out, gave it thought. Here is what I came up with - a $50 set of 900 Mhz audio monitors. They sound better then our old 2.4 Mhz monitors (that interference again) and where a lot cheaper than a full household intercom system ($800 for a kit to do it myself).
I am still considering a single web camera with ethernet out to look in our the little peanut during nap-time while my wife is homeschooling the older two.
Slashdot Mirror
Look, I am all for censorship ... as long as it is done at the individual level! Don't tell me what I can or can not watch, let me decide for myself.
At the same time, let me setup v-chips and filters so that I don't have to see nudity, listen to cursing, see graphic violence if I do not want to.
There are a lot of great movies that are "right on the line" for what we want our kids to see. Many of these films would be great if only this couple of lines were removed and these one or two scenes were cut/editted. I looked into CleanFlix, but what they edit out versus what I want edited out tended to differ.
With all the technology we have at our disposal, I would like to see each scene rated instead of just the whole film, and I would like the ratings to be enhanced. If the movie has 250 scenes where only 1 scene has nudity and only 2 scenes have "naughty words", why should I not be able to cut the nude scene and censor the sound on the naughty words?
I am already ticked off about them showing previews for PG and PG-13 movies at G movies I take the kids to. And that does not even mention the commercials for TV-MA shows during shows that at rated much lower. My kids do not need to see the "sex sells" part of the commercial for an adult show while watching a kids show.
Long story short (too late), give me, the user, have all the information about the film at as granular a level as possible and give me all the control.
Check out EAA's Sport Pilot Introduction.
In a couple of months, you will be able to get a sport pilot's license with only 20 hours of training. Instead of a one seat ultralight, you will now have a vehicle with two seats, a maximum gross takeoff weight of 1,232 pounds, and a maximum speed in level flight of 132 mph!
I currently commute 16 miles each way. This takes me about 1 hour each way.
With a gyroplane capable of going 60 miles an hour, I can cut this commute to under 15 minutes each way (only 11 miles as the crow flies). Since gyroplanes as short takeoff and landing, this should be feasible. Now, if only I can get my employer to go for me landing and taking off on the property...
I have been asking this one since the day I saw my first Knoppix CD.
Why can't we build games where everything you need to run the game is right on the CD?
There are already Linux distros out there that boot into MAME. Why can't we create some type of standard that is the "whole package" answer to DirectX?
As long as your hardware is compatible, you just work. You boot from the CD and play that game and that game only. We can create a standard bootable game distro and port games inside that distro.
Once you have it running in a "fixed environment" of a bootable CD (you know every piece of code on the CD and its version, so you are in total control of compatibility and run environment), you can expand to get the same game to run in a general Linux environment.
Would it be a PITA to reboot my PC just to play a game? Yeah. Don't I already do something similar with console games? Yeah. Aren't I basically just turning my PC into a fixed environment like a console? Yes, but it is an environment where the developer has total control over the run environmnet.
Am I smoking crack here or does this make at least some sense?
This has got to be a fake. Compare the following pictures side by side and you can see that it is not Hayden Christensen under that makeup.
9 60 624_anakin.jpg
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1960000/images/_1
http://www.student.uib.no/~st09155/SW/jd1.jpg
You obviously are using the standard scale in your judgement of acting and not the weighted SciFi scale.
In non-scifi works, actors are expected to have emotional range and be capable of pulling the audience into the plot for the plot's sake. Their ability to project the suspension of disbelief is key into the audience feeling that they are part of an actual event instead of simply an observer.
The SciFi sliding scale, however, is broken into several sub-categories of attributes that are appealing to your typical SlashDot reader. This attributes include such qualities as bust size, scruffiness, ability to immediately represent a given stereotype, bust size, how they look sitting naked on a rock on a desert planet, how they look in a form fitting uniform, bust size, and how they look shooting a ray gun. Occasionally, if they are not female, thus making bust size irrelevant, their acting ability may come into play unless they can show documented proof of being on such hits as "The Scarecrow and Mrs. King".
FireFly is the answer. You have a kick-ass writer/director who is more than willing and able and actors who have already put in some amazing acting. You have a plotline that grabs you by the gut and pulls you along for a ride.
I warn everyone who has not seen Firefly yet -- if you get the DVDs and start watching them, you will go one half of the best ride of your life. It will be like getting on the world's greatest rollercoaster (with 10 loops!), making through the first 3 loops and having the rollercoaster stop in the middle of the ride. You will love what you get and be disgusted that there is not more.
Still, if people continue to buy the DVDs and word of mouth continues to spread, there is still the movie in the works and hope for SciFi or someone else to pick it up. Fox should be smart enough to put it into production again as long as they are getting paid.
Dude, if you join and invite me, I will paypal you $1. Then, when I go to work tomorrow, I will be all like, "Yeah, I'm on Orkut" and all the geeks at work will be like, "Dude, you are the alpha geek. Let us in!" and I will be all like "No way! You guys are lame!" and they will be all like, "Dude, you totally suck, now let us in" and I will be like ... well, you, like, get the point. 'Cause cliques are like, totally.
;=)
It will make my Friday. I'd buy that for a dollar!
StrangeBerry is involved in a lot of networking projects, including UPnP and Java Port of ZeroConf.
Obviously this is going to allow for some level of interaction between your TiVo and equipment on your LAN, be it your router, your PC and/or your Mac. This could lead to an interface betweeen your TiVo and iTunes using Java. Maybe it is about pulling down content over broadband to your TiVo, though DRM concerns immediately come to mind. Maybe it is both.
Only time will tell.
We had one place near us that was run by some college students. They rented a two-story auto center that had empty for about two years. The owner was willing to get anybody in there at that point.
They put folding tables in rows in what was the showroom area. Half of these tables were filled with gaming PCs. The other half of the tables had networking run to them and were left empty for BYOC gaming.
They turned the counter into a snack/coffee bar and sold geeks drinks like Jolt Cola. They put a couple racks in to sell gamer crack, oops, I mean Magic cards, and gaming books (D&D, Vampire, etc.). They also put more folding tables downstairs in the autobays and put used partitions up between the bays.
They charged three different hourly rates:
1) you could rent a place for your PC at one of the open tables.
2) You could rent one of their PCs.
3) You could rent one of the gaming rooms downstairs for role-playing or collectible card games. You got a discount if you paid a month at a time.
They also had monthly membership where you got unlimited play on one of their PCs for one monthly price.
They did very well for a year and the owner seriously jacked up the rent. About six months later, they graduated and closed shop.
I can't remember their pricing for the gaming (I went for RPG downstairs, not computer gaming), but I seem to remember $6 an hour? The gaming tables downstairs were $15-25 for a four hour block depending on the size of the area. The $25 area was usually used by the Warhammer guys.
Hope that gives you some ideas.
As a former FidoNet node SysOp, I have had a similar idea for a couple of years. I have messed around with the code but never been happy with it to a point of putting it on SourceForge.
The idea goes like this:
If you want to host a RSS feed, you run a program that is basically a peer cache. People hit your IP and "subscribe" to the feed. You give them a list of other subscribers' IPs and the public key for the feed. The client then hits these peers and checks to see who has faster bandwidth. If the peer is faster than you, you ask to become a leaf under it. It will either accept you as a leaf or pass you on to any leaves it thinks are still faster than you.
When you have an update to your RSS, you sign it with a digital signature to prove the
authenticity of the RSS file. The fastest peers actually poll the RSS publisher. Whenever
they get a new RSS file, they push it to the leaves under them. The RSS file continues to flow downstream until every node has the RSS feed.
Files under a certain size are just automatically grabbed by the top nodes whenever they become aware of them. Leaf nodes ask their parent node for the file, so again, the small files flow down the tree.
For larger files, everyone uses BT pretty much as it exists today.
Using a system like this, you could even go beyond digital signatures and include public key encryption so that you had to have the public key for the feed to even be able to read the messages. The feed owner could choose who would be allowed to have the private key, thus controlling who could post while at the same time keeping the traffic unreadable to any sniffing the wire.
Integrate this into an encrypted peer-to-peer app like WASTE and you might have something worth using. So who wants to start developing code?
So, if you post a movie before it hits the theaters, you go to jail. If you release it the same day it hits the theaters, you just get fined? This whole bill is just stupid.
Okay, so now TurboLinux, Suse and the other entities involved in OpenLinux turn around and sue SCO for fraud. People go to jail.
IANAL, but I have to wonder here. We all know that SCO was giving away under the GPL what they are now claiming should never have been given away. Furthermore, they are claiming the GPL is unconstitutional.
So why did they enter into OpenLinux?
I think they are now damned if they do, damned if they don't. *IF* everything they claim is true, then they mislead their business partners in the OpenLinux effort. These partners contributed additional development effort, money and other resources to an endevour that SCO now claims they own in its entirety. Wouldn't that be fraud?
... during Desert Storm, we had a laptop based system that was brand new, that means untested in the field. They told us how it was going to change the whole front-line concept of ELINT (electronics intelligence) and really talked it up.
... until the temp got up over 120 and the laptops started overheating. We soon realized that we could not sit them on top of the encryptiion devices (which got hot) and that bought us a few more hours. Finally, we started wetting our "sandstorm scarves" and putting them on top of the laptop to allow evaporation to buy us the rest of the daytime hours.
... it is something you learn on your own while under fire (sometimes literally).
First, we had to get rid of the floppies. Sand and floppies do not mix. So out into the desert we go and for a few hours it worked great
Now this is just the hardware. I will not even get into the issues we had doing manual database changes in the field. No floppies, remember. Well, we found a way, but it was ugly.
So while defense contractors and government civilians might have designed this crap, it is the men (and now women too) in green (or desert camo) who have to actually make it work by any means possible. This is not something you learn in a class
I joined the Army in 1988. At that time, I had already worked 2 years in IT for a consultant building PCs and servers and installing LANs. I had also taught myself Turbo Pascal and worked with 6 other people to write a BBS for the PC. So I joined the Army thinking I would get some great communications training working with satelites and computers.
Well, here is what happened. I left on Feb 1st. Basic Training was, well, physically hard but I made it through. Next, I go to AIT (Advanced Individual Training) at Fort Gordon, Ga. By week 3 of training, they had me take a test and quickly bumped me up to the last 4 weeks of training because I was correcting some of the instructors (and turned out to be right).
Having gotten done with AIT in 7 weeks instead of 6 months, I got to go to Airborne School and earn my jumpwings. So, there it was, Labor Day and I was showing up at Fort Bragg, NC assigned to the 82nd Airborne. They found out what I could do with computers and immediately sent me to headquarters. I ended up a database programmer for a year. I sat at a desk writing code for $15k a year while I had to work with (and often provide instruction to) government employees earning three or even five times as much.
Finally, in 1990, I got sent down to the 313th MI Bn and got to actually do stuff in the field that involved computers, radios, etc. with the intelligence guys and gals. Desert Storm was a hoot and I felt like I made a difference.
But when it came time to re-enlist, I realized that I had learned NOTHING in the Army that I had not: (1) brought in with me and (2) improved on my own by self-learning.
I left the military, got a civilian job and was soon making 4 times as much money and I never had to salute anyone. =)
If you know absolutely nothing about IT, you will learn something in the Army. You will also leave the military with some experience on your resume and possibly a security clearance (very valuable right now).
But since you are already reading Slashdot, there is probably nothing in terms of IT skills or money to be gained in the military (though I enjoy knowing that I can kill out to 200+ meters with almost any decent rifle with a good caliber).
That having been said, I still am proud that I helped pay for the price of Freedom in America (even if John Ashcroft is taking it away) and that I served something bigger than myself in my formative years. So while I learned very little in terms of IT, the experience I gained in life has been priceless.
This is actually a very interesting move on the political front. Palestine is not recognized as a self-ruling nation, put is viewed as an occupied state. The RIAA/MPAA have no legal recourse, but then again no one would likely say boo if they unleash mercenary hackers to take BS5 out of commission.
Of course, if the United States were to formally recognize Palestine as a free and independent state, they could sign a treaty that would let the RIAA/MPAA go get these guys.
So are the RIAA/MPAA bought members of congress going to suddenly start calling for the recognition of Palestine? Hmmm....
Please help save my soul. Contact your state attorney general and tell them you will not stand for this extortion from SCO. Contact the SEC and put in a stock price manipulation complaint against SCO. Please! Linux is the only hope for me being able to buy my soul back from Micro$oft! Help me!
Women were meant to look like women. I have never understood men who like the "twiggy" look. I look at those women and think, "Eat a cheeseburger!" Women were not meant to look like 12 year old boys. I want (and have for that matter) a woman with breats and a shapely woman's rearend. Yes, the shape has changed some with our 3 kids, but that just makes her sexier knowing that she has moved from sex kitten to a fertility Godess! =) Besides, it is a whole different level of love to look into the eyes of your kids and see their mom's loving eyes looking back it you. Long story short, I will take a woman with a shapely figure but a tummy that is not perfectly flat over a stick figure woman anyday.
You know, we keep moaning about the great strides in hardware and the bloat of software when the real impact in my opinion seems to be on the social side. Maybe its me but 10 years ago computers were still a big social thing.
/. Being online rarely involves echanging ideas anymore. Most people online seem to be all about gaming, e-commerce and/or porn.
In 1993, I was one of the main FidoNet nodes for the Pinellas County, Florida. I ran a three line BBS with one of the lines a subscriber only line. I knew all the other FidoNet SysOps in the area. We got together at a state park once a month, grilled stuff, drank some beer and geeked out. Being online was about discussion and the exchange of ideas.
Jump ahead to 2003. My BBS is long dead. I am one of a million strangers on
Even gaming has changed. About the only time I game anymore is the once a month LAN parties I have with a couple friends and most of the conversation there is along the lines of "OH, the had to hurt!" Most "gamers" I know are really just running the hack/slash/up stats treadmill with nameless strangers on this weeks version of Ultima Online.
I used to be so excited about being online and the whole concept of the Internet because I saw a world growing up around me where people broke down barriers, spoke from their heart and judged people by what they wrote instead of physical appearance. Instead, the Internet has been twisted into some mutated creation that speaks to the lowest parts of our person.
And the worst part is that I can't really blame it on the technology. We, as individuals, are guilty of letting *OUR* Internet get corrupted. I am just as much to blame as anyone else.
Well, maybe this post is one small step back in the right direction.
I was under the impression TiVo ran version 2.4.4. Upgrading the TiVo Kernel
Maybe they thought it was more prudent to put their money into lawyers right now instead of the 10,000 security guards it would have taken to try to keep the riot from starting.
OK, maybe it is time to put my tinfoil hat on and start looking out the window for black helicopters, but what if this is all a nod-and-wink kind of scheme.
IBM and SCO make it known that IBM is thinking of buying SCO. Instead, SCO sues IBM. SCO's stock price goes up. SCO's owners dump stock (getting rich) and SCO uses the inflated stock price to buy up small companies. Once SCO has all the pieces in place, IBM suddenly forces things into court and SCO is blown away. SCO stock plummets. *THEN* IBM buys them for a basement bargin price.
This does multiple things for IBM. (1) Publicity. (2) Good PR with the Linux crowd as IBM "saves the day". (3) They get more stuff in the SCO buyout. (4) It places IBM's competitors in the Linux arena on shaking ground while all this is happeneing, possibly forcing some out of business.
Suddenly, in the end, IBM has a Linux distro, AIX for the high-end, lots of other IP, and a rep as being the big champion for Linux that is willing to put its money where its mouth is.
Right about that time, IBM would be ready to take on Microsoft again for the servers and desktops. IBM gives away the desktop OS just to have an in and starts recapturing the mid-level servers. As IBM becomes the "leader" of Linux, why would you not go with IBM and AIX on the big iron since IBM makes it one smooth continuum of *nix?
Man, I have got to stop drinking 10 diet cherry cokes while on medicine for a head cold before I post. =)
Who are we kidding?!? The only reason Linux is not under the same virii attacks as Windows is a matter of numbers -- you get more "kills" for the effort on Windows. If Linux was the most popular operating system, people would attack it.
The problem is a user problem as much as it is a technology problem. Firewalls are great, but if you don't use one, they do you little good. Every single user needs to be held accountable for their machine. You need to run patches. You need to have a firewall. You need to lockdown unused ports, etc.
If someone drove around a car with no brakes, we would hold them accountable for the injuries they caused. It should be no different with computers and virii.
It is only a matter of time before cyberterrorism moves beyond pranks, crude hacks and immature political statements and moves into the realm of real damage.
Imagine a worm that looked for email addresses and actually had a working attachment payload to do the infection (it really showed a naked tennis star as it infected your system). Imagine a virus that looked for any SQL database it could see and tried to login in with 'SA' and no password. Imagine if it randomly transposed digits for every numeric field for a random number of records. Imagine if it infected NT services like Anti-virus, IIS, etc. Imagine if it moved slow enough not to be noticed (only 1 scan a second?) and was able to be triggered for a coordinated DDOS attack remotely.
Yeah, brute force port scans with buffer overruns and cute little messages might look scary, but this is the pipebomb when the ability to release the anthrax is out there.
The biggest difference between Steampunk and Cyberpunk at their roots is internal versus external. Steampunk is not just about new concepts with old technology, it is about hacking the world around you. Cyberpunk is about hacking yourself as a means towards the ends of changing the world around you.
I am doing the exact same thing at our 2 story home with am unfinished basement.
... for now. I am sure I will add it in a couple of years when tablets are under $250.
I am running drops to each downstairs room by coming up from the basement to each room. These cables all run to a patch panel in the wiring closet I have built out under the stairs. I am running a piece of conduit from under the stairs all the way up to the attic.
From the attic, I am coming down into the closet of the home office on the second floor. This is the upstairs computer closet which will house another patch panel and 10/100 switch. I am going to connect the upstairs 10/100 switch with the basement 10/100 switch using Gigabit.
My wife's PC and my work PC sit in the home office. The kid's PC is on the first floor in the home school room. I am modding an xBox to hook up to the a/v receiver in the den on the first floor. When the basement is finished, it will have a Home Theater room with a HTPC and my MAME cabinet.
DVDs and CDs have been ripped to the file server. They are played on the xBox using Media Player. Video Extraction off the DirecTiVo can also add content to the file server.
Note that there is no wireless anywhere in my plan. I have *A LOT* of 2.4 interference in my area, so that combined with security concerns have completely turned me away from 802.11
My wife also wanted audio and, if possible, video feeds to be able to listen in / look in on the baby when she is sleeping. I looked at X.10 devices, priced things out, gave it thought. Here is what I came up with - a $50 set of 900 Mhz audio monitors. They sound better then our old 2.4 Mhz monitors (that interference again) and where a lot cheaper than a full household intercom system ($800 for a kit to do it myself).
I am still considering a single web camera with ethernet out to look in our the little peanut during nap-time while my wife is homeschooling the older two.