Thank goodness! I came here to search for the phrase "cold, dead hands", and was coming up blank. I had to turn the filter down to +1 and search through three pages before I found it! I was beginning to think that this wasn't the Slashdot I knew after all.
I just want to say that I read this as "ISPs Dragged Into Swedish Fish Sharing Battle," and for a split second was prepared for the most awesome thread of the last five years.
"Results 1 - 10 of about 107,000 for "three football fields". (0.25 seconds)...
Ta'Kuntah is longer than three football fields and taller than a 20-storey building....
I lugged the bags another three football fields away, where I waited....
The resultant debris is enough to fill an area of up to three football fields long, by three football fields wide, and three stories high, says the UNDP's..."
Note that, almost unique among SI units, the football field can only be used to measure distances that are perpendicular to the force vector of gravity, while stories must be parallel to it.
Ok, this always comes up. Let's look at this question logically.
First of all, there are about 70,000 viruses/trojans/worms around. There aren't all that many software companies. So either they're working really hard or there are people outside the companies doing the virus writing. And as long as there are people out there writing viruses, why would they bother?
Second, suppose you're a major antivirus company considering writing viruses. You think, ok, who am I going to get to do it? You can't just tell a standard programmer to do something unethical without expecting whistleblowing, which would be catastrophic. Well, okay, I'll just hire some black hats. They're good hard workers and they would never turn around and blackmail the company!
The cost of getting caught writing viruses is huge. The benefit from writing viruses is negligible, unless there are no real virus writers out there--and we know for a fact that there are. A simple cost/benefit analysis shows that it's bad for business for a major antivirus company to write viruses. So there you are.
Now, it's entirely possible that the two-guys-in-a-garage style antivirus company would try this, or that an employee trained at an antivirus company might dabble in it, because there are evil and stupid people everywhere you go. But to imagine that someone like McAfee, Symantec, or Trend Micro would write viruses as a matter of corporate policy is simply inane.
I feel sorry for any of your victims who eventually purchase and want to install software, and the tech support agents who take the call. The software won't install, the customer won't be able to identify the version of Windows, and the agent may never be able to identify the problem.
Perhaps you could identify common locations that are used to identify Windows versions and leave pointers to a text file explaining exactly what you've done. This would allow tech support to determine that the customer has been deceived and has wasted their money, and to point them back toward you for vengeance (and give you the chance to supply an OSS program that does the same thing for free).
My Nintendo is the "Root" of where I got my desire to play games. Not the Atari, Not the Commador64...
Then you were not a born gamer. The only reason I didn't stay inside and "play Atari" for days on end is that I wasn't allowed to have one. And that was on games that sucked, though at age 8 I had not developed the capacity to tell the difference. And the Commodore=64 was leaps and bounds beyond the Atari in graphics and sound. I still play Krakout and Doriath in emulation, and the adaptations of games like Omega Race and Ms. Pac-Man were close enough to lose that "playing at home" letdown feel.
Blueprint, Jumpman, Karateka, Boulder Dash, Rambo, Beach Head, Bard's Tale, Gorf, even Wizard of Wor. If they didn't suck you in, then you weren't a born gamer. You're probably...well...y'know, normal. But I wouldn't generalize that to the general public, and say that video games at home didn't catch on until the Nintendo.
A Chinese Checkers game is an excellent source of cheap marbles, each with unique imperfections in the plastic guaranteed to fascinate the little ones for hours.
When I was a kid, we had a big plastic sheet of some sort--I think we were supposed to color it or something--and we would pick it up roughly by the center and put it down, thereby making a mountain with a number of random channels and gorges. We'd take the "marbles" and try to predict how a given marble would roll down from any given drop point. It was a lot more fun than it sounds, and a lot less destructive than Construx Crash-Ups...
Am I the only one for whom the very distinct woody smell of Tinker Toys was more evocative than the actual building part? Come to that, I got them when I was young enough that taste may have been a factor.
I didn't get into building things and creating vehicles to crash until I was older and had Construx to work with.
We have an old laptop running XP in our entertainment center in a component slot. Hooked up to it is a wireless keyboard, which floats around the living room sofas with the same random Brownian motion of the rest of the remotes, with the exception of never getting lost between the cushions.
It's a bit of a pain to use, because it's old and slow, but it gets the job done. I think part of the problem is that it's very difficult to cool--we tried running one of those fan-pads underneath it, but it was rather noisier than we wanted in our AV setup...
Slashdot Mirror
...Decline of the line!
Thank goodness! I came here to search for the phrase "cold, dead hands", and was coming up blank. I had to turn the filter down to +1 and search through three pages before I found it! I was beginning to think that this wasn't the Slashdot I knew after all.
Never polish a turd on the tip of your tongue.
I just want to say that I read this as "ISPs Dragged Into Swedish Fish Sharing Battle," and for a split second was prepared for the most awesome thread of the last five years.
Absolutely. The workout you get from running with an exercise bike is fantastic. I mean, those things are heavy.
Yes, but if you quote that one, you have to give equal time to this one, too... http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/11/13
Yeah, Sony, fix the price! You've already got all that experience doing it in the music industry, so it should be easy!
Dot-Bar-Hum-Fem-Neu, Killed by kicking a hallucinogen-distorted mumak.
"All shall love me and despair!"
Imagine the breathtaking possibilities this opens! Is the world truly ready for technology that can present an entire Burma Shave ad...in one sign?
Neu, I hate the name.
Football fields are a unit of length, not area.
..."
"Results 1 - 10 of about 107,000 for "three football fields". (0.25 seconds)...
Ta'Kuntah is longer than three football fields and taller than a 20-storey building....
I lugged the bags another three football fields away, where I waited....
The resultant debris is enough to fill an area of up to three football fields long, by three football fields wide, and three stories high, says the UNDP's
Note that, almost unique among SI units, the football field can only be used to measure distances that are perpendicular to the force vector of gravity, while stories must be parallel to it.
The problem is, neither can the suit.
Two companies.
And it seems to be working for them... even if Wall Street doesn't believe it.
Ok, this always comes up. Let's look at this question logically.
First of all, there are about 70,000 viruses/trojans/worms around. There aren't all that many software companies. So either they're working really hard or there are people outside the companies doing the virus writing. And as long as there are people out there writing viruses, why would they bother?
Second, suppose you're a major antivirus company considering writing viruses. You think, ok, who am I going to get to do it? You can't just tell a standard programmer to do something unethical without expecting whistleblowing, which would be catastrophic. Well, okay, I'll just hire some black hats. They're good hard workers and they would never turn around and blackmail the company!
The cost of getting caught writing viruses is huge. The benefit from writing viruses is negligible, unless there are no real virus writers out there--and we know for a fact that there are. A simple cost/benefit analysis shows that it's bad for business for a major antivirus company to write viruses. So there you are.
Now, it's entirely possible that the two-guys-in-a-garage style antivirus company would try this, or that an employee trained at an antivirus company might dabble in it, because there are evil and stupid people everywhere you go. But to imagine that someone like McAfee, Symantec, or Trend Micro would write viruses as a matter of corporate policy is simply inane.
Hope you weren't joking.
I feel sorry for any of your victims who eventually purchase and want to install software, and the tech support agents who take the call. The software won't install, the customer won't be able to identify the version of Windows, and the agent may never be able to identify the problem.
Perhaps you could identify common locations that are used to identify Windows versions and leave pointers to a text file explaining exactly what you've done. This would allow tech support to determine that the customer has been deceived and has wasted their money, and to point them back toward you for vengeance (and give you the chance to supply an OSS program that does the same thing for free).
My Nintendo is the "Root" of where I got my desire to play games. Not the Atari, Not the Commador64...
Then you were not a born gamer. The only reason I didn't stay inside and "play Atari" for days on end is that I wasn't allowed to have one. And that was on games that sucked, though at age 8 I had not developed the capacity to tell the difference. And the Commodore=64 was leaps and bounds beyond the Atari in graphics and sound. I still play Krakout and Doriath in emulation, and the adaptations of games like Omega Race and Ms. Pac-Man were close enough to lose that "playing at home" letdown feel.
Blueprint, Jumpman, Karateka, Boulder Dash, Rambo, Beach Head, Bard's Tale, Gorf, even Wizard of Wor. If they didn't suck you in, then you weren't a born gamer. You're probably...well...y'know, normal. But I wouldn't generalize that to the general public, and say that video games at home didn't catch on until the Nintendo.
Not that I agree with Mister Seventeen Swimming Pools of Coal, but, er...does your hair dryer or toaster boast 60+ days of uptime?
Well, yeah. He spelled it right. See how it works?
A Chinese Checkers game is an excellent source of cheap marbles, each with unique imperfections in the plastic guaranteed to fascinate the little ones for hours.
When I was a kid, we had a big plastic sheet of some sort--I think we were supposed to color it or something--and we would pick it up roughly by the center and put it down, thereby making a mountain with a number of random channels and gorges. We'd take the "marbles" and try to predict how a given marble would roll down from any given drop point. It was a lot more fun than it sounds, and a lot less destructive than Construx Crash-Ups...
Am I the only one for whom the very distinct woody smell of Tinker Toys was more evocative than the actual building part? Come to that, I got them when I was young enough that taste may have been a factor.
I didn't get into building things and creating vehicles to crash until I was older and had Construx to work with.
We have an old laptop running XP in our entertainment center in a component slot. Hooked up to it is a wireless keyboard, which floats around the living room sofas with the same random Brownian motion of the rest of the remotes, with the exception of never getting lost between the cushions.
It's a bit of a pain to use, because it's old and slow, but it gets the job done. I think part of the problem is that it's very difficult to cool--we tried running one of those fan-pads underneath it, but it was rather noisier than we wanted in our AV setup...
So how do you explain the over-the-top writing in all the rest of the paragraphs of the article?