Put a faked session on the port and service they are logging on. Give them "access" to "top secret new code" - of the evil obfuscated kind, which when downloaded and they attempt to compile and run, destroys their box - I mean stuff like attempting to flash their hardware BIOS chips (GFx, sound, HDD, CD/DvD R/RW, Motherboard..) with crap destroy then format their HDD. Stick a big warning on the way in that anti-intrusion measures are in place.
If people can use razor-wire with big warnings, I dont see how this is any different. Make the password for this fake "session" fairly secure, and keep times between allowable attempts as long as 2 minutes to keep their bandwidth/cpu usage low. If they actually get into the fake session - they got what was coming to them....
The RIAA already made themselves infamous for sueing a twelve year old... those videos are very funny.
I am member of the Creative community too.. All of my work is free on line - search ed2k for "TheRobotsNewGroove"...Not at the terminal now - so I cant give the link/hash for it. I have also released much of my work on last.fm
The problem with the Coporate creative community(not the artists themselves) versus downloaders is that some copyrights have overstayed there welcomes. While I think it is off to download a movie before its release, I think it should be public domain after about 2 years - when they have already had the theatre release, the sky-movies release and DVD release...
Copyright was about people being given incentive to create things, which would eventually benefit the community. Extended patents and copyright is only benefiting deep corporate pockets. I have no issues with paying for real contributors. I have donated to a number of Open Source projects, and artists who offer their music for free if I like their work.
Is it me - or are there a lot of canadian robots coming up?
I think I am going to have to start writing entries for all these in the Robot Knowledge Center.
How many robot building slashdotters are there out there?
I think I should challenge the OrionRobots people to build one. We could have a pool tournament in the local Mr Q's in East Finchley.
This will be an interesting challenge. I can already see many different designs, ones on legs, ones on wheels - or even ones on rails around the table - though I mighty disallow the rails...
The nice thing about a pool table is that you have bright coloured balls ona distinctive green (or blue in some cases) background. This makes it a little easier for working things out. A robot may be able to crane over the table with its camera, and then project trajectories.
Of course- these Candian guys would be welcome to the challenge!
Anyone with any other ideas for robot challenges could propose them at our Challenge Proposal Forum.
How about a twister keyboard - and a computerised version of the game . More dubious characters could rig it beforehand and invite attractive members of the opposite sex to play.
Or the Yoga keyboard? Type up your work while putting yourself in healthy yet compromising positions...
Novelty teddy bear keyboards - with a belly full of keys for very young children.
Fingertip membrane chording keyboards - you wear them like gloves, and just touch fingers to thumbs to type.
I have always used trackballs at home. Its a shame I cannot convince my company to invest in any. When you work with veyr large monitor resolutions - be it for development or CAD (or both if you are developing CAD plugins) then they really make a difference - and dont leave me with sore wrists.
It would also be nice to get a wireless keyboard/trackball combo. I settled for seperate wireless USB key and wireless trackball.
Nice ball - shame the site couldnt be bothered to use any CSS to specify no repeat on the image. On my monitor(1600x1200) it repeats the title bar.
Not to put too fine a point on it - but I used to really despise Membrane keyboards. Hence why I went Vic 20/Commodore.
The Spectrums had rubber keyboards I suppose - but even they were god-awful to use until Amstrad introduced the +2/+3 series with real keyboards.
There were some external keyboards for the zx80/81 though.
Did you ever see the keyboards that came with the
RML/380z ?
I still have a 2 drive hi-res graphics 380z somewhere in my attic which I purchased off my old school for a few pence. The money was merely a formality as for some reason they could not just give it away.
Maybe its time to call for judges on technology - specifically computer technology, to have serious tech qualifications as well as law ones - and I dont meant the ECDL.
If the people involved in the law, marketing, management and design departments dealing with technology were properly educated - to the standards of the real technologists and engineers - then the world would be a much less screwed up place right now.
I needed this rant because I am currently dealing with project manager/designer who needs a serious encounter with a cluebat.
So use a non IE based mua - like Thunderbird for instance. It is actually one of the best Mail agents I have seen since pine(when pine was a "new" thing).
Outlook Express has got one advantage over other mail software - it comes preinstalled. Other than that - its the biggest pile of snot ever shoved out of the door - as an afterthought(Oh we got a browser, maybe we really should have a mail client as well...).
But capitalism and the free market economy only work when not in the face of huge monopolies and the craziness with virtually indefinate copyright we have.
A very large monopoly starts to represent a communist system better than a communist government ever did. I know - I once worked for a very large software corporation. The internal social and reward structure is very much like a communist state.
A serious multifunction device - somewhere closer to a smaller tablet PC, than a PDA. My pocketPC is limited by is display size and software - it is quite capable(in terms of memory and processing) of doing a whole lot more than my main computer 5 years ago.
If they were to use some clamshell or flexible screen design to make a larger (100mm square) screen, with resolutions up to 800x600, continuing with Arm rpocessors at around 400-800 mhz - these would be small scale general purpose compuing device. I would definately own a general purpose device that could be stored in my pocket.
Communication wise - the device would need to provide Wi-Fi and bluetooth access, with a VoIP system when in range of a Wi-Fi AP and switching to cellular when not. You would have a BlueTooth ear/mouth peice, so all calls would be routed to it, with a stereo option for playing games/listening to mp3s.
An optional fold out keyboard - or simply a mini-usb port for desktop keyboard access would be welcome.
Memory wise - it should be possible to expand main memory, or flash storage. I would recommend CF (for microdrives). Both main memory and storage should be non-volatile - as an eseential feature of the device, and any software for it - is the ability to shut it down - preserving state - anywhere. This would include any games - and having them well written enough that pop-ups and alarms do not crash the machine (pocket PC - scummvm - popups mean crashes).
I would retain the touch screen and stylus, as well as one-touch dictation/recording.
Anyway - this is probably very niche - I do not know how many people would appretiate truly general purpose handheld devices...
But there is something a little boring- without a cam feed- how can we actually tell it works?
I did actually manage to get to it, and leave a message on the board - but who knows if it displayed - and if my tags did what I expected them to do?
Okay - I agree with freedom of speech as long as anonymity is not a requirement, as long responsibility is taken for what is said. I agree with freedom of speech for an individual - but this should not be allowed to override acts of gross indecency - like child pr0n. I think that freedom of speech should not cover corporate entities- who need to be entirely responsible for what they say. The press should be allowed freedom of speech, but they should not be able to use this to allow them to invade privacy and publish it.
You see- the problem is that you are thinking in extremes - total cencorship (China) is a severe regime, and is not good. The other extreme, total freedom of speech, allows people to say anything anonymously, and not have to face the consequences of something entirely wrong, and distasteful.
There are some things (peadophiles for instance) that are quite simply wrong - and there can be no justification for such acts.
Given the history of spam - sure thats the first fifty rules... Picture a nice floodpost of the rules... But would it ever get through slashdot lameness filters?
Or its a nice single word summing up the concepts embodied by SourceForge, and other open source repository and group collaboration, source version control etc systems. True the concept is not new - but naming it is. Now wheres the caffeine-enriched-vegetable-matter refreshment dispenser(aka Coke Machine)?
Another great example - that round thingy you use to make pushing things along easier, you know the one which tends to roll downwards and one avoids reinventing.
Umm - they in fact end up having more rights- as corporations can and do often afford better lawyers than individuals. The coroporate entity given rights like a human is a very sinister development in the history of the western world - and one that we are slowly, but surely coming to regret very much.
How long is it before companies get to actually vote?
Freenet was originally a nice idea, and unfortunately became a haven for nasty kiddie pr0n.
Paypal have recently been in court over cases saying they were funding kiddie pr0n stuff- when in effect they were receiving payments for them. Since this point - I suspect that paypal have stamped hard on anything they think is vaguely connected- and might get them into furthar trouble.
I hate to say it- but I agreed with freedom of speech until I saw freenet.
Your missing the point. Its not that they have - its the fact that they can - arbitrarily. British anti-terrorism laws are just as OTT.
You could be detained, and if uk is not your point of origin deported(but they never actually get around to that). There is very little stopping them - and the west are that paranoid that it could be you.
I suppose I am lucky being a white UK citizen, from a family with a long English/Cornish history - but that still may not count for anything if I had the wrong religeous leanings. Muslim Brits and Americans are in a dark place right now. I am safe again (for now) being agnostic.
I would of course like to see terrorists brought to justice as much as the next guy - but I also find heavy handed laws that amount to basic racism and assumptions quite scary. Thats where the persecution of the Jews started...
I agree - if the government is not there for sorting out issues (like a good authorative figure should), what else are they there for? Taking taxes and attacking foreigners?
Pet peves is exactly what a local government is for. After all - if the potholes in the road are never repaired, and someone keeps blowing up you local supermarket - these would soon become your pet peves.
Slashdot Mirror
Put a faked session on the port and service they are logging on. Give them "access" to "top secret new code" - of the evil obfuscated kind, which when downloaded and they attempt to compile and run, destroys their box - I mean stuff like attempting to flash their hardware BIOS chips (GFx, sound, HDD, CD/DvD R/RW, Motherboard..) with crap destroy then format their HDD. Stick a big warning on the way in that anti-intrusion measures are in place.
If people can use razor-wire with big warnings, I dont see how this is any different. Make the password for this fake "session" fairly secure, and keep times between allowable attempts as long as 2 minutes to keep their bandwidth/cpu usage low. If they actually get into the fake session - they got what was coming to them....
Are they going to sue that young girl?
The RIAA already made themselves infamous for sueing a twelve year old... those videos are very funny.
I am member of the Creative community too.. All of my work is free on line - search ed2k for "TheRobotsNewGroove"...Not at the terminal now - so I cant give the link/hash for it. I have also released much of my work on last.fm
The problem with the Coporate creative community(not the artists themselves) versus downloaders is that some copyrights have overstayed there welcomes. While I think it is off to download a movie before its release, I think it should be public domain after about 2 years - when they have already had the theatre release, the sky-movies release and DVD release...
Copyright was about people being given incentive to create things, which would eventually benefit the community. Extended patents and copyright is only benefiting deep corporate pockets. I have no issues with paying for real contributors. I have donated to a number of Open Source projects, and artists who offer their music for free if I like their work.
It might be redundant - but he meant a Head Mounted Display.. Boring isnt it...
I remember how disappointed I was when I found out TBM meant Tunnel Boring Machine
Are there any robotics building and hobbyist clubs in canada?
OrionRobots would love to link up with Canadian counterparts.
Is it me - or are there a lot of canadian robots coming up?
I think I am going to have to start writing entries for all these in the Robot Knowledge Center.
How many robot building slashdotters are there out there?
I think I should challenge the OrionRobots people to build one. We could have a pool tournament in the local Mr Q's in East Finchley.
This will be an interesting challenge. I can already see many different designs, ones on legs, ones on wheels - or even ones on rails around the table - though I mighty disallow the rails...
The nice thing about a pool table is that you have bright coloured balls ona distinctive green (or blue in some cases) background. This makes it a little easier for working things out. A robot may be able to crane over the table with its camera, and then project trajectories.
Of course- these Candian guys would be welcome to the challenge!
Anyone with any other ideas for robot challenges could propose them at our Challenge Proposal Forum.
And yes - I am a total robot geek!
Its a shame the cursor keys are so hard to use. But saying that - any hard core first-person shooter gamer never uses the cursor keys anyway.
How long did it take you to get used to using the fn key like that?
How about a twister keyboard - and a computerised version of the game . More dubious characters could rig it beforehand and invite attractive members of the opposite sex to play.
Or the Yoga keyboard? Type up your work while putting yourself in healthy yet compromising positions...
Novelty teddy bear keyboards - with a belly full of keys for very young children.
Fingertip membrane chording keyboards - you wear them like gloves, and just touch fingers to thumbs to type.
Dude - that is opne of the funniest things I have seen- in a long, long time.
Man - if I had heard about it.. I live in London too... Could have helped the goons.
I have always used trackballs at home. Its a shame I cannot convince my company to invest in any. When you work with veyr large monitor resolutions - be it for development or CAD (or both if you are developing CAD plugins) then they really make a difference - and dont leave me with sore wrists.
It would also be nice to get a wireless keyboard/trackball combo. I settled for seperate wireless USB key and wireless trackball.
Nice ball - shame the site couldnt be bothered to use any CSS to specify no repeat on the image. On my monitor(1600x1200) it repeats the title bar.
Not to put too fine a point on it - but I used to really despise Membrane keyboards. Hence why I went Vic 20/Commodore.
The Spectrums had rubber keyboards I suppose - but even they were god-awful to use until Amstrad introduced the +2/+3 series with real keyboards.
There were some external keyboards for the zx80/81 though.
Did you ever see the keyboards that came with the RML/380z ?
I still have a 2 drive hi-res graphics 380z somewhere in my attic which I purchased off my old school for a few pence. The money was merely a formality as for some reason they could not just give it away.
Maybe its time to call for judges on technology - specifically computer technology, to have serious tech qualifications as well as law ones - and I dont meant the ECDL.
If the people involved in the law, marketing, management and design departments dealing with technology were properly educated - to the standards of the real technologists and engineers - then the world would be a much less screwed up place right now.
I needed this rant because I am currently dealing with project manager/designer who needs a serious encounter with a cluebat.
So use a non IE based mua - like Thunderbird for instance. It is actually one of the best Mail agents I have seen since pine(when pine was a "new" thing). Outlook Express has got one advantage over other mail software - it comes preinstalled. Other than that - its the biggest pile of snot ever shoved out of the door - as an afterthought(Oh we got a browser, maybe we really should have a mail client as well...).
Lets not get into this..
But capitalism and the free market economy only work when not in the face of huge monopolies and the craziness with virtually indefinate copyright we have.
A very large monopoly starts to represent a communist system better than a communist government ever did. I know - I once worked for a very large software corporation. The internal social and reward structure is very much like a communist state.
So wtf are you doing here troll?
A serious multifunction device - somewhere closer to a smaller tablet PC, than a PDA. My pocketPC is limited by is display size and software - it is quite capable(in terms of memory and processing) of doing a whole lot more than my main computer 5 years ago.
If they were to use some clamshell or flexible screen design to make a larger (100mm square) screen, with resolutions up to 800x600, continuing with Arm rpocessors at around 400-800 mhz - these would be small scale general purpose compuing device. I would definately own a general purpose device that could be stored in my pocket.
Communication wise - the device would need to provide Wi-Fi and bluetooth access, with a VoIP system when in range of a Wi-Fi AP and switching to cellular when not. You would have a BlueTooth ear/mouth peice, so all calls would be routed to it, with a stereo option for playing games/listening to mp3s.
An optional fold out keyboard - or simply a mini-usb port for desktop keyboard access would be welcome.
Memory wise - it should be possible to expand main memory, or flash storage. I would recommend CF (for microdrives). Both main memory and storage should be non-volatile - as an eseential feature of the device, and any software for it - is the ability to shut it down - preserving state - anywhere. This would include any games - and having them well written enough that pop-ups and alarms do not crash the machine (pocket PC - scummvm - popups mean crashes).
I would retain the touch screen and stylus, as well as one-touch dictation/recording.
Anyway - this is probably very niche - I do not know how many people would appretiate truly general purpose handheld devices...
But there is something a little boring- without a cam feed- how can we actually tell it works? I did actually manage to get to it, and leave a message on the board - but who knows if it displayed - and if my tags did what I expected them to do?
Okay - I agree with freedom of speech as long as anonymity is not a requirement, as long responsibility is taken for what is said.
I agree with freedom of speech for an individual - but this should not be allowed to override acts of gross indecency - like child pr0n. I think that freedom of speech should not cover corporate entities- who need to be entirely responsible for what they say. The press should be allowed freedom of speech, but they should not be able to use this to allow them to invade privacy and publish it.
You see- the problem is that you are thinking in extremes - total cencorship (China) is a severe regime, and is not good. The other extreme, total freedom of speech, allows people to say anything anonymously, and not have to face the consequences of something entirely wrong, and distasteful.
There are some things (peadophiles for instance) that are quite simply wrong - and there can be no justification for such acts.
Given the history of spam - sure thats the first fifty rules... Picture a nice floodpost of the rules... But would it ever get through slashdot lameness filters?
Kilingon? Whats that? Hard Right Nationalist british tv presenters with ridged heads? Or would this be Kilinroyon?
Or its a nice single word summing up the concepts embodied by SourceForge, and other open source repository and group collaboration, source version control etc systems.
True the concept is not new - but naming it is. Now wheres the caffeine-enriched-vegetable-matter refreshment dispenser(aka Coke Machine)?
Another great example - that round thingy you use to make pushing things along easier, you know the one which tends to roll downwards and one avoids reinventing.
Umm - they in fact end up having more rights- as corporations can and do often afford better lawyers than individuals. The coroporate entity given rights like a human is a very sinister development in the history of the western world - and one that we are slowly, but surely coming to regret very much. How long is it before companies get to actually vote?
Freenet was originally a nice idea, and unfortunately became a haven for nasty kiddie pr0n. Paypal have recently been in court over cases saying they were funding kiddie pr0n stuff- when in effect they were receiving payments for them. Since this point - I suspect that paypal have stamped hard on anything they think is vaguely connected- and might get them into furthar trouble. I hate to say it- but I agreed with freedom of speech until I saw freenet.
Your missing the point. Its not that they have - its the fact that they can - arbitrarily. British anti-terrorism laws are just as OTT. You could be detained, and if uk is not your point of origin deported(but they never actually get around to that). There is very little stopping them - and the west are that paranoid that it could be you. I suppose I am lucky being a white UK citizen, from a family with a long English/Cornish history - but that still may not count for anything if I had the wrong religeous leanings. Muslim Brits and Americans are in a dark place right now. I am safe again (for now) being agnostic. I would of course like to see terrorists brought to justice as much as the next guy - but I also find heavy handed laws that amount to basic racism and assumptions quite scary. Thats where the persecution of the Jews started...
I agree - if the government is not there for sorting out issues (like a good authorative figure should), what else are they there for? Taking taxes and attacking foreigners?
Pet peves is exactly what a local government is for. After all - if the potholes in the road are never repaired, and someone keeps blowing up you local supermarket - these would soon become your pet peves.