Agreed! When the British banned civilian explosives research, it did nothing but make sure the Germans could be extra devastating when the war rolled around. As evil as the research sounds, they are being open and therefore hopefully responsible about it. This could lead to a breakthrough new treatment that would defend us against the new, evil bioweapons that some are developing elsewhere (North Korea).
What really irritates me is that even when you uninstall Gator ad-aware style, your browser can no longer visit the Gatored sites - google, altavista, all Gatored out. Does anyone know how to re-enable these sites? One of the computers on my network can't visit them anymore thanks to SPYWARE.
Yeah, it's too bad that most kids' imaginations are well-done by the third grade.
Kids: "Look teacher, we made the new Eminem CD." Tacher: "Uh, that's already available for download." Kids: "We know. It actually works, and we're selling copies to the underclassmen." Teacher: "The lesson for today is... you all get detention."
I'm in the United States, and every day I and everyone else I see breaks the law routinely. It doesn't surprise me and it doesn't appall me except for lawmakers. Why? Because the laws are so arbitrarily constructed and enforced that there's no point in worrying about breaking them until you actually get caught (look at the speed limits - does anyone actually obey them? No. Since everyone does it, it just becomes a question of whether you are the arbitrarily caught person today), and once you get caught, there's no point in looking for "justice" because the punishment is totally arbitrary too. A married couple in California is looking at 25 to 50 for making their own pornography and selling it under some new "obscenity" act that some lawmaker made, though the couple is of legal age. Again, arbitrary and overkill. I could get off easier for murder. Similar comparisons could be made for filesharing vs. corporate corruption or vs. fraud or bank robbery.
*Conspiracy Theory On* Sometimes I wonder if the laws weren't constructed this way so that those in power could choose the people they don't like since everyone routinely breaks some laws and then put that person away for a ridiculously long period of time. The sad thing this time is that the judicial system was largely thrown out the window into the grubby hands of copyright holders. Yeah, Cary Sherman. Now I respect the laws a lot more.
Doctor: Here's the door to your body, see? [bring up some small fuzz balls with goofy faces and limbs from under the desk] And these are oversized novelty germs. [points to a different one up as he names each disease] That's influenza, that's bronchitis, [holds up one] and this cute little cuddle-bug is pancreatic cancer. Here's what happens when they all try to get through the door at once. [tries to cram a bunch through the model door. The "germs" get stuck] [Stooge-like] Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo ! Move it, chowderhead! [normal voice] We call it, "Three Stooges Syndrome."
Burns: So what you're saying is, I'm indestructible!
Doctor: Oh, no, no, in fact, even slight breeze could --
Burns: Indestructible.
See? Safety in numbers.
~Ben
Re:What I would Actually like to see.
on
Aquarium Modcase
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I haven't had chem since high school, but there's a process where if you have a dynamic equilibrium like hydronium ions in water and you start removing the ions, it will actually stimulate more hydronium ions to be produced in the water! The Germans discovered / exploited this process to create Ammonium in World War 1 from Nitrogen and Hydrogen.
However, isn't distilled water relatively non-conductive? Does that mean that you could run the parts of the computer that don't move submerged in distilled water safely, if you could keep the water free of contaminants?
Deus Ex is the best game ever made. It is not only a great story, but it's philosophically interesting since you can choose to handle a situation in numerous different ways. On top of that, it has clever AI, and incorporates the better aspects of a good FPS, Thief, and Silent Scope.
Maybe several thousand geeks boycotting the xxAA does nothing compared to the millions who will pay. Perhaps the solution is competition or a much more widespread boycott.
But that doesn't change this: You have no right to complain about the problem if you don't do anything to combat it yourself. Guaranteed, if even 5% of the customers boycotted the xxAA's products, you would see a difference. So set a good example, and do your part by withholding your couple hundered of dollars worth of movie rentals, tickets and CDs, voting, and telling your friends about the selling off of our civil rights. Otherwise, complaining about the problem would be hypocrisy.
Just make a mechanism such that the reciever can send a 'refund' code to their ISP if it's not spam mail. That way, legitimate messages are not charged. What to do with the collected money? You could let the recipients keep it, or donate it to some charity.
Don't bust on the poor guy's amazing new vehicle. All you need to know you learned in High School physics. The only impressive part is the frictionless coating spray he invented. You see, using a perfectly efficient electric motor to get the wheels moving, the batteries are only necessary to supply the amount of energy necessary to accelerate the car's mass to the desired speed. Since the wheels are toothed but frictionless, they get down into the pavement on a small scale and push the car forward but yet do not create any other by-product except forward motion. When it's time to hit the brakes, a perfectly efficient turbine is switched on to re-convert the mechanical energy from the car moving forward back into electricity with which to recharge the batteries. With no power steering, this means the car uses no energy during normal operation. To charge the batteries further, the car also salvages some energy from when you turn the ignition and press on the brakes. The reason it kept breaking down was because one of the frictionless bearings was not sprayed totally with the frictionless spray. Problem is, you just can't run the windshield wipers, AC, or radio yet. That's where the really amazing free energy source that runs the building the car was constructed in comes in...
Hmm, a well known law school gets a large anonymous donation to fight our awful IP laws so shortly after eBay gets into trouble with a very vague and questionable patent.
What strange timing. I wonder if one of those fresh out of school lawyers will be taking up eBay's case at a significant discount. I wonder how much cheaper one of these lawyers is than a more expens... I mean experienced lawyer.
I bet Hilary Rosen and the rest of the RIAA gestappo is doing cartwheels at this, the damper being put on the further production and distribution of MP3-capable audio players.
Wouldn't it be funny if the RIAA gave them some sort of incentive to do this?
I would like to see more voting and more referendums take place, not on electronic booths, but on the internet. The technology is in place to bring countries closer to true democracy if the mandate was there, and to make it as secure as or more secure than ballot stuffing in regular booths. I guarantee the xxAA and M$ lobbyists would have a harder time bribing a country full of people.
Although this is a serious problem, regular users in the US and Europe shouldn't feel responsible for this crisis. They have agents in the US and Europe who purchase this computer rubble to ship over there, it's not like we load it all onto a barge ourselves and dump it on their land. Granted, in the future, we probably will pay higher prices for proper disposal, the primary reason it has become such a humanitarian issue is because of the workshops who import and promote the business, not because of first-world negligence.
If that's not enough, diamonds are not nearly as valuable as what they sell for. Their value is entirely percieved and is carefully controlled by DeBeers' stockpiling.
Personally, I'm an emerald fan. They are rarer than diamonds, cheaper, and cannot be reproduced by human means easily.
My girlfriend loved the emerald necklace I made for her. I bought a really nice but uncut emerald crystal, a nice mount and chain, and put it together with some silver solder and a pinhead worth of glue.
The reason the internet we use now became such a profitable place is because it was a clean slate, such that anyone could come in and using the best of their abilities create something new without fear. That's what made the internet the place it is today. Global communication existed long before it.
That's ended, now, because like any profitable place devoid of government, those in power such as corporations and the White House all wanted their own slice, but lacking the knowledge to get it through innovation, they decided to buy it with laws like the DMCA, so they got it. Now your zeroes and ones aren't just zeroes and ones anymore. They must be trusted, they must belong to somebody, and you'd better not trespass or distribute any zeroes and ones that aren't your own. Your creativity had better not look anything like anyone else's, because it's probably patented.
The moral? When the battlefield is purely ideas, everybody profits and the community is improved. When it's about money and ownership and laws, the place stagnates. I disagree with the Register's opinion that the Internet should be within national boundaries. We're talking about a very large chain of private property here, and as long as my equipment isn't hurting people in the real world (i.e. exploitation of children, I know someone will bring it up), it should be considered mine to do what I want with. I also disagree that a binary representation of something in the real world necessarily embodies the real-world item. In most cases, it is purely an approximation, much like a Reimann Sum vs. the Line itself.
If Europe decides to make another true frontier where the only limit is creativity, I'm moving to Europe. Hopefully, if this happens, the xxAA and M$ or whatever they have in Europe will get the idea and decide to use some clever encryption schemes or protection, or (gasp) change their fossilized business model. What happened to "The Customer Is Always Right" anyhow? I'm sure that the USA's founding fathers are turning over in their graves thanks to the rule by money we have here now. If, however, this Euro-Net becomes reality and it's just a virtual sidewalk where I can't do anything I couldn't do on a real one, big deal.
"I would not want to trust my bank account to a memory where a single atom could wipe out my savings,"
Still, he trusts the magnetic orientation of a metal disk or metallic tape. However, a concern would be if some of the atoms happened to be radioactive, so the gold and silicon would have to be processed very carefully to ensure that none of the atoms are unstable.
I'm tired of the people who feel the need to play holier than thou or justify their $3000 worth of CDs by crying "hypocrites!" every time this comes up.
There is a big difference between plagarism and copyright violation. For all of the GBs of MP3s I've downloaded and uploaded again, I never changed a single one. Never put my name on it, or made any derivative works, and I bet very few if any slashdotters have. That is the difference between taking a book, putting your name on it, and reselling it and making a copy of the book for a friend. I personally believe that information should be free. I agree with slashdot here, however, because plagarism is without a doubt wrong.
I don't care where you get your music. If you feel filesharing is wrong or if you have the money to buy CDs, fine, but if you are going to start tearing down others because you feel that filesharing is flamingly wrong, I ask you to make your point directly rather than make comparisons that simply don't work.
I had some idea it was dying when I started keeping track of how many I've broken instead of my highest score.
How to break:
Harley-Davidsion: Hit three balls into the same hole in the front. It'll convulse like crazy then start tilting itself forever.
Last Action Hero: Hit the far back right crane launch thing really hard with a pinball. It'll get stuck for about a minute every time you hit the crane launcher.
Pegasus: Just keep playing. It lights on fire. The smoke coming through the holes is a neat effect until the power goes down.
Jurassic Park: Land a pinball on top of the truck-grabber thing when it's down. It won't be able to close. It will launch out balls saying one is lost and they will hit the truck-grabber and bounce straight down the hole. This continues forever.
Slashdot Mirror
Companies have always loved cutting the FAT. It surprises me that they haven't sooner.
I'll be impressed when they sue spammers for circumventing the spam filters.
~Ben
Agreed! When the British banned civilian explosives research, it did nothing but make sure the Germans could be extra devastating when the war rolled around. As evil as the research sounds, they are being open and therefore hopefully responsible about it. This could lead to a breakthrough new treatment that would defend us against the new, evil bioweapons that some are developing elsewhere (North Korea).
~Ben
What really irritates me is that even when you uninstall Gator ad-aware style, your browser can no longer visit the Gatored sites - google, altavista, all Gatored out. Does anyone know how to re-enable these sites? One of the computers on my network can't visit them anymore thanks to SPYWARE.
~Ben
So, you think we can beat Microsoft to buying out Google with a "last-minute snipe"?
~Ben
Yeah, it's too bad that most kids' imaginations are well-done by the third grade.
Kids: "Look teacher, we made the new Eminem CD."
Tacher: "Uh, that's already available for download."
Kids: "We know. It actually works, and we're selling copies to the underclassmen."
Teacher: "The lesson for today is... you all get detention."
I'm in the United States, and every day I and everyone else I see breaks the law routinely. It doesn't surprise me and it doesn't appall me except for lawmakers. Why? Because the laws are so arbitrarily constructed and enforced that there's no point in worrying about breaking them until you actually get caught (look at the speed limits - does anyone actually obey them? No. Since everyone does it, it just becomes a question of whether you are the arbitrarily caught person today), and once you get caught, there's no point in looking for "justice" because the punishment is totally arbitrary too. A married couple in California is looking at 25 to 50 for making their own pornography and selling it under some new "obscenity" act that some lawmaker made, though the couple is of legal age. Again, arbitrary and overkill. I could get off easier for murder. Similar comparisons could be made for filesharing vs. corporate corruption or vs. fraud or bank robbery.
*Conspiracy Theory On*
Sometimes I wonder if the laws weren't constructed this way so that those in power could choose the people they don't like since everyone routinely breaks some laws and then put that person away for a ridiculously long period of time. The sad thing this time is that the judicial system was largely thrown out the window into the grubby hands of copyright holders. Yeah, Cary Sherman. Now I respect the laws a lot more.
~Ben
Doctor: Here's the door to your body, see? [bring up some small fuzz balls with goofy faces and limbs from under the desk] And these are oversized novelty germs. [points to a different one up as he names each disease] That's influenza, that's bronchitis, [holds up one] and this cute little cuddle-bug is pancreatic cancer. Here's what happens when they all try to get through the door at once.o ! Move it, chowderhead! [normal voice] We call it, "Three Stooges Syndrome."
[tries to cram a bunch through the model door. The "germs" get stuck]
[Stooge-like]
Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-wo
Burns: So what you're saying is, I'm indestructible!
Doctor: Oh, no, no, in fact, even slight breeze could --
Burns: Indestructible.
See? Safety in numbers.
~Ben
I haven't had chem since high school, but there's a process where if you have a dynamic equilibrium like hydronium ions in water and you start removing the ions, it will actually stimulate more hydronium ions to be produced in the water! The Germans discovered / exploited this process to create Ammonium in World War 1 from Nitrogen and Hydrogen.
However, isn't distilled water relatively non-conductive? Does that mean that you could run the parts of the computer that don't move submerged in distilled water safely, if you could keep the water free of contaminants?
They sunk my battleship!
Deus Ex is the best game ever made. It is not only a great story, but it's philosophically interesting since you can choose to handle a situation in numerous different ways. On top of that, it has clever AI, and incorporates the better aspects of a good FPS, Thief, and Silent Scope.
~Ben
The bottom line is this:
Maybe several thousand geeks boycotting the xxAA does nothing compared to the millions who will pay. Perhaps the solution is competition or a much more widespread boycott.
But that doesn't change this: You have no right to complain about the problem if you don't do anything to combat it yourself. Guaranteed, if even 5% of the customers boycotted the xxAA's products, you would see a difference. So set a good example, and do your part by withholding your couple hundered of dollars worth of movie rentals, tickets and CDs, voting, and telling your friends about the selling off of our civil rights. Otherwise, complaining about the problem would be hypocrisy.
~Ben
Just make a mechanism such that the reciever can send a 'refund' code to their ISP if it's not spam mail. That way, legitimate messages are not charged. What to do with the collected money? You could let the recipients keep it, or donate it to some charity.
~Ben
Don't bust on the poor guy's amazing new vehicle. All you need to know you learned in High School physics. The only impressive part is the frictionless coating spray he invented. You see, using a perfectly efficient electric motor to get the wheels moving, the batteries are only necessary to supply the amount of energy necessary to accelerate the car's mass to the desired speed. Since the wheels are toothed but frictionless, they get down into the pavement on a small scale and push the car forward but yet do not create any other by-product except forward motion. When it's time to hit the brakes, a perfectly efficient turbine is switched on to re-convert the mechanical energy from the car moving forward back into electricity with which to recharge the batteries. With no power steering, this means the car uses no energy during normal operation. To charge the batteries further, the car also salvages some energy from when you turn the ignition and press on the brakes. The reason it kept breaking down was because one of the frictionless bearings was not sprayed totally with the frictionless spray. Problem is, you just can't run the windshield wipers, AC, or radio yet. That's where the really amazing free energy source that runs the building the car was constructed in comes in...
~Ben
Hmm, a well known law school gets a large anonymous donation to fight our awful IP laws so shortly after eBay gets into trouble with a very vague and questionable patent.
What strange timing. I wonder if one of those fresh out of school lawyers will be taking up eBay's case at a significant discount. I wonder how much cheaper one of these lawyers is than a more expens... I mean experienced lawyer.
~Ben
I bet Hilary Rosen and the rest of the RIAA gestappo is doing cartwheels at this, the damper being put on the further production and distribution of MP3-capable audio players.
Wouldn't it be funny if the RIAA gave them some sort of incentive to do this?
~Ben
"This article in today's NYTimes says that AOL's new plan focussed on creating content for broadband could have cable companies over a barrel.
At least the internet's future is not 'focussed' on spelling.
~Ben
I would like to see more voting and more referendums take place, not on electronic booths, but on the internet. The technology is in place to bring countries closer to true democracy if the mandate was there, and to make it as secure as or more secure than ballot stuffing in regular booths. I guarantee the xxAA and M$ lobbyists would have a harder time bribing a country full of people.
~Ben
Although this is a serious problem, regular users in the US and Europe shouldn't feel responsible for this crisis. They have agents in the US and Europe who purchase this computer rubble to ship over there, it's not like we load it all onto a barge ourselves and dump it on their land. Granted, in the future, we probably will pay higher prices for proper disposal, the primary reason it has become such a humanitarian issue is because of the workshops who import and promote the business, not because of first-world negligence.
~Ben
If that's not enough, diamonds are not nearly as valuable as what they sell for. Their value is entirely percieved and is carefully controlled by DeBeers' stockpiling.
Personally, I'm an emerald fan. They are rarer than diamonds, cheaper, and cannot be reproduced by human means easily.
My girlfriend loved the emerald necklace I made for her. I bought a really nice but uncut emerald crystal, a nice mount and chain, and put it together with some silver solder and a pinhead worth of glue.
~Ben
The reason the internet we use now became such a profitable place is because it was a clean slate, such that anyone could come in and using the best of their abilities create something new without fear. That's what made the internet the place it is today. Global communication existed long before it.
That's ended, now, because like any profitable place devoid of government, those in power such as corporations and the White House all wanted their own slice, but lacking the knowledge to get it through innovation, they decided to buy it with laws like the DMCA, so they got it. Now your zeroes and ones aren't just zeroes and ones anymore. They must be trusted, they must belong to somebody, and you'd better not trespass or distribute any zeroes and ones that aren't your own. Your creativity had better not look anything like anyone else's, because it's probably patented.
The moral? When the battlefield is purely ideas, everybody profits and the community is improved. When it's about money and ownership and laws, the place stagnates. I disagree with the Register's opinion that the Internet should be within national boundaries. We're talking about a very large chain of private property here, and as long as my equipment isn't hurting people in the real world (i.e. exploitation of children, I know someone will bring it up), it should be considered mine to do what I want with. I also disagree that a binary representation of something in the real world necessarily embodies the real-world item. In most cases, it is purely an approximation, much like a Reimann Sum vs. the Line itself.
If Europe decides to make another true frontier where the only limit is creativity, I'm moving to Europe. Hopefully, if this happens, the xxAA and M$ or whatever they have in Europe will get the idea and decide to use some clever encryption schemes or protection, or (gasp) change their fossilized business model. What happened to "The Customer Is Always Right" anyhow? I'm sure that the USA's founding fathers are turning over in their graves thanks to the rule by money we have here now. If, however, this Euro-Net becomes reality and it's just a virtual sidewalk where I can't do anything I couldn't do on a real one, big deal.
~Ben
"I would not want to trust my bank account to a memory where a single atom could wipe out my savings,"
Still, he trusts the magnetic orientation of a metal disk or metallic tape. However, a concern would be if some of the atoms happened to be radioactive, so the gold and silicon would have to be processed very carefully to ensure that none of the atoms are unstable.
~Ben
I'm tired of the people who feel the need to play holier than thou or justify their $3000 worth of CDs by crying "hypocrites!" every time this comes up.
There is a big difference between plagarism and copyright violation. For all of the GBs of MP3s I've downloaded and uploaded again, I never changed a single one. Never put my name on it, or made any derivative works, and I bet very few if any slashdotters have. That is the difference between taking a book, putting your name on it, and reselling it and making a copy of the book for a friend. I personally believe that information should be free. I agree with slashdot here, however, because plagarism is without a doubt wrong.
I don't care where you get your music. If you feel filesharing is wrong or if you have the money to buy CDs, fine, but if you are going to start tearing down others because you feel that filesharing is flamingly wrong, I ask you to make your point directly rather than make comparisons that simply don't work.
~Ben
I had some idea it was dying when I started keeping track of how many I've broken instead of my highest score.
How to break:
Harley-Davidsion: Hit three balls into the same hole in the front. It'll convulse like crazy then start tilting itself forever.
Last Action Hero: Hit the far back right crane launch thing really hard with a pinball. It'll get stuck for about a minute every time you hit the crane launcher.
Pegasus: Just keep playing. It lights on fire. The smoke coming through the holes is a neat effect until the power goes down.
Jurassic Park: Land a pinball on top of the truck-grabber thing when it's down. It won't be able to close. It will launch out balls saying one is lost and they will hit the truck-grabber and bounce straight down the hole. This continues forever.
~Ben
This phenomenon can easily be explained in terms of the Yomama effect...
You see, Yo Mama's so fat that when she takes a vacation, the Earth's gravitational field becomes flatter.
~Ben