The only thing that forcing a porn surfer to use valid cc #s will do is increase the market for stolen cc #s.
And your point is?
I own a car on the basis that it *might* get stolen but it doesn't stop me having it.
As far as I'm concerned, if the credit card companies want to make money from it and the porn surfers want to pay for it with cards then they know the risks.
I'm just suggesting that credit card ownership acts as an age verification mechanism anyway, if enforced correctly.
... if the "powers that be" are all *so* concerned about Internet porn & minors getting exposure to it, how come nobody has enforced proper rules of practice on credit card companies?
It's Amex, Mastercard, Visa, etc. who enable any vendor to accept their credit card transactions & it's therefore these same companies that ***MAKE MONEY*** when certain scumbags sell kiddie porn to other scumbags. So how about a ***NAME AND SHAME*** campaign on the credit card companies who allow this to happen?
And on a wider note, how about getting those same credit cards companies to enforce trading standards on those vendors who trade in adult porn before they can grant a license to accept their card transactions - like, for example, forcing any porn surfer to enter a valid credit card number before even allowing them to view any form of pornographic image?
Sorry, but all this ".xxx" issue is just a load of political pussyfooting around (excuse the pun). If we deem certain laws to be good or proper - like restricting minors from accessing pornography - then it strikes me that we ensure all parties involved adhere to those laws.
Using a Linux boot disk means you can forget about the NT admin password anyway - just mount the Windows NTFS partition onto the Linux filesystem and you can take off any information you want...
Incidentally, you can do this with just about OS, even another Linux box - it's the fact that Linux can recognise just about any partition type there is (with the correct kernel/modules in place) that makes this work.
Kids are not stupid. They are "sponges for knowledge" who will "soak up" all they see and hear around them no matter what it is & they are fully able to completely distinguish fiction from fact, as long as they get enough of both.
Violent games are not the problem, it's the parents who view Playstations and PCs as "babysitters" that are the issue. Balanced kids need balanced input which means they get the time to have fun killing and maiming on a computer screen *and* care and attention from parents who read to them, spend time with them and show them what real life, love and the family are all about.
In one sense, however, these *are* more complex times because there has never been a time when all of us, especially kids, are bombarded with advertising and images designed to convey one message - "buy this product or you're not cool."
This creates tremendous peer-pressure amongst kids which leads to many of the problems we have today - bullying, lack of respect for authority, etc.
Get to my age and you can happily close your eyes and ears to this media rubbish but kids need an equal amount of bombarding of parental care & commitment to counteract what messages the corporations send to them through the media.
This is purely a question of balance and kids having parents who care enough about what gets into their heads to give them time, love and advice to counteract what they soak in from the media.
From what I understand, Alan Moore had nothing to do with the movie.
Apparently, when they were asking permission to make the film, he told them to just go and do it - he didn't care as long as they didn't put his name to it.
Well, I'm sorry, I really pity you and your warped ideals...
We agree on something at least - the sooner we get that idiot Blair out, the sooner we'll have a decent leader who'll take us fully into Europe and we'll be a bigger unified state than you Americans.
I'd rather become an Islamic state than suffer the consequences of being sucked into American globalization under your war-mongering leaders that only care about the dollar.
If your best argument is only over semantics then it proves what an ignorant, intolerant, religious-hatred preaching moron you really are.
Yes, I feel sorry for my countrymen who died in the London bombings, I feel sorry for the American troops in Iraq and the Iraqi civilians getting killed there.
But morons like you who are so stupid that you voted in a president who has offered up human sacrifice just to make Exxon a few more bucks are just pathetic.
Anyone can find a few links on the web to justify an argument, I'm not even going to lower myself to your level.
Maybe because there are so few Linux users to begin with, and they're so dogmatic about their use of it that getting them to change would be like getting the Pope to convert to Islam.
Sorry, I wasn't aware that size of user base bore any relationship to how good or usable something is? I accept it's important if you're making money from the product but Linux doesn't make money.
And if you're arguing about the "dogmatism" of Linux users, do you also complain about the full ads you get in magazines and on TV for Windows?
As far as I am concerned, there are as many Windows zealots as there are Linux ones - the difference is the Linux people usually know Windows pretty well but not the other way around.
And if we Linux users have to use word of mouth to counteract Microsoft FUD then so be it - at least those that listen may realise that they have choices.
In my case, I sometimes get "cast-off" servers from IT when they've done a major hardware upgrade on a Windows server and I end up puting Linux on it and giving a file, FTP and web server to my colleagues.
For example, they distibute a lot of log and error files to other departments in the company and they love the directory listing feature in Apache such that they can paste a link to a URL in their home folder for a file someone else wants.
The real "mass migrations" to Linux are small but I do see more and more Linux servers appearing all over the place, even when I visit a lot of my customers.
I disagree about your comments regarding Windows 9x; Win95 was pretty ropey, although a refreshing change to Windows 3.1, 98SE was much stabler but suffered from bloat due to IE integration.
Windows 2000 was the turning point for MS - proper memory management and good stability - while XP was a backwards move because of it's huge bloat. I can't comment on 2003 because I've not used it.
The major problem with Windows always has been the registry - it grows, fragments and is totally the wrong configuration methodology for desktop environments where users are constantly upgrading, installing and uninstalling software. Even though Windows 2000 and later split the registry out into user folders, it's still pretty impossible to correct registry problems without doing major reinstalls. If you compare that to the UNIX model of storing all users config files in their home directories, then UNIX is much better because if an app problem appears, you can always move or delete a few config files to clear the problem.
Much of the backlash to Windows is as a result of Microsoft's own complacency and disregard for the needs of their users - a lot of people, myself included, won't allow themselves to be dictated to by a power-hungry corporation. In my case, I'd had experience with UNIX at work and in 1996 started trying out Linux. Now I'm at the stage where I shell-script competently, do a lot of CGI stuff with PERL and PHP and have started messing around with C a little. And if it comes to applications for work, no-one really cares if I deploy a server-side app on a Linux server I happen to build, I'm just expected to maintain that server because out IT people won't.
I still use Windows 2000 for some desktop stuff and for work apps but 80% of my time these days is spent in Linux - I'm happy and confident with it and anything I need to deploy, I can usually just "emerge" it (I use Gentoo), configure it and start it running - I don't have to worry about getting corporate licenses and it's stable.
Yes, Linux is not for newbie users but, for a newbie user, there is no pressure anyway - you can install it and dual-boot it with your Windows environment, try it out and learn it in your own time and make your own decisions about if and when you want to use it.
Martin Taylor and MS in general do not understand this mentality that some of us like total control over what we do and like the good feelings we get when you've built something from scratch, configured it properly and got a few scripts to do something really impressive with Linux.
Not all of us want everything "delivered on a plate" to us - some of us do enjoy taking time getting software to work properly and learning in the process.
Terrorists bombed London, the Islamic community does not consider those people as "Muslim".
Spread your racist comments and hate in the sordid little gutters where ignorant half-wits like yourself normally gather, not here amongst intelligent people.
You're not even enough of a "man" that you can post these comments openly - you're a scummy, cowering little coward who only has the guts to say anything behind anonymity.
1. Saying apps get broken by the kernel indicates how little you know about Linux. The kernel is an abstraction layer between the operating system and the hardware. Yes, it's quite possible a piece of hardware might stop working following a kernel change but an application will stop working as the result of a library change, more like.
2. You do not like the command line and you are entitled to your opinion. However, the command line exists because of it's power, the fact that commands can be strung together in millions of different ways to achieve precisely what you need. You cannot possibly understand this power unless you are prepared to spend the time to learn what you can do there - if you are not prepared to do that then Linux probably is not for you.
3. Why don't Man pages "cut it"? They're invariably always there, available as online documentation, they're not detailed enough for newbies possibly but then that's what the numerous UNIX and Linux reference books are for. They server a purpose as a quick reference for command usage, they're not there as an educational reference.
Quite frankly, I don't believe you are an advanced user because you quite clearly assume Open Source to be Linux only - what are Firefox, OpenOffice, The GIMP, etc. etc. but three examples of the myriads of Open Source applications that run on Windows as well as Linux?
You seem to be of the mistaken belief that there is some kind of "Linux vs Windows" was going on when, in reality, it's just about having and exercising a choice.
Linux will not just "drop into your lap" while you sit there with you arms folded waiting. If you don't want to use it, fine, you have a choice. But if you do want to use it, then you have to make some effort yourself.
In the meantime, those of us who do realise and use it's power will just get on with doing that, irrespective of your comments.
Actually, I'm British, I live about 40 miles from London - that city where two weeks ago 52 innocent citizens lost their lives because terrorist extremists decided to punish my country because a prime minister (who I didn't vote for) has sent our armed forces into a country to punish more innocent citizens purely to help increase Exxon's profit margins.
Sorry, I come to Slashdot to escape all of that when I need cheering up, that's why this doesn't belong here.
I'll tell you what, how about we ask Amnesty International if we can post a Doom 3 article on their web site?
Seriously, this attitude is why crappy patents and laws like the DMCA are passed uncontested. It's all very nice living with blinkers on your eyes, ignoring the real world, but don't go crying when that world rudely intrudes on your own life.
Jeez, talk about 2+2=45.9 - where did you get that leap of logic from???
So you mean to tell me that if you were in the cinema watching a movie, it would be okay for the cinema owners to interrupt that movie halfway through to tell you that somebody's backed into someone else's car in the car park?
It's the same kind of logic if I come to Slashdot expecting to read and discuss geek news & see this type of article instead. Slashdot is about discussing computers and Star Trek - it's escapism from the humdrum of modern-day life.
Please do NOT mistake pacifism for apathy - I CARE about peoples' rights - whether that's the right to live in a peaceful world or not to have their rights stripped away from them by corporate profiteering (= DMCA).
If you really were a pacifist, then you should be extremely interested in the ways states have of hurting dissenters,
Ah, right. So in your world, its not good enough for me to a law abiding citizen trying to be nice to those around me and being opposed to war and violence - I have to be an activist also, do I? Well, if you'd like to give me some suggestions as to how I can take an active part in the global Human Rights issue, then I'm all ears...
but not while you're locked in your bedroom playing Everquest
I'm 43 years of age, married with a mortgage & a job in technical support - never played Everquest in my life, I prefer Heroes of Might & Magic and Civilization. Don't patronize or generalize, it lessens your argument. And presumably you have given up all of your entertainment time to Human Rights activism, have you? Well, let's hear what you do then?
Not to mention that inhumane weaponry like this is the best propaganda tool for those opposing war.
Ah, I see. So this isn't a real weapon, it's a piece of propaganda then, is it? All the more reason to not want to read about it then...
Yeah! tell me about Quake, and Doom, and Half Life, and Counter Strike, and Halo, and Unreal...
We geeks are also pretty good at distinguishing fantasy from reality.
Besides, Counter Strike is the only game you list that has any basis of fact, all the others are in totally fictional environments.
The whole point of violence in games, particularly with kids, is you don't stop them playing these games because they are just fun pure and simple. It's bad parents that use PS2s and XBoxes as "babysitters", leave their kids on them for hours on end and don't spend time with them balancing out in-game violence with real-life love and attention.
I totally agree - I expect far more of Slashdot than publicising this crap.
Until recently, I was also an aircraft fanatic and used to go to a lot of air displays here in the UK. But then it suddenly dawned on me that, with military aircraft, I was basically paying to go into an airshow where manufacturers are basically showing off weapons to interested buyers. Suddenly, these shows no longer seemed that appealing...
Tell me about robots, new types of air-conditioner and spacecraft but keep this weapons crap out of here - we geeks are pretty much pacifists and don't care about this stuff.
As to C-Net, they're a bunch of ultra right wing fascists for the way this article has been written - "Let's tell them it's being used in Iraq just in case they think it's being used against real people."
Mod me down as flamebait but for a news site that focuses a lot on Open Source and the fact that people can work together across borders to create something good, I don't expect to see this trash publicised here.
The above was done on a Linux box but a Windows user with Outlook can just bring up the email, select View/Options and look at the last "Received:" line in the email. Pull the IP address out of that line and use "nslookup" in place of "hostx" above in the CMD prompt.
Yes, this one's definitely not from Ebay but from someone on the iomart.com domain. Email is fake, phishing scam failed. Just do the same test with any suspect email and see if the domain name is what you expect it should be. It's that simple!
It's nothing flash and helluva lot of people on Slashdot already know how to do this, be they Linux, Windows, Other OS users.
In fact, an automated script on my mail server already did this for me and SpamAssassin had already captured this as a Spam email.
So to the less experienced people out there, this is just a quick demonstration to show you how easy it is to detect a phished email. All it needs is a little investigation and a little knowledge...
So let's hear no more about phishing because we are now all responsible enough to do it ourselves.
Slashdot Mirror
And your point is?
I own a car on the basis that it *might* get stolen but it doesn't stop me having it.
As far as I'm concerned, if the credit card companies want to make money from it and the porn surfers want to pay for it with cards then they know the risks.
I'm just suggesting that credit card ownership acts as an age verification mechanism anyway, if enforced correctly.
It's Amex, Mastercard, Visa, etc. who enable any vendor to accept their credit card transactions & it's therefore these same companies that ***MAKE MONEY*** when certain scumbags sell kiddie porn to other scumbags. So how about a ***NAME AND SHAME*** campaign on the credit card companies who allow this to happen?
And on a wider note, how about getting those same credit cards companies to enforce trading standards on those vendors who trade in adult porn before they can grant a license to accept their card transactions - like, for example, forcing any porn surfer to enter a valid credit card number before even allowing them to view any form of pornographic image?
Sorry, but all this ".xxx" issue is just a load of political pussyfooting around (excuse the pun). If we deem certain laws to be good or proper - like restricting minors from accessing pornography - then it strikes me that we ensure all parties involved adhere to those laws.
Sure you can subvert it - just don't subscribe to it...
Incidentally, you can do this with just about OS, even another Linux box - it's the fact that Linux can recognise just about any partition type there is (with the correct kernel/modules in place) that makes this work.
Violent games are not the problem, it's the parents who view Playstations and PCs as "babysitters" that are the issue. Balanced kids need balanced input which means they get the time to have fun killing and maiming on a computer screen *and* care and attention from parents who read to them, spend time with them and show them what real life, love and the family are all about.
In one sense, however, these *are* more complex times because there has never been a time when all of us, especially kids, are bombarded with advertising and images designed to convey one message - "buy this product or you're not cool." This creates tremendous peer-pressure amongst kids which leads to many of the problems we have today - bullying, lack of respect for authority, etc.
Get to my age and you can happily close your eyes and ears to this media rubbish but kids need an equal amount of bombarding of parental care & commitment to counteract what messages the corporations send to them through the media.
This is purely a question of balance and kids having parents who care enough about what gets into their heads to give them time, love and advice to counteract what they soak in from the media.
Remember, we're supposed to keep Usenet secret from Joe Sixpack.
Apparently, when they were asking permission to make the film, he told them to just go and do it - he didn't care as long as they didn't put his name to it.
We agree on something at least - the sooner we get that idiot Blair out, the sooner we'll have a decent leader who'll take us fully into Europe and we'll be a bigger unified state than you Americans.
I'd rather become an Islamic state than suffer the consequences of being sucked into American globalization under your war-mongering leaders that only care about the dollar.
If your best argument is only over semantics then it proves what an ignorant, intolerant, religious-hatred preaching moron you really are.
Yes, I feel sorry for my countrymen who died in the London bombings, I feel sorry for the American troops in Iraq and the Iraqi civilians getting killed there.
But morons like you who are so stupid that you voted in a president who has offered up human sacrifice just to make Exxon a few more bucks are just pathetic.
Anyone can find a few links on the web to justify an argument, I'm not even going to lower myself to your level.
Sorry, I wasn't aware that size of user base bore any relationship to how good or usable something is? I accept it's important if you're making money from the product but Linux doesn't make money.
And if you're arguing about the "dogmatism" of Linux users, do you also complain about the full ads you get in magazines and on TV for Windows?
As far as I am concerned, there are as many Windows zealots as there are Linux ones - the difference is the Linux people usually know Windows pretty well but not the other way around.
And if we Linux users have to use word of mouth to counteract Microsoft FUD then so be it - at least those that listen may realise that they have choices.
In my case, I sometimes get "cast-off" servers from IT when they've done a major hardware upgrade on a Windows server and I end up puting Linux on it and giving a file, FTP and web server to my colleagues.
For example, they distibute a lot of log and error files to other departments in the company and they love the directory listing feature in Apache such that they can paste a link to a URL in their home folder for a file someone else wants.
The real "mass migrations" to Linux are small but I do see more and more Linux servers appearing all over the place, even when I visit a lot of my customers.
Windows 2000 was the turning point for MS - proper memory management and good stability - while XP was a backwards move because of it's huge bloat. I can't comment on 2003 because I've not used it.
The major problem with Windows always has been the registry - it grows, fragments and is totally the wrong configuration methodology for desktop environments where users are constantly upgrading, installing and uninstalling software. Even though Windows 2000 and later split the registry out into user folders, it's still pretty impossible to correct registry problems without doing major reinstalls. If you compare that to the UNIX model of storing all users config files in their home directories, then UNIX is much better because if an app problem appears, you can always move or delete a few config files to clear the problem.
Much of the backlash to Windows is as a result of Microsoft's own complacency and disregard for the needs of their users - a lot of people, myself included, won't allow themselves to be dictated to by a power-hungry corporation. In my case, I'd had experience with UNIX at work and in 1996 started trying out Linux. Now I'm at the stage where I shell-script competently, do a lot of CGI stuff with PERL and PHP and have started messing around with C a little. And if it comes to applications for work, no-one really cares if I deploy a server-side app on a Linux server I happen to build, I'm just expected to maintain that server because out IT people won't.
I still use Windows 2000 for some desktop stuff and for work apps but 80% of my time these days is spent in Linux - I'm happy and confident with it and anything I need to deploy, I can usually just "emerge" it (I use Gentoo), configure it and start it running - I don't have to worry about getting corporate licenses and it's stable.
Yes, Linux is not for newbie users but, for a newbie user, there is no pressure anyway - you can install it and dual-boot it with your Windows environment, try it out and learn it in your own time and make your own decisions about if and when you want to use it.
Martin Taylor and MS in general do not understand this mentality that some of us like total control over what we do and like the good feelings we get when you've built something from scratch, configured it properly and got a few scripts to do something really impressive with Linux.
Not all of us want everything "delivered on a plate" to us - some of us do enjoy taking time getting software to work properly and learning in the process.
Terrorists bombed London, the Islamic community does not consider those people as "Muslim".
Spread your racist comments and hate in the sordid little gutters where ignorant half-wits like yourself normally gather, not here amongst intelligent people.
You're not even enough of a "man" that you can post these comments openly - you're a scummy, cowering little coward who only has the guts to say anything behind anonymity.
You're pathetic!
Linux has no anti-Microsoft strategy yet people are migrating from Windows to Linux.
1. Saying apps get broken by the kernel indicates how little you know about Linux. The kernel is an abstraction layer between the operating system and the hardware. Yes, it's quite possible a piece of hardware might stop working following a kernel change but an application will stop working as the result of a library change, more like.
2. You do not like the command line and you are entitled to your opinion. However, the command line exists because of it's power, the fact that commands can be strung together in millions of different ways to achieve precisely what you need. You cannot possibly understand this power unless you are prepared to spend the time to learn what you can do there - if you are not prepared to do that then Linux probably is not for you.
3. Why don't Man pages "cut it"? They're invariably always there, available as online documentation, they're not detailed enough for newbies possibly but then that's what the numerous UNIX and Linux reference books are for. They server a purpose as a quick reference for command usage, they're not there as an educational reference.
Quite frankly, I don't believe you are an advanced user because you quite clearly assume Open Source to be Linux only - what are Firefox, OpenOffice, The GIMP, etc. etc. but three examples of the myriads of Open Source applications that run on Windows as well as Linux?
You seem to be of the mistaken belief that there is some kind of "Linux vs Windows" was going on when, in reality, it's just about having and exercising a choice.
Linux will not just "drop into your lap" while you sit there with you arms folded waiting. If you don't want to use it, fine, you have a choice. But if you do want to use it, then you have to make some effort yourself.
In the meantime, those of us who do realise and use it's power will just get on with doing that, irrespective of your comments.
No, let's ban everything that can have no possible good use and all evil people.
Sorry, I come to Slashdot to escape all of that when I need cheering up, that's why this doesn't belong here.
I'll tell you what, how about we ask Amnesty International if we can post a Doom 3 article on their web site?
Jeez, talk about 2+2=45.9 - where did you get that leap of logic from???
So you mean to tell me that if you were in the cinema watching a movie, it would be okay for the cinema owners to interrupt that movie halfway through to tell you that somebody's backed into someone else's car in the car park?
It's the same kind of logic if I come to Slashdot expecting to read and discuss geek news & see this type of article instead. Slashdot is about discussing computers and Star Trek - it's escapism from the humdrum of modern-day life.
Please do NOT mistake pacifism for apathy - I CARE about peoples' rights - whether that's the right to live in a peaceful world or not to have their rights stripped away from them by corporate profiteering (= DMCA).
If you really were a pacifist, then you should be extremely interested in the ways states have of hurting dissenters,
Ah, right. So in your world, its not good enough for me to a law abiding citizen trying to be nice to those around me and being opposed to war and violence - I have to be an activist also, do I? Well, if you'd like to give me some suggestions as to how I can take an active part in the global Human Rights issue, then I'm all ears...
but not while you're locked in your bedroom playing Everquest
I'm 43 years of age, married with a mortgage & a job in technical support - never played Everquest in my life, I prefer Heroes of Might & Magic and Civilization. Don't patronize or generalize, it lessens your argument. And presumably you have given up all of your entertainment time to Human Rights activism, have you? Well, let's hear what you do then?
Not to mention that inhumane weaponry like this is the best propaganda tool for those opposing war.
Ah, I see. So this isn't a real weapon, it's a piece of propaganda then, is it? All the more reason to not want to read about it then...
Perhaps I'm missing the point but I come here for news and chat about technology, hardware, software & geeky or nerdy stuff.
The majority of geeks or nerds wouldn't be interested in violence - so why do we need to hear about disgusting weaponry here?
We geeks are also pretty good at distinguishing fantasy from reality.
Besides, Counter Strike is the only game you list that has any basis of fact, all the others are in totally fictional environments.
The whole point of violence in games, particularly with kids, is you don't stop them playing these games because they are just fun pure and simple. It's bad parents that use PS2s and XBoxes as "babysitters", leave their kids on them for hours on end and don't spend time with them balancing out in-game violence with real-life love and attention.
So let's have none of this "game violence" BS...
Until recently, I was also an aircraft fanatic and used to go to a lot of air displays here in the UK. But then it suddenly dawned on me that, with military aircraft, I was basically paying to go into an airshow where manufacturers are basically showing off weapons to interested buyers. Suddenly, these shows no longer seemed that appealing...
As to C-Net, they're a bunch of ultra right wing fascists for the way this article has been written - "Let's tell them it's being used in Iraq just in case they think it's being used against real people."
Mod me down as flamebait but for a news site that focuses a lot on Open Source and the fact that people can work together across borders to create something good, I don't expect to see this trash publicised here.
Received: from ebay.com (84-22-184-100.iomart.com [84.22.184.100]
It already tells me it's not from Ebay but let's pretend we just have the IP address to work to only. A quick reverse DNS check:
aragorn ~ # hostx 84.22.184.100
Name: niciis1.iomart.com
Address: 84.22.184.100
The above was done on a Linux box but a Windows user with Outlook can just bring up the email, select View/Options and look at the last "Received:" line in the email. Pull the IP address out of that line and use "nslookup" in place of "hostx" above in the CMD prompt.
Yes, this one's definitely not from Ebay but from someone on the iomart.com domain. Email is fake, phishing scam failed. Just do the same test with any suspect email and see if the domain name is what you expect it should be. It's that simple!
It's nothing flash and helluva lot of people on Slashdot already know how to do this, be they Linux, Windows, Other OS users.
In fact, an automated script on my mail server already did this for me and SpamAssassin had already captured this as a Spam email.
So to the less experienced people out there, this is just a quick demonstration to show you how easy it is to detect a phished email. All it needs is a little investigation and a little knowledge...
So let's hear no more about phishing because we are now all responsible enough to do it ourselves.
Move along, nothing more to see here.
"Dr. Flox's Internet Uncture - Sooths chapped skin & skinned chaps."
"For one week only - free box of tissues & one-handed PC keyboard"
In my day, we were happy with amps that went up to 11... you kids these days...