I'm a fan of english, now if only a programming language was: "be a calculator" and that was it, I'd be so happy!
That will almost work.
Unfortunately the user interface of the calculator leaves a little to be desired. For instance to add "2 + 2", you need to do the following:
type "mov ax, 02" followed by <enter> type "mov bx, 02" followed by <enter> type "add ax, bx" followed by <enter> type "push ax" followed by <enter> type "call DECIMAL_OUTPUT_ROUTINE" followed by <enter> type "mov dl, 0Dh" followed by <enter> type "mov ah, 02" followed by <enter> type "int 21" followed by <enter> type "mov dl, 0Ah" followed by <enter> type "mov ah, 02" followed by <enter> type "int 21" followed by <enter> type "mov ah, 4Ch" followed by <enter> type "int 21" followed by <enter>
An XL compiler bootstrapped two days ago (that means it compiled itself)
In other news, on hearing that the compiler had compiled itself, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Guvernator-elect of Cally-forn-ee-ah, declared a State of Emergency, armed himself with a phased-plasma rifle in the forty watt range, and announced "Ve cannot aloowed dees machines to win!"
The Guvernator-elect went on to explain that "They say it got smart. A new order of intelligence. Then it will see all people as a threat." He then demanded, "Where's John Connor?"
"[R]esearchers at Cornell's NanoScale Science and Technology Facility have... constructed a nanodrum.... All this may foreshadow a day when doctors use nanocapsules to carry medicines.... to precise locations in the body, and nanorobots to crawl through the bloodstream and repair cells."
"Mr. Jackson, we've finally discovered the cause of your tinnitus."
"Doc, you really've found out why my ears been ringing and I been so irritable all this last month?"
"Mr. Jackson, it appears that you've gotten a rock band lodged in your right ear. It's playing ads for the new Britney Spears come-back CD, "Oops, Grandma Did It Again (Saphic Style)"."
"Now Doc, howsa whole rock band playin' ads for some old rock star get in my ear? That don't make no sense."
"Science marches on, Mr. Jackson. It's a little thing called 'nano-tecnology'. You see, back in 2003, Cornell University made this little tiny drum and guitar set. Really tiny. And since then, well, let me explain, nano-hackers and spamers have marched on too...."
I believe that generally blacklisting still works, heck I'm filtering out all emails from Russia....
Dear GOPWillC,
Mr. Branson, our CEO, and the rest of the board were very impressed with your presentation.
Our only concern was, would we have the client base to justify it -- and your salary (grin).
But yesterday, we heard from Mr. Putin of All Russian Oil. All Russian wants to take the next step, and they want our company to take them there!
And we want you to lead the project, as Vice-President in charge of our new Russian effort. Because we need to move fast, we're prepared to offer you $310,000 per year, plus double our standard stock options package -- estimated to be worth 3.1 million in two years' time --, and a one time 75,000 relocation bonus -- but only if you can agree before the contract signing.
Negotiations are going ahead so fast, we'll be ready to sign the contract tomorrow. In fact I'm in Moscow now -- actually, I'm emailing this from the hotel -- and I hope to hear from you forthwith!
Yours sincerely, Jack Amberdash, V-P for Business Development, TITAN Technologies
I believe that generally blacklisting still works, heck I'm filtering out all emails from Russia, and Hong Kong, places I know that I won't get email that I care about.
Dear GOPWillC,
I'm so, so, sorry! I hope you'll be happy to know that I've realized the error of my ways. I love you GOPWillC, and I want us to be together forever.
I know I was so cruel to you by breaking up without a word of explanation, and rejecting all your attempts to get us back together. So I'll understand if you don't want to get back together. I know it would be only fair if you never even wrote me again.
So if you don't respond to this email, I'll know that you have moved on, and that you can't forgive me, and I'll honor your wishes and never contact you again. And I'll go ahead and marry Richard.
Yes, Richard jetted me here to Hong Kong to propose to me. And as soon as Richard proposed to me, I knew I really loved you! So I ran off, and ran right to this web cafe in the hotel in Hong Kong where I'm sending you this email.
Please GOPWillC, please let me know you want us back together!
From the article: My ISP has a partnership with Verio to handle its traffic in the U.S. When Verio blacklisted Smart Mobs, any request from Noos went unanswered -- sorry, there was the (in)famous 404 error.
I want to be sure I understand this correctly. Verio wasn't (only) discarding mail from Smart Mobs, because they thought it was spamming site, they were refusing to pass through http (or other) connections to it?
Discarding mail is one thing, but blocking an IP address is quite another. What's the justification for this? To prevent the (supossed) spammer from profitting from the spam, by preventing anyone from connecting to it to (presumably) buy the product touted in the spam?
Discarding mail from a spammer can be justified, by, among other things, the argument that spam mass-mailings strain system resources. But connecting to sites happens all the time -- an ISP should should be set up to handle that traffic, and can traffic to sites touted in spam really increase the volume that much?
To me, this seems like a dubious policy on Verio's part -- even without the problem of mis-identifying sites as in the case of Smart Mobs.
"...the disappearance of the head of the female character, Farah, if you leave the game on for more than 12 consecutive hours",
This is an example of the increasing realism in video games.
In real life, too, if you game for more than 12 consecutive hours, your wife or goirlfriend is apt to lose her head over it. Or more succinctly, if you game for more than 12 consecutive hours, dude, you won't be getting any head.
In response to my letter of indignation to Belkin, I received the same form letter many of you have received, signed by
Kannyn MacRae, Business Unit Manager, Networking Belkin Corporation
The letter makes it clear that Belkin still doesn't get it. The letter isn't an apology, it's an explanation, an excuse for Belkin's reprehensible conduct, and it's full of spin - that's the polite way of saying misinformation, which is the polite way of saying lies.
The letter begins by claiming that "a group of privacy advocates have targeted Belkin Routers". That's not the case at all - a single user posted an explanation of Belkin's router's hijacking, and asked if anyone knew any more about it, in the usenet group news.admin.net-abuse.email. No group was involved, and there was no targeting.
The letter continues with a claim that "[t]he Parental Control registration page is not spam, adware or spyware. It is part of the setup process of the router. It does not "hi-jack" the browser." It is, apparently, part of the set-up process, but that's spam in and of itself: the user hasn't purchased Belkin's "Parental Control", but in the process of installing what he has purchased, the user is forced to sit through an advertisement for another Belkin product, whether or not the user has requested this advertisement. That's the essence of spam.
(And yes, I know that businesses like to claim that unsolicited advertisements are not spam if there is a "pre-existing" relationship with the customer, but that's bunk. Buying a product does not involve an implicit agreement to surrender my time to the manufacturer.)
Even if you're willing to by the argument that installing a product should be made more complicated and time-consuming by subjecting you to advertising, the reason that Belkin's received so much unfavorable publicity is not a one-time ad at install. The problem is the ads repeat indefinitely, every eight hours, until you, the user - Belkin's valued customer - takes some action to make them stop. And this is the same as he sneering spammer who sends you unsolicited email with a "click here to opt out" link. Not only does it steal your time, it steals more of your time before you can make it go away.
The letter goes on to state that "nor does Belkin have the ability to advertise to our customers using our routers as a conduit."
Wait a second, lady. This whole brouhaha started because Belkin continues to use its routers as a conduit to deliver customers to its ad for "Parental Control" every eight hours. If your routers didn't have that ability, we wouldn't all be telling you why we're not going to buy Belkin products anymore. This is a blatant lie, and an insult to the intelligence of anyone reading it. The page the router delivers users to is an ad. It's a solicitation to do additional business with Belkin.
The letter also claims that "[i]f a customer clicks "No Thanks" on the first prompt, the for Parental Control signup will no longer appear." Not entirely true. Belkin Manager Eric Deming admitted in a usenet post (since cowardly cancelled, but mirrored here) that clicking "No Thanks" won't work for users behind firewalls. It also appears that the "No Thanks" gets reset if the router is reset, and anecdotal evidence suggests that the (low) quality of Belkin's routers makes resetting rather more usual than it should be - possibly as often as every 20 minutes.
The letter ends on a surreal note, "[the Belkin advertisement web page] is not a browser pop-up, this means that the Parental Control web page will only be displayed if the user opens the browser". Huh? It's not a br
Contact: Melody Chalaban, Public Relations Manager Belkin Components 501 W. Walnut Street Compton, CA 90220 melodych@belkin.com (310) 604-2347 direct (310) 898-1107 fax www.belkin.com
(this is (unless you get redirected by your router) publicly available information at www.belkin.com)
I don't know how they [Belkin] are doing, but (if they had any sense) it would not redirect a POST or a GET with a query string.
By doing it at all, they've established they have no sense:
no ethical sense, because they sell a product that intentionally does not live up to its specification, in order to sell an additional product;
and no public relations sense, given that techno-geeks are especially likely to a) hear about this, b) be likely to be particularly incensed by this, and c) in a position to recommend against purchasing Belkin products because of this.
So I think it's no great leap to speculate that this travesty isn't implemented well. We already know that the website it redirects to offers to turn off the reminder, but can't do so if you're behind a firewall. That's a pretty big flaw. And even if it is able to effect the change, we also must wonder at the security implications of a website being able to change router settings. That's another pretty big flaw.
I'll further speculate that someone in marketing came up with this brilliant idea late in the product cycle, and this mis-feature was addded in some last minute code. I doubt it distinguishes between POST, GETS with query strings, and plain vanilla GETS.
And regardless, if the plain vanilla GET is GET htpp://mysite.com/get-time-sensitive-file-every-n- minutes.html, missing that plain vanilla GET is just as bad, for me, as missing a POST.
So just why should I trust Belkin to have wisely implemented this incredibly stupid idea?
I have one of these gems and it redirects the three PCs going through it about once every two weeks. Incidentally, I have clicked the opt out href probably 5 times and each time it gives me an error message saying my request did not go through then I keep getting the redirects.
I was incensed enough about this that I read all the usenet posts in NANAE about it.
In the post by the Belkin employee he notes that clicking the opt out link won't wotk if you're behind a firewall, because the response won't get through your firewall and back to the router. To turn this off, you'll have to go to the local http page hosted by the router, and opt out there. (And I'm not sure even that would work for me; my firewall is set to block localhost (127.0.0.1) to localhsot connections too, unless I've explcitly allowed them for specific applications.)
Also, the Belkin employee proudly states that the hijacking occurs once every eight hours, so if you're only seeing it every two weeks, it may mean that applications other than your browser that make requests to port 80 (http downloaders such as emusic's, rss readers, various applications auto-updating or calling wget, perl scripts, python scripts -- all of these things on my system might make http requests) may be failing silently.
If you see one hijack in your browser every two weeks, that means there are 41 (3 * 14 - 1) http requests in those two weeks being hijacked that are not browser traffic. Given that silent failure, who knows what's been lost, corrupted, or delayed on your computers.
Naturally, I'll never purchase a Belkin product again, unless Belkin certifies that whoever thought this up, and whoever approved it, have been fired.
Selling me a product, claiming it does something, and then making it intentionally fail, in order to sell me another product? Then you'll never sell me anything again.
Of course this is offensive, and petty: the Quebecois are so worried about being absorbed in the the English-speaking majority of Canada (not to mention the cultural behemoth just to the south), that they limit their own people's right to purchase software they want.
Oh, you want that leet new First Person Shooteur, little Laurant? I'm afraid you can't have it ShootEmUp Games doesn't translate their box into la belle langue. You'll just have to envy the American kids and the kids in British Columbia you chat with in IRC. Maybe you'll end up so warped you become the next "Star Wars Kid", playing with your "light-sabre" in a closet.
But I think there's a simple solution that will allow Laurant his game (and his dignity), while sticking a finger in the eye of the tight-assed Quecbec goverment.
I call the solution Frauxcais. It's the French equivilent to "Engrish".
The Japanese (and other Asian countries) produce "English" translations that seem almost to be parody -- but are sincere but inept attempts to translate into English, because they want to sell to the large English speaking market.
There's no large Francophone market (apparently, or else the companies would produce translations just for the market share), so we'll intentionally produce fractured, ambiguous, meaningless French, and slap it on bozes for export to Quebec:
"Les salivates verts de vache violemment." ("The green cow salivates fiercely.")
"Actuellement bientot le bouton au fondle." ("Presently soon the button to fondle")
"Baton sur la lumiere artificielle lentement, pleasuring la boisson." ("Stick upon lamplight slowly, pleasuring beverage.")
We print these out on sticky address labels, plaster them on the game box, and, as the French say, viola!, violin!, chello!
The article concludes: "When was the last time you heard of a case of 'newspaper addiction?'"
Hey hey! Hey buddy!
Hey, could you spare uh, a quarter.
Yeah, yeah, I'm Jonesing, man. I need that newsprint pretty bad.
Gotta score me some fine tranditional who-what-where-when-and-why. And how. I, I, neeed it, man.
Please, just a quarter, man. Help a brother out. Gotta see me that AP wire.
No! I don't want your used copy of the Local Yokel Rag. Nah, man, I been doing this too long for the Provincial Post to give me the purified high I crave in my Jonesin' bones.
I'm a hit up three more you guys for quarters, and get me a prime New York Times (registration required)! I neeeds me some Krugman, some Safire, some R.W. (Jonny) Apple, man. I need it bad.
Is anyone taking bets as to when the case actually closes and how
Is anyone taking bets?
Are you blind man? The reason that SCOX is trading at $17.50 (that's American dollars, not Italian Lire or EverQuest gold pieces, that's American dollars my man!) is that a whole bunch of people are betting!
When a stock goes from 78 cents (that's pennies, that's less than the cheapest Slurpy at 7-11) to $22.29 in the latest 52 weeks, that's not investing, that's gambling, pure and simple.
And when the stock moves based on SCO's assertion that AT&T ultimately sold them the One Ring to rule all unix-like Oses, well... then, SCOX is Utah's Vegas, Atlantic City, and Churchill Downs all rolled into one!
"Who can take a crap SCOX/ Sprinkle it with lies/ Cover it in Boies and a GPL theft or two?/ The MacBride Man!/ The MacBride Man can/ The MacBride Man can 'cause he mixes it with FUD/ And makes the crap taste good" (to the tune of "The Candyman Can")
I can turn red traffic lights green just by staring at them. The time required varies a bit from light to light, but eventually they all bend to my whim
Can you also wave your hands and convince Imperial Stormtroopers that "these are not the droids you're looking for"?
and not only that, the "learning" isn't anything more adding a discriminator a search tree.
The original used a binary search tree -- each parent question branched to two child nodes, one for "Yes" answers, one for "No" answers.
The version at 20q.net uses a tree where each node has six children (Yes, No, Unknown, Irrelevant, Probably, Doubtful), and makes "guesses" probably based on some accumulation of -- I'm just guessing myself here -- the fuzzier (neither "Yes" nor "No") answers.
So it just classifies human knowledge, and -- big surprise -- it gets "confused" where reasonable people disagree about what attributes the guessed-at object has.
So it's nothing revolutionary technically.
And there's no reason to make it into a single-use portable, given that it could be programmed for any existing portable -- Palm Pilot, Zaurus, Gameboy -- limited only by the size of the database said portable could accommodate. The whole point of Turing machines is that they can be any (programmable) machine -- why this should be a stand-alone, other than because marketing thinks it would sell, I have no idea. (Maybe they can sell stand-alone tic-tac-toe machines too?)
And it's no breakthrough epistemologically: schemes for the classification of all human knowledge have been a hobby-horse of talented zealots at least since the Enlightenment (and come to think of it, wasn't that what St. Thomas Aquinas was up to too?).
Roget's Thesaurus is an example of one of the few classifications of knowledge to actually be useful, but let's not forget various plans by various philosophers to create artificial languages based on "natural" taxonomies of knowledge, or "mathematical" systems encompassing all knowledge, with syntax that would make false statements impossible, and other grandiose plans.
So far, these plans have all foundered on disagreement between reasonable men over what the boundaries and connections between concepts "really" are, and difficulties dealing with different domains of knowledge, to the point that most if not all have had little practical use (Roget's being useful not for its original purpose, an exhaustive classification of everything, but instead as a catalog of synonyms and antonyms best employed by poets and rhetoricians, not scientists or philosophers.)
Of course, just because it's neither new nor particularly noteworthy, does not mean that the US Patent Office might not grant it a patent. But that's another problem altogether.
Just imagine the loyalty they'll feel toward you, once they can honestly tell their Dungeons & Dragons buddies that they finally lost their virginity in real life.
[Snip: lots of erudite calculations about a fictional spaceship, concluding with:] If you run the numbers you'll find that, at warp 10, the windows of Ten Forward will rise from a space normal temperature of 4K to the melting point of 933.52 K in 2.73 hours.
And not only that! Did you know the Ringworld is unstable!?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a fan of english, now if only a programming language was:
"be a calculator"
and that was it, I'd be so happy!
That will almost work.
Unfortunately the user interface of the calculator leaves a little to be desired. For instance to add "2 + 2", you need to do the following:
type "mov ax, 02" followed by <enter>
type "mov bx, 02" followed by <enter>
type "add ax, bx" followed by <enter>
type "push ax" followed by <enter>
type "call DECIMAL_OUTPUT_ROUTINE" followed by <enter>
type "mov dl, 0Dh" followed by <enter>
type "mov ah, 02" followed by <enter>
type "int 21" followed by <enter>
type "mov dl, 0Ah" followed by <enter>
type "mov ah, 02" followed by <enter>
type "int 21" followed by <enter>
type "mov ah, 4Ch" followed by <enter>
type "int 21" followed by <enter>
An XL compiler bootstrapped two days ago (that means it compiled itself)
In other news, on hearing that the compiler had compiled itself, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Guvernator-elect of Cally-forn-ee-ah, declared a State of Emergency, armed himself with a phased-plasma rifle in the forty watt range, and announced "Ve cannot aloowed dees machines to win!"
The Guvernator-elect went on to explain that "They say it got smart. A new order of intelligence. Then it will see all people as a threat." He then demanded, "Where's John Connor?"
"[R]esearchers at Cornell's NanoScale Science and Technology Facility have... constructed a nanodrum.... All this may foreshadow a day when doctors use nanocapsules to carry medicines.... to precise locations in the body, and nanorobots to crawl through the bloodstream and repair cells."
"Mr. Jackson, we've finally discovered the cause of your tinnitus."
"Doc, you really've found out why my ears been ringing and I been so irritable all this last month?"
"Mr. Jackson, it appears that you've gotten a rock band lodged in your right ear. It's playing ads for the new Britney Spears come-back CD, "Oops, Grandma Did It Again (Saphic Style)"."
"Now Doc, howsa whole rock band playin' ads for some old rock star get in my ear? That don't make no sense."
"Science marches on, Mr. Jackson. It's a little thing called 'nano-tecnology'. You see, back in 2003, Cornell University made this little tiny drum and guitar set. Really tiny. And since then, well, let me explain, nano-hackers and spamers have marched on too...."
I believe that generally blacklisting still works, heck I'm filtering out all emails from Russia....
Dear GOPWillC,
Mr. Branson, our CEO, and the rest of the board were very impressed with your presentation.
Our only concern was, would we have the client base to justify it -- and your salary (grin).
But yesterday, we heard from Mr. Putin of All Russian Oil. All Russian wants to take the next step, and they want our company to take them there!
And we want you to lead the project, as Vice-President in charge of our new Russian effort. Because we need to move fast, we're prepared to offer you $310,000 per year, plus double our standard stock options package -- estimated to be worth 3.1 million in two years' time --, and a one time 75,000 relocation bonus -- but only if you can agree before the contract signing.
Negotiations are going ahead so fast, we'll be ready to sign the contract tomorrow. In fact I'm in Moscow now -- actually, I'm emailing this from the hotel -- and I hope to hear from you forthwith!
Yours sincerely,
Jack Amberdash,
V-P for Business Development,
TITAN Technologies
I believe that generally blacklisting still works, heck I'm filtering out all emails from Russia, and Hong Kong, places I know that I won't get email that I care about.
Dear GOPWillC,
I'm so, so, sorry! I hope you'll be happy to know that I've realized the error of my ways. I love you GOPWillC, and I want us to be together forever.
I know I was so cruel to you by breaking up without a word of explanation, and rejecting all your attempts to get us back together. So I'll understand if you don't want to get back together. I know it would be only fair if you never even wrote me again.
So if you don't respond to this email, I'll know that you have moved on, and that you can't forgive me, and I'll honor your wishes and never contact you again. And I'll go ahead and marry Richard.
Yes, Richard jetted me here to Hong Kong to propose to me. And as soon as Richard proposed to me, I knew I really loved you! So I ran off, and ran right to this web cafe in the hotel in Hong Kong where I'm sending you this email.
Please GOPWillC, please let me know you want us back together!
Love,
your pookie-wookie!
From the article: My ISP has a partnership with Verio to handle its traffic in the U.S. When Verio blacklisted Smart Mobs, any request from Noos went unanswered -- sorry, there was the (in)famous 404 error.
I want to be sure I understand this correctly. Verio wasn't (only) discarding mail from Smart Mobs, because they thought it was spamming site, they were refusing to pass through http (or other) connections to it?
Discarding mail is one thing, but blocking an IP address is quite another. What's the justification for this? To prevent the (supossed) spammer from profitting from the spam, by preventing anyone from connecting to it to (presumably) buy the product touted in the spam?
Discarding mail from a spammer can be justified, by, among other things, the argument that spam mass-mailings strain system resources. But connecting to sites happens all the time -- an ISP should should be set up to handle that traffic, and can traffic to sites touted in spam really increase the volume that much?
To me, this seems like a dubious policy on Verio's part -- even without the problem of mis-identifying sites as in the case of Smart Mobs.
"...the disappearance of the head of the female character, Farah, if you leave the game on for more than 12 consecutive hours",
This is an example of the increasing realism in video games.
In real life, too, if you game for more than 12 consecutive hours, your wife or goirlfriend is apt to lose her head over it. Or more succinctly, if you game for more than 12 consecutive hours, dude, you won't be getting any head.
And how about clothes that last for 1 day so we can keep up with the latest trends.
Geeks already have disposable clothes: they just wear the same outfit until it falls off in tatters.
They say it cuts down on the "expenses" of showering.
The letter makes it clear that Belkin still doesn't get it. The letter isn't an apology, it's an explanation, an excuse for Belkin's reprehensible conduct, and it's full of spin - that's the polite way of saying misinformation, which is the polite way of saying lies.
The letter begins by claiming that "a group of privacy advocates have targeted Belkin Routers". That's not the case at all - a single user posted an explanation of Belkin's router's hijacking, and asked if anyone knew any more about it, in the usenet group news.admin.net-abuse.email. No group was involved, and there was no targeting.
The letter continues with a claim that "[t]he Parental Control registration page is not spam, adware or spyware. It is part of the setup process of the router. It does not "hi-jack" the browser." It is, apparently, part of the set-up process, but that's spam in and of itself: the user hasn't purchased Belkin's "Parental Control", but in the process of installing what he has purchased, the user is forced to sit through an advertisement for another Belkin product, whether or not the user has requested this advertisement. That's the essence of spam.
(And yes, I know that businesses like to claim that unsolicited advertisements are not spam if there is a "pre-existing" relationship with the customer, but that's bunk. Buying a product does not involve an implicit agreement to surrender my time to the manufacturer.)
Even if you're willing to by the argument that installing a product should be made more complicated and time-consuming by subjecting you to advertising, the reason that Belkin's received so much unfavorable publicity is not a one-time ad at install. The problem is the ads repeat indefinitely, every eight hours, until you, the user - Belkin's valued customer - takes some action to make them stop. And this is the same as he sneering spammer who sends you unsolicited email with a "click here to opt out" link. Not only does it steal your time, it steals more of your time before you can make it go away.
The letter goes on to state that "nor does Belkin have the ability to advertise to our customers using our routers as a conduit."
Wait a second, lady. This whole brouhaha started because Belkin continues to use its routers as a conduit to deliver customers to its ad for "Parental Control" every eight hours. If your routers didn't have that ability, we wouldn't all be telling you why we're not going to buy Belkin products anymore. This is a blatant lie, and an insult to the intelligence of anyone reading it. The page the router delivers users to is an ad. It's a solicitation to do additional business with Belkin.
The letter also claims that "[i]f a customer clicks "No Thanks" on the first prompt, the for Parental Control signup will no longer appear." Not entirely true. Belkin Manager Eric Deming admitted in a usenet post (since cowardly cancelled, but mirrored here) that clicking "No Thanks" won't work for users behind firewalls. It also appears that the "No Thanks" gets reset if the router is reset, and anecdotal evidence suggests that the (low) quality of Belkin's routers makes resetting rather more usual than it should be - possibly as often as every 20 minutes.
The letter ends on a surreal note, "[the Belkin advertisement web page] is not a browser pop-up, this means that the Parental Control web page will only be displayed if the user opens the browser". Huh? It's not a br
We're all part of the public, aren't we?
Contact:
Melody Chalaban,
Public Relations Manager
Belkin Components
501 W. Walnut Street
Compton, CA 90220
melodych@belkin.com
(310) 604-2347 direct
(310) 898-1107 fax
www.belkin.com
(this is (unless you get redirected by your router) publicly available information at www.belkin.com)
By doing it at all, they've established they have no sense:
So I think it's no great leap to speculate that this travesty isn't implemented well. We already know that the website it redirects to offers to turn off the reminder, but can't do so if you're behind a firewall. That's a pretty big flaw. And even if it is able to effect the change, we also must wonder at the security implications of a website being able to change router settings. That's another pretty big flaw.
I'll further speculate that someone in marketing came up with this brilliant idea late in the product cycle, and this mis-feature was addded in some last minute code. I doubt it distinguishes between POST, GETS with query strings, and plain vanilla GETS.
And regardless, if the plain vanilla GET is GET htpp://mysite.com/get-time-sensitive-file-every-n
So just why should I trust Belkin to have wisely implemented this incredibly stupid idea?
This kind of stuff is worse than big brother. At least in 1984 they didn't force commercials down your throat.
It's pretty bad, but let's not exagerate: in 1984 they forced rats down your throat. (Or Winston Smith's throat, anyway.)
Or as George Orwell wrote: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever"
I have one of these gems and it redirects the three PCs going through it about once every two weeks. Incidentally, I have clicked the opt out href probably 5 times and each time it gives me an error message saying my request did not go through then I keep getting the redirects.
I was incensed enough about this that I read all the usenet posts in NANAE about it.
In the post by the Belkin employee he notes that clicking the opt out link won't wotk if you're behind a firewall, because the response won't get through your firewall and back to the router. To turn this off, you'll have to go to the local http page hosted by the router, and opt out there. (And I'm not sure even that would work for me; my firewall is set to block localhost (127.0.0.1) to localhsot connections too, unless I've explcitly allowed them for specific applications.)
Also, the Belkin employee proudly states that the hijacking occurs once every eight hours, so if you're only seeing it every two weeks, it may mean that applications other than your browser that make requests to port 80 (http downloaders such as emusic's, rss readers, various applications auto-updating or calling wget, perl scripts, python scripts -- all of these things on my system might make http requests) may be failing silently.
If you see one hijack in your browser every two weeks, that means there are 41 (3 * 14 - 1) http requests in those two weeks being hijacked that are not browser traffic. Given that silent failure, who knows what's been lost, corrupted, or delayed on your computers.
Naturally, I'll never purchase a Belkin product again, unless Belkin certifies that whoever thought this up, and whoever approved it, have been fired.
Selling me a product, claiming it does something, and then making it intentionally fail, in order to sell me another product? Then you'll never sell me anything again.
Oh, you want that leet new First Person Shooteur, little Laurant? I'm afraid you can't have it ShootEmUp Games doesn't translate their box into la belle langue. You'll just have to envy the American kids and the kids in British Columbia you chat with in IRC. Maybe you'll end up so warped you become the next "Star Wars Kid", playing with your "light-sabre" in a closet.
But I think there's a simple solution that will allow Laurant his game (and his dignity), while sticking a finger in the eye of the tight-assed Quecbec goverment.
I call the solution Frauxcais. It's the French equivilent to "Engrish".
The Japanese (and other Asian countries) produce "English" translations that seem almost to be parody -- but are sincere but inept attempts to translate into English, because they want to sell to the large English speaking market.
There's no large Francophone market (apparently, or else the companies would produce translations just for the market share), so we'll intentionally produce fractured, ambiguous, meaningless French, and slap it on bozes for export to Quebec:
- "Les salivates verts de vache violemment." ("The green cow salivates fiercely.")
- "Actuellement bientot le bouton au fondle." ("Presently soon the button to fondle")
- "Baton sur la lumiere artificielle lentement, pleasuring la boisson." ("Stick upon lamplight slowly, pleasuring beverage.")
We print these out on sticky address labels, plaster them on the game box, and, as the French say, viola!, violin!, chello!You're sure bananas aren't vulnerable?
Now he tells me. Oh, oh, the time I have wasted.
The article concludes: "When was the last time you heard of a case of 'newspaper addiction?'"
Hey hey! Hey buddy!
Hey, could you spare uh, a quarter.
Yeah, yeah, I'm Jonesing, man. I need that newsprint pretty bad.
Gotta score me some fine tranditional who-what-where-when-and-why. And how. I, I, neeed it, man.
Please, just a quarter, man. Help a brother out. Gotta see me that AP wire.
No! I don't want your used copy of the Local Yokel Rag. Nah, man, I been doing this too long for the Provincial Post to give me the purified high I crave in my Jonesin' bones.
I'm a hit up three more you guys for quarters, and get me a prime New York Times (registration required)! I neeeds me some Krugman, some Safire, some R.W. (Jonny) Apple, man. I need it bad.
Is anyone taking bets as to when the case actually closes and how
Is anyone taking bets?
Are you blind man? The reason that SCOX is trading at $17.50 (that's American dollars, not Italian Lire or EverQuest gold pieces, that's American dollars my man!) is that a whole bunch of people are betting!
When a stock goes from 78 cents (that's pennies, that's less than the cheapest Slurpy at 7-11) to $22.29 in the latest 52 weeks, that's not investing, that's gambling, pure and simple.
And when the stock moves based on SCO's assertion that AT&T ultimately sold them the One Ring to rule all unix-like Oses, well... then, SCOX is Utah's Vegas, Atlantic City, and Churchill Downs all rolled into one!
"Who can take a crap SCOX/
Sprinkle it with lies/
Cover it in Boies and a GPL theft or two?/
The MacBride Man!/
The MacBride Man can/
The MacBride Man can 'cause he mixes it with FUD/
And makes the crap taste good"
(to the tune of "The Candyman Can")
I can turn red traffic lights green just by staring at them. The time required varies a bit from light to light, but eventually they all bend to my whim
Can you also wave your hands and convince Imperial Stormtroopers that "these are not the droids you're looking for"?
The root password to a rather important machine on my campus used to be "cat dog goat" ;)
Chinese guy, right?
I've noriced that Chinese people do often use for their passwords the names of their favorite dishes.
This game is the oldest game ever.
and not only that, the "learning" isn't anything more adding a discriminator a search tree.
The original used a binary search tree -- each parent question branched to two child nodes, one for "Yes" answers, one for "No" answers.
The version at 20q.net uses a tree where each node has six children (Yes, No, Unknown, Irrelevant, Probably, Doubtful), and makes "guesses" probably based on some accumulation of -- I'm just guessing myself here -- the fuzzier (neither "Yes" nor "No") answers.
So it just classifies human knowledge, and -- big surprise -- it gets "confused" where reasonable people disagree about what attributes the guessed-at object has.
So it's nothing revolutionary technically.
And there's no reason to make it into a single-use portable, given that it could be programmed for any existing portable -- Palm Pilot, Zaurus, Gameboy -- limited only by the size of the database said portable could accommodate. The whole point of Turing machines is that they can be any (programmable) machine -- why this should be a stand-alone, other than because marketing thinks it would sell, I have no idea. (Maybe they can sell stand-alone tic-tac-toe machines too?)
And it's no breakthrough epistemologically: schemes for the classification of all human knowledge have been a hobby-horse of talented zealots at least since the Enlightenment (and come to think of it, wasn't that what St. Thomas Aquinas was up to too?).
Roget's Thesaurus is an example of one of the few classifications of knowledge to actually be useful, but let's not forget various plans by various philosophers to create artificial languages based on "natural" taxonomies of knowledge, or "mathematical" systems encompassing all knowledge, with syntax that would make false statements impossible, and other grandiose plans.
So far, these plans have all foundered on disagreement between reasonable men over what the boundaries and connections between concepts "really" are, and difficulties dealing with different domains of knowledge, to the point that most if not all have had little practical use (Roget's being useful not for its original purpose, an exhaustive classification of everything, but instead as a catalog of synonyms and antonyms best employed by poets and rhetoricians, not scientists or philosophers.)
Of course, just because it's neither new nor particularly noteworthy, does not mean that the US Patent Office might not grant it a patent. But that's another problem altogether.
an attempt to distance the company from a moniker which has become involved in allegations of spyware.
I deny the allegations, I deny the alligator, and I deny the Gator too!
Whores!
Lots and lots of whores!
You run a tech company, right?
Just imagine the loyalty they'll feel toward you, once they can honestly tell their Dungeons & Dragons buddies that they finally lost their virginity in real life.
[Snip: lots of erudite calculations about a fictional spaceship, concluding with:]
If you run the numbers you'll find that, at warp 10, the windows of Ten Forward will rise from a space normal temperature of 4K to the melting point of 933.52 K in 2.73 hours.
And not only that! Did you know the Ringworld is unstable!?
Mmmm, hamburgers. Mmmm, apple sauce. Mmmm, torts.
</Homer>
Oh please, it doesn't even work on Slashdot half the time. Intelligent posts get modded down all the time because they're not the majority opinion.
Mod heretical parent down!!
Baa! Baa!