I remember it distinctly because my girlfriend's Yahoo wasn't working
Don't worry, it happens to everyone.
I guess his 1337 cyber chatting skillz weren'y enough to get it working for her?
Maybe he should have tried some of the sensuous and ecstasy provoking cyber-scripts designed by J-Dogg/bloodninja, such as the infamous "bloodninja: I meditate to regain my mana, before casting Lvl. 8 Cock of the Infinite."
Weren't the Googolites one of those tribes in the Bible?
Yeah, like, I think the Israelites slew the Googlites because God was upset the Googolites were searching the Torah with the jaw-bones of shellfish while laying with men, or something.
It's in the Book of Gesundheit!, Chapter 42, or something.
How do you manage IT requests in your organization?
Allow each requestor to post his request on something like a bulletin board.
Allow some persons the ability to commend or denigrate a limited number of these posts, making the commended posts more visible and the denigrated posts less visible, by adding to or subtracting from, the post's "priority" points.
Occassionaly award a small number of (say, five) "priority points" to those posters who gain the most priority points from others, allowing these points to be assigned to yet other persons' requests.
Designate different types of "priority points" to distinguish types of requests, but make sure there's some ambiguous overlap: you might include points for requests that are, e.g., "Insightful", "Interesting", "Funny" as positive points, and "Overrated", "Troll", and "Flamebait" as negatives.
Make sure you patrol the request board for goatse.cx posts, and try to limit the number of posts that comapre popular requests to Natalie Portman covered with grits.
[I]ntegrating the billions of sensors already present in our environment with the power of the Web will represent 'a revolutionary leap in earth observation.'
This sounds great!
Please send me more information about how I can use these sensor nets to make a difference!
You can email me at: John.Poindexter@Technically.Not.A.Convicted.Felon. gov
PS, I'm sure my friend John would be interested too! You can email him a prospectus at: JAshcroft@We.Run.A.Christian.DOJ.gov
PPS, don't worry if you get the email addresses wrong. I've got some friends who monitor almost all email, and I'm sure they'll pass along anything interesting!
But if you're like me, into punk, techno and hip hop you should def. check [Emusic.com] out.
I'm not at all into punk, techno, or hip-hop. In fact, most music in those genres makes me cringe to hear it.
But I do enjoy classical, country, and folk music, and classic jazz. In the last year I've been with emusic, I've legally downloaded about 6000 (six thousand) mp3 tracks in those genres from emusic.
The classical music has really paid off for me: I was always wary of paying $16 for a classical CD when I wasn't sure of the quality of the performers: would I get beautiful music or a dud? With emusic, it's $10/month whether or not I download, so all I risk is the download time.
Also important to note is that what you download from emusic is MP3s. This means no DRM, which means anything that plays MP3s can play these tracks, including open-source players (like my portable MP3 player). No "phoning home" to some central server to get permission, no need for tedious and loss-y conversions, no need for special and proprietary software. And most emusic.com MP3s are lame -alt preset, which generally means an average bit rate of 192 kbps -- about what I'd rip myself from a CD.
So you can get a large range of genres, each with a large selection of artists and albums, you get no DRM annoyances, and you can download up to 2000 tracks per month for $10. And there's even a free trial period to give it a try. The future is at emusic.com
[C]onsider donating to the EFF. Just think how much it would help if a fraction of slashdot readers donated $10 or $20....what's $10 in the grand scheme of things?
You know, I would donate that $10, but I just spent my last $16.99 on "InSync With Britny's Backstreet, Boy".
It's got a great track of fiddle music to play while the Bill of Rights, and Rome, burns.
Maybe I'm just not easily frightened, but "stop p2p leeches from sucking up all the bandwidth and making the network unusable for everyone" fails to terrify me. Sorry.
Ok, but why not just cap bandwidth and be done with it?
Scanning PCs (which from the article appears to mean scanning for content, not just port scaning) goes furthr than needed, and opens the door to arbitrary and unchecked abuses.
I was recently asked by a coworker to come up with a list of expensive and cool gadgets for a VIP.
But seriously folks, isn't this what's wrong with the business world today?
"Hey let's get $ImportantPerson something he neither needs nor will use, so that we get brownie points, and we'll make the stockholders pay for it!
"Then maybe he won't realize we haven't been doing any more for the people who actually own the company -- the stockholders than his playful VIP ass!
"Mr. Importent will have useless his toy, we'll be off the hook, and somebody else will be laid off to temporarily drive up stock prices, and the stockholders will think everything's hunky-dory!
"Even better if we can find some way to charge the toy and our time getting it to a government contract!"
I've been threatened with "I will personally come up and rip your arm off if you do that again" allready (sic) on the issue of NAT
If you've actually been threatened with violence by the University or its agents, I'd say you have excellent leverage when you sit down with the University Provost.
I work at UF and know the one of the designers who worked on this. It's actually a really good system that has other purposes besides blocking P2P.
As a piece of technology, Icarus may or may not be a good tool.
But if you're not frightened by its intended use, you're missing the point. Nothing is technically -- or otherwise -- excellent enough to justify turning off your moral sense. You have an ethical duty, regardless of your technical acumen, to think of the moral implications. Indeed, the argument can be made that greater technical acumen demands a greater ethical care on your part that technology not be used to decrease human freedoms.
"Dude, I just built a mind-control ray that makes anyone it touches ecstatic to be a slave of Mine Leader!" is NOT OK, even if you go on to explain "But dude, it's like totally cool and neat-o how the mind-control ray works."
In a less comic-book vein, building "really neat-o" mass surveillance technology is not, generally, something to be proud of.
If you must be a cheerleader for this technology, I beg you to pause at least a little while to consider how it could be misused:
would you want the Chinese government to have it, so that they might hunt down and suppress samizdat calling for human rights?
Would Stalin have found it useful to maintain his police state?
Could it be used to search computers not for viruses but for memes that the State or interest groups find objectionable?
What if the US Government decides that Federally supported schools (and given the realities of student loans, all colleges are "Federally supported" under the law) should not use their networks to disseminate information about how to get abortions? (Not so far-fetched: that's already a requirement for any family planning organizations that gets US foerign aid.)
If by connecting my computer to the school's network constitutes being "a part" of that network, can Icarus search and destroy a list of abortion providers on my hard drive? Or if I'm anti-abortion, can it search and destroy a list of abortion providers if I include beside each provider's name his home address and a tick mark if he hasn't been murdered/driven out of business yet? (Also not so far-fetched: Planned Parenthood has abused the RICO statutes to supress anti-abortionists.)
The 4th Amendment limits the government's ability to search my computer, but if a college insists that
all freshmen live in the dorms,
and that all computers in dorms be connected to the campus network,
and that all computers on the campus network be searched by Icarus, can they turn over to the government what they find on my computer?
What if they find an essay advocating the decriminalization of marijuana, would that be of interest to the local sheriff? What if they find a diary note where I mention I bought a nickel bag or marijuana? What if they find my plan to murder a rival drug dealer?
Were this strictly government action, a warrant would be required for this search. But if my computer is "part of" the campus network, have I given up all my rights?
Id it OK for a Christian School to search my computer for porn? For an electronic copy of the Quoran? For a heretical version of the Christian Bible? Or are you sure that Icarus will draw the line at viruses and P2P applications?
What are we more concerned about, a virus that might disable a few computers, some violation of copyright, or the right of free men and women to be secure in their privacy and the privacy of their thoughts as expressed on their magnetic media?
Are you really ready for the implications of this technology, or are you just blinded by its "gee-whiz, neat-o" aspects?
Slashdot Mirror
A Big Wheel!
San Francisco even has an annual Big Wheel race in , and we all know that San Fran is trendy, e-hip and e-happening.
Or gay and campy.
But either way, it'll help you release your inner child.
I get chicks the old fashioned way...I play in a band and woo them with my funky guitar lines, long blonde hair....
I think we all know this tune. Sing along with me, everybody:
"Play that funky music.
White geek."*
my girlfriend has a 900mhz iBook, and I have to tell you, I'm not really sure where my extra $1000 went.
A Slashdotter with a girlfriend.
And he's missing a thousand bucks.
Ahem.
I think we can all connect those dots.
Just how much are those web-cam "girlfriends" per-minute, anyway?
I remember it distinctly because my girlfriend's Yahoo wasn't working
Don't worry, it happens to everyone.
I guess his 1337 cyber chatting skillz weren'y enough to get it working for her?
Maybe he should have tried some of the sensuous and ecstasy provoking cyber-scripts designed by J-Dogg/bloodninja, such as the infamous "bloodninja: I meditate to regain my mana, before casting Lvl. 8 Cock of the Infinite."
'Googlites' is hardly a common term.
Weren't the Googolites one of those tribes in the Bible?
Yeah, like, I think the Israelites slew the Googlites because God was upset the Googolites were searching the Torah with the jaw-bones of shellfish while laying with men, or something.
It's in the Book of Gesundheit!, Chapter 42, or something.
The original post was subtle and funny.
Yours was condescending and pedantic.
Condescending??!!
And even pedantic??!!
On Slashdot??
I'm shocked, shocked, shocked!
How much Porn will it hold?
This one will hold 30 days of Porn
Now, now, now, this is just wrong!
Everybody knows you don't measure porn in days.
True porn afficianados know that you measure porn in terms of the amount of keyboard cleaning required.
Now that I think about it.. didn't Newton have a job at Cambridge too?
/.ers won't get it.
I'm assuming you're joking; I'm also assuming some
Yeah, he had an insignificant little job, sorta equivalent to a modern "Dorm Mother": he was the second Lucasian Chair of Mathematics.
Hell, they give that wheelchair guy a job and he's hanging out with strippers all the time. I'd say Hawking's pretty eccentric.
Stephen Hawking, of course, is the current Lucasian Chair.
How do you manage IT requests in your organization?
Allow each requestor to post his request on something like a bulletin board.
Allow some persons the ability to commend or denigrate a limited number of these posts, making the commended posts more visible and the denigrated posts less visible, by adding to or subtracting from, the post's "priority" points.
Occassionaly award a small number of (say, five) "priority points" to those posters who gain the most priority points from others, allowing these points to be assigned to yet other persons' requests.
Designate different types of "priority points" to distinguish types of requests, but make sure there's some ambiguous overlap: you might include points for requests that are, e.g., "Insightful", "Interesting", "Funny" as positive points, and "Overrated", "Troll", and "Flamebait" as negatives.
Make sure you patrol the request board for goatse.cx posts, and try to limit the number of posts that comapre popular requests to Natalie Portman covered with grits.
P2P. He asks his friends, they set him up with a client.
In A.D. 2003
War was beginning
RIAA: What happen?
Rosen: Somebody set up us the client.
[....]
RIAA: Move "DRM".
RIAA: For great "justice".
Has anyone else out there been having problems accessing Google or Altavista?
Perhaps you're using malware: Check this thread out.
FWIW, Ashcroft is Morman.
Nope.
Ashcroft is a Pentecostal (Asssemblies of God), and is the son of a Pentecostal minister.
Exactly what are they monitoring again? Earthquakes? Wind? Ocean temperature...?
A-rabs. Today anyway.
DMCA violators and people who try to re-fill patented Lexmark printers. Tomorrow.
Democrat members of the Texas Senate, and other Democrats, as needed. Starting in 2004.
[I]ntegrating the billions of sensors already present in our environment with the power of the Web will represent 'a revolutionary leap in earth observation.'
. gov
This sounds great!
Please send me more information about how I can use these sensor nets to make a difference!
You can email me at: John.Poindexter@Technically.Not.A.Convicted.Felon
PS, I'm sure my friend John would be interested too! You can email him a prospectus at:
JAshcroft@We.Run.A.Christian.DOJ.gov
PPS, don't worry if you get the email addresses wrong. I've got some friends who monitor almost all email, and I'm sure they'll pass along anything interesting!
Seriously though, take a look at the cool sculptures.
:)
Oh, sure, make him spend the whole half-million dollar drant on bandwidth charges.
Feeling spiteful, huh?
But if you're like me, into punk, techno and hip hop you should def. check [Emusic.com] out.
I'm not at all into punk, techno, or hip-hop. In fact, most music in those genres makes me cringe to hear it.
But I do enjoy classical, country, and folk music, and classic jazz. In the last year I've been with emusic, I've legally downloaded about 6000 (six thousand) mp3 tracks in those genres from emusic.
The classical music has really paid off for me: I was always wary of paying $16 for a classical CD when I wasn't sure of the quality of the performers: would I get beautiful music or a dud? With emusic, it's $10/month whether or not I download, so all I risk is the download time.
Also important to note is that what you download from emusic is MP3s. This means no DRM, which means anything that plays MP3s can play these tracks, including open-source players (like my portable MP3 player). No "phoning home" to some central server to get permission, no need for tedious and loss-y conversions, no need for special and proprietary software. And most emusic.com MP3s are lame -alt preset, which generally means an average bit rate of 192 kbps -- about what I'd rip myself from a CD.
So you can get a large range of genres, each with a large selection of artists and albums, you get no DRM annoyances, and you can download up to 2000 tracks per month for $10. And there's even a free trial period to give it a try. The future is at emusic.com
[C]onsider donating to the EFF. Just think how much it would help if a fraction of slashdot readers donated $10 or $20....what's $10 in the grand scheme of things?
You know, I would donate that $10, but I just spent my last $16.99 on "InSync With Britny's Backstreet, Boy".
It's got a great track of fiddle music to play while the Bill of Rights, and Rome, burns.
It's all about your priorities, I guess.
I detected this large supply of monopoles, but it turned out to be a Pak Protector's ship.
They I ate all these yams, and damn do I have a hangover.
Let's say that John down the hall decides to "get even" with you for something? He sends you an MP3 file to your e-mail.
Good point, but thi'll only work if your email client automatically saves attachments. I don't think even Microsoft does this.
Maybe I'm just not easily frightened, but "stop p2p leeches from sucking up all the bandwidth and making the network unusable for everyone" fails to terrify me. Sorry.
Ok, but why not just cap bandwidth and be done with it?
Scanning PCs (which from the article appears to mean scanning for content, not just port scaning) goes furthr than needed, and opens the door to arbitrary and unchecked abuses.
I was recently asked by a coworker to come up with a list of expensive and cool gadgets for a VIP.
But seriously folks, isn't this what's wrong with the business world today?
"Hey let's get $ImportantPerson something he neither needs nor will use, so that we get brownie points, and we'll make the stockholders pay for it!
"Then maybe he won't realize we haven't been doing any more for the people who actually own the company -- the stockholders than his playful VIP ass!
"Mr. Importent will have useless his toy, we'll be off the hook, and somebody else will be laid off to temporarily drive up stock prices, and the stockholders will think everything's hunky-dory!
"Even better if we can find some way to charge the toy and our time getting it to a government contract!"
"I was recently asked by a coworker to come up with a list of expensive and cool gadgets for a VIP.
If the VIP's in management, how about, I dunno, a brain?
Or for that matter, a heart or some courage .
I've been threatened with "I will personally come up and rip your arm off if you do that again" allready (sic) on the issue of NAT
If you've actually been threatened with violence by the University or its agents, I'd say you have excellent leverage when you sit down with the University Provost.
As a piece of technology, Icarus may or may not be a good tool.
But if you're not frightened by its intended use, you're missing the point. Nothing is technically -- or otherwise -- excellent enough to justify turning off your moral sense. You have an ethical duty, regardless of your technical acumen, to think of the moral implications. Indeed, the argument can be made that greater technical acumen demands a greater ethical care on your part that technology not be used to decrease human freedoms.
"Dude, I just built a mind-control ray that makes anyone it touches ecstatic to be a slave of Mine Leader!" is NOT OK, even if you go on to explain "But dude, it's like totally cool and neat-o how the mind-control ray works."
In a less comic-book vein, building "really neat-o" mass surveillance technology is not, generally, something to be proud of.
If you must be a cheerleader for this technology, I beg you to pause at least a little while to consider how it could be misused:
What if the US Government decides that Federally supported schools (and given the realities of student loans, all colleges are "Federally supported" under the law) should not use their networks to disseminate information about how to get abortions? (Not so far-fetched: that's already a requirement for any family planning organizations that gets US foerign aid.)
If by connecting my computer to the school's network constitutes being "a part" of that network, can Icarus search and destroy a list of abortion providers on my hard drive? Or if I'm anti-abortion, can it search and destroy a list of abortion providers if I include beside each provider's name his home address and a tick mark if he hasn't been murdered/driven out of business yet? (Also not so far-fetched: Planned Parenthood has abused the RICO statutes to supress anti-abortionists.)
The 4th Amendment limits the government's ability to search my computer, but if a college insists that
all freshmen live in the dorms,
and that all computers in dorms be connected to the campus network,
and that all computers on the campus network be searched by Icarus,
can they turn over to the government what they find on my computer?
What if they find an essay advocating the decriminalization of marijuana, would that be of interest to the local sheriff? What if they find a diary note where I mention I bought a nickel bag or marijuana? What if they find my plan to murder a rival drug dealer?
Were this strictly government action, a warrant would be required for this search. But if my computer is "part of" the campus network, have I given up all my rights?
Id it OK for a Christian School to search my computer for porn? For an electronic copy of the Quoran? For a heretical version of the Christian Bible? Or are you sure that Icarus will draw the line at viruses and P2P applications?
What are we more concerned about, a virus that might disable a few computers, some violation of copyright, or the right of free men and women to be secure in their privacy and the privacy of their thoughts as expressed on their magnetic media?
Are you really ready for the implications of this technology, or are you just blinded by its "gee-whiz, neat-o" aspects?
I still surprise some of my coworkers when they see me pull my pda out of one of the thigh pockets.
Depending on your co-workers' expectations, I guess it could be a real surprise.