Although it would definately be a real bugger to cart around, a stone PC might actually be rather cool. I'm not sure how you would joint it though... maybe stone surrounding a stronger but thin metal frame? Marble would be particularly cool in creating a PC.
How about plaster? Could you chisel out an artistic PC? Clay.... doesn't it retain shape rather nicely after heating (might be a bit fragile though).
If we moved away from the metal frames, we could perhaps make some rather wicked PC mods. After all, who can really make a molded metal case without a full forge or the ability to heat metal to molten temperatures, much easier with wood or clay/plaster, etc.
No, makes more sense to have a dedicated portable gaming console and a standardized jack to interface with the phone. Better quality games/screen, etc... and you could play online or maybe download other games
The issue becomes though, that while phones shouldn't be capable of becoming an N-Gage or a Gameboy-Advance... there is a nitch for older tech.
I mean, with micro 2-4GB HDD's out, the main lack is the screen, battery life, etc. You play too many games and you have no more battery to use it as a phone. Rather than trying to move the phones to the handheld-gaming market, why not make them compatible with handheld games (hey, I can play online with my GBA if I bought phone X), and perhaps capture the "nostalgia" market with older stuff like galaga etc.
The main idea is that "advancements" shouldn't encroach on the tried-and-true features of the phone, especially not at cost overrun. I really don't mind having a phone that has a camera, or games, so long as it does all the phone features (dialing, # list etc) and doesn't cost me much more for them. Mine has a calendar which reminds me of important events... saves me getting an underutilized PDA. If it had a camera, fine by me so long as the camera feature didn't make it $150 more than phone Y (in which case I would have just bought phone Y).
I think that the parent was referring to files that were already fairly well compressed. No sense in zipping a 100MB file for example, if it only shrinks it to 95MB (then when you uncompress you are using 195MB of space until you delete the ZIP)
Just a side-question: Can you get/make bootable (el-torito) style DVD's?
I've certainly used/create a lot of bootCD's, but I've yet to see it done on a DVD (would be nice, I could make a base image of my server... fully configured, and have an auto-restoring backup).
After long sessions of dealing with infected MS machines, I can tell you truthfully that they do cause extreme illness with symptoms including:
a) Increased heartrate, anger
b) Sweaty palms
c) Migraines
d) Vision impairment
Of course, other OS's aren't so great either... I've noticed a trend of body odour and poor social tendancies that seem to afflict Linux users, and the Mac users generally seem to suffer from some form of uncomfortable constipation issue.
you could tax CD-Rs which are most commonly used by P2P users for backup of the files they download
of course not, that's senseless. The only people that should pay are those that use the services, a net tax will not do that.
I wouldn't have responded had this comment not been modded up, but seriously - how is a CD-R tax better than an internet tax? I'm Canadian, and get taxed up the wazoo for my recordable media. I also tend to use it mostly for backup or archival purposes. I haven't downloaded an RIAA song in years, much less burned one. One overly-encompassing tax is no better than another.
I dunno about where you live, but where I'm from - a moderate-sized city - we have a 24hr Starbucks. Now, quite often people will hang there in the late hours of the night, and they'll maybe drink a few coffees, whatever, and stay a few hours.
I've never been told to leave. Usually as long as somebody at the table gets a drink every so often they're rather happy to have us there. To me... it's not about the coffee, I'm paying for both my beverage and the fact that there is a place where I can sit and socialize at 3am without disturbing the neighbours. It's cheaper than most restaurants... when you count the price of food and that some have a "minimum per patron" requirement.
I guess that really, it would hang on where the active initiative took place. With shared files, it makes sense that there is nobody actually actively "uploading." It's not like there's a central storage point where they're sending copyrighted material, nor are the actively initiating a transfer to another computer.
When you "send" files on a P2P network, you aren't out there looking for somebody to send to say saying "I'll give Jimmy Q this file," but instead it is Jimmy Q, the downloader, making an active request from your machine.
Without the request from an active downloader, you would be doing nothing wrong. And with the CD-levy, we've come close to legitimizing the downloading.
I'd expect that it was "expunged" from a criminal record, but not a general one. That is to say, an employer looking you up wouldn't find it etc, but if you got charged on a similar charge later the cops could.
Better places for spammers to live
on
Spam Bits
·
· Score: 1
Heh. If that's true, I can't think of a better place for a spammer to live.
How about in a box. A pine one. About 6 feet underground. I'd like it if most of them lived there... at least for as long as the oxygen lasts.
6. Agreed on the online play. I know Final Fantasy *fanatics* who have zero desire in FF11 Online. The reaction is usually, "Wait, I bought a game and I have to keep paying every month?"
As somewhat of a FF addict, I'd have to contradict this. I don't mind paying for game-service subscriptions, but it's a question of value VS return.
a) Replay value: Most of the FF series have it. There are some subplots, tricks, interesting items, and just the general fun of re-living a classic. When eventually the MMO server service goes down (usually as players taper off into other games, or die surrounded by empty pizza boxes), that game is more or less gone.
b) Storyline: A series of on-the-fly, partially-tied, etc etc stories don't really cut it for me. For me, playing FF has been like reading a good book, or more recently like watching a decent flick. Sure, some missions are interesting, but there's a general cohesiveness that's missing.
c) Full-timers, cheaters: Sorry, but I work for a living. I can't compete with the wonderboy who plays an MMO for 5h+ a day, or the script-kiddy with the latest exploit/hack.
It's like books Vs magazine subscriptions. Some of us like books, some of us like magazines. I just happen to be a book person, though sometimes a magazine article might catch my eye...
You're not killing it, you're reviving it in a new form. Now, instead of sitting in a closet picking up dust, the user has a Mac case which, while looking much like the original, is a bit fancy and a whole lot more functional.
Or perhaps you think those of us who write software exist only to provide you with free toys?
No more than the software/etc that I code is offered to provide "free toys" to somebody. It's to make life easier, or more productive. I really hate feeding trolls, but most people don't want to contribute to one of the several alpha/beta projects that have bare functionality and then watch it go down the tube. Paying for decent software is fine, and I'd be happy to support a project with strong backing, but most don't have that. I'd rather contribute to the OS movement in general, by making my own OS code to share with the masses.
Beside that fact, you're making a big assumption that I don't contribute. I do, to projects that are advanced enough and attract my attention. So stop trolling and maybe next time offer a suggestion that's helpful to the problem at hand.
Piracy can help in some situations, hinder in others. If somebody catches a movie on DVD that he/she loves, there's a change that he/she will impulse-buy the DVD... especially if it comes out on sale somewhere.
Personally though, I think that the MPAA could make a killing but setting up P2P networks with partial movies... for the ones that don't suck, you're going to have to either rent, buy, or hit the theatre to see the rest (assuming that there aren't other full P2P versions out).
I would have patented ads in space. Heck, we should patent anything that looks like it could be used for more annoying advertisements...
Reason? You don't need to *use* the patented item yourself, but it's very useful in making somebody else stop...
When company X says "We're thinking of burning an ad into the face of the moon with a laser, everybody will know about us then," you might have a valid retort...
what the hell is in ms office that the previous version didn't have that's of huge value?
The ability to open office files from all the other suckers that bought a copy of it? It may sound like a trollish answer, but really the only reason I know people to upgrade office in most situations is because their old version suddenly can't open files made by their co-workers, clients, etc.
Probably a good reason to spread the word about the joys of OO, though DRM'ed documents may eventually kill MS-Office compatability.
Yes, open source is useful in debugging, often for getting those hidden little problems that the initial coders wouldn't find. However, with Diebold and co it seems the errors are simply retarded...
You don't need to see the source to know that the coding is bad, and insecure. Hell, half the problem isn't software, it's either hardware-related or due to the fact that the people running them have more in common with chimpanzees than sysadmins.
Charge your computer whenever you can (the less you drain Li-Ion batteries, the longer they last - there is no "memory effect", so *don't* drain them fully)
I'm not sure if it applies to Li+ - I believe it dos - but many rechargable batteries are cycle-limited. That means that the more often you flip them to charge-mode, battery-mode, charge-mode.. the faster you run out of cycles. Eventually, they just don't charge anymore.
If my previous laptop battery is an example of this, it was charging just fine until one day it just stopped charging/draining at all above about 1-6%
mp3.com is gone... but I'm sure there are some similar sites out there. The music isn't the same as in the stores, but much of it was good. Anyone got suggestions (bonus points to those who find good non-RIAA sites).
I personally have a collection of about 3GB worth of music including alternative/rock/etc, techno/trance, darkwave, and some old amiga stuff. I believe most of it is free to distribute in a not-for-profit manner (old mp3.com stuff)... contact me if interested (and if you like some of it, but the CD for a friend).
Actually, that really is another thing to consider. When you're selecting a server room, you want not only good dependable power, but proper airflow and ventilation. I have a backroom with only a few servers, a bunch of switches, and other networking+A/V equipment. For awhile in the winter it got quite cold, I moved out of my normal office area and hooked my laptop up off one of the switches directly: nice and cozy.
In the summer though, that room is a bit warm. I could definately see how a company with several servers could be in for overheating issues without proper ventilation. Even desktops in an office can cause significant heat output (especially in combination with hot, sweat, smell humans).
Unfortunately it's not currently legal, but really what would be a better idea is to react to compromised machines based on their infection behavior. I know that when Code Red first came out (and still now, even) my Apache logs were full of attempts to acces CMD.EXE or other windows stuff.
The obvious solution would be to respond to the attacking machine by using the same exploit by which it was initially infected, and cause it to go to sleep or attempt to clean itself. Obvious problems arise if the machine is doing something important, but the question arises: when are you allowed to protect your own property in response to somebody who hasn't properly fixed their own?
Conceptually, the best way to do this would be to log attackers, note how they are infected based on heuristics of common infections, and then wait until they attack has been going on for a certain period of time. If the machine is still coming out strong after a day, one should be justified in taking measured to put it offline...
It's time to stop pandering to sysadmins that don't do their jobs. We have some machines that aren't $1000/minute mission critical, but if one were infected I wouldn't feel overtly upset if somebody put it to sleep for me (so long as the machine itself wasn't damaged). For those that do run $$$$/minute machines, they should be well secured so such things don't happen, or at least not for prolonged periods of time.
It's accountability time for sysadmins... you're not unjustified in shooting somebody who invades your house, so why can't you take out the computer that's attacking your network?
I wonder if this is Apple's way of protesting an idiotic law. Just let it go and if somebody really wants to take you to court over it, then you come in with 'fair use' and their attack-lawyers.
If nobody wants to bring it to court (on the grounds that it's stupid and might get shot down), Apple wins. If it goes to court and loses, Apple wins. I'm just wondering how an idiotic law pandering to a profiteering corporation can in any way survive the scrutiny of an intelligent judge.
Then, at $REDIRECT_MACHINE, have a www page that basically says: You are infected with a virus. Please go here for cleaning/removal instructions, and information on protecting your PC.
And of course, the SMTP server would just be a dead address that will cause their email client to visible bork on any sending operation.
Slashdot Mirror
Although it would definately be a real bugger to cart around, a stone PC might actually be rather cool. I'm not sure how you would joint it though... maybe stone surrounding a stronger but thin metal frame? Marble would be particularly cool in creating a PC.
How about plaster? Could you chisel out an artistic PC? Clay.... doesn't it retain shape rather nicely after heating (might be a bit fragile though).
If we moved away from the metal frames, we could perhaps make some rather wicked PC mods. After all, who can really make a molded metal case without a full forge or the ability to heat metal to molten temperatures, much easier with wood or clay/plaster, etc.
No, makes more sense to have a dedicated portable gaming console and a standardized jack to interface with the phone. Better quality games/screen, etc... and you could play online or maybe download other games
The issue becomes though, that while phones shouldn't be capable of becoming an N-Gage or a Gameboy-Advance... there is a nitch for older tech.
I mean, with micro 2-4GB HDD's out, the main lack is the screen, battery life, etc. You play too many games and you have no more battery to use it as a phone. Rather than trying to move the phones to the handheld-gaming market, why not make them compatible with handheld games (hey, I can play online with my GBA if I bought phone X), and perhaps capture the "nostalgia" market with older stuff like galaga etc.
The main idea is that "advancements" shouldn't encroach on the tried-and-true features of the phone, especially not at cost overrun. I really don't mind having a phone that has a camera, or games, so long as it does all the phone features (dialing, # list etc) and doesn't cost me much more for them. Mine has a calendar which reminds me of important events... saves me getting an underutilized PDA. If it had a camera, fine by me so long as the camera feature didn't make it $150 more than phone Y (in which case I would have just bought phone Y).
I think that the parent was referring to files that were already fairly well compressed. No sense in zipping a 100MB file for example, if it only shrinks it to 95MB (then when you uncompress you are using 195MB of space until you delete the ZIP)
Just a side-question: Can you get/make bootable (el-torito) style DVD's?
I've certainly used/create a lot of bootCD's, but I've yet to see it done on a DVD (would be nice, I could make a base image of my server... fully configured, and have an auto-restoring backup).
After long sessions of dealing with infected MS machines, I can tell you truthfully that they do cause extreme illness with symptoms including:
a) Increased heartrate, anger
b) Sweaty palms
c) Migraines
d) Vision impairment
Of course, other OS's aren't so great either... I've noticed a trend of body odour and poor social tendancies that seem to afflict Linux users, and the Mac users generally seem to suffer from some form of uncomfortable constipation issue.
you could tax CD-Rs which are most commonly used by P2P users for backup of the files they download
of course not, that's senseless. The only people that should pay are those that use the services, a net tax will not do that.
I wouldn't have responded had this comment not been modded up, but seriously - how is a CD-R tax better than an internet tax? I'm Canadian, and get taxed up the wazoo for my recordable media. I also tend to use it mostly for backup or archival purposes. I haven't downloaded an RIAA song in years, much less burned one. One overly-encompassing tax is no better than another.
I dunno about where you live, but where I'm from - a moderate-sized city - we have a 24hr Starbucks. Now, quite often people will hang there in the late hours of the night, and they'll maybe drink a few coffees, whatever, and stay a few hours.
I've never been told to leave. Usually as long as somebody at the table gets a drink every so often they're rather happy to have us there. To me... it's not about the coffee, I'm paying for both my beverage and the fact that there is a place where I can sit and socialize at 3am without disturbing the neighbours. It's cheaper than most restaurants... when you count the price of food and that some have a "minimum per patron" requirement.
I guess that really, it would hang on where the active initiative took place. With shared files, it makes sense that there is nobody actually actively "uploading." It's not like there's a central storage point where they're sending copyrighted material, nor are the actively initiating a transfer to another computer.
When you "send" files on a P2P network, you aren't out there looking for somebody to send to say saying "I'll give Jimmy Q this file," but instead it is Jimmy Q, the downloader, making an active request from your machine.
Without the request from an active downloader, you would be doing nothing wrong. And with the CD-levy, we've come close to legitimizing the downloading.
I'd expect that it was "expunged" from a criminal record, but not a general one. That is to say, an employer looking you up wouldn't find it etc, but if you got charged on a similar charge later the cops could.
Heh. If that's true, I can't think of a better place for a spammer to live.
How about in a box. A pine one. About 6 feet underground. I'd like it if most of them lived there... at least for as long as the oxygen lasts.
6. Agreed on the online play. I know Final Fantasy *fanatics* who have zero desire in FF11 Online. The reaction is usually, "Wait, I bought a game and I have to keep paying every month?"
As somewhat of a FF addict, I'd have to contradict this. I don't mind paying for game-service subscriptions, but it's a question of value VS return.
a) Replay value: Most of the FF series have it. There are some subplots, tricks, interesting items, and just the general fun of re-living a classic. When eventually the MMO server service goes down (usually as players taper off into other games, or die surrounded by empty pizza boxes), that game is more or less gone.
b) Storyline: A series of on-the-fly, partially-tied, etc etc stories don't really cut it for me. For me, playing FF has been like reading a good book, or more recently like watching a decent flick. Sure, some missions are interesting, but there's a general cohesiveness that's missing.
c) Full-timers, cheaters: Sorry, but I work for a living. I can't compete with the wonderboy who plays an MMO for 5h+ a day, or the script-kiddy with the latest exploit/hack.
It's like books Vs magazine subscriptions. Some of us like books, some of us like magazines. I just happen to be a book person, though sometimes a magazine article might catch my eye...
You're not killing it, you're reviving it in a new form. Now, instead of sitting in a closet picking up dust, the user has a Mac case which, while looking much like the original, is a bit fancy and a whole lot more functional.
Or perhaps you think those of us who write software exist only to provide you with free toys?
No more than the software/etc that I code is offered to provide "free toys" to somebody. It's to make life easier, or more productive. I really hate feeding trolls, but most people don't want to contribute to one of the several alpha/beta projects that have bare functionality and then watch it go down the tube. Paying for decent software is fine, and I'd be happy to support a project with strong backing, but most don't have that. I'd rather contribute to the OS movement in general, by making my own OS code to share with the masses.
Beside that fact, you're making a big assumption that I don't contribute. I do, to projects that are advanced enough and attract my attention. So stop trolling and maybe next time offer a suggestion that's helpful to the problem at hand.
I could one-up you on that... everything to a single colour. Text, background, etc etc... all a nice hot pink.
No readable text, just a lot of purty colours...
Piracy can help in some situations, hinder in others. If somebody catches a movie on DVD that he/she loves, there's a change that he/she will impulse-buy the DVD... especially if it comes out on sale somewhere.
Personally though, I think that the MPAA could make a killing but setting up P2P networks with partial movies... for the ones that don't suck, you're going to have to either rent, buy, or hit the theatre to see the rest (assuming that there aren't other full P2P versions out).
I would have patented ads in space. Heck, we should patent anything that looks like it could be used for more annoying advertisements...
Reason? You don't need to *use* the patented item yourself, but it's very useful in making somebody else stop...
When company X says "We're thinking of burning an ad into the face of the moon with a laser, everybody will know about us then," you might have a valid retort...
Just out of curiousity... do you know of any free applications to stream video from a linux server?
what the hell is in ms office that the previous version didn't have that's of huge value?
The ability to open office files from all the other suckers that bought a copy of it? It may sound like a trollish answer, but really the only reason I know people to upgrade office in most situations is because their old version suddenly can't open files made by their co-workers, clients, etc.
Probably a good reason to spread the word about the joys of OO, though DRM'ed documents may eventually kill MS-Office compatability.
Yes, open source is useful in debugging, often for getting those hidden little problems that the initial coders wouldn't find. However, with Diebold and co it seems the errors are simply retarded...
You don't need to see the source to know that the coding is bad, and insecure. Hell, half the problem isn't software, it's either hardware-related or due to the fact that the people running them have more in common with chimpanzees than sysadmins.
Charge your computer whenever you can (the less you drain Li-Ion batteries, the longer they last - there is no "memory effect", so *don't* drain them fully)
I'm not sure if it applies to Li+ - I believe it dos - but many rechargable batteries are cycle-limited. That means that the more often you flip them to charge-mode, battery-mode, charge-mode.. the faster you run out of cycles. Eventually, they just don't charge anymore.
If my previous laptop battery is an example of this, it was charging just fine until one day it just stopped charging/draining at all above about 1-6%
mp3.com is gone... but I'm sure there are some similar sites out there. The music isn't the same as in the stores, but much of it was good. Anyone got suggestions (bonus points to those who find good non-RIAA sites).
I personally have a collection of about 3GB worth of music including alternative/rock/etc, techno/trance, darkwave, and some old amiga stuff. I believe most of it is free to distribute in a not-for-profit manner (old mp3.com stuff)... contact me if interested (and if you like some of it, but the CD for a friend).
Actually, that really is another thing to consider. When you're selecting a server room, you want not only good dependable power, but proper airflow and ventilation. I have a backroom with only a few servers, a bunch of switches, and other networking+A/V equipment. For awhile in the winter it got quite cold, I moved out of my normal office area and hooked my laptop up off one of the switches directly: nice and cozy.
In the summer though, that room is a bit warm. I could definately see how a company with several servers could be in for overheating issues without proper ventilation. Even desktops in an office can cause significant heat output (especially in combination with hot, sweat, smell humans).
Unfortunately it's not currently legal, but really what would be a better idea is to react to compromised machines based on their infection behavior. I know that when Code Red first came out (and still now, even) my Apache logs were full of attempts to acces CMD.EXE or other windows stuff.
The obvious solution would be to respond to the attacking machine by using the same exploit by which it was initially infected, and cause it to go to sleep or attempt to clean itself. Obvious problems arise if the machine is doing something important, but the question arises: when are you allowed to protect your own property in response to somebody who hasn't properly fixed their own?
Conceptually, the best way to do this would be to log attackers, note how they are infected based on heuristics of common infections, and then wait until they attack has been going on for a certain period of time. If the machine is still coming out strong after a day, one should be justified in taking measured to put it offline...
It's time to stop pandering to sysadmins that don't do their jobs. We have some machines that aren't $1000/minute mission critical, but if one were infected I wouldn't feel overtly upset if somebody put it to sleep for me (so long as the machine itself wasn't damaged). For those that do run $$$$/minute machines, they should be well secured so such things don't happen, or at least not for prolonged periods of time.
It's accountability time for sysadmins... you're not unjustified in shooting somebody who invades your house, so why can't you take out the computer that's attacking your network?
I wonder if this is Apple's way of protesting an idiotic law. Just let it go and if somebody really wants to take you to court over it, then you come in with 'fair use' and their attack-lawyers.
If nobody wants to bring it to court (on the grounds that it's stupid and might get shot down), Apple wins. If it goes to court and loses, Apple wins. I'm just wondering how an idiotic law pandering to a profiteering corporation can in any way survive the scrutiny of an intelligent judge.
On my boxen, it would be (and I'm sure that there's non-linux equivilents):
Assign special DHCP address to known infected machines:
IPTABLES -A PREROUTING -s $INFECTED_IP_BLOCK -p tcp --dport www -j DNAT --to $REDIRECT_MACHINE
IPTABLES -A PREROUTING -s $INFECTED_IP_BLOCK -p tcp --dport smtp -j DNAT --to $REDIRECT_MACHINE
Then, at $REDIRECT_MACHINE, have a www page that basically says: You are infected with a virus. Please go here for cleaning/removal instructions, and information on protecting your PC.
And of course, the SMTP server would just be a dead address that will cause their email client to visible bork on any sending operation.