Re:Beware the viscious circle.
on
Half Mast
·
· Score: 1
I *was* the lab assistant (as a student), and it was quite a long time ago. All calls went first to the teacher - but it was universally throughout the school that windows 95 would just happily crash, and there wasn't much anyone could do about it.
Besides... if you didn't get the point, I had a hidden client which I could direct to "crash" the machine on demand - it was a point of satisfaction after 3 years or so of dealing with their crap.
As a computer geek, there are many other ways to settle the score without resorting to violence. It's always a shame when somebody who bothered me has all his work on the network drives corrupted, a spontaneous reboot just before saving... or floppy disks subject to magnetic disruption.
Oh... and the year I was the lab admin was the best, many of these jokers were in my class and the prof left me deal with them according - or just assumed that various events were just regular/random PC happenings.
Ah, the pleasant memories:
"These computer SUCK, this is the third time it's crashed before I could finish this assignment"
At the time it happened
on
Half Mast
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
For a short while, I was actually left alone and not harrassed. Due to the previous frequency of harrassment, people kept whispering that I was the most likely to go on a rampage in the school (gee, doesn't that make me feel warm and tingly). Thankfully, I'm not crazy enough to persue that type of behavior (though I did chase somebody with a bat after they crap-kicked me once), and I didn't have access to firearms.
At least for a while though, the events that occurred shocked everybody into realizing that
a) Even geeky people do have a breaking point
b) Bad things happen when you push them past it
I don't sponsor what happened what happened in Columbine: some killings were also based on race and religion, etc, but for awhile its affects gave me a breather. However, now that harrassment in schools is picking up again I wouldn't be surprised to see more students "losing it"
It's also worthy of note that when an event like this happens - all of N. America and possible the world cry "how could it happen," while suicides based on harrassment - which are more frequent often end up as a statistic except for local grief.
Oh, and to this day I find that people tend to bother me less if I wear a nice, dark, long trenchcoat.
Does it happen when you move your mouse? Turn of sound input under "AUX" and/or "MIC", "LINE", etc.
Sometimes they pick up noise and rebroadcast it through the speakers - I've had lots of soundcards and boards that do this.
When you are first starting the car, you'll probably only get as far as POST if it doesn't start immediately... not worry to need about FSCK'ing a filesystem since it isn't near being mounted yet.
A capacitor will handle the downswings. Also, if you put a setup to detect when the ignition is off and then turn off your machine, you might be able to get a cap or other power-holding systems capable of keeping it up for long enough to dismount and do a clean shutdown.
Again, power upspikes are the real problem, when the alternator starts. I might say to use a higher-voltage cap (to handle the additional alternator voltage when it is running) - with something to drop it down to 12V clean, and then another cap.
The problem comes in that for many consumers higher voltage good-capacitance caps are not always easy or cheap to come by, but at least this could allow one to have clean, more-direct power, without loss/etc associated with an DC->AC->DC conversion.
After building up some more money, I've often considered doing the following (this applies to music but could easily apply to other mediums):
Putting up a server with tons and tons of mp3 files named after popular songs. Don't put up the real files however, just audio clips with a voice saying "this is not the file you are looking for" and enough silence or noise to make the filesize/length similar to an actual mp3 of the song.
Next, let several well-respected citizens, or perhaps those in law see that the site does not contain any real copyrighted music.
Wait for the cease and desist. Ignore or send a somewhat ambiguous reply stating something like "there's nothing to cease" but not mentioning the lack of actually pirated files
Wait for the court case...
Even with a crap lawyer, having some strong witnesses and playing 1-10 of the supposed pirated files to demonstrate that the *AA (or BSA) do not actually check file contents but simple use shitty filters and scare tactics should make the case an easy win - and leave the plaintiff with egg on their face.
*note: This works better since I'm in Canada. Loser pays the legal fees, and there's always the countersue, etc, as well as I believe measures for frivolous lawsuits.
Not a bad idea for consoles, though newer ones use DVD and a writable format of such is not cheap.
Actually, for PC's a neat trick instead of this might be to make the game come on DVD/CD, with a tiny USB storage dongle much like a memcard. I've seen many such dongles available, a small one could be made cheap and small enough to package with a game
That's a huge amount of sales. How many people would have pirated this if it had come out on PC instead of console?
This is perhaps one of the upsides to being a PS2 game, at least at first. If it had come out on PC earlier... a lot of people probably would have just pirated it instead of buying. I know I would have, though I would have bought it later had it met approval (judging by popular opinion, it would have) - though of couse on PS2 I can also rent it.
It makes a good statement about the popularity of console games though, wonder if anti-piracy is one of the reasons it's still console-only?
And yet, I'm aware one could play a pirated version with a chipped PS2... but it is *much* more a pain in the butt (and DVD+R is expensive) than PC piracy. Of course, on PC, people may have bought more than 1 CD to play multiplayer between machines.
Not to spark the software-piracy holy war, but it's an honest consideration for console games, and such high sales numbers may prove their increased profitability.
*Maybe* you could have a game run entirely from CD, saving progress in the RW area
A really good idea... but a few hitches:
-What about drivers for the particular burner, or is there a generic?
-Needs to have it's own burning software.
Even rewritable discs have a finite lifetime, although technically so do diskettes.
We all have something to hide. Some people are hiding very bad things... others are hiding things that big business or government tells us are bad... but almost everyone does anyways.
It's not society which is concerned about enforcing these laws, it's big business.
Big business doesn't care about a student drinking beer, it doesn't affect them in a negetive way.
They do care about students copying music, because in their view it hurts the profit margins.
By now, everyone knows that it's not "the people" that run the country or set the rules, it's "the people with money."
While the initial use of the term "piracy" may have made people think of hoisting the jolly roger and scourging the seven-seas.... nowadays it is much more likely to think of piracy in terms of copying (software, movies, songs, etc).
Saying somebody was robbed by pirates on the high sees, you might expect somebody to say "What did they do, take all his CD's and tapes?"
An encrypted key, which in turn encrypts the files? An intriguing thought. It doesn't need to be the sysadmin password even, just a private password key, which in turn could be used by a utility to rencrypt the files with a new crypt key should the user lose his/her password.
Could put a lot of overheard in crypting/decrypting though, especially with large files - I'm not entirely sure about it. Makes me wonder about the encryption utils built into new hardware (DRM capable, etc) - it could be put to a non-evil use.
What Whalen did was limit his domain to one topic, and compile a set of general answers to likely questions, which he matched by spotting keywords
This isn't really AI though, and it's also been previously used in others ways. Anyone could do this with a regexp and a dictionary.
Example: Old Sierra games. You type in a command, it parses words relative to the current situation and chooses any ones that match
AI isn't so much the ability to run memorized commands as it is the ability to learn or anticipate. I wouldn't mind an initially dumb chatbot, if it were able to grow "smarter" over time, and process input in a meaningful manner so as to "learn".
So it's not "deliberately" collection info personally identifiuable to you.... but it does grab the registry, which almost certainly has personally identifiable information, as well as much more (serial keys, passwords, etc etc).
They just "happen" to get this info with all the rest, or at least that would probably be their stance.
Truly. If the people at google were smart though, they'd say:
Stop... or we'll link you on slashdot.
Safe until you pay, so use cash
on
NYT on RFID Tags
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
If you're walking around the store with RFID tagged merchandise... it doesn't matter. Nothing tags that RFID to you in particular. However - as is mentioned - once you pay, they could tag the RFID to your customer card, the name on your credit card/debit card, whatever. But really, the could do the same with barcodes, etc.
Otherwise, you could wear a similar frequency device near the tags to stymie them... Cordless phones, two-way radios, local wireless networks and other communications devices...can interfere with the signals...waves have a hard time penetrating metals and liquids
In the end though, paying cash is probably your best bet at not being ID'ed... until the hidden RFID in your boxers tells them who you are, that is.
While the thought of even more idiotic patents gives me the shudders... I don't have too much problem so long as it is not brought into the battlefields of litigation.
It seems that nowadays, if you make a new product you almost have to try and snap a patent right away, if only to avoid being sued by some other idiot who tries to patent a common idea.
my guess would be... the less extraneous things it does - the better. As long as the the root nameserver serves out addresses, it is accomplishing its purpose. If BIND does things above and beyond, it's just allowing more ways to possibly break or slow down the system.
If a lot of/.'ers are like me, then there are probably a lot of people who don't know the technical differences between BIND and NSD. Can somebody whack us with the proverbial cluestick as to the improvements of NSD over BIND (exempting of course, the mentioned fact that NSD was built from scratch).
I wonder what anomalies, if any, we may see from switching over. Also, as the article mentions that NSD has no design commonalities with BIND, I wonder how many of the tech personnel are knowledgable on the new system...not that a nameserver, even a root one, should be overtly complicated (except for evading DOS attacks)
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I *was* the lab assistant (as a student), and it was quite a long time ago. All calls went first to the teacher - but it was universally throughout the school that windows 95 would just happily crash, and there wasn't much anyone could do about it.
Besides... if you didn't get the point, I had a hidden client which I could direct to "crash" the machine on demand - it was a point of satisfaction after 3 years or so of dealing with their crap.
As a computer geek, there are many other ways to settle the score without resorting to violence. It's always a shame when somebody who bothered me has all his work on the network drives corrupted, a spontaneous reboot just before saving... or floppy disks subject to magnetic disruption.
Oh... and the year I was the lab admin was the best, many of these jokers were in my class and the prof left me deal with them according - or just assumed that various events were just regular/random PC happenings.
Ah, the pleasant memories:
"These computer SUCK, this is the third time it's crashed before I could finish this assignment"
For a short while, I was actually left alone and not harrassed. Due to the previous frequency of harrassment, people kept whispering that I was the most likely to go on a rampage in the school (gee, doesn't that make me feel warm and tingly). Thankfully, I'm not crazy enough to persue that type of behavior (though I did chase somebody with a bat after they crap-kicked me once), and I didn't have access to firearms.
At least for a while though, the events that occurred shocked everybody into realizing that
a) Even geeky people do have a breaking point
b) Bad things happen when you push them past it
I don't sponsor what happened what happened in Columbine: some killings were also based on race and religion, etc, but for awhile its affects gave me a breather. However, now that harrassment in schools is picking up again I wouldn't be surprised to see more students "losing it"
It's also worthy of note that when an event like this happens - all of N. America and possible the world cry "how could it happen," while suicides based on harrassment - which are more frequent often end up as a statistic except for local grief.
Oh, and to this day I find that people tend to bother me less if I wear a nice, dark, long trenchcoat.
Does it happen when you move your mouse? Turn of sound input under "AUX" and/or "MIC", "LINE", etc.
Sometimes they pick up noise and rebroadcast it through the speakers - I've had lots of soundcards and boards that do this.
A few things:
When you are first starting the car, you'll probably only get as far as POST if it doesn't start immediately... not worry to need about FSCK'ing a filesystem since it isn't near being mounted yet.
A capacitor will handle the downswings. Also, if you put a setup to detect when the ignition is off and then turn off your machine, you might be able to get a cap or other power-holding systems capable of keeping it up for long enough to dismount and do a clean shutdown.
Again, power upspikes are the real problem, when the alternator starts. I might say to use a higher-voltage cap (to handle the additional alternator voltage when it is running) - with something to drop it down to 12V clean, and then another cap.
The problem comes in that for many consumers higher voltage good-capacitance caps are not always easy or cheap to come by, but at least this could allow one to have clean, more-direct power, without loss/etc associated with an DC->AC->DC conversion.
After building up some more money, I've often considered doing the following (this applies to music but could easily apply to other mediums):
Putting up a server with tons and tons of mp3 files named after popular songs. Don't put up the real files however, just audio clips with a voice saying "this is not the file you are looking for" and enough silence or noise to make the filesize/length similar to an actual mp3 of the song.
Next, let several well-respected citizens, or perhaps those in law see that the site does not contain any real copyrighted music.
Wait for the cease and desist. Ignore or send a somewhat ambiguous reply stating something like "there's nothing to cease" but not mentioning the lack of actually pirated files
Wait for the court case...
Even with a crap lawyer, having some strong witnesses and playing 1-10 of the supposed pirated files to demonstrate that the *AA (or BSA) do not actually check file contents but simple use shitty filters and scare tactics should make the case an easy win - and leave the plaintiff with egg on their face.
*note: This works better since I'm in Canada. Loser pays the legal fees, and there's always the countersue, etc, as well as I believe measures for frivolous lawsuits.
Just an idea... try Ebay, I've got many a good piece of software there - usually at a better price.
If you can't find it through a direct source (e.g. the product creator/manufacturer/etc), Ebay is often a good second bet.
Not a bad idea for consoles, though newer ones use DVD and a writable format of such is not cheap.
Actually, for PC's a neat trick instead of this might be to make the game come on DVD/CD, with a tiny USB storage dongle much like a memcard. I've seen many such dongles available, a small one could be made cheap and small enough to package with a game
That's a huge amount of sales. How many people would have pirated this if it had come out on PC instead of console?
This is perhaps one of the upsides to being a PS2 game, at least at first. If it had come out on PC earlier... a lot of people probably would have just pirated it instead of buying. I know I would have, though I would have bought it later had it met approval (judging by popular opinion, it would have) - though of couse on PS2 I can also rent it.
It makes a good statement about the popularity of console games though, wonder if anti-piracy is one of the reasons it's still console-only?
And yet, I'm aware one could play a pirated version with a chipped PS2... but it is *much* more a pain in the butt (and DVD+R is expensive) than PC piracy. Of course, on PC, people may have bought more than 1 CD to play multiplayer between machines.
Not to spark the software-piracy holy war, but it's an honest consideration for console games, and such high sales numbers may prove their increased profitability.
The question remains:
If people are willing to subscribe to/buy telezappers, block lists, do not call lists, etc...
Can't telemarketers get the point that these people are not potential sales, they're only potential angry call recipients?
Not only that, but wouldn't forging a phone number come under some sort of legal troubles... especially if you used a number that somebody else owns?
*Maybe* you could have a game run entirely from CD, saving progress in the RW area
A really good idea... but a few hitches:
-What about drivers for the particular burner, or is there a generic?
-Needs to have it's own burning software.
Even rewritable discs have a finite lifetime, although technically so do diskettes.
We all have something to hide. Some people are hiding very bad things... others are hiding things that big business or government tells us are bad... but almost everyone does anyways.
Nobody is 100% innocent.
It's not society which is concerned about enforcing these laws, it's big business.
Big business doesn't care about a student drinking beer, it doesn't affect them in a negetive way.
They do care about students copying music, because in their view it hurts the profit margins.
By now, everyone knows that it's not "the people" that run the country or set the rules, it's "the people with money."
Just for those who didn't see it. UF has a good comic take on this
While the initial use of the term "piracy" may have made people think of hoisting the jolly roger and scourging the seven-seas.... nowadays it is much more likely to think of piracy in terms of copying (software, movies, songs, etc).
Saying somebody was robbed by pirates on the high sees, you might expect somebody to say "What did they do, take all his CD's and tapes?"
An encrypted key, which in turn encrypts the files? An intriguing thought. It doesn't need to be the sysadmin password even, just a private password key, which in turn could be used by a utility to rencrypt the files with a new crypt key should the user lose his/her password.
Could put a lot of overheard in crypting/decrypting though, especially with large files - I'm not entirely sure about it. Makes me wonder about the encryption utils built into new hardware (DRM capable, etc) - it could be put to a non-evil use.
The problem I see with this is... what happens when somebody forgets his/her password? Resetting it isn't going to give the files back...
What Whalen did was limit his domain to one topic, and compile a set of general answers to likely questions, which he matched by spotting keywords
This isn't really AI though, and it's also been previously used in others ways. Anyone could do this with a regexp and a dictionary.
Example: Old Sierra games. You type in a command, it parses words relative to the current situation and chooses any ones that match
AI isn't so much the ability to run memorized commands as it is the ability to learn or anticipate. I wouldn't mind an initially dumb chatbot, if it were able to grow "smarter" over time, and process input in a meaningful manner so as to "learn".
Where does this one come from?
So it's not "deliberately" collection info personally identifiuable to you.... but it does grab the registry, which almost certainly has personally identifiable information, as well as much more (serial keys, passwords, etc etc).
They just "happen" to get this info with all the rest, or at least that would probably be their stance.
Truly. If the people at google were smart though, they'd say:
Stop... or we'll link you on slashdot.
If you're walking around the store with RFID tagged merchandise... it doesn't matter. Nothing tags that RFID to you in particular. However - as is mentioned - once you pay, they could tag the RFID to your customer card, the name on your credit card/debit card, whatever. But really, the could do the same with barcodes, etc.
Otherwise, you could wear a similar frequency device near the tags to stymie them...
Cordless phones, two-way radios, local wireless networks and other communications devices...can interfere with the signals...waves have a hard time penetrating metals and liquids
In the end though, paying cash is probably your best bet at not being ID'ed... until the hidden RFID in your boxers tells them who you are, that is.
While the thought of even more idiotic patents gives me the shudders... I don't have too much problem so long as it is not brought into the battlefields of litigation.
It seems that nowadays, if you make a new product you almost have to try and snap a patent right away, if only to avoid being sued by some other idiot who tries to patent a common idea.
my guess would be... the less extraneous things it does - the better. As long as the the root nameserver serves out addresses, it is accomplishing its purpose. If BIND does things above and beyond, it's just allowing more ways to possibly break or slow down the system.
If a lot of /.'ers are like me, then there are probably a lot of people who don't know the technical differences between BIND and NSD. Can somebody whack us with the proverbial cluestick as to the improvements of NSD over BIND (exempting of course, the mentioned fact that NSD was built from scratch).
I wonder what anomalies, if any, we may see from switching over. Also, as the article mentions that NSD has no design commonalities with BIND, I wonder how many of the tech personnel are knowledgable on the new system...not that a nameserver, even a root one, should be overtly complicated (except for evading DOS attacks)