When I was a cub-scout, the best "drivers" quickly figured out to use graphite lubricant instead of oil such as WD-40. Spread it all around the axels and insides of the wheels. Also, be sure to sand off any of the plastic burs from when the wheels were manufactured.
When it's all lubricated and assembled, try spinning the wheels with your hand. I remember we'd all have competitions: spin all four wheels at once as fast as you could, and time whose wheels would spin the longest.
If I were a spammer, I'd already be trying to make my messages look exactly like normal emails. If I see a message that I absolutely can't distinguish as spam through the Subject and From headers (and that makes it past any filters I have in place), I have to open it before trashing it, or else I risk losing an important message.
After opening the message and realizing that it's spam, sure, it's going to piss me off. But I wasn't about to buy anything from a spammer anyway. Spamming is not about making a billboard or a TV commercial; the goal is not necessarily to catch your eye. The goal is to trick the user into (a) opening the message, (b) following any links therein, and (c) (unrelated to the message itself) believing that whatever is being sold is not a scam and is a good deal.
If the spam looks like a billboard, then the number of people that you can possibly trick past step (a) is very few, since most people will immediately trash it. If it makes it past filters and tricks me into opening it, then the spammer is one step closer to achieving a sale. After all, a TV commercial isn't much good if I turn off my TV when it comes on.
If some ingenious spammer can trick me into following any links in the message, then he is one more step closer, and all that is left is to make me think I've found a good deal.
And, if the spammer succeeded in (a) and (b), then quite possibly I truly believed that the spam came from a friend or other trustworthy person. If a friend recommends something to me, then the little voice in my head that warns me about bad deals has already been muffled. Let the mulah roll in!
I agree with the poster of the article in question, in that eventually, all filters will be useless. That's why I'm already looking into (a) whitelist software, and (b) some kind of web-of-trust. The battle against spam can yet be won, but filters are only small arms in the long-term war. We have yet to develop a reliable A-bomb.
Did you pull that out of your ass? They are not cracking any "copyright protection" schemes, in that they are not cracking anything in order to copy the software. How does this fall under the DMCA? Yes, I have read the actual text of the law.
I don't see what the fact that water expands when frozen has to do with the question. What if the snowflake were made out of some compound that neither expanded nor contracted when melted? Would that change the answer? I don't think it should.
Thanks for the great answer. In response, I really do feel sorry for the teachers of such a class. Unfortunately, I don't think the situation is very unusual. Even my own roommate often comes home saying she "hates" some teacher and wants to complain to the teacher or even a higher authority, mostly because of problems that were her fault to begin with. For example, she misread the instructions on a test, but was peeved because the teacher wouldn't give her partial credit for her "correct" answer. She wanted my support in appealing to whomever would listen to the appeal and get the teacher in trouble, but I would not give it.
Was the class advertised as post-secondary level (and did the "slacker" students just sign up for something that was over their heads), or were the teacher's expectations beyond the level of the class? If the former, then that must have been dissapointing for the teacher and the students who were actually capable of the higher level work, but, on some level, I want to say that if the class really was too hard for the majority of the students then the curve probably really did need adjusting.
I interpreted "similar CPUs" as different speeds of the same model, such as a 1400MHz Athlon vs. a 1600MHz Athlon, in which case it pretty much is that simple, barring major differences in mainboard or memory. But that should be obvious, so your point still remains: comparing G4 vs. Pentium, or even Athon vs. Pentium, with MHz alone means dick.
I don't want to bash you or your comment, but about your signature -- do I take it that you're an employee at Apple but don't own a Mac, or is that just advertising? Just wondering.
Guess what? Of those that I've been able to download enough to preview, they were fakes!
First clue: according to IMDB, LOTR-TTT is 179 minutes long (2:59). None of the movies listed on FileDonkey are that long. Most are only 10 minutes (obviously fake), and the rest are 2:47, which means that either something is missing (in which case I don't want to download it anyway), or, more likely, they are all fakes too.
You're obviously an idiot. Is it a 50% chance, or is it 0.00000001%? Where did you come up with those numbers?
Statistics is perfectly non-bullshit in this case, because pi is random, and there is an infinite amount random data to search. Okay, you're right that pi is not just a "random number". But the digits themselves are statistically random, and somewhere, the entire works of Shakespere is embedded inside.
How in the hell do you arive at "50% chance" for finding a 10 digit number? Okay, let's do it this way: what are the chances of finding the number "1"? Pretty damn high (hint: it's the first digit). Okay, how about the number "12"? "123"? What makes "1234567890" so special? Now, consider what happens because of the fact that the digits of pi extend infinitely: the chances of anything happening approach 100%, because the chances of something not happening are size(string)/size(pi), which approaches 0 as the size of pi approaches infinity.
Now if you can prove that I'm wrong by proving that the digits of pi follow some non-random pattern, then go get yourself a doctorate.
I don't know if it counts as "buggy" since it is a problem with the files themselves, but Xine seems to do a much better job of recovering while playing slightly corrupted files. MPlayer (even the latest versions) loses audio sync at the slightest corruption, and even using the manual sync adjustments won't fix it (it just goes more off). Also, I have a rip of Lord of the Rings for which MPlayer actually reverses left and right audio channels!
I have complaints about Xine's UI (I complain that there is one at all and it is basically required, whereas MPlayer has better support for keybindings). I also complain that Xine has terrible granularity for fast-forwarding and rewinding (one minute vs. 5 seconds for MPlayer). Maybe this is all configurable -- I don't know.
But after all this, for playing any movies or crappy corrupted downloaded rips, I use Xine.
For short clips and anything else, MPlayer is probably better, as well as being the better package.
Harming people does not benefit society, Darwin or not. What makes you think that the people who are being harmed by this are going to learn anything? I've learned to recognize misleading ads on my own, even though to my knowledge I've never been tricked by one. Anyone who can't recognize one of these ads already isn't going to "benefit society" by learning anything new.
Even if they do learn something, the harm has already been done because they've already been harmed. Besides, new suckers are born every minute, and there will always be a fresh supply of people who haven't yet learned their lesson.
On the other hand, the type of people who fall for scams (Nigerian money anyone?) probably harm society anyway. On some level, I want to let them harm themselves just so the rest of us can spend less money by living off the advertising dollars of the stupid. On the other other hand, it's still wrong.
Who cares about hydrogen? Why not base everything off of the most basic unit possible: the planck length, time, and mass, and consequently the planck energy and every other unit. Just find some arbitrary number by which to multiply the units to some practical range (something base-10 is obvious, but maybe there is some more mathematically profound multiple, like pi, which would be more useful), and you have an entire system of measurement.
No no no! No user-space program should ever be allowed to cause a panic. If the kernel has to check that those invariants are met, then that is the cost of stability (and, even more importantly, security).
From: 023jsdf@spam.com Subject: I love you!
Hello, please open this program on your Mac for good times!
Just to get my 2 cents in, I thought the first few seasons of the X-Files were based much more strongly on paranormal plots. The last few seasons focused more on the alien conspiracy. Or maybe that was your point?
I'd say it's more likely that he's a regular than not, because he's probably seen (as I have) a rash of recent self-replies that get modded down as flaimbait. If I want to insult myself for a stupid mistake, then it's not flaimbait or trolling:)
probably the most powerful single human in the whole world... You're some shlub posting on/. when you should be working
Out of all the people who the republicans could have chosen to run in 2000, they would not have picked me, or you, or any other slashdot bunny rabbit. But why'd they have to pick Bush? A man like that does not deserve to control 280 million and influence 6 billion. Although I'm a democrat, I'll take any other republican over him.
I'm not saying this (entirely) because of his intelligence. I'm saying it because he seems to have a death wish for the entire world.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was a cub-scout, the best "drivers" quickly figured out to use graphite lubricant instead of oil such as WD-40. Spread it all around the axels and insides of the wheels. Also, be sure to sand off any of the plastic burs from when the wheels were manufactured.
When it's all lubricated and assembled, try spinning the wheels with your hand. I remember we'd all have competitions: spin all four wheels at once as fast as you could, and time whose wheels would spin the longest.
If I were a spammer, I'd already be trying to make my messages look exactly like normal emails. If I see a message that I absolutely can't distinguish as spam through the Subject and From headers (and that makes it past any filters I have in place), I have to open it before trashing it, or else I risk losing an important message.
After opening the message and realizing that it's spam, sure, it's going to piss me off. But I wasn't about to buy anything from a spammer anyway. Spamming is not about making a billboard or a TV commercial; the goal is not necessarily to catch your eye. The goal is to trick the user into (a) opening the message, (b) following any links therein, and (c) (unrelated to the message itself) believing that whatever is being sold is not a scam and is a good deal.
If the spam looks like a billboard, then the number of people that you can possibly trick past step (a) is very few, since most people will immediately trash it. If it makes it past filters and tricks me into opening it, then the spammer is one step closer to achieving a sale. After all, a TV commercial isn't much good if I turn off my TV when it comes on.
If some ingenious spammer can trick me into following any links in the message, then he is one more step closer, and all that is left is to make me think I've found a good deal.
And, if the spammer succeeded in (a) and (b), then quite possibly I truly believed that the spam came from a friend or other trustworthy person. If a friend recommends something to me, then the little voice in my head that warns me about bad deals has already been muffled. Let the mulah roll in!
I agree with the poster of the article in question, in that eventually, all filters will be useless. That's why I'm already looking into (a) whitelist software, and (b) some kind of web-of-trust. The battle against spam can yet be won, but filters are only small arms in the long-term war. We have yet to develop a reliable A-bomb.
Did you pull that out of your ass? They are not cracking any "copyright protection" schemes, in that they are not cracking anything in order to copy the software. How does this fall under the DMCA? Yes, I have read the actual text of the law.
I don't see what the fact that water expands when frozen has to do with the question. What if the snowflake were made out of some compound that neither expanded nor contracted when melted? Would that change the answer? I don't think it should.
Thanks for the great answer. In response, I really do feel sorry for the teachers of such a class. Unfortunately, I don't think the situation is very unusual. Even my own roommate often comes home saying she "hates" some teacher and wants to complain to the teacher or even a higher authority, mostly because of problems that were her fault to begin with. For example, she misread the instructions on a test, but was peeved because the teacher wouldn't give her partial credit for her "correct" answer. She wanted my support in appealing to whomever would listen to the appeal and get the teacher in trouble, but I would not give it.
Bleh.
Was the class advertised as post-secondary level (and did the "slacker" students just sign up for something that was over their heads), or were the teacher's expectations beyond the level of the class? If the former, then that must have been dissapointing for the teacher and the students who were actually capable of the higher level work, but, on some level, I want to say that if the class really was too hard for the majority of the students then the curve probably really did need adjusting.
I interpreted "similar CPUs" as different speeds of the same model, such as a 1400MHz Athlon vs. a 1600MHz Athlon, in which case it pretty much is that simple, barring major differences in mainboard or memory. But that should be obvious, so your point still remains: comparing G4 vs. Pentium, or even Athon vs. Pentium, with MHz alone means dick.
I don't want to bash you or your comment, but about your signature -- do I take it that you're an employee at Apple but don't own a Mac, or is that just advertising? Just wondering.
Not that I've ever seen such a device, but I'd be rather surprised if some government agencies did not have something like that.
Of course should know that it's possible on your home computer and only takes a few seconds to do, because I saw the Lone Gunmen do it last year!
Yay. You just repeated what HiThere already said.
...that it'd be hard to "expect" something to be out by March 2002.
Guess what? Of those that I've been able to download enough to preview, they were fakes!
First clue: according to IMDB, LOTR-TTT is 179 minutes long (2:59). None of the movies listed on FileDonkey are that long. Most are only 10 minutes (obviously fake), and the rest are 2:47, which means that either something is missing (in which case I don't want to download it anyway), or, more likely, they are all fakes too.
You're obviously an idiot. Is it a 50% chance, or is it 0.00000001%? Where did you come up with those numbers?
Statistics is perfectly non-bullshit in this case, because pi is random, and there is an infinite amount random data to search. Okay, you're right that pi is not just a "random number". But the digits themselves are statistically random, and somewhere, the entire works of Shakespere is embedded inside.
How in the hell do you arive at "50% chance" for finding a 10 digit number? Okay, let's do it this way: what are the chances of finding the number "1"? Pretty damn high (hint: it's the first digit). Okay, how about the number "12"? "123"? What makes "1234567890" so special? Now, consider what happens because of the fact that the digits of pi extend infinitely: the chances of anything happening approach 100%, because the chances of something not happening are size(string)/size(pi), which approaches 0 as the size of pi approaches infinity.
Now if you can prove that I'm wrong by proving that the digits of pi follow some non-random pattern, then go get yourself a doctorate.
60 decimal places of what unit? Meters? If so, that's fine. But if your unit is meters*10E82, then 60 decimal places is not all that much.
Define 'buggy'.
I don't know if it counts as "buggy" since it is a problem with the files themselves, but Xine seems to do a much better job of recovering while playing slightly corrupted files. MPlayer (even the latest versions) loses audio sync at the slightest corruption, and even using the manual sync adjustments won't fix it (it just goes more off). Also, I have a rip of Lord of the Rings for which MPlayer actually reverses left and right audio channels!
I have complaints about Xine's UI (I complain that there is one at all and it is basically required, whereas MPlayer has better support for keybindings). I also complain that Xine has terrible granularity for fast-forwarding and rewinding (one minute vs. 5 seconds for MPlayer). Maybe this is all configurable -- I don't know.
But after all this, for playing any movies or crappy corrupted downloaded rips, I use Xine.
For short clips and anything else, MPlayer is probably better, as well as being the better package.
Kid: Mommie mommie! Can I pleeeeeease get XXX that I saw on YYY.kids.us for Christmas?
Parents: Well all right...
You've never met anyone named "Rusty"? It has to be short for something...
Harming people does not benefit society, Darwin or not. What makes you think that the people who are being harmed by this are going to learn anything? I've learned to recognize misleading ads on my own, even though to my knowledge I've never been tricked by one. Anyone who can't recognize one of these ads already isn't going to "benefit society" by learning anything new.
Even if they do learn something, the harm has already been done because they've already been harmed. Besides, new suckers are born every minute, and there will always be a fresh supply of people who haven't yet learned their lesson.
On the other hand, the type of people who fall for scams (Nigerian money anyone?) probably harm society anyway. On some level, I want to let them harm themselves just so the rest of us can spend less money by living off the advertising dollars of the stupid. On the other other hand, it's still wrong.
You just gave my new (email) signature! Do I attribute the quote to Wolfrider, or is there some other source?
Who cares about hydrogen? Why not base everything off of the most basic unit possible: the planck length, time, and mass, and consequently the planck energy and every other unit. Just find some arbitrary number by which to multiply the units to some practical range (something base-10 is obvious, but maybe there is some more mathematically profound multiple, like pi, which would be more useful), and you have an entire system of measurement.
No no no! No user-space program should ever be allowed to cause a panic. If the kernel has to check that those invariants are met, then that is the cost of stability (and, even more importantly, security).
From: 023jsdf@spam.com
Subject: I love you!
Hello, please open this program on your Mac for good times!
Attachment: dir-move-bug.app
If you worked on ships or have been around ships your whole life, then you'd think it was funny. Don't tell me you've never laughed at a geek joke.
Just to get my 2 cents in, I thought the first few seasons of the X-Files were based much more strongly on paranormal plots. The last few seasons focused more on the alien conspiracy. Or maybe that was your point?
I'd say it's more likely that he's a regular than not, because he's probably seen (as I have) a rash of recent self-replies that get modded down as flaimbait. If I want to insult myself for a stupid mistake, then it's not flaimbait or trolling :)
probably the most powerful single human in the whole world... You're some shlub posting on /. when you should be working
Out of all the people who the republicans could have chosen to run in 2000, they would not have picked me, or you, or any other slashdot bunny rabbit. But why'd they have to pick Bush? A man like that does not deserve to control 280 million and influence 6 billion. Although I'm a democrat, I'll take any other republican over him.
I'm not saying this (entirely) because of his intelligence. I'm saying it because he seems to have a death wish for the entire world.