That's just awesome! I have seen the show a huge number of times but never with Baba Yetu as the accompanying track. I do remember that the Sharjah fountain at one point had Final Fantasy X's Suteki Da Ne as it's music. Wonder how the fountains here are so enchanted with video game music..
Makes sense. Kinda explains why the ever-so-popular thepiratebay.org wasn't blocked:
Domain ID:D104576138-LROR Domain Name:THEPIRATEBAY.ORG Created On:28-Jun-2004 16:08:27 UTC Last Updated On:07-May-2010 07:22:02 UTC Expiration Date:28-Jun-2015 16:08:27 UTC Sponsoring Registrar:Key-Systems GmbH (R51-LROR) Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED Name Server:NS0.THEPIRATEBAY.ORG Name Server:NS1.THEPIRATEBAY.ORG Name Server:NS2.THEPIRATEBAY.ORG Name Server:NS3.THEPIRATEBAY.ORG DNSSEC:Unsigned
Looks like Godaddy was coerced by someone powerful to do this. I doubt that such influence could be had over a foreign registrar. Otherwise I'm sure TPB would be the first to go since it's a proven MPAA favorite. Okay wait.. nevermind that. Just checked another domain and the registrar is chinese.
Isn't this what the article summary gets at ? I couldn't find anywhere in the conclusion how the P4 actually compares to present day processors. I'm not about to read through 17 pages of all of that just to open my eyes.
It's quite reliable for my choices. I just need everything to boil down to a number these days. Too much choice out there. Was simpler when you could just look at Ghz and know which is better. Now a P7700 and T8600 (examples I just made up..) could be at the same clock speed, be called Core 2 Duo and have totally different performance numbers. Confusing!
The problem in India is not of religion but the deadly cocktail that religion and politics create. I do support free speech and honestly think it's wrong [and a tad bit retarded] for the government to ask Google to shut down an Orkut group because of hate speech. The problem with riots in India is often due to politically motivated goals. A politician can polarise the public one way or another and thus sway the polls in his favour. This is the thing that pisses me off the most over here. People here are really intelligent, educated, compassionate, considerate, but if you drop the R-Bomb on them, they'll start acting like crazy lunatics the next second.
Censorship has always existed in India in a big way. You know, Fahrenheit 9/11 released here much later than in the rest of the world. But that's just the tip of the ice berg. The law and order situation prevents folks from using "free-speech" as a defence. If you DO say something against someone powerful and influential and said person finds out [and is affected], he'll surely send his goons to even the score. Sure, you won't get imprisoned for 'free-speech' but you might get worse.
This is certainly not the "END" of free-speech. And no, India is nothing like China at this point of time. Hell, I went to China and the folks there on the streets didn't know that something big had happened in Tienanmen Square. Now THAT IS CENSORSHIP!
Indians in general don't value free speech. We're a culture of followers [follow religion, follow elders, follow leaders, follow everyone] and any deviant (free-speech dude, atheist, etc. etc...) will probably get shut down. In all practicality, you can criticise religion, politics, people, the prime minister, policies and even the pope. Just be careful of who you do it in front of. You can be atheist but don't try and explain it to someone who is religious because you'll explain your beliefs much better than them and just end up confused as to why the other person still follows whatever they do. But that's probably just the same anywhere in the world. "A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything" - Nietzsche
And so what if they shut down an orkut group ? You think people can't express themselves any other place on the internet ? Basically, the Indian government just likes to exercise it's power where it can. Those are very few places.
Oh but as far as western hypocrisy is concerned. Come on guys, don't tell me about free-speech in your countries. Sure, I know that the new 'politically correct' USA has many issues with using certain words, phrases, etc. But look at how Switzerland banned the construction of Minarets as they are a symbol of Islam inspite of having a decent Muslim population. Things aren't as rosy in the west as they're made out to be. France banned the wearing of headgear for muslim women. That's religious expression. What about those dudes in the US who were "investigated" by the FBI for posting some random stuff online post 9/11 ?
Basically, everywhere sucks. Just relatively more or less. India is pretty free by most standards.
Sure, we have a problem in India. It's not as bad as China [not even comparable], and it'll never be, as long as we are allowed the free speech to admit to it. I hope though that the censorship folks realise that this is an exercise in futility. They never achieve any real censorship in India anyway. All our networks (Radio, tv, news, internet, word of mouth..) are way too out of control anyhow.
Besides, just chalk this one up to the Indian government being retarded as usual. Just add it to the list that already has the shutting down of public Wi-Fi after the Mumbai attacks [no coffee shop Wi-Fi anymore:(], requiring 10 verification documents to get a mobile sim, requiring to fill up a piece of paper everytime when entering the country and giving it with your passport and don't even get me started on the swine-flu line at the airports, plus all the other bizarre things that they think actually achieve something. These aren't leaders, these are politicians pretending to lead.
What's weird is that I can still access these sites. Blogger.com works albeit slowly. Mumbaihelp fails to load, upon checking (using a proxy) though it seems that it's a problem with the site, not my ISP. For the record I'm using MTNL Broadband, which is clearly mentioned in the article as one of the blocking parties.
Though if they are resorting to censoring the internet, well, that makes my blood boil a fair extent. Something would need to be done. Seriously, putting aside all the Goatse's (which our Slashdot brethren love..) and the other bad stuff on the net, I love the net for it's inherent freedom. Can't have them censoring it now, can we ?
Well, ironically the example you gave of the mouse has actually been done. It was on Slashdot a few months ago where this guy rewired his mouse to act as a scanner/digital camera. Pretty cool IMO : ). You could atleast take low-res images. And if it's actually seeing megapixel, that's pretty good.
At the moment, honestly, we have FAR TOO MANY people here for the government, or even the corporations to keep track of who's who. Infact, even our census isn't accurate, that's why we always say we have approximately 1 billion people, no idea how many there really are though;).
Hmm.. I do think that this is getting a bit out of hand now. I'm glad that some of "them" do resist the calls for information, but for how long ? After all, most resources are controlled by the government and they're capable of putting an enormous amount of pressure on said corporations.
I don't quite understand the US governments crusade against online porn and for child protection. Is it just a ploy to gain votes ? It's however scary to see such a breach of privacy, even if on a small scale. IMO, this could grow into things much bigger.
I work with online advertising (read that I have a couple of websites..), and I want to share something with my fellow slashdotters. Many of you must have heard of/seen Google Adsense. Well, MS's response to that, MSN Adcenter launched in Beta a few months ago and I've been working with that. One look inside that interface and it is shocking to see the kind of targetting they're capable of. If they can target so well, they obviously have an ENORMOUS amount of information on folks on the internet. Just an example of their penetration, you can choose to target to "Unmarried Men in the age group of 30-35 in the state of New York with incomes in the rage of $100,000". (We all know what those ads are;)) I saw this and was like "WHAT ?! How the hell are they supposed to have so much information on a person who's just opened a website to see some stuff.."
Well, my point is that all this information that lies with MSN, Google, etc. CAN be accessed by the government, and as an individual worried about my privacy, this is alarming.
I think it's time we all scroogled. (and no, this is not a promotional post:))
Wow, am I the ONLY one here who can't make head or tail of what the text in that post says ? It's really confusing. Who did what to who and what happened then and where to who after what was done ? Mind clearing things up a bit ?
Mobile sounds well and good, but..
on
PayPal Goes Mobile
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Well, Paypal on the go sounds pretty good, it's an alternative to putting your credit card number in over a mobile network, and sounds much safer. However, how many people here feel that this would open up an entire audience of really susceptible users to phishing scams ?
Wouldn't it be harder to spot a phishing scam over a mobile device considering that the display on a mobile is pretty limited in screen real estate ? On good ol' 'puters you can just move your mouse over the hyperlink and make out that it's a scam.
Actually, I totally agree with the parent post. In summers I have the air conditioner running so that noise kind of drowns out my PC. But in winters I can't sleep at night if it's awfully quiet, I have to keep the PC running and have got to have that hard drive light flickering to sleep. Call me crazy but I've been sleeping with the PC on for over 10 years now, it's impossible to sleep without it. I can't stand absolute silence if I need to sleep : (.
I find that it is indeed revolutionary, same as the DS is. In a way, they've taken the DS model (where we slash on the touch screen) into your living room by making it an actual slash. Kudos on that achievment. The technology itself is what I find very revolutionary. Now it's still going to be a while until we see the apps that are developed for this new technology however it does sound very promising. I mean to point and shoot in an FPS, say UT2104 and getting a headshot or shooting with a sniper rifle while actually doing it sounds... awesome! I mean, in a way, instead of going for graphical realism, they went for... actual realism! In your face Sony and Microsoft!
I infact forgot to mention I do come in that teenager category =P. Also, I'd like to add that I myself felt when I got my first PC (back in '96) that software was prohibitively expensive. I didn't have the money to buy original software, and I didn't know of linux or any free alternatives at that time... so I used a pirated copy of Windows 95.
Honestly though, after using Windows 95 a few years, I could've easily told someone that I would never pay for that OS even if I had the money. Don't put out a piece of software that crashes every 10 minutes and charge crazy prices for it.
Bah, I hate monopolies. Mandrake, I love you..
I do pay for all the software I can afford and I actually use and reuse, for example, Windows XP, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Opera (I used this for a few years..)...and a few others.
But 3D Studio Max, now could I ever buy that ? Or Maya for that matter, no. Yet I still wanted to see what they were like.. catching my drift ?;)
When these corporations purport that they're losing $2 billion every year because of Piracy is it because that is the value of the total software that is being pirated and distributed (counting each copy as unique..) ? Because if they are, then they're pretty wrong in their estimates and are just blowing figures out of their arse. (Uk related pun;))
It isn't necessary that every piece of pirated software would have been sold legit if there existed no piracy. There is no proof that people who download/buy pirated software would buy the originals if there were no pirated versions available...
I for one, certainly wouldn't. If I were making commercial profit from a certain software, I would definitely buy it. For example, I own a legitimate copy of vBulletin (even though I could have used the free phpBB). And my website isn't exactly 'all that legit'.
However, if I need to pay for MS Windows, and there are no pirated versions available, then I would rather use linux. And I'm sure most 'teenagers' (RTFA) would do the same, to cut costs.
In a way, come to think of it.. anti piracy is good for linux ^_^.
Well, traditional over the air radio was bound to lose out with the digital revolution. Just take a look at shoutcast or any other popular online radio index and the number of choices is infinitely greater than over the air.
So, how about it ?:)
And since I haven't said it yet, condolences to the bereaved families.. I hope the Indian Space Program gets beyond these obstacles.. seeing as I am Indian myself, I'm sure as well, this country is one with a lot of vision, just not enough funds for everything... yet...
Not to be harsh, mean or in a way breaking your bubble. But India mourned the Columbia as much, or more than you morons there. Get your facts right before opening your trap.
Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian born woman in space was aboard the Columbia. She was as much a national hero to us as were your own astronauts and her loss was a great loss to our country.
Sorry if I'm coming off really annoyed here, but it's offensive (atleast to me...) when people measure the value of life by the glamour/glory involved with an incident, and especially when they don't have a clear perspective on the incident because of misinformation... =/
I think women into gaming would be great, hey most of them are quite slow when it comes to games and stuff (no offence to all the uber fast women out there..) but it'd be a lot of fun to take the battle of the sexes to a brand new arena.:D
Slashdot Mirror
That's just awesome! I have seen the show a huge number of times but never with Baba Yetu as the accompanying track. I do remember that the Sharjah fountain at one point had Final Fantasy X's Suteki Da Ne as it's music. Wonder how the fountains here are so enchanted with video game music..
Looks like the registrar is Godaddy. Here's a WHOIS on the domain name:
Domain Name: TORRENT-FINDER.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com/
Name Server: NS1.SEIZEDSERVERS.COM
Name Server: NS2.SEIZEDSERVERS.COM
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientRenewProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: serverDeleteProhibited
Status: serverTransferProhibited
Status: serverUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 24-nov-2010
Creation Date: 30-dec-2005
Expiration Date: 30-dec-2011
Makes sense. Kinda explains why the ever-so-popular thepiratebay.org wasn't blocked:
Domain ID:D104576138-LROR
Domain Name:THEPIRATEBAY.ORG
Created On:28-Jun-2004 16:08:27 UTC
Last Updated On:07-May-2010 07:22:02 UTC
Expiration Date:28-Jun-2015 16:08:27 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Key-Systems GmbH (R51-LROR)
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Name Server:NS0.THEPIRATEBAY.ORG
Name Server:NS1.THEPIRATEBAY.ORG
Name Server:NS2.THEPIRATEBAY.ORG
Name Server:NS3.THEPIRATEBAY.ORG
DNSSEC:Unsigned
Looks like Godaddy was coerced by someone powerful to do this. I doubt that such influence could be had over a foreign registrar. Otherwise I'm sure TPB would be the first to go since it's a proven MPAA favorite. Okay wait.. nevermind that. Just checked another domain and the registrar is chinese.
Domain Name: MASSNIKE.COM
Registrar: BEIJING INNOVATIVE LINKAGE TECHNOLOGY LTD. DBA DNS.COM.CN
Whois Server: whois.dns.com.cn
Referral URL: http://www.dns.com.cn/
Name Server: NS1.SEIZEDSERVERS.COM
Name Server: NS2.SEIZEDSERVERS.COM
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: serverDeleteProhibited
Status: serverTransferProhibited
Status: serverUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 24-nov-2010
Creation Date: 23-sep-2006
Expiration Date: 23-sep-2014
Well then I guess they can change stuff for everyone. But even then, it's just .coms. Maybe that's of significance.
That's because the stores are physically present within the police's jurisdiction.
The police don't have the right to close down a store front in some other country.. =/
Isn't this what the article summary gets at ? I couldn't find anywhere in the conclusion how the P4 actually compares to present day processors.
I'm not about to read through 17 pages of all of that just to open my eyes.
Oh, and for CPU comparisons, I usually use:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
It's quite reliable for my choices. I just need everything to boil down to a number these days. Too much choice out there. Was simpler when you could just look at Ghz and know which is better. Now a P7700 and T8600 (examples I just made up..) could be at the same clock speed, be called Core 2 Duo and have totally different performance numbers. Confusing!
The problem in India is not of religion but the deadly cocktail that religion and politics create. I do support free speech and honestly think it's wrong [and a tad bit retarded] for the government to ask Google to shut down an Orkut group because of hate speech. The problem with riots in India is often due to politically motivated goals. A politician can polarise the public one way or another and thus sway the polls in his favour. This is the thing that pisses me off the most over here. People here are really intelligent, educated, compassionate, considerate, but if you drop the R-Bomb on them, they'll start acting like crazy lunatics the next second.
Censorship has always existed in India in a big way. You know, Fahrenheit 9/11 released here much later than in the rest of the world. But that's just the tip of the ice berg. The law and order situation prevents folks from using "free-speech" as a defence. If you DO say something against someone powerful and influential and said person finds out [and is affected], he'll surely send his goons to even the score. Sure, you won't get imprisoned for 'free-speech' but you might get worse.
This is certainly not the "END" of free-speech. And no, India is nothing like China at this point of time. Hell, I went to China and the folks there on the streets didn't know that something big had happened in Tienanmen Square. Now THAT IS CENSORSHIP!
Indians in general don't value free speech. We're a culture of followers [follow religion, follow elders, follow leaders, follow everyone] and any deviant (free-speech dude, atheist, etc. etc...) will probably get shut down. In all practicality, you can criticise religion, politics, people, the prime minister, policies and even the pope. Just be careful of who you do it in front of. You can be atheist but don't try and explain it to someone who is religious because you'll explain your beliefs much better than them and just end up confused as to why the other person still follows whatever they do. But that's probably just the same anywhere in the world. "A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything" - Nietzsche
And so what if they shut down an orkut group ? You think people can't express themselves any other place on the internet ? Basically, the Indian government just likes to exercise it's power where it can. Those are very few places.
Oh but as far as western hypocrisy is concerned. Come on guys, don't tell me about free-speech in your countries. Sure, I know that the new 'politically correct' USA has many issues with using certain words, phrases, etc. But look at how Switzerland banned the construction of Minarets as they are a symbol of Islam inspite of having a decent Muslim population. Things aren't as rosy in the west as they're made out to be. France banned the wearing of headgear for muslim women. That's religious expression. What about those dudes in the US who were "investigated" by the FBI for posting some random stuff online post 9/11 ?
Basically, everywhere sucks. Just relatively more or less. India is pretty free by most standards.
Sure, we have a problem in India. It's not as bad as China [not even comparable], and it'll never be, as long as we are allowed the free speech to admit to it. I hope though that the censorship folks realise that this is an exercise in futility. They never achieve any real censorship in India anyway. All our networks (Radio, tv, news, internet, word of mouth..) are way too out of control anyhow.
Besides, just chalk this one up to the Indian government being retarded as usual. Just add it to the list that already has the shutting down of public Wi-Fi after the Mumbai attacks [no coffee shop Wi-Fi anymore :(], requiring 10 verification documents to get a mobile sim, requiring to fill up a piece of paper everytime when entering the country and giving it with your passport and don't even get me started on the swine-flu line at the airports, plus all the other bizarre things that they think actually achieve something. These aren't leaders, these are politicians pretending to lead.
What's weird is that I can still access these sites. Blogger.com works albeit slowly. Mumbaihelp fails to load, upon checking (using a proxy) though it seems that it's a problem with the site, not my ISP. For the record I'm using MTNL Broadband, which is clearly mentioned in the article as one of the blocking parties.
Though if they are resorting to censoring the internet, well, that makes my blood boil a fair extent. Something would need to be done. Seriously, putting aside all the Goatse's (which our Slashdot brethren love..) and the other bad stuff on the net, I love the net for it's inherent freedom. Can't have them censoring it now, can we ?
Well, ironically the example you gave of the mouse has actually been done. It was on Slashdot a few months ago where this guy rewired his mouse to act as a scanner/digital camera. Pretty cool IMO : ). You could atleast take low-res images. And if it's actually seeing megapixel, that's pretty good.
This is the slashdot story: Turn an Optical Mouse into a ScannerIndia. Good luck with the bitchslapping =P.
;).
At the moment, honestly, we have FAR TOO MANY people here for the government, or even the corporations to keep track of who's who. Infact, even our census isn't accurate, that's why we always say we have approximately 1 billion people, no idea how many there really are though
Hmm.. I do think that this is getting a bit out of hand now. I'm glad that some of "them" do resist the calls for information, but for how long ? After all, most resources are controlled by the government and they're capable of putting an enormous amount of pressure on said corporations.
I don't quite understand the US governments crusade against online porn and for child protection. Is it just a ploy to gain votes ? It's however scary to see such a breach of privacy, even if on a small scale. IMO, this could grow into things much bigger.
I work with online advertising (read that I have a couple of websites..), and I want to share something with my fellow slashdotters. Many of you must have heard of/seen Google Adsense. Well, MS's response to that, MSN Adcenter launched in Beta a few months ago and I've been working with that. One look inside that interface and it is shocking to see the kind of targetting they're capable of. If they can target so well, they obviously have an ENORMOUS amount of information on folks on the internet. Just an example of their penetration, you can choose to target to "Unmarried Men in the age group of 30-35 in the state of New York with incomes in the rage of $100,000". (We all know what those ads are ;)) I saw this and was like "WHAT ?! How the hell are they supposed to have so much information on a person who's just opened a website to see some stuff.."
Well, my point is that all this information that lies with MSN, Google, etc. CAN be accessed by the government, and as an individual worried about my privacy, this is alarming.
I think it's time we all scroogled. (and no, this is not a promotional post :))
Wow, am I the ONLY one here who can't make head or tail of what the text in that post says ? It's really confusing. Who did what to who and what happened then and where to who after what was done ? Mind clearing things up a bit ?
Well, Paypal on the go sounds pretty good, it's an alternative to putting your credit card number in over a mobile network, and sounds much safer. However, how many people here feel that this would open up an entire audience of really susceptible users to phishing scams ?
Wouldn't it be harder to spot a phishing scam over a mobile device considering that the display on a mobile is pretty limited in screen real estate ? On good ol' 'puters you can just move your mouse over the hyperlink and make out that it's a scam.
Google Vs. Microsoft on Google's own turf. Oh the shame!.
Nothing to see here. Just parents trying to share some porn and making the producers pay BIG BUCKS for it!
Actually, I totally agree with the parent post. In summers I have the air conditioner running so that noise kind of drowns out my PC. But in winters I can't sleep at night if it's awfully quiet, I have to keep the PC running and have got to have that hard drive light flickering to sleep. Call me crazy but I've been sleeping with the PC on for over 10 years now, it's impossible to sleep without it. I can't stand absolute silence if I need to sleep : (.
I find that it is indeed revolutionary, same as the DS is. In a way, they've taken the DS model (where we slash on the touch screen) into your living room by making it an actual slash. Kudos on that achievment. The technology itself is what I find very revolutionary. Now it's still going to be a while until we see the apps that are developed for this new technology however it does sound very promising. I mean to point and shoot in an FPS, say UT2104 and getting a headshot or shooting with a sniper rifle while actually doing it sounds ... awesome! I mean, in a way, instead of going for graphical realism, they went for ... actual realism! In your face Sony and Microsoft!
In Soviet Russia, Gnome releases you! and.. Does it run linux/doom3/etc.etc ? Wondering how come this stuff didn't get posted yet :P.
I infact forgot to mention I do come in that teenager category =P. Also, I'd like to add that I myself felt when I got my first PC (back in '96) that software was prohibitively expensive. I didn't have the money to buy original software, and I didn't know of linux or any free alternatives at that time... so I used a pirated copy of Windows 95. Honestly though, after using Windows 95 a few years, I could've easily told someone that I would never pay for that OS even if I had the money. Don't put out a piece of software that crashes every 10 minutes and charge crazy prices for it. Bah, I hate monopolies. Mandrake, I love you.. I do pay for all the software I can afford and I actually use and reuse, for example, Windows XP, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Opera (I used this for a few years..)...and a few others. But 3D Studio Max, now could I ever buy that ? Or Maya for that matter, no. Yet I still wanted to see what they were like .. catching my drift ? ;)
When these corporations purport that they're losing $2 billion every year because of Piracy is it because that is the value of the total software that is being pirated and distributed (counting each copy as unique..) ? Because if they are, then they're pretty wrong in their estimates and are just blowing figures out of their arse. (Uk related pun ;))
It isn't necessary that every piece of pirated software would have been sold legit if there existed no piracy. There is no proof that people who download/buy pirated software would buy the originals if there were no pirated versions available...
I for one, certainly wouldn't. If I were making commercial profit from a certain software, I would definitely buy it. For example, I own a legitimate copy of vBulletin (even though I could have used the free phpBB). And my website isn't exactly 'all that legit'.
However, if I need to pay for MS Windows, and there are no pirated versions available, then I would rather use linux. And I'm sure most 'teenagers' (RTFA) would do the same, to cut costs.
In a way, come to think of it.. anti piracy is good for linux ^_^.
Well, traditional over the air radio was bound to lose out with the digital revolution. Just take a look at shoutcast or any other popular online radio index and the number of choices is infinitely greater than over the air.
So, how about it ? :)
And since I haven't said it yet, condolences to the bereaved families.. I hope the Indian Space Program gets beyond these obstacles.. seeing as I am Indian myself, I'm sure as well, this country is one with a lot of vision, just not enough funds for everything ... yet ...
Not to be harsh, mean or in a way breaking your bubble. But India mourned the Columbia as much, or more than you morons there. Get your facts right before opening your trap. Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian born woman in space was aboard the Columbia. She was as much a national hero to us as were your own astronauts and her loss was a great loss to our country. Sorry if I'm coming off really annoyed here, but it's offensive (atleast to me...) when people measure the value of life by the glamour/glory involved with an incident, and especially when they don't have a clear perspective on the incident because of misinformation... =/
I think women into gaming would be great, hey most of them are quite slow when it comes to games and stuff (no offence to all the uber fast women out there..) but it'd be a lot of fun to take the battle of the sexes to a brand new arena. :D