I was actually surprised when I heard Serial Experiments Lain mentioned on Geeks in Space. Lain is a great anime, though I've heard that watching it is like being on an acid trip. ^_^
You too, eh? (We shall turn the editors into sho'nuff otaku yet!:)
I've not seen Serial Experiments Lain yet (friend of mine has it though)...I have a hard time believing it can be a worse mindfsck than End of Evangelion, though. (Basically, people whinged about the last two episodes...so the writer crafted something designed to be completely and utterly so much of a mindfsck that mind-altering substances are almost essential to keep one's head from hurting, much less understanding the plot.:)
But while we're getting a lot of overexposure from Dragonball Z, Sailor Moon and even (shudders) Gundam Wing on Cartoon Network, it seems that the average geek in North America is missing out on some better anime that Japan has to offer. For example, I'm not quite sure if everyone here has heard of Cowboy Bebop. A must see series for a Japanese Animation fan, especially those into action.
Heyyyy...I've heard of Cowboy Bebop, at least:) (Heard the soundtracks before seeing the actual anime, which (if memory serves) JUST officially came out in the States)
Agreed, damn good story. I STILL think that Vash the Stampede from Trigun would win, though, if just out of dumb luck:)
And if you're a hard core fan of Japanese Animation, you can't miss out on Nadesico, which is a pretty much a parody of EVERYTHING, including those cheezily animated 70's giant robot anime. Yet it has a plot to call its own. I think it was declared by some to be the "Best Anime Ever." I'd agree with this. Of course, if you are a real hard core fan, you've probably already seen this one.
*ROTFLMAO at mention of Nadesico*
Yes! Definitely one of the funnier anime I've ever seen (ranks right up there with Trigun and all the various Slayers series, IMHO)...one of the best pisstakes I've seen, hands down.:)
A few other picks I'd add:
Damn near everyone has already mentioned Rurouni Kenshin and Escaflowne and Evangelion.:) I'd REALLY recommend you get a hold of these if you can (Escaflowne and Eva should be no prob now, Kenshin's gonna be harder--most of it is only available in fansubs, most fansubbers aren't distributing it because Sony's officially announced it will be released stateside...though out west where you lucky bastards can watch anime on PBS instead of Red Dwarf can prolly catch it under the title of Samurai X (what the hell was Sony smoking when they came up with that title, anyways?)...) Same for Ah!Megumisama/"Oh! My Goddess" (you HAVE to admire any anime where the World Tree is Big Iron, there are programmer goddesses, one of the main characters is a CS major, and Fortran is mentioned:).
Slayers in any way, shape or form it comes.:) The first two series, Slayers and Slayers Next, have been officially released Stateside; supposedly Slayers Try is either planned to be shown or is being shown on Sci-Fi Channel. Pretty much imagine Lodoss War, or a D&D game, gone horribly, HORRIBLY wrong...:)
Lodoss War for that matter--rumour has it that this anime was based off a Japanese RPG that itself was based off AD&D:) (Maybe Slayers WAS based off a Lodoss War game gone horribly wrong...:) Good series though.
For that matter, if you like Slayers and Nadesico, try to get a copy of Lost Universe--basically, Slayers In Space:) (And done by the same crew what brought us Slayers, yet)
People have already mentioned Utena.:) I've not seen all of it yet but looks pretty good:)
Nazca is good if you're into swordplay...only thing that bothers me is the Incas with katanas (sometimes being into ancient American history can be a detriment...:) but VERY interesting series involving reincarination, etc.
Trigun, Vash The Freakin' Stampede. 'Nuff Said.:) (For those who have seen Kenshin: Imagine Sanosuke with blond hair, with the utter luck of Coyote.:)
One anime I'm really surprised hasn't been brought up yet is Princess Mononoke--especially since it's the first anime to receive a major US theatrical release. Gaiman's job at translating and the dub isn't bad at all; then again, I've seen both the official version and a fansub. (This is also one of the few dubs I've ever seen that doesn't make me wince.)
Bubblegum Crisis, if you've not seen it already. Stay the fucking HELL away from the dub; it sucks, sucks, SUCKS (it's possibly the best known way of inflicting torture on poor otaku other than repeatedly playing the Tenchi March:P).
El Hazard is a must-see--both the OVA and TV series. (The TV series is screamingly funny in parts.)
Probably Tenchi Muyo OVA; sub or dub is fine, even though Tenchi sounds amazingly like Kermit the Frog and Ryoko sounds amazingly like she's originally from Louisville, Kentucky:) The series does go downhill from there, so basically check to see if you like it first. Avoid "Tenchi Forever" like the goddamned plague.:)
Any Microsoft-hating geek owes it to himself to at least watch Magical Girl Pretty Sammy episode 2 ("Revenge of the Giant Electronic Brain" or something like that). Possibly the FUNNIEST pisstake I have EVER seen of Microsoft. Mac fans will appreciate it more, because Washu's computer looks VERY similar to an iBook (maybe Pioneer should sue Apple for gimmick infringement...:)
Card Captor Sakura, if you can get hold of a good fansub. (Supposedly will be officially released soon Stateside...not bad shoujo stuff, though, and I tend not to like shoujo.:)
People have already mentioned Vampire Hunter D and Vampire Princess Miyu. Go watch. Seriously.
If one is into more "adult" material, F-Cubed (especially "Night of the F-Cubed") and Ogenki Clinic are screamingly funny hentai.:)
People have already mentioned Macross Plus. Go watch. Seriously.
BGC 2040 should not be watched if one has previously seen any Bubblegum Crisis, as it's basically in an alternate universe and a failure to remember this may cause headaches and/or ranting. (Then again, Tenchi Muyo is even worse--no less than four or five SEPARATE universes with the same characters. Go fig.)
I really wish Sony would hurry the hell up and bring Rurouni Kenshin over Stateside to video so I don't have to watch fourth-generation Hecto Abysmal (HECTO is a fansub group; if you have a choice between HECTO and anyone else go with the other guys; for those of you who whinge on about Shinsen Gumi fansubs, HECTO makes Shinsen Gumi fansubs look like Masterpiece Theatre in comparison; it helps to have a working knowledge of Cantonese to understand HECTO subs--have I gotten it across that HECTO subs really ARE abysmal?:) fansubbed copies. Me want my Kenshin, damnit:)
I wish TV Tokyo would start an American version of Anime X (Anime X is a Japanese all-anime channel which TV Tokyo--the major broadcasters of anime in Japan--runs on the Japanese DSS service); if they did, I would WILLINGLY get digital satellite for that. Same for anyone who did an uncensored anime channel (have I ever mentioned just how MUCH I hate what the US Censorship Bored did to Sailor Moon and DBZ, and why I shudder in fear every time I read that one post that insinuates Cartoon Network might be carrying Tenchi Muyo?:P).
I wish one of the PBS affiliates would show Britcoms and the other would show anime on Saturday nights; then I could die a happy otaku:)
(OK, does it show I'm just a wee bit addicted? Blame it on my loving crack-pusher friends who have nearly 1000 tapes of anime between them and have formed an informal otaku society here.:)
Either way, Opensource will triumph over closed source because we're faster and better. It's like the small, fast mammal (Open Source) running around the huge lumbering dinosaur (Microsoft)... and that dinosaur has just looked up into the sky and realized it's beginning to snow.
Now, now, now...please don't insult dinosaurs by comparing them to Microsoft.:)
Dinosaurs by and large didn't lumber (about the only ones that DID are the really huge ones, like apatosaurs and diplodocus and titanosaurs--those were the dinosaurian equivalent of elephants and mammoths, though); most of them actually went along at a good trot, and more than a few were speedy.:) There is evidence that dinosaurs lived in areas where it DID snow (not as much as now, certainly, but ancient Alaska DID get a couple of inches of snow a year in Cretaceous times). There is a considerable body of evidence that theropods at least, and probably all dinosaurs, had some degree of warm-bloodedness.
Incidentially, just to note--dinosaurs aren't entirely extinct, either. Most of the dinosaurs died off, yes. The dinosaur equivalent of insectivorous bats (which started off as a little branch from maniraptorian theropods--the same group that includes oviraptors, T. rex, and damn near ALL of the feathered dinosaurs found so far) was lucky enough and (just as importantly) tiny enough to survive, and happily that branch survives as the critters we now know as birds. (Some even LIKE snowy areas. Most notably, Linux itself has a snow-loving little dinosaur known as Tux the Penguin--Tux is closer to what dinosaurs were REALLY like.;)
The reason I mention tiny--well, in big extinctions it's been found it helps to be small if you want to survive them. The smallest non-avian dinosaurs around at the time the Big Rock hit were around the size of ducks or larger--modern birds, which were starting to come around at the end of the Cretaceous, were more sparrow-sized.
We also know (mostly from some really incredible fossil remains over the past ten to twenty years) that most of what birdies have--brooding behaviour, feathers, the reason birds use feathers instead of skin-flaps, even their metabolism (which was probably around mammal-level by the Jurassic, and which is the highest known in the animal kingdom now--sparrows have normal body temperatures of around 43 degrees Celsius (or 110 degrees for us Yanks)...)--are all from non-flying ancestors. Some think even T. rex had feathers now (at least T. rex hatchies, and possibly even adults---boy, THAT shatters a lot of illusions, doesn't it?;). It would also surprise a lot of folks to know that the closest dinosaurian relative to the "bird" line happens to be none other than dromaeosaurs like Deinonychus, and there is some evidence dromaeosaurs could be secondarily flightless (it doesn't take a lot to turn Archaeopteryx into a deinonych--there's a wonderful pic of what a feathered deinonych probably looked like here.)
The same could happen to mammals, really--in fact, some could argue it IS happening--but in a big extinction event, the major survivors would probably be mice and insectivorous bats. (Dinosaurs just had the crap luck not to have evolved mouse-equivalents before the rock fell.) If it weren't for mousies, mammals could well end up in the same boat dinosaurs ended up in--all but one branch of bats being wiped out, and the "bats" (or birds, in the case of dinosaurs) having to carry on evolution from there. For that matter, archosaurs including dinosaurs could become dominant again (they've taken the limelight from us at least once--first came "mammal-like reptiles" (which aren't reptiles at all, it turns out) and therapsids (the big group that includes protomammals and mammals, like archosaurs are the big group that includes crocs, thecodonts, pterosaurs, and dinos) then the thecodonts and dinosaurs took over after a major extinction event around the time of the Triassic...then after the major extinction event that hit dinosaurs (who started out little, by the way) mammals took over again (except in South America and parts of North America, where phorusracids promptly re-evolved mobile fingers and took up old-style dinosaurian predation till around 100,000 years ago).
Now that I've said that (steps off soapbox)...
Basically, what the DoJ is trying to do is like a "correction"--basically, make it MUCH harder for Microsoft to be anti-competitive. (Think comets-- this is like a rock hitting getting all the big animals out of the way so the little guys can compete and evolve--that's the purpose of antitrust law, anyways.)
I'm sort of worried that people will be so afraid that smacking Microsoft will cause damage to our oh-so-precious money-racket we call the stock market that they will not apply enough force to the clue-by-four that is desperately needed, nor will they apply said clue-by-four in the right area. The rumblings about the DOJ being wary of a breakup might be a sign they're too chicken to take real action...I hope not, though.
(Then again, my idea of real action would consist of all Microsoft products being GPLd retroactively and all new products being GPLd to perpetuity or the heat death of the universe (whichever comes first), the various folks who testified in behalf of Microsoft (including Gates) being thrown in Bubba's Correctional Institution House of Luurv (and deciding whether they want to be the "husband" or the "wife"--and if they choose the former being told to come over and fsck their wife:), and Gates and Ballmer being forced to PERSONALLY debug each and every one of the 65 million lines of code in Win2K as "community reparations". That's just me, though.:) It is probably fortunate that I am not a judge.:)
Who is Carmen San Dieago? I have been following this, and I just have no idea what you are talking about.
I would stand in shock, but I remember that not everyone on Slashdot is from the States or even from countries where the main computer in schools was either an Apple II or an 8086 (at least to my knowledge, a version of "Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego" was never put out for the Speccy--pretty much the main computer, along with old BBC boxen, in the rest of the world outside of North America:).
Anyhoos..."Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego" was a game put out years back for the Apple II and for older PCs (I think there may have been a Macintosh version too, but my memory may well be addled there) that was ostenably to teach kids about geography and which featured this lady in a red coat named Carmen Sandiego and a large gang of henchmen who stole various and sundry historical artifacts/features/etc. Your goal, of course, was to find out just where the hell Carmen Sandiego and her henchmen were (and it subtly taught you geography and map-reading skills along the way). Definitely one of the better "educational" games that ever came out...
There were some sequels, if memory serves, such as "Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego" (where she was even going back in TIME to steal historically important stuff, the evil wench), but the original is still IMHO the best of the series...
And as for the little song folks have been posting, well...that's from the TV spinoff of the game (which was shown on PBS, our public broadcast/educational TV network here in the States--I'm not sure what the equivalent would be in other countries, other than the "cultural" channels) which was in a game-show format where kids had to (surprise, surprise) track down Carmen Sandiego and at the end take a bunch of markers and identify as many countries on a continent as they could in sixty seconds...great fun if you were a kid, and even educational for us grownups:) The song itself was done by a group called Rockapella that did (surprise, surprise) acapella songs, and they did all the music for the series (which ran for some two or three years at least).
Which is probably more than you ever wanted to know about Carmen Sandiego;)
Well, there's bad news and good news for us folks who get public TV through KET (the Kentucky Network, the statewide PBS system here in Kentucky). I'll give the bad news first as it makes the good news sound better:
The Bad News:
1) Apparently KET does its own scheduling, so you can't find its schedule through PBS's pages; rather, try ket.org.
2) On the main KET network, apparently they aren't showing "Code Rush" at all.:( Damn those grandmas paying for "Mystery" (though I can't say much--a big part of it too, at least in Kentucky, is also people paying for KET to show Britcoms and the Red Green Show, so I guess all of us who like Red Dwarf and Keeping Up Appearances are just as much at fault...).
The Good News:
In those areas that get KET2 feeds (yes, Kentucky actually has two separate networks run by KET--the second one consisting of the non-KET PBS affiliates that got bought up en masse by KET a few years back), they're showing "Code Rush" on April 11. Check yer local listings and times, yadda yadda yadda, blah blah TV Scene blah blah Courier-Journal blah blah.:)
More Bad News (ok, I lied):
As far as I know, KET2 extends to Louisville and that's it (did I mention, offhand, that there was all of ONE non-KET-affiliate PBS station in Kentucky before KET bought them out?). If one hasn't got cable, Louisville is about the only place that one can see it (at least if you don't live in Covington--no idea what Ohio's public TV network has planned).
More Good News (at least according to KET's website):
If one does have cable, it looks as if darn near the entire Insight network in the Louisville-surrounding-area up to around Frankfort and Elizabethtown carries KET2. (No, I do not know what to tell you if you live in Lexington, except maybe you ought to move to Louisville seeing as Lexington seems to be populated mostly by snobs related to the horse-racing industry and nearly everyone I know who lives there loathes it.:) Those of you in the rest of the state might be able to get someone in a KET2-enabled area to videotape it for you, or you could probably buy it on cassette off KET's website come June or so.
Oh, yes. Didn't notice that there. But I'm not talking about persecuting a group becuause of race or colour, I'm talking about helping a group of people who need help overcoming their genetic problems, which in turn will benefit society. Haven't you ever read The Selfish Gene - people are controlled by their genes. We need to be aware of people with such genetic flaws so that they can never pose a danger to society.
Just as a minor note or three, in case you didn't know:
1) Much of what happened in Nazi Germany in regards to the Holocaust was actually based on both eugenics programs in the United States and the committment laws in place then. (Back then, you could legally be involuntarily committed to an insane asylum just for being "different" or "rebellious"--even as an adult--and most states had laws mandating sterilisation for all "mental defectives", that is, anyone who had been committed to a mental institution. I'll also note that in those days once one was committed it was next to impossible to ever leave; it literally took major reforms in the 1960's to committment laws to fix this.)
2) Much of the actual horror of the Holocaust actually started with first the involuntary committment and sterilisation, then the outright murder, of "mental defectives" and other handicapped persons. (Yes, this was even before they started on the Jewish, Catholic and homosexual populations--and everyone thought it was a Good Thing because eugenics were seen as a Great Cure to things like insanity, people being born crippled, etc.)
2a) As a minor side note to the above--most of Mengele's "experiments" were done in hospital settings to children of Holocaust victims who were involuntarily committed to hospitals.
3) If one doesn't think being labeled as a "mental defective"--rightly or wrongly--doesn't affect one's chances in life, ask any of the orphans who are held in "defectives orphanages" in various countries that were formerly part of the old USSR (or Romania, for that matter)--more info here. Hell, for that matter, ask anyone who has publically been revealed in the US to have suffered from a mental disorder how devastating it can be (one of the Kennedys was involuntarily committed, for one; at least one US Presidential candidate actually lost the nomination after it was revealed he had suffered from depression; persons with mental illness have a far harder time getting and keeping jobs than the general population, Americans with Disabilities Act or no [usually, just as with age and occasionally sex discrimination, they find some other excuse to not hire or to fire the person once a history of mental illness shows up in a background check]...persons who have had a history of mental illness (with or without violent tendencies) are also prohibited from many things Americans tend to consider as rights, such as owning a gun (even for hunting) or, in several states, even driving (which, outside of major cities, can actually lock you out of not only jobs but even treatment for mental illness).)
4) Rights for juveniles in the US have been rolled back considerably since the 1980's; pretty much, the legal criteria for involuntarily committing a kid is nearly the same as it is for adults back in the Bad Old Days of the 30's where one could end up in a mental hospital for merely being "different" (all it takes is to convince a parent, or failing that, a judge; the strict legal requirements in place for adults generally don't apply to those under 18). Kids can already be involuntarily committed to mental hospitals by stuff as mere as the recommendation of their high school counselor--stuff like W.A.V.E. will only make things far worse, truly sending things back to the Bad Old Days.
5) Not all mental illness is genetic. In the worst kinds (bipolar illness and schizophrenia) there is a definite tendency that is probably genetically determined, but even then only fifty percent of identical twins will develop schizophrenia if their twin has it--in other words, there are probably also environmental factors involved. The same is probably true, to a greater or lesser extent, with the entire spectrum of "autistic spectrum" "disorders" (which go all the way from severe autism to Asperger's (which one is high-functioning, and there are a surprising number of geeks who have a touch of Asperger's) to hyperlexia (mostly you just have trouble "reading" folks and with speech, but reading skills are actually better than normal-- hyperlexic kids might not talk till four or five, but it isn't unuusal for them to be reading at kindegarten/1st-grade level at age two or three and to be reading as advanced as high-school level by first or second grade)...there is a genetic tendency in some cases, but some of it is environmental and most of it is a mix of the two. For depression specifically, some depression is linked with genetic tendencies, but a fair amount is just iatrogenic (there is no family history) or even the result of environmental factors (severe abuse, especially emotional or spiritual (religious-based) abuse, WILL cause depression in darn near any sane individual; depression is extremely common in walkaways from religious cults, and the highest known rate of suicide in teens exists with gay teens in fundamentalist households) or even cultural factors (the Japanese have a strong tradition against the disgrace of one's family or one's self, and if one does disgrace one's self or gives one's family a bad name committing suicide is actually seen as the honourable way out).
6) Most of the kids who blow away other kids have either been severely abused--not just at school but almost constantly--and most also have serious underlying personality disorders. Personality disorders are one of the few disorders that are thought to not have much of a genetic basis (save in some cases) but are the result of something going Very Wrong in early development--like when they were children. A history of abuse, oddly, can cause a personality disorder to develop (especially in the case of more violent people--there is a very strong correlation between childhood abuse, especially physical and severe emotional (and, according to some studies, religious) abuse, and the development of severe personality disorders that lead to violence). In the Paducah shootings, for instance, there are some hints that the kid could have been trying to walk away from fundamentalism; there are indications the Columbine shooters had long-standing personality disorders.
7) There is a rather healthy industry here in the United States of private mental hospitals and teen psychiatrists--often working with insurance companies--that basically tell parents that their children need at the least psychotherapy and/or Prozac--and more often than not, institutionalisation--for behaviours that sometimes are part of normal teenhood. Pharmaceutical companies make a minor killing off of giving kids Prozac and Ritalin (in fact, the problem is so bad here--kids as young as three are now being given Ritalin and Prozac even though the longterm effects of giving kids that young such powerful drugs is unknown--that even the FDA and Presidential committees are asking people to please not give kids that young psychoactive drugs until proper studies have been done); it is not at all uncommon for private mental hospitals here in the States to hold a patient exactly as long as the insurance company will pay (typically one to two months) and then dismiss the kid (even if the kid is well or was never sick to begin with). It is bad enough that even investigative programs with newspapers and TV have reported on the "teen mental health industry" here in the States...it's also, sadly, not uncommon for parents who are sick of dealing with their kids to have them committed for "depression" or have "out-of-control warrants" swore out on their kids to have them involuntarily committed...some parents even drop off their kids at the mental hospital whilst they take vacations.:P
(As a minor aside on this--if W.A.V.E. had been in affect whilst I was in high school or even elementary school, it is entirely likely that not only would I have been profiled but probably involuntarily committed until I was 18. I had some problems growing up (yes, I was depressed--the result of emotional, occasional physical, and longstanding religious abuse--alas, at that time neither social services nor anyone else seemed to recognise that religious abuse even existed [this was just around the time of the first televangelist scandals here Stateside] nor that teens could suffer abuse without "bringing it on themselves", which didn't help matters) and as it was, I was profiled and got to go through most of my middle and high-school years with the official label of Fucking Nutter Kid even without the wonderful things known as W.A.V.E. and other "geek profiling" tools. In any case, all the visits to the shrink, "special programs", the initial visit to the "teen ward" when the school no longer wanted to deal with the complaints that I was being severely bullied at school, and my parents threatening to send me back to aforementioned "teen ward" when I tried to be the least bit assertive didn't help; getting out at the age of 25 from that toxic situation has begun the process of healing, though I admit I've a long way to go (I have a bad habit of kicking myself in the arse and worrying too much--probably the result of the abuse I suffered--which makes me depressed sometimes, and which nothing short of time and relearning is going to help--all the Prozac in the world isn't going to fix how my folks essentially used the Bible, the shrink, and the occasional belt and fist as weapons to hurt me). Needless to say, I've wondered at times if this has affected me getting a job (I've had a hard time getting jobs, even with qualifications above and beyond what they're asking for); I know for a fact it's affected me with social interactions (not just people freaking because of my history--I don't have much idea of what a normal teenhood consists of, and I have a very hard time trusting anyone because when I've asked for help I've usually been kicked in the nuts over it). I also saw and experienced a fair amount of the abuse that goes on in the "teen mental health industry"--including the kids who ended up getting committed when it was the parents that could've used psychiatric help--and what with the age of Columbine and Geek Profiling and sillybuggers like W.A.V.E. I can only imagine it's gotten even worse nowadays. Nearly bad enough to put me off having kids altogether, in fact (I sure as hell don't want them going through what I've had to go through, and right now I don't trust myself to have kids just yet)...so, well, I know all too well of what I speak. I ended up in the "Teen Mental Health Industry" basically for being bullied (and an incompetent middle-school principal and counselor who didn't want to deal with the bullies) and for beginning to walk away from a Bible-based cult my parents were (and still are) involved in and starting to get the sense something was Seriously Bent in my family. (I'm only now starting to realise just HOW bent it was.))
My worry is this--How many kids are going to end up getting churned up in the machine that is the "Teen Mental Health Industry" who literally haven't done anything other than be gay and have the shitty luck to be born in a house of raving fundies (all the Prozac in the world won't help that, either--about the only thing that WILL help is getting the kid the hell out of the house, and even then he's still gonna be depressed because his family has essentially disowned him for something out of his control), or who gets the living shite beaten out of him both at school (by bullies) and at home (by Mom and Dad) and who might act gothy or tough as a means to try to protect himself, or the kid who has the cojones to be Wiccan or atheist or [insert non-conservative-Protestant-Christianity religion here] in a sea of fundamentalist Christians (this isn't uncommon in parts of the US--our Supreme Court is now taking a case on whether prayers should be allowed at football games which involves a school district largely populated with fundamentalist Christians--the people who have protested the prayers (including Catholics, some Baptists, Jewish folk, and an atheist) have been harassed and beaten in school...in one case involving school prayer here, a person who protested sectarian school prayers in Alabama was literally run out of town by the local fundies), or who is trying to walk away from a coercive group Mom and Dad are involved in, or who dares to be different enough to arouse the ire or fear of the students, parents, or community...there are going to be a lot of kids caught up in that meatgrinder as a result, which is going to result in a lot of pissed-off kids who are pretty much going to be unemployable (both because of the "history of mental illness" and because, well, even compared to regular public schools, "schools for the emotionally disturbed"--which is where these kids will likely end up, even if not committed--have Base Minimum educational standards, and at times literally have to get into partnerships with either vocational schools or gifted/talented magnet schools to even provide educational opprotunities to those kids that don't drop out after about their junior year or go back to regular school--and unless you show some real spark of intelligence, like I was lucky enough to do, you will be shunted into a voc-ed program, probably either nursing or body-shop)... if anything, it might make the problem worse. (Hell, if you know you're going to be profiled and probably committed because the other kids Plain Don't Like You, and you get hell beaten out of you anyways...and you know once you end up committed it's pretty much going to be on your permanent record and will follow you around for life, making it almost impossible for you to be employed or possibly even get health insurance (you folks in the UK are lucky--you at least have Public Health Service; folks in the US who don't have insurance who are mentally ill usually end up either in the state mental institutions or on the streets because they're SOL)...what is there to lose, really?) Kids, both sane and mentally-ill, are going to get hurt BAD by this crap...
Then again, we've got Tipper Bloody PMRC Gore pushing this crap on one end and Bush pushing for them to just go ahead and lock up the entire teenage population of North America on the other end...other than a Geek's Rights Party I dunno what can be done (if folks ARE interested in starting such a beast, well, technically, there are probably at least a few of us of legal age for both House and Senatorial seats federally as well as in state legislatures...and we can always start by working up from stuff like school boards (all the better--we can keep shite like W.A.V.E. from ever being implemented in the FIRST place locally, and it keeps the Religious Right from being able to take over school boards to turn them into little theocracy training centers)...;)
I find it interesting that, at least according to Dave Barry, no war has ever been fought between two countries which both possess McDonalds restauraunts. The reason for this is left as an exercise for the student- it could be that McD's is the single most potent instrument of peace the world has ever known, or it could be that McD's is part of a terrible communist plot to undermine the free world, burying all we hold dear beneath a mound of french fries and chicken McNugget goo.
*chuckle* As far as that goes...I dunno on that, but I can truthfully state that I've not been able to eat meat at McDonald's since I saw one of the employees take a 50-pound bag of "Miracle Meat" (no, I am not making this up--this is what their meat is called), which resembled nothing less than the 50-pound bags of Gravy Train dog food you see at the pet-food department of the grocery, from the freezer-shed.:) (The really sad thing is--Gravy Train likely tastes better and has more nutritional value (not to mention more actual meat) than Miracle Meat does.:)
Seriously, though...the real reason Dave Barry's analysis holds up well (save for Belgrade) is due to a combination of three factors:
1). Generally, when the US goes into a state of war with another country, they put in rather strict trade sanctions that basically state that you cannot do any business--not even visit relatives--with that country unless you have special permission from both the State Department and the US Treasury. (The law that this is under is specifically called the "Trading with the Enemy Act", and you don't even need to be at a state of war--hell, out of the countries where it is virtually illegal for a normal US citizen to go (incidentially, now the only countries you can't send crypto to) we've had shooting wars with only two of them. It's this very law that makes it outright illegal for most Americans to go to Cuba or even buy Cuban cigars in Canada, while everyone else goes to vacations on Cuban beaches...)
It doesn't hurt that the vast majority of big fast-food chains are based in the US, and even if they weren't the US anymore tends to not only put strict sanctions on its own citizens under the Trading with the Enemy Act, but they also manage to get through UN sanctions or at the very least sanctions among NATO members. You know what they say about 800-pound gorillas (no offense to gorillas, who generally are peaceful folk, have good senses of humour, and are rather intelligent unlike the US government;)...
2) Most countries that the US is pissed off enough at to get trade sanctions against and/or go to shooting wars with aren't likely to want much to do with American stuff at all, and likely have imposed their own versions of the Trading with the Enemy Act in regards to American goods and companies. (I'd be REALLY surprised if the Serbian government hadn't run the McDonald's out of Belgrade.) Again, shooting wars aren't even a necessity here, and a lot of it has to do with ideology--it's rather unlikely Afghanistan would be getting a McDonald's soon, or North Korea (even if eighty percent of the country wasn't starving to death) because the ideology of the countries wouldn't permit such a thing.
3) The potential Real Biggie here is that there have not been any hellaciously big shooting wars since McDonald's incorporated back in the 50's. The last Really Big War was in the 40's, during World War II; most wars then have been skirmishes between at most four or five countries (literally the three largest wars the US was involved in were with Vietnam, Korea and Iraq since McDonald's opened shop--for various and sundry reasons hinted at with 1 and 2 above, it's doubtful they'd have McDonald's restaurants to begin with [though in Iraq's case it was probably a combination of culture and the fact they were fighting with Iran]). If another World War were to break out (Grud forbid), we'd likely end up warring with a country with a McDonald's (or more properly, one which HAD one before we ordered McDonald's to Divest Or Else). (Of course, we'd also end up likely going back to the high technology of making knives and projectiles out of obsidian and flint, not to mention getting meat by hunting down deer instead of ingesting Miracle Meat--this is, of course, assuming mammals larger than mice or bats survived and we didn't end up with Planet of the Bipedal Mousies 65 million years later:)
For that matter--interesting historical note: McDonald's didn't enter either what is now Russia nor did it enter China until the Cold War had thawed quite considerably. (Most of you who are reading probably do not remember the days before Gorbachev in the old USSR. Gorby did a lot to warm up relations between the US and the USSR--before that, especially in the early- to mid-80's, people were convinced that before my generation hit the age of 18 (I'll be turning 27 this year, btw) the world would have been blown to smithereens and we'd end up with Planet of the Cockroaches. It was Quite Tense, believe you me.) Even then, they didn't open till things had warmed up to the point there was almost no going back from there...and, more to the point, companies like Pepsi and McDonald's thought it would be profitable to operate there and didn't have to worry about the State Department coming about and telling them they had to divest (other companies--most notably, oil concerns and banks--had already been burned like this several times, most notably in Cuba and in Iran).
*Bzzzt!* Wrong,(solely) pattern based virus detection became obsolete with the first polymorphic viruses and this was in the late 80s.
Well, yes, at least for binary viruses (the largest problem nowadays is actually Word macro viruses, and new binary viruses are fairly rare (with the exception of CIH and the occasional Word macro virus that has a dropper)...)
Then again, it's far more safe not to look for patterns so much as to look by heuristics for programs that can potentially do Very Bad Things. (This pretty much Works on binaries except for a very few programs that rely heavily on system hooks or do "naughty" behaviour legitimately (like disassemblers), and pretty much Works 100% on macro viruses which are the major problem nowadays.)
All modern scanning systems have multiple scan modes with different types of execution emulation along with pattern based detection system and on top of that a more or less sophisticated heuristic scanner that can detect previoysly unknown viruses by searching for virus like behaviour (often only simple ones, excemptions to this rule are coming up like F-Secure Orion that detects all known 32bit windows viruses purely on heuristics).
Well put.
As it is...yes, Linux viruses are a worry, but not a MAJOR worry. I've posted a more complete post here on what I think we do need to worry about (namely, not repeating the same basic design mistakes in Windoze that allow viruses to propogate like crazy on those boxes, and increasing security in general to eliminate ways to let viruses in period).
Yes, it's possible to write viruses for Linux. folks. The first viruses period were for Unix and VMS boxen (back when the entire concept of viruses was still "proof of concept") though for the most part they never spread widely...
Right now, about five or so viruses exist for Linux, all of which are for the most part "proof of concept" viruses. They've not spread widely, in part (methinks) because nobody yet wants to spoil a Good Thing...there eventually do come Bad Folks who do want to break things just out of meanness, though (look at the history of Usenet going into the shitter for a class example), so we can't rely on the good graces of most Linux users for long.
That said...I can state that writing viruses for Linux would be considerably harder. Basically, the virus would have to propogate as root to spread much of anywhere; the fact that most Linux programs are still distributed as source code also helps much in preventing infections. (This is not to say it's impossible, just much harder.)
About the easiest ways I could actually see viruses spreading under Linux the way they do under certain Microsoft OS's That Shall Not Be Mentioned are under the following conditions:
Binaries which must be installed from RPMs and as root become a lot more common. (As others have noted, there are early signs of this occuring, and to be honest I'm as nervous of this as other folks. All the more reason for teaching folks to "Use the Source, Luke";)
If a virus comes out that can also take advantage of system insecurity to get root. (If memory serves, at least one of the "proof of concept" viruses for Linux already does this. This is not impossible.)
If (Cthulhu forbid) a virus were to come out that specifically targeted GCC and/or other compilers. (Again, "proof of concept" exists in a roundabout way for this--specifically, the infamous "backdoor" in early versions of GCC...an original copy was made with backdoor code, and whenever it sensed it was compiling code for the login portion of the OS it inserted the code for the backdoor even if it did not exist beforehand. Even worse, if it sensed it was compiling another copy of itself, it inserted the backdoor code even if it did not exist in the source...a very nasty and clever hack, and one which could cause viruses under Linux to spread like wildfire were it to be repeated to spread viral code (say, as an RPM of GCC binaries--frighteningly enough, these actually exist in most flavours of Linux that install from packages of any sort) and it would be almost next to impossible to avoid (you'd have to recompile from a known, clean version)...)
If (Cthulhu forbid!) Microsoft Word or some similar word-processing program that has macro languages that commit Serious Misbehaviour were to become widely used. (Don't laugh this one off, either, folks. Word macro viruses are the SINGLE worst virus problem nowadays--more Word macro viruses exist than binary viruses, and more than one Word macro virus has been found with "droppers" for binary viruses or trojans...even worse, Word macro viruses with droppers for Mac andWin32 viruses are known. If Microsoft gets split up and Linux becomes much more popular, it is conceivably possible Office might get ported to Linux...even if it doesn't, it's also possible someone will write an office suite with hooks into the OS (which is the source of most probs with Word macro viruses--Office's macro languages have hooks into Visual Basic, and VB has a crapload of hooks into Win32 itself to the point some folks actually write entire Win32 applications in VB) which would cause similar misbehaviour, because a lot of folks from the Windoze world REALLY like their damned macros...which, incidentially, is why offices seem to get continually infected with Word macro viruses if they don't take "precautions".)
IMHO, all except the last two are fairly unlikely (and the second to last is unlikely unless you were to get a rogue person in place at one of the distro sites)...the things Linux has to worry about more (in fact, the things that are becoming an increasing worry even in the Windoze world) are trojans and worms.
Worms, after nearly having died off a few years back, are now back with a vengeance. First it was mIRC macro-worms (mIRC, a common IRC client in the Windoze world, has a rather powerful scripting language that can unfortunately be abused to create worms that propogate largely through DCC chat requests), now the big problem seems to be both trojans (like PrettyPark.exe) and an increasing number of Word macro worms which propogate through taking advantage of security holes in almost every program that exists for Internet apps in Windows (Agent, Eudora, Outlook Express are just a short list of programs in which worms have propogated in).
Trojans and worms have existed before with *nixes (Washington University FTP has frequently been trojaned with backdoor code, among others; I think we all know about the infamous Morris Worm). If we let security practices get lax in writing Linux apps (especially the "user-friendly" sort of apps) and especially if we do Bad Security Practices with stuff like scripting languages, etc. for apps, we could probably end up in the same boat as far as worms and trojans go. Hell, as someone noted, DDoS apps like Trin00 have been found on Linux boxen that have been compromised; I'd be really shocked if someone doesn't figure out some way to distribute a DDoS client as a worm...
So, no, we can't be lax. But part of the battle is knowing what exactly to worry about. Win32 in general, and especially Win9X, has a lot of basic security flaws that enable stuff like viruses and worms and trojans to propogate. Linux has a more secure setup if used properly--we don't want to turn it into a Windoze clone (lest we end up with the same problems) but in making Linux easier to use we want to learn from the mistakes made by a certain company in Redmond (and also by a company started by the Brothers Steve, for that matter) so that we don't repeat those mistakes.:)
Robathome dun said (regarding someone's date of 31/4/15):
If April actually had 31 days, that would be possible.
Robathome no baka:)
Seriously...different countries have different formats of splitting up dates and all. In the US, the typical format tends to be
mm/dd/yy or mm/dd/yyyy
where mm=month, dd=day, and yy=year (non-Y2K-compliant version) or yyyy=year (if you don't want to confuse hell out of everyone).
Europeans do it different, like this:
dd/mm/yy or dd/mm/yyyy
where dd=day, mm=month, etc. etc.
In much of Latin America, including Brazil (don't give me that shocked look--there are a lot of folks from Brazil on the net now, and even other countries like Mexico) they do it in yet another format:
yy/mm/dd or yyyy/mm/dd
where yy=year, etc. etc. etc.
In fact, it's SO bad what with the confusion (not to mention that a lot of places, like, oh, damn near the entire Middle East, don't even USE the Gregorian calendar--and other places, like Japan, use it but with their own special "mutations" (in Japan, they have their own calendar year count--plus they tend to count by emperor's reigns, instead of calendar year)...) that there is actually an official ISO standard for references to dates--which, surprise, surprise, actually fits the Latin American standard:
yyyy-mm-dd
where yyyy=year, mm=month, etc.
So he was right after all. So are the other folks.:)
Myself, I think messing with numbers like that is a bother, so I just use dates like, oh, 15 April 31 (which was the date he mentioned, by the way--by that reckoning, Yshua of Nazareth might've gotten to see it, but we're almost two millennia late:) to be crystal clear. Or measure everything in the good, old, ACCURATE calendar that the Mayans used if I want to confuse hell out of everyone.:) (Which brings up an interesting point...the Maya knew about zero, probably knew about pi to make measurements, and the Long Count is actually measured in terms of base-20 increments...anyone know what pi would be in base 20 and what Pi Day would be in the Long Count?;)
Really, we shouldn't allow the medium to dictate our metaphor here: how is spam really all that different from someone approaching you on the street and asking "Hey buddy, wanna buy a watch?"
Well, among other things, it doesn't force me to store his offers for watches on private property, and it doesn't cost me money and/or labour costs to listen to him try to sell fake Rolexes, not to mention telling him to perform impossible acts of self-copulation with aforementioned watches.;)
The same cannot be said of spam (including UCE). First off, the vast majority of sites with full-time Internet connections pay by the byte or by the hour (and, especially outside North America, a non-negligible number of home users, too; UUCP connections (where you HAVE to download all the mail) are still relatively common in Europe, Asia and South America, and are STILL some countries' only connection to the Internet (if memory serves, Mongolia's main ISP is UUCP-only, and this is also true for most African ISPs outside of South Africa and africa.net accounts), and people in most countries pay by-the-minute for phone calls period (incidentially, most countries also ban telemarketing--North America is one of the few places where it is legal--because it costs folks to receive it; this is also why junk faxes and telemarketing calls to cell-phones are illegal even in North America)...); the costs are often non-negligible, especially with the volumes of spam being sent (I did a quickie analysis around two years ago, which is posted here under the title "Spam By The Numbers"--this gives you a really good idea of the sheer amounts of crap that get sent to your local ISP daily if they aren't using specific block-lists like the MAPS-RBL list; nowadays it is also probably a very conservative estimate--with big mailspams on big ISPs, it can easily hit the gigabytes). This cost will, eventually, be passed on to the consumer-level (stuff like unlimited access being cut, or prices going up because they have to pay for the new RAID-5 array just to store all the spamaceous crap), so don't think you home users get away without paying the costs of spam.
Secondly, tracing down a source of a spam and getting them to stop spamming you is not exactly trivial. Spammers very commonly use throwaway accounts at freemail providers (and previously, AOL, Netcom and Compuserve accounts due to the sheer number of "free trial" CDs they would give out) and will obfuscate the hell out of headers (this is, in part, what the Washington bill was aimed at); not only that, they will often "relay-rape" servers, routing spam through insecure third parties' mail servers (there are a rather surprising number of these out there--Sun and SGI have notoriously insecure versions of Sendmail shipped with their programs, boxes in a lot of third-world countries and @Home boxes are insecure, and I won't even go into Windows mail daemons or mail daemons on old IBM mainframes--suffice it to say that spammers are the main reason most sites worth their salt don't relay mail anymore except for customers, and an increasing number won't even let you post mail without downloading mail first--Mindspring and Broadwing, among others, had to implement this). To make things even worse, spammers have over the years either set up shop at outright spam-friendly ISPs or at sites that couldn't be bothered to give a damn about net.abuse; at one point an entire backbone site on the 'net, Agis.net, had to be literally "IDP'd" (basically: many, many sites started refusing to share any traffic--not just mail and news, stuff like FTP and HTTP and the like) because AGIS hosted literally seven or eight of the worst spammer's havens on the Internet (including Sanford "SpamKing" Wallace's site, etc.) and refused to give them the boot after nearly EVERY other national-level ISP at the time HAD given them the Golden Boot. (Eventually AGIS did boot them and wrote up a strong, anti-net.abuse AUP. The AGIS boycott wasn't trivial--they were literally the third or fourth largest site on the net, many national-level ISPs had them as a primary or secondary network service provider, and they provided the only network service for a lot of sites including all of Alltel's Internet network.) And to make things even WORSE, many (if not most) spammers actually use "remove lists" or "do-not-spam" lists as actual confirm-lists for live addresses to spam; these lists are even bought and sold among spammers, and it is literally next to impossible to get one's address off one of these lists once they have been added on (about the only way I've found is for the email account itself to go dead).
It doesn't help that most of the folks in the "serial spamming" business--the hard-core folks-- are sociopaths (no, I am not making this up--most of them would actually be diagnosed as sociopaths). Sanford Wallace, for example, was in the junk fax business before he went to spamming--he is also widely regarded as being the person most responsible for junk faxes having been banned. Wallace is also almost singlehandedly responsible for most of the anti-spam AUPs in place, with a few other folks was largely responsible for getting AGIS "shunned" a few years back, and is almost singlehandedly responsible for nearly every anti-spam bill that has been proposed to a legislature worldwide. He finally got out of spamming when literally no ISP in North America would touch him with a 40-foot barge pole--and this, only AFTER he'd gotten AGIS IDP'd, been fined well into the millions of dollars for contempt-of-court charges, been literally banned by a Federal court in Ohio from sending mail to any customers of Compuserve, been banned by a Virginia judge from sending any mail to AOL customers, been fined by that judge for disregarding that order, paid well over US$300,000 in Internic charges for domains...this is the psychology we're dealing with. Sad individuals...
It's funny you should mention guys "selling watches", though. If he makes it a business as much as, say, most spammers do, just selling watches on the street is outright illegal in many areas. If it's over a certain volume, in many places he has to buy a specific business license. If he is found selling illegal goods (like, oh, counterfeit watches or selling adult material to under-18s or selling shares in a pyramid scheme or even selling stocks without a prospectus) they can lock him up and throw away the key.
Of note--the FTC has estimated that over 80% of all spams are for "fraudulent" and/or outright illegal schemes. Those that aren't are often adverts for adult sites which are of questionable legality for under-18's (and, depending on local ordinances, may be of questionable legality for anyone--for instance, adverts for marital aids and the sale of marital aids is illegal in Alabama and in a number of Southern counties).
Symantec more or less owns that market segment at this point, aside from Network Associates, who are even more loathesome.
Well, they aren't the only ones in the market, really--F-Prot, which comes in two different flavours (the Data Fellows "Finnish Mix" and the Command Software "British Remix"), is damned good, beats the pants off of both McAffee and NAV, and hasn't been bought out by either company (largely because at least Data Fellows also sells other security software like firewall programs, SSH clients and SSH servers for NT, etc.). Also worth noting is the Best Damn Antivirus Software Money Can Buy (according to alt.comp.virus--and by the way, it's not just antivirus writers who hang out there; there are a fair number of virus coders who hang out there as well), AVP...hell, they've even got a version for Linux for folks who run servers (who want to scan the stuff they're serving for Nasty Stuff).
By no means are you restricted to what Network Solutions or Symantec have to offer. There's other stuff out there that's actually better but less well known about (wow...kinda like BeOS and *BSD and Linux, eh?;).
For most people, I recommend not using anti-virus software at all. AV is a non-solution to something that is mostly a non-problem.
I wouldn't say it's entirely a non-problem. In a home environment, with a clueful user who doesn't download strange binaries without checking the source twice, and especially if he's using an OS for which very few viruses exist (such as BeOS or Linux or *BSD)...and more importantly anymore, never uses certain office suites out of Redmond with extensive macro capabilities including hooks to Visual Basic (which has hooks to system calls in Win32) nor uses programs with extensive HTML and Javascript capability to read email, then yes, it'd be a non-problem.
There are cases where it could be a problem, though. Say...work environments that have to use Office 97 and accept Word and Excel documents from Goddess-only-knows where, or home users who dabble in warez because they don't feel like paying $200 for the latest killer game, or work environments where people take stuff from home and put it on the boxes, or people who are new to the net (and don't know about stuff like Good Computer Hygiene) and get offered this "cool South Park screensaver" from an email address that belongs to their friend on the net (and they are completely and utterly unaware that said program is in fact the "Pretty Park" trojan/worm that mails itself to everyone on your Outlook Express address list)...in those cases, yes, it could be a problem.
Now add in those folks who have to take home stuff from work. Now add in the number of folks at work who are the clueless folks who will blindly run that "Pretty Park" executable, and/or have warez'd copies of Diablo, and/or take stuff to work to show folks how "cool" it is...and you have to take Word documents home to work on them, or Excel spreadsheets...and think of all the OTHER companies your company might be sharing Word documents with...'s pretty scary, really, if you think about it.
I'll touch some more on this below...
t's a non-solution because most AV software protects only against known viruses, and is therefore useless against anything newer than the most recent signature update you've installed. Of course, the kind of virus you are most likely to encounter is a new one that the virus scanners don't know about yet, so what good is your scanner doing? (There have been attempts to develop techniques of recognizing "virus-like behavior", but the eternal problem with that is that there is nothing that most viruses do that isn't also done by perfectly harmless, useful, legitimate software, especially debugging tools.)
By and large, antivirus software isn't for us who know how to use debugging tools:) It's for folks who might be new to computers, or who have to take stuff home from work and run it, or who might want to be double-safe that the program they just downloaded doesn't have anything nasty in it.
Yes, some TSRs and some programs will cause antivirus software to hiccup. I'll also note that these are (in the case of most folks--not necessarily us techy ones) few and far between. It also depends specifically on the heuristics that the program is looking for--I've heard that Norton Antivirus tends to give quite a number more false positive alarms than AVP or F-Prot do, for instance (in fact, on alt.comp.virus it's recommended that if you run Norton or McAffee Antivirus (another AV program bad for false positives in heuristics mode) you double-check it by running F-Prot or AVP in heuristics mode because the latter two programs are far less susceptible to false positives).
As it is, for binary viruses and trojans heuristics can work well; for Word macro viruses (which are the single largest category of viruses today, by the way) they're nearly foolproof. As Word macro viruses are a far worse problem nowadays, this is probably a Good Thing.
It's mostly a non-problem because viruses just aren't that common and are, for the most part, easily avoided by simply not being stupid. I haven't run an anti-virus package on any of my computers since I left the Norton AntiVirus development team in 1993, and have never been hit by a virus in the almost seven years since then.
I'll assume you practice Good Computer Hygiene (not downloading strange binaries, etc.) I do have some questions for you, though...
Do you run Microsoft Office? Do you accept Word documents from possibly untrusted sources? (The single largest category of viruses and worms, not to mention the one with the most growth by far, is Office macro viruses and worms (especially Word macro viruses which often are also worms in that they have specific hooks to common mail applications to enable spread by email)...in 1993, Word macro viruses were literally unheard of. The first "proof of concept" Word macro virus appeared in 1997, and eventually spread to the wild. A year later there were over 200 known Word macro viruses, and the first Excel macro viruses were known. In 1998-ish the first known Word macro worm was discovered. As of now (early 2000) there are over four thousand Office macro viruses (the vast majority Word macro viruses, and a fair number of which can be considered worms as well; more than a few also are "droppers" for destructive payloads), depending on whom one is talking to (some would put it higher, some would put it closer to two thousand)--literally more Word macro viruses and worms exist than binary-based viruses at present, and it is becoming a fairly serious problem in businesses (a Word macro virus/worm brought the email systems of many businesses to a screeching halt last year because of all the load--one of those companies just happened to be [ironically] Microsoft). The largest portion of databases for antivirus software are for Word macro viruses; I suggest you take a look down at Data Fellows' virus-lists and see just how many have the little prefix "W97/M" (Word 97 macro virus)...it's really a staggering number. Binary-based viruses like CIH are by far the exception now; most folks doing viruses are either working in Word macro viruses or are working on worms (such as mIRC worms, or trojans that are worms such as "Pretty Park").
Fortunately for antivirus software authors, most Word macro viruses have specific infection routines and use specific Visual Basic calls (Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom [HAH!], decided to allow one to use Visual Basic hooks in Office macro code...which is a security disaster waiting to happen, as Visual Basic has hooks into the operating system itself) to do nastier things (like the "propogation behavior" of Word macro worms, or droppers for destructive payloads for the nastier Word macro viruses--in a way, they behave more like trojans than viruses), so it's pretty easy to kill such things with heuristics. (It's also pretty easy to kill such things if you don't enable macros, or you use stuff like StarOffice to read the file. But that's another issue:)
(Unfortunately, it seems the bulk of the business world not only uses Win95/98 or WinNT, but also Office, and also Outlook Express--which helps Word macro worms spread like wildfire through a network (by the way, Word macro worms are having the same growth Word macro viruses had in the beginning, and some have been found with destructive payloads--things are going to get interesting indeed). Even worse, Word macro viruses are cross-platform--they can infect Word on Winboxen, Macs, and presumably any other platform that can run Microsoft Word and/or a word processor that recognises Word documents and Word macros (fortunately, most of the Word macro worms can spread only under WinXX and largely only if Outlook Express exists as a mailer, though some can also use Eudora [the other big mailer], but I don't expect this to last very long--and the Mac users can still infect documents with the worms).)
Do you have to share computers at work with anyone? (Their computer could be crawling with viruses. Just because you don't do anything stupid doesn't mean your co-workers won't.)
Does your workplace have a strict "no-files-or-disks-from-home, no-programs-from-home" policy? (If not, they're wide open unless they're using a scanner. Again, you might practice Good Computer Hygiene, but others won't necessarily do so.)
If you do consultation work, are all your boot-disks and install material on non-writable media like CD's? (If they've got a boot-sector virus, they can infect ZIP disks and floppies.)
Are you absolutely certain that all of the software you get is virus-free? (About the only way you CAN be certain is if you compile and run it yourself--and even then, if the compiler itself has virus code, you still might not be safe (cref. a proof-of-concept of this where hidden backdoor code was included in early C compilers for Unix--if code was removed, the compiler simply reinserted it at compile-time; the only way to remove it for certain was to compile from a known clean copy, and reportedly the backdoor generated WAS used a few times). Commercial software has been released accidentially with virus code before (most infamously, a demo CD included with a PC game magazine that was infected with CIH); hell, computers have literally come preinstalled that had viruses (there was a rather infamous case where either Dell or IBM (memory fails me on which one) actually sold some laptops which were infected with CIH--it turns out that the standard disk image used to copy the OS and apps onto the drives had been infected with CIH somehow). There are now known worms that can infect a computer using Outlook Express (with HTML and ActiveX extensions turned on) without even opening the mail itself (just by previewing the mail). Most Internet worms propogate themselves anymore by sending copies to everyone on an address-book list in email clients (the vast majority of Word macro worms, and even some "trojan" worms like PrettyPark), or by mass-DCC send (most mIRC worms propogate this way--the worms take advantage of insecurities in mIRC scripting language).
Do you serve files for other people? (If so--even Word documents--if you don't check them before offering for download, you may unwittingly pass along infected files. Again, infected files don't even necessarily have to be binaries anymore--the vast majority of viruses anymore are Word macro viruses and worms, and the few actual binary viruses tend to be spread either through warez or as "trojans" or worms.)
You see...it's not as easy keeping virus-free as one thinks. In fact, if you accept foreign Word documents at ALL and don't have either a damned good virus-scanner or macros turned off completely, you are essentially wide open to getting a rather nasty case of computer VD. Even more so if you use Outlook Express, or (God Forbid) accept attachments of *.exe or *.doc files in email, or accept HTML-email or have Javascript or ActiveX enabled in your email browser.
It makes sense for people producing executable images of software for distribution to have a scanner handy just to be as sure as possible that the software they're giving out isn't infected, but most of us aren't in that situation.
1) Even commercial software has been infected--there is more than one documented case of this.
2) As stated above, things have changed a LOT in the world of viruses since 1993:)
2a) The major problem, with rare exception (CIH, which really is novel in that it attempts to over-write BIOS info in boxen with flashable BIOSes), is not binary-based viruses like Stoned or Jerusalem (the two biggies in 1993, by the way). The biggies, by far, are Word macro viruses (literally more Word macro viruses exist now than binary ones exist now or in 1993, a fair number have nasty droppers or destructive payloads, and an increasing number can also be classified as worms as they propogate through vulnerabilities in a number of Internet programs [a short list--Outlook Express, Free Agent (Usenet client), Eudora, etc.]).
2b) With the exception of CIH, the major problem with malicious binaries isn't with viruses anymore but with Trojans of various types. The vast majority of these may be classified either as worms (i.e. PrettyPark.exe, the latest in this line) or as attempts to pass off Back Orifice (a program designed by Cult of the Dead Cow to spotlight rather serious security flaws in Win9X, and which can be used to remotely control another computer--often without the victim knowing, as Back Orifice hides its processes and tries to make it difficult to uninstall).
3) The single largest increase of ANY viruses or malicious programs today is in the form of worms. Many of these worms are essentially multiplatform and the vast majority target the single largest used office suite in businesses today. Many of these companies must share Word documents and other traffic with other sites, often untrusted traffic. In a way, the Internet has been the best thing since sliced bread for propogation of viruses (keep in mind, too, that when you left Symantec the vast majority of "program trading" was at universities and most of the "warez" traffic as well as virus traffic was at universities and on small, members-only BBS's; there were still roughly an equal number of *.edu and *.com sites online, the plague known as AOL had yet to hit the net (that occured in 1994 or 1995, and AOL has always had a wee bit of a script-kiddie/V/C community), and the Internet had NOWHERE near the penetration it has now--it was next to impossible for worms to spread the way they do now, much less Word macro viruses (again, keep in mind that macro viruses of ANY kind were unheard of before 1997).)
4) In 1993, a lot of companies still used dumb terminals or didn't have much computer access. Now, a large number of folks have computers--frequently connected to the Internet--and they frequently have to take home work and such. Many of these folks don't practice Good Computer Hygiene--they run programs their friends send them online (unaware that many worms use address-lists specifically to propogate), while spreading rumours like "Good Times" because they literally don't know any better. Sometimes this even extends to the folks running the boxen--a number of sites use NT or even Windows 98 to administer networks, and many of these folks don't use proper security precautions (like not allowing executables to be installed, etc.). 5) The fact that so many folks ARE on the net with Win95/Win98 boxen has to be a major factor in how viruses are spreading, and especially worms (which had pretty much died out in the days of tht Morris Worm and WANK-Worm until Word macro viruses started coming out). Win95 and Win98 are notoriously insecure--in essence, everyone (even on a multi-user system) has root/administrator access, most of the Internet applications for these systems--especially those from Microsoft--are not exactly designed with security in mind, the major office suite for these boxes (Office 97) has major security flaws in its scripting language insofar as using it in a networked environment...the major scripting language for Microsoft-based Internet apps, ActiveX (which has even been incorporated into the OS in Win98) is so insecure that nearly every security site recommends disabling it...also, Win9X is designed for people who are complete and utter computer virgins, who aren't going to know about computer security and who are lucky to know how to install a program without some kind of installation-wizard. It's an OS designed for the clueless, and it's user-friendly to the point of sacrificing security...it also doesn't help that Internet apps (by and large) were actually an afterthought to the OS, added when the Internet exploded in popularity (especially the World Wide Web).
I'd even go so far as to say that, as designed, Win95 and Win98 are outright unsafe to use in a networked environment without some sort of protection both against malicious programs and scripts AND against malicious parties trying to gain outside access. Win9X was not designed as a multi-user, networkable OS; it was originally designed as a home OS for the newbie user who needs stuff to be point-and-click simple, and networkability was an afterthought added when Microsoft found out people actually wanted that Internet thing. Security has always been an afterthought, if it's been thought of at all; to make it secure actually requires either add-ons (like antivirus software and intrusion-detection software) or keeping it off a network period. Yes, security really IS that bad with Windows9X. (NT and Win2000 are considerably more secure, but that's partly because they were designed as networkable OS's and they do have security features in light of this. They are also somewhat less user-friendly, especially in tighter security settings (many WinNT sites have EVERYONE with admin access because some things become unusuable in lower settings).)
It's not just the Microsoft apps for Win9X that have security bugs, either--the whole idea of running untrusted apps is a Bad Thing (there REALLY needs to be a "sandbox" area for untrusted apps; moxe *nixes do this with multiple users and security settings, and Java does it by running it in a virtual machine with no direct hardware access). Eudora has had serious security bugs that worms exploit. mIRC, a major IRC client for Windows boxen, has had periodic troubles with script worms (in fact, before Word97 worms became popular, mIRC was the major target of worms on the net). WinGate, a popular telnet server for Windows boxen, is so horribly broken that early versions have essentially no security whatsoever and can be used as an anonymous relay host by Bad Folks because it has no logging whatsoever (and it HAS been used like this by Bad Folks, which makes it a MAJOR pain in the arse to try to track them down). Most FTP servers for Windows boxen can be cracked. Nearly any Internet-capable program for Windows can be made to cause the system to crash by simply sending "file://C|/con" (with HTML browsers and email clients that parse HTML like Outlook Express and Eudora), or requesting "C:\con" (with FTP clients)...hell, you could probably write malicious ActiveX code to do the same thing, or add that as a dropper to a Word macro virus. This is partly the fault of the programs, but it's partly a sign that the OS in and of itself is horribly mis-suited for network use.
In short, there've been a lot of deep, almost fundamental changes in the world of viruses and malicious code, and more importantly, the dominant means by which they spread and the dominant "host" they breed in to begin with.
Btw, the best source for free, up-to-date information on viruses (and even more importantly virus hoaxes, which greatly outnumber viruses) is the Computer Virus Myths web site.
I wouldn't say virus myths outnumber actual viruses (I think the number of Word macro viruses slightly beats the number of variants of "Good Times"/"Jessica Maddick", etc.:) but Kumite's a good site. (Hell, I recommended it in my last post.:) There IS bad stuff out there, though (especially if you are misfortunate enough to have to use Win9X + Outlook Express + Office 97) and "computer condoms" never hurt. "Computer safe sex" (and yes, I posted a number of tips for that too) never hurts, either. Combine the two and you shouldn't have trouble.:)
Alex Bischoff (not to be confused with the former "TV manager" of a certain wrestling actor's troupe in Atlanta) dun said:
That's not a bad idea, but what AV would you recommend? A product with the ability to auto-update its virus definitions at regular intervals would be a plus.
Command Antivirus has live updates for registered users; if memory serves, so does the Data Fellows version of F-Prot. (Notably: both of these use the F-Prot AV engine (damn near the best antivirus engine you can get next to AVP, and if memory serves they're even using part of the AVP engine in the latest versions) and the Data Fellows version comes in a package called F-Secure which also includes some very neat security toys.)
I don't know whether AVP has live updates or not, but I'd recommend it nonetheless; AVP is quite literally the best antivirus program one can get for Windows, bar none, and they do have trial versions (good for thirty days) for download...the registered version is not terribly expensive (around $25-30 if I remember right) and it is money well spent...if memory serves, AVP actually updates their virus list weekly, too, and updates are available on their website. If one is serious about antivirus protection I'd seriously recommend getting a copy of it...
As it is, if one is serious about antiviral protection anyways, it never hurts to have two antivirus programs on board. You use one for the standard protection which isn't quite as sensitive/more prone to false alarms like Norton or McAffee, and if that alerts you bring out the heavy-duty tools like AVP or F-Prot. (Or, if you're like me and can get both, you use Command Antivirus (read: F-Prot under a different label;) for the main scan and AVP for the heavy guns--I've only had to do that once, when an older version of Command Antivirus didn't like a newer database update [basically they'd changed the format--no biggie, just get the upgrade])
It never hurts to practice computer "safe sex", though--I've never had virus problems, because I'm careful to the point of being neurotic:) Here goes a list of good antiviral techniques:
Don't enable HTML mail or Javascript in mail--this keeps you safe from malicious code that may activate downloads of worms that target Outlook Express, etc.
If possible, don't use Microsoft products like IE or Outlook Express or Office--there are a LOT of serious security bugs, even in the latest versions of Outlook Express and IE, that enable one to download malicious code like worms--sometimes without expressly clicking to accept (such as some worms that specifically target Outlook Express). Office, and specifically Microsoft Word 97, is downright infamous for macro viruses and worms--in fact, the single largest category of viruses anymore are Word macro viruses (and it's also the largest growth category--the year after the first Word "proof of concept" macro virus was released, there were more than 200 known in the wild--now it's something like 4000). In fact, Win95/Win98 actually have security flaws in the OS itself that allow such things to spread easily...
If you must use Microsoft products, stick with the maximum security settings you can get away with--Don't enable macros in Office and don't accept documents with macros unless they go through a reliable virus-scanner first (if possible, encourage people to send stuff in RTF or text format; Excel users, try to stick to tab or comma-delimited formatting, as Excel macro viruses are an increasing problem). Set MSIE and Outlook Express to their maximum security settings. Do not use ActiveX unless absolutely necessary (there are serious security bugs in ActiveX as compared with Java)--at the least do not allow untrusted ActiveX applets to run. Consider using more secure OS's if possible (for Microsoft-only shops, this may entail going from Win98 to WinNT or Win2000). In WinNT or Win2000 environments, only give supervisor access to those who really need it and set others to lower levels where binaries cannot be installed.
Do not read untrusted Word or Excel documents, or run untrusted executables--this expressly includes your friends--"Trusted" here means "downloaded from a known, clean, virus-free source" or "run through a reliable virus-scanner". There are a rather surprising number of worms and trojans (including more than one case of Back Orifice being distributed via a trojan sent by email, as well as cases of DDOS (distributed denial of service) clients being distributed in this fashion). This includes anything gotten in email, ICQ, etc. (Business environments--if accepting resumes by email, you may seriously want to consider asking clients to send resumes in plain text or RTF format. This may not be as pretty, but it's easier for clients to send you resumes this way and it eliminates problems with Word macro viruses.) Again, WinNT shops probably want to strongly consider limiting supervisor and administrator access to those who need it and set everyone else to levels where binaries cannot be installed (the misuse of administrator levels is one major way in which WinNT shops get infected--allWord macro viruses work on NT, and a fair amount of Win32 viruses do as well).
Get a good virus scanner and use it regularly--Norton AntiVirus is probably on the low end as far as "good virus scanners" go. I personally recommend one of the F-Prot based ones or AVP; most over on alt.comp.virus would recommend AVP first and one of the F-Prot based ones secondly. (Most also recommend you use at least two virus scanners, one for regular use and one as a backup/sanity check.) Alt.comp.virus has a lot of good info on viruses and the good and bad in antivirus software, anyways.:)
Consider using other security programs--There are firewall-type and intrusion detection programs even for Win95/Win98 systems such as Jammer--Jammer, in particular, acts as a firewall and detects things like attempted Back Orifice scans, etc. As Win95/Win98 is notoriously insecure, it's a good idea to give it any more security if you can.
Don't trade in warez--This may seem like child's play to most of us, I'm sure, but in home and even in business environments there are a lot of folks who do deal in warez. Most warez anymore (at least the downloaded kind, not the "burning a friend's copy of Win98 to CD" kind) seems to be from Russia, Brazil and China, which also happen to be rather large H/C/V centres. (It's worth noting here that it's widely thought that CIH escaped into the wild from Taiwanese warez posted to one of the Usenet warez groups that just happened to be infected with CIH; it turns out the author or a friend of the author was in one of the major warez groups.) I can't state strongly enough in regards to this that if you absolutely must use or trade warez, please for Cthulhu's sake scan the damn stuff before installing it or trading it with others so you don't infect yourself or others.
Don't assume that commercial software or "minority" OS's are immune to viruses or don't need virus-scans--Commercial software has been released before that was infected with viruses (including several demo CD's). Macs have several viruses to contend with, at least one virus is known to specifically target both WinXX and Macs, and Macs are still susceptible to Word macro viruses (and probably IRC worms, if a version of mIRC exists for Macs); at least three "proof of concept" viruses for Linux do exist, including one which apparently tries to gain root privs to perpetuate itself, and even aside from this Linux boxen are commonly used as servers for files for other OS's. You still want to virus-scan even that copy of Diablo II that you got; folks will be happier if Linux servers scan executable files for viruses. (By the way, yes, antivirus software for Linux does exist; AVP has ported its antivirus scanner to Linux, and actually has the downloads for free last I checked.)
Keep your antivirus software up to date--This is a given, and "live updates" such as featured with NAV and CAV are very nice in this regards. Don't wait for the news report on the next Worm from Hell to update, either. Monthly is a minimum, and preferably more often than that if you can (weekly is good:).
Make sure others follow these same "good computer hygiene" rules--If you run a business, explain why you have policies against people installing stuff from home computers, running executables, etc. If you're at home, explain to folks why you don't accept executables (even of that neat "dancing baby" thing) sent by mail, or HTML mail, or Word or Excel files sent by mail. Encourage others to install and use antivirus software and other security programs.
Don't panic--Panic just spreads stuff like that damned "Good Times" hoax. If someone spreads stuff like that, point them both to a site like Data Fellows which has up-to-date listings of viruses--or, preferably, the alt.comp.virus WildList, pointed to in the ACV FAQ over at ftp.uu.net and your favourite Usenet FAQ archives--and to a site like Virus Myths which has a nice list of hoaxes, etc. (so does Data Fellows, but Kumite's a bit friendlier on that); this is probably the best defense against "meme viruses" like "Good Times" that you can get;)
I don't recall exactly when I saw this, around 1995/1996, but accessing the internet in some countries is/was punishable by death. I remember specificlly many African countries and in Singapore it was punishable by death to be on the net. I know this is not longer the truth in singapore but it may still be in some countries, i'd love to hear about it if anyone else knows anything about this. Oh yeah, the info was in a wired article... please reply if you know anything else on the topic...
Well, I don't remember the article in question, but I can note on some stuff (mostly from having been on the net that long)...
As far as I know, only one nation has ever had the death penalty for using the net, and that is Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan. (The Taliban-controlled areas have severe restrictions and/or outright bans on very nearly all media, including most print media, TV, movies, and even music--they outright make the Bad Old Days of sharia law in Iran look downright liberal in comparison.)
Some countries in central Africa may well have had severe restrictions (including imprisonment, though I doubt the death penalty) for unapproved connections, and most of the Islamic countries have always had severe restrictions on Internet connections (usually requiring proxies, etc.)... don't remember seeing anything on death penalties, though.
Myanmar may have had such a restriction; reportedly, modems are illegal unless specifically licensed by the government there, and an unlicensed modem can land one in prison for a good long time.
Notably--most of thesee countries that would have problems with it don't make the net illegal as much as they'd make all "unathorised" or "unlicensed" publishers illegal--it's far more likely they'd get you for "publishing subversive publications" or the like.
I can state with some certainty that Singapore wasn't one of the places that had the death penalty for using the net, though (I remember *.sg addys from 1992-1993), and the government finally started restrictions around 1996 or so (basically national firewall).
As an aside: Most countries that are going to be so repressive as to literally mandate the death penalty for unlicensed connections to the net have very poor or no Internet connectability whatsoever. Many countries in central Africa pretty much only have UUCP connections to the rest of the world (mostly through stuff like Doctors Without Borders, and occasionally university connections), and an increasing number of those are actually getting full Internet at least for universities. Iran (Yes, Iran) even has full Internet, and even one or two ISPs operating there...
About the only countries I know of with no Internet connections are Iraq, Libya, North Korea, and Afghanistan...Iraq is basically being shunned by the rest of the world and had most of its infrastructure bombed back into the stone age, and most of the folks there have more serious worries (like food and meds and shelter); Libya was likewise shunned due to UN sanctions (its domain is being operated as a vanity domain out of the UK) but this may change now that most UN sactions are being dropped; North Korea both is shunned and pretty much has walled itself off from the rest of the world (about the only country MORE isolated is Afghanistan), its people have more important things to worry about (like food) and the leaders are xenophobic enough to pretty much avoid anything like the net like the black plague; Afghanistan, well, it has the Taliban (fun with psychofundy Sunni Moslems that make the hardline mullahs in Iran seem downright grandfatherly) and I mentioned some of the fun stuff they ban earlier...as for the rest of Afghanistan, just about everything above a molehill was blown to smithereens long ago, they have more important stuff to worry about (like food, shelter, not having the entire country taken over by the Taliban, etc.). Short of a miracle, none of these folks are going to be getting Internet access anytime soon.:P
>It gets annoying to watch Crash hang in midair for a half hour while the system sorts itself out. Is it any more annoying than watching those damn commercials for Crash?
Heh.:)
I'd venture that if you were Japanese, the hangs would be FAR less annoying than the Crash adverts.:) (I've seen the Japanese Crash adverts on fansubs of anime before, and believe me when I say that the Japanese adverts make the US ones seem sane and tolerable by comparison...you really shouldn't watch the Japanese versions if you're pregnant. No telling what it'd do to the fetus:)
Then again, Japanese adverts and non-anime TV shows in general tend to be on complete and utter crack (cough cough ahem Iron Chef cough ahem)...
Final Fantasy deliberately borrows many storytelling elements from the "Star Wars" movies; apparently Sakaguchi and his buddies are real SW fans. The plots smack strongly of Star Wars: young boy with sword and moppish hairdo meets girl, destroys villain and evil force, saves world.
Oh, it's incredibly obvious. Hell, at points it's downright blatant that they're SW fans.
Among other things, in every Final Fantasy game since at least FF5 or FF6 there've been two characters named Biggs and Wedge (for those who remember A New Hope aka the "original" Star Wars, Biggs and Wedge were wingmen with Luke Skywalker). Specifically: FF6, in the beginning of the game; FF7, they were AVALANCHE members; FF8, they were opponents with rather serious delusions of grandeur:). If THAT isn't just a wee bit of a Star Wars in-joke, I don't know what is.:)
(I will resist the urge, by the way, to make bad jokes here about Han Solo naked and petrified.;) Besides, someone already DID that joke already.:)
Q: A mainframe is NOT a thing of the past !!! What do you think manages your bank account, possibly your salary, certainly your IRS account and probably your pension fund ??? A: It's called a Beowulf Cluster. 10 PIII-550's. Total cost $30,000 as opposed to a 6-figure mainframe. IRS though, well, they're just a wastefull buracracy.
Actually, a Beowulf cluster probably wouldn't be the right tool for the job there (it'd be rather akin to using a butter-knife to tighten a flathead slotted screw--it'd work, but there are better tools for the job).
Beowulfs are very good if you need to do processing that can be done very well in parallel such as some formulas. They do not do so well if you a) have to do a lot of parallel work quickly (for that, a supercomputer like a Cray is probably better suited) or b) especially if you have to move and/or work with a massive amount of data (which is what mainframes are used for mostly and which is a job they do very well).
Besides, the entire purpose of Linux on mainframe boxen isn't to link a mess of S/390s into a Beowulf cluster (which, while it would make a very large box, it would be slower than a comparable Cray or even SGI Challenge series). The major purpose of porting Linux to a virtual machine S/390 is twofold--for "bare metal" runs it's basically an alternative to AIX (which, while reliable, is a horrid bastard child of *nix and the entire IBM REXX mess--for a fair amount of stuff which compiles "out of the box" on most *nixes, you have to add REXX scripts in AIX), while the port for "virtual machines" in S/390 (the one largely concentrated on in the article, by the way) is meant largely as a more user-friendly (at least to us folks used to *nixes and OS's invented in the last 25 years or so) alternative to the traditional IBM VM OS's (most notably MVS, VM/CMS, and VM/ESA--I've had experience with VM/CMS, by the way, and trust me when I say that *nix is far friendlier;) that can also be used to add capabilities that have not existed for IBM/Amdahl "Big Iron" so far (like X-terms--other than VAXen and a few abortive NT ports, there isn't such an animal as a GUI for mainframes--it's all CLI terminals; also, stuff like PPP accounts can be set up (good for unis that may still have some old 3090 VM/CMS boxen about--IBM isn't officially supporting most OS's for the 3090s anymore, VM/CMS has a real dearth of Internet apps, and the daemons that DO exist do have some serious security flaws [most notably IBM VM SMTP--which can be anonymously relay-raped in its default install--and the default mail client which had serious problems in the early 80s with worms being transmitted]) and whatnot).
FWIW--there are a lot of places still using Big Iron, and not necessarily because they have a ton of legacy Fortran or COBOL (yuck) code that has been around since 1965.:) Insurance companies and banks, for example, commonly still use Big Iron because, well, Big Iron is about the only thing that won't choke on the massive amounts of data it must deal with reliably on a regular basis. (Supercomputers might be able to deal with it, but storage is iffy, supercomputers tend to be more temperamental than most Big Iron, and the amount of supercomputer needed tends to be quite a bit more than the average amount of Big Iron costs. Beowulfs are good for small- to medium-sized applications, but would barf on the amount of info needed and/or the nodes required (there is a limit to how many boxen may be linked in a Beowulf cluster; part of this is due to transmission speeds, but part of it is due to limitations of the Beowulf code itself); also, Beowulf clusters can fall down go boom if one node falls down goes boom.)
To give an example of, say, the average group that might use and NEED Big Iron--how about the US Census Bureau. They have to put in something around 250-270 million records in their databases every ten years; in addition to that, they have to keep databases (for comparison and updates, as well as to tabulate trends across decades) of anywhere from 100 million-250 million records--one for nearly every person in the country.
Yes, this is actually stored by computer--I happen to live nearish one of the four big processing centres for the Census Bureau in the US. They basically input everything on terminals from the census forms, thousands of people do...which are ultimately stored on Big Iron and on media totalling anywhere from terabytes to possibly even exabytes of data.
Damn near everything SHORT of a Really Huge Big Iron system is going to choke, hard, on this amount of info. (Especially so when you consider that a fair amount of older data is probably stored on tape or removable big-platter hard disks--usually using legacy storage systems which may not even be commercially sold anymore--which are being converted to more modern storage media capable of handling terabytes of data at a time.) I like Linux as much as anyone (and freely admit to being a Slackware and SuSE bigot;) but a Beowulf cluster just isn't going to handle that. Not even if you built it from Alphas. Not even if you built it from bloody Playstation 2s.:)
You mentioned the IRS--well, they've got comparable storage and data handling requirements as the Census Bureau does, only worse.:) They have to maintain upwards of 100 million records which must be entered and updated yearly (just from people who fill out tax returns)...plus records from W2 forms filled out by employers of the folks associated with those 100 records...plus trends must be done on ALL these records, and previously archived records which may stretch back as far as 30-35 years or so (again, often on legacy systems and data--good old removable disk packs and 9-track tapes) in order to flag folks (who might be remiss on paying their taxes) for audits...we're talking literally hundreds of terabytes or MORE of data that the IRS must go through on a yearly basis! It's actually kind of impressive that their systems don't barf more than they do when one thinks of the sheer amounts of data they go through...
Microsoft: Our OS is 100% reliable and has 1000s of applications readily available off the shelf, including the worlds #1 word processor and spreadsheet. Linux: Our os is based on 30 year old technology and has a few apps that are a bit flaky, and you need to rebuild your kernel every 5 minutes. yeah cool "advocacy" dude. Best wait until Linux is ready for the desktop before you start hyping.
*chuckle* Methinks someone doesn't quite get the point with the mention of scalability...
1) Big Freakin' Deal that you can run Office 97 under Win98. For the applications we're talking about here (mainframe stuff--numbercrunching and storing) "pretty" stuff like Office 97 or GUIs in general are neither helpful nor necessary (in fact, they'd be a detriment to the Job that the Big Iron is doing).
1a) I would far from call any Microsoft product "reliable". Yes, this includes Office, Win95/98/NT/2000/3.1/CE/Me/[insert latest marketing spin from Micro$oft here], and IE. Yes, I know of what I speak here--I've had to do more than one repair job when supposedly well-configured Microsoft apps and OS's suddenly developed severe cases of incontinence.:P Compared with some of the stuff I have to put up with re Microsoft stuff (hint: OS's are not supposed to corrupt their essential files over time, nor are they supposed to lock when running programs [necessitating a hard reboot and scandisk], nor are they supposed to crap themselves after 49 days of uptime because even Microsoft acknowledges that neither Win95 nor WinNT are stable enough to stay up longer than that, thus a 49-day reboot is coded in), even beta builds of Linux are marvels of stability:)
1b) Please call me when a version of Windows is widely available for Really Big Iron, such as is used for databases for insurance companies and the US Census Bureau.;) (AFAIK, they don't exist--not even WinNT ports (the largest iron WinNT was ever ported to, BTW, were Sun and Alpha ports--and those two ports are supposedly being discontinued). Most of 'em don't use *nixes, either--they use stuff you've probably never heard of like MVS, VM/CMS, VM/ESA, etc.) 2) The point wasn't on "who had more apps" or "who was prettier". It was "Who can run the base OS on more stuff"...which Linux beats Microsoft, hands down. (Itsys are teeny even compared to WinNT boxen, and with the recent ports to run as virtual machines under mainframes (not to mention the Linux/VAX project, the Linux/3090 project, etc.) Linux has probably just surpassed NetBSD as the OS which can run under the maximum number of architectures.) It's rather a different cock-fight than the usual comparisons, mind. 2a) I'm not sure that the virtual-machine versions of Linux are quite ready for prime-time (at least for what mainframes tend to be used for), but at least the option IS available should one want to run Linux as a shell (as opposed to a traditional mainframe virtual-machine OS like VM/ESA or MVS). Compared to the OS's that do tend to be used with mainframes, Linux is a fair sight more user-friendly; more people nowadays are familiar with *nixes in general (if from nothing else but student email accounts or computer science courses) than most mainframe OS's. Also--and this may be a shock to you to hear this--using Linux as a virtual engine actually would make it easier for users to set up stuff like Internet accounts--including PPP services for folks who want to use Windows from home.;)
(As a minor data point to add to that--the University of Louisville recently retired its old 3090 (which had been formerly used in EMCS and IS courses, then [when email first started becoming widely available and the EMCS and IS departments had largely gone to either PCs, an RS/9000, or a combination of SGI, HP, and DEC Alpha boxen] was used as the primary Internet account server for the Arts and Sciences school) in exchange for a DEC Alpha box. This was done for many reasons, partly because PPP is easier to set up on the Alphas and partly because IBM no longer officially supports VM/CMS on the 3090s [which was a Bad Thing, especially since they also no longer accepted security patches for Internet utils and daemons; at the time, there were two rather serious security bugs for IBM VM SMTP that were being widely abused, and I spent much of a summer giving the two unofficial patches to universities who'd been relay-raped by mailbombers:P]. If a virtual-machine version of Linux had been available for the 3090, it's possible they could have kept it in service a while longer instead of selling the thing off for scrap metal.:P)
3) You talk of things being "ready for the desktop"--most mainframes aren't because they have no real need to be. Realistically, the most useful setup for a Linux VM on a mainframe would be either for Internet-related network services (sorry, but Linux does have better support there anymore--at least sendmail and qmail do have protection against relay-raping and are regularly fixed to close any security holes found) or for a shell alternative for folks who are already used to working on *nixes at a shell prompt (instead of them having to learn the command sets for Yet Another OS). It's fairly obvious that you've never done much work with a mainframe--otherwise, you'd realise that there is no freaking desktop...these are Big Machines, things that fill up entire rooms complete with false floors to hide the miles of cable and Halon extinguisher systems. You aren't going to get right at a terminal, and you probably aren't even going to use an X-term with these beasts (unless the Linux VM running has it set up to do so); if you access these things directly at all instead of sending stuff back and forth across a network with the mainframe being basically a virtual disk, you're going to do it the old-fashioned, CLI, type-in-the-commands-on-a-TN3270 way.
Needless to say, unless and until some kind of Windows port makes it to such Big Iron, whether or not it's "ready for the desktop" is completely and utterly moot! Unless a Linux VM is installed and set up to use X-terms, you aren't going to get a pretty interface--the closest the OS the VM is running and your Windows box are going to get is with your Windows box running a terminal emulator like TeraTerm or VT3270. It's going to be done by text, the way Big Iron has always done it since we got away from programming boxen by switching plugs and relays and valves (vacuum tubes for us Yanks) around and went to punchcards and old Teletype terminals instead, before the nutty folks down at Xerox PARC came up with the idea of GUIs in the first place.
(And before you ask--yes, I know what I speak of here, too. I was at U of L back in the days when the 3090 was actively being used to teach Fortran, and also when it was used as the Arts and Sciences Internet server--U of L actually had set up a mess of old VT100 terminals because, other than through a terminal program, that was the only way the students could read their mail! Graphical interfaces for VM/CMS and most other mainframe OS's that run in virtual machines plain don't exist; Internet apps that most folks take for granted (un-relay-rapable mail servers, such things as even text-based WWW clients, etc.) had to be found or just weren't available, and tended to be years behind their *nix and/or Windoze equivalents. Needless to say, life got easier for the A&S students when they retired the old 3090 and got the nice Alpha server running OSF/1;) I wasn't QUITE there in the days of punchcards, but apparently they were still being used as late as the early 80's there--that's how long the 3090 was around--and the things were never really designed for anything much besides big databases and number-crunching and maybe BITNET connections. Most of the OS's for Big Iron actually date back to the days before CRTs became widely available, especially the Big Iron using virtual machine OS's. In fact, the ONLY Big Iron I know of at ALL that uses anything close to a GUI are a) the Alpha and Sun ports of Windows NT and b) a terminal and configuration program for OS/2 designed to act as a console for booting AS/400 boxen running OS/400 (in other words, the OS/2 program largely replaces the blinkenlights). There's no need for being "desktop pretty" if all you're doing with the thing is using it as a big-arse server (which most mainframes are)--most of the time you might not even be doing direct interaction with it anyway, and if you have to a CLI works wonderfully.;)
Has anyone ever tried mixing it with jim beam?? mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm yummy you'll be puking ur guts out all night:\
Well, duh. I can name many a reason for that:
1) Like the old saying goes: "Liquor then beer, never fear; beer then liquor, never sicker."
2) Guinness should not be drank with some plebian bourbon like Jim Beam.;) (Yes, I can afford to be a whisky bigot and in particular a bourbon bigot. I live in Kentucky, not terrifically far from the "Brewery Belt" at that; needless to say, we have a LOT of bourbon to sample from here.;) Jim Beam is pretty much the Budweiser of Kentucky bourbons anyways--about the only stuff lower on the scale is stuff like Heavin' Hell, erm, Heaven Hill (the Milwaukee's Beast of bourbon, and no, I am not making this up--Heavin' Hell truly sucks and can be used as a substitute for syrup of ipecac should you find the need to induce vomiting quickly in someone). More proper bourbons to drink with something like Guinness would be something far smoother--like, oh, Knob Creek (which is, surprisingly, made by the same folks who make Jim Beam but is really good, where Jim Beam is mostly good for getting drunk;) or Maker's Mark (yum) or, if you can afford it, Blanton's (supposedly the best bourbon in the world, and most definitely the most expensive--it's something like US$50 a fifth (750 ml bottle), and even the AIRPLANE bottles of the stuff are right around US$6 or US$7; this largely explains why I've never had the stuff).
I can testify this, though; if you get good bourbon instead of rotgut, you can drink beer then whisky or the reverse. (I should state, though, as an aside--if you are American and were not raised by raving alcoholics, do not try to even keep up with a native of Belfast at drinking. You Will Not Succeed. Especially if you are anything like me (a smallish woman with around half the mass of the guy from Belfast who has a fair amount of Irish and Native American ancestry--and who tends to get giggly after about, oh, two or three pints of hard cider:). I tried this. Once. I ended up piss drunk at 7 am laughing at bad Jackie Chan movies and waking up later that day with a rare hangover [I usually drink water after drinking to specifically prevent hangovers, and it usually works...not that day, though:P]...trust me. You Will Not Win. Not unless your name happens to be Snorri and you speak Khazad and people refer to you as their dwarven drinking buddy.:)
Since I am from Canada, I can understand many American "Beer" drinkers' aversions to drinking Guinness. American beer is very week and almost clear. Clear beer? It just isn't right. You should come up to eastern Canada and try some of our micro-brewed beers. Beers with 6 or 7 % alcohol content, not that wussy 4 %. And while I'm raving, how about that American "coffee". It's also virtually clear - kind of an amber color. You can even see the bottom of your cup! What's with that?
Speak for yerself. As an American, I can truthfully say that I cannot stand most American pisswater that passes itself off as beer. Literally about the only two "big" brands I find remotely drinkable are Red Dog (actually tastes a lot like the American version of Molson) and some of the Michelob stuff (because, among other things, Michelob actually makes heifeweisens and dark beers).
Most of what I drink tends to be either microbrew stuff, Negra Modelo (fortunately, Negra Modelo is very easy to find in Louisville, what with the largish Mexican population here) or stuff like heifeweisens that I have to go somewhere like Liquor Outlet (big warehouse stores for alcohol) to get...I'd drink more Guinness except that the stuff is ruddy expensive here (average price for a six-pack of Guinness in the Southeastern US tends to be around US$9--which is around Can$15 if I remember my exchange rates right), so it must remain an occasional treat *sigh*...
If I remember right, the main reason most beers in the US are a) pisswater and b) usually just 4 percent or so have to do with a) the fact that the largest brewery here (Budweiser) actually uses rice as a base (now you know why the Japanese love Bud--it tastes like a better version of Asahi or Kirin:) and because of funky rules regarding alcoholic strength and labeling here in the States (up to around six percent, if memory serves, can be labeled as beer, and two-percent beer is actually sold in some states; anything between six and twelve percent legally has to be sold as "malt liquor", and I'm not sure if it's legal to sell beer-like beverages that are over twelve percent).
But no, you're not the only one who can't drink American beer.:) My sister, on the other hand, can't see how I like dark beer (then again, her favourite beers are Miller Blight and Tequiza, so go figure)...
Coffee, on the other hand, is another thing altogether.;) I seriously take it that you have never had good, old, authentic "trucker coffee" in a truck-stop in the States. Trucker coffee is by no means clear--it is black as the Ace of Spades, is probably closer to a syrup than a liquid if done properly, and can be used as paint-stripper if one isn't brave enough to drink the stuff.;)
Needless to say, especially in the Southeast US, you will usually have a choice of either tea or trucker coffee (and if you're REALLY far south, like Louisiana, you start hitting that zone where you will get chicory in your coffee whether you want it or not--chicory actually makes coffee MORE bitter and gives it a unique flavour; Kentucky, I think, is around the northernmost limit of where chicory coffee is regularly sold). I can only assume wussy, see-through coffee is sold mostly up North...
(As an aside, I was raised on trucker-coffee, and most "normal" brews don't have that much taste to me. To me, "normal strength" means that even after a liberal amount of sugar and cream are added one can STILL taste coffee. Alas, my husband won't allow me to make non-espresso-based coffee anymore because he claims that the coffee I make could kick-start a corpse;) (Then again, that's the entire PURPOSE of trucker coffee--to make it so strong as to wake the very dead from their slumber and let them drive cross-country. Believe you me when I say that the modern geek has STILL not quite gotten to the level of caffeine dependence and experimentation as the modern American trucker;)
Microphones embedded in the cat's head enable her to recognise her own name and react by turning her head and blinking coyly.
Awwwwwwww:3 (You do realise that kitty "slow blinky eyes" is actually how kitties "kiss" each other, right? It's basically kitty-ese for "I love you", along with kitty making biscuits on you ("Mommy!") and nuzzling you ("You're mine and I'm marking you as mine and nobody else can have you"). Seriously. Get a good book on kitty body language like Catwatching...)
(As an aside, sometimes I've wondered if that's why me and Demi get along so well. I can "speak" cat, she does a better-than-average job for kitties at "speaking" human, so we can actually have pretty involved conversations.;)
What kind of a cat responds to its name? A proper robot cat will learn its name, but will not respond.
Actually, my cat will respond to her name, either by coming over or making little chirpy-meows at you or meowing "for ME?".
Then again, it can truthfully be said that my cat isn't exactly a normal kitty, either. Firstly, her name is Dementia (Demi for short) because as a kitten, her first act upon being brought home was to chase her tail and bite it continuously for five hours straight (and even to this day, she will still occasionally do it...chasechasechase, bite, "ow", licklicklick, "ooh, it's MOVING!", chasechasechase...rolling around in a ball of kitty). Secondly, she is about the only non-Siamese-descended kitty I know of that makes a concerted effort to learn English (Demi is what is known in cat circles as an Exotic Shorthair--half-Persian, half American Shorthair--they have very plush, almost chinchilla-like coats and shorter faces than most farm-kitties)...she can say "For me?", "Mom", "Throw it" VERY clearly, and she mutter-meows other stuff (like when she is having a conversation with Mommy or Daddy). Thirdly, Anything Mommy Does, Demi Must Do (including asking Mommy if clothes are for her, trying to help Mommy post to Slashdot, trying to help Mommy and/or Daddy fix dinner while asking if it's for her, etc.). She will even copy mannerisms at times...including trying to dance once when her dad went "Bust a move, Demi!" trying to get her off of a FAQ for a Playstation game:). Fourthly, for some weird reason her catnip gene never kicked in until she was two years old, and her catnip abuse consists of the following: a) roll on bag of catnip and attempt to kill bag. b) Pick up a mouthful and throw it after huffing catnip fumes when Mommy opens bag to get some out for Demi. c) Spend next four hours licking walls, carpet, and any other available objects. Fifthly, she was one of the few cats I've ever seen who drool when excited (she's finally gotten over that, thank Goddess).
This is why she is generally known as Demi the half-a-kitty around the house. The body is definitely that of a kitty. The brain, we have doubts about;) (And it's not because she's imprinted on humans, either...my husband got her when she was twelve weeks old (near the top limit of when you CAN adopt kittens before they start turning feral on you) and she'd lived all her life before then as a farm-kitten (among working farm-cats). She's just crazy.;)
ObWarning: The following post is liable to get just a bit ranty and pissy, mostly because it hits one of my major trigger-buttons. Don't worry, this time I'm not going to flame the fundies;) No, I've got another set to rant against...just keep that in mind if this sounds pissy.
Saxton dun said:
The issue I do want to address, though, is how do we prevent the innocent from stubmling across pr0n *mistakenly*? I don't want a 5 year old in my library, doing legitimate reading or, hell, reading about Pokèmon characters, I don't care, then hitting the wrong link... And don't come back trying to tell me that kind of thing doesn't happen. =)
Well, for starters...how about doing your job as a parent and (Cthulhu forbid!) actually supervising the little rugrat in the library instead of letting him run about and getting on stuff unsupervised?
What in the bloody nine layers of hell are you doing letting a five-year-old-kid run about unsupervised anywhere? (No, I don't care if he's in the library or not. By the gods, you shouldn't let kids that young be unsupervised--not at home, not at the library.)
I could name a million reasons why you don't ever let a kid that young be unsupervised anywhere--much less mucking about on a terminal in the library (and for what it's worth, it's not safe for you to let a kid run about unsupervised in a library, Internet access or no--among other things, he might find the exact same things in the "adult" section of the library you are so afraid of him finding online (yes, believe it or not, libraries carry not only "Playboy" but stuff like translations of the Kama Sutra;), he could be abducted or worse, he could hurt himself running around like a yard-ape...).
Let me ask you this--would you allow your five-year-old to walk around unassisted and without adult supervision anywhere outside of your backyard? Would you allow Junior to attend school, or go on field-trips, or even to cross the freakin' STREET by himself to go to a playground without adult supervision?
If you had an IQ of over, oh, your average resident in a state home for the profoundly mentally retarded, you'd say "Hell no". Because you know little Junior--being over five--barely knows how to tie his own shoes, much less safely navigate himself in a downtown area without getting lost or hurt. You'd want a responsible grownup with him in school, with him as she leads the kid-herd to the zoo, at the playground, and you sure as hell wouldn't let him cross busy streets by himself (not even if he knows the "look both ways" rule, because he forgets sometimes much as most five-year-olds will).
Guess what? The Internet is just the same as if you are taking Junior on a field-trip, or taking him to the park, or (shock! shock!) the actual library itself. He's freakin' five years old. I don't think it's unreasonable to be with Junior while he's looking on the Internet--not just to make sure he doesn't accidentially or on purpose stumble onto www.babeswithgreatbigtitties.com instead of Pokemon stuff, but because a) it could actually be an enriching experience for you AND him, b) you could well teach him some lessons if he (God forbid!) were to stumble upon some nekked chick (and trust me, he's going to be far more likely to ask "Mommy, why is that girl naked?" and be very confused than to become a rapist at the age of five from looking at a picture of a naked woman) like that you don't approve of that sort of thing, and c) because, by the God and the Goddess, you took that responsiblity to actually parent the kid when you did the Nasty Dance, nine months later Junior popped out, and you didn't hand him over to the orphan's home.
If you feel that, somehow, you cannot handle such a pressing responsibility as daring to parent little Junior instead of expecting the library staff, the complete written works of Dr. Seuss, the computer and Internet provider, Nintendo and all one hundred and fifty-two Pokemon, the school system, and the Teletubbies to act as babysitters and/or parentis in loco because you are too busy watching TV or posting to Slashdot or whatnot, there are plenty of people who can't have kids who would be more than willing and able to take the little monster off your hands and give him a loving, supporting home where people would give enough of a shite about him to parent him instead of expecting everyone else to parent him. Failing that, I'm sure there are plenty of wolf-packs in Alaska, Canada, Wyoming, and Michigan who'd probably do a decent job of raising the kid, because if you are so stuck on yourself like that, the kid would probably be better off in the long run being raised by wolves (at least the wolves would give a damn about the kid and parent him--wolf parents are very, very good parents, which you'd know if you watched so much as a special on the Discovery Channel, and I honestly think that most human parents could stand to learn some lessons from the canids on parenting;).
Yes, I'm very pissy about this. But it's exactly this crap--people expecting librarians, libraries, the Internet, all one hundred and fifty two Pokemon, the Teletubbies, Barney The Insipid Purple Hellwyrm, the boob-tube in general, and basically anyone but themselves to actually step in and parent their damn kids--which involves being involved in their lives, supervising them, giving them lots of love and support, knowing enough to see when Junior might be Seriously Bent or Very Ill and knowing when to get professional help, knowing exactly how much to hold onto them and how much to let go, and is by very definition a very labour-intensive process, especially among us apes [yes, it's been labour intensive since before we split from chimps--watch "People Of The Forest" sometime--it actually has a case of a chimp that died thanks to overprotective parents]--it's THAT crap which has given us such wonderful things as NC-17 movies being the theatrical kiss of death, the country swinging ever more to the theocratic right-wing, book-banning initiatives in schools, and yes, even little happy censorship initiatives like in Holland.
You get them because some Very Bad Folks (who, by and large, are control-freaks [who may not entirely be control-freaks of their own design; the vast majority are also members of Bible-based cults which have a VERY strong control structure and a major emphasis on obtaining Control and Power over others--a fair number are even folks who have been in this for multiple generations] who have been taught that they are literally the Chosen People, that it is their duty and their very destiny to force this entire nation and then the world to be a fundy theocracy whether folks want it or not, and whom are not only not above lying to get that goal but are actually taught how to do so [such stuff as "stealth candidates", using "code words" for fundy initiatives like "family" or "heritage", and an entire principle known as "Heavenly Deception" which basically means "lying is perfectly ok as long as it's in the service of God" are a part of this]) who will actually use this (partly because they are outright taught to be predatory and sneaky to "win battles for God") as an excuse to sell a whole, nasty bill of goods that most folks would normally not agree with...by claiming "it's for the children...you don't want your children to be corrupted and harmed, do you?" A lot of folks (not coincidentially, the same ones who let their five-year-old kids run around unsupervised in libraries and on the Internet and let Mickey Mouse, Simba, La-La, Barney, and Elmo babysit their kids) fall for this, because they don't bother to do the homework in researching the groups pushing all the censorship stuff--all they hear is "this is protecting your kids from porn" and they think "Whew...I don't have to parent my kids, I'll just let Cyber Sitter (or X-Stop or BESS or any of the other censorware programs) babysit my kids." They might not realise that's what they're thinking, but they are. (Ironically--the groups that have pushed for censorware, especially the Religious Right groups, probably do more harm to kids themselves than do "naughty pictures". A whole nasty look at their agenda (including links to comparisons between Bible-based cults and Scientology) is here--including a mess of links to stuff in the very words of the groups. Also, fun statistics: upwards of one to fifty kids a year are killed in attempted "exorcisms" by Bible-based cults (where the Religious Right groups that push censorware get a lot of their membership, especially hardcore members); gay kids who grow up in fundamentalist households, especially in Bible-based cults, have the single highest rates of both suicide and being victims of abuse of any group (per population) for which statistics are kept; kids in Bible-based cults are victims at a higher rate in general of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse than the general population.)
Parents will understand that there is a time and a place for children to be educated about the "reality" of things in this world, and sometimes age 5 isn't always the best time to explain all the hate-groups in our world and the high existance of pornographic material.
Well, you know what? Sometimes Things Happen, and even though we don't want to have to explain horrible stuff like that to our kids, we have to in terms they'll understand. It's part of being a parent, you know.
Black kids, and in fact MOST minority kids, have to sometime in their kindegarden or first-grade years have The Talk regarding why little Joe there just called them a bad name like "nigger"...and they have to explain to kids why this is such a hurtful thing and why racism is Bad. I bet those parents wish they never had to do it, but they do. That's life.
A fair number of parents, especially in the more rural parts of the South and the Midwest, have to have The Talk with their kids at a rather young age about why the Klan are considered Bad Folks (if you're unaware--in many Midwestern towns, branches of the KKK will have parades down streets or rallies in downtown areas; in some areas, they've even attempted to join "Adopt A Highway" highway-beautification programs, so even if the kids never see a Klan protest they might have to have The Talk anyways). I had The Talk myself around the age of five, when we were going to a family park/picnic-area and passed through a rural town in Kentucky--which just happened to have a Klan march going on at the time.:P
Parents with girls usually have to have The Talk around the age of five to seven when boys won't play with girls and call them names.
Parents sometimes even have to explain to five-year-olds that the "Show-world Dance Emporium and Blue Movies" store they passed when going downtown sells things they don't approve of and aren't for grownups.
For that matter, you also have to explain to kids why drugs are bad, and why kids shouldn't drink or smoke. Yes, you sometimes have to do this young (Are you aware, incidentially, that most drug-education programs now want to start such education as early as kindegarten and first grade? That they routinely start as early as the second and third grade nowadays?). Yes, it'd be nice to let them have their innocence longer, but sometimes Stuff Happens, and trust me when I say it doesn't require the Internet.
(For instance--how would you explain it to your kid if--say--he saw a Klan rally outside his school because they're talking about keeping busing (this is not uncommon in parts of the Midwest and South, by the way)? How would you explain it if he found an issue of Playboy all by his lonesome (yes, kids have been known to do that)? What if (Cthulhu forbid) someone were to expose himself to the little tyke? Or someone stole his Pokemon cards or ripped him off in a trade?)
The point is, you are going to eventually have to explain to him that people do certain things that are not within your family values. If you do your job as a parent, and you don't let electronic babysitters (or print babysitters) raise your kids for you instead, your kids will (assuming they aren't Seriously Bent to begin with, which you can't do a hell of a lot about without professional help--most kids aren't Seriously Bent, though) learn what is Right and Wrong according to your family's values, and you'll probably be really surprised how many of the core values he takes with him as an adult. (Again, this is assuming you raise your child, rather than a) using electronic babysitters or b) trying to train the kid under an atmosphere of fear and pain rather like a lion-tamer does with his whip. All too many households (especially those in which many members, or especially Mommy and Daddy, are in coercive groups) do take the latter approach, and if the kids don't end up completely brainwashed, Broken, or dead from it they usually end up resenting the parents and going the opposite way...)
If (Cthulhu forbid) your kid is one of the few who is Seriously Bent, again, short of professional help there isn't much you can do about it. It's also about the only way your little five-year-old is going to be permanently scarred by ANY form of porn. If you do your job as a parent (instead of expecting the television, the Internet, censorware programs, the school system, and the librarian to babysit your kid for you) then you should be able to see the early signs that your kid is Bent before he goes off doing Stupid Things like trying to outdo the Columbine Massacre or going about raping cattle and pillaging women, and hopefully you will get some help for that kid before he hurts someone. (By the way--most kids that DO go off like that either have something seriously Wrong in their brain chemistry or wiring that has probably existed from birth, or are victims of rather severe abuse and/or neglect. If you are doing your job as a parent, the latter isn't likely, and the former is basically a matter of a crap-shoot with genetics (or possibly environmental conditions or both--probably "both") that there's not much one can do with it--especially since we know only some of the causative genes for two of the mental illnesses known to have a definite genetic factor, schizophrenia and bipolar illness.)
As for Junior seeing porn and hate-groups on the net at the age of five--the best antidote, again, is to do your job as a parent. The Internet is just like a downtown area or busy mall, and you wouldn't let your kid walk around there unsupervised at the age of five; just like you insist Junior hold your hand crossing the street, make sure he only uses the Internet when you're with him. (This way, he's not going to stumble on anything like bigtitties.com or surfnazis.org or anything like that; if, Cthulhu forbid, you do--you explain that this is something you disapprove of and is "yucky" or "bad", then you go on to find Pokemon pages--just like my grandma explained to me how the Klan were bad folks because they hated black people and Jews, then we went to the campground and had lots of fun.) Raise your kids with your values (this is not to say "cram them down their throat on pain of physical pain"--it's possible to raise your kids with values by acting as a good example to your kids and having those values in place continuously, and it usually works better doing it that way too;) and--again, if they're not Seriously Bent to start out with--they should be ok. (If you have Nazis or the Klan imparting their values to your five-year-old, you have a problem much deeper than the possibility that little Johnny is regularly hitting stormfront.org. Either Johnny is seriously bent, or (far more likely) you are not doing your job as a parent, are simply using the Internet as a babysitter whilst you check out whatever at the library, and as a result the Nazis or the Klan are now teaching Junior. That's a case where you fucked up, not the library nor Johnny nor even the Nazis.)
In relation to this--this is why censorware is bad. You're not only using the Internet as a babysitter (and the censorware, at that) instead of taking the time to parent the kid, you are letting someone else who does not have the same values as you, and may have values which you neither agree with nor want imparted to your child parent your child for you. Most censorware supports, at best, a very right-wing agenda (a lot of stuff on feminism, birth control and even body education for females and males, safer sex, gay/les/bi/trans teens, and even stuff on breast, uterine, ovarian, cervical, and testicular cancer is blocked; in many cases, the Constitution, anti-censorship groups, the ACLU, and especially anti-censorware groups have been blocked) and much of it supports an outright fundamentalist agenda. (No offense, but if and when I do have kids--a decision I have not made yet, because the possibility exists that I may not have kids for a long time, if ever; I'm sure as hell not ready for it now, because a) I don't have the patience required to have 'em and parent them properly, and b) there's a lot of stuff I have to work out before I'm gonna be ready to have kids--one thing I do not want them exposed to until I've had time to educate them on the mores I want them brought up with is the fundamentalist agenda...considering that many Religious Right groups get much of their membership from Bible-based cults and the fact that a lot of Bible-based cults use very deceptive marketing techniques to lure teens in especially (including "hell house" haunted houses, "free pizza" dinners, "Christian rock" concerts, and even "motivational anti-drug speeches" where kids are forced to hear sermons and not allowed to leave until they are over--many kids have joined the groups under such circumstances), and further considering that I happen to be a walkaway from such a group I was raised in...I don't want any kids of mine hurt like I was, and I'd rather not have fundamentalists mucking about with the moral education of my kids till they're old enough to decide on their own, thanks. This is also why I'm worried on the whole "grandparents' visitation rights" thing, by the way; my folks, and much of my extended family, are still involved in the cult [most recruited by my birthmother, no less] and I ESPECIALLY don't want Grandma trying to turn my kids into good little fundamentalists, but if "grandparents' visitation rights" laws are held up as Constitutional I might not have much of a choice to keep them from that (unless I delay having kids till my birthmother dies)...)
Nobody ever said it was going to be easy being a parent. If anything, it's the hardest job in the world. (I'm at least smart enough to know I'm not up to raising kids at this point in my life unless it's the four-footed, feline sort of kid [and hubby tells me I'm overprotective in THAT and spoil our "daughter" Demi the half-a-kitty rotten;)].) If you don't think you can hack it, then please, for both the sake of your sanity and the sake of the kid, give 'em to someone who CAN take the time and care to raise them and actually parent them instead of using them as a little droid to be programmed or instead of using damn near every electronic babysitter known to man to babysit them with. Give them to a pack of wolves or your neighbour's German Shepherd to raise if you can't find humans to do it. They'd be better off with THAT (even counting all the social problems feral kids have when they come back to human society) than with a parent who doesn't give enough of a shit about his own kids to parent them instead of using all one hundred and fifty two Pokemon to babysit his kids, or not caring enough to be physically there and present to make sure that Nazis aren't recruiting your five-year-old for the next Racial Holy War, or thinking his kid is less a decent young human who can be raised to be a decent adult human and more a sinful, icky thing that needs to be indoctrinated and mustn't ever, EVER be allowed to get "dirty" or "sinful" (because either extreme is going to fuck your kid up, one way or another--look at me;). Orphanages would be better in the long run if you can't hack it. (And some folks can't. No offense, but the ones who can't should take the fragging responsibility as an adult and the Brains that God/Goddess/[insert your favourite deity here]/the process of evolution gave you, and make the active decision not to breed unless and until you can make the commitment required to properly parent and raise your younguns, and if you've already popped them out and can't take the responsibility, for the sake of the kids, give them to someone who can. It's pretty much people not wanting to take responsibility in the first place that not only has led to kids not being found to be Bent till they go nutzoid and shoot up half a school, but people demanding censorware crap on all their favourite electronic babysitters and wanting them to be made "kid-safe" because some control-freak from the Religious Right is just predatory enough to prey on both their worries and their wanting a minimum of responsibility to push for that crap on behalf of wanting to turn the effective government of the United States into a giant Bible-based cult...and because the folks don't want to take responsibility, they get goaded into this crap (especially if it's claimed it's for the children)...they're more than willing to go along. For the love of Grud, show some backbone and take responsibility, folks...:P)
For anybody who followed the problems Trey Parker had in getting the South Park movie accepted with an R rating from the MPAA... I didn't follow it, what was his problems?
Basically, when Trey Parker and company offered the movie to the MPAA ratings board the first time, the ratings board rated it "NC-17" (this is roughly equivalent to an "18" cert in most countries, and is essentially box-office poison in the US--more on that below).
Trey Parker and company were, understandably, more than a bit pissed (seeing as they'd ALREADY gotten a movie rated "NC-17" by the MPAA ratings board--"Orgazmo", a sex comedy--which also pretty much placed them on the MPAA rating board's shitlist to begin with).
So, they went through at each point where the MPAA had made a specific objection, and made those parts even worse...and the next time the movie was presented, it actually got an "R" rating (this would be roughly equivalent to a "15" cert in most countries, only a) it applies to 17 and under and b) is generally enforced more strictly, especially at the time SP:BLaU was released in the US).
What he said in interviews about the movie was that each time they came to him and said he couldn't do something he would put in something 100x worse. Eventually he would put in something the censors didn't understand and so they accepted it. You mean its actually so bad over there that they can dictate what you can't have in movies?!
For all intents and purposes, yes, unfortunately.
Basically, here's the situation in the US: Firstly, the vast majority of films are passed through the MPAA's ratings board (set up after an even more draconian censorship scheme, the infamous Hayes Code [which even banned such things as women in miniskirts, tongue-kisses, ANY profanity worse than "damn" or "hell", and even proscribed regular kisses over a certain length] was finally done away with in 1968 or so), which is a group of six or eight folks picked to represent "most of America" (many are suspected to be housewives; nobody really knows who all is on the MPAA ratings board, as the membership is kept very secretive). Movies aren't required to be rated by law (except in some towns), but the vast majority are (literally the only exceptions are porn movies, independent films, and [mostly] imports).
Also, the vast majority of movie theatres in the US (even the vast majority of art-movie theatres) are owned by three or four major chains (National Amusements, Cinemark, Loew's, and there's probably one or two more I'm forgetting) that, a long time ago, were actually owned by the movie theatres themselves until the Department of Justice ordered the studios to divest themselves of movie chains (this was in the 50's). The number of independent movie theatres in the US probably is less than 5% of all movie theatres in the United States, and is almost exclusively either small-town operations or art-house movie theatres that specialise in import films, cult-classic films, art films, and anime.
The vast majority of movie theatre chains in the United States have standing policies that they will not show NC-17 or unrated films in their theatres. (In addition, some counties and cities--most notably, some towns in Texas--have or formerly had ordinances against NC-17 or unrated films being shown within town limits.) The vast majority of movie theatres in the US are multiplex theatres; the only real outlet for NC-17 and/or unrated films, in most cases, is either through the direct-to-video market (which is basically what has happened with porn in the US) or through art-house movie theatres (which are only usually available in large cities or in places with large collegiate populations--Louisville, Kentucky [which has a metro population approaching a million people] could only support one of the two art-movie theatres in town, leading to the much lamented closing of the Vogue Theatre).
To make matters even worse, the largest video-rental chain in the United States (Blockbuster Video) will not offer NC-17 or unrated movies for rent, and even has a habit of censoring even R-rated movies (one reason I will not rent from Blockbuster, by the way). Most chain stores, most notably Wal-Mart (pretty much the largest store chain in the US) will not sell NC-17 videos. Most cable channels, even pay ones (with the notable exception of Cinemax) will not show NC-17 rated movies, and most "pay-per-view" channels will not show NC-17 movies except on the "adult-only" (read; mostly porn flicks) channels. The vast majority of places like grocery stores (which actually do rent out a lot of videos, at least in the Southeastern US) don't rent out NC-17 videos.
Now, keep in mind with all this--in many parts of the United States (I would go so far as to say the vast majority of the US that is not in large cities), often the only video rental placea available are Blockbuster Video (or maybe Blockbuster and the one or two mom-and-pop video places Blockbuster hasn't successfully run out yet) and grocery chains. In most of the rural and even suburban parts of the United States, often the only large stores that may sell video tapes are Wal-Mart, grocery stores, and possibly if in a larger town an electronics store like H. H. Gregg or Circuit City or Best Buy (none of which sell NC-17 videos, by the way). Most of these areas might not even get cable, but get pay channels through either DSS or "big dish" cable. Many of these areas are 50 miles away or more from the nearest specialised video store that might sell NC-17 rated tapes (usually something like Suncoast Video). A fair number of these folks, especially in the more rural parts of the United States, may even run afoul of local obscenity ordinances that de facto define NC-17 rated movies as obscene (yes, these are illegal according to our Constitution, but until someone gets arrested and files a lawsuit over it, there's not much that can be done). For most Americans, about the only way to get an NC-17 rated movie or video is to a) see it at an art-movie theatre (and hope it's not owned by one of the chains that refuses to show NC-17 rated movies), b) buy the thing at a video-sales store or rent it at somewhere large that has an over-18 section (considering Blockbuster Video is about as agressive at running competitors out as Wal-Mart is, this can be hard, especially in smaller towns), or c) buy it online (especially if you are in a podunk town, or unfortunate enough to live somewhere where NC-17 movies are literally against the law).
To make things worse yet: A fair number of papers and even paper chains actually have policies against advertising NC-17 or unrated films. In some communities, there are actual bans on advertising of NC-17 or unrated films (even for the video market).
Needless to say, because of this, nobody wants their movie rated NC-17 if they can keep from it, because almost nobody will show it and almost nobody will even hear about it or be able to rent it in most places. (What is especially ironic is that the whole "NC-17" rating was set up as an alternative to the "X" rating--the old US "18 cert" equivalent, which had pretty much been co-opted by porn films because literally the only places willing to show X-rated movies were art-movie theatres and porn-houses. Of course, since they never attacked the REAL problem (the fact that the largest theatre chains refused to show any kind of "18-cert"-type film period, not to mention a slew of unconstitutional ordinances banning the showing and/or advertisement of such films and the policies of a LOT of newspapers not to advertise such films in any form or fashion) they ended up with exactly the same problems with the NC-17 cert as they did with the old X cert.:P)
This is basically why Trey Parker had to lobby (and eventually outfox) the MPAA's ratings board. If he hadn't, "South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut" would have suffered the exact same fate that "Orgazmo" faces ("Orgazmo" is supposedly a screamingly funny movie, but it is next to impossible to find and pretty much never showed anywhere--because it got the NC-17 Mark of Death from the MPAA ratings board). Which would suck.:P
I dont want to sound mean or anything, but,.. what is the point of these recent posts? I dont live in Michigan, and if I did, probably not Holland. Some of you don't even live in the US... Why should we care about what happens in Michigan? Ok, the geek compound is based there,so what?, discuss this via e-mail not a thread on/.
It's Important, because (among other things) the various and sundry Religious Right groups in the US who had their sights on Holland were planning on using Holland as a precedent. (If you want to know more about their agenda--on which I've posted at least three very longish posts on Slashdot in the history of the threat to Holland's libraries--here's a good (if pissy) summary here; I'm not gonna type out all that mess again right this second.;)
Basically, they badly need a precedent for library filtering right now; they've had two separate cases where the smack has been laid down on attempted library filtering initiatives by no less than US Federal Courts (most notably in Loudon County, VA). They were sure they would get a definite win in Holland, seeing as Holland is not only one of the most conservative towns in North America but also is close to no less than three colleges run by very conservative churches.
They did not get their precedent. (Let me be the first to say "WAHOO!!!" in that case, drink to those who busted ARSE to keep Holland's libraries and Internet connections free, and thanks for posting this on Slashdot.)
However--it's very, very likely (especially if you live in smaller towns in the Midwest, or in Southeastern parts of the US that have large fundamentalist populations--like, for instance, Pensacola, FL [which actually has a large Bible-based cult running out of it] or Springfield, MO [which has been described as the "buckle" of the Bible Belt] or anywhere in Virginia). Even moderate towns like Louisville, Kentucky could be targeted (we have no less than three large, vocal fundy groups here--one of which is literally a Bible-based cult; it seems the happy folks who are running the Southern Baptist Seminary are also working very hard to turn the Southern Baptists into the next denomination to have severe problems with Bible-based cults, as the seminary has gone increasingly coercive).
In other words, It Can (And Probably Will) Happen Next In Your Town. Just like record-ban and concert-ban initiatives have. Just like huge abortion protests have. Just like the calls that have gone on for well nigh over thirty years for censorship of school materials and forcing kids to listen to Christian sermons in schools even if neither they nor their parents are Christians (there are public school systems in Kentucky that still try to put up the Ten Commandments [Protestant King James version] even though Kentucky is under a direct court order from the US Supreme Court not to do so; there are public schools in Florida that offer "Bible History" courses that are very thinly disguised versions of the exact lesson plans they use in fundamentalist Sunday schools). There are even attempts to get public libraries censored in many large cities (Columbus, OH has recently had to fight "Family Friendly Libraries", an AFA splinter group).
These folks have an agenda, and we must always be on guard lest we be snuck up on and caught unawares. Holland is a big wake-up call for those who might not be aware of how the Religious Right is slowly trying to take over everything it can in the pursuit of their ultimate goal. Those of us in anticensorship circles and those who are walkaways from the various Bible-based cults and Religious Right groups that promote this stuff have seen it literally for years.
Thanks for posting. Mixing Christian fundamentalism and politics is like mixing fertilizer and a Ryder truck. One can only imagine the Oklahoma City that these psychopaths have in mind for us if they ever get their way.
Trust me when I say you do not want to find out what they may have in mind. Almost everything points to it being very, very, very bad for the humans of this planet and for other living things...
Specifically, an awful lot of people in the Religious Right seem to think that a fair amount of stuff in Revelation (the Book of Apocalypse for you Catholic/Orthodox folks) points to a worldwide nuclear war. For years, the fundies have claimed Russia would be the one to start it--when this finally became completely untenable, they claimed it was Iraq. In any case, they're firmly convinced that SOMEONE is going to start some kind of nuclear conflict which will erupt worldwide.
There are actually a surprising number of books out in the fundamentalist circles regarding this...some of them even trying to reach out to popular culture (like Hal Linden's books).
The really scary thing about this is a) they are firmly convinced this is a Good Thing because b) they are also firmly convinced that before this happens they are going to be Raptured up and will get the enjoyment of seeing the sinners (and the entire planet) burn in nuclear hellfire from front-row seats in Heaven. (Yeah, there's a rather shocking amount of hate and resentment even in their stories of Eternal Reward. Sick, huh?).
I think I can truthfully say that little would scare me more than a leader of the Religious Right with his finger on The Button. And I can base that on how (before I walked away) I used to see the preacher and darn near the entire congregation nearly jizz themselves when the Cold War threatened to heat up...and later (after I'd walked away but was still forced to occasionally attend) when the Gulf War hit because they were utterly, completely convinced that this was going to be the Big One...and after THAT, Y2K (and in all three cases it was going to be Russia's Fault--these guys STILL aren't out of the Cold War mindset!)...I don't want these guys anywhere NEAR anything remotely resembling a nuclear weapon, thank you.:P
It is interesting you mention Oklahoma City, though. The perpetrators are suspected of being in with Christian Identity groups; Christian Identity is a really warped version of fundamentalism that claims that white folks are the "true Children of Israel" and that the Jews are actually the literal children of Satan--all the "brown" and "yellow" folks are apparently "mud people" in their eyes. In fact, the bombing is thought to have been done to parallel the plot of a book popular in Christian Identity and other racist circles called "The Turner Diaries" which basically depicts these groups committing various terrorist acts and eventually overthrowing the US Government.
Now, I'm sure most of you are wondering just why the hell I'm mentioning Christian Identity when we're talking about (presumably) relatively non-racist fundies. Well, it turns out the two do have some links, especially on the more radical sides of the Religious Right that they never want to show on TV...
First off, the US Taxpayer's Party (the second-largest fundamentalist party in the US [the first is that part of the Republican Party that the Religious Right has effectively hijacked]--it also may be now running under the name "Constitution Party")--which has explicit party platforms calling for the US to essentially establish a theocracy--has links to not only a veritable who's who of the Religious Right (among them--James Dobson of Focus on the Family [a branch group of FoF, Family Research Council, is heavily pushing the censorware drive in Holland] [info here], Senator Bob Smith [info here], Matt Trewhella [who has advocated stuf like bombing abortion clinics, is a Christian Reconstructionist, and his group Missionaries to the Preborn darn near makes Operation Rescue look pacifist in comparison; info here], Pat Buchanan [yes, as in the guy who's now going for the Reform Party nomination and who has almost singlehandedly succeeded in destroying that party--info here], the heads of Operation Rescue, and the Rev. Rushdoony [the "main guy" behind Christian Reconstructionism--the canard that the Founding Fathers somehow meant the US to be a theocracy]) but also a surprising number of links to militia groups and--here's the kicker--Christian Identity groups (info here and here (this one is especially good--it turns out the very leader of the US Taxpayers Party runs a militia and calls for churches to form "Christian Patriot" militias), here, here, here, and here; if memory serves, there's also reference in the ADL's report on militias).
There's some more info here on the politics of the US Taxpayers Party. Keep in mind that this party has gotten big support from the Religious Right and (should the Republican Party ever find its cojones again and tell the Religious Right exactly where to go) it's strongly thought that (at the least) the 35 states in which the GOP party apparatus has been hijacked by the Religious Right would go to the US Taxpayers Party, as well as the majority of the Religious Right supporters of the GOP now. As it is, the US Taxpayers Party got on the ballot in 40 states last Presidential election...which is damned scary enough.
For some more happy links between the "non-racist" bits of the Religious Right and the scary folks making fertiliser bombs...
1) The Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation (a big Religious Right think-tank/bankroller--these are the guys who have the adverts for adoption saying "Choose Life" and the guys who have Jeff Gordon and NFL stars and the lady from "Children of a Lesser God" hawking "Power for Living" on TV ["Power for Living", btw, is basically a guide on how to get involved in coercive fundy groups:P]...) has founded at least one Christian Identity group in past.
2) Larry Pratt, who has worked with Pat Buchanan (among others) has some rather extensive links to militia and outright racist groups (more info, including on links between the Religious Right and the far right, here).
3) It seems that the Coors family (major bankrollers of the Religious Right) and the Heritage Foundation may have links to racist groups (info here).
4) The Free Congress Foundation, a subsidary group of the Heritage Foundation, has links with many racist and fascist groups (info here).
5) Pat Robertson could actually be considered borderline between "non-racist" fundies and the scary guys on the far right. Many of his books have actually contained "code words" common in the racist community, and at times he's been outright overt about it...it's probably best that you look here (thank you, Google, for caching--surprisingly, this is actually a critique from a conservative viewpoint!) or here to hear the guy in his own words...
6) More info here on a funding-group active in California.
This is not to indicate fundamentalists are racists. Most aren't, and I suspect most would be shocked to find what their leaders support...but there ARE links there, sadly. I'd be remiss if I didn't point that out (and for youse in Holland--it turns out that Focus on the Family is the group most consistently associated with the US Taxpayers Party--you may be able to use this to your advantage, possibly).
Slashdot Mirror
Maul dun said:
You too, eh? (We shall turn the editors into sho'nuff otaku yet! :)
I've not seen Serial Experiments Lain yet (friend of mine has it though)...I have a hard time believing it can be a worse mindfsck than End of Evangelion, though. (Basically, people whinged about the last two episodes...so the writer crafted something designed to be completely and utterly so much of a mindfsck that mind-altering substances are almost essential to keep one's head from hurting, much less understanding the plot. :)
Heyyyy...I've heard of Cowboy Bebop, at least :) (Heard the soundtracks before seeing the actual anime, which (if memory serves) JUST officially came out in the States)
Agreed, damn good story. I STILL think that Vash the Stampede from Trigun would win, though, if just out of dumb luck :)
*ROTFLMAO at mention of Nadesico*
Yes! Definitely one of the funnier anime I've ever seen (ranks right up there with Trigun and all the various Slayers series, IMHO)...one of the best pisstakes I've seen, hands down. :)
A few other picks I'd add:
Damn near everyone has already mentioned Rurouni Kenshin and Escaflowne and Evangelion. :) I'd REALLY recommend you get a hold of these if you can (Escaflowne and Eva should be no prob now, Kenshin's gonna be harder--most of it is only available in fansubs, most fansubbers aren't distributing it because Sony's officially announced it will be released stateside...though out west where you lucky bastards can watch anime on PBS instead of Red Dwarf can prolly catch it under the title of Samurai X (what the hell was Sony smoking when they came up with that title, anyways?)...) Same for Ah!Megumisama/"Oh! My Goddess" (you HAVE to admire any anime where the World Tree is Big Iron, there are programmer goddesses, one of the main characters is a CS major, and Fortran is mentioned :).
Slayers in any way, shape or form it comes. :) The first two series, Slayers and Slayers Next, have been officially released Stateside; supposedly Slayers Try is either planned to be shown or is being shown on Sci-Fi Channel. Pretty much imagine Lodoss War, or a D&D game, gone horribly, HORRIBLY wrong... :)
Lodoss War for that matter--rumour has it that this anime was based off a Japanese RPG that itself was based off AD&D :) (Maybe Slayers WAS based off a Lodoss War game gone horribly wrong... :) Good series though.
For that matter, if you like Slayers and Nadesico, try to get a copy of Lost Universe--basically, Slayers In Space :) (And done by the same crew what brought us Slayers, yet)
People have already mentioned Utena. :) I've not seen all of it yet but looks pretty good :)
Nazca is good if you're into swordplay...only thing that bothers me is the Incas with katanas (sometimes being into ancient American history can be a detriment... :) but VERY interesting series involving reincarination, etc.
Trigun, Vash The Freakin' Stampede. 'Nuff Said. :) (For those who have seen Kenshin: Imagine Sanosuke with blond hair, with the utter luck of Coyote. :)
One anime I'm really surprised hasn't been brought up yet is Princess Mononoke--especially since it's the first anime to receive a major US theatrical release. Gaiman's job at translating and the dub isn't bad at all; then again, I've seen both the official version and a fansub. (This is also one of the few dubs I've ever seen that doesn't make me wince.)
Bubblegum Crisis, if you've not seen it already. Stay the fucking HELL away from the dub; it sucks, sucks, SUCKS (it's possibly the best known way of inflicting torture on poor otaku other than repeatedly playing the Tenchi March :P).
El Hazard is a must-see--both the OVA and TV series. (The TV series is screamingly funny in parts.)
Probably Tenchi Muyo OVA; sub or dub is fine, even though Tenchi sounds amazingly like Kermit the Frog and Ryoko sounds amazingly like she's originally from Louisville, Kentucky :) The series does go downhill from there, so basically check to see if you like it first. Avoid "Tenchi Forever" like the goddamned plague. :)
Any Microsoft-hating geek owes it to himself to at least watch Magical Girl Pretty Sammy episode 2 ("Revenge of the Giant Electronic Brain" or something like that). Possibly the FUNNIEST pisstake I have EVER seen of Microsoft. Mac fans will appreciate it more, because Washu's computer looks VERY similar to an iBook (maybe Pioneer should sue Apple for gimmick infringement... :)
Card Captor Sakura, if you can get hold of a good fansub. (Supposedly will be officially released soon Stateside...not bad shoujo stuff, though, and I tend not to like shoujo. :)
People have already mentioned Vampire Hunter D and Vampire Princess Miyu. Go watch. Seriously.
If one is into more "adult" material, F-Cubed (especially "Night of the F-Cubed") and Ogenki Clinic are screamingly funny hentai. :)
People have already mentioned Macross Plus. Go watch. Seriously.
BGC 2040 should not be watched if one has previously seen any Bubblegum Crisis, as it's basically in an alternate universe and a failure to remember this may cause headaches and/or ranting. (Then again, Tenchi Muyo is even worse--no less than four or five SEPARATE universes with the same characters. Go fig.)
I really wish Sony would hurry the hell up and bring Rurouni Kenshin over Stateside to video so I don't have to watch fourth-generation Hecto Abysmal (HECTO is a fansub group; if you have a choice between HECTO and anyone else go with the other guys; for those of you who whinge on about Shinsen Gumi fansubs, HECTO makes Shinsen Gumi fansubs look like Masterpiece Theatre in comparison; it helps to have a working knowledge of Cantonese to understand HECTO subs--have I gotten it across that HECTO subs really ARE abysmal? :) fansubbed copies. Me want my Kenshin, damnit :)
I wish TV Tokyo would start an American version of Anime X (Anime X is a Japanese all-anime channel which TV Tokyo--the major broadcasters of anime in Japan--runs on the Japanese DSS service); if they did, I would WILLINGLY get digital satellite for that. Same for anyone who did an uncensored anime channel (have I ever mentioned just how MUCH I hate what the US Censorship Bored did to Sailor Moon and DBZ, and why I shudder in fear every time I read that one post that insinuates Cartoon Network might be carrying Tenchi Muyo? :P).
I wish one of the PBS affiliates would show Britcoms and the other would show anime on Saturday nights; then I could die a happy otaku :)
(OK, does it show I'm just a wee bit addicted? Blame it on my loving crack-pusher friends who have nearly 1000 tapes of anime between them and have formed an informal otaku society here. :)
Fialar dun said:
Now, now, now...please don't insult dinosaurs by comparing them to Microsoft. :)
Dinosaurs by and large didn't lumber (about the only ones that DID are the really huge ones, like apatosaurs and diplodocus and titanosaurs--those were the dinosaurian equivalent of elephants and mammoths, though); most of them actually went along at a good trot, and more than a few were speedy. :) There is evidence that dinosaurs lived in areas where it DID snow (not as much as now, certainly, but ancient Alaska DID get a couple of inches of snow a year in Cretaceous times). There is a considerable body of evidence that theropods at least, and probably all dinosaurs, had some degree of warm-bloodedness.
Incidentially, just to note--dinosaurs aren't entirely extinct, either. Most of the dinosaurs died off, yes. The dinosaur equivalent of insectivorous bats (which started off as a little branch from maniraptorian theropods--the same group that includes oviraptors, T. rex, and damn near ALL of the feathered dinosaurs found so far) was lucky enough and (just as importantly) tiny enough to survive, and happily that branch survives as the critters we now know as birds. (Some even LIKE snowy areas. Most notably, Linux itself has a snow-loving little dinosaur known as Tux the Penguin--Tux is closer to what dinosaurs were REALLY like. ;)
The reason I mention tiny--well, in big extinctions it's been found it helps to be small if you want to survive them. The smallest non-avian dinosaurs around at the time the Big Rock hit were around the size of ducks or larger--modern birds, which were starting to come around at the end of the Cretaceous, were more sparrow-sized.
We also know (mostly from some really incredible fossil remains over the past ten to twenty years) that most of what birdies have--brooding behaviour, feathers, the reason birds use feathers instead of skin-flaps, even their metabolism (which was probably around mammal-level by the Jurassic, and which is the highest known in the animal kingdom now--sparrows have normal body temperatures of around 43 degrees Celsius (or 110 degrees for us Yanks)...)--are all from non-flying ancestors. Some think even T. rex had feathers now (at least T. rex hatchies, and possibly even adults---boy, THAT shatters a lot of illusions, doesn't it? ;). It would also surprise a lot of folks to know that the closest dinosaurian relative to the "bird" line happens to be none other than dromaeosaurs like Deinonychus, and there is some evidence dromaeosaurs could be secondarily flightless (it doesn't take a lot to turn Archaeopteryx into a deinonych--there's a wonderful pic of what a feathered deinonych probably looked like here.)
The same could happen to mammals, really--in fact, some could argue it IS happening--but in a big extinction event, the major survivors would probably be mice and insectivorous bats. (Dinosaurs just had the crap luck not to have evolved mouse-equivalents before the rock fell.) If it weren't for mousies, mammals could well end up in the same boat dinosaurs ended up in--all but one branch of bats being wiped out, and the "bats" (or birds, in the case of dinosaurs) having to carry on evolution from there. For that matter, archosaurs including dinosaurs could become dominant again (they've taken the limelight from us at least once--first came "mammal-like reptiles" (which aren't reptiles at all, it turns out) and therapsids (the big group that includes protomammals and mammals, like archosaurs are the big group that includes crocs, thecodonts, pterosaurs, and dinos) then the thecodonts and dinosaurs took over after a major extinction event around the time of the Triassic...then after the major extinction event that hit dinosaurs (who started out little, by the way) mammals took over again (except in South America and parts of North America, where phorusracids promptly re-evolved mobile fingers and took up old-style dinosaurian predation till around 100,000 years ago).
Now that I've said that (steps off soapbox)...
Basically, what the DoJ is trying to do is like a "correction"--basically, make it MUCH harder for Microsoft to be anti-competitive. (Think comets-- this is like a rock hitting getting all the big animals out of the way so the little guys can compete and evolve--that's the purpose of antitrust law, anyways.)
I'm sort of worried that people will be so afraid that smacking Microsoft will cause damage to our oh-so-precious money-racket we call the stock market that they will not apply enough force to the clue-by-four that is desperately needed, nor will they apply said clue-by-four in the right area. The rumblings about the DOJ being wary of a breakup might be a sign they're too chicken to take real action...I hope not, though.
(Then again, my idea of real action would consist of all Microsoft products being GPLd retroactively and all new products being GPLd to perpetuity or the heat death of the universe (whichever comes first), the various folks who testified in behalf of Microsoft (including Gates) being thrown in Bubba's Correctional Institution House of Luurv (and deciding whether they want to be the "husband" or the "wife"--and if they choose the former being told to come over and fsck their wife :), and Gates and Ballmer being forced to PERSONALLY debug each and every one of the 65 million lines of code in Win2K as "community reparations". That's just me, though. :) It is probably fortunate that I am not a judge. :)
Some anonymous coward dun wrote:
I would stand in shock, but I remember that not everyone on Slashdot is from the States or even from countries where the main computer in schools was either an Apple II or an 8086 (at least to my knowledge, a version of "Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego" was never put out for the Speccy--pretty much the main computer, along with old BBC boxen, in the rest of the world outside of North America :).
Anyhoos..."Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego" was a game put out years back for the Apple II and for older PCs (I think there may have been a Macintosh version too, but my memory may well be addled there) that was ostenably to teach kids about geography and which featured this lady in a red coat named Carmen Sandiego and a large gang of henchmen who stole various and sundry historical artifacts/features/etc. Your goal, of course, was to find out just where the hell Carmen Sandiego and her henchmen were (and it subtly taught you geography and map-reading skills along the way). Definitely one of the better "educational" games that ever came out...
There were some sequels, if memory serves, such as "Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego" (where she was even going back in TIME to steal historically important stuff, the evil wench), but the original is still IMHO the best of the series...
And as for the little song folks have been posting, well...that's from the TV spinoff of the game (which was shown on PBS, our public broadcast/educational TV network here in the States--I'm not sure what the equivalent would be in other countries, other than the "cultural" channels) which was in a game-show format where kids had to (surprise, surprise) track down Carmen Sandiego and at the end take a bunch of markers and identify as many countries on a continent as they could in sixty seconds...great fun if you were a kid, and even educational for us grownups :) The song itself was done by a group called Rockapella that did (surprise, surprise) acapella songs, and they did all the music for the series (which ran for some two or three years at least).
Which is probably more than you ever wanted to know about Carmen Sandiego ;)
Well, there's bad news and good news for us folks who get public TV through KET (the Kentucky Network, the statewide PBS system here in Kentucky). I'll give the bad news first as it makes the good news sound better:
The Bad News:
1) Apparently KET does its own scheduling, so you can't find its schedule through PBS's pages; rather, try ket.org.
2) On the main KET network, apparently they aren't showing "Code Rush" at all. :( Damn those grandmas paying for "Mystery" (though I can't say much--a big part of it too, at least in Kentucky, is also people paying for KET to show Britcoms and the Red Green Show, so I guess all of us who like Red Dwarf and Keeping Up Appearances are just as much at fault...).
The Good News:
In those areas that get KET2 feeds (yes, Kentucky actually has two separate networks run by KET--the second one consisting of the non-KET PBS affiliates that got bought up en masse by KET a few years back), they're showing "Code Rush" on April 11. Check yer local listings and times, yadda yadda yadda, blah blah TV Scene blah blah Courier-Journal blah blah. :)
More Bad News (ok, I lied):
As far as I know, KET2 extends to Louisville and that's it (did I mention, offhand, that there was all of ONE non-KET-affiliate PBS station in Kentucky before KET bought them out?). If one hasn't got cable, Louisville is about the only place that one can see it (at least if you don't live in Covington--no idea what Ohio's public TV network has planned).
More Good News (at least according to KET's website):
If one does have cable, it looks as if darn near the entire Insight network in the Louisville-surrounding-area up to around Frankfort and Elizabethtown carries KET2. (No, I do not know what to tell you if you live in Lexington, except maybe you ought to move to Louisville seeing as Lexington seems to be populated mostly by snobs related to the horse-racing industry and nearly everyone I know who lives there loathes it. :) Those of you in the rest of the state might be able to get someone in a KET2-enabled area to videotape it for you, or you could probably buy it on cassette off KET's website come June or so.
Some anonymous coward dun said:
Just as a minor note or three, in case you didn't know:
1) Much of what happened in Nazi Germany in regards to the Holocaust was actually based on both eugenics programs in the United States and the committment laws in place then. (Back then, you could legally be involuntarily committed to an insane asylum just for being "different" or "rebellious"--even as an adult--and most states had laws mandating sterilisation for all "mental defectives", that is, anyone who had been committed to a mental institution. I'll also note that in those days once one was committed it was next to impossible to ever leave; it literally took major reforms in the 1960's to committment laws to fix this.)
2) Much of the actual horror of the Holocaust actually started with first the involuntary committment and sterilisation, then the outright murder, of "mental defectives" and other handicapped persons. (Yes, this was even before they started on the Jewish, Catholic and homosexual populations--and everyone thought it was a Good Thing because eugenics were seen as a Great Cure to things like insanity, people being born crippled, etc.)
2a) As a minor side note to the above--most of Mengele's "experiments" were done in hospital settings to children of Holocaust victims who were involuntarily committed to hospitals.
3) If one doesn't think being labeled as a "mental defective"--rightly or wrongly--doesn't affect one's chances in life, ask any of the orphans who are held in "defectives orphanages" in various countries that were formerly part of the old USSR (or Romania, for that matter)--more info here. Hell, for that matter, ask anyone who has publically been revealed in the US to have suffered from a mental disorder how devastating it can be (one of the Kennedys was involuntarily committed, for one; at least one US Presidential candidate actually lost the nomination after it was revealed he had suffered from depression; persons with mental illness have a far harder time getting and keeping jobs than the general population, Americans with Disabilities Act or no [usually, just as with age and occasionally sex discrimination, they find some other excuse to not hire or to fire the person once a history of mental illness shows up in a background check]...persons who have had a history of mental illness (with or without violent tendencies) are also prohibited from many things Americans tend to consider as rights, such as owning a gun (even for hunting) or, in several states, even driving (which, outside of major cities, can actually lock you out of not only jobs but even treatment for mental illness).)
4) Rights for juveniles in the US have been rolled back considerably since the 1980's; pretty much, the legal criteria for involuntarily committing a kid is nearly the same as it is for adults back in the Bad Old Days of the 30's where one could end up in a mental hospital for merely being "different" (all it takes is to convince a parent, or failing that, a judge; the strict legal requirements in place for adults generally don't apply to those under 18). Kids can already be involuntarily committed to mental hospitals by stuff as mere as the recommendation of their high school counselor--stuff like W.A.V.E. will only make things far worse, truly sending things back to the Bad Old Days.
5) Not all mental illness is genetic. In the worst kinds (bipolar illness and schizophrenia) there is a definite tendency that is probably genetically determined, but even then only fifty percent of identical twins will develop schizophrenia if their twin has it--in other words, there are probably also environmental factors involved. The same is probably true, to a greater or lesser extent, with the entire spectrum of "autistic spectrum" "disorders" (which go all the way from severe autism to Asperger's (which one is high-functioning, and there are a surprising number of geeks who have a touch of Asperger's) to hyperlexia (mostly you just have trouble "reading" folks and with speech, but reading skills are actually better than normal-- hyperlexic kids might not talk till four or five, but it isn't unuusal for them to be reading at kindegarten/1st-grade level at age two or three and to be reading as advanced as high-school level by first or second grade)...there is a genetic tendency in some cases, but some of it is environmental and most of it is a mix of the two. For depression specifically, some depression is linked with genetic tendencies, but a fair amount is just iatrogenic (there is no family history) or even the result of environmental factors (severe abuse, especially emotional or spiritual (religious-based) abuse, WILL cause depression in darn near any sane individual; depression is extremely common in walkaways from religious cults, and the highest known rate of suicide in teens exists with gay teens in fundamentalist households) or even cultural factors (the Japanese have a strong tradition against the disgrace of one's family or one's self, and if one does disgrace one's self or gives one's family a bad name committing suicide is actually seen as the honourable way out).
6) Most of the kids who blow away other kids have either been severely abused--not just at school but almost constantly--and most also have serious underlying personality disorders. Personality disorders are one of the few disorders that are thought to not have much of a genetic basis (save in some cases) but are the result of something going Very Wrong in early development--like when they were children. A history of abuse, oddly, can cause a personality disorder to develop (especially in the case of more violent people--there is a very strong correlation between childhood abuse, especially physical and severe emotional (and, according to some studies, religious) abuse, and the development of severe personality disorders that lead to violence). In the Paducah shootings, for instance, there are some hints that the kid could have been trying to walk away from fundamentalism; there are indications the Columbine shooters had long-standing personality disorders.
7) There is a rather healthy industry here in the United States of private mental hospitals and teen psychiatrists--often working with insurance companies--that basically tell parents that their children need at the least psychotherapy and/or Prozac--and more often than not, institutionalisation--for behaviours that sometimes are part of normal teenhood. Pharmaceutical companies make a minor killing off of giving kids Prozac and Ritalin (in fact, the problem is so bad here--kids as young as three are now being given Ritalin and Prozac even though the longterm effects of giving kids that young such powerful drugs is unknown--that even the FDA and Presidential committees are asking people to please not give kids that young psychoactive drugs until proper studies have been done); it is not at all uncommon for private mental hospitals here in the States to hold a patient exactly as long as the insurance company will pay (typically one to two months) and then dismiss the kid (even if the kid is well or was never sick to begin with). It is bad enough that even investigative programs with newspapers and TV have reported on the "teen mental health industry" here in the States...it's also, sadly, not uncommon for parents who are sick of dealing with their kids to have them committed for "depression" or have "out-of-control warrants" swore out on their kids to have them involuntarily committed...some parents even drop off their kids at the mental hospital whilst they take vacations. :P
(As a minor aside on this--if W.A.V.E. had been in affect whilst I was in high school or even elementary school, it is entirely likely that not only would I have been profiled but probably involuntarily committed until I was 18. I had some problems growing up (yes, I was depressed--the result of emotional, occasional physical, and longstanding religious abuse--alas, at that time neither social services nor anyone else seemed to recognise that religious abuse even existed [this was just around the time of the first televangelist scandals here Stateside] nor that teens could suffer abuse without "bringing it on themselves", which didn't help matters) and as it was, I was profiled and got to go through most of my middle and high-school years with the official label of Fucking Nutter Kid even without the wonderful things known as W.A.V.E. and other "geek profiling" tools. In any case, all the visits to the shrink, "special programs", the initial visit to the "teen ward" when the school no longer wanted to deal with the complaints that I was being severely bullied at school, and my parents threatening to send me back to aforementioned "teen ward" when I tried to be the least bit assertive didn't help; getting out at the age of 25 from that toxic situation has begun the process of healing, though I admit I've a long way to go (I have a bad habit of kicking myself in the arse and worrying too much--probably the result of the abuse I suffered--which makes me depressed sometimes, and which nothing short of time and relearning is going to help--all the Prozac in the world isn't going to fix how my folks essentially used the Bible, the shrink, and the occasional belt and fist as weapons to hurt me). Needless to say, I've wondered at times if this has affected me getting a job (I've had a hard time getting jobs, even with qualifications above and beyond what they're asking for); I know for a fact it's affected me with social interactions (not just people freaking because of my history--I don't have much idea of what a normal teenhood consists of, and I have a very hard time trusting anyone because when I've asked for help I've usually been kicked in the nuts over it). I also saw and experienced a fair amount of the abuse that goes on in the "teen mental health industry"--including the kids who ended up getting committed when it was the parents that could've used psychiatric help--and what with the age of Columbine and Geek Profiling and sillybuggers like W.A.V.E. I can only imagine it's gotten even worse nowadays. Nearly bad enough to put me off having kids altogether, in fact (I sure as hell don't want them going through what I've had to go through, and right now I don't trust myself to have kids just yet)...so, well, I know all too well of what I speak. I ended up in the "Teen Mental Health Industry" basically for being bullied (and an incompetent middle-school principal and counselor who didn't want to deal with the bullies) and for beginning to walk away from a Bible-based cult my parents were (and still are) involved in and starting to get the sense something was Seriously Bent in my family. (I'm only now starting to realise just HOW bent it was.))
My worry is this--How many kids are going to end up getting churned up in the machine that is the "Teen Mental Health Industry" who literally haven't done anything other than be gay and have the shitty luck to be born in a house of raving fundies (all the Prozac in the world won't help that, either--about the only thing that WILL help is getting the kid the hell out of the house, and even then he's still gonna be depressed because his family has essentially disowned him for something out of his control), or who gets the living shite beaten out of him both at school (by bullies) and at home (by Mom and Dad) and who might act gothy or tough as a means to try to protect himself, or the kid who has the cojones to be Wiccan or atheist or [insert non-conservative-Protestant-Christianity religion here] in a sea of fundamentalist Christians (this isn't uncommon in parts of the US--our Supreme Court is now taking a case on whether prayers should be allowed at football games which involves a school district largely populated with fundamentalist Christians--the people who have protested the prayers (including Catholics, some Baptists, Jewish folk, and an atheist) have been harassed and beaten in school...in one case involving school prayer here, a person who protested sectarian school prayers in Alabama was literally run out of town by the local fundies), or who is trying to walk away from a coercive group Mom and Dad are involved in, or who dares to be different enough to arouse the ire or fear of the students, parents, or community...there are going to be a lot of kids caught up in that meatgrinder as a result, which is going to result in a lot of pissed-off kids who are pretty much going to be unemployable (both because of the "history of mental illness" and because, well, even compared to regular public schools, "schools for the emotionally disturbed"--which is where these kids will likely end up, even if not committed--have Base Minimum educational standards, and at times literally have to get into partnerships with either vocational schools or gifted/talented magnet schools to even provide educational opprotunities to those kids that don't drop out after about their junior year or go back to regular school--and unless you show some real spark of intelligence, like I was lucky enough to do, you will be shunted into a voc-ed program, probably either nursing or body-shop)... if anything, it might make the problem worse. (Hell, if you know you're going to be profiled and probably committed because the other kids Plain Don't Like You, and you get hell beaten out of you anyways...and you know once you end up committed it's pretty much going to be on your permanent record and will follow you around for life, making it almost impossible for you to be employed or possibly even get health insurance (you folks in the UK are lucky--you at least have Public Health Service; folks in the US who don't have insurance who are mentally ill usually end up either in the state mental institutions or on the streets because they're SOL)...what is there to lose, really?) Kids, both sane and mentally-ill, are going to get hurt BAD by this crap...
Then again, we've got Tipper Bloody PMRC Gore pushing this crap on one end and Bush pushing for them to just go ahead and lock up the entire teenage population of North America on the other end...other than a Geek's Rights Party I dunno what can be done (if folks ARE interested in starting such a beast, well, technically, there are probably at least a few of us of legal age for both House and Senatorial seats federally as well as in state legislatures...and we can always start by working up from stuff like school boards (all the better--we can keep shite like W.A.V.E. from ever being implemented in the FIRST place locally, and it keeps the Religious Right from being able to take over school boards to turn them into little theocracy training centers)... ;)
Some anonymous coward dun said:
*chuckle* As far as that goes...I dunno on that, but I can truthfully state that I've not been able to eat meat at McDonald's since I saw one of the employees take a 50-pound bag of "Miracle Meat" (no, I am not making this up--this is what their meat is called), which resembled nothing less than the 50-pound bags of Gravy Train dog food you see at the pet-food department of the grocery, from the freezer-shed. :) (The really sad thing is--Gravy Train likely tastes better and has more nutritional value (not to mention more actual meat) than Miracle Meat does. :)
Seriously, though...the real reason Dave Barry's analysis holds up well (save for Belgrade) is due to a combination of three factors:
1). Generally, when the US goes into a state of war with another country, they put in rather strict trade sanctions that basically state that you cannot do any business--not even visit relatives--with that country unless you have special permission from both the State Department and the US Treasury. (The law that this is under is specifically called the "Trading with the Enemy Act", and you don't even need to be at a state of war--hell, out of the countries where it is virtually illegal for a normal US citizen to go (incidentially, now the only countries you can't send crypto to) we've had shooting wars with only two of them. It's this very law that makes it outright illegal for most Americans to go to Cuba or even buy Cuban cigars in Canada, while everyone else goes to vacations on Cuban beaches...)
It doesn't hurt that the vast majority of big fast-food chains are based in the US, and even if they weren't the US anymore tends to not only put strict sanctions on its own citizens under the Trading with the Enemy Act, but they also manage to get through UN sanctions or at the very least sanctions among NATO members. You know what they say about 800-pound gorillas (no offense to gorillas, who generally are peaceful folk, have good senses of humour, and are rather intelligent unlike the US government ;)...
2) Most countries that the US is pissed off enough at to get trade sanctions against and/or go to shooting wars with aren't likely to want much to do with American stuff at all, and likely have imposed their own versions of the Trading with the Enemy Act in regards to American goods and companies. (I'd be REALLY surprised if the Serbian government hadn't run the McDonald's out of Belgrade.) Again, shooting wars aren't even a necessity here, and a lot of it has to do with ideology--it's rather unlikely Afghanistan would be getting a McDonald's soon, or North Korea (even if eighty percent of the country wasn't starving to death) because the ideology of the countries wouldn't permit such a thing.
3) The potential Real Biggie here is that there have not been any hellaciously big shooting wars since McDonald's incorporated back in the 50's. The last Really Big War was in the 40's, during World War II; most wars then have been skirmishes between at most four or five countries (literally the three largest wars the US was involved in were with Vietnam, Korea and Iraq since McDonald's opened shop--for various and sundry reasons hinted at with 1 and 2 above, it's doubtful they'd have McDonald's restaurants to begin with [though in Iraq's case it was probably a combination of culture and the fact they were fighting with Iran]). If another World War were to break out (Grud forbid), we'd likely end up warring with a country with a McDonald's (or more properly, one which HAD one before we ordered McDonald's to Divest Or Else). (Of course, we'd also end up likely going back to the high technology of making knives and projectiles out of obsidian and flint, not to mention getting meat by hunting down deer instead of ingesting Miracle Meat--this is, of course, assuming mammals larger than mice or bats survived and we didn't end up with Planet of the Bipedal Mousies 65 million years later :)
For that matter--interesting historical note: McDonald's didn't enter either what is now Russia nor did it enter China until the Cold War had thawed quite considerably. (Most of you who are reading probably do not remember the days before Gorbachev in the old USSR. Gorby did a lot to warm up relations between the US and the USSR--before that, especially in the early- to mid-80's, people were convinced that before my generation hit the age of 18 (I'll be turning 27 this year, btw) the world would have been blown to smithereens and we'd end up with Planet of the Cockroaches. It was Quite Tense, believe you me.) Even then, they didn't open till things had warmed up to the point there was almost no going back from there...and, more to the point, companies like Pepsi and McDonald's thought it would be profitable to operate there and didn't have to worry about the State Department coming about and telling them they had to divest (other companies--most notably, oil concerns and banks--had already been burned like this several times, most notably in Cuba and in Iran).
Mashiara dun said:
Well, yes, at least for binary viruses (the largest problem nowadays is actually Word macro viruses, and new binary viruses are fairly rare (with the exception of CIH and the occasional Word macro virus that has a dropper)...)
Then again, it's far more safe not to look for patterns so much as to look by heuristics for programs that can potentially do Very Bad Things. (This pretty much Works on binaries except for a very few programs that rely heavily on system hooks or do "naughty" behaviour legitimately (like disassemblers), and pretty much Works 100% on macro viruses which are the major problem nowadays.)
Well put.
As it is...yes, Linux viruses are a worry, but not a MAJOR worry. I've posted a more complete post here on what I think we do need to worry about (namely, not repeating the same basic design mistakes in Windoze that allow viruses to propogate like crazy on those boxes, and increasing security in general to eliminate ways to let viruses in period).
Yes, it's possible to write viruses for Linux. folks. The first viruses period were for Unix and VMS boxen (back when the entire concept of viruses was still "proof of concept") though for the most part they never spread widely...
Right now, about five or so viruses exist for Linux, all of which are for the most part "proof of concept" viruses. They've not spread widely, in part (methinks) because nobody yet wants to spoil a Good Thing...there eventually do come Bad Folks who do want to break things just out of meanness, though (look at the history of Usenet going into the shitter for a class example), so we can't rely on the good graces of most Linux users for long.
That said...I can state that writing viruses for Linux would be considerably harder. Basically, the virus would have to propogate as root to spread much of anywhere; the fact that most Linux programs are still distributed as source code also helps much in preventing infections. (This is not to say it's impossible, just much harder.)
About the easiest ways I could actually see viruses spreading under Linux the way they do under certain Microsoft OS's That Shall Not Be Mentioned are under the following conditions:
Binaries which must be installed from RPMs and as root become a lot more common. (As others have noted, there are early signs of this occuring, and to be honest I'm as nervous of this as other folks. All the more reason for teaching folks to "Use the Source, Luke" ;)
If a virus comes out that can also take advantage of system insecurity to get root. (If memory serves, at least one of the "proof of concept" viruses for Linux already does this. This is not impossible.)
If (Cthulhu forbid) a virus were to come out that specifically targeted GCC and/or other compilers. (Again, "proof of concept" exists in a roundabout way for this--specifically, the infamous "backdoor" in early versions of GCC...an original copy was made with backdoor code, and whenever it sensed it was compiling code for the login portion of the OS it inserted the code for the backdoor even if it did not exist beforehand. Even worse, if it sensed it was compiling another copy of itself, it inserted the backdoor code even if it did not exist in the source...a very nasty and clever hack, and one which could cause viruses under Linux to spread like wildfire were it to be repeated to spread viral code (say, as an RPM of GCC binaries--frighteningly enough, these actually exist in most flavours of Linux that install from packages of any sort) and it would be almost next to impossible to avoid (you'd have to recompile from a known, clean version)...)
If (Cthulhu forbid!) Microsoft Word or some similar word-processing program that has macro languages that commit Serious Misbehaviour were to become widely used. (Don't laugh this one off, either, folks. Word macro viruses are the SINGLE worst virus problem nowadays--more Word macro viruses exist than binary viruses, and more than one Word macro virus has been found with "droppers" for binary viruses or trojans...even worse, Word macro viruses with droppers for Mac andWin32 viruses are known. If Microsoft gets split up and Linux becomes much more popular, it is conceivably possible Office might get ported to Linux...even if it doesn't, it's also possible someone will write an office suite with hooks into the OS (which is the source of most probs with Word macro viruses--Office's macro languages have hooks into Visual Basic, and VB has a crapload of hooks into Win32 itself to the point some folks actually write entire Win32 applications in VB) which would cause similar misbehaviour, because a lot of folks from the Windoze world REALLY like their damned macros...which, incidentially, is why offices seem to get continually infected with Word macro viruses if they don't take "precautions".)
IMHO, all except the last two are fairly unlikely (and the second to last is unlikely unless you were to get a rogue person in place at one of the distro sites)...the things Linux has to worry about more (in fact, the things that are becoming an increasing worry even in the Windoze world) are trojans and worms.
Worms, after nearly having died off a few years back, are now back with a vengeance. First it was mIRC macro-worms (mIRC, a common IRC client in the Windoze world, has a rather powerful scripting language that can unfortunately be abused to create worms that propogate largely through DCC chat requests), now the big problem seems to be both trojans (like PrettyPark.exe) and an increasing number of Word macro worms which propogate through taking advantage of security holes in almost every program that exists for Internet apps in Windows (Agent, Eudora, Outlook Express are just a short list of programs in which worms have propogated in).
Trojans and worms have existed before with *nixes (Washington University FTP has frequently been trojaned with backdoor code, among others; I think we all know about the infamous Morris Worm). If we let security practices get lax in writing Linux apps (especially the "user-friendly" sort of apps) and especially if we do Bad Security Practices with stuff like scripting languages, etc. for apps, we could probably end up in the same boat as far as worms and trojans go. Hell, as someone noted, DDoS apps like Trin00 have been found on Linux boxen that have been compromised; I'd be really shocked if someone doesn't figure out some way to distribute a DDoS client as a worm...
So, no, we can't be lax. But part of the battle is knowing what exactly to worry about. Win32 in general, and especially Win9X, has a lot of basic security flaws that enable stuff like viruses and worms and trojans to propogate. Linux has a more secure setup if used properly--we don't want to turn it into a Windoze clone (lest we end up with the same problems) but in making Linux easier to use we want to learn from the mistakes made by a certain company in Redmond (and also by a company started by the Brothers Steve, for that matter) so that we don't repeat those mistakes. :)
Robathome dun said (regarding someone's date of 31/4/15):
Robathome no baka :)
Seriously...different countries have different formats of splitting up dates and all. In the US, the typical format tends to be
mm/dd/yy or mm/dd/yyyy
where mm=month, dd=day, and yy=year (non-Y2K-compliant version) or yyyy=year (if you don't want to confuse hell out of everyone).
Europeans do it different, like this:
dd/mm/yy or dd/mm/yyyy
where dd=day, mm=month, etc. etc.
In much of Latin America, including Brazil (don't give me that shocked look--there are a lot of folks from Brazil on the net now, and even other countries like Mexico) they do it in yet another format:
yy/mm/dd or yyyy/mm/dd
where yy=year, etc. etc. etc.
In fact, it's SO bad what with the confusion (not to mention that a lot of places, like, oh, damn near the entire Middle East, don't even USE the Gregorian calendar--and other places, like Japan, use it but with their own special "mutations" (in Japan, they have their own calendar year count--plus they tend to count by emperor's reigns, instead of calendar year)...) that there is actually an official ISO standard for references to dates--which, surprise, surprise, actually fits the Latin American standard:
yyyy-mm-dd
where yyyy=year, mm=month, etc.
So he was right after all. So are the other folks. :)
Myself, I think messing with numbers like that is a bother, so I just use dates like, oh, 15 April 31 (which was the date he mentioned, by the way--by that reckoning, Yshua of Nazareth might've gotten to see it, but we're almost two millennia late :) to be crystal clear. Or measure everything in the good, old, ACCURATE calendar that the Mayans used if I want to confuse hell out of everyone. :) (Which brings up an interesting point...the Maya knew about zero, probably knew about pi to make measurements, and the Long Count is actually measured in terms of base-20 increments...anyone know what pi would be in base 20 and what Pi Day would be in the Long Count? ;)
Spud Zeppelin dun said:
Well, among other things, it doesn't force me to store his offers for watches on private property, and it doesn't cost me money and/or labour costs to listen to him try to sell fake Rolexes, not to mention telling him to perform impossible acts of self-copulation with aforementioned watches. ;)
The same cannot be said of spam (including UCE). First off, the vast majority of sites with full-time Internet connections pay by the byte or by the hour (and, especially outside North America, a non-negligible number of home users, too; UUCP connections (where you HAVE to download all the mail) are still relatively common in Europe, Asia and South America, and are STILL some countries' only connection to the Internet (if memory serves, Mongolia's main ISP is UUCP-only, and this is also true for most African ISPs outside of South Africa and africa.net accounts), and people in most countries pay by-the-minute for phone calls period (incidentially, most countries also ban telemarketing--North America is one of the few places where it is legal--because it costs folks to receive it; this is also why junk faxes and telemarketing calls to cell-phones are illegal even in North America)...); the costs are often non-negligible, especially with the volumes of spam being sent (I did a quickie analysis around two years ago, which is posted here under the title "Spam By The Numbers"--this gives you a really good idea of the sheer amounts of crap that get sent to your local ISP daily if they aren't using specific block-lists like the MAPS-RBL list; nowadays it is also probably a very conservative estimate--with big mailspams on big ISPs, it can easily hit the gigabytes). This cost will, eventually, be passed on to the consumer-level (stuff like unlimited access being cut, or prices going up because they have to pay for the new RAID-5 array just to store all the spamaceous crap), so don't think you home users get away without paying the costs of spam.
Secondly, tracing down a source of a spam and getting them to stop spamming you is not exactly trivial. Spammers very commonly use throwaway accounts at freemail providers (and previously, AOL, Netcom and Compuserve accounts due to the sheer number of "free trial" CDs they would give out) and will obfuscate the hell out of headers (this is, in part, what the Washington bill was aimed at); not only that, they will often "relay-rape" servers, routing spam through insecure third parties' mail servers (there are a rather surprising number of these out there--Sun and SGI have notoriously insecure versions of Sendmail shipped with their programs, boxes in a lot of third-world countries and @Home boxes are insecure, and I won't even go into Windows mail daemons or mail daemons on old IBM mainframes--suffice it to say that spammers are the main reason most sites worth their salt don't relay mail anymore except for customers, and an increasing number won't even let you post mail without downloading mail first--Mindspring and Broadwing, among others, had to implement this). To make things even worse, spammers have over the years either set up shop at outright spam-friendly ISPs or at sites that couldn't be bothered to give a damn about net.abuse; at one point an entire backbone site on the 'net, Agis.net, had to be literally "IDP'd" (basically: many, many sites started refusing to share any traffic--not just mail and news, stuff like FTP and HTTP and the like) because AGIS hosted literally seven or eight of the worst spammer's havens on the Internet (including Sanford "SpamKing" Wallace's site, etc.) and refused to give them the boot after nearly EVERY other national-level ISP at the time HAD given them the Golden Boot. (Eventually AGIS did boot them and wrote up a strong, anti-net.abuse AUP. The AGIS boycott wasn't trivial--they were literally the third or fourth largest site on the net, many national-level ISPs had them as a primary or secondary network service provider, and they provided the only network service for a lot of sites including all of Alltel's Internet network.) And to make things even WORSE, many (if not most) spammers actually use "remove lists" or "do-not-spam" lists as actual confirm-lists for live addresses to spam; these lists are even bought and sold among spammers, and it is literally next to impossible to get one's address off one of these lists once they have been added on (about the only way I've found is for the email account itself to go dead).
It doesn't help that most of the folks in the "serial spamming" business--the hard-core folks-- are sociopaths (no, I am not making this up--most of them would actually be diagnosed as sociopaths). Sanford Wallace, for example, was in the junk fax business before he went to spamming--he is also widely regarded as being the person most responsible for junk faxes having been banned. Wallace is also almost singlehandedly responsible for most of the anti-spam AUPs in place, with a few other folks was largely responsible for getting AGIS "shunned" a few years back, and is almost singlehandedly responsible for nearly every anti-spam bill that has been proposed to a legislature worldwide. He finally got out of spamming when literally no ISP in North America would touch him with a 40-foot barge pole--and this, only AFTER he'd gotten AGIS IDP'd, been fined well into the millions of dollars for contempt-of-court charges, been literally banned by a Federal court in Ohio from sending mail to any customers of Compuserve, been banned by a Virginia judge from sending any mail to AOL customers, been fined by that judge for disregarding that order, paid well over US$300,000 in Internic charges for domains...this is the psychology we're dealing with. Sad individuals...
It's funny you should mention guys "selling watches", though. If he makes it a business as much as, say, most spammers do, just selling watches on the street is outright illegal in many areas. If it's over a certain volume, in many places he has to buy a specific business license. If he is found selling illegal goods (like, oh, counterfeit watches or selling adult material to under-18s or selling shares in a pyramid scheme or even selling stocks without a prospectus) they can lock him up and throw away the key.
Of note--the FTC has estimated that over 80% of all spams are for "fraudulent" and/or outright illegal schemes. Those that aren't are often adverts for adult sites which are of questionable legality for under-18's (and, depending on local ordinances, may be of questionable legality for anyone--for instance, adverts for marital aids and the sale of marital aids is illegal in Alabama and in a number of Southern counties).
In short, there are a lot of differences. You might visit CAUCE here, or spam.abuse.net for detailed info on the history of spamming and the real costs to Internet users. Those of you running Linux and *BSD boxen might want to in particular hit spam.abuse.net's info on securing your mail server, or hit Sendmail's web site which, along with the latest version, has extensive info on spamproofing your mail (including blocking open relays and spamaceous sites through the MAPS-RBL and stopping Bad Guys from relay-raping your server).
Mendax Veritas dun said:
Well, they aren't the only ones in the market, really--F-Prot, which comes in two different flavours (the Data Fellows "Finnish Mix" and the Command Software "British Remix"), is damned good, beats the pants off of both McAffee and NAV, and hasn't been bought out by either company (largely because at least Data Fellows also sells other security software like firewall programs, SSH clients and SSH servers for NT, etc.). Also worth noting is the Best Damn Antivirus Software Money Can Buy (according to alt.comp.virus--and by the way, it's not just antivirus writers who hang out there; there are a fair number of virus coders who hang out there as well), AVP...hell, they've even got a version for Linux for folks who run servers (who want to scan the stuff they're serving for Nasty Stuff).
By no means are you restricted to what Network Solutions or Symantec have to offer. There's other stuff out there that's actually better but less well known about (wow...kinda like BeOS and *BSD and Linux, eh? ;).
I wouldn't say it's entirely a non-problem. In a home environment, with a clueful user who doesn't download strange binaries without checking the source twice, and especially if he's using an OS for which very few viruses exist (such as BeOS or Linux or *BSD)...and more importantly anymore, never uses certain office suites out of Redmond with extensive macro capabilities including hooks to Visual Basic (which has hooks to system calls in Win32) nor uses programs with extensive HTML and Javascript capability to read email, then yes, it'd be a non-problem.
There are cases where it could be a problem, though. Say...work environments that have to use Office 97 and accept Word and Excel documents from Goddess-only-knows where, or home users who dabble in warez because they don't feel like paying $200 for the latest killer game, or work environments where people take stuff from home and put it on the boxes, or people who are new to the net (and don't know about stuff like Good Computer Hygiene) and get offered this "cool South Park screensaver" from an email address that belongs to their friend on the net (and they are completely and utterly unaware that said program is in fact the "Pretty Park" trojan/worm that mails itself to everyone on your Outlook Express address list)...in those cases, yes, it could be a problem.
Now add in those folks who have to take home stuff from work. Now add in the number of folks at work who are the clueless folks who will blindly run that "Pretty Park" executable, and/or have warez'd copies of Diablo, and/or take stuff to work to show folks how "cool" it is...and you have to take Word documents home to work on them, or Excel spreadsheets...and think of all the OTHER companies your company might be sharing Word documents with...'s pretty scary, really, if you think about it.
I'll touch some more on this below...
By and large, antivirus software isn't for us who know how to use debugging tools :) It's for folks who might be new to computers, or who have to take stuff home from work and run it, or who might want to be double-safe that the program they just downloaded doesn't have anything nasty in it.
Yes, some TSRs and some programs will cause antivirus software to hiccup. I'll also note that these are (in the case of most folks--not necessarily us techy ones) few and far between. It also depends specifically on the heuristics that the program is looking for--I've heard that Norton Antivirus tends to give quite a number more false positive alarms than AVP or F-Prot do, for instance (in fact, on alt.comp.virus it's recommended that if you run Norton or McAffee Antivirus (another AV program bad for false positives in heuristics mode) you double-check it by running F-Prot or AVP in heuristics mode because the latter two programs are far less susceptible to false positives).
As it is, for binary viruses and trojans heuristics can work well; for Word macro viruses (which are the single largest category of viruses today, by the way) they're nearly foolproof. As Word macro viruses are a far worse problem nowadays, this is probably a Good Thing.
I'll assume you practice Good Computer Hygiene (not downloading strange binaries, etc.) I do have some questions for you, though...
Do you run Microsoft Office? Do you accept Word documents from possibly untrusted sources? (The single largest category of viruses and worms, not to mention the one with the most growth by far, is Office macro viruses and worms (especially Word macro viruses which often are also worms in that they have specific hooks to common mail applications to enable spread by email)...in 1993, Word macro viruses were literally unheard of. The first "proof of concept" Word macro virus appeared in 1997, and eventually spread to the wild. A year later there were over 200 known Word macro viruses, and the first Excel macro viruses were known. In 1998-ish the first known Word macro worm was discovered. As of now (early 2000) there are over four thousand Office macro viruses (the vast majority Word macro viruses, and a fair number of which can be considered worms as well; more than a few also are "droppers" for destructive payloads), depending on whom one is talking to (some would put it higher, some would put it closer to two thousand)--literally more Word macro viruses and worms exist than binary-based viruses at present, and it is becoming a fairly serious problem in businesses (a Word macro virus/worm brought the email systems of many businesses to a screeching halt last year because of all the load--one of those companies just happened to be [ironically] Microsoft). The largest portion of databases for antivirus software are for Word macro viruses; I suggest you take a look down at Data Fellows' virus-lists and see just how many have the little prefix "W97/M" (Word 97 macro virus)...it's really a staggering number. Binary-based viruses like CIH are by far the exception now; most folks doing viruses are either working in Word macro viruses or are working on worms (such as mIRC worms, or trojans that are worms such as "Pretty Park").
Fortunately for antivirus software authors, most Word macro viruses have specific infection routines and use specific Visual Basic calls (Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom [HAH!], decided to allow one to use Visual Basic hooks in Office macro code...which is a security disaster waiting to happen, as Visual Basic has hooks into the operating system itself) to do nastier things (like the "propogation behavior" of Word macro worms, or droppers for destructive payloads for the nastier Word macro viruses--in a way, they behave more like trojans than viruses), so it's pretty easy to kill such things with heuristics. (It's also pretty easy to kill such things if you don't enable macros, or you use stuff like StarOffice to read the file. But that's another issue :)
(Unfortunately, it seems the bulk of the business world not only uses Win95/98 or WinNT, but also Office, and also Outlook Express--which helps Word macro worms spread like wildfire through a network (by the way, Word macro worms are having the same growth Word macro viruses had in the beginning, and some have been found with destructive payloads--things are going to get interesting indeed). Even worse, Word macro viruses are cross-platform--they can infect Word on Winboxen, Macs, and presumably any other platform that can run Microsoft Word and/or a word processor that recognises Word documents and Word macros (fortunately, most of the Word macro worms can spread only under WinXX and largely only if Outlook Express exists as a mailer, though some can also use Eudora [the other big mailer], but I don't expect this to last very long--and the Mac users can still infect documents with the worms).)
Do you have to share computers at work with anyone? (Their computer could be crawling with viruses. Just because you don't do anything stupid doesn't mean your co-workers won't.)
Does your workplace have a strict "no-files-or-disks-from-home, no-programs-from-home" policy? (If not, they're wide open unless they're using a scanner. Again, you might practice Good Computer Hygiene, but others won't necessarily do so.)
If you do consultation work, are all your boot-disks and install material on non-writable media like CD's? (If they've got a boot-sector virus, they can infect ZIP disks and floppies.)
Are you absolutely certain that all of the software you get is virus-free? (About the only way you CAN be certain is if you compile and run it yourself--and even then, if the compiler itself has virus code, you still might not be safe (cref. a proof-of-concept of this where hidden backdoor code was included in early C compilers for Unix--if code was removed, the compiler simply reinserted it at compile-time; the only way to remove it for certain was to compile from a known clean copy, and reportedly the backdoor generated WAS used a few times). Commercial software has been released accidentially with virus code before (most infamously, a demo CD included with a PC game magazine that was infected with CIH); hell, computers have literally come preinstalled that had viruses (there was a rather infamous case where either Dell or IBM (memory fails me on which one) actually sold some laptops which were infected with CIH--it turns out that the standard disk image used to copy the OS and apps onto the drives had been infected with CIH somehow). There are now known worms that can infect a computer using Outlook Express (with HTML and ActiveX extensions turned on) without even opening the mail itself (just by previewing the mail). Most Internet worms propogate themselves anymore by sending copies to everyone on an address-book list in email clients (the vast majority of Word macro worms, and even some "trojan" worms like PrettyPark), or by mass-DCC send (most mIRC worms propogate this way--the worms take advantage of insecurities in mIRC scripting language).
Do you serve files for other people? (If so--even Word documents--if you don't check them before offering for download, you may unwittingly pass along infected files. Again, infected files don't even necessarily have to be binaries anymore--the vast majority of viruses anymore are Word macro viruses and worms, and the few actual binary viruses tend to be spread either through warez or as "trojans" or worms.)
You see...it's not as easy keeping virus-free as one thinks. In fact, if you accept foreign Word documents at ALL and don't have either a damned good virus-scanner or macros turned off completely, you are essentially wide open to getting a rather nasty case of computer VD. Even more so if you use Outlook Express, or (God Forbid) accept attachments of *.exe or *.doc files in email, or accept HTML-email or have Javascript or ActiveX enabled in your email browser.
1) Even commercial software has been infected--there is more than one documented case of this.
2) As stated above, things have changed a LOT in the world of viruses since 1993 :)
2a) The major problem, with rare exception (CIH, which really is novel in that it attempts to over-write BIOS info in boxen with flashable BIOSes), is not binary-based viruses like Stoned or Jerusalem (the two biggies in 1993, by the way). The biggies, by far, are Word macro viruses (literally more Word macro viruses exist now than binary ones exist now or in 1993, a fair number have nasty droppers or destructive payloads, and an increasing number can also be classified as worms as they propogate through vulnerabilities in a number of Internet programs [a short list--Outlook Express, Free Agent (Usenet client), Eudora, etc.]).
2b) With the exception of CIH, the major problem with malicious binaries isn't with viruses anymore but with Trojans of various types. The vast majority of these may be classified either as worms (i.e. PrettyPark.exe, the latest in this line) or as attempts to pass off Back Orifice (a program designed by Cult of the Dead Cow to spotlight rather serious security flaws in Win9X, and which can be used to remotely control another computer--often without the victim knowing, as Back Orifice hides its processes and tries to make it difficult to uninstall).
3) The single largest increase of ANY viruses or malicious programs today is in the form of worms. Many of these worms are essentially multiplatform and the vast majority target the single largest used office suite in businesses today. Many of these companies must share Word documents and other traffic with other sites, often untrusted traffic. In a way, the Internet has been the best thing since sliced bread for propogation of viruses (keep in mind, too, that when you left Symantec the vast majority of "program trading" was at universities and most of the "warez" traffic as well as virus traffic was at universities and on small, members-only BBS's; there were still roughly an equal number of *.edu and *.com sites online, the plague known as AOL had yet to hit the net (that occured in 1994 or 1995, and AOL has always had a wee bit of a script-kiddie/V/C community), and the Internet had NOWHERE near the penetration it has now--it was next to impossible for worms to spread the way they do now, much less Word macro viruses (again, keep in mind that macro viruses of ANY kind were unheard of before 1997).)
4) In 1993, a lot of companies still used dumb terminals or didn't have much computer access. Now, a large number of folks have computers--frequently connected to the Internet--and they frequently have to take home work and such. Many of these folks don't practice Good Computer Hygiene--they run programs their friends send them online (unaware that many worms use address-lists specifically to propogate), while spreading rumours like "Good Times" because they literally don't know any better. Sometimes this even extends to the folks running the boxen--a number of sites use NT or even Windows 98 to administer networks, and many of these folks don't use proper security precautions (like not allowing executables to be installed, etc.). 5) The fact that so many folks ARE on the net with Win95/Win98 boxen has to be a major factor in how viruses are spreading, and especially worms (which had pretty much died out in the days of tht Morris Worm and WANK-Worm until Word macro viruses started coming out). Win95 and Win98 are notoriously insecure--in essence, everyone (even on a multi-user system) has root/administrator access, most of the Internet applications for these systems--especially those from Microsoft--are not exactly designed with security in mind, the major office suite for these boxes (Office 97) has major security flaws in its scripting language insofar as using it in a networked environment...the major scripting language for Microsoft-based Internet apps, ActiveX (which has even been incorporated into the OS in Win98) is so insecure that nearly every security site recommends disabling it...also, Win9X is designed for people who are complete and utter computer virgins, who aren't going to know about computer security and who are lucky to know how to install a program without some kind of installation-wizard. It's an OS designed for the clueless, and it's user-friendly to the point of sacrificing security...it also doesn't help that Internet apps (by and large) were actually an afterthought to the OS, added when the Internet exploded in popularity (especially the World Wide Web).
I'd even go so far as to say that, as designed, Win95 and Win98 are outright unsafe to use in a networked environment without some sort of protection both against malicious programs and scripts AND against malicious parties trying to gain outside access. Win9X was not designed as a multi-user, networkable OS; it was originally designed as a home OS for the newbie user who needs stuff to be point-and-click simple, and networkability was an afterthought added when Microsoft found out people actually wanted that Internet thing. Security has always been an afterthought, if it's been thought of at all; to make it secure actually requires either add-ons (like antivirus software and intrusion-detection software) or keeping it off a network period. Yes, security really IS that bad with Windows9X. (NT and Win2000 are considerably more secure, but that's partly because they were designed as networkable OS's and they do have security features in light of this. They are also somewhat less user-friendly, especially in tighter security settings (many WinNT sites have EVERYONE with admin access because some things become unusuable in lower settings).)
It's not just the Microsoft apps for Win9X that have security bugs, either--the whole idea of running untrusted apps is a Bad Thing (there REALLY needs to be a "sandbox" area for untrusted apps; moxe *nixes do this with multiple users and security settings, and Java does it by running it in a virtual machine with no direct hardware access). Eudora has had serious security bugs that worms exploit. mIRC, a major IRC client for Windows boxen, has had periodic troubles with script worms (in fact, before Word97 worms became popular, mIRC was the major target of worms on the net). WinGate, a popular telnet server for Windows boxen, is so horribly broken that early versions have essentially no security whatsoever and can be used as an anonymous relay host by Bad Folks because it has no logging whatsoever (and it HAS been used like this by Bad Folks, which makes it a MAJOR pain in the arse to try to track them down). Most FTP servers for Windows boxen can be cracked. Nearly any Internet-capable program for Windows can be made to cause the system to crash by simply sending "file://C|/con" (with HTML browsers and email clients that parse HTML like Outlook Express and Eudora), or requesting "C:\con" (with FTP clients)...hell, you could probably write malicious ActiveX code to do the same thing, or add that as a dropper to a Word macro virus. This is partly the fault of the programs, but it's partly a sign that the OS in and of itself is horribly mis-suited for network use.
In short, there've been a lot of deep, almost fundamental changes in the world of viruses and malicious code, and more importantly, the dominant means by which they spread and the dominant "host" they breed in to begin with.
I wouldn't say virus myths outnumber actual viruses (I think the number of Word macro viruses slightly beats the number of variants of "Good Times"/"Jessica Maddick", etc. :) but Kumite's a good site. (Hell, I recommended it in my last post. :) There IS bad stuff out there, though (especially if you are misfortunate enough to have to use Win9X + Outlook Express + Office 97) and "computer condoms" never hurt. "Computer safe sex" (and yes, I posted a number of tips for that too) never hurts, either. Combine the two and you shouldn't have trouble. :)
Alex Bischoff (not to be confused with the former "TV manager" of a certain wrestling actor's troupe in Atlanta) dun said:
Command Antivirus has live updates for registered users; if memory serves, so does the Data Fellows version of F-Prot. (Notably: both of these use the F-Prot AV engine (damn near the best antivirus engine you can get next to AVP, and if memory serves they're even using part of the AVP engine in the latest versions) and the Data Fellows version comes in a package called F-Secure which also includes some very neat security toys.)
I don't know whether AVP has live updates or not, but I'd recommend it nonetheless; AVP is quite literally the best antivirus program one can get for Windows, bar none, and they do have trial versions (good for thirty days) for download...the registered version is not terribly expensive (around $25-30 if I remember right) and it is money well spent...if memory serves, AVP actually updates their virus list weekly, too, and updates are available on their website. If one is serious about antivirus protection I'd seriously recommend getting a copy of it...
As it is, if one is serious about antiviral protection anyways, it never hurts to have two antivirus programs on board. You use one for the standard protection which isn't quite as sensitive/more prone to false alarms like Norton or McAffee, and if that alerts you bring out the heavy-duty tools like AVP or F-Prot. (Or, if you're like me and can get both, you use Command Antivirus (read: F-Prot under a different label ;) for the main scan and AVP for the heavy guns--I've only had to do that once, when an older version of Command Antivirus didn't like a newer database update [basically they'd changed the format--no biggie, just get the upgrade])
It never hurts to practice computer "safe sex", though--I've never had virus problems, because I'm careful to the point of being neurotic :) Here goes a list of good antiviral techniques:
Don't enable HTML mail or Javascript in mail--this keeps you safe from malicious code that may activate downloads of worms that target Outlook Express, etc.
If possible, don't use Microsoft products like IE or Outlook Express or Office--there are a LOT of serious security bugs, even in the latest versions of Outlook Express and IE, that enable one to download malicious code like worms--sometimes without expressly clicking to accept (such as some worms that specifically target Outlook Express). Office, and specifically Microsoft Word 97, is downright infamous for macro viruses and worms--in fact, the single largest category of viruses anymore are Word macro viruses (and it's also the largest growth category--the year after the first Word "proof of concept" macro virus was released, there were more than 200 known in the wild--now it's something like 4000). In fact, Win95/Win98 actually have security flaws in the OS itself that allow such things to spread easily...
If you must use Microsoft products, stick with the maximum security settings you can get away with--Don't enable macros in Office and don't accept documents with macros unless they go through a reliable virus-scanner first (if possible, encourage people to send stuff in RTF or text format; Excel users, try to stick to tab or comma-delimited formatting, as Excel macro viruses are an increasing problem). Set MSIE and Outlook Express to their maximum security settings. Do not use ActiveX unless absolutely necessary (there are serious security bugs in ActiveX as compared with Java)--at the least do not allow untrusted ActiveX applets to run. Consider using more secure OS's if possible (for Microsoft-only shops, this may entail going from Win98 to WinNT or Win2000). In WinNT or Win2000 environments, only give supervisor access to those who really need it and set others to lower levels where binaries cannot be installed.
Do not read untrusted Word or Excel documents, or run untrusted executables--this expressly includes your friends--"Trusted" here means "downloaded from a known, clean, virus-free source" or "run through a reliable virus-scanner". There are a rather surprising number of worms and trojans (including more than one case of Back Orifice being distributed via a trojan sent by email, as well as cases of DDOS (distributed denial of service) clients being distributed in this fashion). This includes anything gotten in email, ICQ, etc. (Business environments--if accepting resumes by email, you may seriously want to consider asking clients to send resumes in plain text or RTF format. This may not be as pretty, but it's easier for clients to send you resumes this way and it eliminates problems with Word macro viruses.) Again, WinNT shops probably want to strongly consider limiting supervisor and administrator access to those who need it and set everyone else to levels where binaries cannot be installed (the misuse of administrator levels is one major way in which WinNT shops get infected--allWord macro viruses work on NT, and a fair amount of Win32 viruses do as well).
Get a good virus scanner and use it regularly --Norton AntiVirus is probably on the low end as far as "good virus scanners" go. I personally recommend one of the F-Prot based ones or AVP; most over on alt.comp.virus would recommend AVP first and one of the F-Prot based ones secondly. (Most also recommend you use at least two virus scanners, one for regular use and one as a backup/sanity check.) Alt.comp.virus has a lot of good info on viruses and the good and bad in antivirus software, anyways. :)
Consider using other security programs--There are firewall-type and intrusion detection programs even for Win95/Win98 systems such as Jammer--Jammer, in particular, acts as a firewall and detects things like attempted Back Orifice scans, etc. As Win95/Win98 is notoriously insecure, it's a good idea to give it any more security if you can.
Don't trade in warez--This may seem like child's play to most of us, I'm sure, but in home and even in business environments there are a lot of folks who do deal in warez. Most warez anymore (at least the downloaded kind, not the "burning a friend's copy of Win98 to CD" kind) seems to be from Russia, Brazil and China, which also happen to be rather large H/C/V centres. (It's worth noting here that it's widely thought that CIH escaped into the wild from Taiwanese warez posted to one of the Usenet warez groups that just happened to be infected with CIH; it turns out the author or a friend of the author was in one of the major warez groups.) I can't state strongly enough in regards to this that if you absolutely must use or trade warez, please for Cthulhu's sake scan the damn stuff before installing it or trading it with others so you don't infect yourself or others.
Don't assume that commercial software or "minority" OS's are immune to viruses or don't need virus-scans--Commercial software has been released before that was infected with viruses (including several demo CD's). Macs have several viruses to contend with, at least one virus is known to specifically target both WinXX and Macs, and Macs are still susceptible to Word macro viruses (and probably IRC worms, if a version of mIRC exists for Macs); at least three "proof of concept" viruses for Linux do exist, including one which apparently tries to gain root privs to perpetuate itself, and even aside from this Linux boxen are commonly used as servers for files for other OS's. You still want to virus-scan even that copy of Diablo II that you got; folks will be happier if Linux servers scan executable files for viruses. (By the way, yes, antivirus software for Linux does exist; AVP has ported its antivirus scanner to Linux, and actually has the downloads for free last I checked.)
Keep your antivirus software up to date--This is a given, and "live updates" such as featured with NAV and CAV are very nice in this regards. Don't wait for the news report on the next Worm from Hell to update, either. Monthly is a minimum, and preferably more often than that if you can (weekly is good :).
Make sure others follow these same "good computer hygiene" rules--If you run a business, explain why you have policies against people installing stuff from home computers, running executables, etc. If you're at home, explain to folks why you don't accept executables (even of that neat "dancing baby" thing) sent by mail, or HTML mail, or Word or Excel files sent by mail. Encourage others to install and use antivirus software and other security programs.
Don't panic--Panic just spreads stuff like that damned "Good Times" hoax. If someone spreads stuff like that, point them both to a site like Data Fellows which has up-to-date listings of viruses--or, preferably, the alt.comp.virus WildList, pointed to in the ACV FAQ over at ftp.uu.net and your favourite Usenet FAQ archives--and to a site like Virus Myths which has a nice list of hoaxes, etc. (so does Data Fellows, but Kumite's a bit friendlier on that); this is probably the best defense against "meme viruses" like "Good Times" that you can get ;)
Mostaphalles dun said:
Well, I don't remember the article in question, but I can note on some stuff (mostly from having been on the net that long)...
As far as I know, only one nation has ever had the death penalty for using the net, and that is Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan. (The Taliban-controlled areas have severe restrictions and/or outright bans on very nearly all media, including most print media, TV, movies, and even music--they outright make the Bad Old Days of sharia law in Iran look downright liberal in comparison.)
Some countries in central Africa may well have had severe restrictions (including imprisonment, though I doubt the death penalty) for unapproved connections, and most of the Islamic countries have always had severe restrictions on Internet connections (usually requiring proxies, etc.)... don't remember seeing anything on death penalties, though.
Myanmar may have had such a restriction; reportedly, modems are illegal unless specifically licensed by the government there, and an unlicensed modem can land one in prison for a good long time.
Notably--most of thesee countries that would have problems with it don't make the net illegal as much as they'd make all "unathorised" or "unlicensed" publishers illegal--it's far more likely they'd get you for "publishing subversive publications" or the like.
I can state with some certainty that Singapore wasn't one of the places that had the death penalty for using the net, though (I remember *.sg addys from 1992-1993), and the government finally started restrictions around 1996 or so (basically national firewall).
As an aside: Most countries that are going to be so repressive as to literally mandate the death penalty for unlicensed connections to the net have very poor or no Internet connectability whatsoever. Many countries in central Africa pretty much only have UUCP connections to the rest of the world (mostly through stuff like Doctors Without Borders, and occasionally university connections), and an increasing number of those are actually getting full Internet at least for universities. Iran (Yes, Iran) even has full Internet, and even one or two ISPs operating there...
About the only countries I know of with no Internet connections are Iraq, Libya, North Korea, and Afghanistan...Iraq is basically being shunned by the rest of the world and had most of its infrastructure bombed back into the stone age, and most of the folks there have more serious worries (like food and meds and shelter); Libya was likewise shunned due to UN sanctions (its domain is being operated as a vanity domain out of the UK) but this may change now that most UN sactions are being dropped; North Korea both is shunned and pretty much has walled itself off from the rest of the world (about the only country MORE isolated is Afghanistan), its people have more important things to worry about (like food) and the leaders are xenophobic enough to pretty much avoid anything like the net like the black plague; Afghanistan, well, it has the Taliban (fun with psychofundy Sunni Moslems that make the hardline mullahs in Iran seem downright grandfatherly) and I mentioned some of the fun stuff they ban earlier...as for the rest of Afghanistan, just about everything above a molehill was blown to smithereens long ago, they have more important stuff to worry about (like food, shelter, not having the entire country taken over by the Taliban, etc.). Short of a miracle, none of these folks are going to be getting Internet access anytime soon. :P
Some anonymous coward dun said:
Heh. :)
I'd venture that if you were Japanese, the hangs would be FAR less annoying than the Crash adverts. :) (I've seen the Japanese Crash adverts on fansubs of anime before, and believe me when I say that the Japanese adverts make the US ones seem sane and tolerable by comparison...you really shouldn't watch the Japanese versions if you're pregnant. No telling what it'd do to the fetus :)
Then again, Japanese adverts and non-anime TV shows in general tend to be on complete and utter crack (cough cough ahem Iron Chef cough ahem)...
BitwizeGHC dun said:
Oh, it's incredibly obvious. Hell, at points it's downright blatant that they're SW fans.
Among other things, in every Final Fantasy game since at least FF5 or FF6 there've been two characters named Biggs and Wedge (for those who remember A New Hope aka the "original" Star Wars, Biggs and Wedge were wingmen with Luke Skywalker). Specifically: FF6, in the beginning of the game; FF7, they were AVALANCHE members; FF8, they were opponents with rather serious delusions of grandeur :). If THAT isn't just a wee bit of a Star Wars in-joke, I don't know what is. :)
(I will resist the urge, by the way, to make bad jokes here about Han Solo naked and petrified. ;) Besides, someone already DID that joke already. :)
KwsNI dun said:
Actually, a Beowulf cluster probably wouldn't be the right tool for the job there (it'd be rather akin to using a butter-knife to tighten a flathead slotted screw--it'd work, but there are better tools for the job).
Beowulfs are very good if you need to do processing that can be done very well in parallel such as some formulas. They do not do so well if you a) have to do a lot of parallel work quickly (for that, a supercomputer like a Cray is probably better suited) or b) especially if you have to move and/or work with a massive amount of data (which is what mainframes are used for mostly and which is a job they do very well).
Besides, the entire purpose of Linux on mainframe boxen isn't to link a mess of S/390s into a Beowulf cluster (which, while it would make a very large box, it would be slower than a comparable Cray or even SGI Challenge series). The major purpose of porting Linux to a virtual machine S/390 is twofold--for "bare metal" runs it's basically an alternative to AIX (which, while reliable, is a horrid bastard child of *nix and the entire IBM REXX mess--for a fair amount of stuff which compiles "out of the box" on most *nixes, you have to add REXX scripts in AIX), while the port for "virtual machines" in S/390 (the one largely concentrated on in the article, by the way) is meant largely as a more user-friendly (at least to us folks used to *nixes and OS's invented in the last 25 years or so) alternative to the traditional IBM VM OS's (most notably MVS, VM/CMS, and VM/ESA--I've had experience with VM/CMS, by the way, and trust me when I say that *nix is far friendlier ;) that can also be used to add capabilities that have not existed for IBM/Amdahl "Big Iron" so far (like X-terms--other than VAXen and a few abortive NT ports, there isn't such an animal as a GUI for mainframes--it's all CLI terminals; also, stuff like PPP accounts can be set up (good for unis that may still have some old 3090 VM/CMS boxen about--IBM isn't officially supporting most OS's for the 3090s anymore, VM/CMS has a real dearth of Internet apps, and the daemons that DO exist do have some serious security flaws [most notably IBM VM SMTP--which can be anonymously relay-raped in its default install--and the default mail client which had serious problems in the early 80s with worms being transmitted]) and whatnot).
FWIW--there are a lot of places still using Big Iron, and not necessarily because they have a ton of legacy Fortran or COBOL (yuck) code that has been around since 1965. :) Insurance companies and banks, for example, commonly still use Big Iron because, well, Big Iron is about the only thing that won't choke on the massive amounts of data it must deal with reliably on a regular basis. (Supercomputers might be able to deal with it, but storage is iffy, supercomputers tend to be more temperamental than most Big Iron, and the amount of supercomputer needed tends to be quite a bit more than the average amount of Big Iron costs. Beowulfs are good for small- to medium-sized applications, but would barf on the amount of info needed and/or the nodes required (there is a limit to how many boxen may be linked in a Beowulf cluster; part of this is due to transmission speeds, but part of it is due to limitations of the Beowulf code itself); also, Beowulf clusters can fall down go boom if one node falls down goes boom.)
To give an example of, say, the average group that might use and NEED Big Iron--how about the US Census Bureau. They have to put in something around 250-270 million records in their databases every ten years; in addition to that, they have to keep databases (for comparison and updates, as well as to tabulate trends across decades) of anywhere from 100 million-250 million records--one for nearly every person in the country.
Yes, this is actually stored by computer--I happen to live nearish one of the four big processing centres for the Census Bureau in the US. They basically input everything on terminals from the census forms, thousands of people do...which are ultimately stored on Big Iron and on media totalling anywhere from terabytes to possibly even exabytes of data.
Damn near everything SHORT of a Really Huge Big Iron system is going to choke, hard, on this amount of info. (Especially so when you consider that a fair amount of older data is probably stored on tape or removable big-platter hard disks--usually using legacy storage systems which may not even be commercially sold anymore--which are being converted to more modern storage media capable of handling terabytes of data at a time.) I like Linux as much as anyone (and freely admit to being a Slackware and SuSE bigot ;) but a Beowulf cluster just isn't going to handle that. Not even if you built it from Alphas. Not even if you built it from bloody Playstation 2s. :)
You mentioned the IRS--well, they've got comparable storage and data handling requirements as the Census Bureau does, only worse. :) They have to maintain upwards of 100 million records which must be entered and updated yearly (just from people who fill out tax returns)...plus records from W2 forms filled out by employers of the folks associated with those 100 records...plus trends must be done on ALL these records, and previously archived records which may stretch back as far as 30-35 years or so (again, often on legacy systems and data--good old removable disk packs and 9-track tapes) in order to flag folks (who might be remiss on paying their taxes) for audits...we're talking literally hundreds of terabytes or MORE of data that the IRS must go through on a yearly basis! It's actually kind of impressive that their systems don't barf more than they do when one thinks of the sheer amounts of data they go through...
Some anonymous coward dun said:
*chuckle* Methinks someone doesn't quite get the point with the mention of scalability...
1) Big Freakin' Deal that you can run Office 97 under Win98. For the applications we're talking about here (mainframe stuff--numbercrunching and storing) "pretty" stuff like Office 97 or GUIs in general are neither helpful nor necessary (in fact, they'd be a detriment to the Job that the Big Iron is doing).
1a) I would far from call any Microsoft product "reliable". Yes, this includes Office, Win95/98/NT/2000/3.1/CE/Me/[insert latest marketing spin from Micro$oft here], and IE. Yes, I know of what I speak here--I've had to do more than one repair job when supposedly well-configured Microsoft apps and OS's suddenly developed severe cases of incontinence. :P Compared with some of the stuff I have to put up with re Microsoft stuff (hint: OS's are not supposed to corrupt their essential files over time, nor are they supposed to lock when running programs [necessitating a hard reboot and scandisk], nor are they supposed to crap themselves after 49 days of uptime because even Microsoft acknowledges that neither Win95 nor WinNT are stable enough to stay up longer than that, thus a 49-day reboot is coded in), even beta builds of Linux are marvels of stability :)
1b) Please call me when a version of Windows is widely available for Really Big Iron, such as is used for databases for insurance companies and the US Census Bureau. ;) (AFAIK, they don't exist--not even WinNT ports (the largest iron WinNT was ever ported to, BTW, were Sun and Alpha ports--and those two ports are supposedly being discontinued). Most of 'em don't use *nixes, either--they use stuff you've probably never heard of like MVS, VM/CMS, VM/ESA, etc.) 2) The point wasn't on "who had more apps" or "who was prettier". It was "Who can run the base OS on more stuff"...which Linux beats Microsoft, hands down. (Itsys are teeny even compared to WinNT boxen, and with the recent ports to run as virtual machines under mainframes (not to mention the Linux/VAX project, the Linux/3090 project, etc.) Linux has probably just surpassed NetBSD as the OS which can run under the maximum number of architectures.) It's rather a different cock-fight than the usual comparisons, mind. 2a) I'm not sure that the virtual-machine versions of Linux are quite ready for prime-time (at least for what mainframes tend to be used for), but at least the option IS available should one want to run Linux as a shell (as opposed to a traditional mainframe virtual-machine OS like VM/ESA or MVS). Compared to the OS's that do tend to be used with mainframes, Linux is a fair sight more user-friendly; more people nowadays are familiar with *nixes in general (if from nothing else but student email accounts or computer science courses) than most mainframe OS's. Also--and this may be a shock to you to hear this--using Linux as a virtual engine actually would make it easier for users to set up stuff like Internet accounts--including PPP services for folks who want to use Windows from home. ;)
(As a minor data point to add to that--the University of Louisville recently retired its old 3090 (which had been formerly used in EMCS and IS courses, then [when email first started becoming widely available and the EMCS and IS departments had largely gone to either PCs, an RS/9000, or a combination of SGI, HP, and DEC Alpha boxen] was used as the primary Internet account server for the Arts and Sciences school) in exchange for a DEC Alpha box. This was done for many reasons, partly because PPP is easier to set up on the Alphas and partly because IBM no longer officially supports VM/CMS on the 3090s [which was a Bad Thing, especially since they also no longer accepted security patches for Internet utils and daemons; at the time, there were two rather serious security bugs for IBM VM SMTP that were being widely abused, and I spent much of a summer giving the two unofficial patches to universities who'd been relay-raped by mailbombers :P]. If a virtual-machine version of Linux had been available for the 3090, it's possible they could have kept it in service a while longer instead of selling the thing off for scrap metal. :P)
3) You talk of things being "ready for the desktop"--most mainframes aren't because they have no real need to be. Realistically, the most useful setup for a Linux VM on a mainframe would be either for Internet-related network services (sorry, but Linux does have better support there anymore--at least sendmail and qmail do have protection against relay-raping and are regularly fixed to close any security holes found) or for a shell alternative for folks who are already used to working on *nixes at a shell prompt (instead of them having to learn the command sets for Yet Another OS). It's fairly obvious that you've never done much work with a mainframe--otherwise, you'd realise that there is no freaking desktop...these are Big Machines, things that fill up entire rooms complete with false floors to hide the miles of cable and Halon extinguisher systems. You aren't going to get right at a terminal, and you probably aren't even going to use an X-term with these beasts (unless the Linux VM running has it set up to do so); if you access these things directly at all instead of sending stuff back and forth across a network with the mainframe being basically a virtual disk, you're going to do it the old-fashioned, CLI, type-in-the-commands-on-a-TN3270 way.
Needless to say, unless and until some kind of Windows port makes it to such Big Iron, whether or not it's "ready for the desktop" is completely and utterly moot! Unless a Linux VM is installed and set up to use X-terms, you aren't going to get a pretty interface--the closest the OS the VM is running and your Windows box are going to get is with your Windows box running a terminal emulator like TeraTerm or VT3270. It's going to be done by text, the way Big Iron has always done it since we got away from programming boxen by switching plugs and relays and valves (vacuum tubes for us Yanks) around and went to punchcards and old Teletype terminals instead, before the nutty folks down at Xerox PARC came up with the idea of GUIs in the first place.
(And before you ask--yes, I know what I speak of here, too. I was at U of L back in the days when the 3090 was actively being used to teach Fortran, and also when it was used as the Arts and Sciences Internet server--U of L actually had set up a mess of old VT100 terminals because, other than through a terminal program, that was the only way the students could read their mail! Graphical interfaces for VM/CMS and most other mainframe OS's that run in virtual machines plain don't exist; Internet apps that most folks take for granted (un-relay-rapable mail servers, such things as even text-based WWW clients, etc.) had to be found or just weren't available, and tended to be years behind their *nix and/or Windoze equivalents. Needless to say, life got easier for the A&S students when they retired the old 3090 and got the nice Alpha server running OSF/1 ;) I wasn't QUITE there in the days of punchcards, but apparently they were still being used as late as the early 80's there--that's how long the 3090 was around--and the things were never really designed for anything much besides big databases and number-crunching and maybe BITNET connections. Most of the OS's for Big Iron actually date back to the days before CRTs became widely available, especially the Big Iron using virtual machine OS's. In fact, the ONLY Big Iron I know of at ALL that uses anything close to a GUI are a) the Alpha and Sun ports of Windows NT and b) a terminal and configuration program for OS/2 designed to act as a console for booting AS/400 boxen running OS/400 (in other words, the OS/2 program largely replaces the blinkenlights). There's no need for being "desktop pretty" if all you're doing with the thing is using it as a big-arse server (which most mainframes are)--most of the time you might not even be doing direct interaction with it anyway, and if you have to a CLI works wonderfully. ;)
Rendler dun said:
Well, duh. I can name many a reason for that:
1) Like the old saying goes: "Liquor then beer, never fear; beer then liquor, never sicker."
2) Guinness should not be drank with some plebian bourbon like Jim Beam. ;) (Yes, I can afford to be a whisky bigot and in particular a bourbon bigot. I live in Kentucky, not terrifically far from the "Brewery Belt" at that; needless to say, we have a LOT of bourbon to sample from here. ;) Jim Beam is pretty much the Budweiser of Kentucky bourbons anyways--about the only stuff lower on the scale is stuff like Heavin' Hell, erm, Heaven Hill (the Milwaukee's Beast of bourbon, and no, I am not making this up--Heavin' Hell truly sucks and can be used as a substitute for syrup of ipecac should you find the need to induce vomiting quickly in someone). More proper bourbons to drink with something like Guinness would be something far smoother--like, oh, Knob Creek (which is, surprisingly, made by the same folks who make Jim Beam but is really good, where Jim Beam is mostly good for getting drunk ;) or Maker's Mark (yum) or, if you can afford it, Blanton's (supposedly the best bourbon in the world, and most definitely the most expensive--it's something like US$50 a fifth (750 ml bottle), and even the AIRPLANE bottles of the stuff are right around US$6 or US$7; this largely explains why I've never had the stuff).
I can testify this, though; if you get good bourbon instead of rotgut, you can drink beer then whisky or the reverse. (I should state, though, as an aside--if you are American and were not raised by raving alcoholics, do not try to even keep up with a native of Belfast at drinking. You Will Not Succeed. Especially if you are anything like me (a smallish woman with around half the mass of the guy from Belfast who has a fair amount of Irish and Native American ancestry--and who tends to get giggly after about, oh, two or three pints of hard cider :). I tried this. Once. I ended up piss drunk at 7 am laughing at bad Jackie Chan movies and waking up later that day with a rare hangover [I usually drink water after drinking to specifically prevent hangovers, and it usually works...not that day, though :P]...trust me. You Will Not Win. Not unless your name happens to be Snorri and you speak Khazad and people refer to you as their dwarven drinking buddy. :)
Some anonymous coward dun said:
Speak for yerself. As an American, I can truthfully say that I cannot stand most American pisswater that passes itself off as beer. Literally about the only two "big" brands I find remotely drinkable are Red Dog (actually tastes a lot like the American version of Molson) and some of the Michelob stuff (because, among other things, Michelob actually makes heifeweisens and dark beers).
Most of what I drink tends to be either microbrew stuff, Negra Modelo (fortunately, Negra Modelo is very easy to find in Louisville, what with the largish Mexican population here) or stuff like heifeweisens that I have to go somewhere like Liquor Outlet (big warehouse stores for alcohol) to get...I'd drink more Guinness except that the stuff is ruddy expensive here (average price for a six-pack of Guinness in the Southeastern US tends to be around US$9--which is around Can$15 if I remember my exchange rates right), so it must remain an occasional treat *sigh*...
If I remember right, the main reason most beers in the US are a) pisswater and b) usually just 4 percent or so have to do with a) the fact that the largest brewery here (Budweiser) actually uses rice as a base (now you know why the Japanese love Bud--it tastes like a better version of Asahi or Kirin :) and because of funky rules regarding alcoholic strength and labeling here in the States (up to around six percent, if memory serves, can be labeled as beer, and two-percent beer is actually sold in some states; anything between six and twelve percent legally has to be sold as "malt liquor", and I'm not sure if it's legal to sell beer-like beverages that are over twelve percent).
But no, you're not the only one who can't drink American beer. :) My sister, on the other hand, can't see how I like dark beer (then again, her favourite beers are Miller Blight and Tequiza, so go figure)...
Coffee, on the other hand, is another thing altogether. ;) I seriously take it that you have never had good, old, authentic "trucker coffee" in a truck-stop in the States. Trucker coffee is by no means clear--it is black as the Ace of Spades, is probably closer to a syrup than a liquid if done properly, and can be used as paint-stripper if one isn't brave enough to drink the stuff. ;)
Needless to say, especially in the Southeast US, you will usually have a choice of either tea or trucker coffee (and if you're REALLY far south, like Louisiana, you start hitting that zone where you will get chicory in your coffee whether you want it or not--chicory actually makes coffee MORE bitter and gives it a unique flavour; Kentucky, I think, is around the northernmost limit of where chicory coffee is regularly sold). I can only assume wussy, see-through coffee is sold mostly up North...
(As an aside, I was raised on trucker-coffee, and most "normal" brews don't have that much taste to me. To me, "normal strength" means that even after a liberal amount of sugar and cream are added one can STILL taste coffee. Alas, my husband won't allow me to make non-espresso-based coffee anymore because he claims that the coffee I make could kick-start a corpse ;) (Then again, that's the entire PURPOSE of trucker coffee--to make it so strong as to wake the very dead from their slumber and let them drive cross-country. Believe you me when I say that the modern geek has STILL not quite gotten to the level of caffeine dependence and experimentation as the modern American trucker ;)
Deprecated dun said:
Actually, my cat will respond to her name, either by coming over or making little chirpy-meows at you or meowing "for ME?".
Then again, it can truthfully be said that my cat isn't exactly a normal kitty, either. Firstly, her name is Dementia (Demi for short) because as a kitten, her first act upon being brought home was to chase her tail and bite it continuously for five hours straight (and even to this day, she will still occasionally do it...chasechasechase, bite, "ow", licklicklick, "ooh, it's MOVING!", chasechasechase...rolling around in a ball of kitty). Secondly, she is about the only non-Siamese-descended kitty I know of that makes a concerted effort to learn English (Demi is what is known in cat circles as an Exotic Shorthair--half-Persian, half American Shorthair--they have very plush, almost chinchilla-like coats and shorter faces than most farm-kitties)...she can say "For me?", "Mom", "Throw it" VERY clearly, and she mutter-meows other stuff (like when she is having a conversation with Mommy or Daddy). Thirdly, Anything Mommy Does, Demi Must Do (including asking Mommy if clothes are for her, trying to help Mommy post to Slashdot, trying to help Mommy and/or Daddy fix dinner while asking if it's for her, etc.). She will even copy mannerisms at times...including trying to dance once when her dad went "Bust a move, Demi!" trying to get her off of a FAQ for a Playstation game :). Fourthly, for some weird reason her catnip gene never kicked in until she was two years old, and her catnip abuse consists of the following: a) roll on bag of catnip and attempt to kill bag. b) Pick up a mouthful and throw it after huffing catnip fumes when Mommy opens bag to get some out for Demi. c) Spend next four hours licking walls, carpet, and any other available objects. Fifthly, she was one of the few cats I've ever seen who drool when excited (she's finally gotten over that, thank Goddess).
This is why she is generally known as Demi the half-a-kitty around the house. The body is definitely that of a kitty. The brain, we have doubts about ;) (And it's not because she's imprinted on humans, either...my husband got her when she was twelve weeks old (near the top limit of when you CAN adopt kittens before they start turning feral on you) and she'd lived all her life before then as a farm-kitten (among working farm-cats). She's just crazy. ;)
ObWarning: The following post is liable to get just a bit ranty and pissy, mostly because it hits one of my major trigger-buttons. Don't worry, this time I'm not going to flame the fundies ;) No, I've got another set to rant against...just keep that in mind if this sounds pissy.
Saxton dun said:
Well, for starters...how about doing your job as a parent and (Cthulhu forbid!) actually supervising the little rugrat in the library instead of letting him run about and getting on stuff unsupervised?
What in the bloody nine layers of hell are you doing letting a five-year-old-kid run about unsupervised anywhere? (No, I don't care if he's in the library or not. By the gods, you shouldn't let kids that young be unsupervised--not at home, not at the library.)
I could name a million reasons why you don't ever let a kid that young be unsupervised anywhere--much less mucking about on a terminal in the library (and for what it's worth, it's not safe for you to let a kid run about unsupervised in a library, Internet access or no--among other things, he might find the exact same things in the "adult" section of the library you are so afraid of him finding online (yes, believe it or not, libraries carry not only "Playboy" but stuff like translations of the Kama Sutra ;), he could be abducted or worse, he could hurt himself running around like a yard-ape...).
Let me ask you this--would you allow your five-year-old to walk around unassisted and without adult supervision anywhere outside of your backyard? Would you allow Junior to attend school, or go on field-trips, or even to cross the freakin' STREET by himself to go to a playground without adult supervision?
If you had an IQ of over, oh, your average resident in a state home for the profoundly mentally retarded, you'd say "Hell no". Because you know little Junior--being over five--barely knows how to tie his own shoes, much less safely navigate himself in a downtown area without getting lost or hurt. You'd want a responsible grownup with him in school, with him as she leads the kid-herd to the zoo, at the playground, and you sure as hell wouldn't let him cross busy streets by himself (not even if he knows the "look both ways" rule, because he forgets sometimes much as most five-year-olds will).
Guess what? The Internet is just the same as if you are taking Junior on a field-trip, or taking him to the park, or (shock! shock!) the actual library itself. He's freakin' five years old. I don't think it's unreasonable to be with Junior while he's looking on the Internet--not just to make sure he doesn't accidentially or on purpose stumble onto www.babeswithgreatbigtitties.com instead of Pokemon stuff, but because a) it could actually be an enriching experience for you AND him, b) you could well teach him some lessons if he (God forbid!) were to stumble upon some nekked chick (and trust me, he's going to be far more likely to ask "Mommy, why is that girl naked?" and be very confused than to become a rapist at the age of five from looking at a picture of a naked woman) like that you don't approve of that sort of thing, and c) because, by the God and the Goddess, you took that responsiblity to actually parent the kid when you did the Nasty Dance, nine months later Junior popped out, and you didn't hand him over to the orphan's home.
If you feel that, somehow, you cannot handle such a pressing responsibility as daring to parent little Junior instead of expecting the library staff, the complete written works of Dr. Seuss, the computer and Internet provider, Nintendo and all one hundred and fifty-two Pokemon, the school system, and the Teletubbies to act as babysitters and/or parentis in loco because you are too busy watching TV or posting to Slashdot or whatnot, there are plenty of people who can't have kids who would be more than willing and able to take the little monster off your hands and give him a loving, supporting home where people would give enough of a shite about him to parent him instead of expecting everyone else to parent him. Failing that, I'm sure there are plenty of wolf-packs in Alaska, Canada, Wyoming, and Michigan who'd probably do a decent job of raising the kid, because if you are so stuck on yourself like that, the kid would probably be better off in the long run being raised by wolves (at least the wolves would give a damn about the kid and parent him--wolf parents are very, very good parents, which you'd know if you watched so much as a special on the Discovery Channel, and I honestly think that most human parents could stand to learn some lessons from the canids on parenting ;).
Yes, I'm very pissy about this. But it's exactly this crap--people expecting librarians, libraries, the Internet, all one hundred and fifty two Pokemon, the Teletubbies, Barney The Insipid Purple Hellwyrm, the boob-tube in general, and basically anyone but themselves to actually step in and parent their damn kids--which involves being involved in their lives, supervising them, giving them lots of love and support, knowing enough to see when Junior might be Seriously Bent or Very Ill and knowing when to get professional help, knowing exactly how much to hold onto them and how much to let go, and is by very definition a very labour-intensive process, especially among us apes [yes, it's been labour intensive since before we split from chimps--watch "People Of The Forest" sometime--it actually has a case of a chimp that died thanks to overprotective parents]--it's THAT crap which has given us such wonderful things as NC-17 movies being the theatrical kiss of death, the country swinging ever more to the theocratic right-wing, book-banning initiatives in schools, and yes, even little happy censorship initiatives like in Holland.
You get them because some Very Bad Folks (who, by and large, are control-freaks [who may not entirely be control-freaks of their own design; the vast majority are also members of Bible-based cults which have a VERY strong control structure and a major emphasis on obtaining Control and Power over others--a fair number are even folks who have been in this for multiple generations] who have been taught that they are literally the Chosen People, that it is their duty and their very destiny to force this entire nation and then the world to be a fundy theocracy whether folks want it or not, and whom are not only not above lying to get that goal but are actually taught how to do so [such stuff as "stealth candidates", using "code words" for fundy initiatives like "family" or "heritage", and an entire principle known as "Heavenly Deception" which basically means "lying is perfectly ok as long as it's in the service of God" are a part of this]) who will actually use this (partly because they are outright taught to be predatory and sneaky to "win battles for God") as an excuse to sell a whole, nasty bill of goods that most folks would normally not agree with...by claiming "it's for the children...you don't want your children to be corrupted and harmed, do you?" A lot of folks (not coincidentially, the same ones who let their five-year-old kids run around unsupervised in libraries and on the Internet and let Mickey Mouse, Simba, La-La, Barney, and Elmo babysit their kids) fall for this, because they don't bother to do the homework in researching the groups pushing all the censorship stuff--all they hear is "this is protecting your kids from porn" and they think "Whew...I don't have to parent my kids, I'll just let Cyber Sitter (or X-Stop or BESS or any of the other censorware programs) babysit my kids." They might not realise that's what they're thinking, but they are. (Ironically--the groups that have pushed for censorware, especially the Religious Right groups, probably do more harm to kids themselves than do "naughty pictures". A whole nasty look at their agenda (including links to comparisons between Bible-based cults and Scientology) is here--including a mess of links to stuff in the very words of the groups. Also, fun statistics: upwards of one to fifty kids a year are killed in attempted "exorcisms" by Bible-based cults (where the Religious Right groups that push censorware get a lot of their membership, especially hardcore members); gay kids who grow up in fundamentalist households, especially in Bible-based cults, have the single highest rates of both suicide and being victims of abuse of any group (per population) for which statistics are kept; kids in Bible-based cults are victims at a higher rate in general of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse than the general population.)
Well, you know what? Sometimes Things Happen, and even though we don't want to have to explain horrible stuff like that to our kids, we have to in terms they'll understand. It's part of being a parent, you know.
Black kids, and in fact MOST minority kids, have to sometime in their kindegarden or first-grade years have The Talk regarding why little Joe there just called them a bad name like "nigger"...and they have to explain to kids why this is such a hurtful thing and why racism is Bad. I bet those parents wish they never had to do it, but they do. That's life.
A fair number of parents, especially in the more rural parts of the South and the Midwest, have to have The Talk with their kids at a rather young age about why the Klan are considered Bad Folks (if you're unaware--in many Midwestern towns, branches of the KKK will have parades down streets or rallies in downtown areas; in some areas, they've even attempted to join "Adopt A Highway" highway-beautification programs, so even if the kids never see a Klan protest they might have to have The Talk anyways). I had The Talk myself around the age of five, when we were going to a family park/picnic-area and passed through a rural town in Kentucky--which just happened to have a Klan march going on at the time. :P
Parents with girls usually have to have The Talk around the age of five to seven when boys won't play with girls and call them names.
Parents sometimes even have to explain to five-year-olds that the "Show-world Dance Emporium and Blue Movies" store they passed when going downtown sells things they don't approve of and aren't for grownups.
For that matter, you also have to explain to kids why drugs are bad, and why kids shouldn't drink or smoke. Yes, you sometimes have to do this young (Are you aware, incidentially, that most drug-education programs now want to start such education as early as kindegarten and first grade? That they routinely start as early as the second and third grade nowadays?). Yes, it'd be nice to let them have their innocence longer, but sometimes Stuff Happens, and trust me when I say it doesn't require the Internet.
(For instance--how would you explain it to your kid if--say--he saw a Klan rally outside his school because they're talking about keeping busing (this is not uncommon in parts of the Midwest and South, by the way)? How would you explain it if he found an issue of Playboy all by his lonesome (yes, kids have been known to do that)? What if (Cthulhu forbid) someone were to expose himself to the little tyke? Or someone stole his Pokemon cards or ripped him off in a trade?)
The point is, you are going to eventually have to explain to him that people do certain things that are not within your family values. If you do your job as a parent, and you don't let electronic babysitters (or print babysitters) raise your kids for you instead, your kids will (assuming they aren't Seriously Bent to begin with, which you can't do a hell of a lot about without professional help--most kids aren't Seriously Bent, though) learn what is Right and Wrong according to your family's values, and you'll probably be really surprised how many of the core values he takes with him as an adult. (Again, this is assuming you raise your child, rather than a) using electronic babysitters or b) trying to train the kid under an atmosphere of fear and pain rather like a lion-tamer does with his whip. All too many households (especially those in which many members, or especially Mommy and Daddy, are in coercive groups) do take the latter approach, and if the kids don't end up completely brainwashed, Broken, or dead from it they usually end up resenting the parents and going the opposite way...)
If (Cthulhu forbid) your kid is one of the few who is Seriously Bent, again, short of professional help there isn't much you can do about it. It's also about the only way your little five-year-old is going to be permanently scarred by ANY form of porn. If you do your job as a parent (instead of expecting the television, the Internet, censorware programs, the school system, and the librarian to babysit your kid for you) then you should be able to see the early signs that your kid is Bent before he goes off doing Stupid Things like trying to outdo the Columbine Massacre or going about raping cattle and pillaging women, and hopefully you will get some help for that kid before he hurts someone. (By the way--most kids that DO go off like that either have something seriously Wrong in their brain chemistry or wiring that has probably existed from birth, or are victims of rather severe abuse and/or neglect. If you are doing your job as a parent, the latter isn't likely, and the former is basically a matter of a crap-shoot with genetics (or possibly environmental conditions or both--probably "both") that there's not much one can do with it--especially since we know only some of the causative genes for two of the mental illnesses known to have a definite genetic factor, schizophrenia and bipolar illness.)
As for Junior seeing porn and hate-groups on the net at the age of five--the best antidote, again, is to do your job as a parent. The Internet is just like a downtown area or busy mall, and you wouldn't let your kid walk around there unsupervised at the age of five; just like you insist Junior hold your hand crossing the street, make sure he only uses the Internet when you're with him. (This way, he's not going to stumble on anything like bigtitties.com or surfnazis.org or anything like that; if, Cthulhu forbid, you do--you explain that this is something you disapprove of and is "yucky" or "bad", then you go on to find Pokemon pages--just like my grandma explained to me how the Klan were bad folks because they hated black people and Jews, then we went to the campground and had lots of fun.) Raise your kids with your values (this is not to say "cram them down their throat on pain of physical pain"--it's possible to raise your kids with values by acting as a good example to your kids and having those values in place continuously, and it usually works better doing it that way too ;) and--again, if they're not Seriously Bent to start out with--they should be ok. (If you have Nazis or the Klan imparting their values to your five-year-old, you have a problem much deeper than the possibility that little Johnny is regularly hitting stormfront.org. Either Johnny is seriously bent, or (far more likely) you are not doing your job as a parent, are simply using the Internet as a babysitter whilst you check out whatever at the library, and as a result the Nazis or the Klan are now teaching Junior. That's a case where you fucked up, not the library nor Johnny nor even the Nazis.)
In relation to this--this is why censorware is bad. You're not only using the Internet as a babysitter (and the censorware, at that) instead of taking the time to parent the kid, you are letting someone else who does not have the same values as you, and may have values which you neither agree with nor want imparted to your child parent your child for you. Most censorware supports, at best, a very right-wing agenda (a lot of stuff on feminism, birth control and even body education for females and males, safer sex, gay/les/bi/trans teens, and even stuff on breast, uterine, ovarian, cervical, and testicular cancer is blocked; in many cases, the Constitution, anti-censorship groups, the ACLU, and especially anti-censorware groups have been blocked) and much of it supports an outright fundamentalist agenda. (No offense, but if and when I do have kids--a decision I have not made yet, because the possibility exists that I may not have kids for a long time, if ever; I'm sure as hell not ready for it now, because a) I don't have the patience required to have 'em and parent them properly, and b) there's a lot of stuff I have to work out before I'm gonna be ready to have kids--one thing I do not want them exposed to until I've had time to educate them on the mores I want them brought up with is the fundamentalist agenda...considering that many Religious Right groups get much of their membership from Bible-based cults and the fact that a lot of Bible-based cults use very deceptive marketing techniques to lure teens in especially (including "hell house" haunted houses, "free pizza" dinners, "Christian rock" concerts, and even "motivational anti-drug speeches" where kids are forced to hear sermons and not allowed to leave until they are over--many kids have joined the groups under such circumstances), and further considering that I happen to be a walkaway from such a group I was raised in...I don't want any kids of mine hurt like I was, and I'd rather not have fundamentalists mucking about with the moral education of my kids till they're old enough to decide on their own, thanks. This is also why I'm worried on the whole "grandparents' visitation rights" thing, by the way; my folks, and much of my extended family, are still involved in the cult [most recruited by my birthmother, no less] and I ESPECIALLY don't want Grandma trying to turn my kids into good little fundamentalists, but if "grandparents' visitation rights" laws are held up as Constitutional I might not have much of a choice to keep them from that (unless I delay having kids till my birthmother dies)...)
Nobody ever said it was going to be easy being a parent. If anything, it's the hardest job in the world. (I'm at least smart enough to know I'm not up to raising kids at this point in my life unless it's the four-footed, feline sort of kid [and hubby tells me I'm overprotective in THAT and spoil our "daughter" Demi the half-a-kitty rotten ;)].) If you don't think you can hack it, then please, for both the sake of your sanity and the sake of the kid, give 'em to someone who CAN take the time and care to raise them and actually parent them instead of using them as a little droid to be programmed or instead of using damn near every electronic babysitter known to man to babysit them with. Give them to a pack of wolves or your neighbour's German Shepherd to raise if you can't find humans to do it. They'd be better off with THAT (even counting all the social problems feral kids have when they come back to human society) than with a parent who doesn't give enough of a shit about his own kids to parent them instead of using all one hundred and fifty two Pokemon to babysit his kids, or not caring enough to be physically there and present to make sure that Nazis aren't recruiting your five-year-old for the next Racial Holy War, or thinking his kid is less a decent young human who can be raised to be a decent adult human and more a sinful, icky thing that needs to be indoctrinated and mustn't ever, EVER be allowed to get "dirty" or "sinful" (because either extreme is going to fuck your kid up, one way or another--look at me ;). Orphanages would be better in the long run if you can't hack it. (And some folks can't. No offense, but the ones who can't should take the fragging responsibility as an adult and the Brains that God/Goddess/[insert your favourite deity here]/the process of evolution gave you, and make the active decision not to breed unless and until you can make the commitment required to properly parent and raise your younguns, and if you've already popped them out and can't take the responsibility, for the sake of the kids, give them to someone who can. It's pretty much people not wanting to take responsibility in the first place that not only has led to kids not being found to be Bent till they go nutzoid and shoot up half a school, but people demanding censorware crap on all their favourite electronic babysitters and wanting them to be made "kid-safe" because some control-freak from the Religious Right is just predatory enough to prey on both their worries and their wanting a minimum of responsibility to push for that crap on behalf of wanting to turn the effective government of the United States into a giant Bible-based cult...and because the folks don't want to take responsibility, they get goaded into this crap (especially if it's claimed it's for the children)...they're more than willing to go along. For the love of Grud, show some backbone and take responsibility, folks... :P)
Snaller dun said:
Basically, when Trey Parker and company offered the movie to the MPAA ratings board the first time, the ratings board rated it "NC-17" (this is roughly equivalent to an "18" cert in most countries, and is essentially box-office poison in the US--more on that below).
Trey Parker and company were, understandably, more than a bit pissed (seeing as they'd ALREADY gotten a movie rated "NC-17" by the MPAA ratings board--"Orgazmo", a sex comedy--which also pretty much placed them on the MPAA rating board's shitlist to begin with).
So, they went through at each point where the MPAA had made a specific objection, and made those parts even worse...and the next time the movie was presented, it actually got an "R" rating (this would be roughly equivalent to a "15" cert in most countries, only a) it applies to 17 and under and b) is generally enforced more strictly, especially at the time SP:BLaU was released in the US).
For all intents and purposes, yes, unfortunately.
Basically, here's the situation in the US: Firstly, the vast majority of films are passed through the MPAA's ratings board (set up after an even more draconian censorship scheme, the infamous Hayes Code [which even banned such things as women in miniskirts, tongue-kisses, ANY profanity worse than "damn" or "hell", and even proscribed regular kisses over a certain length] was finally done away with in 1968 or so), which is a group of six or eight folks picked to represent "most of America" (many are suspected to be housewives; nobody really knows who all is on the MPAA ratings board, as the membership is kept very secretive). Movies aren't required to be rated by law (except in some towns), but the vast majority are (literally the only exceptions are porn movies, independent films, and [mostly] imports).
Also, the vast majority of movie theatres in the US (even the vast majority of art-movie theatres) are owned by three or four major chains (National Amusements, Cinemark, Loew's, and there's probably one or two more I'm forgetting) that, a long time ago, were actually owned by the movie theatres themselves until the Department of Justice ordered the studios to divest themselves of movie chains (this was in the 50's). The number of independent movie theatres in the US probably is less than 5% of all movie theatres in the United States, and is almost exclusively either small-town operations or art-house movie theatres that specialise in import films, cult-classic films, art films, and anime.
The vast majority of movie theatre chains in the United States have standing policies that they will not show NC-17 or unrated films in their theatres. (In addition, some counties and cities--most notably, some towns in Texas--have or formerly had ordinances against NC-17 or unrated films being shown within town limits.) The vast majority of movie theatres in the US are multiplex theatres; the only real outlet for NC-17 and/or unrated films, in most cases, is either through the direct-to-video market (which is basically what has happened with porn in the US) or through art-house movie theatres (which are only usually available in large cities or in places with large collegiate populations--Louisville, Kentucky [which has a metro population approaching a million people] could only support one of the two art-movie theatres in town, leading to the much lamented closing of the Vogue Theatre).
To make matters even worse, the largest video-rental chain in the United States (Blockbuster Video) will not offer NC-17 or unrated movies for rent, and even has a habit of censoring even R-rated movies (one reason I will not rent from Blockbuster, by the way). Most chain stores, most notably Wal-Mart (pretty much the largest store chain in the US) will not sell NC-17 videos. Most cable channels, even pay ones (with the notable exception of Cinemax) will not show NC-17 rated movies, and most "pay-per-view" channels will not show NC-17 movies except on the "adult-only" (read; mostly porn flicks) channels. The vast majority of places like grocery stores (which actually do rent out a lot of videos, at least in the Southeastern US) don't rent out NC-17 videos.
Now, keep in mind with all this--in many parts of the United States (I would go so far as to say the vast majority of the US that is not in large cities), often the only video rental placea available are Blockbuster Video (or maybe Blockbuster and the one or two mom-and-pop video places Blockbuster hasn't successfully run out yet) and grocery chains. In most of the rural and even suburban parts of the United States, often the only large stores that may sell video tapes are Wal-Mart, grocery stores, and possibly if in a larger town an electronics store like H. H. Gregg or Circuit City or Best Buy (none of which sell NC-17 videos, by the way). Most of these areas might not even get cable, but get pay channels through either DSS or "big dish" cable. Many of these areas are 50 miles away or more from the nearest specialised video store that might sell NC-17 rated tapes (usually something like Suncoast Video). A fair number of these folks, especially in the more rural parts of the United States, may even run afoul of local obscenity ordinances that de facto define NC-17 rated movies as obscene (yes, these are illegal according to our Constitution, but until someone gets arrested and files a lawsuit over it, there's not much that can be done). For most Americans, about the only way to get an NC-17 rated movie or video is to a) see it at an art-movie theatre (and hope it's not owned by one of the chains that refuses to show NC-17 rated movies), b) buy the thing at a video-sales store or rent it at somewhere large that has an over-18 section (considering Blockbuster Video is about as agressive at running competitors out as Wal-Mart is, this can be hard, especially in smaller towns), or c) buy it online (especially if you are in a podunk town, or unfortunate enough to live somewhere where NC-17 movies are literally against the law).
To make things worse yet: A fair number of papers and even paper chains actually have policies against advertising NC-17 or unrated films. In some communities, there are actual bans on advertising of NC-17 or unrated films (even for the video market).
Needless to say, because of this, nobody wants their movie rated NC-17 if they can keep from it, because almost nobody will show it and almost nobody will even hear about it or be able to rent it in most places. (What is especially ironic is that the whole "NC-17" rating was set up as an alternative to the "X" rating--the old US "18 cert" equivalent, which had pretty much been co-opted by porn films because literally the only places willing to show X-rated movies were art-movie theatres and porn-houses. Of course, since they never attacked the REAL problem (the fact that the largest theatre chains refused to show any kind of "18-cert"-type film period, not to mention a slew of unconstitutional ordinances banning the showing and/or advertisement of such films and the policies of a LOT of newspapers not to advertise such films in any form or fashion) they ended up with exactly the same problems with the NC-17 cert as they did with the old X cert. :P)
This is basically why Trey Parker had to lobby (and eventually outfox) the MPAA's ratings board. If he hadn't, "South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut" would have suffered the exact same fate that "Orgazmo" faces ("Orgazmo" is supposedly a screamingly funny movie, but it is next to impossible to find and pretty much never showed anywhere--because it got the NC-17 Mark of Death from the MPAA ratings board). Which would suck. :P
Some anonymous coward dun said:
It's Important, because (among other things) the various and sundry Religious Right groups in the US who had their sights on Holland were planning on using Holland as a precedent. (If you want to know more about their agenda--on which I've posted at least three very longish posts on Slashdot in the history of the threat to Holland's libraries--here's a good (if pissy) summary here; I'm not gonna type out all that mess again right this second. ;)
Basically, they badly need a precedent for library filtering right now; they've had two separate cases where the smack has been laid down on attempted library filtering initiatives by no less than US Federal Courts (most notably in Loudon County, VA). They were sure they would get a definite win in Holland, seeing as Holland is not only one of the most conservative towns in North America but also is close to no less than three colleges run by very conservative churches.
They did not get their precedent. (Let me be the first to say "WAHOO!!!" in that case, drink to those who busted ARSE to keep Holland's libraries and Internet connections free, and thanks for posting this on Slashdot.)
However--it's very, very likely (especially if you live in smaller towns in the Midwest, or in Southeastern parts of the US that have large fundamentalist populations--like, for instance, Pensacola, FL [which actually has a large Bible-based cult running out of it] or Springfield, MO [which has been described as the "buckle" of the Bible Belt] or anywhere in Virginia). Even moderate towns like Louisville, Kentucky could be targeted (we have no less than three large, vocal fundy groups here--one of which is literally a Bible-based cult; it seems the happy folks who are running the Southern Baptist Seminary are also working very hard to turn the Southern Baptists into the next denomination to have severe problems with Bible-based cults, as the seminary has gone increasingly coercive).
In other words, It Can (And Probably Will) Happen Next In Your Town. Just like record-ban and concert-ban initiatives have. Just like huge abortion protests have. Just like the calls that have gone on for well nigh over thirty years for censorship of school materials and forcing kids to listen to Christian sermons in schools even if neither they nor their parents are Christians (there are public school systems in Kentucky that still try to put up the Ten Commandments [Protestant King James version] even though Kentucky is under a direct court order from the US Supreme Court not to do so; there are public schools in Florida that offer "Bible History" courses that are very thinly disguised versions of the exact lesson plans they use in fundamentalist Sunday schools). There are even attempts to get public libraries censored in many large cities (Columbus, OH has recently had to fight "Family Friendly Libraries", an AFA splinter group).
These folks have an agenda, and we must always be on guard lest we be snuck up on and caught unawares. Holland is a big wake-up call for those who might not be aware of how the Religious Right is slowly trying to take over everything it can in the pursuit of their ultimate goal. Those of us in anticensorship circles and those who are walkaways from the various Bible-based cults and Religious Right groups that promote this stuff have seen it literally for years.
Doesn't make it less Important, though.
Some anonymous coward dun said:
Trust me when I say you do not want to find out what they may have in mind. Almost everything points to it being very, very, very bad for the humans of this planet and for other living things...
Specifically, an awful lot of people in the Religious Right seem to think that a fair amount of stuff in Revelation (the Book of Apocalypse for you Catholic/Orthodox folks) points to a worldwide nuclear war. For years, the fundies have claimed Russia would be the one to start it--when this finally became completely untenable, they claimed it was Iraq. In any case, they're firmly convinced that SOMEONE is going to start some kind of nuclear conflict which will erupt worldwide.
There are actually a surprising number of books out in the fundamentalist circles regarding this...some of them even trying to reach out to popular culture (like Hal Linden's books).
The really scary thing about this is a) they are firmly convinced this is a Good Thing because b) they are also firmly convinced that before this happens they are going to be Raptured up and will get the enjoyment of seeing the sinners (and the entire planet) burn in nuclear hellfire from front-row seats in Heaven. (Yeah, there's a rather shocking amount of hate and resentment even in their stories of Eternal Reward. Sick, huh?).
I think I can truthfully say that little would scare me more than a leader of the Religious Right with his finger on The Button. And I can base that on how (before I walked away) I used to see the preacher and darn near the entire congregation nearly jizz themselves when the Cold War threatened to heat up...and later (after I'd walked away but was still forced to occasionally attend) when the Gulf War hit because they were utterly, completely convinced that this was going to be the Big One...and after THAT, Y2K (and in all three cases it was going to be Russia's Fault--these guys STILL aren't out of the Cold War mindset!)...I don't want these guys anywhere NEAR anything remotely resembling a nuclear weapon, thank you. :P
It is interesting you mention Oklahoma City, though. The perpetrators are suspected of being in with Christian Identity groups; Christian Identity is a really warped version of fundamentalism that claims that white folks are the "true Children of Israel" and that the Jews are actually the literal children of Satan--all the "brown" and "yellow" folks are apparently "mud people" in their eyes. In fact, the bombing is thought to have been done to parallel the plot of a book popular in Christian Identity and other racist circles called "The Turner Diaries" which basically depicts these groups committing various terrorist acts and eventually overthrowing the US Government.
Now, I'm sure most of you are wondering just why the hell I'm mentioning Christian Identity when we're talking about (presumably) relatively non-racist fundies. Well, it turns out the two do have some links, especially on the more radical sides of the Religious Right that they never want to show on TV...
First off, the US Taxpayer's Party (the second-largest fundamentalist party in the US [the first is that part of the Republican Party that the Religious Right has effectively hijacked]--it also may be now running under the name "Constitution Party")--which has explicit party platforms calling for the US to essentially establish a theocracy--has links to not only a veritable who's who of the Religious Right (among them--James Dobson of Focus on the Family [a branch group of FoF, Family Research Council, is heavily pushing the censorware drive in Holland] [info here], Senator Bob Smith [info here], Matt Trewhella [who has advocated stuf like bombing abortion clinics, is a Christian Reconstructionist, and his group Missionaries to the Preborn darn near makes Operation Rescue look pacifist in comparison; info here], Pat Buchanan [yes, as in the guy who's now going for the Reform Party nomination and who has almost singlehandedly succeeded in destroying that party--info here], the heads of Operation Rescue, and the Rev. Rushdoony [the "main guy" behind Christian Reconstructionism--the canard that the Founding Fathers somehow meant the US to be a theocracy]) but also a surprising number of links to militia groups and--here's the kicker--Christian Identity groups (info here and here (this one is especially good--it turns out the very leader of the US Taxpayers Party runs a militia and calls for churches to form "Christian Patriot" militias), here, here, here, and here; if memory serves, there's also reference in the ADL's report on militias).
There's some more info here on the politics of the US Taxpayers Party. Keep in mind that this party has gotten big support from the Religious Right and (should the Republican Party ever find its cojones again and tell the Religious Right exactly where to go) it's strongly thought that (at the least) the 35 states in which the GOP party apparatus has been hijacked by the Religious Right would go to the US Taxpayers Party, as well as the majority of the Religious Right supporters of the GOP now. As it is, the US Taxpayers Party got on the ballot in 40 states last Presidential election...which is damned scary enough.
For some more happy links between the "non-racist" bits of the Religious Right and the scary folks making fertiliser bombs...
1) The Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation (a big Religious Right think-tank/bankroller--these are the guys who have the adverts for adoption saying "Choose Life" and the guys who have Jeff Gordon and NFL stars and the lady from "Children of a Lesser God" hawking "Power for Living" on TV ["Power for Living", btw, is basically a guide on how to get involved in coercive fundy groups :P]...) has founded at least one Christian Identity group in past.
2) Larry Pratt, who has worked with Pat Buchanan (among others) has some rather extensive links to militia and outright racist groups (more info, including on links between the Religious Right and the far right, here).
3) It seems that the Coors family (major bankrollers of the Religious Right) and the Heritage Foundation may have links to racist groups (info here).
4) The Free Congress Foundation, a subsidary group of the Heritage Foundation, has links with many racist and fascist groups (info here).
5) Pat Robertson could actually be considered borderline between "non-racist" fundies and the scary guys on the far right. Many of his books have actually contained "code words" common in the racist community, and at times he's been outright overt about it...it's probably best that you look here (thank you, Google, for caching--surprisingly, this is actually a critique from a conservative viewpoint!) or here to hear the guy in his own words...
6) More info here on a funding-group active in California.
This is not to indicate fundamentalists are racists. Most aren't, and I suspect most would be shocked to find what their leaders support...but there ARE links there, sadly. I'd be remiss if I didn't point that out (and for youse in Holland--it turns out that Focus on the Family is the group most consistently associated with the US Taxpayers Party--you may be able to use this to your advantage, possibly).