Lets hope the sharkbite and the missing foot convinces them it's a bad idea.
DRM isn't a bad system for controlling a client-server network. Don't want your confidential e-mails, documents and data being read by someone else? No problemo.
Problem comes in when you implement it on home users machines. A home users' machine is by definition a peer; both a client and a server of services on the internet. DRM is meant to turn a machine into a far more client oriented machine rather than a peer oriented machine by giving other people control of the media they give you. Meaning, the RIAA can burn cd's and when you buy a CD you may listen, not copy, backup etc a cd. Yet I somehow think that with Ms's incompetance there'll be a way around this, but that's besides the point I'm trying to make.
So where will this lead us? First rollout's going to be on corperate amercia's networks not on home users machines; this patch is basically a demo. Home users could care less about this kind of security; most people trust their families and if they don't, then there's a major problem with that family. Sure, people want firewalls and antivirus scanners, sandboxes and spyware hunting applications as far as keeping their machine from exploding, but as far as keeping your school report form your sister well that's just dumb.
Sure, kids don't want their parents seeing their pr0n collection or vice versa, but there are other tools available both withing winnt and outside to facilitate that kind of control(and even to an extent in win98). Plus there's the added "Teacher, it says "Drm error; you have no rights to open this file", how do I print the paper I made at home?." Although the school I went to had a strict secuity policiy; you get only 1 disk, that disk stays in the computer room, you are not allowed to put any disk in any computer, which later changed quite a bit as I hit highschool but you get the idea; it adds points of failure.
So what my guess is that they are either going to package it with a future os as an enabled, mostly harmless service that makes it difficult for you, for example, to copy a CD the RIAA doesn't want you copying. Much like how most people who run win2k aren't aware they are loging in under admin, so too will they be unaware they are running a DRM system and knowing MS, they'll leave it at that. There is nothing in Win2k that I am aware of that is forced on the user. WinXP home ed is a different story, but in Win2k you get admin control. Sure, it's not total control like with linux but the computer doesn't do things you don't want it to do; if you don't want it running tcpip you shut down the protocol and it's that simple.
Ms also knows full well that there are alternatives out there that people can and will use to bypass their security bullshit. Hell, I even have friends who'll pay me to mod chip their dvd player to get rid of the regional encoding. I also know people who play a lot of music on their computers and if all of a sudden they coulnd't they'd come straight to me and ask how to get around it.
In any case, if home users don't like it they will no doubt goto their geeky friends and ask "I can't copy this cd, what do I do?" and those geeky frineds will hand them a linux cd if that's the only alternative.
There's, thankfully, been a lot of developement as far as dumbing down linux so the average user can understand and utilise it. Sure, a lot of hardcore linux elitist assholes are going to complain, but when it comes right down to it most people are dumb and lazy. The next step is taking linux from, for example, a gaming engine to an actual game. We've got the engine complete, it's got documentation out the asshole, it's got different mods now we've got to make a coherent distrobution that's standards based that people can understand.
What do we have to watch out for? Firstly, if Ms gets control over what you can and cannot run, then they are most certainly not going to let you run competing products
If it's legal in one place it's going to spread to others. Tis' the way with the internet. Attack the US servers, and the canadian ones will start servin' some more.
It's entertaining to watch news sites run around about possible outbreaks of viruses. It's akin to the stories of asteroids "Oh my GOD!!! AN ASTEROID IS GOING TO KILL US ALL IN 2011", same as OH MY GOD!!! A VIRUS IS GOING TO DELETE ALL MY PORN, FINANCIAL RECORDS, MUSIC, VIDEO, AND WRITING IN A FEW MONTHS!!!"
1 hacker got angry and made a virus that infected users machines, for fucks sake, it didn't even delete anything, it just showed people they were insecure and now the media is trying to stirr up paranoia. Ignore this bullshit and secure your boxes, and for those of you who have too much time on your hands, help those too stupid to help themselves?
Looks like a pile of hourseshit to me and you can bet Microsoft is going to try some dirty stuff in the next couple of years, but I think Bill is beginning to get a grasp of what he's up against.
Linux is Microsoft's achillies heel, the one and only thing that can really take Microsoft out; the peasants revolting and building their own community. It's everything microsoft isn't, it's free, it's open sourced, it's standards based and it's a community project. Microsoft is expensive, closed source, proprietary and is a corperate project. Microsoft's stuff is inherently insecure while linux's stuff is inherently secure.
What I do hope happens is Gates decides to throw longhorn in the trash for being the piece of shit it is and start developing on the OSS standard and makes a opersting system from scratch based on the linux kernel for the idiots at home. I'd love the idea of Microsoft working hand in hand with the OSS community, but as most of us feel, nobody trusts Bill Gates farter than they can throw him (and by the look of the picture he's gotten pudgy).
What most of us fear is Bill Gates deciding to try to steal the communities hard made and hard worked on code. Sure, if he wants to develope it and sell it under the terms of the GPL that's fine by me, and I like that idea but when your company is pulling stunts like with SCO people are going to be resiliant and understandably mistrusting if not vengful.
So, we'll see. Lets just hope for all of our sakes that he doesn't suceed in stealing the linux code and screwing all of the hackers who made it. I don't even want to think what would happen if hackers around the world decided vigalantism is a great way to go. We're all 3 meals from anarchy, and if they shut down the internet itself there's sure going to be anarchy. Think Ms Blaster multiplied by a thousand. If any of these hackers are reading this, if your'e going to do something vigalanty style, I'd suggest going ahead and destroying redmond from the inside out while setting all their information free on kazaa and when you're done with that, gut the goverment for all the data it's worth and set their info free as well.
It's not so much the fact that (now that I'v done some google searching) I'm wrong, but it's the fact that you called me a " stupid liberal who lost track of how big the world really is" that makes me think you need to look at what you're saying more. Breaking up into nitpicky warring factions who insult eachother is probably one of the dumest thing anyone can participate in. Sure, discussions usually become heated and sometimes even violent but we don't have to walk out of them hating eachother.
And yes, I deal with people who I consider to be mentally handicapped (nice way of saying stupid) on a daily basis, but you've got to learn an infinite patience and resiliance in order to keep from going insane and attacking everyone around you.
like take a legislative razor and cut through the lines of providers who establish local monopolies and then force people to pay exuberant prices on internet connections?
Seriously. Companies built the network just like Ma bell did and when you creat a vital resource you must give that resource to the people or face hell, like Ma bell did. It isn't as bad as it was for broadband but if the deregulation continues as it is, it'll get that bad.
If they REALLY want to increase the growth of broadband, how about taking some money from, say, "foreign aid" or military spending, say around 10-20 billion and then throwing it at companies to build lines in areas where they need it while ensuring that the lines belong to the people and making sure the companies can't charge more than $XXX in those areas? And actually make sure the lines are built and that they are upto code or else the companies get it.
A family in their minivan riding down the road, all of a sudden a billboard flashing red and yellow advertising viagra pops out of nowhere distracting hundreds of drivers causing a car accidents all over.
Seriously. Good intention, bad idea. At least it'll give hacker groups the ability to show their views to the world.
access-list 121 remark $External Network$
access-list 121 deny tcp any any eq telnet
access-list 121 remark $***Start Adblocking ist***$
access-list 121 remark $Valueclick$
access-list 121 deny ip 64.70.54.0 0.0.0.255 any
access-list 121 remark $Ads.web.aol.com$
access-list 121 deny ip 64.12.174.0 0.0.0.255 any
access-list 121 remark $Various Doubleclick$
access-list 121 deny ip 216.73.92.0 0.0.0.255 any
access-list 121 deny ip 213.86.246.0 0.0.0.255 any
access-list 121 remark $Versign BS DNS entry$
access-list 121 deny ip 64.94.110.11 0.0.0.255 any
access-list 121 remark $***Stop Adblocking list***$
access-list 121 permit ip any any
access-list 121 permit ipinip any any
access-list 121 deny ip any any
that's becuase of the MSN BS search feature built into IE. MS collects traffic statistics with this then creats spin-off compnaies which then cybersquat the domain. You can disable it by going into the internet options and fooling around with the settings.
Simply block all traffic to 64.94.110.11 and give verisign your hate mail as well. It'll still return the error message whenever that address is found, so even if it is hosted, it's as good as not registered.
This a stupid stupid stupid move by them, Akin to shooting themselves in the foot with a 45 caliber pistol; it's going to anger a lot of people in the IT industry.
People wearing headphones could easily hunt down a 'virtual insect'
I bet these people wonder how they can tell from which direction sounds comes from when someone is talking to them. Seriously, replace "virtual insect" with "other guy on the enemy team in ravenshield" and these people are found to be completly clueless.
Hell, even the part about fighter piolets using more than their eyes is rather old; I'm in a tribes2 clan and I remember awhile back we had installed a soundpack that modified the Beowulf tank to play the lowrider music instead of the jet music and the shrike scout antigrav plane to play something else so that you could hear from what direction they are coming from 5 or 6 seconds before they came so you could dodge them. I also remember a bug when I installed my audigy that when you shot anything, you'd get to hear whatever that thing is as it traveled. So, for example, as a missle traveled it'd sound as if I was riding on the missle; I could hear the sound bouncing off of objects and I could tell "oh, the missle just went a little left of a building" or "oh, the missle just changed course and went for a flare" without needing to see it. I could also judge how close one of my pot-shots with the disk launcher came by how the frequency of the soundwaves generated by the disk itself. Of course, I had to turn it off; when you hear every single shot within the area you're getting info, as well as vehicles, generators, turrets, etc things get confusing and you can't tell what's going on anymore. You can also use touch to the same degree.
This is akin to activision deciding to release dod on 1 website exclusivly...Great for the website, horrible for the game itself.
Know what I'm going to say if halflife 2 runs crappy on nvidia videocards and well on ati's because it was coded to run on ati's cards? Simple, if I'v got an nvidia card I'm not going to run out to buy halflife 2 and go for something else. If I'v got an ati card, then I might buy it. I'm not investing another $400 to run 1 game, period.
By going with ati, they've also alienated the linux community single handedly becuase ati doesn't have linux drivers. Not that a linux dedicated server software won't exist, just the gamers on linux rigs won't go out and buy the game.
Neither Nvidia or ATI are guiltless as far as PR campaigning goes and bullshitting people. I don't trust either company nor do I trust the propaganda machine that is the enthusiast community. I look more at options and major performance defects and what the company does.
As a gamer, I could care far less about them selling cards becuase of major games. UT2K3? I think it sucks, along with a large number of other "major release" games. If they optimise the drivers to run halflife but not tribes2, I'm not buying the card period. I'm more conserned with if it can run what I'v got at my expectations.
Options are also good; I want to know if the card is quality. Right now, I picked an nvidia card becuase nvidia has apparently good linux drivers and being able to run linux games in the future is important to me. ATI has no support for linux. I also consider the nvidia drivers to be superior to ati's drivers feature wise, but that may change.
This is basically an orchestrated scam inwhich ATI pays valve to make a public endorcement of ati's cards. They'd be telling us months before that nvidia's drivers suck or something to that extent, trying to get both card makers' drivers working. For people who code such nice engines I'd doubt they'd have the lack of brains to make an engine that would screw a large part of their demographic, but they would have the brains to come out and lie for a big cash incentive.
Take a bit of time to understand this case; either Eolas wins and Microsoft gets screwed pretty heartily or Microsoft wins and Patents on software are weakened some way or another. They can't rule that this patent doesn't apply or else all patents don't apply. They can rule something like "the function is significantly different" or some BS like that, but then the goverment looses even more credibility and respect and it generates controversy.
And those of you who thing the OSS community will loose out have another thing coming to you. Eolas is a patent creation company, they make inventions and lisence them out to other companies to be used. Read their "vision"
To create and develop the inventions that allow information technologies to enhance the quality of life for everyone.
OSS is for everyone, anything under GPL is for everyone. MS on the other hand is stifling this so they are going after MS, plus they can get some dough. I may be wrong, and they might be a company run by greedy bastards but if they were, they'd sue a smaller companys first and work their way up. It just doesn't make logical sense for them to be the bad guys.
It's a win-win sitution for the people. Either software patents are weakened or MS gets hit upside the head with a sledge and their browsers are insuperior to the likes of mozilla. Besides, how many companies are going to recode their entire plugin so they'll work with IE? I'd find it cheaper to push the customer base onto mozilla short term and start new projects long term.
The Times called the FBI after Lamo browsed sensitive data on its computers, including Social Security numbers for celebrities and government officials who are among the 3,000 contributors to its op-ed page.
Sensative data, sounds like he got more than cc numbers. Also sounds like he has a political ageda, which is ok by my book. You can get lotsa info off of the Nyt's internal system; memo's, drafts, omitted papers, letters from people with political agenda's....
In any case, this is akin to breaking into a musieum to steal stuff, and instead of stealing he took pictures (very exact ones) and left a how-to note. He didn't damage anything, he showed them security holes in exchange for internal data. They don't like the internal data getting out...
BTW, any good company will resecure their systems after any consultancy and scour it for software; some firms can't be trusted.
The RIAA has been screwing us over for awhile, and as a result they've had a drop of 15% in CD sales. It's enough to make Universal Cd's basically say "We're sorry, we'll be a good monopoly, please stop keep on buying our stuff (so that we don't get small enough for the Supreme court anti-trust crusher).".
The blood is in the water; they can ruin the lives of few filesharers but hundreds of thousands will still spring up in their place. It happened before, and it's happening again. The dinosaurs will be crushed at the hands of the vigilant youth. In 5 or 10 years, when the RIAA is gone and music is free what'll be our next battle is the question? Mabye the RIAA is all an elaborate scandal or some kind to cover up the other horrors awaiting us; the news doesn't cover it, lord knows it's owned by 5 major corperations who are heavily intertweined. A lot of 3rd party news sources are springing up, hopefully rantradio, the one in my sig, will get big enough in the next couple of years to do some damage before they hosts get arrested for corrupting the youth or some such bullshit.
Seriously, take them out to a parking lot, and throw a couple of rounds into them in non-fatal spots. Take the kids and throw them into prison for a year or two.
It isn't the game manufacturers problem if they inspire psycho's like these to throw some ammo into traffic. It's the parents' fault for not raising them to not be psycho's and the kids' fault for failing to understand that shooting oncoming traffic is a bad idea, and probably moreso, societies fault for not accepting them as people, if society accepted them they wouldn't think it'd be a great idea to shoot at traffic.
Looove it!
I prefer the sledgehammer method, you may however want something more radical, like a shotgun, 9mm, or my personal favorite, use it as a noisemaker and tie it to the back of the couple's wedding limo.
You can get child pr0n, donkey pr0n, alien pr0n, any kind of pr0n you want on p2p systems. Additionally, you can get terrorist tapes of people getting shot, tapes of combat, books about anything and everything from cookbooks to military training manuals to bomb making manuals. The information available on p2p networks is unlimited in both quantity, quality, and diversity.
This bill is basically saying they're going to shut down the roads and conduct searches and siezures whenever they want on anyone they want because they might be harboring child porn. I agree, child pr0n is fucked up but I'd rather have my freedom than throw a bunch of pricks in jail.
Yeah, I think it'll pass and that they'll just drive p2p farther and farther underground; they can't stop it, they can stop this generation of p2p applications, but can they stop the next, and the one after that?
1: The software is open source and produced by the open source community, not by the goverment or any corperations. There should be several different voting projects at any given time to ensure no single group of people control the software. Encryption schemes and the softwares structure needs to be changed on a yearly basis to ensure that it is difficult to tamper with.
2: All voting machines will be x86 based boxes (for simplicity and cheapness sake) and built by certified professionals who give community service to do this. It's a requirement that they use fiber optic cable between the voting booth and whatever central server in the building they have.
3: Electon boxes are only allowed in public buildings such as city halls, schools, police stations, etc and must be hooked upto the internet in this way. No corperation may host a voting event.
4: Between ends, there needs to be hefty encryption to ensure ISP's don't tamper with the information.
5: A paper ballot will be taken, meaning, everyone who votes leaves a paper trail which is stored perminantly and a reciept given to everyone who votes at the machine when they do.
6: If 1% of the voting population for any given district, or if 1% of the total population of the country, sign a petition for a recount then there will be a recount done using the paper ballots.
7: Leave the system up year round and invite people to hack into it so long as they report how they hacked into it. Before election, the system is flushed and the software is reinstalled.
As is right now, there are far too many problems with the current system. Too many conflicts of interest and too many people trying to rig the machines. It's going to be interesting to see in the next 5 or 10 years if the USA turns into a totalitarian dictatorship or if the people start civil war, or if the issues are going to be solved peacefully.
If they have electronic voting, demand a ballot and don't go away until you get one. Make sure to make a scene and talk loudly about how you heard the machines were insecure on slashdot and how the situation in Nebraska is fishy and how you won't use the machines becuase they are rigged. If you can get a mob together to go and screw up the machines beforehand, that'd be better.
Seriously, I'v had my fill between corperations and the goverment. When I goto vote next election, if they have electronic machines made by any of these fishy companies with no paper trail, I'm getting a chainsaw and spraypainging "democracy" on the sides, throwing on a nasty nasty chain, hiding it in a trombone case, getting in a buisness suit so I look like a hurried musician, and when I get in the building, I'll start the puppy up in the bathroom or some consealed area, run out screaming "You want democracy, I'll give you democracy!!! Lets do this by paper!" and rip the machines to hell.
Do I care about the prison time? The better question is, what jury on earth is going to convict me? >:) Especially if I proove that my motives were justifyable, there's something fishy going on and the goverment is bieng fishy, denied me a printout of my vote and ballot, and make it a point to tell the jury they don't have to convict me. Plus, I'll make national news for sure, a psycho running into a voting area with a chainsaw and ripping all of the boxes to shreds? You'd bet that it'd get all over the god box.
Sure, I'll take it up the ass a few years in jail and have a felony conviction to ensure that the voting system isn't rigged. Besides, I'm sure it'll look GREAT on a resume!
Then ATI comes along(or 3dlabs, or matrox), takes advantage of Nvidia's cards being more expensive and less efficent and blows them to hell as far as pricing goes. You don't get much room for monopolization in the gaming market when the efficiency, price, and potency of your hardware is at stake. Plus, how much of their talent would put up with it? Which developers are going to lisence the code and make their games more expensive than they already are?
Also, note that the DMCA hasn't been upheld in a major court battle as of yet. It's still a law which derives it's power entirely out of FUD.
If anything, MS is simply furthering their format as always and seperating thesmelves and their customers from the opensource movement even further. This feature really doesn't add much to a basic word editor. Home users could care less about their school documents getting read by other family members, buisnesses already have security and adding something like this is just another layer ontop of the cake.
With every new version of office the document formats get further and further from legally being translatable into an OSS format. Eventually these companies, unable to free their data from microsoft formats, will get gouged so much to keep their databases up that they'll either decide that moving to OSS is a better solution and illegally use a formatter or die trying.
OSS can only get better in the next few years, MS on the other hand has to figure out a way to keep their monopoly going whilst adding features in a way that people like.
1: Decide to take vote at xx date, lobby heavily to get politicians behind bill
2: Mass outcry, politicans decide to not pass the bill or to wait for a vote, as it'd be political suicide to do otherwise.
3: Mass outcry dies down, corperations keep the politicans pockets lined waiting for the proper time to reintroduce the bill (when the protesters have something else to go after in otherwords. Divide, conquer, etc).
Rinse, repeat.
What should be done here is the protesters start protesting the mans power and start questioning their loyalty to the people, in other words, politically assassinate the bastards. They'll eventually get it passed if they keep on trying to pass it. Just as carp and a number of other provisions are continuously barragged at congress year after year, month after month which ties them up for doing anything other than actual leadership, just making deals and selling our rights away.
Slashdot Mirror
Lets hope the sharkbite and the missing foot convinces them it's a bad idea.
DRM isn't a bad system for controlling a client-server network. Don't want your confidential e-mails, documents and data being read by someone else? No problemo.
Problem comes in when you implement it on home users machines. A home users' machine is by definition a peer; both a client and a server of services on the internet. DRM is meant to turn a machine into a far more client oriented machine rather than a peer oriented machine by giving other people control of the media they give you. Meaning, the RIAA can burn cd's and when you buy a CD you may listen, not copy, backup etc a cd. Yet I somehow think that with Ms's incompetance there'll be a way around this, but that's besides the point I'm trying to make.
So where will this lead us? First rollout's going to be on corperate amercia's networks not on home users machines; this patch is basically a demo. Home users could care less about this kind of security; most people trust their families and if they don't, then there's a major problem with that family. Sure, people want firewalls and antivirus scanners, sandboxes and spyware hunting applications as far as keeping their machine from exploding, but as far as keeping your school report form your sister well that's just dumb.
Sure, kids don't want their parents seeing their pr0n collection or vice versa, but there are other tools available both withing winnt and outside to facilitate that kind of control(and even to an extent in win98). Plus there's the added "Teacher, it says "Drm error; you have no rights to open this file", how do I print the paper I made at home?." Although the school I went to had a strict secuity policiy; you get only 1 disk, that disk stays in the computer room, you are not allowed to put any disk in any computer, which later changed quite a bit as I hit highschool but you get the idea; it adds points of failure.
So what my guess is that they are either going to package it with a future os as an enabled, mostly harmless service that makes it difficult for you, for example, to copy a CD the RIAA doesn't want you copying. Much like how most people who run win2k aren't aware they are loging in under admin, so too will they be unaware they are running a DRM system and knowing MS, they'll leave it at that. There is nothing in Win2k that I am aware of that is forced on the user. WinXP home ed is a different story, but in Win2k you get admin control. Sure, it's not total control like with linux but the computer doesn't do things you don't want it to do; if you don't want it running tcpip you shut down the protocol and it's that simple.
Ms also knows full well that there are alternatives out there that people can and will use to bypass their security bullshit. Hell, I even have friends who'll pay me to mod chip their dvd player to get rid of the regional encoding. I also know people who play a lot of music on their computers and if all of a sudden they coulnd't they'd come straight to me and ask how to get around it.
In any case, if home users don't like it they will no doubt goto their geeky friends and ask "I can't copy this cd, what do I do?" and those geeky frineds will hand them a linux cd if that's the only alternative.
There's, thankfully, been a lot of developement as far as dumbing down linux so the average user can understand and utilise it. Sure, a lot of hardcore linux elitist assholes are going to complain, but when it comes right down to it most people are dumb and lazy. The next step is taking linux from, for example, a gaming engine to an actual game. We've got the engine complete, it's got documentation out the asshole, it's got different mods now we've got to make a coherent distrobution that's standards based that people can understand.
What do we have to watch out for? Firstly, if Ms gets control over what you can and cannot run, then they are most certainly not going to let you run competing products
If it's legal in one place it's going to spread to others. Tis' the way with the internet. Attack the US servers, and the canadian ones will start servin' some more.
It's entertaining to watch news sites run around about possible outbreaks of viruses. It's akin to the stories of asteroids "Oh my GOD!!! AN ASTEROID IS GOING TO KILL US ALL IN 2011", same as OH MY GOD!!! A VIRUS IS GOING TO DELETE ALL MY PORN, FINANCIAL RECORDS, MUSIC, VIDEO, AND WRITING IN A FEW MONTHS!!!"
1 hacker got angry and made a virus that infected users machines, for fucks sake, it didn't even delete anything, it just showed people they were insecure and now the media is trying to stirr up paranoia. Ignore this bullshit and secure your boxes, and for those of you who have too much time on your hands, help those too stupid to help themselves?
Looks like a pile of hourseshit to me and you can bet Microsoft is going to try some dirty stuff in the next couple of years, but I think Bill is beginning to get a grasp of what he's up against.
Linux is Microsoft's achillies heel, the one and only thing that can really take Microsoft out; the peasants revolting and building their own community. It's everything microsoft isn't, it's free, it's open sourced, it's standards based and it's a community project. Microsoft is expensive, closed source, proprietary and is a corperate project. Microsoft's stuff is inherently insecure while linux's stuff is inherently secure.
What I do hope happens is Gates decides to throw longhorn in the trash for being the piece of shit it is and start developing on the OSS standard and makes a opersting system from scratch based on the linux kernel for the idiots at home. I'd love the idea of Microsoft working hand in hand with the OSS community, but as most of us feel, nobody trusts Bill Gates farter than they can throw him (and by the look of the picture he's gotten pudgy).
What most of us fear is Bill Gates deciding to try to steal the communities hard made and hard worked on code. Sure, if he wants to develope it and sell it under the terms of the GPL that's fine by me, and I like that idea but when your company is pulling stunts like with SCO people are going to be resiliant and understandably mistrusting if not vengful.
So, we'll see. Lets just hope for all of our sakes that he doesn't suceed in stealing the linux code and screwing all of the hackers who made it. I don't even want to think what would happen if hackers around the world decided vigalantism is a great way to go. We're all 3 meals from anarchy, and if they shut down the internet itself there's sure going to be anarchy. Think Ms Blaster multiplied by a thousand. If any of these hackers are reading this, if your'e going to do something vigalanty style, I'd suggest going ahead and destroying redmond from the inside out while setting all their information free on kazaa and when you're done with that, gut the goverment for all the data it's worth and set their info free as well.
It's not so much the fact that (now that I'v done some google searching) I'm wrong, but it's the fact that you called me a " stupid liberal who lost track of how big the world really is" that makes me think you need to look at what you're saying more. Breaking up into nitpicky warring factions who insult eachother is probably one of the dumest thing anyone can participate in. Sure, discussions usually become heated and sometimes even violent but we don't have to walk out of them hating eachother.
And yes, I deal with people who I consider to be mentally handicapped (nice way of saying stupid) on a daily basis, but you've got to learn an infinite patience and resiliance in order to keep from going insane and attacking everyone around you.
like take a legislative razor and cut through the lines of providers who establish local monopolies and then force people to pay exuberant prices on internet connections?
Seriously. Companies built the network just like Ma bell did and when you creat a vital resource you must give that resource to the people or face hell, like Ma bell did. It isn't as bad as it was for broadband but if the deregulation continues as it is, it'll get that bad.
If they REALLY want to increase the growth of broadband, how about taking some money from, say, "foreign aid" or military spending, say around 10-20 billion and then throwing it at companies to build lines in areas where they need it while ensuring that the lines belong to the people and making sure the companies can't charge more than $XXX in those areas? And actually make sure the lines are built and that they are upto code or else the companies get it.
A family in their minivan riding down the road, all of a sudden a billboard flashing red and yellow advertising viagra pops out of nowhere distracting hundreds of drivers causing a car accidents all over.
Seriously. Good intention, bad idea. At least it'll give hacker groups the ability to show their views to the world.
Alternativally, what I do on my router is this;
access-list 121 remark $External Network$ access-list 121 deny tcp any any eq telnet access-list 121 remark $***Start Adblocking ist***$ access-list 121 remark $Valueclick$ access-list 121 deny ip 64.70.54.0 0.0.0.255 any access-list 121 remark $Ads.web.aol.com$ access-list 121 deny ip 64.12.174.0 0.0.0.255 any access-list 121 remark $Various Doubleclick$ access-list 121 deny ip 216.73.92.0 0.0.0.255 any access-list 121 deny ip 213.86.246.0 0.0.0.255 any access-list 121 remark $Versign BS DNS entry$ access-list 121 deny ip 64.94.110.11 0.0.0.255 any access-list 121 remark $***Stop Adblocking list***$ access-list 121 permit ip any any access-list 121 permit ipinip any any access-list 121 deny ip any any
Works like a charm ^.^
that's becuase of the MSN BS search feature built into IE. MS collects traffic statistics with this then creats spin-off compnaies which then cybersquat the domain. You can disable it by going into the internet options and fooling around with the settings.
Simply block all traffic to 64.94.110.11 and give verisign your hate mail as well. It'll still return the error message whenever that address is found, so even if it is hosted, it's as good as not registered.
This a stupid stupid stupid move by them, Akin to shooting themselves in the foot with a 45 caliber pistol; it's going to anger a lot of people in the IT industry.
People wearing headphones could easily hunt down a 'virtual insect'
I bet these people wonder how they can tell from which direction sounds comes from when someone is talking to them. Seriously, replace "virtual insect" with "other guy on the enemy team in ravenshield" and these people are found to be completly clueless.
Hell, even the part about fighter piolets using more than their eyes is rather old; I'm in a tribes2 clan and I remember awhile back we had installed a soundpack that modified the Beowulf tank to play the lowrider music instead of the jet music and the shrike scout antigrav plane to play something else so that you could hear from what direction they are coming from 5 or 6 seconds before they came so you could dodge them. I also remember a bug when I installed my audigy that when you shot anything, you'd get to hear whatever that thing is as it traveled. So, for example, as a missle traveled it'd sound as if I was riding on the missle; I could hear the sound bouncing off of objects and I could tell "oh, the missle just went a little left of a building" or "oh, the missle just changed course and went for a flare" without needing to see it. I could also judge how close one of my pot-shots with the disk launcher came by how the frequency of the soundwaves generated by the disk itself. Of course, I had to turn it off; when you hear every single shot within the area you're getting info, as well as vehicles, generators, turrets, etc things get confusing and you can't tell what's going on anymore. You can also use touch to the same degree.
This is akin to activision deciding to release dod on 1 website exclusivly...Great for the website, horrible for the game itself.
Know what I'm going to say if halflife 2 runs crappy on nvidia videocards and well on ati's because it was coded to run on ati's cards? Simple, if I'v got an nvidia card I'm not going to run out to buy halflife 2 and go for something else. If I'v got an ati card, then I might buy it. I'm not investing another $400 to run 1 game, period.
By going with ati, they've also alienated the linux community single handedly becuase ati doesn't have linux drivers. Not that a linux dedicated server software won't exist, just the gamers on linux rigs won't go out and buy the game.
Neither Nvidia or ATI are guiltless as far as PR campaigning goes and bullshitting people. I don't trust either company nor do I trust the propaganda machine that is the enthusiast community. I look more at options and major performance defects and what the company does.
As a gamer, I could care far less about them selling cards becuase of major games. UT2K3? I think it sucks, along with a large number of other "major release" games. If they optimise the drivers to run halflife but not tribes2, I'm not buying the card period. I'm more conserned with if it can run what I'v got at my expectations.
Options are also good; I want to know if the card is quality. Right now, I picked an nvidia card becuase nvidia has apparently good linux drivers and being able to run linux games in the future is important to me. ATI has no support for linux. I also consider the nvidia drivers to be superior to ati's drivers feature wise, but that may change.
This is basically an orchestrated scam inwhich ATI pays valve to make a public endorcement of ati's cards. They'd be telling us months before that nvidia's drivers suck or something to that extent, trying to get both card makers' drivers working. For people who code such nice engines I'd doubt they'd have the lack of brains to make an engine that would screw a large part of their demographic, but they would have the brains to come out and lie for a big cash incentive.
Take a bit of time to understand this case; either Eolas wins and Microsoft gets screwed pretty heartily or Microsoft wins and Patents on software are weakened some way or another. They can't rule that this patent doesn't apply or else all patents don't apply. They can rule something like "the function is significantly different" or some BS like that, but then the goverment looses even more credibility and respect and it generates controversy.
And those of you who thing the OSS community will loose out have another thing coming to you. Eolas is a patent creation company, they make inventions and lisence them out to other companies to be used. Read their "vision"
To create and develop the inventions that allow information technologies to enhance the quality of life for everyone.
OSS is for everyone, anything under GPL is for everyone. MS on the other hand is stifling this so they are going after MS, plus they can get some dough. I may be wrong, and they might be a company run by greedy bastards but if they were, they'd sue a smaller companys first and work their way up. It just doesn't make logical sense for them to be the bad guys.
It's a win-win sitution for the people. Either software patents are weakened or MS gets hit upside the head with a sledge and their browsers are insuperior to the likes of mozilla. Besides, how many companies are going to recode their entire plugin so they'll work with IE? I'd find it cheaper to push the customer base onto mozilla short term and start new projects long term.
The Times called the FBI after Lamo browsed sensitive data on its computers, including Social Security numbers for celebrities and government officials who are among the 3,000 contributors to its op-ed page.
Sensative data, sounds like he got more than cc numbers. Also sounds like he has a political ageda, which is ok by my book. You can get lotsa info off of the Nyt's internal system; memo's, drafts, omitted papers, letters from people with political agenda's....
In any case, this is akin to breaking into a musieum to steal stuff, and instead of stealing he took pictures (very exact ones) and left a how-to note. He didn't damage anything, he showed them security holes in exchange for internal data. They don't like the internal data getting out...
BTW, any good company will resecure their systems after any consultancy and scour it for software; some firms can't be trusted.
The RIAA has been screwing us over for awhile, and as a result they've had a drop of 15% in CD sales. It's enough to make Universal Cd's basically say "We're sorry, we'll be a good monopoly, please stop keep on buying our stuff (so that we don't get small enough for the Supreme court anti-trust crusher).".
The blood is in the water; they can ruin the lives of few filesharers but hundreds of thousands will still spring up in their place. It happened before, and it's happening again. The dinosaurs will be crushed at the hands of the vigilant youth. In 5 or 10 years, when the RIAA is gone and music is free what'll be our next battle is the question? Mabye the RIAA is all an elaborate scandal or some kind to cover up the other horrors awaiting us; the news doesn't cover it, lord knows it's owned by 5 major corperations who are heavily intertweined. A lot of 3rd party news sources are springing up, hopefully rantradio, the one in my sig, will get big enough in the next couple of years to do some damage before they hosts get arrested for corrupting the youth or some such bullshit.
Seriously, take them out to a parking lot, and throw a couple of rounds into them in non-fatal spots. Take the kids and throw them into prison for a year or two.
It isn't the game manufacturers problem if they inspire psycho's like these to throw some ammo into traffic. It's the parents' fault for not raising them to not be psycho's and the kids' fault for failing to understand that shooting oncoming traffic is a bad idea, and probably moreso, societies fault for not accepting them as people, if society accepted them they wouldn't think it'd be a great idea to shoot at traffic.
No telling how YOU might be a PSYCHOPATH!!!
http://www.dansdata.com/psycho.htm
Looove it!
I prefer the sledgehammer method, you may however want something more radical, like a shotgun, 9mm, or my personal favorite, use it as a noisemaker and tie it to the back of the couple's wedding limo.
You can get child pr0n, donkey pr0n, alien pr0n, any kind of pr0n you want on p2p systems. Additionally, you can get terrorist tapes of people getting shot, tapes of combat, books about anything and everything from cookbooks to military training manuals to bomb making manuals. The information available on p2p networks is unlimited in both quantity, quality, and diversity.
This bill is basically saying they're going to shut down the roads and conduct searches and siezures whenever they want on anyone they want because they might be harboring child porn. I agree, child pr0n is fucked up but I'd rather have my freedom than throw a bunch of pricks in jail.
Yeah, I think it'll pass and that they'll just drive p2p farther and farther underground; they can't stop it, they can stop this generation of p2p applications, but can they stop the next, and the one after that?
That there's some crazy person behind some desk at microsoft who's calling the shots; this man is a psychopath...
Go onto any filesharing app and there's a plethora of books on any subject you could possibly want. Pr0n, stories, information, research, etc.
Will this do much to stop the flow of information? Not for anyone who has an internet connection and the know-how to use it. >:)
Here's how we fix our electronic voting problem;
1: The software is open source and produced by the open source community, not by the goverment or any corperations. There should be several different voting projects at any given time to ensure no single group of people control the software. Encryption schemes and the softwares structure needs to be changed on a yearly basis to ensure that it is difficult to tamper with.
2: All voting machines will be x86 based boxes (for simplicity and cheapness sake) and built by certified professionals who give community service to do this. It's a requirement that they use fiber optic cable between the voting booth and whatever central server in the building they have.
3: Electon boxes are only allowed in public buildings such as city halls, schools, police stations, etc and must be hooked upto the internet in this way. No corperation may host a voting event.
4: Between ends, there needs to be hefty encryption to ensure ISP's don't tamper with the information.
5: A paper ballot will be taken, meaning, everyone who votes leaves a paper trail which is stored perminantly and a reciept given to everyone who votes at the machine when they do.
6: If 1% of the voting population for any given district, or if 1% of the total population of the country, sign a petition for a recount then there will be a recount done using the paper ballots.
7: Leave the system up year round and invite people to hack into it so long as they report how they hacked into it. Before election, the system is flushed and the software is reinstalled.
As is right now, there are far too many problems with the current system. Too many conflicts of interest and too many people trying to rig the machines. It's going to be interesting to see in the next 5 or 10 years if the USA turns into a totalitarian dictatorship or if the people start civil war, or if the issues are going to be solved peacefully.
If they have electronic voting, demand a ballot and don't go away until you get one. Make sure to make a scene and talk loudly about how you heard the machines were insecure on slashdot and how the situation in Nebraska is fishy and how you won't use the machines becuase they are rigged. If you can get a mob together to go and screw up the machines beforehand, that'd be better.
Seriously, I'v had my fill between corperations and the goverment. When I goto vote next election, if they have electronic machines made by any of these fishy companies with no paper trail, I'm getting a chainsaw and spraypainging "democracy" on the sides, throwing on a nasty nasty chain, hiding it in a trombone case, getting in a buisness suit so I look like a hurried musician, and when I get in the building, I'll start the puppy up in the bathroom or some consealed area, run out screaming "You want democracy, I'll give you democracy!!! Lets do this by paper!" and rip the machines to hell.
Do I care about the prison time? The better question is, what jury on earth is going to convict me? >:) Especially if I proove that my motives were justifyable, there's something fishy going on and the goverment is bieng fishy, denied me a printout of my vote and ballot, and make it a point to tell the jury they don't have to convict me. Plus, I'll make national news for sure, a psycho running into a voting area with a chainsaw and ripping all of the boxes to shreds? You'd bet that it'd get all over the god box.
Sure, I'll take it up the ass a few years in jail and have a felony conviction to ensure that the voting system isn't rigged. Besides, I'm sure it'll look GREAT on a resume!
Megatokyo.com Machall.com
Then ATI comes along(or 3dlabs, or matrox), takes advantage of Nvidia's cards being more expensive and less efficent and blows them to hell as far as pricing goes. You don't get much room for monopolization in the gaming market when the efficiency, price, and potency of your hardware is at stake. Plus, how much of their talent would put up with it? Which developers are going to lisence the code and make their games more expensive than they already are?
Also, note that the DMCA hasn't been upheld in a major court battle as of yet. It's still a law which derives it's power entirely out of FUD.
If anything, MS is simply furthering their format as always and seperating thesmelves and their customers from the opensource movement even further. This feature really doesn't add much to a basic word editor. Home users could care less about their school documents getting read by other family members, buisnesses already have security and adding something like this is just another layer ontop of the cake.
With every new version of office the document formats get further and further from legally being translatable into an OSS format. Eventually these companies, unable to free their data from microsoft formats, will get gouged so much to keep their databases up that they'll either decide that moving to OSS is a better solution and illegally use a formatter or die trying.
OSS can only get better in the next few years, MS on the other hand has to figure out a way to keep their monopoly going whilst adding features in a way that people like.
There's a definate pattern here;
1: Decide to take vote at xx date, lobby heavily to get politicians behind bill
2: Mass outcry, politicans decide to not pass the bill or to wait for a vote, as it'd be political suicide to do otherwise.
3: Mass outcry dies down, corperations keep the politicans pockets lined waiting for the proper time to reintroduce the bill (when the protesters have something else to go after in otherwords. Divide, conquer, etc).
Rinse, repeat.
What should be done here is the protesters start protesting the mans power and start questioning their loyalty to the people, in other words, politically assassinate the bastards. They'll eventually get it passed if they keep on trying to pass it. Just as carp and a number of other provisions are continuously barragged at congress year after year, month after month which ties them up for doing anything other than actual leadership, just making deals and selling our rights away.