Just where the hell do you work? The bloody KGB???
Really! Please tell us. I know sure as HELL that I'd never want to work for, or even grace with a resume, such a putridly dictatorial, big-brother-esque orginisation as you've described in your last couple of posts.
>but all of these methods, even if they work, are >well beyond the skill level of the lusers here, >and even if it wasn't we're a lean enough >organization that everyone *should* have enough >work to do that by the time they got done beating >me at the job I get paid to do they'd get canned >for screwing off..
Two points on this one...
1) When you put in 10-12 (or more) hours a day, as mant geeks are wont to do, I certianly don't think it's out of line to take the occasional break to check personal email, read slashdot, listen to some music, etc... My employer agrees; and we have pretty much free reign so long as we get our work done. Sad that employers like yours exist who are not so enlightened. Who was it again that you work for, so I can avoid ever sending a resume?
2) Now this is the odd bit...
A) you expect that your geeks are smart enough to turn out quality code in a timely manner (despite what must be horrible morale, given your oppressive practices), yet you expect them to..
B) be "lusers" who are too dumb to know how to do IP tunneling, use anon proxies, forge IP headers, etc...
???
Who do you work for again. I hope I NEVER have to have ANY dealings with a company such as the one you've described.
>Downloading a huge software package, a bunch of >audio files, listening to streaming audio and >downloading a video file, and websurfing, all at >the same time.
>Yeah, that sounds what the typical user does...
Well, subtract the big honkin ISO download...
(but then who knows, I might change my mind about Mandrake and go go back to Red Hat. I only have CDs up to 6.1, and RH's @ 6.2 now, so...)
... and you *DO* get my typical computer useage; that's when I'm physically at the terminal, at least.
Now, that's obviouslly gonna change over time. Once my server is up, so will be the bandwidth useage, especially when I'm logged in via X remotely. But once I'm done building my MP3 library...
(I'm in the process of "converting" my entire CD collection (400+ discs) to MP3 format. Even with a (nearly) saturated connection, a 640Kbps connection and Napster/Gnutella is faster, easier, and more convinent than dragging the discs out and ripping them myself)
... that useage is gonna go down.
But you see my point... yes? I'm ONE user on 640Kb dedicated to MYSELF, and it becomes inadaquate with annoying regularity, even with typical useage. In fact, a number of my friends and co-workers have mentioned similar situations to my own.
>3 Mbps is perfectly adequate for 3600 users if >those 3600 users are doing what a typical student >would need to do for their schoolwork. It only >starts becoming inadequate if those students >start doing stuff that has nothing to do with >education, like downloading lots of music files, >or pron.
Which would be all well and good, if the schools were providing that bandwidth FREE of any additional cost. But at my school at least, we had to pay something called a "technology fee" which was supposed to PAY FOR our bandwidth. Oh, and that's not even mentioning that you have to PAY *EXTRA* to live in the "wired" dorm...
... And now, even living in San Francisco, home of some of the most ridiculously high rents you've ever seen, when you add up my rent, utilities, AND my DSL connection; I am, in fact, paying *LESS* per month than I was the year I lived in the dorm.
And in return for LESS money, I get MORE privacy, NO stupid rules, NO intrusive RAs and *MUCH* MORE bandwidth.
So, ultimately, especially given the money that colleges charge for it, 3Mbps *IS* absurdly insufficent for 3600 students.
Another poster mentioned that a couple of the software packages only allocate bandwidth away from Napster-like applications.
But 3600 people shareing two lousy T1's?!?!?!?
Hell, you may as well just drop the ethernet connection and revert to 56K if you're counting on 1/3600th of 3Mb!
I have a 640/640Kb DSL connection (equivelent to just over a third of a single T1, IIRC) TO MYSELF at home, and I STILL saturate that connection from time to time.
Just last night actually, I ran out of bandwidth. Between downloading the latest Mandrake ISO for my soon to be functioning again web, file, and mail server, grabbing a handful of MP3s, listening to a realaudio broadcast of a radio station I like but get no reception on my stereo, downloading the new X-Men trailer, and casual websurfing on top of all that (Flash and Shockwave sites suck a good bit of bandwidth as well), and you can easily saturate 640Kb! Subtract the ISO download for the average traffic, and you STILL get a hearty chunk of bandwidth. But add the server, and online gameing, and you're right bach up there.
And I'm not even running that server yet! AND I pay the telco a *LOT* less for that connection than I payed to live in the dorms back at school!
We're not just talking about free speech here, we're talking sheer stupidity! Just what kind of neanderthal crams 3600 people onto a pair of T1s? If 640Kbps is inadaquate for ONE user, how the HELL is 3Mbps sufficent for 3600???
>There's no protection whatsoever like >that on the Mac
Pure FUD. Plain and simple...
Are you lieing on behalf of your master up in redmond? Or have you just never used a Mac, but because your master tells you "all else but windows is bad" you feel qualified to comment despite your ignorance?
>You mean your 7 year old daughter can >just go in there and waste the whole >system without knowing it???
If you have your Mac set so that she can... yes. But then, if someone like you used Linux you'd probably just log in as root and have no password set anyway.
HINT for real users who want to control access to their Mac...
There's a little control panel called "Multiple Users"...
HINT for astroturfing trolls like schnedt...
Your lies can fool all of the people some of the time. Your lies can fool some of the people all of the time. But your lies cant fool all of the people all of the time.
john Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku: I am not a drone. Remove the collective if
OFFTOPIC, but.. I LOVED that game...
on
Hacking The Tivo
·
· Score: 1
I had it for my Apple ][c instead of my C64 tho... It didn't use the "lipstick", just the keyboard/ second joystick button.
IIRC, the reason that the commodore version used the voice thingy, was because we had those old atari one button joysticks on the commodore, and you needed a convinent way to fire in combat without reaching for the keyboard (the button on the stick was used for throttle control IIRC).
Incidently, if you plugged a second joystick into the other port, that stick's button would fire your weapons just as the lipstick would.
That was an awesome game... I don't suppose you know of a good emulation site that has the Echelon image? either C64 or Apple ][ os fine.
1) It doesn't seem that the editors are reading the stories they link to. Reading the ZDnet article myself, it doesn't look like a "poison pill" file to me. It looks more like just another search engine that uses the gnutella protocol to log IPs of the people OFFERING files. It does NOT appear to be a way to entrap people DOWNLOADING files. Indeed, that's entirely unnecessary, as peer-to-peer file transfers, by their very nature, return the IP address of the downloader.
2) Speaking of entrapment... If this WAS a "poison pill" file, a) it's not a copyrighted MP3 anyway, and b) isn't entrapment illegal as hell anyway?
3) In the IQ war between computer geeks and dirty metalhead types... I'll wager on the geeks every time. How long before a countermove is made by the geek community to nullify this problem? The obvious first move is forged IP headers emailing the file request to an anonymous hotmail-type account, or posting to a specified usenet group. That could be an option EASILY added to gnutella... or napster for that matter.
4) There is STILL no "single point of failure" in gnutella. That is, no master servers to shut down. Metallica would have to sue ALL 300,000 individuals, were they using gnutella instead of Napster. Just prosecuting a few to set up as "examples" could enable a "selective enforcement" defence... not to mention a VERY bad PR incident.
5) Just HOW MANY ways are there to make sure a visible IP address does not actually lead back to you? Perhaps I could set up my own anon proxy, and announce it to alt.cubans.who.hate.castro... and it would just HAPPEN to be noticed by someone who hates the RIAA and crossposted to alt.metallica/RIAA.die.die.die.
The McLibel case certianly shows that the golden arches will (try to) sue nonprofits into the ground when they talk smack about ronald.
Sick huh, that we're talking about doing part of a mulitbillion dollar corp's legal dept's work for them. Normally I'd despise mcdonalds as much as anyone...
But PethicalTS's rampage against the internet and the fair use principle is a real pisser.
I's *LOVE* to see both of those bastards grind it out to the tune of millions in legal fees in court.
And no matter *who* wins, we all win, because one bunch of assholes or another will lose!
And real world laws, and many prior court ruleings, allow for the use of other's material for a variety of uses, including parody, commentary, critisism, etc...
"Sec. 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching(including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copy- right."
PeatingTA, is clearly a commentary, and/or criticism of PethicalTA. Wether or not PeatingTA makes money or not is irrelevant. Weird AL certianly makes money off HIS parodies, yet they are still protected as fair use.
The mass judge is clearly an idiot who ignored YEARS of precidents protecting fair use rights. Or perhaps he's a militant PETA zealot. Or perhaps he's one of those RIAA/MPAA/metallica/DMCA types who beleives that fair use should be abolished.
>Whether or not this is effective is >an entirely different story.
They're not effective because they use totally the wrong approach. I can become a well-rounded individual on my own WITHOUT sitting through the rantings of some clueless ivory-tower type about how how evil capitalism and democracy are.
HU/SS classes use the "this is how I think, therefore this is how you should think. Now memorize and regurgitate it" approach. So that's what you do memorize his rantings, regurgitate them onto the exam papers, and forget the entire horrible expierence when the semester's over.
Real classes, OTOH, such as the CS/PS/MA series give you problems that require thought. They teach you how to solve problems. They require you to exercise your brain. Therefore the knowledge is retained.
The difference between the "ranting zealot" and "challanging taskmaster" approaches to education is why, while the author of the "socialist Manifesto" escaped me till you replied; I can still knock out the pseudocode for Cohen-Sutherland or UNIX Quicksort in a few minutes, and have them functional in C shortly thereafter.
Mabye SOME people CAN just photographiclly remember all of the random spewings of clueless old geezers. I, usually have to have to THINK about something to retain it past finals time, however.
OTOH... You want well rounded? Well, hundred year old politics is definately NOT by forte. Wanna talk history of Ska music, and the influence of first and second wave bands on the current third wave and ska-core bands? How bout the evolution of punk rock/straight edge/anti-racist action culture? Or perhaps vulcanology? Or underwater sound propagation? Fun with pyrotechnics? The merits of Rollerblade in-lines vs. Oxygens or Bladerunners? Or, speaking of Blade Runners, classic and modern SciFi? Or plate tectonics (well, perhaps that should fall under vulcanology (my next vacation is to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.))?
Or if you MUST talk politics, how 'bout modern, relevant stuff; like DMCA issues? Or the Fed's idiotic "war on drugs" where armed robbers, rapists, and other violent criminals are being set free to make room in the jails for durg offenders with mandatory minimum sentences? Or perhaps the archaic and barbaric death penalty and the people about to be executed despite many discrepancies in the trial evidence? Or why I won't shop at the gap, and why I won't buy nike shoes or exxon gas?
There's plenty intresting of stuff to be "well rounded" about without obsessing about a proven-wrong 100-year old dead crackpot.
>The group involved, however, wasn't to be a >totalitarian regime e.g. Stalin's, but rather >all of the working class, in a free society.
Ah, but that's the kicker isn't it... Socialism, as it has been practiced in every socialist regeim that existed, HAS been a brutal, oppressive, police state. Take your pick: USSR, China, Cuba, N Korea, N Vietman, Cambodia, etc... So what is "real" socialism... The theoretical ideas of a long dead philosopher; or the actual fruits of his work, as it has been put into existance?
>worker's paradise, since the worker would not >be owned by corporations, but rather the >corporations by the workers.
Well, lets see... Last I checked, I don't live in a socialist country (Limbaugh-esque rantings about the "People's Republic of Kalifornia" notwithstanding) and yet, I, and all of my co-workers, have these papers in our bottom-left drawers that say "Option Grant" on them...
>propaganda spewed about socialism and >communism in the U.S.
>Luckily, many European countries haven't been >infected with McCarthy's nonsense, and Reagan's >witch hunts,
Well, they DID threaten to destroy the US you know... does "We will bury you" ring a bell? AND there's the little matter of the conquest of half of Europe, and the threats to take the other half, right after we...
(and before you jump on me being US-centric, I KNOW the US was not alone, and that England was just as important, if not moreso. I *AM* a CS major after all, And I would be majorly remiss to not know where Alan Turing was from. If you can find a copy of "The Ultra Secret" by F.W. Winterbotham, you should read it. It's a fascinating first hand look at the exploits of Bletchley Park.)
...fought the largest war in history to stop the nazis from doing the same thing. Such would be described by PR types as a BAD THING(tm) if you want people to have a good impression of you.
Oh, and there is the little matter of the cuban "revolution" and pointing nuclear missiles at us from 90 miles, right in the perfect position for a no-warning "decapitation" strike. The Berlin blockade and Berlin wall, and the Afghanastan invasion are also not very good ways to convince people that you're "peaceful socialists" trying to bring about a "workers' paradise".
Now, McCarthy was, of course, inexcusable. A cliche to the tune of "when you obsess about your enemy you become like that enemy" comes to mind. And I'm not familiar with any "witchhunts" under Reagan. But I can sure understand the concern. There we had the largest military power in the world promising our annhilation; and they were happily gobbling up big parts of the rest of the world as stepping stones towards that goal. Not exactly something that *wouldn't* engender a good deal of distrust, and yea... outright paranoia.
But remember... just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you.
When I have mod points, I'm inclined sometimes, when I see no other post really worthy of moderation, instead of letting points expire, to mod up one of signal 11's more recent posts just because it pisses off the AC trolls. And is *IS* funny when they whine so much about one user.
It's been awhile since I was forced to read any socialist propaganda, but one semester in college, I was subjected to quite a bit of it. Just goes to show, that you gotta check your profs out before you decide that that section of the class fits into your schedule best.
((rant mode on)those F-ing required HU/SS electives... BOREING!!! who assigns "required electives" anyway, what an oxymoron. The least they could have done if I HAD to take non-CS classes is let me take PS chemistry or physics electives. But NOOOOO You *HAVE* to put up with that humanities/social science (heh "social science" there's another oxymoron) crap. sigh... no wonder our educational system is going down the toilet. At least *I* got my BSCS while it still is a *CS* degree and means something. ok well, (rant mode off))
But one of the primiary tenants of the socialist philosophy, as I recall, is the establishment of the socialist state by means of a violent overthrow of democratic society. And subsequently any private property WOULD be siezed by the government and redistributed as it saw fit. "The socialist manifesto", or something it was called. Supposedly, it was written by the guy who invented socialism in the first place.
Hardly sounded like "never dreaming of taking away private property or outlawing democratic elections" when I had to sit through it. Oh, and was this professor EVER a socialist. He went out of his way to make it sound like a "workers paradise" or some nonsence like that. God that class was torture.
>in Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler very clearly states >his agenda, and the book almost reads like a >play-by-play of what he will do in the decades to >come. Had these people read his work, Adolf >Hitler would probably not have been elected, and >have ended his life as a minor political >functionary.
Wonderful how hindsight's always 20/20 eh?
Of course now, almost everybody does it the other way around. They get elected, THEN they get the lucrative book deal.
So do you mean that I *MUST* read all of the ramblings of the likes of pat robertson and jerry fallwell so that I will not vote for them? Sorry, I don't plan to subject myself to that tripe.
And for that matter, you don't really HAVE to have read Mien Kampf in order to know where hitler stood. He merrily blamed jews for all of germany's problems in public while he was running for chancellor.
Oh... you think that a biggoted fascist will not get elected if people know about him beforehand? Well, I think you overestimate the average voter. How then, prey tell, does someone like strom thurmand, well known to be a segregationist, manage to keep his senate seat? How about the guys in serbia who elected slobodan milosovich?
You learned everything *YOU* know about encryption from reading Cryptonomicon eh?
Yeah, I know that every bit you add to keylength doubles the number of possibilities, and thus, the brute force time. In fact, EVERYBODY knows it. It's freshman stuff... those powers of two, ya know?
But considering that the PGP key length necessary for secure email is 4096 bits, I'd say that, yeah, 128 bit keys still suck.
So take your holier than thou attitude and stick it up your ass, fucker.
Well, the government is notorious for buing filled with dishonest people. But incompetence is just as good as dishonesty sometimes. Or, in the case of the postal service, rampant mental instability and pure psychosis is more scary than simple dishonesty.
>or waiter is far less likely to >commit a felony than some dumb kid with nothing >to lose and no idea how much trouble he could >get into.
Uh, just who do you think makes a profession out of the "food service industry" anyway? It's not exactly something that takes a university education. Sure, you've got some college kids picking up a little extra cash in there... at least in college towns you do. But just who takes the waiter jobs where there are no colleges? Mental burnouts who are unqualified for any more challanging employment elsewhere. We're not exactly talking about brainiacs here.
>I'm not entrusting my SSN to a 40-bit connection!
I'm not sure what keysize is legal now with the new export laws. But I THINK Netscape's up to 128 bit SSL now. Yeah, that's still not too great. But consider...
One crooked government employee (oh, but would anyone immoral EVER work for the government??? Who's heard of such a thing?) can most likely harvest more SSNs than a script kiddie with a packet sniffer and a brute force keygen can crack.
Likewise, one person with a photographic memory walking through a mall one day can most likely harvest more credit card numbers than a script kiddie with a packet sniffer and a brute force keygen can crack.
Or forget photographic memories. How about one immoral waiter with a pen and paper? You *DO* follow them to the credit card machine and watch to make sure they don't write down your number whenever you pay with your visa... don't you? I didn't think so. And even if YOU do, do you think the AVERAGE person does?
Or one disturbed postal worker who wants to get his hands on checking account numbers and routing codes... Most people *DO* still pay their bills via check through the USPS.
Now, don't get me wrong, strong crypto is undeniably a GOOD THING(tm). But it's not a panacea.
And while 40bit or 128bit browser crypto may be trivial for the NSA or most corperations, or even for schools with their beowulf networks...
It's NOT trivial for joe 5kr19t k1dd13 who wants 2 g3t some w1k3d kardz and phuck 5h1t up. He's far more likely to get kardz by calling up his friend who's a waiter at Steak N Shake than by kracking them.
*ALL* iMacs have G3 CPUs, but it's only the recent slot-loading model that's fanless. The first generation if iMac DOES have a fan in there.
The new generation has a different case design than the first to allow for convection cooling. I beleive the kicker was adding RF shielding into the plastic so you could get rid of those big aluminium shields that block circulation.
So if you've got a first gen iMac (tray loading), you'll still need the fan in there (case fan, NOT a CPU fan) to allow adaquate circulation. But if you're talkin about the current generation (slot loading) you won't need a fan any more than you do now.
>Could you please cite references when >Microsoft "cheated" and fudged benchmarks?
That's the most obvious one off the top of my head. The story is archived on slashdot I'm sure.... not too sure just when gates was caught THIS time, but you should find the story with a simple search.
The short version is that gates wanted to "proove" that Linux is an inferior POS. Microsoft, therefore, PAYED mindcraft to go to redmond and do a series of "independant" benchmarks comparing server performance between NT/IIS and Linux/Apache. Gates then had a hoarde of his MCSE drones set up NT/IIS in the ideal configuration and optimise it in every way they could think of. And for the Linux side, they just installed an old version of Red Hat/Apache in the default configuration WITH NO OPTIMISATION WHATSOEVER!!!
And when NT beat Linux, gates trumpeded it all over the press that an "independent" benchmark by mindcraft "prooved" that NT is the server OS uber alles; and that Linux is a worthless piece of crap.
Sure seems to meet the definition of a "cheated and fudged benchmark" to me.
It doesn't matter what you're testing. There's no cross-platform benchmark that will be accepted by EVERYONE. The loser will invariably (and sometimes justifiably, sometimes not) whine about how the benchmark is unfair, or unoptomised or whatever.
Witness:
ByteMark is biased in favor of PPC SpecMark is biased in favor of intel Unreal FPS is biased in favor of Glide Quake FPS is biased in favor of OpenGL Office benchmarks are biased in favor of windoze Photoshop benchmarks are biased in favor of MacOS
Mindcraft benchmarks are.... well, I won't even go there.
But you get the point?
All of the above have been used, at one point or another (again, sometimes justifiably, sometimes not), by the side that came out behind in an attempt to invalidate the test that showed their OS / CPU / video card / FPS game / etc. to be inferior.
I too was really looking forward to both Halo and Oni... not to mention the possibility of a Myth III.
After Myth 2, the Warcraft/Starcraft type RTS just seemed so flat and non-immersive to me. That was a great game engine with a lot of future potential.
And an anime action game with such good 3D... bitchin.
But alas... as they say... all good things...
It's just too excruciatingly bad that Bungiee had to end this way... assimilated and destroyed by the collective.
>You aren't seriously going to claim Apple's >designs could be built by 'electronic >enthusiasts' are you?
The ones in which Woz had a hand in the design can.
Not only that, but when you bought a Woz designed Apple, you got the complete schematics of the MB, complete with part numbers of all the ICs and other components...
Oh... and you also got documented assembler code for all the ROMs as well... AND a built in disassembler in the ROM in case anything got updated but not documented.
ALL of this came with every Apple, AND he freely handed out all of the above to the Homebrew club and anyone else who asked. Basically, you didn't have to buy an Apple from Apple, you could write to them, get the schematics, and build it yourself if you wanted to. Apple just sold the completed box (with the nice plastic case) for anyone eho WASN'T skilled with a soldiering iron.
My dad still has a copy of the Apple ][ schematics that he actually got Woz to autograph at a trade show back when I was like... four or something. He's also promised that I WILL inherit those Apple docs.
It wasn't until the influence of Gasse and Sculley that Apple hardware became closed. Gasse, incidently, for all his public whining about Apple "not releasing the G3 specs to Be", was the one who fought most tenaciously to KEEP APPLE CLOSED and NOT allow clones. By this time, both Steves had been forced out of the company.
But yeah, I'd see a Kevin Smith movie any day. But seeing as Dogma was just out last year, and he typically has a 2-3 year interval between movies, and he just put a lot of effort into the Clerks cartoon, only to be fucked (again) by disney...
I don't think we'll be seeing a new View Askew production this year.
But, eh, I *DID* break the DVD boycott to get Dogma and Chasing Amy on DVD to complete my collection. Only two DVDs I've bought since the deCSS fiasco.... honest.
Slashdot Mirror
>is nothing more than another capitalist
>institution, feeding off of others for it's
>sustinence.
100 free frags to the first slashdotter to point out the sheer absurdity of that statement.
Hint for bucktoothed vermin...
Who owns hotmail?
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Really! Please tell us. I know sure as HELL that I'd never want to work for, or even grace with a resume, such a putridly dictatorial, big-brother-esque orginisation as you've described in your last couple of posts.
>but all of these methods, even if they work, are
>well beyond the skill level of the lusers here,
>and even if it wasn't we're a lean enough
>organization that everyone *should* have enough
>work to do that by the time they got done beating
>me at the job I get paid to do they'd get canned
>for screwing off..
Two points on this one...
1)
When you put in 10-12 (or more) hours a day, as mant geeks are wont to do, I certianly don't think it's out of line to take the occasional break to check personal email, read slashdot, listen to some music, etc... My employer agrees; and we have pretty much free reign so long as we get our work done. Sad that employers like yours exist who are not so enlightened. Who was it again that you work for, so I can avoid ever sending a resume?
2)
Now this is the odd bit...
A) you expect that your geeks are smart enough to turn out quality code in a timely manner (despite what must be horrible morale, given your oppressive practices), yet you expect them to..
B) be "lusers" who are too dumb to know how to do IP tunneling, use anon proxies, forge IP headers, etc...
???
Who do you work for again. I hope I NEVER have to have ANY dealings with a company such as the one you've described.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>audio files, listening to streaming audio and
>downloading a video file, and websurfing, all at
>the same time.
>Yeah, that sounds what the typical user does...
Well, subtract the big honkin ISO download...
(but then who knows, I might change my mind about Mandrake and go go back to Red Hat. I only have CDs up to 6.1, and RH's @ 6.2 now, so...)
... and you *DO* get my typical computer useage; that's when I'm physically at the terminal, at least.
Now, that's obviouslly gonna change over time. Once my server is up, so will be the bandwidth useage, especially when I'm logged in via X remotely. But once I'm done building my MP3 library...
(I'm in the process of "converting" my entire CD collection (400+ discs) to MP3 format. Even with a (nearly) saturated connection, a 640Kbps connection and Napster/Gnutella is faster, easier, and more convinent than dragging the discs out and ripping them myself)
... that useage is gonna go down.
But you see my point... yes? I'm ONE user on 640Kb dedicated to MYSELF, and it becomes inadaquate with annoying regularity, even with typical useage. In fact, a number of my friends and co-workers have mentioned similar situations to my own.
>3 Mbps is perfectly adequate for 3600 users if
>those 3600 users are doing what a typical student
>would need to do for their schoolwork. It only
>starts becoming inadequate if those students
>start doing stuff that has nothing to do with
>education, like downloading lots of music files,
>or pron.
Which would be all well and good, if the schools were providing that bandwidth FREE of any additional cost. But at my school at least, we had to pay something called a "technology fee" which was supposed to PAY FOR our bandwidth. Oh, and that's not even mentioning that you have to PAY *EXTRA* to live in the "wired" dorm...
... And now, even living in San Francisco, home of some of the most ridiculously high rents you've ever seen, when you add up my rent, utilities, AND my DSL connection; I am, in fact, paying *LESS* per month than I was the year I lived in the dorm.
And in return for LESS money, I get MORE privacy, NO stupid rules, NO intrusive RAs and *MUCH* MORE bandwidth.
So, ultimately, especially given the money that colleges charge for it, 3Mbps *IS* absurdly insufficent for 3600 students.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
But 3600 people shareing two lousy T1's?!?!?!?
Hell, you may as well just drop the ethernet connection and revert to 56K if you're counting on 1/3600th of 3Mb!
I have a 640/640Kb DSL connection (equivelent to just over a third of a single T1, IIRC) TO MYSELF at home, and I STILL saturate that connection from time to time.
Just last night actually, I ran out of bandwidth. Between downloading the latest Mandrake ISO for my soon to be functioning again web, file, and mail server, grabbing a handful of MP3s, listening to a realaudio broadcast of a radio station I like but get no reception on my stereo, downloading the new X-Men trailer, and casual websurfing on top of all that (Flash and Shockwave sites suck a good bit of bandwidth as well), and you can easily saturate 640Kb! Subtract the ISO download for the average traffic, and you STILL get a hearty chunk of bandwidth. But add the server, and online gameing, and you're right bach up there.
And I'm not even running that server yet! AND I pay the telco a *LOT* less for that connection than I payed to live in the dorms back at school!
We're not just talking about free speech here, we're talking sheer stupidity! Just what kind of neanderthal crams 3600 people onto a pair of T1s? If 640Kbps is inadaquate for ONE user, how the HELL is 3Mbps sufficent for 3600???
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>that on the Mac
Pure FUD. Plain and simple...
Are you lieing on behalf of your master up in redmond? Or have you just never used a Mac, but because your master tells you "all else but windows is bad" you feel qualified to comment despite your ignorance?
>You mean your 7 year old daughter can
>just go in there and waste the whole
>system without knowing it???
If you have your Mac set so that she can... yes. But then, if someone like you used Linux you'd probably just log in as root and have no password set anyway.
HINT for real users who want to control access to their Mac...
There's a little control panel called "Multiple Users"...
HINT for astroturfing trolls like schnedt...
Your lies can fool all of the people some of the time. Your lies can fool some of the people all of the time. But your lies cant fool all of the people all of the time.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
I had it for my Apple ][c instead of my C64 tho...
It didn't use the "lipstick", just the keyboard/ second joystick button.
IIRC, the reason that the commodore version used the voice thingy, was because we had those old atari one button joysticks on the commodore, and you needed a convinent way to fire in combat without reaching for the keyboard (the button on the stick was used for throttle control IIRC).
Incidently, if you plugged a second joystick into the other port, that stick's button would fire your weapons just as the lipstick would.
That was an awesome game... I don't suppose you know of a good emulation site that has the Echelon image? either C64 or Apple ][ os fine.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
It doesn't seem that the editors are reading the stories they link to. Reading the ZDnet article myself, it doesn't look like a "poison pill" file to me. It looks more like just another search engine that uses the gnutella protocol to log IPs of the people OFFERING files. It does NOT appear to be a way to entrap people DOWNLOADING files. Indeed, that's entirely unnecessary, as peer-to-peer file transfers, by their very nature, return the IP address of the downloader.
2)
Speaking of entrapment... If this WAS a "poison pill" file, a) it's not a copyrighted MP3 anyway, and b) isn't entrapment illegal as hell anyway?
3)
In the IQ war between computer geeks and dirty metalhead types... I'll wager on the geeks every time. How long before a countermove is made by the geek community to nullify this problem? The obvious first move is forged IP headers emailing the file request to an anonymous hotmail-type account, or posting to a specified usenet group. That could be an option EASILY added to gnutella... or napster for that matter.
4)
There is STILL no "single point of failure" in gnutella. That is, no master servers to shut down. Metallica would have to sue ALL 300,000 individuals, were they using gnutella instead of Napster. Just prosecuting a few to set up as "examples" could enable a "selective enforcement" defence... not to mention a VERY bad PR incident.
5)
Just HOW MANY ways are there to make sure a visible IP address does not actually lead back to you? Perhaps I could set up my own anon proxy, and announce it to alt.cubans.who.hate.castro... and it would just HAPPEN to be noticed by someone who hates the RIAA and crossposted to alt.metallica/RIAA.die.die.die.
6)
Freenet.... 'nuf said.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Does mcdonalds legal have it's own url/email?
The McLibel case certianly shows that the golden arches will (try to) sue nonprofits into the ground when they talk smack about ronald.
Sick huh, that we're talking about doing part of a mulitbillion dollar corp's legal dept's work for them. Normally I'd despise mcdonalds as much as anyone...
But PethicalTS's rampage against the internet and the fair use principle is a real pisser.
I's *LOVE* to see both of those bastards grind it out to the tune of millions in legal fees in court.
And no matter *who* wins, we all win, because one bunch of assholes or another will lose!
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
And real world laws, and many prior court ruleings, allow for the use of other's material for a variety of uses, including parody, commentary, critisism, etc...
"Sec. 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair
use Notwithstanding the provisions of sections
106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work,
including such use by reproduction in copies or
phonorecords or by any other means specified by
that section, for purposes such as criticism,
comment, news reporting, teaching(including
multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship,
or research, is not an infringement of copy-
right."
PeatingTA, is clearly a commentary, and/or criticism of PethicalTA. Wether or not PeatingTA makes money or not is irrelevant. Weird AL certianly makes money off HIS parodies, yet they are still protected as fair use.
The mass judge is clearly an idiot who ignored YEARS of precidents protecting fair use rights. Or perhaps he's a militant PETA zealot. Or perhaps he's one of those RIAA/MPAA/metallica/DMCA types who beleives that fair use should be abolished.
Which are you?
In any event, you, and that judge, are wrong.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>an entirely different story.
They're not effective because they use totally the wrong approach. I can become a well-rounded individual on my own WITHOUT sitting through the rantings of some clueless ivory-tower type about how how evil capitalism and democracy are.
HU/SS classes use the "this is how I think, therefore this is how you should think. Now memorize and regurgitate it" approach. So that's what you do memorize his rantings, regurgitate them onto the exam papers, and forget the entire horrible expierence when the semester's over.
Real classes, OTOH, such as the CS/PS/MA series give you problems that require thought. They teach you how to solve problems. They require you to exercise your brain. Therefore the knowledge is retained.
The difference between the "ranting zealot" and "challanging taskmaster" approaches to education is why, while the author of the "socialist Manifesto" escaped me till you replied; I can still knock out the pseudocode for Cohen-Sutherland or UNIX Quicksort in a few minutes, and have them functional in C shortly thereafter.
Mabye SOME people CAN just photographiclly remember all of the random spewings of clueless old geezers. I, usually have to have to THINK about something to retain it past finals time, however.
OTOH... You want well rounded? Well, hundred year old politics is definately NOT by forte. Wanna talk history of Ska music, and the influence of first and second wave bands on the current third wave and ska-core bands? How bout the evolution of punk rock/straight edge/anti-racist action culture? Or perhaps vulcanology? Or underwater sound propagation? Fun with pyrotechnics? The merits of Rollerblade in-lines vs. Oxygens or Bladerunners? Or, speaking of Blade Runners, classic and modern SciFi? Or plate tectonics (well, perhaps that should fall under vulcanology (my next vacation is to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.))?
Or if you MUST talk politics, how 'bout modern, relevant stuff; like DMCA issues? Or the Fed's idiotic "war on drugs" where armed robbers, rapists, and other violent criminals are being set free to make room in the jails for durg offenders with mandatory minimum sentences? Or perhaps the archaic and barbaric death penalty and the people about to be executed despite many discrepancies in the trial evidence? Or why I won't shop at the gap, and why I won't buy nike shoes or exxon gas?
There's plenty intresting of stuff to be "well rounded" about without obsessing about a proven-wrong 100-year old dead crackpot.
>The group involved, however, wasn't to be a
>totalitarian regime e.g. Stalin's, but rather
>all of the working class, in a free society.
Ah, but that's the kicker isn't it... Socialism, as it has been practiced in every socialist regeim that existed, HAS been a brutal, oppressive, police state. Take your pick: USSR, China, Cuba, N Korea, N Vietman, Cambodia, etc... So what is "real" socialism... The theoretical ideas of a long dead philosopher; or the actual fruits of his work, as it has been put into existance?
>worker's paradise, since the worker would not
>be owned by corporations, but rather the
>corporations by the workers.
Well, lets see... Last I checked, I don't live in a socialist country (Limbaugh-esque rantings about the "People's Republic of Kalifornia" notwithstanding) and yet, I, and all of my co-workers, have these papers in our bottom-left drawers that say "Option Grant" on them...
>propaganda spewed about socialism and
>communism in the U.S.
>Luckily, many European countries haven't been
>infected with McCarthy's nonsense, and Reagan's
>witch hunts,
Well, they DID threaten to destroy the US you know... does "We will bury you" ring a bell? AND there's the little matter of the conquest of half of Europe, and the threats to take the other half, right after we...
(and before you jump on me being US-centric, I KNOW the US was not alone, and that England was just as important, if not moreso. I *AM* a CS major after all, And I would be majorly remiss to not know where Alan Turing was from. If you can find a copy of "The Ultra Secret" by F.W. Winterbotham, you should read it. It's a fascinating first hand look at the exploits of Bletchley Park.)
...fought the largest war in history to stop the nazis from doing the same thing. Such would be described by PR types as a BAD THING(tm) if you want people to have a good impression of you.
Oh, and there is the little matter of the cuban "revolution" and pointing nuclear missiles at us from 90 miles, right in the perfect position for a no-warning "decapitation" strike. The Berlin blockade and Berlin wall, and the Afghanastan invasion are also not very good ways to convince people that you're "peaceful socialists" trying to bring about a "workers' paradise".
Now, McCarthy was, of course, inexcusable. A cliche to the tune of "when you obsess about your enemy you become like that enemy" comes to mind. And I'm not familiar with any "witchhunts" under Reagan. But I can sure understand the concern. There we had the largest military power in the world promising our annhilation; and they were happily gobbling up big parts of the rest of the world as stepping stones towards that goal. Not exactly something that *wouldn't* engender a good deal of distrust, and yea... outright paranoia.
But remember... just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>You are both blithering idiots.
An ACtroll thinks I'm an idiot!!!
That hurts sooooo much...
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Signal 11 is a karma whore.
YOU are a troll, AC.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
When I have mod points, I'm inclined sometimes, when I see no other post really worthy of moderation, instead of letting points expire, to mod up one of signal 11's more recent posts just because it pisses off the AC trolls. And is *IS* funny when they whine so much about one user.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
((rant mode on)those F-ing required HU/SS electives... BOREING!!! who assigns "required electives" anyway, what an oxymoron. The least they could have done if I HAD to take non-CS classes is let me take PS chemistry or physics electives. But NOOOOO You *HAVE* to put up with that humanities/social science (heh "social science" there's another oxymoron) crap. sigh... no wonder our educational system is going down the toilet. At least *I* got my BSCS while it still is a *CS* degree and means something. ok well, (rant mode off))
But one of the primiary tenants of the socialist philosophy, as I recall, is the establishment of the socialist state by means of a violent overthrow of democratic society. And subsequently any private property WOULD be siezed by the government and redistributed as it saw fit. "The socialist manifesto", or something it was called. Supposedly, it was written by the guy who invented socialism in the first place.
Hardly sounded like "never dreaming of taking away private property or outlawing democratic elections" when I had to sit through it. Oh, and was this professor EVER a socialist. He went out of his way to make it sound like a "workers paradise" or some nonsence like that. God that class was torture.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>in Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler very clearly states
>his agenda, and the book almost reads like a
>play-by-play of what he will do in the decades to
>come. Had these people read his work, Adolf
>Hitler would probably not have been elected, and
>have ended his life as a minor political
>functionary.
Wonderful how hindsight's always 20/20 eh?
Of course now, almost everybody does it the other way around. They get elected, THEN they get the lucrative book deal.
So do you mean that I *MUST* read all of the ramblings of the likes of pat robertson and jerry fallwell so that I will not vote for them? Sorry, I don't plan to subject myself to that tripe.
And for that matter, you don't really HAVE to have read Mien Kampf in order to know where hitler stood. He merrily blamed jews for all of germany's problems in public while he was running for chancellor.
Oh... you think that a biggoted fascist will not get elected if people know about him beforehand? Well, I think you overestimate the average voter. How then, prey tell, does someone like strom thurmand, well known to be a segregationist, manage to keep his senate seat? How about the guys in serbia who elected slobodan milosovich?
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
You learned everything *YOU* know about encryption from reading Cryptonomicon eh?
Yeah, I know that every bit you add to keylength doubles the number of possibilities, and thus, the brute force time. In fact, EVERYBODY knows it. It's freshman stuff... those powers of two, ya know?
But considering that the PGP key length necessary for secure email is 4096 bits, I'd say that, yeah, 128 bit keys still suck.
So take your holier than thou attitude and stick it up your ass, fucker.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>a bureaucrat
Well, the government is notorious for buing filled with dishonest people. But incompetence is just as good as dishonesty sometimes. Or, in the case of the postal service, rampant mental instability and pure psychosis is more scary than simple dishonesty.
>or waiter is far less likely to
>commit a felony than some dumb kid with nothing
>to lose and no idea how much trouble he could
>get into.
Uh, just who do you think makes a profession out of the "food service industry" anyway? It's not exactly something that takes a university education. Sure, you've got some college kids picking up a little extra cash in there... at least in college towns you do. But just who takes the waiter jobs where there are no colleges? Mental burnouts who are unqualified for any more challanging employment elsewhere. We're not exactly talking about brainiacs here.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
I'm not sure what keysize is legal now with the new export laws. But I THINK Netscape's up to 128 bit SSL now. Yeah, that's still not too great. But consider...
One crooked government employee (oh, but would anyone immoral EVER work for the government??? Who's heard of such a thing?) can most likely harvest more SSNs than a script kiddie with a packet sniffer and a brute force keygen can crack.
Likewise, one person with a photographic memory walking through a mall one day can most likely harvest more credit card numbers than a script kiddie with a packet sniffer and a brute force keygen can crack.
Or forget photographic memories. How about one immoral waiter with a pen and paper? You *DO* follow them to the credit card machine and watch to make sure they don't write down your number whenever you pay with your visa... don't you? I didn't think so. And even if YOU do, do you think the AVERAGE person does?
Or one disturbed postal worker who wants to get his hands on checking account numbers and routing codes... Most people *DO* still pay their bills via check through the USPS.
Now, don't get me wrong, strong crypto is undeniably a GOOD THING(tm). But it's not a panacea.
And while 40bit or 128bit browser crypto may be trivial for the NSA or most corperations, or even for schools with their beowulf networks...
It's NOT trivial for joe 5kr19t k1dd13 who wants 2 g3t some w1k3d kardz and phuck 5h1t up. He's far more likely to get kardz by calling up his friend who's a waiter at Steak N Shake than by kracking them.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
The new generation has a different case design than the first to allow for convection cooling. I beleive the kicker was adding RF shielding into the plastic so you could get rid of those big aluminium shields that block circulation.
So if you've got a first gen iMac (tray loading), you'll still need the fan in there (case fan, NOT a CPU fan) to allow adaquate circulation. But if you're talkin about the current generation (slot loading) you won't need a fan any more than you do now.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>Microsoft "cheated" and fudged benchmarks?
That's the most obvious one off the top of my head. The story is archived on slashdot I'm sure.... not too sure just when gates was caught THIS time, but you should find the story with a simple search.
The short version is that gates wanted to "proove" that Linux is an inferior POS. Microsoft, therefore, PAYED mindcraft to go to redmond and do a series of "independant" benchmarks comparing server performance between NT/IIS and Linux/Apache. Gates then had a hoarde of his MCSE drones set up NT/IIS in the ideal configuration and optimise it in every way they could think of. And for the Linux side, they just installed an old version of Red Hat/Apache in the default configuration WITH NO OPTIMISATION WHATSOEVER!!!
And when NT beat Linux, gates trumpeded it all over the press that an "independent" benchmark by mindcraft "prooved" that NT is the server OS uber alles; and that Linux is a worthless piece of crap.
Sure seems to meet the definition of a "cheated and fudged benchmark" to me.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Witness:
ByteMark is biased in favor of PPC
SpecMark is biased in favor of intel
Unreal FPS is biased in favor of Glide
Quake FPS is biased in favor of OpenGL
Office benchmarks are biased in favor of windoze
Photoshop benchmarks are biased in favor of MacOS
Mindcraft benchmarks are.... well, I won't even go there.
But you get the point?
All of the above have been used, at one point or another (again, sometimes justifiably, sometimes not), by the side that came out behind in an attempt to invalidate the test that showed their OS / CPU / video card / FPS game / etc. to be inferior.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
After Myth 2, the Warcraft/Starcraft type RTS just seemed so flat and non-immersive to me. That was a great game engine with a lot of future potential.
And an anime action game with such good 3D... bitchin.
But alas... as they say... all good things...
It's just too excruciatingly bad that Bungiee had to end this way... assimilated and destroyed by the collective.
Rest in peace Bungie. You will be missed.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>designs could be built by 'electronic
>enthusiasts' are you?
The ones in which Woz had a hand in the design can.
Not only that, but when you bought a Woz designed Apple, you got the complete schematics of the MB, complete with part numbers of all the ICs and other components...
Oh... and you also got documented assembler code for all the ROMs as well... AND a built in disassembler in the ROM in case anything got updated but not documented.
ALL of this came with every Apple, AND he freely handed out all of the above to the Homebrew club and anyone else who asked. Basically, you didn't have to buy an Apple from Apple, you could write to them, get the schematics, and build it yourself if you wanted to. Apple just sold the completed box (with the nice plastic case) for anyone eho WASN'T skilled with a soldiering iron.
My dad still has a copy of the Apple ][ schematics that he actually got Woz to autograph at a trade show back when I was like... four or something. He's also promised that I WILL inherit those Apple docs.
It wasn't until the influence of Gasse and Sculley that Apple hardware became closed. Gasse, incidently, for all his public whining about Apple "not releasing the G3 specs to Be", was the one who fought most tenaciously to KEEP APPLE CLOSED and NOT allow clones. By this time, both Steves had been forced out of the company.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Does anyone say "the bomb" anymore???
But yeah, I'd see a Kevin Smith movie any day. But seeing as Dogma was just out last year, and he typically has a 2-3 year interval between movies, and he just put a lot of effort into the Clerks cartoon, only to be fucked (again) by disney...
I don't think we'll be seeing a new View Askew production this year.
But, eh, I *DID* break the DVD boycott to get Dogma and Chasing Amy on DVD to complete my collection. Only two DVDs I've bought since the deCSS fiasco.... honest.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
I can't beleive I didn't mention American Beauty...
I had originally thought it was going to suck and had to be dragged out to see it. Afterwards, I liked it so much that I went to see it again.
As for The Matrix, I could have sworn that it was a 1998 movie... brain fart on my part I guess. Prolly what threw me was how fast it got out on DVD.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if