So we should reward then for dangerous, illegal behavior, and being, as others have put it, "complete assmunches" and "fucktards?" When you see a specimen of Idiotus Automotivus running a red, you call the police. If you are going to go through red lights on a regular basis, then you should not be driving.
Interestingly enough, it was also Australia that came up with the secret ballot in the late 19th century. At the time, American political machines (Read political circle-jerks) printed their own ballots on distinctly colored paper. No need to explain the kind of corruption this caused. After the secret ballot was introduced, counties with 100 registered voters no longer returned 250 votes:)
So now they've repeated their earlier sucess... What will be next, perfecting telepathic voting systems?
I seem to recall reading somewhere about patents being for, oh, what was it... oh, yeah: "Promoting the progress of science and the useful arts." Oh, who cares about the constitution anyway? I mean, it's only the supreme law of the land. I mean, if I get more money by spitting on it both in letter and in spirit, then let's start spittin'! This makes me sick.
They generally work on the concept of a rapidly expanding gas placed behind a metallic projectile in a cylinder open on one end, known to the layman as a "gun." However, we have been reluctant to use these highly effective devices to end spam for some reason I cannot fathom. I mean, I don't think even a defense lawyer would stoop low enough to to defend a spammer:).
Whining to the choir on/. won't do anything. Most of the mindless USPTO drones who did this probably don't know you can type in that address bar thingy, let alone what a slashdot is.
Write them, in the widely used and open-source Dead Tree Format, about the prior art to this bullshit patent.
Contact them, and tell them about the prior art to this bullshit patent.
Send them a CD with a working copy of the prior art to this bullshit patent.
Don't preach to the choir. Go out and spread the word about the kind of insanity that reigns in our government.
If I had three friends and they all want me to send them a Linux distro. Given the piddly-shit upstream rates you are forced to accept if you want to get a reasonable price, that could easily take days on a cable modem.
Or suppose I was doing an rsync backup for someone.
Obviously, the limiting factor here is that unless you want to pay generously, you will be forced to accept severely asymmetrical connection speeds (fast download, shitty upload), or mediocre synchronous (128/256) rates.
Can you say "frivilous lawsuit?" We've got the RIAA, the "Patriot" act and SCO out there, and they're suing over 1000 vs 1024? My thoughts:
* If you actually know what 2^10, 2^20, etc is, you already know enough to see if the manufacturer means 1000 or 1024.
* If you don't, you're not going to notice a few percent difference.
* The average moron falls under number 2.
I mean, this is practically the *meaning* of a trivial lawsuit. No one will get anything from this except a bunch of scummy lawyers (Not that all lawyers are scum; it's just that the scum get more attention)
Personally, I think that when the law code is so convoluted, long, cross-linked, and full of antique, useless waste that you can make millions of dollars interperting it for others, it's time to do a serious code audit.
If those all run on Windows, then you can generate quite enough power by harnessing the mechanical energy of pulling your hair out.
Re:When this hits the market I'll buy!
on
Solar Window Panes
·
· Score: 1
I have this horrible feeling that the greedy bastards you mention will find some way to monopolize and price-inflate this too. See what M$ did to computer operating systems and what DeBeers did to diamonds.
I can see it helping, but not that much... Usually EVs have motors that consume >60Kw of power at peak. Even while cruising, a vehicle consumes around 10-12Kw to keep in motion on a highway. A typical EV might have, what, about 4 or 5 square meters recieving full sun at noon? That works out to 5Kw available, and something more than 2.5 turned into power. It could help, however, there simply is not enough energy in direct sunlight to keep a car moving at highway speeds, unless the car loses substantially less energy to friction (See ultra-streamlined solar car races).
"Adware" has huge negative connotations, which generally revolve around enlarging your sexual organs.
Mandrake is proposing to put 1 ad in the installer and a few paid links in the default bookmarks. Whoop-de-do.
If there were a little optional box you could have that would display ads of your choice, I'd go for it. Mandrake gets paid, I get to see what I want. And because they know that if they piss users they'll lose them, they've got a real incentive to keep the ads clean and targeted.
They buy the DMCA, use it to force information out of her ISP, and when they find out they are attacking a child they continue. Anything I say about this will be a faint euphemism compared to what it is.
And of course, guess that Brit Hume says at the end of the hour? "You must pay the price." Yeah... Nice example of empathy, there. A 12 year old girl and her single mother, who probably couldn't pay the damned cartel anyway, have had their lives pretty much ruined after being assraped by a senile, rabid dinosaur.
I don't trust anyone but myself to filter what I want. Suppose a certain corporation that shall not be named were to lean on ISPs to block common p2p ports?
Suppose I were working at home as a security consultant and needed acess to all ports, including those used by virii?
The internet was originally designed with all the intellegence at the ends, and not at the center. This was done to prevent anything like this kind of behavior, where the people with the routers can control what you can access. If it were not for this forethought on behalf of the Internet founders, your ISP would control what you can access.
And that's what this could easily evolve into. You know the routine. You start with a little. Then they push it a little farther. And a little farther. And a little farther. Then the "internet" is nothing but a glorified TV station, feeding you the same junk in an interactive manner.
Obligatory BTTF quote: "Admittedly, that is a worst case scenario..."
Using a p2p application and you don't want them to get porn, set up some drop rules (Always drop by name; IPs change):
if name contains "porn" then don't display
if name contains "fuck" then don't display
if name contains "sex" then don't display
I'd bet those three alone will block almost all the porn (because you kind of have to use words like that to make porn show up in searches for porn, duh). There might be some innocent victims, such as Sex Pistols mp3's, but you can write exceptions too.
Meanwhile, if you're an adult, you can turn the rules off and (if you've got time to kill), report IP's that generate 50 references to results that contain every sex word in existance.
Or you may have ulterior reasons for disabling the filters:p
If the spammers can't take the hint (WE DON'T WANT YOUR SHIT IN OUR MAILBOXES, HINT, HINT), then I think they will have little choice *but* to take the hint when someone shoots up Boca Raton. No, seriously. These people aren't going to take a subtle hint like massive blacklists. It will take either someone sniping them one by one, or a massive lynching mob converging on Boca Raton.
But the best case scenario doesn't usually happen. So we're left with either A) Requiring that all E-Mail be authenticated (meaning a massive violation of the anonymity it offers), B) Draconian spam filters that drop anything not found in a dictionary, or C) Requiring that you take a TEST before being allowed to use a computer.
Personally, I vote for the test. What keeps this human trash in business is Complete *ucking Morons (CFMs) who probably also genuinely believes everything Miss Cleo says, and take the horoscope quite seriously. These CFMs are the ones who will believe anything you say, and are destined to recieve either a Darwin Award or the Dogbert Gullibility award in the future.
If you can't recognise spam, or don't know the difference between a hard drive and floppy drive, then I honestly don't think you should have your own computer, which no doubt will end up with every known virus and worm on it, along with a hidden directory set up by crackers to serve child porn over your unfirewalled internet connection, along with several spybots and spambots that feed everything you do to a spammer.
Ever notice that you start seeing all these problems on a large scale when computers became idiot-friendly enough for idiots to get to the internet?
But I would have to side with MS on this. I don't care who they are filed against, software patents are bullshit. If it's some IP firm trying to hold all web commerce hostage with one-click-shopping, or some assholes suing MS because of their implementation of a plugin, the asshole loses.
You may disagree, but in my book scum lawyers trump MS. Not that it wasn't an admirable competition...
"Dear CA Supreme Court: Without any respect what so ever, fuck you. I have a handful of DVDs (I will never buy another) and I will watch them on any operating system I want. You are a disgrace to freedom and our Constitution."
It's quite obvious now (as it has been for some time) that our "courts" are nothing more than a big-business circle jerk. If you try to fight them on their turf, they'll win and the only result will be more propaganda for them to spin.
Unfotunately, I don't think civil disobedience will work either... Ghandi succedded because A) the great majority of people actually cared about something other than bread and circuses B) Britian couldn't control the news coming out. Unfortunately, the average fuckwit in America today doesn't know anything about the constitution, doesn't know anything about any amendment other than the first, and only wants bread and circuses, so forget A. And guess who controls the media?
Take the fight to *your* turf, however, and you'll find that these idiots don't stand a chance (Already RIAA.com seems to be slow). Some initial suggestions:
* Never buy another DVD. Never let any of your friends buy another DVD either. Get the tape or p2p it
* I'm sure everyone here can think of a way to DOS or DDOS their site
* Snail-mail DOS
* Post their E-Mail addresses for the spambots
Yes, a lot of this is indeed malicious. But when passive resistance isn't working, you have no choice but to step up to actively fighting them. I'll change my sig for the spambots as soon as I find it (Besides, that honeypot now gets plenty spam...)
That they will strangely enough avoid prosecution, or at most get a slap on the wrist. Just like that trash from Enron. Oh well... Welcome to America, where money is king.
It really, truly is time for people to realize that THERE IS SOMETHING MORE IMPORTANT THAN MONEY: ETHICS.
I can go and search the thrift store for 25 or 50 cents per book. I can get most new books for around $5 on paperback, or up to $25 for a just-released-hardcover.
In return, I get a product that I can read and take anywhere, and that is immune to intense magnetic fields (Of the kind that distort a CRT 3 feet away) from an NIB magnet I have. I can leave it somewhere for decades and not worry about it getting corrupted or erased. It doesn't need batteries.
In other words, I am NOT getting screwed by the printing company: I am getting what I want at a reasonable price.
Slashdot Mirror
"The tighter you squeeze, Tarkin, the more systems will slip through your fingers!"
Funny, yet at the same time disturbingly accurate... Yikes!
So we should reward then for dangerous, illegal behavior, and being, as others have put it, "complete assmunches" and "fucktards?" When you see a specimen of Idiotus Automotivus running a red, you call the police. If you are going to go through red lights on a regular basis, then you should not be driving.
Interestingly enough, it was also Australia that came up with the secret ballot in the late 19th century. At the time, American political machines (Read political circle-jerks) printed their own ballots on distinctly colored paper. No need to explain the kind of corruption this caused. After the secret ballot was introduced, counties with 100 registered voters no longer returned 250 votes :)
So now they've repeated their earlier sucess... What will be next, perfecting telepathic voting systems?
I seem to recall reading somewhere about patents being for, oh, what was it... oh, yeah: "Promoting the progress of science and the useful arts." Oh, who cares about the constitution anyway? I mean, it's only the supreme law of the land. I mean, if I get more money by spitting on it both in letter and in spirit, then let's start spittin'! This makes me sick.
They generally work on the concept of a rapidly expanding gas placed behind a metallic projectile in a cylinder open on one end, known to the layman as a "gun." However, we have been reluctant to use these highly effective devices to end spam for some reason I cannot fathom. I mean, I don't think even a defense lawyer would stoop low enough to to defend a spammer :).
Whining to the choir on /. won't do anything. Most of the mindless USPTO drones who did this probably don't know you can type in that address bar thingy, let alone what a slashdot is.
Write them, in the widely used and open-source Dead Tree Format, about the prior art to this bullshit patent.
Contact them, and tell them about the prior art to this bullshit patent.
Send them a CD with a working copy of the prior art to this bullshit patent.
Don't preach to the choir. Go out and spread the word about the kind of insanity that reigns in our government.
If I had three friends and they all want me to send them a Linux distro. Given the piddly-shit upstream rates you are forced to accept if you want to get a reasonable price, that could easily take days on a cable modem.
Or suppose I was doing an rsync backup for someone.
Obviously, the limiting factor here is that unless you want to pay generously, you will be forced to accept severely asymmetrical connection speeds (fast download, shitty upload), or mediocre synchronous (128/256) rates.
Can you say "frivilous lawsuit?" We've got the RIAA, the "Patriot" act and SCO out there, and they're suing over 1000 vs 1024? My thoughts:
* If you actually know what 2^10, 2^20, etc is, you already know enough to see if the manufacturer means 1000 or 1024.
* If you don't, you're not going to notice a few percent difference.
* The average moron falls under number 2.
I mean, this is practically the *meaning* of a trivial lawsuit. No one will get anything from this except a bunch of scummy lawyers (Not that all lawyers are scum; it's just that the scum get more attention)
Personally, I think that when the law code is so convoluted, long, cross-linked, and full of antique, useless waste that you can make millions of dollars interperting it for others, it's time to do a serious code audit.
I said this before; Give it to them on hollerith cards. "What's wrong, judge? I gave them the information."
If those all run on Windows, then you can generate quite enough power by harnessing the mechanical energy of pulling your hair out.
I have this horrible feeling that the greedy bastards you mention will find some way to monopolize and price-inflate this too. See what M$ did to computer operating systems and what DeBeers did to diamonds.
I can see it helping, but not that much... Usually EVs have motors that consume >60Kw of power at peak. Even while cruising, a vehicle consumes around 10-12Kw to keep in motion on a highway. A typical EV might have, what, about 4 or 5 square meters recieving full sun at noon? That works out to 5Kw available, and something more than 2.5 turned into power. It could help, however, there simply is not enough energy in direct sunlight to keep a car moving at highway speeds, unless the car loses substantially less energy to friction (See ultra-streamlined solar car races).
"Adware" has huge negative connotations, which generally revolve around enlarging your sexual organs.
Mandrake is proposing to put 1 ad in the installer and a few paid links in the default bookmarks. Whoop-de-do.
If there were a little optional box you could have that would display ads of your choice, I'd go for it. Mandrake gets paid, I get to see what I want. And because they know that if they piss users they'll lose them, they've got a real incentive to keep the ads clean and targeted.
They buy the DMCA, use it to force information out of her ISP, and when they find out they are attacking a child they continue. Anything I say about this will be a faint euphemism compared to what it is.
And of course, guess that Brit Hume says at the end of the hour? "You must pay the price." Yeah... Nice example of empathy, there. A 12 year old girl and her single mother, who probably couldn't pay the damned cartel anyway, have had their lives pretty much ruined after being assraped by a senile, rabid dinosaur.
No
I don't trust anyone but myself to filter what I want. Suppose a certain corporation that shall not be named were to lean on ISPs to block common p2p ports?
Suppose I were working at home as a security consultant and needed acess to all ports, including those used by virii?
The internet was originally designed with all the intellegence at the ends, and not at the center. This was done to prevent anything like this kind of behavior, where the people with the routers can control what you can access. If it were not for this forethought on behalf of the Internet founders, your ISP would control what you can access.
And that's what this could easily evolve into. You know the routine. You start with a little. Then they push it a little farther. And a little farther. And a little farther. Then the "internet" is nothing but a glorified TV station, feeding you the same junk in an interactive manner.
Obligatory BTTF quote: "Admittedly, that is a worst case scenario..."
I think you meant "More immoral than their own." Or... Um... You choose :/
Using a p2p application and you don't want them to get porn, set up some drop rules (Always drop by name; IPs change):
:p
if name contains "porn" then don't display
if name contains "fuck" then don't display
if name contains "sex" then don't display
I'd bet those three alone will block almost all the porn (because you kind of have to use words like that to make porn show up in searches for porn, duh). There might be some innocent victims, such as Sex Pistols mp3's, but you can write exceptions too.
Meanwhile, if you're an adult, you can turn the rules off and (if you've got time to kill), report IP's that generate 50 references to results that contain every sex word in existance.
Or you may have ulterior reasons for disabling the filters
Elmer Fudd: "Give me the BIRD!"
Wakko: "I can't; This is a childrens show."
If the spammers can't take the hint (WE DON'T WANT YOUR SHIT IN OUR MAILBOXES, HINT, HINT), then I think they will have little choice *but* to take the hint when someone shoots up Boca Raton. No, seriously. These people aren't going to take a subtle hint like massive blacklists. It will take either someone sniping them one by one, or a massive lynching mob converging on Boca Raton.
But the best case scenario doesn't usually happen. So we're left with either A) Requiring that all E-Mail be authenticated (meaning a massive violation of the anonymity it offers), B) Draconian spam filters that drop anything not found in a dictionary, or C) Requiring that you take a TEST before being allowed to use a computer.
Personally, I vote for the test. What keeps this human trash in business is Complete *ucking Morons (CFMs) who probably also genuinely believes everything Miss Cleo says, and take the horoscope quite seriously. These CFMs are the ones who will believe anything you say, and are destined to recieve either a Darwin Award or the Dogbert Gullibility award in the future.
If you can't recognise spam, or don't know the difference between a hard drive and floppy drive, then I honestly don't think you should have your own computer, which no doubt will end up with every known virus and worm on it, along with a hidden directory set up by crackers to serve child porn over your unfirewalled internet connection, along with several spybots and spambots that feed everything you do to a spammer.
Ever notice that you start seeing all these problems on a large scale when computers became idiot-friendly enough for idiots to get to the internet?
But I would have to side with MS on this. I don't care who they are filed against, software patents are bullshit. If it's some IP firm trying to hold all web commerce hostage with one-click-shopping, or some assholes suing MS because of their implementation of a plugin, the asshole loses.
You may disagree, but in my book scum lawyers trump MS. Not that it wasn't an admirable competition...
"Dear CA Supreme Court: Without any respect what so ever, fuck you. I have a handful of DVDs (I will never buy another) and I will watch them on any operating system I want. You are a disgrace to freedom and our Constitution."
It's quite obvious now (as it has been for some time) that our "courts" are nothing more than a big-business circle jerk. If you try to fight them on their turf, they'll win and the only result will be more propaganda for them to spin.
Unfotunately, I don't think civil disobedience will work either... Ghandi succedded because A) the great majority of people actually cared about something other than bread and circuses B) Britian couldn't control the news coming out. Unfortunately, the average fuckwit in America today doesn't know anything about the constitution, doesn't know anything about any amendment other than the first, and only wants bread and circuses, so forget A. And guess who controls the media? Take the fight to *your* turf, however, and you'll find that these idiots don't stand a chance (Already RIAA.com seems to be slow). Some initial suggestions:
* Never buy another DVD. Never let any of your friends buy another DVD either. Get the tape or p2p it
* I'm sure everyone here can think of a way to DOS or DDOS their site
* Snail-mail DOS
* Post their E-Mail addresses for the spambots
Yes, a lot of this is indeed malicious. But when passive resistance isn't working, you have no choice but to step up to actively fighting them. I'll change my sig for the spambots as soon as I find it (Besides, that honeypot now gets plenty spam...)
That they will strangely enough avoid prosecution, or at most get a slap on the wrist. Just like that trash from Enron. Oh well... Welcome to America, where money is king.
It really, truly is time for people to realize that THERE IS SOMETHING MORE IMPORTANT THAN MONEY: ETHICS.
"but I honestly don't think Microsoft is evil - just greedy."
*WOPR voice* What's The Difference, Dr. Falken?
To be honest, I have to put my vote with "no."
I can go and search the thrift store for 25 or 50 cents per book. I can get most new books for around $5 on paperback, or up to $25 for a just-released-hardcover.
In return, I get a product that I can read and take anywhere, and that is immune to intense magnetic fields (Of the kind that distort a CRT 3 feet away) from an NIB magnet I have. I can leave it somewhere for decades and not worry about it getting corrupted or erased. It doesn't need batteries.
In other words, I am NOT getting screwed by the printing company: I am getting what I want at a reasonable price.