You keep your posts off of Kansas sites, buddy - that's my turf!
But yes, Greensburg is a good stop - I ususally stop there on my way back home from parts west as it gives me a good chance to stretch my legs and get some coffee.
But have you ever been to any of the other sites in Kansas I listed in my previous post?
I can just see a server running your suggestion now:
"Hmmm. Mozilla on Linux. Crap! what theme is he running. Well, I can guess it's not KDE, since he's not running Konq. But is he running Sawfish, Blackbox, or TWM95? Crux, or one of those themes from Bowie Poag?
1) Big Brutus, in West Mineral, Kansas - the second largest electric shovel in the world, and (IIRC) the only one still in (more or less) one piece. If you are in Branson, MO you are a couple of hours out.
2) The Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, Hutchinson, Kansas. See where Apollo 13 and Liberty Bell were restored, and (in a couple of months) watch them restore a V2 rocket (and even help them do it!). (While here, if it isn't Sunday, get directions to The Carrage Crossing restaurant).
3) EBR-1 the world's first breeder reactor, and the first reactor to make electric power, just outside Arco, Idaho (first city to be powered by nuclear power) (while here, you can go through Craters of the Moon National Park, one of the places that the Apollo astronauts trained. Stay in the DK inn, and you have a good chance of staying in one of the rooms they stayed in). 4) The Very Large Array, outside Socorro, New Mexico. While here, you could also go through White Sands National Park. 5) The London Bridge V2.1 in Lake Havasu, Nevada, where the entire London Bridge was relocated to. 6) The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial a.k.a. The Saint Lewis Arch - there is quite a museum below the arch, and I found it mind-blowing to realize that Saint Lewis is an ocean port. 7) Mount Rushmore National Park - go through the Rushmore Borglum Story for how they carved it and the tricks Borglum used to make the faces look more alive. While there, stop by.... 8) Crazy Horse Memorial to see such a work being created. 9) Mesa Verde National Park, near Cortez, Colorado, and Walnut Canyon National Monument, near Flagstaff, AZ, are great examples of how people can eake out a living and build a city where you wouldn't think anybody could survive.
Re:What are we going to do tonight Brain?
on
Human-Mouse Hybrids?
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Please get the quote right:
Pinky: Wot are we going to do tonigh, Brain? Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky: TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD
(and that is, of course, Brain's problem. Had he listened to another animated short fellow with a big head, he would know: "Do. Or Do Not. There Is No Try.")
I object to any statement of the form "Perhaps this will change the minds of the hoax-believers" - that statement assumes the existance of an organ (the brain of the doubters) not in evidence!
Until the doubters can be shown to have brains and minds, I move the argument be stricken from the record!
The difference between Amtrak in the US and the rail systems in Europe and the UK is this:
In Europe, the primary goal of the rail system is moving people. In the US, the primary goal is moving freight.
Amtrak does not own the railbeds - the various freight companies (like Burlington Northern/Santa Fe) do. This has several negative effects on Amtrak:
Freight trains get priority over passenger lines. So if both a trainload of shipping containers and an Amtrak train need the same section of rail, guess who gets to set in a siding.
Late trains wait for on-time trains. As a result, if you are late, you just get later as you keep waiting on the sidings. This is not so much a problem with freight, but kills passenger service.
Freight trains don't NEED to run 150MPH plus. 70 MPH is fine. As a result, the freight companies have no motivation to upgrade the rail beds. I've ridden the Southwest Chief - and over some of the rail lines you'd better be sitting down, as you will be thrown around otherwise.
In addition, the first time a high-speed train Darwin'ed a moron trying to beat it across the tracks, and derailed and killed a bunch of passengers, Amtrak would be sued into obilivion. You would need to have over/underpasses at every road intersection, as well as fences along the rail to prevent stupid people from walking along the rails ("Look! I am gunna put a penny on the tracks. This will be co-" <Brraaaak! Ding Ding Ding... >)
Now, were the US to invest enough money to build a seperate, passenger only rail system, then it MIGHT become reasonable to take the train - a train that averaged 150 MPH would be able to make the run from Kansas to California in 12 hours, rather than 26. Given the delays involved in flying, this becomes competitive, especially if they set up the Autotrain cars so that I can have my car when I get where I am going. It would still be faster to fly from New York to LA, but from the middle of the US out it would become reasonable to take the train, unless you are on a high-priority business trip.
Now, how to achive this spending of money without it becoming Pure Pork? If I had a certain answer I wouldn't be typing on Slashdot, but what I would recommend is a modification of what worked in the past: a Rural Rail act, similar to the Rural Electrification Act of yore. Make Amtrak a private company, have the government loan them the money to build/improve the rails, and make them pay it back. If they fail to pay it back, forclose on the lines.
If you look at the history of the REA, it made the government far more than it cost - most of the REA loan recipents paid their loans off in full. In addition, the improvement in the infrastructure of the country ALSO paid for the system.
I'd love to see the rails improve - the train is MUCH nicer for a 6'4" person like me than a plane, seeing the scenary along the way is great, having a 110VAC outlet in your sleeper car is great for mobile hacking, and trains can stop more places than a plane can. But until it either costs less than a plane or takes about the same time as a plane, it is a luxury, not a viable competitor.
(however, I do recommend taking either the Southwest Chief or the California Zypher at least once - get a sleeper car, and treat the trip as the vacation.)
I won't do business with them, and I would counsel anybody else to avoid doing business with them.
I *LIVE* in a podunk town (200 residents). I can still get videos from the local gas station/bait shop/quickeemart on the corner. There are alternatives.
Obviously, if you wish to do business with a spammer, that's your call. But I do want folks to know that Netflix are spammers.
I cannot help but notice that in almost all cases, the security problems in both IE and Mozilla have been in the realm of active content - Javascript, Flash, and ActiveX.
Hence why I as a matter of course disable them.
How about encouraging webmasters and web designers to avoid requiring them unless absolutely necessary?
Sysadmins need to pursue intrusion attempts
on
Due Diligence?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I know of a Linux system that logs and reports intrusion attempts by CodeRed/Nimda, Slapper, et. al., and mails a report to a system admin every morning.
The system admin wasn't pursuing these reports. I asked why.
His response - "Well, those are attempts to exploit a Windows server, and this is a Linux box, so they don't matter."
I made the counterpoint "If one of your system was infected, wouldn't you want to be told about it?"
If every systems admin would take the time to track down the Code Red attempts on their systems, and notify the responsible parties whereever possible, then a lot of the unpatched systems would be shut down (if not by their administrators, then by the ISP supplying connectivity).
I just don't understand an admin with an attitude like that.
1) Except for emergency legislation, all legislation must stand for public review for a period of not less than 18 months. 2) At the end of the 18 month period, the House and Senate are allowed a simple yes/no vote on the bill. 3) If the House or the Senate wish to modify the bill, then the 18 month clock is restarted. 4) An "emergency legislation" is allowed to be passed without the 18 month review process. 5) An emergency legislation bill is only allowed to be in force for 2 years, with NO chance for renewal. Also, any no other emergency legislation substantially similar to any previous emergency legislation is permitted.
So, consider the life of a law under these proposals. Let us say a new, terrible weapon of mass destruction is invented, that can be made from rolls of toilet paper and chewing gum. This weapon can destroy cities, so it is decided that a law requiring the refomulation of chewing gum and redesign of toilet paper rolls is needed to prevent the average Joe from making this weapon.
So, Congress passes "The George and Ray Emergency legilative act of 2002", which bans the manufacture of the old forms of chewing gum and toilet paper. This act can only run until 2004 (2 years later).
The Congress also drafts the proposed "George and Ray act of 2004", which codifies for all time the changes. They have 6 months to do so if they want continuous coverage.
Now, Senator PorkBarrel decides to try to slip in a rider on the bill getting his home state a US$100 billion development plan.
Under the current system, he can do this at the eleventh hour, and be pretty assured that it won't be spotted.
Under the proposed system, he knows his rider must be under public scrutiny for a year and a half. So do all his croneys in Congress.
His croneys WANT this bill passed, so they are unlikely to allow a rider that is going to be spotted by the public to jeopardise the bill, so the bounce it.
Failing that, after a few months scrutiny, somebody spots the rider. Much furor is raised over the rider, and the Congress gets told "remove the rider, or we remove you next election."
1) Moderating a troll as merely "Offtopic" is unfair because there is a much more accurate moderation: Troll. By robbing the system of the extra information that the comment is a troll, you prevent the troll filters from working as well. As a result, your moderation is inaccurate, and therefor deserving of "Unfair".
2) Your advice is correct, and I follow it. I do evaluate if the likelyhood of a company being spamvertised is the source of the spam, and adjust my actions accordingly. But too damn many companies are hiding behind "plausible denyablity" - having a third party spam, and then being "Shocked! Shocked! Shocked!" that the third party is spamming.
I *NEVER* give any company I do business with permission to email me for the purposes of advertisment. Those companies that I have done business with that violate that restriction are informed that they have stepped over the line - repeat offenders are informed to remove me from their database and that I won't be doing further business with them.
(BTW: moderating this comment as "Offtopic" would be fair - hence why I'm posting it at 1, not 2).
Or C) The prosecution had no case to make in the first place.
Actually, that would be a special case of "the prosecution failed to make its case". You see, that is the core of the adversarial legal system we have - the prosecution asserts one thing, the defense asserts something else, and the side that best makes its arguments wins.
Perhaps you can look that up in Encarta - you should be able to buy it at the company store.
Also, could I pursuade you to come and lie in front of my house? I need to put a new lawn in, and Astroturf is expensive....
No, having a remove link does not change the fact that:
1) I did not ask for this garbage to be sent to me. 2) I am the one paying for the delivery of this garbage.
If I walk up to you, and punch you in the stomach, and then say "If you want me to stop, say so", was it any less an undeserved and unlawful attack?
When Netflix spammed me, I had never had any contact with them and therefor never given them permission to contact me. Therefor they got my name from a spammer's list of harvested addresses.
I contacted them about the spam, and their response was "Well, it was a third party, using a list we don't control. We will certainly talk most sternly with them."
In other words, the typical response of a spammer.
Hence why I brought it up in response to the post here - people have a right to know that Netflix has very little regard for email privacy, and therefor will in all probability sell you email address to other spammers.
If you choose to do business with them, that is your choice, and while I would counsel you not to do so, I also respect your right to make a choice.
However, I have the right to express my opinion on the matter as well, and my opinion is "It is Bad and Wrong to do business with spammers."
It's not a personal attack - it is a valid question.
Yes, I try to avoid doing business with anybody who rams their advertising down my throat without my permission.
However, it is one thing to send hard mail to my account, paid for (mostly) by the sender, with proper return address information, for valid offers, in such a fashion that fraudulant offers may be pursued legally, and quite another to send offers with little or no contact information, with forged headers, and using my equipment without my permission.
So I would disagree with your premise that third class mail is the same as spam.
But yes, if I get third class mail from somebody with whom I have no prior business relationship, into the round file it goes and they go on my shit list.
To put it bluntly, I was asking who is to blame, the judge or the prosecution - was it that the prosecution failed to make its case, or that the judge failed to decide based on the case.
Now, I personally feel that it was the former - the prosecution failed to make its case, and so the judge decided the case brought.
Mr. Rosen seems to have either missed the point or side stepped it, but that's just my view.
Does anybody else have any opinions on this? Was I unclear in my question, or did Mr. Rosen misunderstand it, or did he duck it?
The PDF of the paper refuses to render with any Ghostscript derived viewer.
It sure would be nice if those who wish to cast stones would make sure their own position is clean.
That said, I've had to ding webmasters about having their routers set up to block packets with explicit congestion notify set - that is now an accepted part of TCP/IP, and failing to accept packets with ECN set is a violation of the standard.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, Huntsville would be fun too.
However, I have a lot of that 50 miles away in Hutchinson:
Redstone Rocket: Check
Authentic V2: Check.
Authentic V1: Check.
Shuttle mockup: Check.
Real engines: Check (including Russian engines)
SR-71: Check
T-38 Trainer: Check
Apollo 13 command module: Check
Moon Rock: Check
Space suits (including Svetlana Savitskaya's (second woman in space): Check
Apollo-Soyuez mockup: Check
Various actual Russian space probes: Check
Imax: check (well, Omnimax with an Imax lens).
Apollo moon lander mockup: check.
Apollo "white room": Check.
If only the TiVo had a Firewire interface....
Imagine getting 2 of these drives - 1TB on your TiVo.
Of course, I'd want a faster processor, or parsing the "Now Showing" list would take forever!
You keep your posts off of Kansas sites, buddy - that's my turf!
But yes, Greensburg is a good stop - I ususally stop there on my way back home from parts west as it gives me a good chance to stretch my legs and get some coffee.
But have you ever been to any of the other sites in Kansas I listed in my previous post?
I can just see a server running your suggestion now:
"Hmmm. Mozilla on Linux. Crap! what theme is he running. Well, I can guess it's not KDE, since he's not running Konq. But is he running Sawfish, Blackbox, or TWM95? Crux, or one of those themes from Bowie Poag?
Screw it - he's probably blocking me anyway."
Crap - Lake Havasu is in Arizona, not Nevada. Check all my links and didn't check my text.
1) Big Brutus, in West Mineral, Kansas - the second largest electric shovel in the world, and (IIRC) the only one still in (more or less) one piece. If you are in Branson, MO you are a couple of hours out.
2) The Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, Hutchinson, Kansas. See where Apollo 13 and Liberty Bell were restored, and (in a couple of months) watch them restore a V2 rocket (and even help them do it!). (While here, if it isn't Sunday, get directions to The Carrage Crossing restaurant).
3) EBR-1 the world's first breeder reactor, and the first reactor to make electric power, just outside Arco, Idaho (first city to be powered by nuclear power) (while here, you can go through Craters of the Moon National Park, one of the places that the Apollo astronauts trained. Stay in the DK inn, and you have a good chance of staying in one of the rooms they stayed in).
4) The Very Large Array, outside Socorro, New Mexico. While here, you could also go through White Sands National Park.
5) The London Bridge V2.1 in Lake Havasu, Nevada, where the entire London Bridge was relocated to.
6) The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial a.k.a. The Saint Lewis Arch - there is quite a museum below the arch, and I found it mind-blowing to realize that Saint Lewis is an ocean port.
7) Mount Rushmore National Park - go through the Rushmore Borglum Story for how they carved it and the tricks Borglum used to make the faces look more alive. While there, stop by....
8) Crazy Horse Memorial to see such a work being created.
9) Mesa Verde National Park, near Cortez, Colorado, and Walnut Canyon National Monument, near Flagstaff, AZ, are great examples of how people can eake out a living and build a city where you wouldn't think anybody could survive.
Of course, just look at The National Parks Service website for all sorts of cool places to go.
(and that is, of course, Brain's problem. Had he listened to another animated short fellow with a big head, he would know: "Do. Or Do Not. There Is No Try.")
I object to any statement of the form "Perhaps this will change the minds of the hoax-believers" - that statement assumes the existance of an organ (the brain of the doubters) not in evidence!
Until the doubters can be shown to have brains and minds, I move the argument be stricken from the record!
In Europe, the primary goal of the rail system is moving people. In the US, the primary goal is moving freight.
Amtrak does not own the railbeds - the various freight companies (like Burlington Northern/Santa Fe) do. This has several negative effects on Amtrak:
In addition, the first time a high-speed train Darwin'ed a moron trying to beat it across the tracks, and derailed and killed a bunch of passengers, Amtrak would be sued into obilivion. You would need to have over/underpasses at every road intersection, as well as fences along the rail to prevent stupid people from walking along the rails ("Look! I am gunna put a penny on the tracks. This will be co-" <Brraaaak! Ding Ding Ding... >)
Now, were the US to invest enough money to build a seperate, passenger only rail system, then it MIGHT become reasonable to take the train - a train that averaged 150 MPH would be able to make the run from Kansas to California in 12 hours, rather than 26. Given the delays involved in flying, this becomes competitive, especially if they set up the Autotrain cars so that I can have my car when I get where I am going. It would still be faster to fly from New York to LA, but from the middle of the US out it would become reasonable to take the train, unless you are on a high-priority business trip.
Now, how to achive this spending of money without it becoming Pure Pork? If I had a certain answer I wouldn't be typing on Slashdot, but what I would recommend is a modification of what worked in the past: a Rural Rail act, similar to the Rural Electrification Act of yore. Make Amtrak a private company, have the government loan them the money to build/improve the rails, and make them pay it back. If they fail to pay it back, forclose on the lines.
If you look at the history of the REA, it made the government far more than it cost - most of the REA loan recipents paid their loans off in full. In addition, the improvement in the infrastructure of the country ALSO paid for the system.
I'd love to see the rails improve - the train is MUCH nicer for a 6'4" person like me than a plane, seeing the scenary along the way is great, having a 110VAC outlet in your sleeper car is great for mobile hacking, and trains can stop more places than a plane can. But until it either costs less than a plane or takes about the same time as a plane, it is a luxury, not a viable competitor.
(however, I do recommend taking either the Southwest Chief or the California Zypher at least once - get a sleeper car, and treat the trip as the vacation.)
Netflix are spammers. They will sell your information, and they buy unconfirmed lists and spam them.
Google evidence
I won't do business with them, and I would counsel anybody else to avoid doing business with them.
I *LIVE* in a podunk town (200 residents). I can still get videos from the local gas station/bait shop/quickeemart on the corner. There are alternatives.
Obviously, if you wish to do business with a spammer, that's your call. But I do want folks to know that Netflix are spammers.
I cannot help but notice that in almost all cases, the security problems in both IE and Mozilla have been in the realm of active content - Javascript, Flash, and ActiveX.
Hence why I as a matter of course disable them.
How about encouraging webmasters and web designers to avoid requiring them unless absolutely necessary?
I know of a Linux system that logs and reports intrusion attempts by CodeRed/Nimda, Slapper, et. al., and mails a report to a system admin every morning.
The system admin wasn't pursuing these reports. I asked why.
His response - "Well, those are attempts to exploit a Windows server, and this is a Linux box, so they don't matter."
I made the counterpoint "If one of your system was infected, wouldn't you want to be told about it?"
If every systems admin would take the time to track down the Code Red attempts on their systems, and notify the responsible parties whereever possible, then a lot of the unpatched systems would be shut down (if not by their administrators, then by the ISP supplying connectivity).
I just don't understand an admin with an attitude like that.
Here's a better solution for preventing pork.
1) Except for emergency legislation, all legislation must stand for public review for a period of not less than 18 months.
2) At the end of the 18 month period, the House and Senate are allowed a simple yes/no vote on the bill.
3) If the House or the Senate wish to modify the bill, then the 18 month clock is restarted.
4) An "emergency legislation" is allowed to be passed without the 18 month review process.
5) An emergency legislation bill is only allowed to be in force for 2 years, with NO chance for renewal. Also, any no other emergency legislation substantially similar to any previous emergency legislation is permitted.
So, consider the life of a law under these proposals. Let us say a new, terrible weapon of mass destruction is invented, that can be made from rolls of toilet paper and chewing gum. This weapon can destroy cities, so it is decided that a law requiring the refomulation of chewing gum and redesign of toilet paper rolls is needed to prevent the average Joe from making this weapon.
So, Congress passes "The George and Ray Emergency legilative act of 2002", which bans the manufacture of the old forms of chewing gum and toilet paper. This act can only run until 2004 (2 years later).
The Congress also drafts the proposed "George and Ray act of 2004", which codifies for all time the changes. They have 6 months to do so if they want continuous coverage.
Now, Senator PorkBarrel decides to try to slip in a rider on the bill getting his home state a US$100 billion development plan.
Under the current system, he can do this at the eleventh hour, and be pretty assured that it won't be spotted.
Under the proposed system, he knows his rider must be under public scrutiny for a year and a half. So do all his croneys in Congress.
His croneys WANT this bill passed, so they are unlikely to allow a rider that is going to be spotted by the public to jeopardise the bill, so the bounce it.
Failing that, after a few months scrutiny, somebody spots the rider. Much furor is raised over the rider, and the Congress gets told "remove the rider, or we remove you next election."
To take your points in order:
1) Moderating a troll as merely "Offtopic" is unfair because there is a much more accurate moderation: Troll. By robbing the system of the extra information that the comment is a troll, you prevent the troll filters from working as well. As a result, your moderation is inaccurate, and therefor deserving of "Unfair".
2) Your advice is correct, and I follow it. I do evaluate if the likelyhood of a company being spamvertised is the source of the spam, and adjust my actions accordingly. But too damn many companies are hiding behind "plausible denyablity" - having a third party spam, and then being "Shocked! Shocked! Shocked!" that the third party is spamming.
I *NEVER* give any company I do business with permission to email me for the purposes of advertisment. Those companies that I have done business with that violate that restriction are informed that they have stepped over the line - repeat offenders are informed to remove me from their database and that I won't be doing further business with them.
(BTW: moderating this comment as "Offtopic" would be fair - hence why I'm posting it at 1, not 2).
like spelling on /.
Some folks hereabouts are rather immune to subtlty, and I feared that had I left it at that, the masses would not have "gotten" the joke.
Think of the second comment as a laugh-track.
Thank you - good to know somebody appreciates a good insult.
Sorry, but it still is spam.
"spam" in this context is UCE - unsolicited commercial email.
Let's see.
Email - yes.
Commercial - yes.
Unsolicited - yes.
Check, doublecheck and triplecheck - it's spam.
And do get it right - SPAM is spiced pork shoulders in a can, and is a trademark of Hormel Foods, inc.
"spam" is unsolicted commercial email.
Look up the definitions.
Just as a cross-check of my own beliefs, is all. I always like to check my thoughts against those who are more knowledgable than myself.
That and to remind folks that this isn't the judge's fault.
I want that cover, either in printed form or as a hi-res JPG or as vector Postscript.
Thinkgeek, are you listening?
I would suggest that you read both my question, and his response, before continuing.
Actually, that would be a special case of "the prosecution failed to make its case". You see, that is the core of the adversarial legal system we have - the prosecution asserts one thing, the defense asserts something else, and the side that best makes its arguments wins.
Perhaps you can look that up in Encarta - you should be able to buy it at the company store.
Also, could I pursuade you to come and lie in front of my house? I need to put a new lawn in, and Astroturf is expensive....
No, having a remove link does not change the fact that:
1) I did not ask for this garbage to be sent to me.
2) I am the one paying for the delivery of this garbage.
If I walk up to you, and punch you in the stomach, and then say "If you want me to stop, say so", was it any less an undeserved and unlawful attack?
When Netflix spammed me, I had never had any contact with them and therefor never given them permission to contact me. Therefor they got my name from a spammer's list of harvested addresses.
I contacted them about the spam, and their response was "Well, it was a third party, using a list we don't control. We will certainly talk most sternly with them."
In other words, the typical response of a spammer.
Hence why I brought it up in response to the post here - people have a right to know that Netflix has very little regard for email privacy, and therefor will in all probability sell you email address to other spammers.
If you choose to do business with them, that is your choice, and while I would counsel you not to do so, I also respect your right to make a choice.
However, I have the right to express my opinion on the matter as well, and my opinion is "It is Bad and Wrong to do business with spammers."
It's not a personal attack - it is a valid question.
Yes, I try to avoid doing business with anybody who rams their advertising down my throat without my permission.
However, it is one thing to send hard mail to my account, paid for (mostly) by the sender, with proper return address information, for valid offers, in such a fashion that fraudulant offers may be pursued legally, and quite another to send offers with little or no contact information, with forged headers, and using my equipment without my permission.
So I would disagree with your premise that third class mail is the same as spam.
But yes, if I get third class mail from somebody with whom I have no prior business relationship, into the round file it goes and they go on my shit list.
I feel Mr. Rosen missed the point of my question.
/me dons Armor, +20 vs flames.
To put it bluntly, I was asking who is to blame, the judge or the prosecution - was it that the prosecution failed to make its case, or that the judge failed to decide based on the case.
Now, I personally feel that it was the former - the prosecution failed to make its case, and so the judge decided the case brought.
Mr. Rosen seems to have either missed the point or side stepped it, but that's just my view.
Does anybody else have any opinions on this? Was I unclear in my question, or did Mr. Rosen misunderstand it, or did he duck it?
Netflix advertises via spam - as such I would avoid doing business with them.
Google'd evidence
The PDF of the paper refuses to render with any Ghostscript derived viewer.
It sure would be nice if those who wish to cast stones would make sure their own position is clean.
That said, I've had to ding webmasters about having their routers set up to block packets with explicit congestion notify set - that is now an accepted part of TCP/IP, and failing to accept packets with ECN set is a violation of the standard.