I can't wait to get a RadioShark, record Coast to Coast A.M. every night, and then listen to the cavalcade of freaks and weirdos on my iPod while driving, walking, exercising and so on.
For internet broadcasts, I'll still be using iRecordMusic to bring shows like This American Life and The Savvy Traveler into my iPod via iTunes on my Mac.
Good thing that 120GB external hard drives are on sale at Office Max this week!
Russian officials have identified the suspect as a 75-year-old deranged homeless man named Dmitri. Dmitri has never seen a computer or even heard of computers or the internet, and upon being arrested declared himself to be the reincarnation of Czar Nicholas II. Russian authorities state that Dmitri is the ringleader of every single former Soviet-bloc hacking and IP theft operation, which he was running from a cardboard box under a freeway overpass, and once he's been put to death following a speedy closed-door non-jury trial, which takes place in about twenty minutes, all Russian-based criminal activity on the internet will cease. Officials are hailing the arrest as a triumph for the Russian criminal justice system and the dawning of a new era in East-West internet-based relations. Dmitri's friends, two of whom are imaginary, are protesting by wrapping themselves in some copper wire they found and then trading it for vodka.
Certainly different from legal forms of extortion
on
Fighting Online Extortion
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· Score: 4, Interesting
A legal extortionist, say, a patent troll or industry trade group, has to consider how much they can actually get out of a victim, since there are legal costs involved in filing the suit in the first place. These organized criminal enterprises, on the other hand, only have to do some hacking, and then fling their crap in every direction to see what sticks. Just as street criminals drive small businesses out of neighborhoods, leaving nothing but blight and boarded-up, rat-infested buildings, these online criminals could drive all the small e-commerce sites off the web and essentially cripple the web as a business method for all but the largest, wealthiest companies. So don't look for the authorities to step up efforts to combat this anytime soon.
"Well, I wanna turn in Billy, man!" "Hey, whatta you talkin' 'bout, man?!" "Man, you sold me those email addresses on that CD, they all bounced back, man! Opt-in, my ass!"
I predict we will arrive on Mars in tentacled tripod ships and fire death rays at the inhabitants until we are driven from the planet by microorganisms.
Lothar von Richtofen was Manfred von Richtofen's younger brother. It was Manfred who was supposedly shot down by Capt. Brown, although it's widely speculated that it was shots by ground forces that downed the fabled Red Baron.
Ken Jennings, on the other hand, has never flown a Sopwith Camel or a Fokker Tri-Plane, but could probably correctly answer a series of increasingly-difficult trivia questions about them.
Let me be the first to suggest FileMaker Pro Migrator by.com Solutions. I mucked about with the trial version of the program and it does look like it accomplishes quite a bit. And I guess that once you've got the data moved over, you could use a program like Dreamweaver to tweak the web-based interface.
There's no way that Microsoft's music store will anything like the cachet that the iTunes Music Store has. Microsoft, as a hip brand name, trails far behind Jenny Craig Mac & Cheese. But then again, if they make their songs playable on every non-iPod device out there, they'll pick up the lion's share of the market in no time. Good luck getting it all to work right, though.
No, it was 37. I've seen the movie something like 37 times, and I used to have a WAV file of the interchange on my computer. Just search Google the phrase "37 dicks" and you'll see.
Linux is 13? Pretty soon it's going to start liking girls, [sniff] and then before you know it you're handing over the car keys and telling it to please be careful. (oops, I've assigned the male gender to an operating system... all the girls who read Slashdot will be mad at me... all three of them...)
I imagine that Sony has an uphill fight on its hand due to the differences between their corporate culture and Apple's. Apple engineers are, I bet, given more free reign to do things right, where Sony's engineers are probably in a Dilbert-like world of impossible demands by toga-clad marketing departments. And, of course, Apple's specialty has always been the end user software experience, an area where Sony has a lot of catching up to do. And don't forget about patents... it's easy to say, Why doesn't x-company's device do what y-company's device can do, when we don't have to worry about y-company filing an infringement suit, and don't have executives breathing down our necks to get this product on store shelves by July.
The FBI despises anyone who actually goes and does something that people pay attention to. What the FBI, as well as most of the federal government, wants, is for people to sit down, shut up, watch TV, mow the lawn, grow old and die, and stay the hell off the streets and away from the internet. Don't be writing to your congressional representatives, or writing letters to the editor of the local newspaper, or engaging in dialogue or protest, or putting up websites in support of a TV show you like, or anything else that in any way could be construed as rocking the boat, or you'll be branded a terrorist. That's what Adam McGaughey did wrong... rather than just watch a TV show and enjoy it silently in the comfort of his home, he put a website telling about how much he enjoys the TV show, and included information about it, and helped to organize fandom of the show, which the FBI considers a no-no. Don't rock the boat. Don't organize people. Don't talk to people. Don't sell stuff. Don't do anything that anyone can see or hear, ever, or the FBI will investigate you, break down your doors, and take everything you own as evidence.
Now they'll be able to prove that my photo of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam in 1983 is a fake.
Rumsfeld was really shaking hands with an alien, and Saddam was shaking hands with Elvis, but the resulting merger of the two photos was much more provocative.
The link presented is what, a press release by the company doing the suing? That's a nice, unbiased viewpoint, there. I like how the "article" states "This move follows Microsoft's and Apple's delay in entering into licensing agreements with BTG on commercially reasonable terms." In other words, "we're suing them because they told us that we're full of crap and please get lost." I skimmed through the lengthy patent in question, and it's so insanely broad that I cannot imagine that it would survive a court battle with its claims intact. There's not one single mention of how any portion of the "technology" in question would actually do anything. It's just a description of how it would be used. It looks like someone patenting a type of car by claiming, "It has wheels, and it moves forward and backward and can be steered by a person or by some other type of steering control, give me a billion dollars right now, I'm a genius."
There was that OpenTransport thing Apple used to have on Classic. They could've just resurrected that name, couldn't they? Maybe call it OpenTransportX or something. Or iTransport. Or iNetwork or iTalk.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't wait to get a RadioShark, record Coast to Coast A.M. every night, and then listen to the cavalcade of freaks and weirdos on my iPod while driving, walking, exercising and so on.
For internet broadcasts, I'll still be using iRecordMusic to bring shows like This American Life and The Savvy Traveler into my iPod via iTunes on my Mac.
Good thing that 120GB external hard drives are on sale at Office Max this week!
Putting the word "female" into a Slashdot post is like pointing a loaded gun at this poor guy's server and pulling the trigger.
Russian officials have identified the suspect as a 75-year-old deranged homeless man named Dmitri. Dmitri has never seen a computer or even heard of computers or the internet, and upon being arrested declared himself to be the reincarnation of Czar Nicholas II. Russian authorities state that Dmitri is the ringleader of every single former Soviet-bloc hacking and IP theft operation, which he was running from a cardboard box under a freeway overpass, and once he's been put to death following a speedy closed-door non-jury trial, which takes place in about twenty minutes, all Russian-based criminal activity on the internet will cease. Officials are hailing the arrest as a triumph for the Russian criminal justice system and the dawning of a new era in East-West internet-based relations. Dmitri's friends, two of whom are imaginary, are protesting by wrapping themselves in some copper wire they found and then trading it for vodka.
A legal extortionist, say, a patent troll or industry trade group, has to consider how much they can actually get out of a victim, since there are legal costs involved in filing the suit in the first place. These organized criminal enterprises, on the other hand, only have to do some hacking, and then fling their crap in every direction to see what sticks. Just as street criminals drive small businesses out of neighborhoods, leaving nothing but blight and boarded-up, rat-infested buildings, these online criminals could drive all the small e-commerce sites off the web and essentially cripple the web as a business method for all but the largest, wealthiest companies. So don't look for the authorities to step up efforts to combat this anytime soon.
"Well, I wanna turn in Billy, man!"
"Hey, whatta you talkin' 'bout, man?!"
"Man, you sold me those email addresses on that CD, they all bounced back, man! Opt-in, my ass!"
And so on.
In his song "The Powers That Be" from Radio K.A.O.S....
They like order, make-up, lime light power
Game shows, rodeos, star wars, TV
There you go, Star Wars TV! He was singing about George Lucas! And if you see them come, you better run!
I predict we will arrive on Mars in tentacled tripod ships and fire death rays at the inhabitants until we are driven from the planet by microorganisms.
Uh-oh, I'd better take those PayPal logos off of my website, www.nakedwomengamblingfordrugs.com.
Lothar von Richtofen was Manfred von Richtofen's younger brother. It was Manfred who was supposedly shot down by Capt. Brown, although it's widely speculated that it was shots by ground forces that downed the fabled Red Baron.
Ken Jennings, on the other hand, has never flown a Sopwith Camel or a Fokker Tri-Plane, but could probably correctly answer a series of increasingly-difficult trivia questions about them.
Let me be the first to suggest FileMaker Pro Migrator by .com Solutions. I mucked about with the trial version of the program and it does look like it accomplishes quite a bit. And I guess that once you've got the data moved over, you could use a program like Dreamweaver to tweak the web-based interface.
There's no way that Microsoft's music store will anything like the cachet that the iTunes Music Store has. Microsoft, as a hip brand name, trails far behind Jenny Craig Mac & Cheese. But then again, if they make their songs playable on every non-iPod device out there, they'll pick up the lion's share of the market in no time. Good luck getting it all to work right, though.
No, it was 37. I've seen the movie something like 37 times, and I used to have a WAV file of the interchange on my computer. Just search Google the phrase "37 dicks" and you'll see.
I still chuckle at that bit ten years later.
Never mind, they do called it 'packeteering.' Should've Googled the word before asking.
Should they call it 'packeteering'?
Linux is 13? Pretty soon it's going to start liking girls, [sniff] and then before you know it you're handing over the car keys and telling it to please be careful. (oops, I've assigned the male gender to an operating system... all the girls who read Slashdot will be mad at me... all three of them...)
Was it in the first Omen movie where the guy had a room that was papered with pages from the Bible in order to keep Satan out?
I imagine that Sony has an uphill fight on its hand due to the differences between their corporate culture and Apple's. Apple engineers are, I bet, given more free reign to do things right, where Sony's engineers are probably in a Dilbert-like world of impossible demands by toga-clad marketing departments. And, of course, Apple's specialty has always been the end user software experience, an area where Sony has a lot of catching up to do. And don't forget about patents... it's easy to say, Why doesn't x-company's device do what y-company's device can do, when we don't have to worry about y-company filing an infringement suit, and don't have executives breathing down our necks to get this product on store shelves by July.
The FBI despises anyone who actually goes and does something that people pay attention to. What the FBI, as well as most of the federal government, wants, is for people to sit down, shut up, watch TV, mow the lawn, grow old and die, and stay the hell off the streets and away from the internet. Don't be writing to your congressional representatives, or writing letters to the editor of the local newspaper, or engaging in dialogue or protest, or putting up websites in support of a TV show you like, or anything else that in any way could be construed as rocking the boat, or you'll be branded a terrorist. That's what Adam McGaughey did wrong... rather than just watch a TV show and enjoy it silently in the comfort of his home, he put a website telling about how much he enjoys the TV show, and included information about it, and helped to organize fandom of the show, which the FBI considers a no-no. Don't rock the boat. Don't organize people. Don't talk to people. Don't sell stuff. Don't do anything that anyone can see or hear, ever, or the FBI will investigate you, break down your doors, and take everything you own as evidence.
Now they'll be able to prove that my photo of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam in 1983 is a fake.
Rumsfeld was really shaking hands with an alien, and Saddam was shaking hands with Elvis, but the resulting merger of the two photos was much more provocative.
"A method by which pressing muttons or..."
Muttons? What do sheep have to do with it?
The link presented is what, a press release by the company doing the suing? That's a nice, unbiased viewpoint, there. I like how the "article" states "This move follows Microsoft's and Apple's delay in entering into licensing agreements with BTG on commercially reasonable terms." In other words, "we're suing them because they told us that we're full of crap and please get lost." I skimmed through the lengthy patent in question, and it's so insanely broad that I cannot imagine that it would survive a court battle with its claims intact. There's not one single mention of how any portion of the "technology" in question would actually do anything. It's just a description of how it would be used. It looks like someone patenting a type of car by claiming, "It has wheels, and it moves forward and backward and can be steered by a person or by some other type of steering control, give me a billion dollars right now, I'm a genius."
There was that OpenTransport thing Apple used to have on Classic. They could've just resurrected that name, couldn't they? Maybe call it OpenTransportX or something. Or iTransport. Or iNetwork or iTalk.
Zaphod could say "Holy Zarquon's singing plants!" Nah, the "singing fish" line was more surreal.
If he could generate enough finite improbability, he could simultaneously appear in every Starbucks in the universe, and accomplish his goal.
He just needs a cup of really hot tea for his atomic vector plotter. Does Starbucks serve tea?