I live in Michigan, and it's always embarrassing to have a merchant out of town reject the Canadian pocket change that I spend and accept as a matter of course.
And I want a XO laptop. Anywhere I can play with one before plunking down the cash?
I've done some reading, and it seems like a bit more than that. Only subscribers can found guilds and serve as officers, but anybody can be a member of a guild. Subscribers also get a larger stash (don't know how much bigger), many extra character slots (3 vs. 12 or something along those lines) and "ongoing content", whatever that means. Monthly content updates instead of waiting a year and a half for the expansion pack - a lesson learned from D2, it seems. The subscriber-only items aren't supposed to be unbalancing.
Sorry, can't cite sources - stupid work filters.
US players will be able to get into the open beta... next week was the last rumor I heard... by pre-ordering (buying a $5(?) box) at Best Buy, Wal*Mart or EBGames/Gamestop. Buying the preorder gets you the open beta, a "dye kit" for coloring your armor, and the option to buy a "lifetime" subscription for $150.
Much in the same way a network administrator has dominion over but does not own all the data on a network.
Interesting thought.
You put some MP3s of your favorite obscure band, that you ripped from a CD you bought, in your home folder (not globally shared) on a multiuser system. Say, a university server, or maybe something at work. Your sysadmin is good at his job, and runs nightly backups of all the users' files.
You now have positive knowledge that someone not licensed for the content (the sysadmin) can and WILL copy those files on a daily basis.
Are you distributing? Are you liable in a civil suit? Would the RIAA agree?
What's the difference between this scenario and his?
Check out www.dash.net. It's in beta, and I don't have the unit in hand yet (don't even know if I made beta), but this is exactly what they're promising. It tracks how fast you're going and where, along with a timestamp, deidentifies it, then when you get home, uploads from your car to the internet via your home wifi network, and downloads aggregated data on speeds/locations/times.
Because the job market, state debt, quality of roads, proximity to survivalists, Flint, and sarcasm dripping off your use of the word "sunny" weren't doing the job sufficiently?
Just kidding, survivalists and Flint. Please don't shoot me.
Actually, if you guys could come over near my place and use the unprotected wi-fi I have in my house, it sure would help that whole defense against the RIAA thing. "An IP isn't a person" and all that.
I drive as fuel-friendly as I can. Never accelerate towards red lights (traffic or brake), get out of low gears quickly, keep the windows up at speed, all that garbage. But coasting for THREE MILES to a traffic backup? I'll get killed when I'm coasting at 35 on the freeways in Detroit when there's no backup to be seen and Joe Cellphone is coming up on me at 80. It's going to take a lot of fuel savings to make up that repair bill, or the increase in my insurance after the 4th time it happens.
I'm all for real-time feedback, and I think if you tied it into current gas prices, people would pay attention. Enforcing a three-mile coast in the vehicle? Asking for trouble.
I have RFC1925 (Pt 2, Sec 3: "With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine.") posted at my desk here at work, with the aforementioned phrase highlighted.
This is true. C-SPAN can pack up its cameras and go home.
Trouble is, the content (anything produced by the government) is paid for by taxpayers, and therefore is in the public domain. I work for the government, and images and copy I produce as part of my job can't be copyrighted because anybody in the country could claim partial ownership by virtue of the fact that they paid for the office I sit in, the computer I make it on, the power to run them both, and my time to make it.
(Whether or not I'm on gov't time right now or on break will determine if this post is in the public domain.)
So where does C-SPAN get to say "Okay, it's not public domain anymore"? You can charge for duplication and distribution, as all we linux nerds know, but what do they have to do to assert a copyright or the legal standing to apply a license, creative commons or otherwise? Does a recording of an explicitly public domain performance automatically pass into PD? If push comes to shove, does C-SPAN have a leg to stand on?
I honestly don't know, and can't come up with some way to reconcile the two.
You think that's bad, I had some guy play the girlfriend card to get out of a group in D&D Online last night. At least the "I can't go out with you, I'm washing my hair" brushoff has SOME air of plausibility. Sheesh. The nerve of some nerds.
Star Chamber is a good alternative for those who are interested in such games. It's a board game with collectible cards to affect units in play and add new ones. Has the feel of what would happen if Magic and Master of Orion had a child.
You can buy "starters" and "boosters" to build decks and collections, and "event passes" that you use to play in tournaments, for those inclined to do so. The cards seem pretty well balanced, and the community is willing to help newbies. You can buy cards as one-offs, or get a subscription that gives you a choice of cards or event passes every month.
Next weekend, they have a "Newbie Day", where newbs can play with veterans and get commentary and tips on how to improve their game, plus random card giveaways. I just got the game myself, and I'm going to try to get some experience.
They just got bought by SOE. As a former SWG player, I hope that Star Chamber is left more or less alone by Sony. They seem to have a solid product that doesn't need tinkering.
I don't think that a defense lawyer could legally and ethically say if his client was guilty. I think the distinction to be made here is "No, I never used eDonkey or BitTorrent" not guilty and "What's the Internet?" not guilty.
It's easier for an expert to kill X than it is for a n00b to start it. It's not like XP where the CLI is an afterthought. It's there, just like back in the olden days of Windows, running under the GUI.
If you don't like it, don't use it. For me, I'm looking for a linux system that works BEFORE I start working on it. Give me a working system, then let me customize it. I don't have the chops to build a linux box from the ground up, and while that puts me in the minority here, I'm very firmly in the majority over the general population on this one.
I'm hoping this gives the linux movement a bit more momentum, even if it does do so at the expense of tarnishing the OSS camps' dreams just a bit.
That's kind of the point, isn't it? We can't find out because investigators can't be cleared.
And if somebody Authorizes it, is it still illegal?
Maybe. It depends on the activity. The President is not above the law.
If Foreign terrorists are calling you here in the U.S, I want to know why and I don't give a hoot what you claim is legal or illegal.
If my government is spying on me, I want to know why and I don't give a hoot what you claim is illegal or legal.
Now that we've gotten our wish lists out of the way, let's focus on reality. This country has elected and appointed officials and laws that govern them all. Just because the President says it's legal doesn't make it so.
If the U.S is at war, I give the Commander and Chief great latitude
That's a big if. Congress hasn't declared war, and only Congress is empowered to do so. (US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8) The "War on Terror", as with the "War on Drugs", is a slogan, not a declared state of war. Commander-In-Chief he may be, but the President does not have the Constitutional authority to declare war in this country.
Your blind faith in the government is your right, and don't let me stop you from having it. I don't have that same faith. I believe that a government with nothing to hide does not deny security clearances to ITS OWN AGENTS. (Remember, DOJ is Executive branch.) I believe that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and power that goes unchecked and unquestioned is absolute. I believe that the administration has been doing things in my name (as a citizen) that I don't approve of, and the legislature and courts are complicit.
Nothing would make me happier than to be wrong about all my suspicions regarding the President and his staff.
Problem is, I can't know, because the President has blocked investigators from finding out.
Forcing one's boss to do something is terribly difficult. You generally need support from your boss' boss. When they're both high-level political appointees, it's that much harder. Not saying you're wrong, just saying that it's not always possible. Generally easier (and better, imho) to teach him, give him some sort of appreciation of the pile of excrement he can wind up in if he doesn't.
As for two-factor, I know VA is moving towards it (and was before the whole laptop debacle). Might be fed-wide. Hopefully this will light a fire under it.
He wasn't supposed to take identifiable data out of the facility, and if he did, it was supposed to be encrypted. The employee ignored his annual data security training, and sufficient barriers don't exist to force the encryption. There is a major data security storm going on around here, and it serves no good to blame the government when it's One Damn Fool causing the problems by ignoring rules.
It's like a postal service driver driving on the wrong side of the road, plowing into a family, killing everyone involved, and blaming USPS for the deaths. At what point do you trust an employee to do his job right? You want to build something into the mailtruck to make sure it stays on the right half of a road? How does he make left turns?
Throwing money at a problem rarely actually fixes it. It's easier to increase a budget than to rethink your R&D priorities, come up with changes, and act on them. Spending more money typically just shows that you've acknowledged there's a problem and would like someone to think that you're committed to making it less of a problem.
Not true. BBC has a few good podcasts that I subscribe to, and if what they're reporting on is any indication of British public sentiment, they most definitely do believe it. There have been several stories in the last few weeks that seem to have been tipped off by a BBC reporter posing as a lawyer to get into Gitmo to interview one of these "detainees", who told stories about conditions there and forced feeding tantamount to torture. The Brits seem very concerned about it, to the point of getting Condi and... some State Dept official whose name I forget on the BBC Today interview program and grilling them on it. (Not American media softball throwing, either. Real calling bullshit and holding feet to fire.) It represents an end-around bypassing due process, speedy and public trial, and probably a couple other Amendments. Frankly, they can't understand why Americans aren't as concerned as they are.
That said, I'd rather see something a little more organized like, say, a large solar shade positioned between the sun and the earth.
I keep trying to get "Launch Solar Shade" passed, but I can't get the votes - I have the energy market cornered and Lal, Santiago and Zakharov have decided that they don't want to trade with me.
I am going to nerve staple those bastards if I ever get my hands on them.
Slashdot Mirror
I live in Michigan, and it's always embarrassing to have a merchant out of town reject the Canadian pocket change that I spend and accept as a matter of course.
And I want a XO laptop. Anywhere I can play with one before plunking down the cash?
I've done some reading, and it seems like a bit more than that. Only subscribers can found guilds and serve as officers, but anybody can be a member of a guild. Subscribers also get a larger stash (don't know how much bigger), many extra character slots (3 vs. 12 or something along those lines) and "ongoing content", whatever that means. Monthly content updates instead of waiting a year and a half for the expansion pack - a lesson learned from D2, it seems. The subscriber-only items aren't supposed to be unbalancing.
Sorry, can't cite sources - stupid work filters.
US players will be able to get into the open beta... next week was the last rumor I heard... by pre-ordering (buying a $5(?) box) at Best Buy, Wal*Mart or EBGames/Gamestop. Buying the preorder gets you the open beta, a "dye kit" for coloring your armor, and the option to buy a "lifetime" subscription for $150.
No plans for Mac or Linux or BSD or Solaris or Amiga.
This is not my Kurt Loder news! This is not my MTV Raps!
What, Dennis Kucinich's wife plays WoW?
Interracial relationships: gnome/elf marriages, next on Donahue/Geraldo/Sally Jessy/Town Talk with George.
Much in the same way a network administrator has dominion over but does not own all the data on a network.
Interesting thought.
You put some MP3s of your favorite obscure band, that you ripped from a CD you bought, in your home folder (not globally shared) on a multiuser system. Say, a university server, or maybe something at work. Your sysadmin is good at his job, and runs nightly backups of all the users' files.
You now have positive knowledge that someone not licensed for the content (the sysadmin) can and WILL copy those files on a daily basis.
Are you distributing? Are you liable in a civil suit? Would the RIAA agree?
What's the difference between this scenario and his?
Check out www.dash.net. It's in beta, and I don't have the unit in hand yet (don't even know if I made beta), but this is exactly what they're promising. It tracks how fast you're going and where, along with a timestamp, deidentifies it, then when you get home, uploads from your car to the internet via your home wifi network, and downloads aggregated data on speeds/locations/times.
Because the job market, state debt, quality of roads, proximity to survivalists, Flint, and sarcasm dripping off your use of the word "sunny" weren't doing the job sufficiently?
Just kidding, survivalists and Flint. Please don't shoot me.
Actually, if you guys could come over near my place and use the unprotected wi-fi I have in my house, it sure would help that whole defense against the RIAA thing. "An IP isn't a person" and all that.
And that's what I came here to post.
I drive as fuel-friendly as I can. Never accelerate towards red lights (traffic or brake), get out of low gears quickly, keep the windows up at speed, all that garbage. But coasting for THREE MILES to a traffic backup? I'll get killed when I'm coasting at 35 on the freeways in Detroit when there's no backup to be seen and Joe Cellphone is coming up on me at 80. It's going to take a lot of fuel savings to make up that repair bill, or the increase in my insurance after the 4th time it happens.
I'm all for real-time feedback, and I think if you tied it into current gas prices, people would pay attention. Enforcing a three-mile coast in the vehicle? Asking for trouble.
General error reading drive C.
Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail? f
C:\>
I'm sorry, Senator, I seem to have developed some bad sectors.
I have RFC1925 (Pt 2, Sec 3: "With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine.") posted at my desk here at work, with the aforementioned phrase highlighted.
I work for the Federal Government in IT.
Derive from this what you will.
This is true. C-SPAN can pack up its cameras and go home.
Trouble is, the content (anything produced by the government) is paid for by taxpayers, and therefore is in the public domain. I work for the government, and images and copy I produce as part of my job can't be copyrighted because anybody in the country could claim partial ownership by virtue of the fact that they paid for the office I sit in, the computer I make it on, the power to run them both, and my time to make it.
(Whether or not I'm on gov't time right now or on break will determine if this post is in the public domain.)
So where does C-SPAN get to say "Okay, it's not public domain anymore"? You can charge for duplication and distribution, as all we linux nerds know, but what do they have to do to assert a copyright or the legal standing to apply a license, creative commons or otherwise? Does a recording of an explicitly public domain performance automatically pass into PD? If push comes to shove, does C-SPAN have a leg to stand on?
I honestly don't know, and can't come up with some way to reconcile the two.
Frag that, chummer. I want my datajack, and I don't care how.
You think that's bad, I had some guy play the girlfriend card to get out of a group in D&D Online last night. At least the "I can't go out with you, I'm washing my hair" brushoff has SOME air of plausibility. Sheesh. The nerve of some nerds.
My then-fiancee had the same email policy at her job.
Her employer? International Paper.
Kinda shoots nonrepudiation in the face, but hey, that's how they want to do business, that's their... erm... business.
Star Chamber is a good alternative for those who are interested in such games. It's a board game with collectible cards to affect units in play and add new ones. Has the feel of what would happen if Magic and Master of Orion had a child.
You can buy "starters" and "boosters" to build decks and collections, and "event passes" that you use to play in tournaments, for those inclined to do so. The cards seem pretty well balanced, and the community is willing to help newbies. You can buy cards as one-offs, or get a subscription that gives you a choice of cards or event passes every month.
Next weekend, they have a "Newbie Day", where newbs can play with veterans and get commentary and tips on how to improve their game, plus random card giveaways. I just got the game myself, and I'm going to try to get some experience.
They just got bought by SOE. As a former SWG player, I hope that Star Chamber is left more or less alone by Sony. They seem to have a solid product that doesn't need tinkering.
I don't think that a defense lawyer could legally and ethically say if his client was guilty. I think the distinction to be made here is "No, I never used eDonkey or BitTorrent" not guilty and "What's the Internet?" not guilty.
In Soviet Russia, Wife orders YOU ! ! !
It's easier for an expert to kill X than it is for a n00b to start it. It's not like XP where the CLI is an afterthought. It's there, just like back in the olden days of Windows, running under the GUI.
If you don't like it, don't use it. For me, I'm looking for a linux system that works BEFORE I start working on it. Give me a working system, then let me customize it. I don't have the chops to build a linux box from the ground up, and while that puts me in the minority here, I'm very firmly in the majority over the general population on this one.
I'm hoping this gives the linux movement a bit more momentum, even if it does do so at the expense of tarnishing the OSS camps' dreams just a bit.
What illegal activity?
That's kind of the point, isn't it? We can't find out because investigators can't be cleared.
And if somebody Authorizes it, is it still illegal?
Maybe. It depends on the activity. The President is not above the law.
If Foreign terrorists are calling you here in the U.S, I want to know why and I don't give a hoot what you claim is legal or illegal.
If my government is spying on me, I want to know why and I don't give a hoot what you claim is illegal or legal.
Now that we've gotten our wish lists out of the way, let's focus on reality. This country has elected and appointed officials and laws that govern them all. Just because the President says it's legal doesn't make it so.
If the U.S is at war, I give the Commander and Chief great latitude
That's a big if. Congress hasn't declared war, and only Congress is empowered to do so. (US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8) The "War on Terror", as with the "War on Drugs", is a slogan, not a declared state of war. Commander-In-Chief he may be, but the President does not have the Constitutional authority to declare war in this country.
Your blind faith in the government is your right, and don't let me stop you from having it. I don't have that same faith. I believe that a government with nothing to hide does not deny security clearances to ITS OWN AGENTS. (Remember, DOJ is Executive branch.) I believe that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and power that goes unchecked and unquestioned is absolute. I believe that the administration has been doing things in my name (as a citizen) that I don't approve of, and the legislature and courts are complicit.
Nothing would make me happier than to be wrong about all my suspicions regarding the President and his staff.
Problem is, I can't know, because the President has blocked investigators from finding out.
Forcing one's boss to do something is terribly difficult. You generally need support from your boss' boss. When they're both high-level political appointees, it's that much harder. Not saying you're wrong, just saying that it's not always possible. Generally easier (and better, imho) to teach him, give him some sort of appreciation of the pile of excrement he can wind up in if he doesn't.
As for two-factor, I know VA is moving towards it (and was before the whole laptop debacle). Might be fed-wide. Hopefully this will light a fire under it.
He wasn't supposed to take identifiable data out of the facility, and if he did, it was supposed to be encrypted. The employee ignored his annual data security training, and sufficient barriers don't exist to force the encryption. There is a major data security storm going on around here, and it serves no good to blame the government when it's One Damn Fool causing the problems by ignoring rules.
It's like a postal service driver driving on the wrong side of the road, plowing into a family, killing everyone involved, and blaming USPS for the deaths. At what point do you trust an employee to do his job right? You want to build something into the mailtruck to make sure it stays on the right half of a road? How does he make left turns?
Would that I had mod points for this.
Throwing money at a problem rarely actually fixes it. It's easier to increase a budget than to rethink your R&D priorities, come up with changes, and act on them. Spending more money typically just shows that you've acknowledged there's a problem and would like someone to think that you're committed to making it less of a problem.
Which, hey, could be the plan.
Not true. BBC has a few good podcasts that I subscribe to, and if what they're reporting on is any indication of British public sentiment, they most definitely do believe it. There have been several stories in the last few weeks that seem to have been tipped off by a BBC reporter posing as a lawyer to get into Gitmo to interview one of these "detainees", who told stories about conditions there and forced feeding tantamount to torture. The Brits seem very concerned about it, to the point of getting Condi and ... some State Dept official whose name I forget on the BBC Today interview program and grilling them on it. (Not American media softball throwing, either. Real calling bullshit and holding feet to fire.) It represents an end-around bypassing due process, speedy and public trial, and probably a couple other Amendments. Frankly, they can't understand why Americans aren't as concerned as they are.
That said, I'd rather see something a little more organized like, say, a large solar shade positioned between the sun and the earth.
I keep trying to get "Launch Solar Shade" passed, but I can't get the votes - I have the energy market cornered and Lal, Santiago and Zakharov have decided that they don't want to trade with me.
I am going to nerve staple those bastards if I ever get my hands on them.