My flow is so intense that I will overflow your buffer, Corrupt your stack pointer makin' all your data suffer. I've got saturated edges but your flow is sparser, Real gangstas sip on Yacc; instead you generate a parser. While you're busy poppin' stacks I'll pop a cap in your skull, While you smoke your crack pipe I'm gonna pipe you to/dev/null. I may not have a label but I rap like a star; I'm an unsigned long int and you're an 8-bit char.
Your mom circulates like a public key, Servicing more requests than HTTP. She keeps all her ports open like Windows ME, Oh, there's so much drama in the PhD.
I'm not retarted. Are you? If so, no disrespect intended.
Anyway, from your post, the guy did not clearly refute the "paraphrased statement". In fact he seemed to defend it by using a similar analogy to justify the presumed illegality of the item. I don't see anything anywhere where it was clear he didn't make that statement, or that he felt the paper should retract it. So what are you talking about?
If your description of the dialogue with him is accurate (which might be a substantive leap of faith), I might actually read between the lines and say the guy DID say the statement, but is now back-pedaling, because in your post he doesn't appear to come out completely against it, or else the way in which you paraphrased his response was ambiguious and unhelpful.
In any case, if there was an inaccuracy, the paper should issue a retraction and we shouldn't have to try to take the word of an anonymous poster in a tech forum. I have to assume until we see a retraction, I'd attribute the boneheaded statement to the boneheaded LEO.
Can we get the same details of financial support provided to the Congresscritters who are making a stink here? How much you want to bet their supporters are a lot more illuminating?
Even more ironic is if you want an unlisted number, you have to pay extra, but alternatively you can give the phone company any name to put in the directory. I had a friend who was listed in the phone book as "Judy Jetson".
Slashdot Introduces A New Way To Advertise On Its Site - "We're excited about this new approach towards advertising. It's going to change the way people view the web and make it exciting for both marketers and consumers," says CmdrTaco, as he unveils Slashdot's new innovative "Combined News/Advertising" technology. Advertisers fed up with having banner ads blocked, can now, for an additional fee, have a customized slashdot story published with their press release, represented as "news". "It doesn't matter how outrageous and ridiculous your claim may be," states Taco, "Adopt a ten-year-old technology and we'll help you unveil it as if it's the latest development in the field."
I own an HP K60 and it has performed well, until recently when the printer started refusing to print, with the message "scanner failure". Why the failure of the scanner should render the entire printer useless is one obvious design flaw, but the worst part is after doing research, it became obvious the problem was dirt on a sensor deep in the printer. Someone had posted a solution to this problem on HP's support forum and they removed it. The process simply pointed out where to unscrew a few screws and blow out an area with compressed air, but apparently HP didn't want anyone knowing the solution to the problem was that simple. That sucks, and for that reason I'm not buying any more HPs, not to mention their software is lousy. I recently replaced the K60 with a Canon MP780 and have been very pleased. Plus it has a separate, replacable print head, so I'm not sure what the big deal of this article is in the first place.
I just checked ebay, and here's an auction with 5 hours to go, the high bid is $14.50 for a First Edition DM Guide and 13 modules.
Now that's just sad...
Maybe some people here will follow the link and bid but otherwise, this is typical of the depreciation of this material, which is still 100% useful -- no it's not my auction. I'd rather give my stuff away to someone in the neighborhood than put it up for auction at a fraction of what I paid for it. At that price it's almost not worth the trouble to pack and mail it. Seems to be clear evidence that AD&D is definitely dead.
One day I dug up all my old AD&D stuff, including first editions of all the original books, and tons of modules including some obscure ones. I thought since I wasn't using them I could put them up on eBay, but after perusing the auctions, even 30+ year old, mint versions of this vintage material, it's hard to sell them even for their original face value. Pretty depressing in more ways than one.
* It's not a crime to sit on a public street in your vehicle and use your computer.
* Is there a law that says receiving a transmitted signal is a crime?
Granted the guy is probably a sleazebag and was up to no good, but I'd like to know if there are laws on the books that clearly make using someone else's open wireless connection a crime?
The article isn't about spam. It's a study of the effects of e-mail-based affirmations. It doesn't take a bunch of goofball researchers to demonstrate that daily affirmations are influential, but what does that have to do with spam? Nothing.
Spam is universally acknowledged as unsolicited, deceptive, indiscriminate, often illegal and immoral solicitations.
If they want to do a legitimate study on spam, then use spam, NOT uplifting e-mail messages.
Games like Everquest wouldn't have even gone into development. There wasn't anything on the horizon when it was released reguardless of what you think.
Dream on.
EQ was the child of MUDs, not UO, which is why it came out of the box and kicked UO's ass up and down the street.
If UO never existed, it would have had little or no effect on EQ. The only thing UO may have taught EQ is that PVP sucks.
I think you probably hit the nail on the head. I consciously chose to not play EQ2 because of the baggage I carried from EQ. I have friends who have moved and rave about it, but I'm over it. However, you fail to recognize that if they can't make the game obnoxiously addictive, they don't make money, so EQ2 must suffer some of the same flaws that EQ had, as well as other treadmill games of that nature.
Everything that's out now won't last. They'll exploit those they can, but the killer MMOG app has yet to be developed (and the closest to it right now IMO are some of the online poker games).
I was a GM for Sony for four years. They treated us like crap and didn't listen. I know many of the higher-ups at SOE now and I wish them the best of luck. I know it's not their fault. Verant was the shit when it came to development. But they did what everyone does and they cashed out and tried to carry on. I don't have any specific disdain for Sony. I'm a shareholder. I wish them success, but I will never believe that a big corporation will crank out what people really want. Big corporations only copy or consume creativity and rarely come up with it themselves.
To something like SOE, I'm a nobody. I've been dedicating a good bit of my mental energy for 20+ years towards understanding what makes a good, playable multiplayer game, but until I embarass the big guys, they won't pay attention. And I refuse to work for $9/hour for three years before someone over there gives me the time of day. So I have no incentive to post a long diatribe on exactly what I think is wrong and how things could be improved. I still think one day a bunch of people like me will get together in a grass roots effort to create something really special that is not restricted corporate overlords or the need to become profitable in X time. There are probably lots of little guys like me, who have time and resources, but feel a bit overwhelmed in the current development climate.
And then there is the current market. The target demographic for these games makes you want to throw your development computer in the trash. I have no desire to create a system that caters to people who have the attention span of a fruit fly on crack.
The producers are off-track because their market is off-track. While this is depressing, it also gets me excited, because the next big thing will fly under the radar for awhile because today's shallow gamers wouldn't appreciate it.
* CDC PLATO - Empire, Drygulch... to date to me seem to be the most fun MMOGs I ever played and are credited with getting me into computers.
* BBS Stuff/MUDs - fun here and there, the turn-based stuff typically ended up being a lot more fun because it didn't suck the tremendous time later games did, but it died a long time ago.
* Sierra Network, Neverwinter Nights (on AOL), STC and early proprietary networks were always stunted by the technology and were unable to deliver immersive worlds worthy of loyalty.
Then came the Internet...
* Early net systems like Active Worlds, (something) 23/21 (I can't even remember the name so you can imagine how influential these were) These systems were plagued with many of the issues the early non-net-based games had. Boooring.
* Ultima Online - required a tremendous stretch of the imagination to buy into IMO - the whole perspective thing was lame in comparison to the new stuff on the horizon, and the uncontrolled PVP and general user-unfriendliness of the game made it profoundly unappealing
* Evercrack - ate years of my life, was lots of fun, met many nice friends, but who knows if I may have cured cancer or learned to play guitar better than SRV had I not been wasting my time for so long, and have virtually nothing to show for it.
* Duke Nukem, Doom, Unreal Tournament, etc. - Made me realize that I totally sucked, as I was continually fragged by a bunch of 12-year-olds with no command of the English language, served to seed my resentment towards power gamers (which I thought I *used* to be, but I was *wrong*)
* Star Wars Galaxies - I really was excited about this game prior to getting into it, visually it's striking, but the game just didn't work, as advanced as it was, it was way to easy to hit a brick wall and ask yourself "WTF am I doing?", took a break, came back a year later, played for a few months and realized the same thing... not sure why this game isn't working but it is NOT working... beginning to suspect the problem is basing this upon Lucas' guidelines and being trapped in a world that is now a corporate entity exploiting baby boomers and early gen-X'ers, haphazardly created to sell breakfast cereal, action figures, pez dispensers and M&Ms.
* Sims - I pat myself on the back for being smart enough to not even get into this waste of space. What's the point of creating an online personna that's even more pathetic than your real life one?
* Puzzle Pirates - thought maybe I could get into this as a breath of fresh air from the soul-sucking MMORPGs that require you to spend half your life eating glass before you feel good about your online personna, but nope, this game is the same thing. It's most substantive flaw is that someone thought it would be a good idea to write the entire application in JAVA, so as a result, it's 100 times slower than its contemporaries - smooth move! Yea, you can goof off more easily solo but ultimately this game continually prompts you to jump on the hamster wheel so you can put some purple jumpsuit on your avatar and impress other online losers. No game has made me more aware of how pathetic I am, when I'm pretending to be a jolly pirate pillaging via tetris-esque gameplay and dreaming of a pixelated octopuss to wear around my neck. Someone kill me please.
* Pokerstars - About the only game you can casually jump into at any time, and play. I don't espouse to be seeded into some goofball WPT event, but enjoy that I'm probably smarter than 90% of the dummies that play the game dreaming of winning big. Ironically, it's an ancient (by today's standards) game that ends up being one of the most playable and long-lived online.
What does the future hold? One thing is for sure... the big companies doing stuff now don't have a freakin' clue. Just once I'd like an audience with some developers who would listen, but nobody listens anymore, so it doesn't matter what I think.
If you're the person who set this up, it's an atrocity.
If you're the student who knowingly broke the rules, then it's unfair.
Lesson #1: Life is not fair
Maybe felony charges are harsh, but they're minors so the record would be expunged when they reach legal age. It's a painful, but poignant lesson.
This is not am ambiguous issue. Regardless of whether or not the security was proper, at some point you have to respect that these young adults have a decent grasp on the concept of right and wrong, and violating rules and laws carries with it a punishment that they must face.
Wow, I remember when comments on Slashdot used to be thoughtful and informative. Now they're reactive, ignorant and shallow. Did any of the dorks calling these people "stupid hippies" actually read any of the details of why they're protesting?
CHICAGO, Ill. -- On Saturday, at 1 pm, dozens of concerned citizens joined the public health group THONG outside of the Eddie Bauer flagship store on Michigan Avenue to protest the company's use of untested "nano-fibers" in their "nanotex" clothing line which also boasts the "Teflon" label and are "wrinkle free". THONG is a local Chicago public-interest group that uses nudity to educate people on detrimental threats to human health and the environment.
"We're out here naked so people can SEE THE PROBLEM, nanotech is such a radical and unpredictable new technology, like biotech, that it takes something highly visible, like a naked body, to get people to focus on the need to stop corporations from using humans as guinea pigs for new, untested, and unstable new technologies!" said Kiki Walters of THONG.
"The Royal Society in the UK has issued their own report, recommending regulation to control exposure to nanotechnologies. We believe they have a point to make. We just wanted to make it even more obvious to people."
Eddie Bauer's line of water and stain resistant clothing utilizes nanotechnology, a radically new and untested technology that involves the manipulation of matter at the scale of the nanometer (nm), which is one-billionth of a meter. At this scale, materials behave differently than their larger counterparts, and can possibly be more reactive and toxic, posing unknown risks to human health and the environment. Though nanoparticles are not regulated by any government in the world, many products containing them are already on the market, including food, clothing, cosmetics and sunscreens, without proper safety testing for toxicity, posing risks to the health of consumers and retail workers. Nano-Tex(TM) clothing contains nano-fibers coated with Teflon particles. Nanoparticles have been found to penetrate the blood brain barrier. Inhalation of many types of nanoparticles have been proven to be toxic to animals in lab tests.
"Even the largest re-insurance company in the world, Swiss RE, has stated that they will not insure nanotech at this time. At least this major financial player has openly admitted the potential toxicity of nanoproducts, and that these products present what they call long latent unforeseen claims." said Natalie Eggs, another THONG member.
The real toxic issue here is not nanotech, but the fact that nanotech is being used to further promote the use of substances such as Teflon, which is known to be toxic and dangerous and is already outlawed in many countries. People wearing these outfits with the special nanotech-enabled teflon-based chemicals embedded within them, are exposing themselves to toxic chemicals that are widely recognized around the world as being dangerous!
This is one of the single most important issues that will come up over the next decade with respect to technology. With computers hosting and controlling everything, it's part of their inherent nature to accumulate all the information they can.. and NEVER delete it.
I've said from the beginning, nothing is free. If you use Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo or any of those "free" services, one primary thing you're losing is autonomy and privacy and security. All your correspondence, the content of messages, who your friends are and your interests are being archived and will never be deleted. That's fine and dandy for some... until they find their privacy invaded or their security compromised. Even if you trust a company like Google to "act responsibly", with that information, the fact that your online life via their networks is archived indefinitely in multiple locations exponentially increases the potential for third parties to gain access to this information and do who knows what with it.
Why take this chance? Do business with small ISPs who don't tap their customers' communication links. Do yourself a favor and help small businesses who would treat you better and respect your privacy.
That must have been a later incarnation of Penn & Teller's BBS. I realized I made an error in my earlier post: there was no "click here" because there was no mouse. But those guys were into the BBS stuff in the early days like myself and it was cool to see.
Slashdot Mirror
That is some funny shiznat:
/dev/null.
My flow is so intense that I will overflow your buffer,
Corrupt your stack pointer makin' all your data suffer.
I've got saturated edges but your flow is sparser,
Real gangstas sip on Yacc; instead you generate a parser.
While you're busy poppin' stacks I'll pop a cap in your skull,
While you smoke your crack pipe I'm gonna pipe you to
I may not have a label but I rap like a star;
I'm an unsigned long int and you're an 8-bit char.
Your mom circulates like a public key,
Servicing more requests than HTTP.
She keeps all her ports open like Windows ME,
Oh, there's so much drama in the PhD.
I'm not retarted. Are you? If so, no disrespect intended.
Anyway, from your post, the guy did not clearly refute the "paraphrased statement". In fact he seemed to defend it by using a similar analogy to justify the presumed illegality of the item. I don't see anything anywhere where it was clear he didn't make that statement, or that he felt the paper should retract it. So what are you talking about?
If your description of the dialogue with him is accurate (which might be a substantive leap of faith), I might actually read between the lines and say the guy DID say the statement, but is now back-pedaling, because in your post he doesn't appear to come out completely against it, or else the way in which you paraphrased his response was ambiguious and unhelpful.
In any case, if there was an inaccuracy, the paper should issue a retraction and we shouldn't have to try to take the word of an anonymous poster in a tech forum. I have to assume until we see a retraction, I'd attribute the boneheaded statement to the boneheaded LEO.
This "poor guy" is supposed to be in charge of enforcing the law, therefore the "poor guy" better know whether something is legal or not.
If he doesn't he's an incompetent idiot, and not a "poor guy". No sympathy.
...in total, claimed the Americans, $700,000 worth of damage had been done.
What's that amount to? Getting some keys on a keyboard stuck and stealing a mouse ball?
Can we get the same details of financial support provided to the Congresscritters who are making a stink here? How much you want to bet their supporters are a lot more illuminating?
I used to love Argon Zark. Nobody talks about that great comic artistry, but then again, I don't think the artist updates the site like he used to.
Even more ironic is if you want an unlisted number, you have to pay extra, but alternatively you can give the phone company any name to put in the directory. I had a friend who was listed in the phone book as "Judy Jetson".
Slashdot Introduces A New Way To Advertise On Its Site - "We're excited about this new approach towards advertising. It's going to change the way people view the web and make it exciting for both marketers and consumers," says CmdrTaco, as he unveils Slashdot's new innovative "Combined News/Advertising" technology. Advertisers fed up with having banner ads blocked, can now, for an additional fee, have a customized slashdot story published with their press release, represented as "news". "It doesn't matter how outrageous and ridiculous your claim may be," states Taco, "Adopt a ten-year-old technology and we'll help you unveil it as if it's the latest development in the field."
I own an HP K60 and it has performed well, until recently when the printer started refusing to print, with the message "scanner failure". Why the failure of the scanner should render the entire printer useless is one obvious design flaw, but the worst part is after doing research, it became obvious the problem was dirt on a sensor deep in the printer. Someone had posted a solution to this problem on HP's support forum and they removed it. The process simply pointed out where to unscrew a few screws and blow out an area with compressed air, but apparently HP didn't want anyone knowing the solution to the problem was that simple. That sucks, and for that reason I'm not buying any more HPs, not to mention their software is lousy. I recently replaced the K60 with a Canon MP780 and have been very pleased. Plus it has a separate, replacable print head, so I'm not sure what the big deal of this article is in the first place.
Sure thing. Let's do a saving throw on that to check the probability... (roll 5000 d20s, if 20 comes up every time, you get your AD&D module signed)
Any game that promotes physical activity is a great idea. This is a very clever adaptation that involves exercise, freedom and creativity.
Be thankful they didn't do a real life version of Joust.
I just checked ebay, and here's an auction with 5 hours to go, the high bid is $14.50 for a First Edition DM Guide and 13 modules.
Now that's just sad...
Maybe some people here will follow the link and bid but otherwise, this is typical of the depreciation of this material, which is still 100% useful -- no it's not my auction. I'd rather give my stuff away to someone in the neighborhood than put it up for auction at a fraction of what I paid for it. At that price it's almost not worth the trouble to pack and mail it. Seems to be clear evidence that AD&D is definitely dead.
One day I dug up all my old AD&D stuff, including first editions of all the original books, and tons of modules including some obscure ones. I thought since I wasn't using them I could put them up on eBay, but after perusing the auctions, even 30+ year old, mint versions of this vintage material, it's hard to sell them even for their original face value. Pretty depressing in more ways than one.
What law? In what state? Citation?
What law did this guy actually violate?
* It's not a crime to sit on a public street in your vehicle and use your computer.
* Is there a law that says receiving a transmitted signal is a crime?
Granted the guy is probably a sleazebag and was up to no good, but I'd like to know if there are laws on the books that clearly make using someone else's open wireless connection a crime?
The article isn't about spam. It's a study of the effects of e-mail-based affirmations. It doesn't take a bunch of goofball researchers to demonstrate that daily affirmations are influential, but what does that have to do with spam? Nothing.
Spam is universally acknowledged as unsolicited, deceptive, indiscriminate, often illegal and immoral solicitations.
If they want to do a legitimate study on spam, then use spam, NOT uplifting e-mail messages.
Games like Everquest wouldn't have even gone into development. There wasn't anything on the horizon when it was released reguardless of what you think.
Dream on.
EQ was the child of MUDs, not UO, which is why it came out of the box and kicked UO's ass up and down the street.
If UO never existed, it would have had little or no effect on EQ. The only thing UO may have taught EQ is that PVP sucks.
I think you probably hit the nail on the head. I consciously chose to not play EQ2 because of the baggage I carried from EQ. I have friends who have moved and rave about it, but I'm over it. However, you fail to recognize that if they can't make the game obnoxiously addictive, they don't make money, so EQ2 must suffer some of the same flaws that EQ had, as well as other treadmill games of that nature.
Everything that's out now won't last. They'll exploit those they can, but the killer MMOG app has yet to be developed (and the closest to it right now IMO are some of the online poker games).
I was a GM for Sony for four years. They treated us like crap and didn't listen. I know many of the higher-ups at SOE now and I wish them the best of luck. I know it's not their fault. Verant was the shit when it came to development. But they did what everyone does and they cashed out and tried to carry on. I don't have any specific disdain for Sony. I'm a shareholder. I wish them success, but I will never believe that a big corporation will crank out what people really want. Big corporations only copy or consume creativity and rarely come up with it themselves.
To something like SOE, I'm a nobody. I've been dedicating a good bit of my mental energy for 20+ years towards understanding what makes a good, playable multiplayer game, but until I embarass the big guys, they won't pay attention. And I refuse to work for $9/hour for three years before someone over there gives me the time of day. So I have no incentive to post a long diatribe on exactly what I think is wrong and how things could be improved. I still think one day a bunch of people like me will get together in a grass roots effort to create something really special that is not restricted corporate overlords or the need to become profitable in X time. There are probably lots of little guys like me, who have time and resources, but feel a bit overwhelmed in the current development climate.
And then there is the current market. The target demographic for these games makes you want to throw your development computer in the trash. I have no desire to create a system that caters to people who have the attention span of a fruit fly on crack.
The producers are off-track because their market is off-track. While this is depressing, it also gets me excited, because the next big thing will fly under the radar for awhile because today's shallow gamers wouldn't appreciate it.
* CDC PLATO - Empire, Drygulch... to date to me seem to be the most fun MMOGs I ever played and are credited with getting me into computers.
* BBS Stuff/MUDs - fun here and there, the turn-based stuff typically ended up being a lot more fun because it didn't suck the tremendous time later games did, but it died a long time ago.
* Sierra Network, Neverwinter Nights (on AOL), STC and early proprietary networks were always stunted by the technology and were unable to deliver immersive worlds worthy of loyalty.
Then came the Internet...
* Early net systems like Active Worlds, (something) 23/21 (I can't even remember the name so you can imagine how influential these were) These systems were plagued with many of the issues the early non-net-based games had. Boooring.
* Ultima Online - required a tremendous stretch of the imagination to buy into IMO - the whole perspective thing was lame in comparison to the new stuff on the horizon, and the uncontrolled PVP and general user-unfriendliness of the game made it profoundly unappealing
* Evercrack - ate years of my life, was lots of fun, met many nice friends, but who knows if I may have cured cancer or learned to play guitar better than SRV had I not been wasting my time for so long, and have virtually nothing to show for it.
* Duke Nukem, Doom, Unreal Tournament, etc. - Made me realize that I totally sucked, as I was continually fragged by a bunch of 12-year-olds with no command of the English language, served to seed my resentment towards power gamers (which I thought I *used* to be, but I was *wrong*)
* Star Wars Galaxies - I really was excited about this game prior to getting into it, visually it's striking, but the game just didn't work, as advanced as it was, it was way to easy to hit a brick wall and ask yourself "WTF am I doing?", took a break, came back a year later, played for a few months and realized the same thing... not sure why this game isn't working but it is NOT working... beginning to suspect the problem is basing this upon Lucas' guidelines and being trapped in a world that is now a corporate entity exploiting baby boomers and early gen-X'ers, haphazardly created to sell breakfast cereal, action figures, pez dispensers and M&Ms.
* Sims - I pat myself on the back for being smart enough to not even get into this waste of space. What's the point of creating an online personna that's even more pathetic than your real life one?
* Puzzle Pirates - thought maybe I could get into this as a breath of fresh air from the soul-sucking MMORPGs that require you to spend half your life eating glass before you feel good about your online personna, but nope, this game is the same thing. It's most substantive flaw is that someone thought it would be a good idea to write the entire application in JAVA, so as a result, it's 100 times slower than its contemporaries - smooth move! Yea, you can goof off more easily solo but ultimately this game continually prompts you to jump on the hamster wheel so you can put some purple jumpsuit on your avatar and impress other online losers. No game has made me more aware of how pathetic I am, when I'm pretending to be a jolly pirate pillaging via tetris-esque gameplay and dreaming of a pixelated octopuss to wear around my neck. Someone kill me please.
* Pokerstars - About the only game you can casually jump into at any time, and play. I don't espouse to be seeded into some goofball WPT event, but enjoy that I'm probably smarter than 90% of the dummies that play the game dreaming of winning big. Ironically, it's an ancient (by today's standards) game that ends up being one of the most playable and long-lived online.
What does the future hold? One thing is for sure... the big companies doing stuff now don't have a freakin' clue. Just once I'd like an audience with some developers who would listen, but nobody listens anymore, so it doesn't matter what I think.
Kind of like libertarians, but not as cute.
This is a matter of perspective undoubtedly.
If you're the person who set this up, it's an atrocity.
If you're the student who knowingly broke the rules, then it's unfair.
Lesson #1: Life is not fair
Maybe felony charges are harsh, but they're minors so the record would be expunged when they reach legal age. It's a painful, but poignant lesson.
This is not am ambiguous issue. Regardless of whether or not the security was proper, at some point you have to respect that these young adults have a decent grasp on the concept of right and wrong, and violating rules and laws carries with it a punishment that they must face.
Wow, I remember when comments on Slashdot used to be thoughtful and informative. Now they're reactive, ignorant and shallow. Did any of the dorks calling these people "stupid hippies" actually read any of the details of why they're protesting?
CHICAGO, Ill. -- On Saturday, at 1 pm, dozens of concerned citizens joined the public health group THONG outside of the Eddie Bauer flagship store on Michigan Avenue to protest the company's use of untested "nano-fibers" in their "nanotex" clothing line which also boasts the "Teflon" label and are "wrinkle free". THONG is a local Chicago public-interest group that uses nudity to educate people on detrimental threats to human health and the environment.
"We're out here naked so people can SEE THE PROBLEM, nanotech is such a radical and unpredictable new technology, like biotech, that it takes something highly visible, like a naked body, to get people to focus on the need to stop corporations from using humans as guinea pigs for new, untested, and unstable new technologies!" said Kiki Walters of THONG.
"The Royal Society in the UK has issued their own report, recommending regulation to control exposure to nanotechnologies. We believe they have a point to make. We just wanted to make it even more obvious to people."
Eddie Bauer's line of water and stain resistant clothing utilizes nanotechnology, a radically new and untested technology that involves the manipulation of matter at the scale of the nanometer (nm), which is one-billionth of a meter. At this scale, materials behave differently than their larger counterparts, and can possibly be more reactive and toxic, posing unknown risks to human health and the environment. Though nanoparticles are not regulated by any government in the world, many products containing them are already on the market, including food, clothing, cosmetics and sunscreens, without proper safety testing for toxicity, posing risks to the health of consumers and retail workers. Nano-Tex(TM) clothing contains nano-fibers coated with Teflon particles. Nanoparticles have been found to penetrate the blood brain barrier. Inhalation of many types of nanoparticles have been proven to be toxic to animals in lab tests.
"Even the largest re-insurance company in the world, Swiss RE, has stated that they will not insure nanotech at this time. At least this major financial player has openly admitted the potential toxicity of nanoproducts, and that these products present what they call long latent unforeseen claims." said Natalie Eggs, another THONG member.
The real toxic issue here is not nanotech, but the fact that nanotech is being used to further promote the use of substances such as Teflon, which is known to be toxic and dangerous and is already outlawed in many countries. People wearing these outfits with the special nanotech-enabled teflon-based chemicals embedded within them, are exposing themselves to toxic chemicals that are widely recognized around the world as being dangerous!
This is one of the single most important issues that will come up over the next decade with respect to technology. With computers hosting and controlling everything, it's part of their inherent nature to accumulate all the information they can.. and NEVER delete it.
I've said from the beginning, nothing is free. If you use Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo or any of those "free" services, one primary thing you're losing is autonomy and privacy and security. All your correspondence, the content of messages, who your friends are and your interests are being archived and will never be deleted. That's fine and dandy for some... until they find their privacy invaded or their security compromised. Even if you trust a company like Google to "act responsibly", with that information, the fact that your online life via their networks is archived indefinitely in multiple locations exponentially increases the potential for third parties to gain access to this information and do who knows what with it.
Why take this chance? Do business with small ISPs who don't tap their customers' communication links. Do yourself a favor and help small businesses who would treat you better and respect your privacy.
That must have been a later incarnation of Penn & Teller's BBS. I realized I made an error in my earlier post: there was no "click here" because there was no mouse. But those guys were into the BBS stuff in the early days like myself and it was cool to see.
What is a BBS?
It's a bulletin board system.
To put it in perspective for the younger kids...
It's like a computer without a graphical interface.
It's like Unreal Tournament, except instead of fragging people, you interact with them and learn things.