I really don't think Korn CDs are such a great idea. You would probably throw them away, give 'em to your angry kid brother or play "microwave lightning storm" with 'em LONG before they'd deteriorate!
People forget that our country was based on the idea that a thousand guilty should go free rather than one innocent be sacrificed.
Somewhere along the way "think of the kids" and media hysteria took over our better moral instincts.
It seems fine to say that those thousand guilty will hurt 10,000 MORE innocent people and the 1 innocent is a worthy cost of a working system.
That is until YOU'RE the innocent.
It would seem that being sodomized in prison would be a bit more than "cruel and unusual". I wonder why the prison system has never been sued into oblivion...
One more bleeding heart liberal comment and I'm done. The fact that we (by we I mean it's an accepted fact in our culture) all think people get abused in prison and we send a crap load of non-violent offenders there is a damn tragedy.
The "91% of computers are infected with spyware" DOES come from McAfee who just so happens to have a vested interest in selling tin foil hats to the populace.
How do they get these stats?
1. They count every Kazaa download and call it 1 user who has spyware. 2. They count anyone with a "doubleclick" cookie as having spyware. 3. They have 1337 h4X0Rs p0wning us all and they have a progress bar in their mountain lair fortress showing how much of the InterWeb they now control! MUHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHA!
This reminds me of the stat that says Bit Torrent downloads are using a vast percentage of available internet bandwidth.
With that said, I have cleaned MANY of my friend's windows computers and they generally have some sort of horrible infestation going on. Granted they often have the file sharing software du jour and they have no idea of what windows download is.
Come to think of it... I think I have dumb friends. Damn.
Innovation, research and development costs lots of money up front. When you have the market percentage that MS does, it is most likely easier to see what works, copy it and 90% of people will buy it/ use it.
The other issue is that million dollar ideas at MS are almost useless. That is such a small percentage of their total revenue that they don't even bother. As has been said before, MS's largest competitor is MS's last generation products. E.g. Office 2000.
I wonder how many people would run away screaming from the US if car bombs detonated near their walmart or starbucks a few times a month.
I do think that within 10 years someone might pop a nuke or spread a bio agent and kill thousands or tens of thousands or more people. As the technology to do so spreads to more and more countries I think it's inevitable that it will fall into the hands of someone that chooses to use it for ther own purpose.
On the other hand, I actually think the relative lack of someone downing airliners or derailing trains, etc. is actually proof that terrorists are splintered, poorly organized and not all that numerous OR they are not that willing to take lives randomly.
View the recent situation where a possibly deranged man left his car on the rails of a train in LA. 11 people died, 200 were injured and I'm sure that cost a few million bucks. How easy would it be for someone to steal a car, park it on the rails at night and disappear?
Basically you need very little time or money to do great damage. I think the point is not that many people really are willing to do it. Or they would be doing so.
Actually using google (thanks for the tip PAL!) even pro-gun websites do not claim that Britain has a lower murder rate (as in murders per capita).
According to this site, we have 4 murders per 100,000 people whereas the UK has 1 per 100,000.
According to this site, we have 5.7 murders per 100,000 people whereas the UK has 1.41 per 100,000, so the 1 to 4 ratio seems to be corroborated. This second site seems to be more of a pro-gun site and explains that many facts are distorted re: gun homicide vs. gun suicide as well as the fact that the homicide rate in Britain did not change much following their ban of guns. This site also mentions that Canada has less households w/ guns (29% vs. 39%) but they also do have about 1/3rd the murders. I don't know how that works out per capita though.
So. Basically you are simply wrong according to these sites. You only addressed one comment and that's all I really have time to address in your rebuttle.
So maybe my statement is wrong. Or maybe yours is. But it's difficult to find info that does not have an agenda behind it. My biggest complaint with your comment was that you make a blanket statement like that. "Gun control laws don't work".
And when I have some time, I'll look into the assault ban. It was my understanding that this was a ban on full auto guns. Semi auto were still legal I believe. I'd rather here your comments on why you don't think that technological solutions to the things that make people want to ban guns won't work...
I mean, hell, the idea that a hacker could take your gun and exploit the "biometrics identity thingy", kill someone and frame you for the murder would be a better argument then "what if there is blood on the handle".
I'd also appreciate an argument where you don't feel the government should have a record of all gun owners because in the event of a dictatorship these people would be easier to "round up".
I mean basically we can argue stats and causes and everything else and we'll never really know because even the researchers and police have a motivation to sometimes skew the stats.
This is an old joke. Not that I'm not saying it's not still funny:-D.
I worked at a small company fixing peoples' computers. Invariably when it was a virus call the customer and I would come up with two groups of suspects...
1. Anti-Virus Companies 2. Kids with too much time on their hands and no girlfriend.
I am totally with you on this. Every instance you use your card is a security risk. I've worked retail before and trust me that most are not subjected to a security check at all.
I'm a web developer. I have always wondered if you conduct credit card transactions over http or send them over email rather than use https exactly how risky that is. My thoughts are that the packets can be intercepted from point a to point b. I.e. the client's computer to buymycrapfakewebsite.com.
Most of these computers are major switches and such. If they are compromised we are ALL screwed!
How does that compare to handing your CC to a waiter or waitress who makes minimum wage?
"Adding electronics to a gun won't make it more reliable though."
Why not? Why are you being a luddite? There are electronics in our cars, airplanes, medical equipment to name just a few places where a failure could mean injury and death.
Why are gun owners so resistant to having "smart" guns? Wouldn't they in fact help the gun lobby and make taking away your rights more difficult? Since now if gun #67834 was fired then user #67834 fired it with a %99.99 probability rate. The gun control people would not be able to quote how many guns were used on their owners, etc. No more little kids getting their hands on daddy's gun, etc.
The fact that someone owns guns generally does not make me nervous. The attitude of many of the more vocal users DOES make me nervous.
If the technology can not be proven to be extremely reliable then it should not be used. If the failure rate is within a certain window (perhaps the window you and others mention in previous posts attributable to faulty ammo or 1 to 2%.)
Why are police officers exempt? Probably because they have a very powerful lobby.
Why would you have blood on your hands? Isn't that what the gun is hopefully there to prevent? Asssuming there is a struggle that came to blows you may well have lost your gun. Will a conventional gun fire in the "other" guy's bloody hands?
I have to say you don't help your case by saying things like "Gun control laws don't work so there's no point discussing them." I mean obviously they seem to work in other countries with a much lower murder rate than the U.S. Are you saying they will not work in the U.S.? Are you referring to assault weapon gun control laws?
When the article said "Bigwigs like... Belkin", I kind of tilted my head in a quizzical manner and said "What? Since when!"
It seems that the majority of Belkin's products consist of things like $39.99 usb cables. Which Best Buy, etc. stocks right next to the $100.00 HP, Epson, etc. printers that *don't* include a USB cable. Anyone else smell some collusion?
Oh. Here is a little hint. Add the aformentioned amazingly overpriced cable into your cart. Enter the code "12345" into the "redeem coupon" field near the top and click the button.
This magically lowers the price to $20.00. Now they are only making 300% profit!
I can see this as being a good technology on anything where bandwidth is more of a concern than cpu speed.
For instance, if you wanted to transmit from a probe on another planet, or an autonomous untethered robot exploring under the ocean (which communicates with long wave radio I think).
What image format do these tasks use currently?
Maybe even those big brother cameras that are supposed to monitor every moment of our lives could benefit!
But I agree that the uses they list are silly. I would suggest that even among those that understand what "zipping" is don't realize that jpegs do not compress much. They probably do it to just put the jpegs together in xmas2004pictures.zip.
I was wondering what the slashdot community thinks of the estimates that BT uses 1/3rd of available internet traffic.
Considering that it is a bit more private and "exclusive" than things like Kazaa and Edonkey does that number seem possible. You know. It takes the install of the basic BT binary as well as the GUI client of your desire. Then you need to find a decent BT website/ community.
If this figure IS true, wouldn't making BT even more viable eventually choke the internet?
Thoughts?
It would be ironic that something that was designed to "manage" bandwidth may end up hogging all that is available.
0. Get all Windows updates, patches, etc.
1. Get both programs (Spybot and Adaware)
2. Update both via downloading the newest signature files.
3. Reboot in safe mode. (press F8, etc.)
4. Run both programs.
5. Optionally open msconfig (not available in Win2K) and/or regedit and check to see what is still running and track down each item at http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_index.htm or similar.
6. Reboot.
7. Optionally take a look to see if any items you removed in step 5 recreate themselves.
8. Optionally install firefox, etc.
Heh heh. Re-reading this makes it seem not so easy, but everything is easy when you know how.
I have noticed newer spyware variations doing two VERY BAD THINGS.
1. Preventing adaware, spybot, norton, etc. from working. Via the hosts file or otherwise.
2. Modifying system files so that they can not be removed. I turned one friend's computer (running XP) into a paperweight. Because the program was manipulating winlogon.exe. Adaware removed it and the computer would logout every time you tried to logon. I had to extract the file from an XP boot disk.
OK. So the point of this post was that since Microsoft knows their files the best, one would assume they could check file checksums and file dates, etc. and prevent these sorts of shenanigans.
They have had a program called System File Checker sfc.exe since the windows 98 days. I always thought an adaware program combined with this would be nice.
Although I have never figured out how these spyware programs can circumvent "system file protection" when it is a royal pain for US to do so.
OK. OK. I was in a rush because I was at work. I do remember reading about a laser that was linked from www.dansdata.com. This thing was a glorified light saber. It melted a plastic cup.
The point I was attempting to make is that it is a hell of a lot easier to afford, get, hide and use than a Surface to Ground missle.
However, I would assume it would be much easier to defend against. With technology and not excessively punitive prison sentences.
The REAL issue here is that verypowerfulgreenlasers have gotten extremely cheap ($59.00 to $99.00) so they need to throw the book at this guy to prevent the rest of us citizens from playing possibly dangerous games.
A more realistic thing to do is come up with a technological solution to prevent an airplane from being downed by a $100.00 device. A self-darkening wind screen, some sort of polarized surface, a one way mirror coating?
The use of the Patriot Act is a travesty. The guy is pointing out stars to his daughter and obviously Mr. Clueful was not exactly trying to hide the fact from the police helicoptor.
Microsoft lost Passport.com? As in they let the domain name expire?
The Link on Cnet.
An excerpt:
A Linux user is taking credit for restoring service to Microsoft's Hotmail free email service, saying he paid a delinquent domain name registration fee that blocked access to some users over much of the Christmas weekend.
and
The lapse, which was first reported on the Internet news service Slashdot.org, was apparently caused when Microsoft's registration for the Passport.com domain name expired sometime Dec. 24, Chaney said. The Passport.com site verifies user identification and passwords for access to Hotmail and about 25 other services, according to Chaney.
I just remembered this made me laugh when it happened.
Slashdot Mirror
I really don't think Korn CDs are such a great idea. You would probably throw them away, give 'em to your angry kid brother or play "microwave lightning storm" with 'em LONG before they'd deteriorate!
People forget that our country was based on the idea that a thousand guilty should go free rather than one innocent be sacrificed.
Somewhere along the way "think of the kids" and media hysteria took over our better moral instincts.
It seems fine to say that those thousand guilty will hurt 10,000 MORE innocent people and the 1 innocent is a worthy cost of a working system.
That is until YOU'RE the innocent.
It would seem that being sodomized in prison would be a bit more than "cruel and unusual". I wonder why the prison system has never been sued into oblivion...
One more bleeding heart liberal comment and I'm done. The fact that we (by we I mean it's an accepted fact in our culture) all think people get abused in prison and we send a crap load of non-violent offenders there is a damn tragedy.
The "91% of computers are infected with spyware" DOES come from McAfee who just so happens to have a vested interest in selling tin foil hats to the populace.
How do they get these stats?
1. They count every Kazaa download and call it 1 user who has spyware.
2. They count anyone with a "doubleclick" cookie as having spyware.
3. They have 1337 h4X0Rs p0wning us all and they have a progress bar in their mountain lair fortress showing how much of the InterWeb they now control! MUHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHA!
This reminds me of the stat that says Bit Torrent downloads are using a vast percentage of available internet bandwidth.
With that said, I have cleaned MANY of my friend's windows computers and they generally have some sort of horrible infestation going on. Granted they often have the file sharing software du jour and they have no idea of what windows download is.
Come to think of it... I think I have dumb friends. Damn.
I'm sorry for your loss, but that is a truly great story. How amazingly unempathetic that beaurocrat was....
Innovation, research and development costs lots of money up front. When you have the market percentage that MS does, it is most likely easier to see what works, copy it and 90% of people will buy it/ use it.
The other issue is that million dollar ideas at MS are almost useless. That is such a small percentage of their total revenue that they don't even bother. As has been said before, MS's largest competitor is MS's last generation products. E.g. Office 2000.
How about:
Honey... What are these bangbus_13.avi and goatsnhos.avi files?
Argh. Don't forget to password protect your computer kiddos. Including the bios.
If mom wants to run l0pht crack and pull the computer's battery...
You are on /. and you have a girlfriend?
You obviously are NOT human.
I agree with most of that.
I wonder how many people would run away screaming from the US if car bombs detonated near their walmart or starbucks a few times a month.
I do think that within 10 years someone might pop a nuke or spread a bio agent and kill thousands or tens of thousands or more people. As the technology to do so spreads to more and more countries I think it's inevitable that it will fall into the hands of someone that chooses to use it for ther own purpose.
On the other hand, I actually think the relative lack of someone downing airliners or derailing trains, etc. is actually proof that terrorists are splintered, poorly organized and not all that numerous OR they are not that willing to take lives randomly.
View the recent situation where a possibly deranged man left his car on the rails of a train in LA. 11 people died, 200 were injured and I'm sure that cost a few million bucks. How easy would it be for someone to steal a car, park it on the rails at night and disappear?
Basically you need very little time or money to do great damage. I think the point is not that many people really are willing to do it. Or they would be doing so.
"or lying on your couch with your feet in the air"
The irritation of having to use an external mouse with your laptop should fade at times like this...
Everyone arrested who used Microsoft's Internet Explorer on Microsoft's Windows operating system(s).
here, here, here and here.
It's really quite amazing what you can get away with.
I must look very sketchy (shaved head, occassionally possessing a goatee) because I get asked for ID OFTEN in CA.
According to this site, we have 4 murders per 100,000 people whereas the UK has 1 per 100,000.
According to this site, we have 5.7 murders per 100,000 people whereas the UK has 1.41 per 100,000, so the 1 to 4 ratio seems to be corroborated. This second site seems to be more of a pro-gun site and explains that many facts are distorted re: gun homicide vs. gun suicide as well as the fact that the homicide rate in Britain did not change much following their ban of guns. This site also mentions that Canada has less households w/ guns (29% vs. 39%) but they also do have about 1/3rd the murders. I don't know how that works out per capita though.
So. Basically you are simply wrong according to these sites. You only addressed one comment and that's all I really have time to address in your rebuttle.
So maybe my statement is wrong. Or maybe yours is. But it's difficult to find info that does not have an agenda behind it. My biggest complaint with your comment was that you make a blanket statement like that. "Gun control laws don't work".
And when I have some time, I'll look into the assault ban. It was my understanding that this was a ban on full auto guns. Semi auto were still legal I believe. I'd rather here your comments on why you don't think that technological solutions to the things that make people want to ban guns won't work...
I mean, hell, the idea that a hacker could take your gun and exploit the "biometrics identity thingy", kill someone and frame you for the murder would be a better argument then "what if there is blood on the handle".
I'd also appreciate an argument where you don't feel the government should have a record of all gun owners because in the event of a dictatorship these people would be easier to "round up".
I mean basically we can argue stats and causes and everything else and we'll never really know because even the researchers and police have a motivation to sometimes skew the stats.
This is an old joke. Not that I'm not saying it's not still funny :-D.
I worked at a small company fixing peoples' computers. Invariably when it was a virus call the customer and I would come up with two groups of suspects...
1. Anti-Virus Companies
2. Kids with too much time on their hands and no girlfriend.
Heh.
I am totally with you on this. Every instance you use your card is a security risk. I've worked retail before and trust me that most are not subjected to a security check at all.
I'm a web developer. I have always wondered if you conduct credit card transactions over http or send them over email rather than use https exactly how risky that is. My thoughts are that the packets can be intercepted from point a to point b. I.e. the client's computer to buymycrapfakewebsite.com.
Most of these computers are major switches and such. If they are compromised we are ALL screwed!
How does that compare to handing your CC to a waiter or waitress who makes minimum wage?
"Adding electronics to a gun won't make it more reliable though."
Why not? Why are you being a luddite? There are electronics in our cars, airplanes, medical equipment to name just a few places where a failure could mean injury and death.
Why are gun owners so resistant to having "smart" guns? Wouldn't they in fact help the gun lobby and make taking away your rights more difficult? Since now if gun #67834 was fired then user #67834 fired it with a %99.99 probability rate. The gun control people would not be able to quote how many guns were used on their owners, etc. No more little kids getting their hands on daddy's gun, etc.
The fact that someone owns guns generally does not make me nervous. The attitude of many of the more vocal users DOES make me nervous.
If the technology can not be proven to be extremely reliable then it should not be used. If the failure rate is within a certain window (perhaps the window you and others mention in previous posts attributable to faulty ammo or 1 to 2%.)
Why are police officers exempt? Probably because they have a very powerful lobby.
Why would you have blood on your hands? Isn't that what the gun is hopefully there to prevent? Asssuming there is a struggle that came to blows you may well have lost your gun. Will a conventional gun fire in the "other" guy's bloody hands?
I have to say you don't help your case by saying things like "Gun control laws don't work so there's no point discussing them." I mean obviously they seem to work in other countries with a much lower murder rate than the U.S. Are you saying they will not work in the U.S.? Are you referring to assault weapon gun control laws?
Let's see. How does it go again?
I for one welcome our soccer playing, laser beaming, man killing, meatbag dominating overlords!
Seriously though, I actually laughed out loud at your post and now my co-workers are eyeing me curiously.
It seems that the majority of Belkin's products consist of things like $39.99 usb cables. Which Best Buy, etc. stocks right next to the $100.00 HP, Epson, etc. printers that *don't* include a USB cable. Anyone else smell some collusion?
Oh. Here is a little hint. Add the aformentioned amazingly overpriced cable into your cart. Enter the code "12345" into the "redeem coupon" field near the top and click the button.
This magically lowers the price to $20.00. Now they are only making 300% profit!
I can see this as being a good technology on anything where bandwidth is more of a concern than cpu speed.
For instance, if you wanted to transmit from a probe on another planet, or an autonomous untethered robot exploring under the ocean (which communicates with long wave radio I think).
What image format do these tasks use currently?
Maybe even those big brother cameras that are supposed to monitor every moment of our lives could benefit!
But I agree that the uses they list are silly. I would suggest that even among those that understand what "zipping" is don't realize that jpegs do not compress much. They probably do it to just put the jpegs together in xmas2004pictures.zip.
I think I erred in permitting my kids to play GTA *before* buying them hookers...
This may be off topic...
I was wondering what the slashdot community thinks of the estimates that BT uses 1/3rd of available internet traffic.
Considering that it is a bit more private and "exclusive" than things like Kazaa and Edonkey does that number seem possible. You know. It takes the install of the basic BT binary as well as the GUI client of your desire. Then you need to find a decent BT website/ community.
If this figure IS true, wouldn't making BT even more viable eventually choke the internet?
Thoughts?
It would be ironic that something that was designed to "manage" bandwidth may end up hogging all that is available.
It used to be pretty easy to get rid of spyware.
0. Get all Windows updates, patches, etc.
1. Get both programs (Spybot and Adaware)
2. Update both via downloading the newest signature files.
3. Reboot in safe mode. (press F8, etc.)
4. Run both programs.
5. Optionally open msconfig (not available in Win2K) and/or regedit and check to see what is still running and track down each item at http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_index.htm or similar.
6. Reboot.
7. Optionally take a look to see if any items you removed in step 5 recreate themselves.
8. Optionally install firefox, etc.
Heh heh. Re-reading this makes it seem not so easy, but everything is easy when you know how.
I have noticed newer spyware variations doing two VERY BAD THINGS.
1. Preventing adaware, spybot, norton, etc. from working. Via the hosts file or otherwise.
2. Modifying system files so that they can not be removed. I turned one friend's computer (running XP) into a paperweight. Because the program was manipulating winlogon.exe. Adaware removed it and the computer would logout every time you tried to logon. I had to extract the file from an XP boot disk.
OK. So the point of this post was that since Microsoft knows their files the best, one would assume they could check file checksums and file dates, etc. and prevent these sorts of shenanigans.
They have had a program called System File Checker sfc.exe since the windows 98 days. I always thought an adaware program combined with this would be nice.
Although I have never figured out how these spyware programs can circumvent "system file protection" when it is a royal pain for US to do so.
Slashdot maybe? ;-)
OK. OK. I was in a rush because I was at work. I do remember reading about a laser that was linked from www.dansdata.com. This thing was a glorified light saber. It melted a plastic cup. The point I was attempting to make is that it is a hell of a lot easier to afford, get, hide and use than a Surface to Ground missle. However, I would assume it would be much easier to defend against. With technology and not excessively punitive prison sentences.
The REAL issue here is that very powerful green lasers have gotten extremely cheap ($59.00 to $99.00) so they need to throw the book at this guy to prevent the rest of us citizens from playing possibly dangerous games.
A more realistic thing to do is come up with a technological solution to prevent an airplane from being downed by a $100.00 device. A self-darkening wind screen, some sort of polarized surface, a one way mirror coating?
The use of the Patriot Act is a travesty. The guy is pointing out stars to his daughter and obviously Mr. Clueful was not exactly trying to hide the fact from the police helicoptor.
The Link on Cnet.
An excerpt: and I just remembered this made me laugh when it happened.